So I turned 24...

...and apparently forgot I had a blog. Really, I didn't, but since that magical day of #Shaes24th, I've been a really busy girl and my dear little blog got a little neglected. #sorrynotsorry though...

The night before I turned 24, I spent the evening with my favorite 8 year old - painting our nails, watching TV and having a super fun girls' night.

I had to work on my birthday, but never fear, I wore my fancy pants shoes so I could celebrate all.day.long.

When I got back from meetings that day, I had a huge delivery on my desk - Matt had sent me flowers! 

It's now been almost two weeks and I think they're still getting prettier and definitely still blooming. Good job, Matt. Gold stars. That evening, Matt and I celebrated my birthday with a BARBIE CAKE.

I was clearly very excited about all the birthday fun and how he much surprised me with such a great day, as evidenced by my excited face in the pictures we took that night. 

Every birthday princess knows that a birthday party isn't complete without a slumber party, so clearly I had one that night! Julie and Kiera were ready to celebrate when I got home from my celebration with Matt, and celebrate we did, until I was so tired that my eyes wouldn't stay open. Then the next day, we continued celebrating, by fixing our hair and makeup like princesses do, of course! 

Ready for our slumber party!

Have you ever met more beautiful fairy princesses?

My girls. The only thing that could have made the slumber party better is if Mag could have joined us for a cousin night! :)

On Friday Matt and I celebrated again, but I didn't get any pictures. #bloggerbirthdayfail. On Saturday, I met Twin Lori and Baby Tate for a birthday lunch! I'm telling you, I celebrate my birthday right! :)

Saturday night, my family came over to celebrate. I'd told momma I wanted a sparkly pink cake, but she outdid herself with this delicious made-from-scratch, glittering, pink, pearl Shae-cake.

After eating cake, Tate had to try pickle juice. He liked it, I promise. 

On Sunday, we had the Pikey Family Reunion because my great-great-great grandpa Benson Pikey was inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame on Tuesday! I enjoyed the event so much - there's always so much Chickasaw history and I find it very interesting to learn more about the people who have given so much to my tribe.

Great-great Aunt Marie - Ben Pikey's granddaughter - had to hit the casino floor for a bit after the Hall of Fame! She will be 102 this summer and is still just as rotten as they come :) 

On Wednesday morning (I think - my days are running together - eep!), my baby brother Kale was on TV! AmPo was chosen as OKC FOX's Cool School and Kale and the Elementary Choir got to perform! It was too cool. I asked him for his autograph and he told me I wasn't a "real person" so I didn't get it. Ouch!

Matt and Thabo came over last Wednesday night for dinner - I made pizza from almost-scratch (lies. It was totally from a box). Molly and Thabo weren't quite sure what to think of each other - my sassy little pug doesn't like to share, but tries to be as lazy as possible while defending her territory. At one point, she was sitting on Matt and staring down Thabo as he played. They haven't seen each other since Thabo was a tiny baby puppy, but by the end of the night I think they'd decided to be friends. 

On Friday, Magan, Kiera and I ran around the countryside taking pictures, and I got to see a beautiful sunset after taking pictures in the middle of the road. I'll be sure to share some pictures from their photo shoot soon :) 

On Saturday, I got up bright and early (for the weekend) to go to Letter Carriers' Food Drive! My job was to go to various sites and take pictures, and Matt's job was to drive me. I had such a fun day and really appreciated Matt going along with me to work! After the food drive, we went to dinner, watched the Thunder and even shopped a little! Such a solid Saturday :) 

Almost done with our day of work! 

Sunday it was time to celebrate MOM! My brothers and I are blessed with a truly incredible woman to call momma. We had a day at the ponds with our whole family, complete with fishing, homemade fried chicken, hot dog roasts, smores and sunburns! I can't wait for more days like this all summer long. 

Daddy said the rule is if you're driving the truck, the windows are down. I agree. 

I did an activity called "princess fishing" at the pond - I threw the line(?), reeled in the fish, but daddy took it off and held for the pictures. I don't touch gross things like that!

