Hello, Summer Break!

I’m SO relieved to say that my two-week mini-semester is OVER! I had hoped that it would be a low-stress class, but we crammed a LOT of information into 30 hours of class. Every evening when I got home, I read two chapters in a textbook and answered 10 essay questions at the end of each chapter and studied those questions and a long list of definitions from each chapter because we had a 20-30 question quiz the next day in class over the reading material and that was pretty much ALL that our grade was based on. The teacher’s grading scale was not normal – instead of the normal 90-100 = A, his scaled was 95-100=A; 85-94=B, etc. Anyway, to say the least, I’m very glad that it’s over and now I have the entire next MONTH off from school and I am SO glad for the break.

Today Stephen and I worked in our yard on a project that we have been wanting to do for quite a while. I took before pictures and when we finish up (hopefully tomorrow!) I’ll take some after pics. I’ve been looking forward to doing some landscaping since the beginning of Spring, but I just haven’t had the time. This entire past week I’ve been so excited about buying some flowers and getting ready for this landscaping project. I went by Walmart on Thursday (and I completely blew off my homework until LATE that night) and couldn’t help but buy these pretties…

Impatiens, begonias, vinca, lilies, & coleus… most of which will be potted and put on my front porch steps! :)

I have so much planned for the next month. We are planning a trip to Ft. Worth to visit Stephen’s family and to go to the Zoo and probably a few other outings. I have a HUGE to-do list for the house and yard, and, of course, I plan on spending a ton of quality time with Christopher. He is growing up SO quick and is SUCH a little boy. I’ve already started planning his birthday party (Sports theme… what else?) and I’m really excited about it. I can’t believe he’s going to be TWO in less than 3 months… where has the time gone?!?

Dinner at Nana’s (yes – Nachos. Don’t judge.)
&
Playing in his sandbox at Nana’s

Local Celebrity

Christopher made the the paper! This is the third time (not including his birth announcement) that he has made it into our local newspaper. Not that we have any connections. Ha. Christopher had to spend a little time with Stephen at his office this week while I was in class. Star is the cat that lives in the office at the paper. Every week, Star writes a little article in the paper telling what all she has been up to. Christopher loves cats and of course he loved getting to meet Star. I’m glad that Star wrote about meeting Christopher!

Someone needs to work with Star regarding the proper usage of commas and other grammar etiquette. Just sayin’.

Easter 2011

Guess what I have! PICTURES! (a LOT of em!)

Of course, it’s been so long since Easter and so much has happened, I’m not sure I can remember everything about it. ;)

The weekend before Easter, we celebrated at my mom’s house. She always has her big Easter celebration the weekend before, so that it doesn’t conflict with our (large) family’s day-before-Easter plans in Texas. (Pretty much all of our relatives live in the Texarkana area.)

It was a long day and Christopher didn’t get his normal nap in before hunting eggs, so by the time it came to do the egg hunt he was exhausted and really had no interest in hunting eggs. My mom and I had been working with him for a week or so and he had been really enjoying it, but he was pretty much done after about two minutes.

First – my mom made this cutie patootie Easter Basket for Christopher. It says “Hoppy Easter” on one side and his name on the other. I love it!

I realize now that I just took pictures of Christopher and not of the whole family. Not cool. Also, looking through the pictures – I’m not happy with the way a lot of them turned out. Not sure what the deal is? Aggravating!

The next weekend, on Easter Sunday, we went to church with my parents. That afternoon, we went to my mother-in-law’s to hunt eggs and have dinner with her.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I waited until the very last minute to do Easter Bunny shopping pick up a few items at the store. While I was there I saw a cute egg dye kit that was sports-themed. Since Christopher’s OBSESSED with balls, I made a last-minute decision to dye and decorate eggs. I always loved the day when we dyed and decorated eggs and I hope it’s a fun tradition for Christopher, too. The only thing was that the little plastic wrappers that going around the eggs – well, they were really cute baseball/soccer ball/football designs, but the eggs I got were too big and they wouldn’t go around the eggs. So, note to self – get SMALL eggs when using them as Easter decorating eggs.

When we got to Nana’s house, we found out that the Easter Bunny had left Christopher a basket full of goodies!

Next, we dyed eggs!

Hunting eggs…

Some of the plastic eggs that were hidden in Nana’s yard had SURPRISES in them!

In this picture, Christopher is asking us to open up a piece of candy for him. It was a little bite-size chocolate wafer type thing and Mama wanted a bite as well. I opened it and let him bite off a piece, then when I went to take a bite, he shook his head NO at me and took the candy back and stuffed the WHOLE THING IN HIS MOUTH. See pictures below.

