O! The Places We'll Go...

First Day of Internship!

2012-01-23T22:02:00.001-06:00

Today was my first day of Internship and I just wanted to take a quick minute to document it!

I am interning at Acorn. I think that I am going to really enjoy it! My cooperating teacher is very nice and I am looking forward to the next semester!!

The past few years I have struggled with a little bit of anxiety when it came to school and classes. In December when I did my first public school “teach” at Mena, I was SO nervous I thought I was going to be sick. And all I had to do was teach one teeny tiny lesson to a group of well-behaved students in one classroom for one period. And at college I had some major test anxiety – mainly in classes like Accounting and Business Law. BUT, I must have had a lot of people praying for my nerves last night and today because I was not nervous at all last night! I was at complete ease all day yesterday and I slept fine last night. I really had no reason to be nervous, so I wasn’t. But I don’t think I’ll be nervous at all this semester.

As far as today – it went great! I was tired from going to bed too late and not having any caffeine in my system at all. I need to become a coffee drinker. I gotta have something to wake me up in the mornings! I went to school, met the principal, and basically observed in the business classes all day long! It was super easy.

As soon as school was out, I went to pick Christopher up from his babysitter. (I need to do a whole separate post on Christopher SOON!) I was so happy to see him and to learn that he had a very good day. We came home and spent a few minutes with Stephen before I had to head to Bunco with the girls! Bunco seemed to last forever tonight and by the time I got home from there it was after 7:00. Right after I got home, Stephen and I went over to his mom’s house to meet my mom to talk about the house! I haven’t mentioned it on here yet, but Stephen and I are moving into his mom’s house while our house is on the market. We are really hoping to get our house sold by this summer but I did not want to have to deal with having it on the market while I was student teaching… since her house has been unoccupied since September, we are moving in there and that way we will be able to leave our house for sale, keep it clean and uncluttered, etc. Much easier on everybody. We will stay at her house until we know where I will be teaching next fall and then go from there…

By the time I got home, put Christopher to bed, read him Goodnight, Moon (twice) got my clothes ready for tomorrow and cleaned up the kitchen, it was nearly 9:00. I. AM. EXHAUSTED.

I know that today will not be the norm – go go go until 9 pm. It was a good first day for internship though!

I’m ready for bed now – Stephen and I have been watching Frasier on Netflix at night after we get in bed. I’m pretty sure I won’t make it through a whole episode before turning over to fall asleep!

Getting Fit

2012-01-15T15:24:00.001-06:00

One of my goals for the new year was to try to live a healthier lifestyle. This includes doing the Couch to 5K program, eating healthier, & exercising.

I’ve been doing the Couch to 5K plan. I love it. LOVE IT. Big time love it. I loved it when I did it last year. I’m hoping to finish it this time. I really want to participate in a 5K.

I use an app called “Ease into 5K” for my running. I can listen to my own songs and it tells me when to walk and when to run. It also has GPS built in so it tracks my walk and run pace, how far I go, etc. I really like it!

I planned on doing C25K while at orientation last week, but it was dark and rainy on Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday Stephen, Deanna, and Christopher came to visit me, on Thursday I spent too much time at Walmart after orientation and on Friday I headed home as soon as I could. Not to mention I was just flat out exhausted at the end of each day of orientation to even think about putting on my running shoes. I mean… I didn’t even pick up the laptop and blog. Running? Um, no. Didn’t happen. BUT I did run yesterday – my first full day back at home – and you can see that I am walking further and my average pace has improved by over two full minutes.

I’ve seen several of my friends on Facebook talking about myfitnesspal, so I decided to check it out and see what the fuss was about. I really like it so far! One of my favorite things about it is that you can scan the UPC of an item and it automatically pulls up all the nutritional information about it. I don’t have to input calories, fat, carbs, etc. Love that about it! You can also add friends so that you can encourage one another. Hopefully I can keep up with that and it will help me watch my calorie intake. :)

I do not have a goal weight. I have a certain size I’d like to be and if I get to that size and decide I want to be smaller (keep in mind I’m 5’2” so a size 9 on me is bigger than on a woman who is 5’7”. For a 5’2” woman the “ideal weight” is 122 pounds – seven pounds LESS than when I started dating Stephen and was wearing a size 5 pant.) My main goal is to just be healthy and happy with my body. I’m tired of being uncomfortable in my own body, ya know? Yeah.

I plan to join either Curves or the gym here in town… I’m not sure yet how my schedule is going to be with internship semester, so I plan on waiting a few weeks until I know when I’m going to be able to work out. I would prefer to join Curves, but their hours may not work with my schedule. So much of my schedule also depends on Stephen – and he never has the same day twice between school, work, and various types of sporting events that he has to cover across the county. It’s crazy.

Almost Halfway!

2012-01-10T23:25:00.001-06:00

I’m trucking along through Orientation. I had great plans to do a lot of catching up on blogging and even making a trip to Hot Springs or Texarkana to do a little bit of shopping… but so far all I’ve done is come to the apartment, turned on the TV, and park my butt on the couch till time to move to the bed. It’s been rainy and gloomy and I haven’t really wanted to be out. If I’m this tired after all day of sitting at a table listening to lectures, what am I going to do when I have to be in a classroom… working?!? Haha. I’m exhausted!

I miss my family. Good news is that I get to see them tomorrow! Stephen, his mom, and Christopher are heading up here and (hopefully) will be waiting on me when I get out of Orientation!!! I’M SOOO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!! This is the longest I’ve ever been away from Christopher so I’m itching to get to hug and kiss on him.

AND right as I typed that Stephen called me to tell me that Christopher – who is spending the night with his Nana tonight because it’s Stephen’s late night at the paper – just woke up with a low-grade fever. I hope it’s nothing serious and it’s gone in the morning. Boo.

I texted my mother-in-law tonight asking for a picture of Christopher. Apparently he had already gone to bed and she went into the bedroom to take a picture of him for me and turned on the light so that she could take the picture with her phone – these are the pictures she sent me. They made me laugh and cry at the same time. I can just see him saying ‘ight! in his little voice like he always does when the light is bright in his eyes. I just wanted to drive to Mena so that I could give him a kiss on the cheeks and turn out the light for him. Sweet boy.

Every night I’ve had great intentions of going to bed early and getting looooots of sleep. And both Sunday and Monday night I was up past midnight. Right now it’s 11:22 and I’m watching tv and blogging. Fail.

Happy mid-week. Ha!

Orientation Week

2012-01-08T23:44:00.001-06:00

Tomorrow morning begins Internship Orientation at Henderson. I can’t believe that one week from tonight I will be freaking out about starting my student teaching the next day. Haha! I am all settled in at Tyler and Britney’s apartment in Arkadelphia. They are somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico right now, cruising with my mom and dad.

Originally we all booked a Caribbean cruise together back in June or July… After I started back to school in August I found out that I was going to be required to come back to campus a week earlier than when classes were scheduled to start. I was NOT HAPPY. Stephen and I had to change the date of our cruise and my parents, Ty & Britney kept their date for January. Deanna and Leonard decided they would like to go on a cruise as well, (Leonard has never been) so they made arrangements to go on the same cruise as us in May. I’m excited about the cruise… but I’m super upset that I’m not in the middle of the ocean with my family right now.

Anyway. I’m fortunate that I get to stay at Ty and B’s apartment because it saves me a lot of time and money from traveling back and forth every day. I already miss my boys like crazy and I plan on driving to meet them and see them at least once, probably twice this week! Christopher probably won’t even know I’m gone because his Nana is flying in from Missouri to help keep him this week.

I’m hoping to spend the week catching up on blogging and kind of prepping myself to start internship next week. I hate to spend the whole week away from Stephen and Christopher, but I’m hoping to to kind of use the time to rest and relax… enjoy the quiet, toy-free, ESPN-free environment. =)

I did finish one blog that I started last week. It’s directly below this post, or click here.

I’m exhausted but I know that I’m going to having trouble sleeping tonight. Guess I should get off the computer and try to wind down. I have orientation all day tomorrow and I have no idea what to expect.

Shopping and My Little Helper

2012-01-05T23:30:00.000-06:00

This is the last week of my Christmas break. While school at Henderson doesn’t start back for almost two weeks (Wednesday, January 18th), I have to be there bright and early on Monday morning for my internship orientation.

I’m glad that I am interning, but I think it’s kind of crazy that I have to be at school 40 hours next week before the semester begins for orientation. Seems like something they could have covered last semester in our Methods class. Whatever.

This week has been really good! I have been trying to “soak up” time with Christopher – and I think that God knew that my heart needed that. Tonight and last night he has been SO sweet and loving and cuddly. He is usually a really good kid but of course we have been dealing with “terrible twos” and an independent streak recently.

One thing that I am so excited about and thankful for is that he will be starting at a new daycare – this one is a home daycare and not a big daycare with several different classrooms. It’s just one lady and her daughter with several children around Christopher’s age. He attended a local “bigger” daycare here in the fall and I just wasn’t a fan of it at all. Our new location is cheaper (by $80 a month!) and she doesn’t make you pay if your child doesn’t attend one day – which is awesome. I hated that the other daycare wanted us to pay even if I felt like keeping Christopher home with me some days. SO that was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders! The only negative is that it is several miles out of town – but that is really a small thing that I’m not too worried about.

Today I went shopping with my mom and Britney. I was in dire need of a new “professional dress” wardrobe. I have only bought a few dressy things since Christopher was born because I had great intentions of losing a bunch of weight. WELL. Here it is, one week before student internship begins, and I have one pair of dress pants and just a few blouses to go with them. I was really nervous about going shopping because I am short and round… My waist is a certain size but my hips are a size smaller, so by the time I find a pair of pants that feel comfy in the waist, they look huge across my hips and thighs. I was SO excited because I found a certain brand in Target that fit me perfectly (except being a bit long – but that is almost always the case for me with pants) and they are SO cute! I also found several tops and cardigans at Target that worked. Who would’ve thought that Target had such great dressy clothing?!? I also found a few cute tops and pants at Dress Barn (Moo) and I scored an adorable (although PRICEY) pea coat at Dress Barn as well.

Stephen had games out of town tonight so Christopher had I had the house to ourselves tonight and spent some good time together. He helped me fold and put away the towels. Such a good little helper!

The first washcloth he folded looked like this:

I was… hmm, surprised, to say the least. He folded this washcloth perfectly! I made a big deal about it and took a picture and high-fived him… then he folded a few more and they all looked like this:

And of course he kept wanting me to take pictures and make a big deal about it. :) He also “helped” me put them up in the cabinet after they were all folded.

Love that boy.

New Year Goals

2012-01-01T10:03:00.001-06:00

First off, Happy New Year! I can’t believe we are in the year 2012! Crazy. 2011 was a pretty good year for Stephen and me. Once I’m all caught up with my blogging (hopefully over the next few days) I will do a recap of 2011, some of the main things that went on with us last year. I’m excited to see what 2012 brings… hopefully a graduation and a new job for myself!

Moving on -- I kind of hate the word resolutions. I have “goals” for this year. I rarely do these because I am kind of known for starting things and then not finishing them. (College, Couch to 5k, painting a room, craft projects…) I have tried to be better about finishing things that I start, and I feel like I really have gotten better this year.

There are a few goals that I would like to try to achieve this year. I’ll try to remember to do a review at the end of the year to see how much I accomplished. I am also going to put them on my sidebar. >>>>>>>

Here they are, in no particular order. (I also may come back and add more goals on as the year progresses.)

**Start and complete the Couch to 5k program.
**Participate in at least one 5k competition and complete it. (Cross the finish line; time doesn’t matter.)
**Obtain my bachelor’s degree.
**Start living a healthier lifestyle by exercising and eating healthy foods.
**Start attending church on a more regular basis.
**Spend lots of time with Christopher and Stephen doing fun family activities.
**Hike Pinnacle Mountain.
**Organize my time around the house. Devote more time to housework and yardwork.
**Take more pictures of Christopher – he’s growing so fast!
**Use our video recorder more.
**Be a better wife to Stephen and a better mom to Christopher.
**Go on at least one mini-vacation with Stephen and Christopher.
**Continue to learn about Photoshop and Photography
**Spend time with my girl friends and strengthen those relationships. It’s important to have friends!
**Start putting extra payments towards the G6. (We are already doing this, but I’d like to do a little more.)
**Become more organized with our finances.
**Eat out LESS and cook at home MORE!