Such a busy, fun couple of weeks! God has put some truly wonderful people in my life and I am so, so very blessed! In conclusion: I'm seriously liking 24 so far. 

T-minus 10 days until #Shaes24th

The title has nothing to do with the post, just thought everyone could use a reminder that on May 2, you need to use #Shaes24th and do amazing things...like wear glitter, tutus and tiaras, eat snow cones, hang out with fantastic people, and just having an awesome day in general. Anyway, on to the post.

Last Wednesday, I had plans to watch Duck Dynasty hang out with Matt & Thabo. However, in the springtime, Oklahoma likes to throw fits and have crazy weather, complete with tornadoes and flash flooding. So around lunchtime, we realized the bad weather would hit just after we got off work - slash neither of us needed to be on the road because clearly this girl is scared of tornadoes and didn't want anyone out in them. Instead, I went straight home after work to find my mom crawling out of the cellar. A little early, you crazy lady. Come to find out, she was {wisely} cleaning out our little hidey hole so that our family + neighbors could all ride out the storm underground.

Sidenote: mom was smart-ly wearing orange since a smart decision was made the same day by Marcus Smart, Markel Brown and LeBryan Nash that they'll all be returning for another year! Yes, we already bought tickets.
#BringBackTheRowdy

I'm not sure how many of you all are familiar with the May 3 tornado (aka the one that wiped out my house the day after my birthday), but it has our family a little leery of tornadoes. While some crazy brave Oklahomans may enjoy chasing them, we prefer to hide from them. So when the path of the storm pictured below resembled the one from May 3 a little too much for comfort, we headed underground. 

Julie wasn't a fan of the cellar & decided to stay on my lap most of the evening!

About the time the hail started, some of our neighbors showed up. Just from opening the door to let them in my brother got soaked! As we sat there discussing who knows what, we realized water was leaking in a bit from the air hole in the corner. Soon, water was leaking in a lot - it was very apparent that the twirly lid had been blown off and there was nothing stopping the rain from coming in! (Sorry for those of you who aren't familiar with "the twirly lid" - I have no idea what it's called but they're on top of like every single cellar.)

My brother took a blanket we had with us and tried shoving it in the hole to stop the water, and as you'll see in the picture on the right, it didn't last! Quickly it got too heavy and fell, letting water rush in. As the corner was quickly flooding and we were imagining swimming in the cellar, dad showed up from work (thanks for missing all the excitement!) and said it was safe to come inside. Thankfully we didn't have to go back down that night! 

On Thursday after work, I went over to Aunt Kandi's to help Kiera decorate her lunch pail for school - Friday was the Land Run and she couldn't have a boring, non-themed lunch pail! Since she was dressing up like a Native American, we were sure to incorporate Chickasaw colors and a Native theme to her pail.

Our finished project! She told me exactly
where to put everything and I just glued. 

Friday afternoon, you couldn't tell there had been crazy #okwx (<-- follow during storms for humor), so Matt and I headed to go grown-up Easter egg hunting to the driving range. I'm not even sure when the last time was that I attempted to hit a golf ball, so I decided not to take it too hard on myself if I was terrible. Thankfully I managed to hit a few good balls, and should do much better next time :) Even if I would have done terrible, we had such a fun, relaxing time and I definitely hope we spend many more evenings this spring/summer playing! 

See? Grown up Easter egg hunting!

After golfing, we were hungry! I forgot to mention that we actually picked up all the range balls we used (they didn't have any and said if we pick up whatever we wanted to hit they would let us golf for free...okay!), so we definitely needed to replenish some energy! In this post I told you about this bubble pizza stuff we made, and Matt loved it so much that he requested it again Friday night! #winning #domestic So, off to the store we went for ingredients. And, since so many people have asked for the recipe, I'll put it at the bottom of this post. :) 

Bubble Pizza!

