christmas!

to see all the pictures, go here
these are the pictures from our first christmas together as husband and wife. we spent christmas eve celebrating with my immediate family (my parents, brother, sisters and their kiddos), and christmas day with my extended family who came up to visit from the waco area. we had lots of fun, food and plenty of presents and really enjoyed getting to spend some time with the whole family without worrying about planning a wedding! merry christmas from the kings!

christmas festivities

here are some pictures that show us getting ready for christmas this year. lexi started off the celebration with an edible christmas card from a friend and fellow lab-owner that i work with (thanks, ryan!) she LOVED it. the other pictures are from our annual cookie bake (or "cookie fest" as my nephew calls it) where we get together and bake all sorts of cookies for christmas. this year it also coincided with my dad's arrival home from the phillipines (he works over there for weeks at a time, then is home for a while before going back!). more pictures to come soon!

wedding pictures!

to see the pictures, click here
for those of you who have been waiting...they're finally here!
our wonderful photographer, steve colwill, has finished the slideshows for the entire wedding day (preparation, ceremony, portraits and the reception). the photos are available in a gallery form (still shots) or as a slideshow. if you do the slideshow, make sure you have your speakers on! the gallery does include all the pictures, so there are some in there that aren't in the slideshows. if the link above doesn't work, you can type in www.poeticexposure.com/jessica_and_matt/wedding_gallery

thank you to everyone who made our wedding day so special, we hope you enjoy the photos!

from the bride

here are some pics that i took on the wedding day. the first few are of the girls getting ready at my mom's house (hair, makeup, etc.), the few after that are of us getting ready at the ceremony site, mostly before the photographers arrived, there are also a couple from right after the wedding, too. of course, everything else you'll have to see in the wedding slideshow from the photographer :)

click here for pictures

wedding preparations

click here for pictures!
here are the pictures from the days before the wedding. the first pictures are of the bachelor/bachelorette party. we were slightly untraditional and had a co-ed party to begin with at my parent's house where we watched the cowboys game and had beer, margaritas and pizza. then the guys and girls went their separate ways: matt and his gang to a bar in addison and me and the girls to pete's piano bar.
the rest of the pictures are from the rehearsal dinner that was held at heritage ranch, the wedding site. and i promise pictures of the honeymoon are coming soon...there's a bunch of them!

november celebrations

here are some pictures from our november celebrations. one pic shows all the november birthday boys and girl (alia on the 8th, dad on the 17th, matt on the 21st and ben on the 30th). the pic of me and matt is from thanksgiving in hewitt, texas with my mom's side of the family. the other two pictures show my attempts to get the house ready for christmas before the wedding and honeymoon and lexi next to the christmas tree (it's her first christmas!)

updates!!!! (finally)

to our patient blog-watchers, thank you for understanding that i haven't had a chance to make any posts recently! i have included in this post some pictures of my new car (bought 10/1/07) and my new nephew who is getting bigger all the time! the other pictures are of jared and myself making his homecoming mum. for those of you not from texas, yes, that is what homecoming mums look like here, and yes, everything really IS bigger in texas! just take a look at the pics from the high school football game (one of the PESH games i frequently mention).
i'll post more next time i have a free minute!

halloween!

sorry it's taken so long to post, there's been so much going on around here lately my camera and i can barely keep up! instead of making a bunch of smaller posts, i decided i'd group all the fall/halloween pictures into one blog entry so you can view a slideshow and see everything that's been going on with us....
on october 27th, i visited the first annual dallas pumpkin festival sponsored by life is good with my sister, sarah and her husband and their two little ones; ray, olivia and baby jonah. the weather was great, the food was tasty and the 6,000+ carved pumpkins stacked all around were amazing to see! i also go to ride the DART rail for the first time and enjoyed the trip (and not having to look for a parking space!).
later that night, matt and i got to go to an ER dr's halloween party with a DJ, full bar, catered food and lots of crazy costumes. it was lots of fun to spend the night with friends, dance a bit, and introduce matt to some of my co-workers...and it's always great to go to a doctor's party! ;)
sunday, the 28th, i got to spend more time with sarah & her family and my mom when we all went to the dallas arboretum for the afternoon and walked around the beautiful fall exhibits and pumpkin patch. the theme for this season was "the great chocolate tree" so we got to learn all about the process of making chocolate and enjoyed free samples...yum!
that night we finished up by carving our halloween pumpkins and drinking hot chocolate.
to see the pictures, click here.

