settling into our new nest

Every house where love abides

And friendship is a guest,

Is surely home, and home sweet home

For there the heart can rest.

~Henry Van Dyke

The lovebirds have settled into a new nest:)  We are so grateful, lucky, and excited for our wonderful new townhome in New Town St. Charles.  When I gushed over moving back to my hometown in the beginning of my blog, I would never have guessed I could live in such a beautiful place here in St. Charles.  We love it!  And not only that, we are so grateful to everyone who pitched in to help us move; including my Momma and Daddy, Opa (who found us a pickup truck to use when we moved our bed), the Kulmas (who allowed us to borrow their truck) and Aaron's brother Josh.  We are so lucky to have so many wonderful family members and friends.

Speaking of friends, we had a wonderful time at Aaron's friend's Eric's house the weekend before we moved.  We had the pleasure of congratulating the happy couple on their newly announced engagement.  Congrats Eric and Ashleigh!  We are excited and honored to be throwing an engagement party for all our friends in our new home within the next month or so.

The night was filled with beer and good conversation.  The boys ordered a HUGE pizza to feed all the hungry guests.  The pizza is literally the largest delivered pizza.  It was crazy big, crazy good, and went crazy fast.  Definitely a good idea to order a great big pizza when you are feeding hungry boys.  After the pizza we went to a nearby bar and sang some karaoke.  I sang some "Little Mermaid" with the help of every gal in the bar.  We had so much fun!

My sweet sister played a bossy elderly lady in her school play that weekend and Aaron and I were not disappointed by her fabulous performance.  She played the part perfectly, perhaps that was due to the fact that she is familiar with playing such a character.

Amidst the commotion of moving we celebrated Easter!  We were super excited and happy to see everyone and share our excitement in our new home with them.  Everyone was there, we were very lucky to have everyone home for Easter, and I loved getting to visit with all my wonderful cousins, aunts, uncles, and everybody.

Momma and Grandmama matched!

Dr. Schneider (Opa) and T.J. (Uncle Tommy) were having some intense medical discussions.  Keep in mind that "medical discussions" is a loose term and can refer to anything centering around the hospital or the golf course.

Sweet little Rachel and Ally were having some fun bonding time with Cassie.  They even got to have an inside Easter egg hunt.  Grandpa did a great job hiding the eggs and they did an even better job finding them.  The girls even hid the eggs a second time for Aaron.  This time, though, they had to hide them really hard because "he is really old."

He definitely heard about that and they got tickled for that comment.  This picture is a good one to show how the girls love playing with their cousin-in-law.  Their smiles sure are big!

Although I do not think that pictures do any home justice, many of my family members have stopped by to check out the new nest, I am posting some anyway for my family members who may have to wait to come check it out.

Our living room, including our new couch and my hubby's new toy (the big HD tv).

My beautiful kitchen.  I love all the space for my kitchenware.  Some of these items were gifts from the wedding that couldn't fit into our Chicago apartment, so I re-discovered some truly beautiful and useful gadgets.  

And the downstairs bathroom.  We feel so lucky every morning when we wake up and realize that this is our home.  Thanks to the Lord for this blessing and all the others in our lives.

The royal wedding is tomorrow and I am sure some of you are going to watch it.  Thanks to our AT&T U-verse I am avoiding getting up super early and am recording it to watch later in the afternoon.  It should be very exciting and bring some tears and memories of my wedding.  It will be a true fairytale wedding.  Speaking of weddings, I am looking forward to myself and Aaron's 1 Year anniversary, coming up in June, and the many weddings we will be attending this year.  Love...ain't it beautiful!