The rest of the weekend was spent laughing at Baby Tate, watching Django, celebrating my Aunt Kandi's birthday, and watching the Thunder get their first playoff W of the season! #ShearTheBeard 

Baby Tate was more interested in grabbing the spoon
than eating the food Aunt Hanna tried to feed him!

Molly was so sleepy that she dozed off during the Thunder game (imagine that. #lazydog). She decided her spot was the middle of the bed last night, and I think I might have a small Molly-foot-sized bruise on my hip  from where she kicked me all night. For a small dog, she has quite a powerful kick. 

#ThunderUp

via

Recipe for Bubble Pizza (adapted from this pin):

You'll need

a greased glass baking dish - a 9 in square would be perfect

1 can of Grand's Homestyle Butter Biscuits (these are the best, trust me - although if you don't, just use any Grand's Homestyle Biscuit...just know you'll regret not using the butter ones.)

Toppings of your choice (I used pepperoni, some full and some chopped up, but bacon or something would be good too)

1 14 oz can of pizza sauce 

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Oregano (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Using a knife, cut each biscuit into fourths and put the pieces into the pan - cover the bottom, but don't try to squish it down. It'll be a little layered. 

Put your toppings on top of the biscuits.

Evenly pour the sauce on top of the toppings/biscuits. 

Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove from oven, quickly add cheese - as much or as little as you'd like.

Bake for another 5 minutes

Top with oregano if desired. Let sit for 5 minutes to cool, then cut into squares and serve! 

Easter Weekend!

It's Tuesday and I'm just now getting to post my weekend recap. Why is that? Well, because it was such an awesome weekend that I didn't want to miss a second of it to write a little blog post, of course! Plus, if I had posted about such an awesome weekend on April Fool's Day you might think I made it all up. Be sure to read all the way to the end because there's quite a treat at the bottom!! :)

Friday night I got to have dinner with one of my favorite childhood friends! We talked about all sorts of things and took plenty of time remembering fun times as kids - like the time my house blew away from a tornado the day after my birthday - two nights after my friends had been there for a slumber party, and how she came back a few days later to help clean the aftermath (which happened to be the first time I went out to the house after the tornado - such a great friend). And the time I gave her a super cute picture frame for her birthday...with a picture of me and some random other little kid that most definitely was not Ashley! It's the thought that counts, right? I am so very blessed to have friends like Ashley & her family in my life - the very genuine kind who you know will be there forever.

Saturday morning I made sure to sleep in because I was still majorly lacking sleep from our big event Thursday (see pictures here). Once I finally got around, I headed to the city for the adventure Matt had been planning all week. He told me to bring my camera so I knew it would be good. We got in the car for what I decided was called "Matt & Shae's Day of Fun" and headed to the Museum of Osteology - aka the Bone Museum! We spent so much time looking at all the bones and being amazed - "that's not as big as I thought it would be" or "WHOA that's HUGE!" were our most used phrases, I think.

After the Museum of Osteology, we needed a snow cone. So off we went to get the first one of the year!

Blue bubblegum = blue mouth. Whoops!

After a break to play with Thabo...

We went to my house for dinner and to hang out with my Hardy cousins! The sunset was beautiful on the way there, so clearly I had to snap a picture. I still didn't capture exactly how pretty it was though.

Molly loves Matt. Much more than she loves me, I think :(

Sunday after church, my family went to Aunt Bettie's house to eat and hunt eggs. 

the hiders

the hunters

After eating all the delicious food we could and finding all the almost-cooked eggs (side eye, Mag), we went to our land to "hunt" eggs - like skeet shooting, just with eggs - and to fish. 

Mom & her cousin Sherry, who is in town from Colorado

Kaden and Bear couldn't let Sam (Bear's dog) have all the fun in the freezing water - those silly boys had to jump in themselves!

And just as we were finishing up a great weekend, Bear and Magan had to go scare me. Watch the video below for your daily laugh. I promise, it's worth it (at my expense, nonetheless).

My cousins love {to torture} me. 

Hope your Easter weekend was full of celebrating Jesus and loving on your family!