a new NEPHEW!

see the pictures!
to see additional pictures, go here

baby jonah ryan proctor finally decided to show up!
sarah's contractions became regular around 10pm on saturday night and by 1am ray was helping her relax her way through them. i got the phone call at about 1:45am that i should probably go ahead and leave work because the contractions were coming about every 5 minutes and lasting a minute each. i got to their house at about 2:30am and stepped in to help sarah with her relaxation so ray could get things ready to head out the door. uncle matt came over to keep an eye on olivia while she was sleeping so we could take sarah to the birthing center. we arrived about 4am, sarah's water broke around 4:55am and she started pushing at 4:59am. 9 minutes later we got to meet little jonah ryan, born in the tub at 5:08am on october 21, 2007. he weighed in at a whopping 8 lbs and 6.5 oz and was 22 inches long! mom and baby both did great and checked out healthy. both sets of grandparents and uncle jared were among the first to meet little jonah and everyone else got phone calls as soon as we thought they might be awake. liv got to meet her new little brother about 7am, when uncle matt brought her to the birthing center (after letting her get her full night of sleep) and the whole family got to go home around 10:30am to rest, recover and enjoy their new little miracle!
thank you to my friends at work who let me leave in the middle of my shift so i could be there for my sister, brother-in-law, and jonah.
and thank you sarah, for being such a wonderfully strong woman, to have her children without medication or intervention, and being an example and inspiration to all!
welcome to the world, baby jonah!

weekend life

this weekend has been very busy so far! friday night i got a call from my sister sarah and her husband ray saying that sarah was having fairly frequent contractions, but they weren't regular yet. i kept my phone next to me and stayed up a good part of the night thinking we'd get to meet our newest family member before my shift on saturday, but unfortunately it didn't happen. i'm sure we'll be meeting our newest family member sometime this weekend, though. it was okay the birth didn't happen, since saturday morning i had a wedding shower hosted by my church congregation. the food was great and we got a lot of really nice things that i know we will enjoy! the pictures i included from the shower are of me and both my sisters, and of me with my mother and sisters. the other pictures are of what goes on in an ER when there are no patients. that's right...no patients! on tuesday night when i worked we actually cleared out the ER for just a couple hours. in one picture i am with my friend, heather, next to the medication area. in the other, well, that's a bunch of us on a powered scooter-device used for pushing hospital beds. it's a great ride ;) ER nurses have to have a sense of humor, right?

fall fun

with the weather getting cooler, everyone has been in the mood for fall activities. matt and i continue to go to my brother's high school football games on friday nights and cheer on the plano east senior high (PESH) panthers and watch jared march during the half-time show. we also held our annual pumpkin carving party at my parent's house on sunday where the kids got to carve pumpkins and decorate sugar cookies. eveyone had a great time, other than the fact that the cowboys lost their undefeated record to the patriots...nothing a sugar cookie and some hot chocolate didn't cure, though!

i wanted to post more than 5 pictures, so, to see this week's pictures click here

time to celebrate

another busy week! on october 9, lexi finally got to go to her "graduation ceremony" for her puppy training class. thank goodness her daddy was able to take her while i went to work. we missed her actual graduation date because it was at the same time as our co-ed shower, so we are excited we finally got to make it! this week was also a very special week for matt and myself, on friday the 12th we will celebrate the 1st anniversary of our first date. matt took me out to fogo de chao (an all-you-can-eat meat and salad restaurant...yummy!). the service was great and the food was delicious, but the dessert was by far, unanimously the best part of the meal (which is why it gets it's own picture!). there are no pictures of me because we went out on the 10th instead of the 12th so i could go out with my hair & makeup done from my trial run for the wedding. after some debate, i decided that i didn't want anyone to see me with my hair and makeup done until the wedding...sorry! but don't worry, less than 2 months to go!

sheffield wedding

on saturday, september 29, we got the chance to see two of our good friends get married in dallas. the wedding was beautiful and we had a great time. crystal was a friend of mine in nursing school and matt helped rich coach my soccer team a few times. the wedding gave us a chance to catch up with friends we haven't been able to see all summer and to remind us that in a few months it will be US at the altar! the first pic is nearly inexplainable: somehow all the guys (significant others of girls from nursing school) dressed the same! we don't know when they sent out the memo, but we were all impressed! the second pic you see is of the happy couple seconds after being pronounced man and wife. the next pics are of matt and myself at the table and then dancing the night away! (we both had sore feet the next day)! and what did we keep hearing all night? "you're next!"

