September

September- My Best Friend's Wedding

Well 5 snow days has allowed me the opportunity to try and catch up on some very overdue blogging. The truth is I've been putting off blogging about September because I want to do Ellen and Cal's wedding justice. Their wedding was so wonderful it's hard to know how to capture it all, but here we go...

Ellen's wedding started off with a few hiccups as every good wedding does - but Ellen is not your average person so her "hiccup" involved her wedding venue burning down 3 months before her wedding! Ellen pressed on in true Ellen fashion and was determined to have the best wedding ever!

The wedding ceremony was held on the lawn of the Barr Mansion in Austin, TX. We had cocktail hour on the lawn and guests enjoyed Belgian and Texan beers - a nod to the bride and groom's heritage.

The FOB

 

The Darius Family

Pommes frites (Belgian fries) were served as a late night snack and inflatable guitars and microphones were handed out on the dance floor and kept people entertained until 1AM! Ellen is a DANCER and so are all of her family and friends! The dance floor was full the entire 5 hours, I think I sat down for only 1 or 2 songs the whole time! 

Get it Cal!!

Dancing 

More Dancing

Even  MORE dancing! Please note Sterling in the back gettin his groove on!

Made for each other!

 Cheers to Ellen and Cal!!

Ellen's FABULOUS wedding review!

August

KK Reunion and Ellen's Bachelorette Party!

Both of the wonderful events took place at one of my favorite places on earth - Kickapoo Kamp. I always look forward to reunion weekend. Some of my best friends, in my favorite place and all we have to do is lay on the river and eat smores! That's my kind of weekend! Just a couple weekends after that I was back at Kamp for Ellen's Bach party! Since KK is near and dear to Ellen as well we thought it would be the perfect setting. It was so wonderful to have the people that care so much for Ellen all in one place. We had a great time at Kamp and then hit the town later on Saturday night. I'm pretty sure we were the best thing to happen to Kerrville, TX in a long time! What a wonderful weekend dedicated to my wonderful bestie!

Trying to catch up...starting with July

So since its been an eternity since I've posted I am going to do a quick recap of the last 6 months. We'll start with July and hopefully I can get through the rest of the year before 2010 is over.

July


Annual Meeting
Every year Sterling goes to Milwaukee over the summer for his annual meeting with Northwestern Mutual. This year I was able to go with him and we had such a great time! It's a very family focused event with lots of fun activities. The first night we had a big group dinner with the Dallas offices. The next day everyone participates in the 'Roots and Wings' 5k or 10k race along Lake Michigan in the morning and then heads out to the Milwaukee Zoo for the Garden Party that evening. Northwestern reserves the entire Zoo and brings in enough food to feed an army! All of the exhibits are open for us and we get to roam the entire Zoo! It's my favorite event! There are meetings on Monday and Tuesday for Sterling to go to. I was able to go with him to some of the meetings and we got to hear amazing speakers like Tom Brokaw. Lastly, Northwestern Mutual always brings in someone really great for a private concert. This year it was Keith Urban! You better believe me and another wife got in the line super early to get front row seats. It paid off big time because we were front row and center stage. He gave an awesome performance! We even hung out with the band afterwards at our hotel! We look forward to this annual meeting every year. It's so much fun to get to spend time with co workers (who are really more like friends than co workers) and other friends from all over the country. Everyone leaves with new ideas and a renewed passion for their business.

Northwestern HQ

Roots & Wings Race

Sterling was in the top 100 for new clients in the entire company for 2010!! 

Our private concert with Mr. Keith Urban

There is no zoom used here, we were really this close!

Annie & Brad's Wedding


Also in July was Annie and Brad's fabulous wedding! Boy do they know how to throw a party! Every last detail was so beautiful and the dance floor was hoppin! We are so grateful to have been a part of their special day to mark the beginning of forever!

San Francisco

For Memorial Day weekend we went to San Fran with some friends from Sterling's office. He qualified for this trip based on his number of new clients! It was a jam packed 5 days, but we had a blast! My legs have never been so sore, those streets are crazy!

