Visiting Home: Fun with Friends!

After a week with my family in VA, we arrived in Dallas late on a Thursday night and spent the next day hanging out with Dad and Mom Gipson, Susie, Lucy, our new brother-in-law, Sam (more on that in the next post!) and Matt's sweet grandparents.

Then we departed Dallas early on Saturday and made our way down to Houston to spend 3 fun days with all of our friends from home that we've missed so much over the last year. We all gathered at one couple's house and as soon as everyone arrived I was relieved to find that things felt completely normal! I was worried that it would feel like we'd missed so much in the course of a year, but thankfully it felt as though we had never left!

One thing (or several little things I should say) changed since we left...there are tons of babies in our group now! So unfortunately, I did a TERRIBLE job documenting our weekend with friends b/c I was WAY too distracted by all of the extreme baby/toddler cuteness I was surrounded by to remember to take pictures :(

I did mange to take just a few though!

Keith and Sophie hosted a 4th of July cookout at their house. Matt, Nathan and Keith decided to do a little "extreme slip n' sliding."

Extreme slip n' sliding involved 3 grown men diving on the mat within seconds of each other and rolling out of the way quickly :)

And now...the reason that I forgot to take any pictures of us with our friends...

Precious little C...

Sweet little B...

...and adorable little R

See? Would you be taking pictures of yourself with friends when all these CUTE kiddos were around? And...I apologize to the babies/kids that aren't on here. Some of them moved too quickly and I didn't get a chance to snap their picture!

Thanks to all of our friends from back home for taking so much time out of their weekends to spend with us. We had a blast and can't wait to move home and hangout much more often again! :)

Visiting home: The Beach!

The night after the cookout at Dad's house, we piled into the car and headed off to Ocean City, MD for 4 fun filled days in the sun! I think its safe to say that we all had a blast...but of course, the time went by too quickly. This won't be a wordy post because hanging out by the beach is pretty self explanatory...so I'll just share some of my favorite pictures from the trip!

I love my little sister!

This picture just cracks me up! Brittni was trying to use her boogie board, but it was so windy that the board kept flying in the air like a kite. She could barely hang on to it!

Day 2...can't beat pool side drinks!

One afternoon Matt, Jeff and Brittni went on a little fishing expedition while Mom and I shopped and ate yummy snacks along the boardwalk.

Matt and Brittni all ready to set sail!

Ready to fish for the very first time!

In the evening, Mom, Matt, Brittni and I hung out on the beach for an hour. We flew kites and had fun acting a bit nutty!

The next day we woke up to a LOT of wind making it too cold to swim in the water or even lounge by the beach. So instead, we spent the afternoon on the boardwalk eating pizza and snacks and riding rides...

Out on the boardwalk

Brittni is a brave, little thing and she wanted to ride every single ride! Unfortunately for her, when you're the only kid among adults, its quite hard to find a willing participant to ride the whirly rides...so she had to go at them alone. She didn't seem to mind at all though and as these rides sped up (and they went SUPER fast) you could see absolute joy all over her face!

Why are we showing off our rings? Because we found the very spot we got engaged at 7 years ago! A lot has happened in the last 7 years...that's for sure!

Mom and her girls :)

Matt gave Brittni a little break from walking...

One final night of building sand castles and hanging out on the beach until the sunset.

Of course, all good things come to an end and the next morning we hit the road bright and early to get back home. We couldn't have asked for a better trip. It was fun to have so much time with family after being gone for so long!

Next up...a flight to TX!

Visiting home: Virginia!

Well hello! After a month long hiatus thanks to a wonderful trip home to the states, I am finally back. Being back home for the first time in 12.5 months was every bit as good as I thought it would be! The time flew by and before we knew it, we were headed back to Singapore. Thankfully, we left with a fresh load of new memories to keep us going until the next time we're back (which hopefully won't be as long this time around)!

Our first stop was VA to visit my family...

Up at Mom's house, Matt and Brittni spent a lot of time swimming :)

Mom surprised us with a family baby shower where they gave us lots of fun gifts to bring back to Singapore. Look how cute that cake is! Mom made it!