These are all that I can think of right now… just off the top of my head. I know that I will probably not be able to complete all of these, but I am definitely going to try my very hardest!

Happy 2012!

Blog Day

2011-12-31T14:50:00.001-06:00

I’ve spent the better part of today writing several different posts trying to “catch up” on blogging. I backdated several of them to more appropriate days for when they should have been written and posted. I am also linking to them here. I still have more that I need to write!

Christmas Train and Santa, 2011
Christmas with Nana and PopPop in Branson
My Dough Ornaments
Christmas Decorations

That’s all for today!

Christmas Decorations, 2011

2011-12-30T11:49:00.000-06:00

I love Christmas! I am always wanting to put up my Christmas decorations in October, and I think every year since Stephen and I have been married, I have had our trees up in November before Thanksgiving.

This year I was just so busy with school and sickness and life in general, I was slow getting up Christmas decorations. I put up my green tree the day after Thanksgiving, but it was that afternoon that I got so sick with a fever and spent the rest of Thanksgiving break curled in my bed.

I don’t remember when I finally put up my white tree, but it was probably mid-December. I love my white tree! Christopher helped with it. :)

Christopher had a blue tree in his room this year. I never took a picture of it while it was decorated, but here is a picture of it when we first put it together and plugged it in in the living room. I think this might be a repeat picture. He loved it!

I think this is the only picture of my green tree I got. I have no idea why I cut the top of the tree off.

White tree!

Rudy!

Stephen seemed to be sick the whole month of December. Between working, school, and sleeping off sickness, he never had time to put up our outside lights. So, the TUESDAY before Christmas, while Stevo was at work, I took it upon myself to put up lights. I put up our inflatable snowman, candy canes that we bought on clearance last year, and attempted to put up the lights on our house. Right after I started doing that, my dad called and said he was on the way to help me. My dad didn’t even put lights up on his own house (my brother did it for him) so it was very sweet of him to come over to my house and put up mine for me!

sweet helper.

Normally I wait until after the new year to take down all my Christmas deco, but this year I had it all down, including the exterior decorations, a few days after Christmas. My house was crowded with three extra trees and 10 extra Boxer pups.

Dough Ornaments

2011-12-23T14:19:00.000-06:00

My mom started a tradition in the 90s when she was going to the War Eagle craft fair. She always bought a personalized Christmas ornament for our tree. Next year I need to take a picture of all of them and document them on here. =)

When Christopher was born, I decided to do the same thing. Our first dough ornament I bought in Branson at the Landing from one of the street vendors.

Last year, I didn’t get to go to Branson or to War Eagle, so I bought one online. Not as special, but it is still hand-written and personalized.

This year, I went to War Eagle with my mom and Britney. We found a dough ornament booth and all three of us bought personalized ornaments for this year. I also bought one for my mother-in-law and gave it to her for her birthday. I think I will make it a tradition to give her a dough ornament each year for her birthday.

This is the only picture I have of Deanna’s.

I love our dough ornaments and look forward to seeing them on our tree every year!

Christmas Card 2011

2011-12-22T15:55:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to design my own card this year. I looked online for ideas (because let’s face it, I’m not that creative) and played around with a few ideas. I wanted to do a double-sided card, but I had some questions about how to create it and kept meaning to go by a local print shop in town to ask them how I should do it… but time just got away from me and I ended up going with a one-sided card. I had Britney take our family pictures (like the one in the post just before this one) but between my son not looking at the camera and my husband not looking at the camera (SIGH) I didn’t really have one picture of all three of us one that was Christmas-card worthy. I ended up going with this shot of Christopher that I took before Britney took our family pictures.

I did some basic editing to the picture in Photoshop and added the words “wish you joy” and I ended up with this:

My original intention was for this to be the “front” of our card and then to do a “back” with a picture of all three of us, but like I said – I never got around to it. I had almost decided not to do cards at all this year… but the thought of not having one just made me sad. So one Saturday morning when I really needed to be working on homework and finals junk, I decided to just add our name and a bible verse. I always want a bible verse on our Christmas cards. And instead of taking them up to the professional print shop in town, I just used my dad’s nice laser printer.

So after playing around with a few different layouts, my final Christmas Card was this:

I wasn’t a hundred percent happy with my final product, but I think that it’s because I had originally envisioned so much more, you know? Stephen loves it. I like it.

I made a few rookie mistakes that I want to document for future reference.

The green letters in our last name look okay on the computer, but they were a little dark printed. I should have used a lighter background.
I over-edited the picture and it turned out a little grainy-looking when I printed it. Next time, run less actions on the picture and print it off before adding any words or graphics.
Use thicker paper. I used cardstock but it was still not as sturdy/thick as I would have liked. Next time I will probably use a print shop in town instead of printing them myself, so I will need to tell them to use a thick cardstock.
Make sure that I use pre-cut paper. I printed these 2 to a page and then had to cut them out using a scrapbook paper-cutter. It was an hour of my life that I’ll never get back. Also, I got the text really close the bottom of the card and it was a pain because if I got the paper cutter just a faction of an inch too close to the card, it cut off the bottom of my text. Pain. In. My. Rear.
Next time, start designing cards in September/October and have them ready to go to the print shop in November. Last-minute printing and addressing makes things so much more stressful than they need to be. :)

Christmas in Branson

2011-12-19T14:33:00.000-06:00

Stephen’s mom and her new husband were not going to be able to make it to Mena for Christmas. Branson, Missouri is halfway between where they live and where we live, so we decided to meet there to celebrate Christmas this year. We weren’t sure we were going to be able to make it because of the puppies, but a sweet lady who Stephen works with (who also was buying two of the puppies for Christmas gifts) was nice enough to agree to keep the puppies at her house for the weekend. We were so thankful because we wouldn’t have been able to go without her taking care of them. (My parents and Tyler and Britney already had plans for Branson that weekend, as well.)

We headed to Branson the Thursday after finals. I had a great time! We followed my dad up there and beat Deanna and Leonard there, so we had lunch with my family at Fuddruckers. This is a staple for us whenever we go to Branson. Love it! I didn’t feel like dragging around my big camera, so all of my pictures from Branson are with my iPhone.

C was too busy chewing their yummy chicken to smile for the camera!

After eating, we headed to Silver Dollar City. We met up with Nana and PopPop while we were there!

Christopher got to ride the frogs and the butterflies!

That’s his little hand waving at me!

Christopher riding the butterfly with Nana

C made friends with a little boy in the candy shoppe. :)

Aunt B and Nana on the carousel.

Christopher was afraid to ride the horses, so he and “GeeGee” (hard “G” sound – not GiGi) rode in the carriage.

Me and B!

We rode the train – it’s so pretty with all the lights around the park, and they have a really neat act featuring Grandpa telling the true story of Christmas.

They have these trees every once in a while where every limb is covered in lights. I think they’re so pretty!

Before we left, we had to stop and watch the Christmas tree/light show. It’s always really neat! This video is just one portion of the show.

SDC Christmas Show

That night when we got done at SDC we went to our condo and did Christmas with Deanna and Leonard. Deanna always gets us pajamas each year, which I love! Christopher got a “laptop” and some color-wonder crayons and some money to put in his bank account. Stephen and I got a new GPS unit and a little cash. It was a great Christmas! (No pics, unfortunately!)

On Friday, we did some outlet mall shopping and ate lunch at Taco Bell as a big group – my family and Stephen’s. After C’s LOOONG and much needed afternoon nap, we headed to the Branson Landing for dinner at Cantina Laredo (another Branson staple for us) with the whole group again. This was my family’s last night in Branson. We really enjoyed being able to do SDC and the Landing with them! I think this is the only picture I took on Friday:

That’s how we kept Christopher entertained at the outlet mall. What’s funny is that he prefers for them not to be moving, so it’s free entertainment!

On Saturday, I was given permission to go shopping by myself because I didn’t finish all of my Christmas shopping on Friday. I started at Tanger Outlet Mall and then went on to the Landing. I think I shopped for 5 hours straight and when I was done this is what the back of the Murano looked like!

Stephen will never let me go shopping by myself again. Ha!

Saturday afternoon we went to the Keeter Center at College of the Ozarks. This is where Deanna and Leonard tied the knot in October. They had a huge Christmas tree and a huge gingerbread house on display there.

That night we ate at Olive Garden with Deanna and Leonard and then went back to the Landing for a little bit more shopping. Mainly Deanna at Kirklands - I had outshopped myself that morning!

We also made a stop at Krispy Kreme. I got this yummy-looking Red Velvet Cake donut. It wasn’t as good as I had anticipated. :(

On Sunday morning, we loaded up our goodies and headed back home. We had a great trip and really enjoyed getting to spend time with Deanna and Leonard. I always enjoy it when both of our families are able to get together and spend time with each other. Since Deanna got married and moved away, I think we will be doing that less and less. This was a great way to meet up and enjoy each other’s company!

kissy-kissy smoochie-smoochie!

2011-12-15T00:53:00.001-06:00

Earlier in the semester I took a 6-week course over Adobe Photoshop. I had tried to teach it to myself but there are just so many different tools that I felt overwhelmed. I knew that with some basic foundation and instruction I would be able to use it and teach myself more and more through online tutorials or trial-and-error.

So after I finished this class this, I wanted to design my own cards this year. After last year’s disaster with my Christmas cards, I was determined to be on the ball this year and have our pictures taken and cards designed/ordered/printed during the week of or week after Thanksgiving. My sister-on-law Britney took our pictures in early/mid November but I just never got around to getting them printed. I considered not sending cards out at all this year but I knew that I would be SO disappointed with myself if I didn’t. I did design my own (although I WILL say that I got the idea for it from another photo/card website and added some stuff to it.) I got them addressed and will mail them tomorrow and will post them on here next week sometime. I made some rookie mistakes that I’ll be sure to correct in the future, but over all I’m pretty happy with them!

This picture is one that I almost used on our card, but I wasn’t sure how people would feel about kissy-kissy on a card…? I know that this is a popular pose right now and I LOVE the way it turned out for us, but would our aunts and uncles or co-workers like getting a Christmas card with Stephen and me kissing on it? I ended up not using it but thought I’d share it here. I think I’m going to have it blown up to an 8x10!

It’s 12:50am and I still haven’t packed for our trip to Branson this weekend. I guess I should go do that now. :) Be back Sunday!

Christopher’s got mail! and Christmas break

2011-12-13T22:36:00.001-06:00

Christopher got his first *real* piece of mail last week! My parents got him the Highlights “High Five” magazine for toddlers. He was so excited to have his own mail!

Have I mentioned recently how much I LOVE this kid? He is so much fun right now. Challenging, but FUN.

In other news, my Christmas break is HERE! My last final is OVER! All I have left is student internship this spring and I will graduate this coming May 15 (at 3pm, in case you wanted to mark your calendars) with a Bachelor of Science in Education! I will also have a minor in Business Administration and will be licensed to teach Business and Technology classes to grades 7-12! SO EXCITING!

I can’t believe the semester is over! This semester seriously FLEW by. I think the longest/hardest part was up to our fall break in mid-October. I’m SO ready to start my Christmas break with my little family. I have SO much I am wanting to do and I have no idea where to start. No, wait – I DO know where I’m starting. SLEEP! ha!

This last weekend has been crammed with homework and projects and presentations and last night I slept for about 3 hours on our COUCH (Stephen’s been sick for the last week and has been snoring SO SO BAD! I can’t sleep through it! He’s been sleeping on the couch but I thought since I was already up late {3:30am!!} I would try sleeping on the couch.) Anyway, I slept a few hours on the couch last night and woke up early to go to school and had a LONG day there. After I got Christopher home from my moms house and tucked into bed, I started a load in the dishwasher, fed the dogs, and parked my happy butt on the chaise lounge to watch The Biggest Loser finale. (And I haven’t moved since.) Tomorrow I have to do laundry and pack for a trip to Branson this weekend to celebrate Christmas with Stephen’s mom and step-dad! As for tonight -- I’m exhausted and my bed is definitely calling my name.

GOODNIGHT!