Too much.

Okay, I feel SO much better now that I’ve written about Easter. You know, from a month ago.  Our desktop wasn’t recognizing that my memory card had pictures on it, so I ended up installing Photoshop on my laptop and transferring all the pictures there. SOOO now, I shouldn’t have any reason not to be a blogging fanatic. Except for the ridiculously time-consuming two-week-long class I’m in right now.  But more about that later. :)

Quick Update!

We are home from a fun (EXTREMELY impromptu) family trip to Branson! My last day of class was last Tuesday, but I start a new “mini-semester” summer class tomorrow that is every day for 2 weeks! I have so much to do tonight but I am hoping that this class that I’m in isn’t too time-consuming! I have SO much to do on my “to-do” list and one of the things at the TOP of that list is to catch up on blogging! :) We had a great time in Branson and I can’t wait to recap everything that has been going on recently!

I have some studying to do for tomorrow (our professor was nice enough to email us last week [FINALS week!!!!] to let us know that we have homework due tomorrow and a quiz tomorrow. And of course I am waiting until the last minute to finish it all up!)

Lots of Stuff… list-style

I have a lot of *stuff* running through my head right now, but the two mains things are Christopher and school. But then again, that’s all my world revolves around right now anyway, right?

I’m doing a list-style post this tonight just to write down a few things going on right now!

*Christopher is still fighting a cough/fever. I’m keeping a careful eye on him and praying that his fever goes away tonight and doesn’t return tomorrow. He’s only been sick once or maybe twice before, (he’s never even thrown up!) so this whole sickness thing is something that I haven’t dealt with much. I am so thankful that he’s been so healthy for the first 2 years of his life!

*I need to take more pictures. Sometimes I get sad when I realize that I don’t have a lot of pictures of Christopher with people. I have lots of pictures of him by himself, but I never think to get other people in the shot, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even Stephen and myself.

*Last day of the spring semester is a week away. I am so over school right now.

*Even though spring semester ends next Tuesday, my “mini-session” pre-summer classes start the following Monday. I’ll have to continue to drive to Arkadelphia five days a week for two weeks, THEN I will finally have the whole month of June off. I will go back in July for the second summer session and have about three weeks off after that before fall classes start near the end of August.

*I have a looooooong list of to-dos for my summer “break.”

*I feel like my house has been in a constant state of disarray/uncleanliness since school started back in January. Last semester I was able to keep up with it pretty good, but this semester – not so much. This is another reason I’m looking forward to school being out.

*Tonight I was thinking about how dirty it is and I decided that I would really like to clean EVERYTHING out of it, clean it from top to bottom, sweep/mop/vacuum/steam clean the entire floor (and possibly even replace the carpet in the living room) then move about half of our stuff back in it. Then it might be easier to keep clean and stay clean. Ha! We have outgrown the house and I have recently become VERY overwhelmed (to say the LEAST!) with all of the clutter going on everywhere. If it were up to me I would trash a lot of the things that we don’t use, but Stephen is just the opposite and refuses to let anything leave the boundaries of the house. Unfortunately, we have very little storage in this house and I’m about to go nuts from all the stuff we’ve accumulated. We refuse to waste money on a storage building, so sometime this summer Stephen and I have got to come to a compromise and get the place more organized. Which I should now go add to my to-do list…

*I just realized that I only have one real final test, and it’s not even comprehensive. My other finals are either take-home tests, final projects, or hands-on. (Preparing different types of documents – Advanced Word Processing.

*Is it too early to be getting Senioritis? I only have one year left!

*Anybody else watching The Voice? I have loved Maroon 5 since high school and I would have to say that Songs About Jane is still my all-time favorite CD. Ever. Love, love love me some Adam Levine!

*I looked at the forecast today and it showed sunny skies for a whole week straight. I was starting to wondering if we had moved to Forks without realizing it.

*Stephen is working late tonight, so I had to give the outdoor dogs their dinner. (He usually does it.) We feed them separately so we let them in the laundry room and it’s a hassle for several different reasons. I realized tonight how thankful I am that Stephen is usually the one to feed them in the evenings. It is a job that I do not like!

*I just remembered that the reason I got on the computer was to look up a recipe for a chocolate pie. I’ll explain more about THAT in my next post! (Maybe Thursday or Friday!?)

