Stephanie Howell

Addio, dolce amici!

July 12, 2013

Farewell, sweet friends!

I wanted to take a chance to tell you today, as I don’t think I’ll have a chance to update the blog before we leave.

In two days we will fly over the Atlantic Ocean to Venice.

We are about to embark on a 3 year adventure. One that will involve seeing places I’ve dreamed of my entire life. I’ve wanted to go to Italy ever since I was a little girl and saw Roman Holiday for the first time.

As I type this I am full of confliced emotions.

I am scared. I am nervous. I am already homesick. I am thrilled. I am worried. I am excited. I am already thinking of the things I will see and wondering if I will simply weep when I see them.

Most of all, I am overjoyed.

I am going on this adventure with five of my most precious gifts.

We are so lucky that we get to do this. That I get to give these children a gift like this.

I love this country so much and I am so blessed to have been born and raised here.

But…

I am off to learn to cultivate la vita bella. I am ready for more wine and delicious food…and less worry and “give me more” and “latest and greatest”.

Ready to go somewhere where there are over 100 ways to say I love you and perhaps life won’t be a competition of who is busiest.

I’m ready to spread my wings and fly. And become a better woman for it.

So with that I say…

Arrivaderci!

Ti amo troppo (I love you tooooo much 🙂

xoxo

wordless(ish?!?!) wednesday

July 10, 2013

practicing our Italian hand gestures.

P.S. We will be living in Italy in FIVE DAYS!!!!!!!

xoxo

5K Ranch

July 8, 2013

**ETA after several email inquiries…this is a privately owned ranch. It’s not a hotel or rentable property!**

So between seeing my family in Waco and Jimmy’s family in Nederland…we decided to take a little vacation at 5K Ranch.

Hmm. How can I describe 5K Ranch? How about this. Heaven on earth.

Imagine a place where you have absolutely nothing to worry about. It’s in one of the most beautiful parts of Texas, each of us have our own large bedroom+bathroom, and there is a big ole pool. At 5K ranch there’s nothing to do but ride 4 wheelers and explore, swim in the pool, eat, read, and relax.

Oh, did I mention that our most favorite friends in the world gather there every year? This was the 6th summer at 5K ranch.

We’ve made three.

Every year when our friends meet up there I’m so homesick. Homesick for the jokes, the laughing until we cry. Homesick for the BBQ, the cocktails, and the just being together.

The core of this group is Jimmy’s best guy friends that he’s had since he was a kid. Friends that are the kind of friends that would do anything for each other. You know…the ones you can call up in the middle of the night and they will come without hesitation.

Yep. Those kind of friends. The kind that are the best kind to have when your husband is in Afghanistan and you don’t know if he’ll come home. The kind that dance with you at weddings when he is gone so you don’t feel sad, the kind that take you in as one of them even if it’s super intimidating at first.

The last time we went the the ranch we pretty much had the only kids. This year? Well look for yourself.

Kind of amazing, huh? And two more growing in bellies as we speak.

The kids run themselves ragged all day. Swimming, exploring, not napping, getting dirty, using their imaginations. There is a collective group of a zillion adults watching them.

We discipline and admonish each other’s kiddos as if they are our own. Love them like they are our own too.

This year I met six children that I’ve watched grow through the Internet. Four kiddos I’ve long to hold and get to know. I finally got to do that this week.

We finally got to tell them how long we’ve been waiting to meet them and how much we love their mommies and daddies.

]And after the kiddos zonk out we stay up late talking, reminiscing, and laughing. So much laughing. As I sit here today I don’t have a voice at all.

This week I got to have my coffee on a porch swing every morning.

I got to watch the sun set and the horses graze every night.

And where can you ride a giant swan and learn how to flip off the diving board? 5K. That’s where.

Oh, and let’s not forget the cocktails.

Thanks to Uncle Brad for making me not one but two delicious drinks that tasted like juice and threatened to have me napping on the lawn with the dogs. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal because there would have been 93248028 adults to step in and take over my parenting role.

That’s the thing about 5K. Never any worries.

I’ve tried to put in in words here, but the fact is I can’t really do that properly. The fact is that I’m a little bit teary eyed as I type this.

We are very fortunate to lead the life we lead. We get to see this world and explore and meet new people. But we miss our friends. I miss them so much it makes my heart ache.

Most people are fortunate to be surrounded by their best friends and family at all times. We miss out on that and it can be sad sometimes.

True friends of the heart are a gift. And time worry-free is a gift.

So grateful for 5K ranch.

We’ll be back in three summers. And we’ll miss it terribly until then.

Road Trip Day 4

June 28, 2013

Thursday morning we woke up to a beautiful day in Nashville and spent some time in the Hotel Indigo lobby. I wanted to take Cate and Lucy's photos in front of this AWESOME wall.

Note to self…I'm totally doing this with teal books in our next house. But it will probably be a shelf/vignette. Love it.

Miss Cate cooperated, but Lucy was not in the mood. See below. Hmmph.

I quickly stopped by Hatch Show Print (one of the oldest working letterpress shops in America). And y'all…BY FAR my favorite thing I saw on this entire trip. I could have stayed there for hours and hours.