Tyler and Britney

2011-12-12T21:00:00.000-06:00

I mentioned that I took pictures of my brother and sister-in-law a few weekends ago. I am so proud of them! I thought they turned out really well. (This is me, tooting my own horn. toot! toot!) She picked out three to share on her Christmas card so I thought I’d share a few of the others that she didn’t pick. I’ll share more later. These are all SOOC, so the color isn’t the best.

{Also, I just have to say: LESS THAN 24 hours till I’m DONE with this semester!!!!!!!!!!!!!}

their sweet puppies, buddy and shelby

Christmas Train 2011

2011-12-10T11:00:00.000-06:00

Every year there is a Christmas train that comes through our hometown. Last year, we went to it with my parents and my mother-in-law. This year it was just Stephen, Christopher and I that went to it. We went on Wednesday, December 7th. Last year, Christopher was not a fan of Santa Claus.

I have been pumping him up for Santa Claus since November… every time we would go to Walmart, we would go back to the Lawn&Garden Center and look at the Santa lawn ornaments. We would look at pictures of Santa, talk about him, etc. We told him before the train that we were going to see Santa and that Christopher was going to sit on his lap while we took his picture! He seemed okay with that at first, but after a few minutes decided no, he really didn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap.

When we got into the train where we could see Santa, Christopher was shaking his head NO and saying he did NOT want to see Santa. Yeah… well. Too bad, buddy!

Christopher and Santa, 2011:

Still not so much a fan. I had to sit with him, and he was so upset and scared, I just sat down and let Stephen take the picture, then hopped up. Well, Stephen isn’t used to my camera and his thumb was in front of the flash, which is why the bottom right side of this picture is dark. I ran it through autocorrect in Photoshop and it looks ten times better than it did.

Poor Christopher. He was so upset by Santa that he didn’t enjoy the rest of the train. He was shaking the entire time. Hopefully next year will be a better experience!

tgif

2011-12-09T20:46:00.001-06:00

The weekend is here!!!!

Y’all. It’s my last weekend of normal undergraduate school. It seriously feels so surreal.

I am about to start working on some homework, but I have seriously missed blogging and just wanted to post a few things before moving on to schoolwork.

Isn’t he getting SO BIG!?!?

Sweet boy when we first put together and plugged in his very own Christmas tree. (This was in the living room, it’s now in his room.) I had my eye on this tree for the entire Christmas season last year at Walmart but Stephen didn’t think we needed a tree in Christopher’s room because he was only 16 months old. I waited until their after-Christmas sale and snatched it up for 50% off and I’ve been holding on to it all year so excited to use it in his room! It has blue ornaments on it now and I’m hoping to go out of town soon and let Christopher pick out his own special ornament to go on it.

Is anyone else tired of football? I’m so ready for football season to be over. I hate having those four (plus) hours every Sunday devoted to the Cowboys. And usually Stephen ends up watching other teams play, as well. It makes me stir-crazy. And to make matters worse, Stephen is always in a bad mood when the Cowboys lose. Which has been often, this year. Oy vey.

Let’s see, what else did I feel like rambling about? Oh, yes! I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but we had our house under contract to be sold in October, but about a week after we signed our agreement we found out that the buyer’s financing had fallen through. Boo. We got a call yesterday afternoon asking for a showing this morning, so I spent most of the evening yesterday cleaning up my Christmas junk and making the house presentable. I feel like it looks crazy right now because of the three (yes, three) Christmas trees and the ten boxer pups (did I mention that we lost a pup? A beautiful flashy male. There were just so many puppies, somehow Bella laid on him and he died. So now we have ten.) our house is just out of sorts. My deep freezer is normally in my laundry room but right now it’s in the kitchen, along with a Christmas tree and a small round kitchenette type table. We haven’t heard anything yet so I assume that they aren’t making an offer. I am really fine with us not selling it right now – just praying about it. If it’s supposed to sell, it will.

I think I’ve mentioned (a time or two. Ha!) that we have been super busy recently. We just got our third tree up on Wednesday and we don’t even have our Christmas lights on the house yet. I think Stephen wants to put them up this weekend but I don’t know if he’ll have time. He has ball games tonight and tomorrow, out of town, plus he has a lot of schoolwork to work on this weekend. Normally my trees and lights and décor are out before Thanksgiving. I know it’s just the season of life we are in right now – busy busy busy.

Christopher has really gotten into watching TV recently. He has hardly ever wanted to sit and watch anything. I don’t want him to be a couch potato, but there were times when I just would want him to sit for 5 minutes so I could take a shower or clean the kitchen. This summer he discovered Shrek and then a few weeks ago I pulled out a Sesame Street DVD called “Kids Favorite Song 2” and he really likes the songs on there. He calls it “boom boom” because one of the songs is “The Ants Go Marching” …you know – “they all go marching down, into the ground, to get out of the rain, BOOM BOOM BOOM.” It’s his favorite part of the whole DVD. Stephen and I recently replaced our non-working TV in our bedroom (thank you, Black Friday sales!) and I can put C in bed and have enough time to take a shower AND blow-dry and straighten my hair. It’s wonderful! (Well, wonderful except for the annoying songs.)

Something else he is really loving right now is Goodnight Moon. My mom got him this book for Christmas last year (I think.) He loves reading books in general but this one is his favorite right now. I have the first half of it memorized. This is him before bedtime. He asked to go to sleep with his ball (from the Ft Worth Zoo, his Aunt Cristin and Uncle Jim bought it when we visited this summer) and Goodnight Moon. In his “belbo” (Elmo, haha) PJs. Love him to pieces.

I have SO much more to update but I’ve procrastinated enough on homework for tonight so I’m stopping here. Just felt like winding down from a long day (up early this morning to finish up the house for a 9am showing and then I did my first public school teach this afternoon!) with a little blogging.

if you haven’t heard from me within a week, send a search party.

2011-12-08T18:15:00.000-06:00

I only have one day of school left – to take a (non-comprehensive) final in one class and in another class, do an hour-long presentation over a 10-page research paper. (Acccckk!)

It’s amazing how much other, miscellaneous schoolwork I have left to do at this point in time.

{I bet you didn’t know that I am the Queen of Procrastination}

unless you’re my mom

I don’t want to be like this. Truly. But somehow, no matter how good my intentions are, other things just get in the way and I end up scrambling at the last minute to get everything finished. Everything must be done by next Tuesday! And as always, I will get it all done and turned it. (I HOPE!) Assuming I’m still alive on Wednesday, I’ll write a million and one updates that date all the way back to mid-October.

It might be Thursday.

Here’s a sneak peak of the day we took family pictures for Christmas cards. (Which I still haven’t ordered and I’m not even sure if I will this year.)

Christopher in the leaves

2011-12-03T23:41:00.001-06:00

I feel like I will never get caught up with all my blogging. And I guess that’s okay.

I bought a new camera lens about a month ago and I’ve used it a few times. I looooove this new lens. LOVE it. I haven’t used it much but I am SO happy with it. I took pictures of my brother and sister-in-law today for their Christmas card. I used the new lens and was really happy with a lot of the pictures! I’ll share those later – after she’s mailed her cards. For now, here’s a picture of Christopher from a few weeks ago. (SOOC)

I’ve also been trying to shoot in full-on manual mode. Not easy but I’m getting better at it!

Now – to bed. I still have a busy 9 days left in my semester and sleep is something that is VERY important to my day-to-day functioning.

reasons (aka: excuses)

2011-11-28T01:18:00.001-06:00

The reasons that you have not heard from me recently…

{and why it will be at least December 4th before you hear from me again.}

I WILL be back, and with plenty to blog about. Promise.

Steph

101 Boxers

2011-11-17T22:42:00.001-06:00

I mentioned earlier (this post) that we had bred our Boxers and were expecting a litter of pups!

We didn’t know exactly when her due date was but we guessed that it would be sometime in the first two weeks of November. Bella kept getting bigger and bigger… and I honestly thought the weekend of Halloween would be when she had them. I read that her temperature would fall below 100 degrees within 24 hours of going into labor, so we started taking her temperature. I don’t know if the thermometer wasn’t reading correctly or what, but her temp jumped all over the place. It would go from 99 to 101.5 and one time it was even 97… I thought for SURE that when it ready 97 it was “time!”

But day after day, night after night, she never had them. Poor girl was getting so big and uncomfortable – you could tell by looking at her that she was about it pop! I took the following picture this last weekend:

Big Momma

I’ve mentioned before how we are gone ALL DAY on Tuesdays. Stephen and I leave our house at 6am on Tuesday morning and get back in Mena around 8pm at the latest… most of the time class gets out earlier and it’s between 6-7 that we get home. Regardless, we’re gone for a good 12 hours on Tuesdays, so normally my dad pops by the house and lets Baxter out for us. We set up Bella’s “birthing area” in the laundry room and we’ve been keeping her in there at night and when we were going to be gone for more than a few hours, so he’s been letting her out, as well. I was terrified that she was going to have the babies on a Tuesday while we were gone and something would go wrong and I wouldn’t be here to get her to the vet, etc.

This past Tuesday was one of the days that we didn’t get home till about 7:45. My dad had come by around 4:00 and let the dogs out; I had talked to him and was reassured that no puppies had been born. We came straight to the house we we got back to town. Stephen was going to head to work and I was going to let the dogs out and then go to my parents house to pick up Christopher.

When I opened the door to the laundry room, I was greeted by this:

She had destroyed her pillow. Nesting. She had also spilled her water bowl all over the floor and peed. She bolted out of the laundry room and ran to our couch in the living room. She was panting really heavy, so that’s when I knew that she was in labor. I called my parents and told them it’d be awhile before I came to pick Christopher up; I wanted to clean up the laundry room, mop it, and get Bella back in there before leaving the house. It took me a good 20-30 minutes to clean everything up. After I had finished mopping, I went into the living room to get Bella and put her back in the laundry room so that I could go pick up Christopher… when I got the the living room, I saw Bella standing in the middle of the room WITH A PUPPY COMING OUT OF HER!

I flipped out. I ran back to the laundry room to get my phone to call Stephen, then ran back to the living room. I guess I startled her when I came back in because she turned and ran back to the couch… except when she jumped up on the couch, a puppy came out and hit the floor! And I don’t think she ever realized it. I think I was already calling Stephen at this point, but all I could focus on was the fact that Bella had just had a puppy in my living room floor, she was on the couch, the puppy was out of her sight on the floor right next to the couch and it was still in its sac and she wasn’t doing anything to clean it. Stephen answered his phone and I told him, Bella just had a puppy in our living room floor!!! Please hurry home!!! I was trying to get Bella off the couch to clean her puppy but she wouldn’t BUDGE, and all I could remember was reading that if the sac didn’t get taken off the puppy quickly, it would suffocate. So… yes, that’s right – I broke the sac and removed it from the puppy, and then showed it to Bella. I really think she had no idea she had just given birth, but as soon as I showed her the puppy her instincts kicked in and she started cleaning it and doing all that she needed to do. Stephen and I laid down towels on our living room floor but Bella wouldn’t budge from the couch and I remembered reading that when a momma dog goes into labor and starts to have puppies, she picks her spot and shouldn’t be moved because it could mess things up, so we piled towels up along the cushions and back of the couch. I don’t remember when puppy #2 came, but I know that Stephen was home and there were 2 puppies when he headed back to work. At some point I had called my dad to ask him to please bring Christopher to our house because I didn’t want to leave Bella and two puppies alone on the couch.

I was so frazzled all night long. I tried to watch TV but every time I turned to look at Bella she would be having another pup! The couch wasn’t the best place for her to give birth. I was paranoid that she would smother a pup while she was cleaning up after the birth of one or that one might get stuck between couch cushions. I was texting with Stephen and one of my best friends, Jessica, while Bella was in labor. Number three was born right after Stephen went back to work, then number four, five, six… they just kept coming! Number seven, number EIGHT… at eight I texted Jess and Stephen and it said, Eight! EIGHT! Holy freaking cow EIGHT! Then it was NINE! I was in shock at that point. There were SO MANY PUPPIES. Bella was cleaning number nine up and Jessica was texting things like Ten! Come on Bella push out number ten!

