it's official.

we have lived in san antonio, texas for an entire year. 

it has been a challenging year, but we have soo many good times to look back on. i was ready for this adventure in a new state and ready to see why people like texas so much, and ready to do that with jon. it has taken us awhile, but we are starting to really dig it here. 

(i think the polarized sunglasses help. they make everything beautiful)

the day we got here with alex, our two dogs sadie and logan, and the kitty bandit. 

june 8, 2013. 

june 10, 2013. 

jon jumped right into school and has been going full time ever since. such a good student!

 june 13, 2013.

back when i thought it was fun and cute to have chickens living in the front room!

 july 4th, 2013.

in austin with jessie! she spent the summer in dallas and it was a treat to see a friendly face!

july 14th, 2014.

i mean..?

 july 19th, 2013.

right though? it is true what they say, the texas sky really is the biggest one i've seen. and i love it so much.

 july 20th, 2013.

fredricksburg with jon. eating chocolate, learning about their german history and taking in texas' history at the same time. (ah, that simple phrase of defiance just thrills me as a proud american)

 august 22, 2013. 

two skinnies training for a half marathon. pregnant me is lovvvving pre-pregnant me. get it gurl. 

 september 20, 2013.

i joined jon at UTSA for my final semester of school and was admittedly very confused with my california/texas mishmash of outfits. but my goodness are those boots comfortable. 

october 11th, 2013.

 yeah.

 october 12, 2013.

we fell in love again lots of times over this past year and i mean lots of times.

 october 13, 2013.

awww our babies at church. the 4/5 year olds which we moved up with in january to teach them as 5/6 year olds. they were so happy when we told them about the baby. it was easter and one little girl said "have a good easter! and have a good baby!"

 november 3, 2013.

we moved into the third floor at the house after completely and utterly renovating it. it needs work, but that flag though.

 november 6th, 2013.

new braunfels is right outside of san antonio and is a little german town. since this family loves germany, we always go to germanfests, wurstfests, bierfests, the works. when jon's dad and step mom were trying to recruit us to move to texas in august 2012, we went to a german festival where my FIL sang along to all of the songs and held up his drink as if it was a bier stein with all the other drunkards. jon sang along too and i think that was the moment i knew we wanted to move to texas although that feeling could have come a couple hours later when we were at the AT&T center watching the professional bull riders, but who knows.

 november 6, 2013.

this family doesn't go out a lot, but when they do go out…they go all out. fooooood. 

 november 17th, 2013.

ran our first half marathon. together but separate.

 december 7th, 2013.

ran our second half marathon, this time together the whole time and it was one of the funnest things we've done together.

 december 15, 2013.

visited the alamo quite a few times. although some of the details are still fuzzy and hard to remember, it is an amazing and spiritual place to be. 

 january 6, 2013.

bought a car! now it's safe to say that we sold my nissan and bought this toyota as baby prep. we can't wait to have a little toddler making a mess of our leather interior!

january 11, 2014.

got treated to a nice group meal from my place of employment and were really into being the sober ones.

 february 15th, 2014.

jon will kill me for posting this but it is just too lol. we are part of a group at the san antonio museum of art called young friends and we meet for art things and have a season pass at the museum. its alright, the museum itself is tiny. (especially compared to those in san diego and la, but we take what we can get) this night we went to a surprise party for a friend from work in a nice downtown loft and afterwards came to the art party. this is jon rocking out to the live music and making me laugh so much.

 march 5, 2014. 

heyyy we even got pregnant this year. maybeeee the most notable thing so far.

march 29th, 2014. 

we went to disneyworld!!! i need to write about it because it was the bomb.

 april 7th, 2014. 

saw our little baby for the first time and could see the tiny heart beating. while we were watching it, we saw it move (it looked more like a full body twitch) but its the cutest thing we've ever seen and it has made us laugh to imitate it ever since. 

april 27, 2014.

eeeeek my father and father in law got me a bow with arrows for my birthday!! it is from the 70's, has a 35lb draw and i'm proudly getting better. the other day i almost did a good job imitating katniss when we heard a bunny in the wilderness but i'm still quite stumbly loading the bow, hahaha. 