I wanted to purchase SO many posters, but time (and space) was very limited so I got a few small items:

Next we drove down the road to Local Taco to meet my sweet (and longtime!) online friend -and rockstar mommy blogger- Jessica Turner.

She is wonderful. We are a lot alike and it was so easy to talk to her about life and motherhood. There was a LOT of talking and a LOT of laughter. 🙂

Jimmy and I both agree that we'd be great friends with her if we lived closer. She's a doll.

The babies clearly took to her too. And I'm so grateful that she thought to ask to take our first family pictures from our road trip. Love these so much.
After reluctantly saying goobye we hit the road. Our goal was to make it to Little Rock, Arkansas.

These two monkeys were worn out and fell asleep really quickly.

We made it into Arkansas…

And here's where things got a little bit cray. We all got a little stir crazy. The roads were bumpy, there were lots of detours (without warning) and major traffic due to construction.

We went a little cuckoo.
So what else to do? Stop at the proverbial road trip restaurant…Cracker Barrel!
Some yummy food, a little checkers and a lot of rocking made everyone feel much better.
We also snickered a little bit of Jimmy with his man purse. Bahahaha. Yes, we were loopy.
We decided that we were ready for this trip to be over and that we just had to book it to Texas. So that's what we did.

We spent the night in Texarkana and woke up ready to get on the road. One last road trip breakfast and we were out of there.
We had one lunchtime stop at WHATABURGER. Oh how my Texan heart has missed this place. Can you tell we were a tiny bit excited?

And we drove alllll the way to Waco. Where we arrived at BB's magical house. Seriously. Magic. If you don't believe me, just look at these photos.

We had a really good time, y'all. The girls were SO good. We saw so many wonderful places and people. It was truly a gift.

Many of you asked how we kept the girls entertained. Truth is…we really didn't. We were crammed in a Pathfinder with luggage up to our ears.

There was no DVD players or games for them. We just talked to them and sang with them…listened to music. And they entertain each other.

I don't have a magic formula or road trip survival kit for this one. We just said a prayer and drove.

Army kids are pretty good at traveling!

Now I will do a survival kit for each girl for the trip to Italy (Houston to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Venice) and I will make sure to share it.

Love you all!!

Road Trip Days 2 and 3

June 26, 2013

Howdy from Nashville! We are up bright and early this morning and we will be hitting the road again after lunch, but I wanted to quickly share our second and third days on the road.

Monday morning we left VA and I started a book. So good, by the way. I finished it in one day. 🙂

Our goal was to get to Nashville but we quickly realized that we had several stops in mind and we readjusted our goal to Knoxville,TN.

Our first stop was The Natural Bridge. There are no words to describe how gorgeous this place was.

How Great Thou Art, Indeed.

And then, in case I need proof that my husband rocks, we made a detour to hit up the JCrew Clearance Center in Lynchburg,VA. Yeah, my heart was racing a little bit. The entire store was 20% off on top of pretty deep discounts to begin with. YES!

Unfortunately, it must have been a bum day. There wasn’t much to choose from, but I did scoop up a couple pair of shorts and a really cute one piece. ($20!?!?!?)

We drove throughout the rest of the day and pulled into the Hilton Knoxville just in time for drinks and dessert on the patio. The girls were pretty much a hit to all of the businessmen. HA!

Can you spot the tiny topknots above the piano? My favorite.

Tuesday dawned gray and rainy but we got on the road. It was going to be an easy day, only 3 hours to Nashville.

Our first stop was to see one of my favorite people in the world, Ms Jenni Bowlin.

Y’all…her house. There are NO words. It is absolutely gorgeous. My dream house.

You have heard me rave about Jenni plenty of times on this blog, so I’ll keep it simple. Genuine,kind, the real deal. Love her.

I also love Doris. She is just the sweetest. I think the babies wish they could have just stayed in Mt. Juliet forever.

Lucy loved singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider with Miss Doris…

and Catie loved seeing the chickens with Miss Doris. So so sweet.

I loved catching up with my scrapbooking friends. The curly haired gorgeous girl is Melissa, she used to work for Jenni and I always loved catching up with her at CHA. I’ve missed her and was so glad she could meet us for lunch!

After we reluctantly left my dream house 🙂 we checked in at our hotel in Nashville.

We walked down Broadway to get some dinner. The girls were pretty much in heaven at this point. You should have seen their faces!

We had the best ribs this Texas girl has had in a long time (and sausage, and pork, and brisket,and and and) at Jack’s Bar-B-Que and then we just wandered for a bit.

The girls stood with their little faces pressed to this bar for quite a while. They loved the music (the stage was right up against the window). The bouncer thought they were so cute…he even took a photo.

And at one point the drummer tapped the window with his sticks and grinned at them. It was unbelievably cute.
We decided that C and L needed to see their first ever live music. They were so dang interested in every single live music venue we passed.

So we took them into Wildhorse Saloon and let them listen. Y’all…it was awesome. They were so into it. Dancing, bobbing heads. Pure awesome.

These 2 party girls stayed up way past their bedtime but they loved every minute.

Today we are meeting a friend for lunch and then booking it through Arkansas.

On the road yet again!

xoxo

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