Probably 15 or 20 minutes later I looked over at Bella and she was still cleaning up number nine. I went over and looked closer and the puppy she was cleaning was pretty wet… like it had just been born. Jess texted me at that time and asked if there were still just nine and I texted her back that I was about to count. I counted twice…. TEN.

TEN PUPPIES. At that point it was about 11:00. My couch was covered in soaked towels (tmi? sorry.) and ten precious boxer puppies and one boxer mommy. I COULD NOT BELIEVE that Bella had just given birth to TEN puppies on my couch. {My couch, by the way – will never be the same.}

About an hour later – a little after midnight – I decided it was time to move everybody into the laundry room so that my couch could start to recover. I set up a heated blanket, newspaper, and moved 10 puppies (and counted again as I moved them all) into the laundry room. I was going to let Bella outside to have a bathroom break then go to bed for the night.

Except when I came back in the living room, Bella was cleaning up PUPPY NUMBER ELEVEN.

SERIOUSLY.

I let her clean it up then lured her into the laundry room with puppy number eleven. I went to bed at 2am with eleven boxer pups in my living room and praying that I didn’t wake up to twelve.

I didn’t. :) We have eleven precious, perfect boxer pups! Seven boys and four girls. Bella and all of the puppies seem to be doing really well and they go to the vet tomorrow for their dew claws removed and tails to be docked. One of the little boys has a swollen foot and paw. It’s been like that since he was born so I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but hopefully we can figure it out tomorrow at the vet’s office.

Bella around 2am Wednesday morning. Proud momma of eleven!

Precious.

{Yesterday}

{Tonight}

Tonight, Stephen and I took each puppy and weighed them and put a colored string around its neck. I want to be able to watch their weight over the next few days after they have their procedures at the vet tomorrow. An hour after we had done it I went back in and looked and almost half of them were missing their color. I’m going to try to figure out which is which.

So far things have been pretty easy going. The pups are pretty quiet and they mostly sleep and eat. I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be losing my mind from the mess and noise. Thankfully, it is all good timing and I will be out of school for the second half of our time with the pups. Also, I couldn’t have asked for better timing for Bella to have the pups. I’d been praying that she wouldn’t have them on a Tuesday when we were at school and they came about 20 minutes after we got home on a Tuesday evening! I already had planned to miss class today because my mom was going to be out of town and I only had one class anyway. Next Tuesday I only have one morning class that meets, so we won’t have to be gone all day long; instead we’ll just be gone for the morning. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving! So exciting!

I have more updates about life recently and I will get to them at some point, but I had to post about our new sweet babies. :)

Tomorrow is FRIDAY!

Halloween pictures FAIL and more randoms

2011-11-12T14:33:00.001-06:00

I had planned on doing a Halloween 2011 post for Christopher (I even wrote it out and all it needed was pictures from Halloween Eve and Halloween night) …BUT… my computer wouldn’t recognize my SD card from my camera. I restarted the computer, tried to download the pics to Stephen’s desktop, had Stevo take the SD card to his work computer, took the card to my parents computer… none of them are registering it when I insert it. I put the SD card back in my camera and my camera throws up an error message that it cannot use the SD card and that it may be damaged.

SAD STEPHANIE.

I am SO upset! All of Christopher’s Halloween pictures were on that SD card and I have no idea what else we can do to try to get them. Stephen suggested re-dressing him up and taking pictures again – and I am seriously thinking about doing it. It won’t be the same and I will always know it, but I want to have good quality pictures to remember his past Halloween outfits in the future. The sad thing is that Christopher’s Nana made a special trip from Missouri to Mena to be with C for Halloween so THOSE pictures will never be able to be re-created.

So anyway, that kind of explains my lack of blogging recently. I like to try to keep things chronological on here.

Today and last Saturday, my mom and I have had a yard sale together. Last weekend we had it at my mother-in-law’s house and it went really well. Today, we had it at my dad’s office and it was REALLY windy and didn’t do nearly as well as last week. I think most people were staying inside on this cold, windy, overcast fall day!

I’ve been keeping myself busy with school and ~~housework~~ tv shows. The house, as always, is a mess. I’m hoping to get it super cleaned up and organized today because I want to put up my Christmas tree tomorrow!

I recently finished a short continuing ed class at our local community college. It was over Adobe Photoshop, which I knew virtually nothing about when I started the class. I am SO excited because I can actually use Photoshop now and I know that I’m just going to keep learning more and more about it. I have a very tiny knowledge of how to use it but I feel like the class gave me enough of a foundation over it that I can continue to teach myself more about it by trial and error or by watching various tutorials online. Before, I would watch the tutorials and be completely lost. Not the case anymore! Here is something I created this week. I’ll share more of this project when I’m finished with it.

I am hoping to design our Christmas Card this year. This isn’t the card I’m going to use, just something I was playing around with.

I think tomorrow I’m going to attempt to take family pictures for our Christmas card so that I can start designing the card around the pictures I like. Hopefully that goes well!

Happy Saturday!

the view from where i sit (keeping it real)

2011-11-01T22:43:00.001-05:00

Tuesdays are long, hard days for me. They’re even worse for Stephen.

I’m up at 4:50, shower/makeup/prep for school, leave home at 6, drive two hours, in class from 8:00 – 5:00/6:00, drive two hours home. I didn’t get home from school (and I’m going to be honest and say that instead of “school,” I originally wrote “store”) until 8:30 and after I got home and laid Christopher down for bed, I immediately fed the dogs and let them into the house. I know as soon as I sit down on Tuesday nights that I’m pretty much spent. I don’t get up unless it’s to crawl from the living room to my bedroom.

My house is such a mess right now it’s almost funny. I don’t know how it gets this way so quickly… I spent all day last Friday cleaning. Somehow the weekend always messes up my house. And my weeks are full of driving, school, and homework. I just have zero energy during the week.

Anyway, back to the point. I’m sitting here looking around my house and thinking about how ridiculously messy it is.

And apparently because I’ve gone crazy, I decided to take pictures of it to share.

Mom – don’t look. You may have a heart attack.

Baxter’s leg, my foot, notebooks, kleenex, (runny noses, anybody?) C’s pjs – pants on the floor, top on the table, random t-shirt, goodnight moon, random rainboot, two boxers, ab roller (not for working out – ha! – Christopher uses it as a toy) Christopher’s jeans, junk mail, {clean} load of unfolded towels, trash bags full of yard sale clothing, cardboard box for Christopher’s changing table (took it down last weekend) tricycle in the kitchen…

big boxer belly. we’re expecting puppies sometime in the next week or so!

blanket, camera bag, and my ridiculous dining room table. it doesn’t matter how many times I clean junk off it, more crap just makes it way up there. right now it’s holding our non-working TV from our bedroom, which we replaced with a new TV we found for a great deal at walmart (you can also see the top half of the box from our new TV.) also on my dining room table are multiple bags filled with more of our junk, Halloween candy, clothes of Christophers… you get the picture. if you look closely, you can see the top half of “Rudy” – something I bought at War Eagle when I went with mom and B. more about him later!

Iron in the windowsill, ironing board, (took it out of the laundry room Sunday – not sure why I haven’t put it back up yet) random toy, more jeans, kleenex, and junk mail, and Jim Bob Duggar.

I’ll leave you with this – not something I can se right now, but a sneak peak for the next post (hopefully up tomorrow):

my little hobo.

and now… bedtime. =)

picture overload (part 2)

2011-10-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was the Christian Motorcycle Association (CMA) Rally in my town. Every year when they are here they do a Motorcycle Parade that runs down Highway 71 right in front of my parents house. Since Christopher goes crazy every time he sees or hears a motorcycle on the road or in a parking lot, I thought he would really enjoy watching a few hundred bikes rolling down the road.

He wasn’t as into it as I thought he would be. I’m not sure, but I think that maybe there were too many loud/honking motorcycles and he was just a tad overwhelmed. He wouldn’t wave at them and wasn’t really interested in them. He just wasn’t sure what to think! Oh well – it was still really neat to watch!

I ♥ these lashes!

I think Christopher enjoyed hitting Pawpaw’s truck more than the “cycles.”

Last but least – me playing around with my camera Tuesday morning. I took these in the visor mirror in the car on Tuesday morning, wasting time instead of working on my research paper. =/
I just like these “self-portraits.”

picture overload (part 1)

2011-10-25T23:01:00.001-05:00

It’s Tuesday night! Tomorrow is the middle of the week. Can I get a whoohoo! Tuesdays are my long day at school, so I am always glad when they’re over! This Thursday I don’t have class, (hallelujah!) so I’m excited about not having to make that drive again for a week. =)

I have TON of pictures that I’m wanting to share, so I’m just forewarning you: major picture overload to come!

Momma doesn’t look so hot in this picture – but I love it anyway. I love Christopher’s smile and the way his little arms are wrapped around my neck.

This isn’t really anything – but I thought it was a neat picture of the water feature at our park.

These pictures are all from when we went to the park last Friday.

Oh my goodness – this next picture. I love it.

Have I mentioned how much I love my Toms?
Ahem…have I mentioned about how short I am?

Okay – that’s all of the pictures from the park last Friday. Here’s some random iPhone pictures I wanted to post…

Christopher and my dad at Papa’s last week.

Christopher and Momma snuggled on the couch last weekend and watched…

CARS! This is one of my favorite movies, and it was the first time Christopher actually showed some interest in it.

My impatiens look better at the end of October than they did ALL DANG SUMMER LONG.
Pretty sure that had something to do with the ridiculous heat.
And ants. Stupid freakin’ ants took over my other two pots of impatiens.

I have been in SUUUCH a Christmas spirit recently. I’m SO ready to put up my Christmas decorations.
Yesterday, I put Christmas Radio on Pandora to help me make it through some boring homework.
I am a Christmas JUNKIE.

Does this one really need a caption? May 21st can’t come fast enough!

Goodness… I have even more photos but I think this post has more than enough.
I’ll do those in a separate post and set it to go up sometime tomorrow or Thursday. :)

One…two…three…GO!

2011-10-24T14:42:00.001-05:00

He thought this was SO fun.

the eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul (ralph waldo emerson)

2011-10-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Christopher and I had lunch with my dad at a local Mexican restaurant. It was a gorgeous fall day outside, and I decided to take Christopher to the park afterwards. I took my camera with me because I’m really trying to take more pictures of Christopher. (I’m also TRYING to shoot in full manual mode, but it’s going to take me awhile to get there. I think I took about 5 pictures in manual before saying ‘forget it’ and switching to portrait.)

Anyway, back to the point. I took this picture of Christopher and I just love it. Doesn’t he have the most beautiful eyes? Yes, I believe he does.

The only “touching up” I did to this photo was removing some dried stuff around his nose (he’s had a runny nose recently) and some Mexican food around his lips (apparently he was saving it for later.) I did not touch his eyes.

I have more pictures from the park, but this one deserves a post all on it own, don’t you think? Yes, I think it does.

A few things… (I’m gonna be a GRANDMA!)

2011-10-20T15:31:00.001-05:00

I think I’ve already mentioned that I went to War Eagle with my mom and Britney. We left out EARLY last Friday morning and headed to Northwest Arkansas. (Can I mention my love for NWA again? Cause I really love it up there!) We got to War Eagle around 9:30 or 10:00 and shopped there for several hours (it’s huge!) then we went into Springdale, ate lunch at Applebees, then went to the Convention Center to the craft fair there. There was SO much cute stuff. I can’t wait till our budget is a little bigger. I’ll have a LOT of fun. I think we are going to try to make it a yearly tradition! This year, I had a little bit of my birthday money and I bought a few things for myself. I think it was all Christmas decorations! (What can I say? It’s my favorite time of year!)

One thing I forgot to mention about our trip to Branson… just for my own documentation. On the way to NWA, you go through a tunnel for a short distance. Christopher thought it was really funny when we went through it and after we got out of it, he asked to do it again. (“More!”) I’m going to try to remember to video his reaction the next time we go through it.

Last – these are our sweet Boxers, Bella and Jasper. Bella was a Christmas present to me three years ago, and Jasper was a Christmas gift to Christopher last year. This year at Christmas, we will have a few more boxers to add to our mix! Bella is going to have a litter of sweet Boxer puppies! Of course, we will not be keeping them. We decided to let them breed one time, then we will be getting Bella spayed. We had an ultrasound done – the vet quit counting at five puppies. I’m excited but nervous. I’ve never dealt with a dog having puppies before, so I’m going to have to do lots of research so that I feel prepared to do anything that I may need to do.