april 27, 2014.

enjoyed sadie and logan so much. every single day i'm grateful to have our dogs here. logan makes us so mad because he is OCD about biting/scratching/licking anywhere on his body but his puppy eyes and excitement to be outside in the morning makes up for all of it. and the way he puts his ears forward and cocks his head to the side when i go upstairs or leave the house without him makes my heart break in a good way. cutest dog ever. sadie has some quirks of her own, her incessant barking/whining at jonathan when we are in conversation and her ear piercing bark when the doorbell rings, but it's pretty endearing that she waits all day for jonathan to get home and interrupts our conversation because she just has so much to tell him about her day. we are both so happy to have them.

april 28th, 2014.

finally scratched old timey photo off of our bucket list on my birthday!! we went downtown to take them and it was so much fun! i was only 12 weeks along, but the corset was most uncomfortable. jon looked swoonie in his getup and it was all around fun.

may 11, 2014.

celebrated FOUR YEARS together!!!! i'm wearing my necklace from jonathan and we are posing by his clementine tree from me. more on that later.. :)

june 8, 2014.

cuterton almost didn't make an appearance, but here he is. we've enjoyed his company too and we are so glad that everything worked out so that he had a home while we were between homes and was able to move here with us. 

we are so happy together and are looking forward to another year here in san antone.

so far the things we love about it are:

the green scenery and blue sky.

family.

the bbq.

fredricksburg.

homegrown peaches.

the riverwalk.

a quote from our favorite song right now:

"It don't matter where we go, we'll never be alone. Anywhere beside you is a place that I'll call home."

home.

the last weekend in march we packed up our house, drove two days to san antonio, tx and moved all of our belongings into a storage unit. we house hunted, rode the horse, and made ourselves comfortable in the hagerman home. we got back on sunday and the next time we go to texas in june, it'll be the real deal.
a video:
Home from Alexandra Hagerman on Vimeo.

goodbye first house: bedroom

the last room in the house is our bedroom:

 we have a tiny bed and we constantly fought over how much space the other person was taking up. during the olympics we took our mattress downstairs into the front room for two weeks and pushed it up against the couch. while we were down there, i slept up against the couch and that meant jon got most of the bed! we decided that maybe it'd be better if we pushed our bed into the corner of the room so that i could sleep up against the wall and we'd both be more comfortable. (i don't like sleeping close to the edge of the bed when its in the middle of the room, scary!!) it looks funny having our bed like this, especially since that means the rest of the furniture is lined up on the opposing wall, but it's actually helped a lot! the only thing i don't like is reaching over jon to turn on and off the lamp, and not having a place to plug in my phone.

(mouse!)

i think i posted about this before. jon used to go to work before i woke up and sometimes i was so sleepy i couldn't even say i love you! so i used push pins to spell ILY right by the door so that he knew i loved him every time he left the room, even if i didn't say it. the light switch cover is the one that was in my granny's bedroom forever.