We started the trip off right with dinner in China Town and walked around to all the shops. The next morning we made it to the farmer's market, then to Golden Gate Park and to a Giants game. Instead of having vendors in the stands selling cotton candy they had people with a keg of hot chocolate strapped to their back with a belt of whip cream dispensers! We don't get that in Texas! Day 3 we went to Alcatraz. I had no idea it was so close to the bay, kinda scary! We ate lunch at In-N-Out Burger! I thought it was awesome and definitely as good as people say! We continued on to Ghirardelli Square for some delicious ice cream. Made the trip to Lombard Street and then got some Clam Chowder at Pier 39. We pretty much ate our way through San Fran! Day 4 was probably our favorite - We went to Muir Woods and saw the huge redwood trees! We could have spent all day out there! Then we rented bikes and went down North Beach. The weather was absolutely perfect the entire time! I told Sterling, let's be very honest about our trip....its was a FUN trip to San Francisco, but it was not a vacation! I was so tired by the end that I needed a real vacation :) We had such a great time, but as always it was wonderful to get back to the great state of Texas!

MS 150 (actually 160)

A few weeks ago Sterling rode in his first MS 150. The event raises over $2 million dollars so thank you to everyone who donated to Sterling's ride! The race started in Frisco and went 85 miles to Texas Motor Speedway. We camped out for the night and in the morning Sterling got to start day 2 by riding a lap around the track. He then continued on to bike another 75 miles to downtown Fort Worth. Luckily Massage Envy was their title sponsor and gave the riders on the team free massages!

When Sterling first got into cycling, he was vehemently against spandex. After such a long ride he fully understands the need for padded shorts! This race is so well run and everyone had a lot of fun! I even had a really great time cheering him on at all the different locations. I am so proud of him for completing this ride!

Sterling with his team at the Starting line

Speeding out to Texas Motor Speedway!!!



WOO HOO!!!!

Birthday Weekend in Austin

I know it's been forever since I've blogged. After you let too much time go by there is all this pressure to make your next post about something really important. Well, not that we haven't done anything important in the last few months, but this time someone had a camera!

We went to Austin last weekend for a little birthday celebration! My birthday, my best friend Ellen's (B2B) birthday and her fiance Cal's birthday are all within about 8 days of each other. Our wonderful friends Sarah and Eric had the great idea of getting us all together. Friday night there were 9 people and 2 labs at the Newton household :) Never was definitely never a dull moment. Austin is so relaxing and fun. We had breakfast at Taco Deli (top 5 best queso I've ever had!) then we headed to Town Lake to let the dogs run around and swim. The weather was perfect! Sarah and I also got to do a little wedding planning with Ellen! :) Sterling and Eric wrapped up the weekend with a bike ride in the beautiful hill country. It was so fun to get away and be with such wonderful friends! We're already planning our beach trip to Galveston this summer! Yea!

Eric, Sarah, Sterling, me, Ellen and Cal

B2B and her MOHs!

And the hardcore riders!

We've been busy....

Ok, so it's been insanely too long since I've posted anything. We've had so much going on that keeping up with the blogging was a daunting task. So I'm going to do my best to catch up. Well in the last 2 months Sterling and I moved into our first house in Frisco and Sterling's 97 Avalon finally bit the dust so we also got a new (to us) car...pictures coming soon! Sorry to disappoint, but I only have picture from moving day. I apologize for the mess in the house and the exhaustion on our faces! We absolutely love our new home!! We are getting use to the commute, but we try to carpool as much as possible so we can atleast be together in traffic.

All the painting was already done (which we are so grateful for) and we just love the colors! The red room is the dining room.

This is our rotunda and our kitchen.


The view from the living room to the rest of the house.

I'll try and post more pictures as we get more done to the house. We do have a guest bed for any interested!

In the last couple of months we also went to Georgetown to celebrate my brother, Tyler's 21st birthday. I cannot believe my little brother is 21! We had a great time going to the Farmer's Market in downtown Austin then spending the day at Hamilton Pool.

We also took a trip to the Grand Cayman Islands!!! Sterling qualified for this trip through work, so the best part was it was FREE!!!! We had such a great time and I'm especially missing the warm beaches right now in this freezing weather! We went to Sting Ray Island and we both held a stingray!! It was so crazy, it felt like a wet mushroom. And you better believe I asked about Steve Irwin and what went on there! Don't worry it was a different species of sting ray that he ran into. There was a beautiful reef right outside our hotel so we went snorkeling all the time. I even went scuba diving for the first time!! Sterling is certified so he was super excited to go diving again! We saw some amazing things and it was just amazing to be able to breath under water! We stayed at the Ritz which was fabulous! They definitely gave us the royal treatment!














Overall we've had an amazing past couple of months! We are excited to have some time off at Christmas to spend time with family. We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!!!