Prowant Wedding Weekend

2011-10-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

Last weekend (October 8 & 9) we headed to Branson to celebrate the marriage of Deanna (my mother-in-law) and Leonard. Deanna has two kids and so does Leonard, and we were all able to meet in Branson and get to know one another. We are really excited to have new family members! We loved getting to meet everybody and spend some time together.

Stephen had a home football game to cover on Friday night, so we left Saturday morning around 7:30 and headed north. We had planned to stop at Ricks in Fayetteville to get a snack before lunch in Branson, but when we got there, there was a line out the door and we didn’t feel like stopping our trip for that long just for some donuts. There was a home game in Fayetteville that day, so I guess people were stopping to get cakes and stuff for tailgating.

We got to Branson and had lunch at Fuddruckers – yum. I think it’s such a fun place to eat, and I love their fry sauce and ranch. (I’m one of those people who judges a restaurant based on their ranch dressing.) After Fuddruckers, we headed to Tanger Outlet Mall to do some light shopping. I had a few things I needed to pick up for Christopher, mainly some jeans for fall and a few fall t-shirts. Christopher’s at a weird size right now. 18-24 month clothes fit him fine in the waist but are too short, and a lot of 2T things are too big or too long. It’s frustrating!

After we were finished shopping we headed to our cabin for the weekend, which was literally a minute from Tangers. Leonard and Deanna wanted everybody to be together for the weekend instead of in different hotels, so they rented a 5-bedroom, 3-floor cabin. It was really nice and it was a great way for us to all hang out and get to know one another. Leonard’s kids weren’t in town yet, but we were able to catch up with Jim & Cristin (Stephen’s brother and his wife.)

Once Leonard’s kids got there, we all went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Hollister. We stayed there for quite a while before heading back to the cabin. We laid Christopher down then stayed up late talking. The next morning, we packed up and headed to the wedding, which was at the College of the Ozarks campus in Hollister. I had never been there before, but it’s beautiful! We watched Deanna and Leonard exchange vows, then we headed inside where we had a DELICIOUS brunch at the Keeter Center at the College of the Ozarks. It was a really neat atmosphere and I loved the food.

We had planned on going to Silver Dollar City after the brunch, but nobody else wanted to go with us and it’s just not as much fun by ourselves. When it’s just the three of us, Stephen and I can’t ride anything because we have Christopher with us (plus Stephen doesn’t really enjoy the rides, anyway) and there really isn’t much in the park and Christopher can do (2 or 3 rides is all, and I have to ride them with him – and Momma can only ride in circles so many times before getting sick and losing those delicious waffles from brunch) so we just decided to head on back home. We stopped in Ft Smith and did a little shopping and had dinner at Gino’s. I was disappointed that we didn’t go to SDC, but hopefully Stephen and I can get another chance to go with another couple (maybe Leonard & Deanna or Tyler & B) sometime before the end of the year.

Christopher & his Aunt Cristin

Leonard’s daughter, Lori, and her husband, Jordan. They are so sweet!

Leonard’s son, Greg, his wife Michelle, and their precious daughter, Ava.
Christopher loved Ava. He always wanted to be kissing and hugging her.

Jim & Cristin

Richard and Gina. They are Deanna’s best friends and Richie is related to Leonard. (First cousins once removed.)
Gina and Richie and are the people who introduced Deanna and Leonard! :)

TUESDAY tidbits :)

2011-10-18T10:49:00.001-05:00

**I just have to say that I originally named this monday morning ramblings until my brilliant sister-in-law pointed out that I wrote it on tuesday, not monday… yes, hello, I’m 26 and can’t tell you the correct day of the week. tuesdays are like the first day of the week for me since that’s the day that my school week starts. oh, well. it is now tuesday tidbits."**

Good morning, friends!

I'm at school this morning, waiting for class to start. I decided to hop on the computer and write a quick update! I have a post started at home, it just needs pictures added to it to be finished. I'll try to get that up tomorrow. I just wanted to jot down a quick things this morning that I've been meaning to document!

*Midterms are here! It's hard to believe that my fall semester is halfway over. EEK! I counted this past weekend, and (not including today) I have 14 more class days (Tuesdays & Thursdays) left this semester. So. Stinkin. Excited.

*I haven't written much about Christopher and daycare - or as he calls it, "scooh!" (School.) He is doing really well! The adjustment was hard for the first several weeks. He would recognize the building when we turned onto the street that the daycare is on and start shaking his head "no" and whining. BUT, I am happy to say that he is now excited about going to school (most days) and will usually even pick school over staying at home with Mommy or Granny. However, when we actually get to school and go inside and I start to leave, he has second thoughts. I know that he only cries for a minute or two (yes, I stay and listen or peek out the windows if they're playing outside after I drop him off) and then he is fine for the rest of the day.

*I'm playing Bunco again! I played for a few months two years ago, when I was on maternity leave with Christopher. I loved it but once I went back to work it was hard to go because of Walmart's scheduling, then last year I had class on Monday nights. I've been the last two months and won 2nd place both times. But really - I just love being able to get out and have a little fun with my friends!

*I'm taking a Photoshop class at RMCC. It's only 6 weeks long, and it's one night a week. I don't really know much about Photoshop at ALL and I figure it's something that I may need to teach one day. Plus, I am hoping to be able to do some designing with it (like Christmas cards, birthday invitation, etc) and some picture editing, as well.

*PICTURES! I have been SO horrible recently about taking pictures. I think it all started when I lost my 8 GB memory card around Christopher's birthday. I need to replace it. I'm having a garage sale at the beginning of next months and I'm hoping to buy myself a new lens. I've been drooling over this one for months, and I'm pretty sure it's what I'm going to go with!

**there's lots more I could add to this, but I've got to get to class now! I'll leave you with a picture my mom just sent to me -- apparently she lets my son play in make-up on the days that she keeps him. ;)

Happy Monday!

fall afternoons

2011-10-05T19:30:00.000-05:00

Over the last few weeks, Christopher and I have spent lots of time in our front yard enjoying the gorgeous fall weather, playing on the “cycle,” blowing bubbles, etc. He can play while I sit on the front porch and work on homework or play fetch with the dogs. Lots of times we have yummy half-price Cruizzers drinks to sip.

These are from one day last week.

{cheesy smile!}

These pictures make me smile. It reminds me of another sweet fall afternoon from two years ago (almost to the day!) Christopher has changed SO much… Baxter – well, he’s pretty much stayed the same.

applications, football games, selling the house, and a birthday

2011-10-04T22:41:00.001-05:00

We’ve had a busy few days! Last week for a rush for me because I was getting everything together to turn for my application for student internship! It was due Friday and there were a lot of other things that I had to have approved or turn in before I could complete my internship application. I met with the HSU Registrar so that he could approve my application for GRADUATION! That was really exciting for me! (Obviously, I get excited easily.) I have been saying since the beginning of the summer, “I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!” referring to internship and graduation, but it wasn’t until the Registrar approved my graduation application that it really felt REAL to me – ya know? I also had to write a personal essay and have it approved by the HSU Writing Center. They were jam packed and I had trouble getting an appointment with them so I ended up having to drive to Arkadelphia last Friday to meet so that they could approve my essay. After it was approved, I turned in my entire application for internship, which was just as exciting as my application for graduation. I’m SO relieved to have everything done and turned in. Now I just have to finish out this semester of classes. Before I know it, Christmas Break will be over and I will be starting my student teaching.

About an hour after I got home on Friday, we loaded up the car and headed to Clarksville for the Bearcat football game. Stephen was going to be by himself on the trip and I knew that he was tired and would be getting in late, so I offered to go with him. Christopher went with us. He had a great time at the football game! Their visitor stands were very big and we basically had a huge section to ourselves so that he could run around. He could see Stephen taking pictures and notes down on the sidelines and would holler “Dada!” and then WAAAAVE when Stephen turned around. I was cracking up laughing. I had no idea he could holler that loud! ha! Stephen took come cute pictures of Christopher waving at him (and Big Mama with her mouth wide open laughing) but UNFORTUNATELY (ha) I do not have those pictures on my laptop, since Stephen took them with his work camera.

These are the only pictures I took. In the last photo (the one that’s blurry) he was saying “CHEESE!” but he moved when I took the picture. You can still see his sweet cheesy grin. :) We bought pizza and nachos (for a healthy dinner for Christopher and myself) at the game and the lady at the snack stand gave Christopher a sucker. This sucker kept him occupied for the 2nd quarter, halftime, and the majority of the 3rd quarter. I was thankful for it! (It was past his bedtime, and while he doesn’t really get extremely cranky, he can get kind of hyper and might throw a fit if things don’t go exactly how he wants them to go. The sucker kept his mind off the fact that it was past bedtime.)

On our way to the game, we received a phone call from my MIL (who is also our real estate agent) telling us that we had someone wanting to see our house. We put it up for sale this summer – about 4 months ago – but we hadn’t shown it at ALL. After the whole fiasco of our A/C going out this summer and us spending a ridiculous amount of money to fix it, Stephen and I had actually decided to just take it off the market when our contract was up in December. So on Saturday, my mom and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the inside of my house while Stephen worked in the yard (let’s just say it’d been a while since our backyard had been mowed.) We left the house at 4:00, went out to eat with my parents, and got back home at 6:00. At about 15 after, my MIL texted me to let us know that we had gotten an offer and she was emailing it to me! WE WERE SHOCKED!

Their offer was lower than we wanted, so we countered on Monday morning, and Monday after they countered again. We accepted their counter. Sooo now we start the whole waiting game to see if everything checks out and that the financing doesn’t fall through, etc. If everything works out, we will be closing in mid-November and we will have to be out of our house the weekend after Thanksgiving!

Today (Tuesday) is my 26th Birthday! I had to spend the entire day at school. We were up this morning at 5 in Arkadelphia at 8 for Stephen’s first class. We had my birthday lunch at Hamburger Barn then I had afternoon classes that lasted until 6:00. I didn’t even get to see Christopher until 8:15. It was a pretty uneventful birthday, but I had a lot of sweet friends leave me happy birthday wishes on my facebook wall and it made my day a little better. :) Britney gave me my gift from her and Ty this morning. I got Pictionary Man and an Olive Garden gift certificate. My mom and dad gave me a REALLY pretty wind chime that I’m excited to hang up on my front porch! I am also getting a pair of Toms from them (I just have to go pick them out) and apparently something else that they don’t have yet. ??? When Stephen asked me what I wanted, I told him –
     “A new refrigerator?” (We got one in May)
     “A new A/C?” (Which, as I already mentioned, cost us a fortune just a few weeks ago.)
     “A new car?” (I mentioned in my last post that we just replaced Stephen’s 16-year-old car.)

I really don’t need ANYTHING for my birthday. I’m good with just saving our cash, thankyouverymuch!

I’m off to catch up on DVR’d shows. :) Happy 4th of October, everybody!

it’s me again, Margaret.

2011-09-27T00:12:00.001-05:00

ack! blogging FAIL.

school sucks the life out of me. for real. and I have SO not even been in a “school” mindset recently. not good for a future teacher, right? I know. I told Stephen that I needed a break and that I was not going to go to school next semester (as in, my last semester of undergraduate school) and he just looked at me like I was losing my mind. I then told him that I was thinking about changing my major to psychology and I thought he was going to kill me with his laser eyes.

speaking of internship next semester… I will be turning in my application for internship at the end of this week. I KNOW! me = excited & nervous. verrrry excited and nervous.

I’m so glad that all of our normal tv shows are back on! greys and the big bang theory are mine & stevo’s favorites. oh and the biggest loser! and about 10 more hours of other shows that I really don’t have time to be watching…

Christopher is still going to “school” a few days a week, depending on my work load. last week he only went one day because I didn’t have a lot of homework and because I just love staying home with him and miss him when he’s at school all day. I just want to spend as much time with him as possible.

sometime soon I want to do a Christopher post. there are so many little things about him that I want to remember.

Stephen and I really need to win the lottery so that I can be a stay-at-home mom.