co-ed shower

here are some pics from our co-ed shower we had on september 23. to all who were unable to attend, we're sorry you missed a great party! the food was great, we had a wonderful turn-out and we got to play some fun games! the pics are of me and matt in front of the tasty food, me and three of my bridesmaids, matt with a mouthful of double bubble bubble gum (he had to chew a piece each time he missed and answer to a question about me), me having to figure out which leg was matt's just by feeling, and us opening presents. thanks to all who made it so much fun!

engagement photos

i promised you i'd post them, so here they are...
well, some of them, at least. this is the link to the slideshow our photographer made for us from a few of our engagement pics taken last friday at the dallas arboretum. for those who are curious, his name is steve colwill, he can be found at poeticexposure.com.

it's better if you have your speakers on...enjoy! click on the link below:
engagement photos

or, type in:
http://www.poeticexposure.com/jessica_and_james

lexi and the bee?

sunday i continued on my "busy" streak as matt and i attended our first premarital class, then headed to lexi's last puppy class (she is scheduled to graduate next sunday!), before i left early to go to my sister, sarah's, baby shower. i had lots of fun, but i was tired at the end of the day! monday turned out to be an exciting day as well, since it was my first official night as a "real" nurse (with no preceptor, trainer, etc.). of course, lexi made sure that i didn't get all the attention. apparently, while i was sleeping and she was playing outside, she decided to eat, or attempt to eat, a bee, wasp or some other sort of stinging insect. when i woke up to let her back in i thought she had something in her mouth. when i reached in her mouth to remove the foreign object, i realized that it was her face that was so swollen (it's her left side, you can see it in the picture)! she won herself a trip to the vet, only to get weighed (the pic of her in the leash) so i could give her some benadryl with her dinner to decrease the swelling since she didn't seem to be having any other problems. for those that are curious, she weighed in a 39.8 lbs...a far cry from the 11 lbs she was when we brought her home on june 17th! the benadryl worked marvelously and lexi no longer has any swelling or signs of problems from the encounter, and hopefully she has learned not to play with stinging-type insects! my night at work went well too, if any of you were concerned about that ;)
fyi-matt and i take our engagement pics this friday (weather permitting) so i will try to have a few of those up as soon as possible afterwards!

busy, busy

today was a very busy day! i spent the morning at the wedding site with my mom and two of my bridesmaids looking for decorating ideas and such while matt was a at work. after that, we both ended up meeting at my house where i was going to work on making practice bouquets for the wedding with elizabeth, one of the bridesmaids, and he had to watch my sister's 3 kids. it worked out well, with my niece helping me and elizabeth making the bouquets and the two boys taking lexi on a walk with matt. afterwards we watched the incredibles and made chocolate chip cookies (after dinner, of course!). after my sister came to pick up the kids, matt and i headed to garland to watch the plano east senior high school football game and see my brother play snare drum on the drumline in the band. he did great and PESH won 40-7! it turned out to be a great day for everyone (and how could it not be with flowers, football and cookies involved?!) :)

birthdays!

this weekend we got to celebrate my mother and sister's birthdays. lexi enjoyed it because she got to play with all 4 of the kiddos and her doggie cousin bailey. we had lots of fun too, catching up with my family and getting to visit with everyone. the pictures you see are of the birthday girls (31 & 50 years young); me, sarah & liv; my mom with my nephew ben; and my dad with liv. in the next few months there will be many more pictures of birthdays since we have four coming up in november and a new birthday due sometime in october (sarah & ray are due to have their baby #2). i'll keep you posted!

a well-trained dog...

...is a lot of work! but we are finding that the training is already paying off (yay!). lexi now knows how to sit, lay, stay, "take it" and she is getting very good at playing fetch. we are still working on "drop it" and "leave it" and a few other more tricky commands. however, we are happy to report that she now only has to be in her crate while no one is at the house with her, which means that housetraining is pretty much "done." now the big challenge is making sure that she is chewing on the proper chew toys and not anything else. she knows what she's not allowed to chew on, until she finds something else new and has to be reminded to "drop it" or "leave it." no real complaints, though, since she will now sit and stay with a verbal command only and knows that she cannot go outside, come inside or eat her dinner until she is given the command from one of us. we still have 3 more training lessons left, and then it's just up to us to make sure it sticks through repetition. hopefully, she will be a very well-trained, well-behaved dog when those of you who haven't met her are introduced to her!