i must say that our room never looks like this. maybe on the first day that we have guests. the floor is usually covered in clothes and shoes! but that's what makes it homey, right?!
i am writing this while i should be studying for my midterm tomorrow. it's been awhile since i've just sat down and written my thoughts like i used to.
it is our last night here in this house. i don't think it has hit me yet, it seems surreal. i did get a dose of reality when we were packing today. in the winter marines wear green cammies. they change to their desert (tan) cammies in the spring and wear them until fall. they just switched from green to tan when the time changed. that means jon won't be wearing his green cammies anymore...who knows if he will ever wear them again. we took out all the drawers from his dresser and he and his dad took the dresser out to the u-haul. i saw his drawer sitting in the middle of the floor filled with his green cammies that he is sending to storage for an indefinite amount of time. it made my heart hurt...a lot. it's enough to have to say goodbye to our first little house and move in with someone else. it's really sad to leave san diego, the place where we've spent our entire marriage, our friends, my school. but to think about leaving the military...that is more heart wrenching than the others. we can come back to san diego, we can come see our friends, i'll be back next year to graduate from my school. but come May 3rd, jon will no longer be wearing his uniform everyday. he won't be able to say "I'm a Marine." i will no longer be a Marine Wife. I mean, i will...but it just won't be the same. it is quite difficult to explain. it's just been amazing to have my spouse do something we are both so proud of. i'm proud that my husband went to afghanistan. i'm proud that he enlisted on his own free will. i'm proud that he has known since he was a child that he wanted to do this and proud that he chose the marine corps because it is the toughest branch(wink). i know we need to move on from this. jon has so much to give the world, so much more than the marine corps will allow him to do. he's starting school in june and i know he will do awesome!  he's had an internship this spring and met a lot of prevalent people who were impressed by him. i know he's going to do great in whatever he decides to do. i am sad to leave california, but i'm ready to be in a state where i can (hopefully) find a job that doesn't require me to mop before i go home, is that too much to ask?
i could ramble on and on, but i really must get to studying. we are packing up the trailer tomorrow and checking out of our house. tomorrow night we are going to sleep at the isaac's (that's who we will be living with when we come back to san diego on april 7th) and then saturday morning the three of us are road-tripping from san diego to san antonio! jon and my FIL tried to warn me about how tiny the middle seat was in the u-haul, but i told them to stop. i wanted to be surprised. i don't deserve to dread the roadtrip three days before we leave. i'll deal it with saturday morning.
wish us (me) luck!

goodbye first house: kitchen

we got our little yellow butter dish from our dear friend from elementary/jr high/high school jenni hens (from anthro). she lives in san diego and goes to SDSU with me! we love her so much. she got that for us for our wedding almost three years ago! we just recently bought the two ceramic jars from the PX because they were ridiculously inexpensive. i like how they look with the painting, but who knows where they will all be in our new place.

the mirror is an heirloom i got from my granny's house after she died. she got it years ago at ZCMI!

there isn't much going on in our kitchen. i always had big plans for it, but they were never carried out. i will miss how big and spacious it is, hopefully our next house will have a kitchen like this. maybe with different cabinets and lighting though...

goodbye first house: living room.

our living room is the most 'finished' room in the house. it has come along way since summer 2011 and even more so since summer 2010. i can't believe how empty our house was and how small that little plant is on my desk! it is the same plant that is sitting next to the tv now.

our original brown sofa was the first piece of furniture we bought as a married couple. jon bought it for us actually and i never really liked it. looking back at it though, i kind of miss it....

i think we bought it for $350 from his friend who was getting out of the military. two years later, we sold it for $250, and bought this vintage blue sofa for $150. haha, a day in the life of the hagerman's. 

the painting above the sofa is one that my uncle don did. he said that he, my mom, and my grandma were sitting on their porch in sugar house in 1976 when a little girl went by. don had intentions to paint a picture of their house, but when he saw the little girl he asked her if she'd like a portrait done of her. she said yes and he said she sat still for a solid 45 minutes while he worked. when he was finished, he showed her the finished product. she liked it, but didn't look long. she said that her mother was waiting for her! it's a quirky little painting, but i love having it and remembering that cute story. 

see how good my plants are doing! i recently repotted them and am praying they make it through the move alright....

i got those knobs from anthropology. the red clock is the clock that used to hang in my grandma's bedroom right across from her when she sat in bed. the eagle globe and anchor is the marine symbol that my dad carved and painted for jon while he was deployed and gave it to him on the fourth of july in 2011. 

my instagram pictures made it to coffee table books. it's fun because sometimes my visitors find pictures of themselves in there!

our nate berkus tortoise shell is one of our favorite household items. for a long time after we moved in, we could not figure out what to hang on our walls besides pictures and my eyes were so bored when i'd look around the room. we love this funny little thing. 

we got that little Dalarna horse when we were in Solvang in November for Veteran's day. jon found that little shot glass that he bought from sweden while he lived there with the same little horse on it. he gave me the canvas print for our two year anniversary (cotton)! and we proudly have his associates degree displayed that he obtained in october.

here is one last photo for your viewing pleasure:

jon and alex in sweden with the dalarna horse in october 2008 after jon had finished his two year mission.