I have a mid-term test in two weeks.
MID-TERM. already!

I turn 26 in a week.

I started the Couch to 5K program again. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE running? Cause I do. I LOVE it! It’s so therapeutic. I’m hoping to do a 5k in December.

I know that I have more ramblings to discuss… but it’s 11:49 and my alarm will be going off in just over 5 hours. so I’d say that it’s time for bed. after a few pictures, of course.

Sweet boy sleeping in my bed. This was the first time he’s ever gone to sleep in our bed. Stephen wasn’t home and Christopher wanted to go to sleep in his crib, so I let him go to sleep in our bed.

We got a new ride! The trooper (white car in the background of these photos) was replaced by a 2007 Nissan Murano. We LOVE it.

Jasper and Bella. Jasper ON Bella. Crazy boxers.

Autumn is here! Yay for fall decorations!

Bearcats/Razorbacks wreath that I made. I’m not extremely crafty so I’m pretty proud of it.
I want to get something to put in the middle of it. It seems kind of plain to me. Thoughts? Ideas?

it’s now 12:11
I’m going to hate myself in the morning.

home. (again. and hopefully for good!)

2011-09-06T22:55:00.001-05:00

hey y’all! guess what!

I’m hooooome!

Again.

Our *NEW* air conditioning unit was installed and hooked up to electricity on Friday. We decided to bug bomb the house on Friday night and let it air out on Saturday, and we moved most of our stuff back in our house on Saturday afternoon, then we spent the first night back in our house on Saturday night.

It. Was. Heavenly. I was so glad to be HOME and sleep in my OWN bed and watch television in MY chair.

Monday morning, we went over to my mother-in-law’s house to finish packing up the last of our stuff and clean the house/wash the laundry, etc. We spent a few hours there cleaning up and packing the car, then came home and unloaded everything.

A few hours later, Stephen decided to go crawling under our house to look for a leak that we’ve been dealing with for a few months. Do not ask me why we did not do this earlier, or while we were out of the house during those 4 weeks. It will only aggravate me.

We knew that we had a leak because our water bill had been astronomical for a month or two before we moved out. While we weren’t living here, we shut the water off at the road in order to avoid the situation. Well, Stephen immediately saw the leak – coming from underneath our refrigerator. (Which, coincidentally, was one of the things that I missed the most while I was living at my mother-in-law’s house.)

Apparently something happened whenever we got our new fridge installed and hooked up to the water line. And it’s been leaking ever since. It was kind of just dripping straight down, since we have a pier-and-beam house. We never knew.

So anyway, we ended up having to shut our water off and move BACK into my mother-in-law house… on the SAME day that we had finished moving all of our junk out. I was super upset because we had seriously – just hours earlier – finished packing up the rest of our stuff. I cried. A lot. Mainly because I was mad because we hadn’t taken care of the situation already.

But we were able to get somebody out to the house today and get it fixed. And now I’m back in my house. Again. Hopefully for good. :)

There is a HUGE positive to the A/C situation. When it burned down, we got a lot of different people to look at it and give us their opinion regarding what we should do about it. While it would have been much cheaper to just replace our outside unit (which was the only thing that had burned) we discussed the possibility of replacing our inside furnace unit, as well. We have had a natural gas furnace since we moved into this house, but it is the only thing that is gas and it was very old and outdated and not really running properly. We had some scary issues with it last winter, and the unit was located in Christopher’s bathroom – right on the other side of the wall from his bed. I HATED the fact that an unreliable old furnace with a pilot light was basically right next to Christopher’s head. In the past, we had discussed replacing it with a newer furnace or an electric furnace, but it was pretty expensive and we knew that we would not be staying in this house long-term, so we had decided to “deal with it.”

When the A/C caught fire and we started talking about options to replace it, we decided to look into replacing the furnace. It was going to be about double the cost, but with the problems we’d had with it last winter and considering the fact that our insurance covered about half of it, we decided to go ahead and replace the old gas furnace with a new electric one.

The new A/C unit is MUCH more efficient! We can already tell that it blows harder and cooler! I am hoping that the heat will be more efficient as well. Either way, I am thankful knowing that we no longer have to deal with gas. The possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning always scared me.

Okay – now that I’ve rambled (or whined) on and on about our living situation, I just have to say that I am incredibly thankful to be home, and I am thankful that we had a place to stay while our A/C was getting replaced. I am also thankful to have a home and I know that things could be so much worse. Just wanted to put some positives out there. :)

While I was moving stuff back in to our house and (sorta) cleaning up, I discovered that I am a small addiction.

I have a love for febreze products.
don’t believe me??

let me add some febreze dust and shine furniture spray to that.

still not convinced?

I. Love. This. Stuff.

One day last week, Stephen and I went to pick up some half-price Cruizzers drinks before picking up Christopher from daycare. We decided to get him a Sierra Mist as a special “treat.” He has normally drinks water, milk, or apple juice (which I even water down to half water/half juice.) One time this summer when we went to Branson, we let him have Sprite for the first time and of course he loved it, but he has only had it that one time. He was SO excited that he had a special drink and sucked in down in pretty much no time flat. ha! After each big gulp he would go, “AAAHHhhhhhhh.” It was too cute!

Christopher is SUCH a little boy. Over just the past few days he’s gotten several new boo-boos. He fell in my mom’s driveway a few days ago and scraped both knees. Then today he fell again at mom’s and got a second big scrape on his left knee. He’s going to have horribly scarred knees by the time he starts Kindergarten!

And last but not least – one of the first things I did while we were moving back in to our house was hang up my new Arkansas garden flag! I got this at HobLob one time this summer on sale cheap and have been looking forward to hanging it up ever since!

And now – I need to get back to ~~doing homework~~ catching up on 19 Kids and Counting. :)

video of Christopher

2011-09-06T09:55:00.001-05:00

Hello!

2011-08-29T21:43:00.001-05:00

It seems like forever since I have done a “real” update.

We have been at my mother-in-law’s house for 23 days (and counting) now. It really hasn’t been all that bad – she was here for the first few days we were here, then gone for 10 days, then back for 10 days… and now she’s gone again. I think she is going to be gone for about another 10 days and I am hoping that by the time she’s back, we’re back in our own home. It’s honestly nothing against my mother-in-law… I am just really missing my house. I’m tired of living out of one bedroom here and I want to sleep in my own bed again!

Soooo… what have we been up to?

Last Monday, (a week ago today) Christopher started daycare at Sunshine House on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. It is where I went to daycare when I was his age. It’s been kind of a rough transition for him. Last Tuesday, my parents had to pick him up because I was going to be late getting home from school. They happened to be getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins in town when I got home, so I just met them there. When it was time to leave, my parents were going to follow me back to my MILs house because I had driven my mom’s car to school that day. Mom would just take Christopher out of dad’s truck, give him to me, and take her car home…

Well, when we were walking out of the restaurant, Christopher started to follow me towards my mom’s car, while my parents went the opposite direction. When we started telling him to go with Granny and Grandpa (which normally would NOOOT be a big deal and he would PREFER to go with them) and he had a meltdown. Not going to lie – kind of my this Momma’s heart happy. I ended up riding with him and my dad, while my mom drove her car.

It’s continued like that throughout the week – even on the days when he didn’t go to daycare. He’s been a little clingy, a little whiny, and very quick to cry when he thinks that he might have to be separated from me. I know it’s just a phase and that he will get over it, but it’s hard for me to deal with because I’m not really sure how to handle it.

Christopher on his first day of Daycare, after I had picked him up. He was so happy to see me!

I DO know that he enjoys himself at daycare. He cries when he is first dropped off, but he quits as soon as we are out of sight and his teacher (Ms. Pam) has assured me that he does very well eating, napping, and playing with the other kids. She said that he is a delight and she just loves him. :)

These pictures are from Christopher’s birthday. I wanted a “birth minute” photo, but got distracted (surprise, surprise) while waiting, so it was taken a few minutes late. I wanted to post it on here, for my own records. :)

This is my new pretty… it’s my Erin Condren life planner, and I’m kind of in love with it. I’m hoping that it will keep my life as organized and sane as possible over the next couple of months. It goes until December of 2012, so I will use it all during my Internship semester and the first semester that I am teaching, too. There were all sorts of covers and designs to choose from, but I picked this one because it just seems to go with my life right now. I’m starting my FINAL year of school – I’m FINALLY a senior in college – and I could not be more excited about graduating next May and moving on to the next “phase” in my life.

And last but certainly not least – our first child, sweet Baxter, is finally back with us. My mom has had him since we moved out of our house, but my parents left for a vacation to Branson earlier today so he’s at my mother-in-law’s house with us now! I know that he is going to miss the constant attention from Granny – to be honest, he is probably not too happy about not being there anymore! Haha!

Christopher’s 2nd Birthday Party

2011-08-24T00:18:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, we celebrated Christopher’s second birthday. I had such a fun time planning his party this year. Last year, we did a family-only celebration at our house. I wanted his first birthday party to be on his actual birthday and we sang Happy Birthday at the birth minute – 4:59. It was a sweet, simple party. :) I knew then that I would want to do a big fun bash for his second birthday, though! I started planning it a few months ago, but of course I didn’t really get down to the details until after Summer II classes were over.

These were the invitations for his party. I was originally going to use a service like Shutterfly or Mixbook for his invitations, but I put it off too long and it was going to cost an arm and a leg to get them printed and shipped in time for me to mail them out. I searched Etsy for boys sports invites and came across this one, from The Trendy Butterfly. This invite was perfect and it was SO much cheaper for me to do it this way. I was super happy with the invitation.

The two weeks prior to the party, I made goodies. I had been wanting to try my hand at decorating sugar cookies. I experimented with them a few weeks ago. I tried royal icing to begin with, but I didn’t like the taste of it, so I made a last-minute decision to try glaze, which is a bit harder to work with, but tastes much better.

This was the final product – I wasn’t super happy with the way everything looked (I got in a hurry and did the white on the footballs too soon) but I though they were pretty good for my first experience with sugar cookies. I bagged these up and gave them away as favors.

My sister-in-law Britney and her sister, Manda, helped me with the party. This is the two of them putting up a “streamer wall.” Britney found the idea online and we all thought it was a really neat idea.

It’s hard to tell (and I didn’t think to get a picture close up) but the bowls on the table are a football and a basketball. We had pizza, green salad and fruit salad. The red bucket was filled with ice and Capri Sun for the kids. (We expected six kids other than Christopher, and only had one show up.)

I made chocolate cupcakes and homemade chocolate buttercream frosting. I then turned those into a Cupcake Cake shaped like a football and piped white icing on it for the threads. I think it was cuter in person than in the picture.

The gift/dessert table. In addition to the chocolate cupcakes, I also made petit fours from pound cake and raspberry preserves (yum!) and chocolate-covered pretzel rods.

The pretzel rods and petit fours were on a cute baseball plate – but again, I forgot to take a close-up of it. :(

We also had yummy pizza and breadsticks!

We had “tattoos” for the kids/guests. This is Britney and me with our football tattoos. Christopher had a basketball on his cheek.

My mom made Christopher a super-cute Birthday Crown. It had a baseball on one side of the C and a bat and a glove on the other.

He wasn’t really sure what to think about everybody singing Happy Birthday to him…

Blowing out the candles!

I’m pretty sure he only ate the icing. Ha!

I won’t bore you with pictures of all the toys – we’ll just say that there were lots of them and that Christopher is a blessed, loved little boy! I will show these because I thought they were so sweet – my brother and Britney’s gift to Christopher was a blanket that Britney made then they had Christopher’s monogram embroidered on it. He immediately laid down on it and had a HUGE grin on his face. (Although I will also say that he loved ALL of his gifts and wanted to open them all immediately and could have cared less about opening them all. Once he opened the first gift, he was good!)

We had several good friends and family members at the party!
Christopher’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Cristin drove in all the way from Joshua, Texas to be there.
(Christopher had to change clothes mid-party because his Dallas shirt was covered in chocolate icing!)

Sweet Raidyn – the only other kiddo at the party! This is my cousin’s daughter, and my aunt was nice enough to make the 2-hour drive from Texarkana with Raidyn so that they could attend. :) She also had a basketball on her cheek – I told my aunt that my cousin was probably going to kill me when Raidyn came home with a tattoo. I offered to also pierce something. Ha!