Pretty Brittni modeling one of the outfits we brought back for her.

A few nights later, Dad hosted a cookout for us at his and Vivi's house. The whole family came plus a few friends. It was a fun night! (Vivi's kids on the left, Dad's on the right)

Two of my best friends! Kitska on the left and Rachel on the right.

You will get to see a lot more of Rachel in a few weeks because she'll be here in Singapore in August! Wooo Hoooo!

So the cookout ended our 3rd night in town and the next morning it was off to the beach with Mom, Jeff and Brittni for 4 fun days in the sun!

Cullen Shower!

Our good friends Cara and Ali have a precious baby on the way (due to make his or her arrival in less than a month!) and we couldn't leave for our 3.5 weeks in the states without throwing them a party hosting a baby shower for them first. The celebration took place this past Saturday (yes 3 days ago. Dare I say it? I'm caught up on the blog...for now) and it went off without a hitch!

The guests of honor :)

Obviously the 4 of us got the memo about wearing black and white ;)

I had to figure out some way to get all of the men to come to the shower...so I made lots of food...

...and we did lots of eating!

Just to make sure everyone truly had enough to eat, I made them sample baby food too.

...and from the looks on these faces, I'm glad I was the one running the game so I didn't have to taste the food myself! :) Chris and David won guessing 6.5 out of 11 types of baby food correctly.

It's only fair that all of the men should get to experience what it feels like to be 8 months pregnant! Look at all of these willing participants! Some of them appear to have bigger bellies than Cara!

We had two willing female participants too! It's not easy to slip a balloon inside of a dress, but Chris and Karen both managed to get the job done!

Who can tie their shoes the fastest with a big ol' belly in the way?

The Dad-to-be won...he must have picked up on some skills from watching Cara ;)

Gift time!

Ali tested a few of the goods out. Looks like the teething toy will work out just fine for the baby!

Me with the lovely and glowing very-soon-to-be-mom!

We are all so excited to meet Baby Cullen! Congratulations to Cara and Ali! :)

Celebrating six years, Borneo style.

A couple of weeks ago Matt and I decided to take a little trip in celebration of our 6 year anniversary. After a lot of going back and forth over where we should go, we finally settled on Borneo at the recommendation of Chris and David. Borneo is home to Mt. Kinabalu, a popular tourist destination for those who are ambitious and want to climb the mountain. Matt is definitely one of those people, but he's saving his mountain climbing desires for another weekend because this particular weekend was ALL about relaxation and nothing more. I kid you not, we checked into our resort and didn't leave the grounds once until it was time to check out. Though there was some exploring to be done outside of the resort, we just weren't interested this time! What did interest us? The pool, the beach, food and sleep. We did absolutely nothing (wait I'm lying...we did manage to get in a kayak one day and drag ourselves over to the spa for massages the next...that was tough work!) on that trip which honestly made it one of the best trips ever! I truly can't think of a better way to have spent our 6th anniversary! :)

View from the room

The balcony was AMAZING! We spent a lot of time reading and napping out here and even enjoyed watching a major thunderstorm pass by in the evening.

This definitely sums up the weekend!

One of our only moments of true activity :)

Really, does it get better than a delicious lunch on a beautiful beach with perfect weather?

Another gorgeous sunset over southeast Asia

Remember I said we picked Borneo based off a rec from Chris and David? Well, after we booked our trip and told them about it, we found out they were going to be there at the same time. Bonus! (Chris and David were far more ambitious than us and were actually there to climb the mountain).

So when we first arrived in Borneo, we went to the main lobby to check in. However, we were quickly swept away to a private lobby. I didn't realize I had booked us a stay in the luxury Ocean Wing (I thought I had just booked an ocean view room). In any case, we loved it so it didn't matter. When we checked out, the entire staff gathered around and sang us a private farewell song. It was really good, albeit kind of awkward because the song lasted for well over a minute and we weren't exactly sure who to make eye contact with :)