*I got Christopher up tonight, a few hours after he had been asleep. I was worried about him and wanted to take his temp and so I brought him into the living room with me to check it and he ended up falling asleep in my lap. :) It was so sweet and of course – I couldn’t move him. I watched TV for about an hour with him snuggled up with me. When I went to take him back to his room, he woke up and so I offered him some water. He didn’t want any water but he did want to hold onto his sippy cup. When I laid him down in his crib he wanted to hold on to it and wouldn’t let me take it with me. I set it up in the corner of his crib (in case it leaked) but when I was walking away I saw him grab on to it and then cuddle up with it like it was a teddy bear or something. Too funny.

I went back in there a few minutes ago and found it up by his head. :) Silly boy. I hope he feels better tomorrow!

*I am VERY sleepy and I’m not quite sure why I’m up at 12:30 in the morning so it’s off to bed for me!!!

miscellaneous

How is it that today is the second of May and next week is finals, yet today I wore a HOODIE and had my heat blasting? Weird weather. I’m ready for sweet summertime. Bring the 100 degree weather and mosquitos! Enough with this wet rainy crap!

I’ve been battling a cold all weekend. Sore throat, sneezy, running nose, the works. I think I’ve now passed it on to Stephen, but for the most part I’m over it, thankfully. Christopher, on the other hand, started coughing yesterday or maybe the night before, and it’s not getting any better. :( This afternoon he took a FOUR HOUR NAP and woke up with a low-grade fever. Poor guy. I hate that I have to be at school all day long tomorrow. He’s staying with his Nana and I’m hoping that he gets better, otherwise we may have to make a trip to the doctor or walk-in clinic on Wednesday.

This is a picture from tonight. He had broccoli and cheese soup. I always liked my moms broccoli and cheese soup when I wasn’t feeling well and I figure that if he has a sore throat it would probably feel good for that, too. We had a Bear Creek broccoli & cheese package in the cupboards so I whipped it up. Ha! All you have to do is boil water and add the soup (which is a powder mix) in and let it cook for 10 minutes. SO easy and fast. Not as yummy as my moms, but it’s nice to keep them around for quick-fix meals! I wasn’t sure if Christopher would be able to handle feeding himself soup since it is so runny, but he did fine and did not need (or want!) my help. (And I’ll admit, I was a little hurt!) He is growing up SO quickly!

We aren’t sure yet whether he is going to be left handed or right handed. In this picture he was using his right hand, but before I brought my camera out he was using his left.  His biggest obsession right now is balls – baseballs, soccer balls, footballs, golf balls, basketballs. He uses both hands to throw and we can’t really tell if one is better than the other. Maybe he’ll be ambidextrous?

I haven’t even tried to transfer over the pictures from my memory card again, but I found a few Easter photos on my phone and emailed them to myself. Here’s Christopher at my mom’s house the weekend before Easter. This is the face he made when he would see an egg.

He would see it and inhale/gasp while making this face. SO cute and funny.

I love this picture:

I had originally thought that we wouldn’t dye eggs, but when I went to WalMart at the last minute on SUNDAY AFTERNOON looking for Easter baskets goodies, I saw the cutest Sports-themed dye kit. It had all sorts of sports balls on them and I knew immediately that I needed to get it for Christopher. Some of the stickers were “x” and “o” for drawing out plays. This is Stephen, showing Christopher how to make some sort of play in football. I have a better picture of it on my good camera, which I will put on here some day. It may be the 4th of July, but it will make it eventually. Ha!

These two are inseparable and so sweet. I can’t believe how BIG Jasper is!

The first picture Stephen took probably a month ago. The second one I took tonight. He’s grown a lot even just in that time frame!  I think they will have such pretty babies!

I got my Mother’s Day present today. Stephen says that it’s not, but I told him to PLEASE not buy anything for me for Mother’s Day because I don’t want to spend any more money than necessary now that we have a BRAND NEW REFRIDGERATOR sitting in our kitchen!

Isn’t she pretty?  Our old fridge (which was used when we received it 3 years ago) has been acting up since last summer and it finally gave up on us yesterday. My brother worked on it for us but even the HVAC man couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it.  We normally don’t just go out and buy something this big without thinking about it for awhile, and we certainly wouldn’t have bought it if we didn’t absolutely have to have it. We had a lot of food sitting inside of our old fridge that needed to be kept cold so it was kind of one of those have-to situations and I have a feeling that we will be keeping it for a LONG time. Thankfully, we put away most of our income tax refund money and it wasn’t as big of a deal to buy a new fridge now as it would have been last summer/fall. But anyway, it is a Samsung French Door system with water and ice in the door and I am IN LOVE with it! It has so much ROOM! I could seriously stand in front of it and stare at all the space on the inside all.day.long. They were having a great sale on them and we paid about $500 less than we were planning on spending, so it was a great deal (to us, anyway!)