Our good friends Richie and Gina Lawry and their son Gavin and daughter-in-law Rachel were there.

Aunt B

Nana and PopPop (with a football tattoo smack-dab in the middle of his forehead!)

My parents – my mom was so nice and let us have the party at their house. I also did all of the treats at her house, because my A/C was out and I’m not familiar/comfortable with my MIL’s kitchen.

Also – funny story about this picture: Stephen was trying to get Christopher to smile for the camera and he told him, “I’m going to get your ears!” and so Christopher was covering his ears and WOULD NOT uncover them (or smile) for the picture. He is looking out of the corner of his eyes to see if Stephen was going to get him. All of the pictures of him with my parents look like this!

People not pictured that attended were my aunt Carla, Britney’s sister - Manda, and our sweet friend Melarry.

We had a wonderful party and I am thankful for everybody who came out and celebrated Christopher’s birthday with us!

quick update :)

2011-08-21T23:05:00.001-05:00

We’ve had a lot going on recently. Two weeks ago yesterday, our A/C unit caught on fire (!!!!) and we’ve been living with my mother-in-law. I had hoped that we would be back in our house by the time school started back, but we’re not. I have spent the last two weeks planning for Christopher’s birthday party and spending lot of precious time with my sweet little boy.

Yesterday was Christopher’s birthday party! We had a great time with good friends and family. I will update all about that later.

Tomorrow will be a hard day for me. I start back to school at Henderson. I have to leave town at 6 for an 8am class – my ONLY MWF class this semester. At the same time class is starting, Stephen will be dropping Christopher Tyler off for his first day of Daycare. He will be attending Sunshine House three days a week this fall. I have cried plenty of tears over it today, so I am hoping and praying that they are all out of my system tomorrow and that I don’t bawl the entire trip to Arkadelphia. :( I know that it will be good for him and that he will enjoy it – but I am just an emotional wreck over it. No surprise there, though.

The ONLY good thing about tomorrow is the fact that it will be my LAST first day of fall undergraduate classes. Can I get a Hallelujah?

I will be back soon with a big update about all that has been going on recently. I am hoping that by the end of the week we will be back in OUR house. I feel like I am even more scatterbrained than normal while I am living at my mother-in-law’s house!

Two

2011-08-18T16:59:00.000-05:00

Two years ago today, I became a mom.

Christopher Tyler Olmstead was born via c-section at 4:59 in the afternoon, and my world was forever changed.

I cannot imagine anything better than being his mom, and I count my blessings every single day.

I know I’ve posted a few of these already… but I am reposting them since today is his official birthday.

And here he is this morning. :) (iPhone pics)

giving me “the look”

Christopher Tyler --

At two, you are growing into your own personality and becoming more and more “little boy” everyday. You are SO smart and observant of everything that happens around you. You love your family and all the pets in your life. You have a special place in your heart for your Aunt B and “Bubba.” You love to be outside, whether it is swimming, walking, riding the four-wheeler (which you love) or just playing around – you love the outdoors. The only movie or TV show you’ve ever shown interest in is Shrek, but it seems as though Shrek has lost its luster… that could have something to do with the fact that you have watched it, oh, probably 30 times in the last few months. ;) You still love anything that has to do with Balls, and – of course – it’s what your two-year birthday party theme will be on Saturday. Right now, your favorite toys are “cycles” and cars. In just a few days, you will be starting daycare for the first time in your whole life, and I am praying that you handle it better than Momma is handling it. I think you will love the interaction with other children your age!

Your favorite foods are: avocado, macaroni & cheese, all fruit – but especially “blublublees” – blueberries, tomatoes, pizza, any type of potato, “cookies” (animal crackers – and the real ones!) and type of dessert. (You got your momma’s sweet tooth!) You like water but LOVE “oose” – juice. You’ve had one (ok, two - small) glasses of Sprite, which you loved – but it was a special treat at a restaurant in Branson.

You are wearing a size 5 diaper, you weight about 29 pounds, and you are about 33 inches tall (I think.) At your two-year appointment last week, you measured in the 50th percentile for both height and weight. (They measured your height once and it put you in the 10th percentile, so they measured again and it was different, so that put you in the 50th.) You are SO sweet and loving and even though you ARE two years old and getting into everything, you are still SUCH a good child. You still have your pacifier, but you’ve only had it for naps and bedtime for a year now. We thought about taking it away a few weeks ago – and you did go to bed and nap without it a few day – but I decided since you are starting daycare that you might need it there and so I let you have it back. I don’t think you’re going to have it much longer, though. I don’t know why, but I’m having a hard time with taking the paci away from you, even though you really have no problem with it. :-/

You are my whole world -- the best thing that has EVER happened to me, and I am blessed beyond measure to be able to call you my son.

I love you to the moon and back (times infinity.)

Momma

school’s out… for two weeks!

2011-08-05T15:06:00.001-05:00

Summer II classes are over!!! I’m still not sure yet what I made in all my classes, but I took Accounting B & Marketing at Henderson, and I took Macroeconomics online through RMCC. I took 11 hours total this summer (2 hour pre-summer class at HSU at the end of May – Classroom Assessment) and now I will only have to take 15 hours this fall before starting my student internship followed by graduation in the spring! I can FINALLY see the finish line and I’m SO excited that I’m only 21 college credits away from my education degree!!!!

I plan on spending the next two weeks before summer starts soaking up my time with Christopher. He will be starting Daycare (insert SUPER sad face from Mommy here) for the first time EVER the same week that I go back to school. He will also be turning TWO in less than TWO weeks!

On a different note -- I love the “face-time” camera on the iPhone4. It’s not the best quality, but it’s easy to take a picture of Christopher and me since he can see what he’s doing. I told him the other day to stick his tongue out and he thought it was so funny!

I then told him to SMILE and he just kept looking at himself with his tongue stuck out…

I love this silly boy!!

busy week

2011-08-02T22:39:00.001-05:00

Last week was a busy week for us! It was not a “normal” week for us and it probably isn’t interesting to anybody other than myself – but I am just wanting to document it. Consider yourself warned!

Sunday: I washed my beloved iPhone 3Gs. Thankfully, I had insurance on it (through my awesome State Farm agents, Matt & Joey) and was able to get some money to replace it and do an early upgrade.

Monday: I spent the morning in Arkadelphia in class (out of town from 10 to 4) and then came back that afternoon and took care of the insurance issue, pick up my check, and then got a Brand Spankin’ New iPhone4 that night. I was SO excited and in love with new pretty white iPhone4. I had been wanting to upgrade, but was trying to wait until the release of the 5, or 4G, whatever it will be called.

Tuesday: I didn’t have either of my classes on Tuesday, so I was able to spend the day at home. I spent the day taking care of some little things that I had been needing to get done. I went to run an errand that afternoon and laid my (new, remember?) phone on the top of my car while I was putting Christopher in his carseat – and it slid off and hit the concrete and BUSTED the screen. Less than 24 hours after I got it… ruined. 2 iPhones… ruined – in less than 48 hours. After crying uncontrollably for 5 minutes, I called Stephen and told him what I had done. Poor guy. He reacted better than me (no crying from his end) and quickly told me that everything would be fine and we would get the screen replaced at the Phone Doctors store in Ft Smith.

Wednesday: Since Stephen usually works late into the night on Tuesday nights (his section of the newspaper goes to print at 10am on Wednesday morning, so he has to be finished with his section by then) he usually sleeps in late on Wednesday morning and is off all day Wednesday, unless there is some sort of sporting event that he needs to go to. I normally have a morning class at 10:30, but it was cancelled all last week because my teacher was out of state, so he made our homework and test online last week – anyway, I didn’t have to leave for my 1:00 Marketing class until 11, and Stephen and Christopher were up and decided to travel to Arkadelphia with me to keep me company during my drive there and back. WEELLLL… around 40 minutes into our drive (and after Christopher had eaten a granola bar and downed his 3rd glass of milk {which Stephen had given him – I had no idea he’d had that much milk}) Christopher started whining like he was uncomfortable or tired or something was wrong. Stephen (I was driving) turned around to see what was wrong and about 30 seconds later, Christopher upchucked his breakfast and milk. This was the FIRST time that my child has EVER thrown up. I can count on one hand the number of times that he spit up as an infant. I almost didn’t know what to do. I pulled over and we cleaned up as much of the throw-up as we could. It was on Christopher’s clothes, the carseat, the floor, the seat… everywhere. And let me just say this – I will never look at ricotta cheese the same. :-/ The car (and our hands) smelled like soured milk the rest of the hour-long trip to Arkadelphia. When we got there, Stephen dropped me off at school and he took Christopher to Tyler and Britney’s house and cleaned out the car and washed the carseat cover and Christopher’s clothes. It was an interesting day! Christopher was FINE the rest of the day so I suspect that full belly of milk + curvy roads = carsick boy! Definitely a mistake that we will NOT make again!

Christopher hanging out in his diaper and Bubba’s boots while waiting on his clothes to wash!

Thursday: My afternoon class was online on Thursday, so we decided to go to Phone Doctors in Ft Smith on Thursday morning. We picked up Stephen’s mom on the way out of town so that she could do some light shopping with us while we were out of town. She needed to go to her pool chemical place so we also did that while we were gone. I had called earlier in the week to make sure that they would be able to do my phone on the same day that I dropped it off, so that I didn’t have to make two 2-hour trips. WELL, when we got there, the guy tells me that I can pick up my phone on Friday around noon. Turns out, their technician had to go out of town for some reason (extremely important, I’m sure) so they were having a different tech come in from their Tulsa store, but he wouldn’t be in until later that afternoon. Arrrgh. So, I left my brand new, broken iPhone4 at the Phone Doctors and made plans to drive BACK to Ft Smith on Friday to pick it up. (I wasn’t really happy at this point.) We ate lunch at Cheddars (yum!) and spent about 4 or 5 hours in Ft Smith before heading home. We stopped in Poteau and got snow cones on the way home. Not long after we got back, we met up with Tyler & Britney at my parents house. Britney and I made sugar cookies to practice decorating them for Christopher’s birthday party. (Excited about that!)

Friday: Left out around 11:30 and made another trip to Ft Smith to pick up my phone. In case you’re counting, I was on the road Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Christopher was with me those last three days in a row. I know he was sick of his carseat {although not literally, thankfully!} by Friday evening. After we got home from Ft Smith on Friday, we went to my mother-in-law’s house to meet her new friend, Lonnie. (I have a feeling that I may be talking about Lonnie quite often in the future -- Christopher was told to call him “Pop-Pop” …hmmm.)

It was a long, busy week for us – we were on the go way more than normal. I was thankful for Saturday morning, because Stephen let me sleep in!

Here is a picture of my sweet almost two-year-old big boy, holding his portable DVD player in his lap and watching Arrrgggghhhh. (Shrek. As if you didn’t know.)

bubble up enchiladas

2011-07-31T22:22:00.001-05:00

I’ve started TWO different posts trying to explain how crazy the last week has been (at least compared to normal) but I’m pretty much too exhausted to finishing writing it.

SOOO, instead of reviewing last week (which I am going to do, because it was one that I definitely want to document and remember) I wanted to share something that I made tonight and was SOOO yummy.

I mentioned before that I’ve recently discovered Pinterest – and I’m still going to share more about that later. I’ve gotten all kinds of fun new ideas from Pinterest, from crafts to clothing to cooking. I’ve tried out a few dishes and they’ve all been so good!

Tonight, I made Bubble Up Enchiladas… they were super simple and relatively healthy – a win-win!
It was DELICIOUS – thumbs up from all three members of my family. :) Here is where I got the recipe, but I’ll also post it below.

1 pound ground turkey
1 (10 ounce) can enchilada sauce
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 can reduced fat refrigerator biscuits
1 ¼ cups shredded low fat Mexican Cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown turkey and drain if needed. Mix in enchilada sauce and tomato sauce. Cut the refrigerated biscuits into fourths and stir them in the meat mixture. Pour into casserole dish and bake for 25 minutes. Take out of oven and sprinkle cheese on top. Bake an additional 10 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

I topped mine off with light sour cream and avocado. Yummy to my tummy!

blowing bubbles

2011-07-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

low-key weekend

2011-07-24T13:29:00.001-05:00

We’ve had a low-key weekend and it’s been so nice after several weekend of out-of-town and then having to drive to Arkadelphia 4 days a week.

We’ve spent most of the weekend with my whole family – Friday night we played Pit and yesterday we had brunch (Paula Deen cinnamons? yes, please!) and watched the first two Harry Potter movies (my mom wants to watch the first 7 before watching the final one) and then we had pizza for dinner and played Charades afterwards.

So far today we’ve just relaxed at home, which has been nice. :) I cleaned house like a madwoman on Friday so it’s nice to not have to worry about it too much today.

Right now both boys are napping and I’m trying to pull myself away from the computer (I recently became obsessed with Pinterest… which deserves it’s own post sometime soon!) and take a shower and make a grocery list. Our refrigerator is bare!

Christopher has gone to church with his Nana the last two Saturdays. Here is a picture from last week… modeling his new sunglasses we got in Branson a few weeks ago! (They’re still a little big.)

Random/4th of July

2011-07-22T13:50:00.001-05:00

Summer is moving along so quickly! I’m not too upset about it though, because it has been SO HOT this summer and besides, I’m back in school for Summer II so my real “break” has been over for three weeks.

My Summer II classes are over halfway over. My morning class doesn’t meet at all next week, instead we are doing our work online. I’m excited to not have to leave so early and be gone all day.

I’m really looking forward to this fall. Well – not driving to HSU every day, but just the cooler weather, football, fall candles and decorations. It’s my favorite season of the year and I love everything about it. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it’s my last fall semester as an undergraduate student! I’ll be doing my student teaching in the Spring and graduate next May. That’s what I’m really looking forward to! (With the exception, of course, that it means that my baby will be almost three!)

This is the first weekend in several weeks that we have not had something big planned or had to go out of town, so I’m enjoying being able to relax at home. Tomorrow, we are going to my parents house to start watching the Harry Potter series from the beginning with my family. We’re taking snacks and will probably watch the first two movies. I’m trying to decide what to take for a snack?

Which reminds me – we had a 4th of July celebration at my mom’s house and I never posted the pictures from it – so I’ll share now.

Earlier that weekend we had hung out with a few other couples at Jeremiah and Kristy’s house, and Susan had brought this AMAZING cream cheese/bacon dip, which she got from Megan’s blog. It was DELISH. So, I made it to take to my mom’s for our family 4th of July party. I also made Red White and Blue strawberries, which Megan had also posted on her blog. They were SO yummy, as well. (Side note about the strawberries: I didn’t have blue sprinkles at home, so I just used blue food coloring to make the sugar blue. I saw someone on Food Network do this one time to make pink sugar. You can use a few drop of liquid food coloring on regular white sugar to turn it whatever color you need. This saves money and time!)

(I made about 3 times this much, but this is what was left when I remembered to take a picture.)

It’s Friday, which means no school today. Stephen was sweet enough to let me sleep in this morning. Christopher is taking a nap right now, and I really should be cleaning the house! I guess I’ll go do that… happy weekend, all!

I love…

2011-07-20T19:52:00.001-05:00

…these beautiful blue eyes. <3

the end of an Era.

2011-07-17T23:12:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Stephen and I made our way down to Texarkana to see this:

I. Was. So. Sad.

I know it may seem silly – but Harry Potter has been a part of my life since I started reading series when I was the ninth grade.

I think that by the time I had started the books, there were already 3 of them out. My mom actually bought the books because she thought my brother would be interested in reading them, so they started them together. While we were on a family vacation one time, mom was reading the second or third book out loud to Ty, and I was hooked. I actually finished reading that book while we were on the vacation, then I went back and read the first book or two that Mom and Ty had already read. And from then on, I bought the books on the day that they were released (at the midnight release for the last several books.)

I’m not sure if I watched the first movie in theaters, but I do know that I watched the second one and then all of those after it. I got several other people into the series as well, including friends and my high school boyfriend Grant, college boyfriend Ross, and then Stephen after we got married. I actually read all seven books OUT LOUD to Stephen during the first few months of our marriage. We went on a cruise for our honeymoon. I read Harry Potter in the car on the drive to Galveston, we read Harry Potter on our balcony on the boat, we read it in bed before we went to sleep. (Not joking here, people.) We finished the book we were on while we were on the ship… then we started the next book, because we had packed it, as well. :)

Anyway – the movie was SO good and it did NOT disappoint. I’m so sad – it’s like the end of an era – I don’t have another Harry Potter book OR movie to look forward to EVER AGAIN. It feels weird. :(

Ft Worth, part 2

2011-07-17T13:47:00.001-05:00

After we left the zoo, we went to the Ft Worth Stockyards, which I had never seen before. We ate at Riscky’s BBQ and then did a little shopping at the stockyards. We were there at the perfect time for a reenactment of the cattle making their way into the stockyards.

Christopher fell asleep in the truck for the 20ish minute ride from the Zoo to the Stockyards.

We did a little bit of shopping at the Stockyards. Funny story – we went in to a “general store” there and they had ice cream. Apparently Christopher saw a family with their ice cream and was eyeing it, because a sweet old lady walked up to me with a few dollars in her hand and said, “I want to buy him an ice cream!” She went on to tell me that Christopher was “looking at their ice cream and licking his lips, so he must need some, too!” I tried to explain to her that he had already had an ice cream earlier that day, but she insisted that I take the money – so Christopher got his SECOND free ice cream cone of the day. (A sweet girl who worked at the Zoo gave Christopher his own cone there, as well, even though I was planning on sharing mine.) We got him a strawberry ice cream cone and he loved it just as much as his vanilla one earlier that day.

After we left the stockyards, we took Christopher back to Jim & Cristin’s house a he took a much-needed nap. That evening, we had dinner at the house of friend of Stephen’s from school.

Saturday was a low-key day. Christopher was up around 8 or so (I think?) but he laid down for a nap at 11 – which is extremely early – then slept for 3 or 4 hours. He was still exhausted from his day before, I think. We then did a little shopping (Academy & a party store – for C’s 2nd birthday) and then ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

The weekend we were there was the last weekend of the NBA playoffs, so we got some fun new Mavs gear. :)

We left to head back home on Sunday morning. It was a fun trip and I’m glad we were able to make it!

Ft. Worth

2011-07-15T15:27:00.001-05:00

A few weekends ago, we made a trip down to Ft Worth with my mother-in-law to visit Stephen’s brother and sister-in-law, Christopher’s Uncle Jim and Aunt Cristin.

Christopher was a great car rider and I was so proud of him for making the long 5hr+ trip. He has become a great trip-taker within just the last few months, and let me tell ya… I’m so thankful! The days of crying and screaming from the car seat were not fun.

That evening after we got there, we all met up with Stephen’s aunt, uncle, and cousins, the Snyder family. We ate at Joe T. Garcia’s, which was a really neat atmosphere and we had a lot of funning sitting on the patio talking and laughing and catching up!

On Friday morning, we went to the Ft Worth Zoo. This was Christopher’s first trip to the zoo, and I think that he really enjoyed it! I was very impressed with the Ft Worth Zoo and I can definitely see us making several more trips there in the future! It was also nice for me because there is plenty of shade throughout the zoo, instead of the sun beaming down on top of us the whole time. (I can get overheated and sick very quickly.)

We saw all different kinds of animals at the zoo…

Christopher – telling us “how the monkey goes.”

This was a neat indoor area for the gorillas.

See the baby?

This white tiger was right up at the window looking at us!

This was a neat bird sanctuary. When I took this picture, I was standing outside of it, but you can go in and feed the birds. I didn’t feel like getting pooped on, so we didn’t go in. Maybe some other time! There were HUNDREDS of birds in there!

Christopher got a free ice cream cone! He loved it!

He loved this area where you could put your hands in and feel different things. (Above) He also liked feeling different types of fur/skin and then finding out what it belonged to! (Below)

We had a great time at the zoo!

This post is getting long, so I am going to finish the rest of our trip in a separate post!

Busy

2011-07-08T01:24:00.001-05:00

I am so ridiculously behind with blogging.

MAYBE one day (in a year or two) I’ll get caught up and then continue to keep up on a daily (or at least every-other-day) basis.

In the past week, we’ve been to Branson, (again! Third time this year. We’re making good use of our timeshare condo!) spent plenty of time in Nana’s pool, had a fun evening with friends, celebrated the 4th with both of our families, and on Tuesday – I started Summer II classes at Henderson, so I’ve been busy driving and doing schoolwork and then spending my free time with Little Man. (SO sad our month of June went by so quickly. We were busy but we also spent plenty of Quality Time on the couch watching Shrek.)

Hopefully this weekend I can find some time to sit down and write an update or two - I have a Mother’s Day post that I still haven’t completed, plus our trip to Ft Worth last month. I really want to post about them since this is my “journal” for our family. I need to worry less about having it perfectly written out and instead just document it. I love going back and reading them months (or years) later – so that’s all that matters!

I’ll try to be completely caught up with blogging in one week! That will make me feel better, at least, even if nobody else cares about it!

And because I hate posting without pics – here’s Christopher enjoying a free, hot & fresh donut from Krispy Kreme on our Branson trip last week! Yum.O.

Our First Home

2011-06-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned, Stephen and I have put our house on the market. I took pictures of the house for the MLS listing with my own camera, and so I thought I’d go ahead and post them on here… mainly for myself for years in the future, but also for any ~~nosy~~ people who are interested in buying our house!

Sooo – welcome to our home! When you walk in the front door, you enter our living room.

Just opposite of the living room is our dining room. The dining room and living room are all one big open area.

We also have our desk in the living/dining area.

On the other side of the dining area is the kitchen. We have lots of cabinet space in our kitchen. There is an area for a breakfast table and a bar (but we never bought bar stools.)

We have a galley-style kitchen, but it is long, so there is a lot of countertop space!

Christopher’s room is off the kitchen.

He has his own private bathroom with a HUGE shower.

Also off the kitchen is our super-big laundry room.

The last room of our house is mine and Stephen’s bedroom. It is off the living room.

We have a nice-sized bathroom with a full shower/tub. We also have a HUGE walk-in closet, but I didn’t get any pictures of it.

Off our bedroom we have a covered porch. Hopefully in the near future it will be a screened-in porch. ;)

That is our first home! It has been good to us -- it was a great starter home and I know that I will be sad to leave it, but I also look forward to moving on to bigger and better things! (Read: three bedrooms and a garage.) :)

(I just realized that I don’t have any pictures of the exterior of the house. I’ll have to take those soon and post them as well!)

christopher loves jasper <3

2011-06-28T21:35:00.001-05:00

Saturday, Sunday, Monday

2011-06-27T22:52:00.001-05:00

This past weekend Stephen and I made a trip to Ft Smith with Tyler and Britney. We were mainly going to watch The Green Lantern, but I did manage to get there a little early and do a little shopping beforehand.

I got both of these cute frames from Target for $2.50 and they were originally $14.99! I love Target, but it’s probably better for my wallet that I don’t live closer to one.

I know that I am not a “graduate” yet, but I’ve had Senioritis for about 4 years, and now I am finally, officially a Senior in my MAJOR field and I will be graduating next spring! I couldn’t help but buy this neat frame for myself. In less than a year, I’ll be able to post a picture of it again – complete!

We made it to the movie, which was pretty good. Stephen has a huge list of movies that are coming out this summer that he wants to go watch… Eh. I’d rather shop.

After the movie, we had some yummy Olive Garden for dinner. It was 6 on a Saturday evening, and there was a 30 minute wait for a table. The inside was packed with people waiting, so we had to wait outside in the HOT weather.

We stopped in Poteau on the way home for some snow cones. (My favorite is Wedding Cake – YUM!) We had a great time with Ty and B, as always.

I was so excited to be home, though, because Christopher had spent the evening and night before with his Nana, and it had been over 24 hours since I’d last seen him. I was glad to have him back home with me. :)

On Sunday, we slept in. (Speaking of which, what happened to my plan of going to bed by 10 and getting up by 7 during the month of June so that I wouldn’t get off schedule and going back to school in July wouldn’t be hard?) We ended up going to my MIL’s around 1:30 so that Stephen and I could swim while Christopher napped. I LOVE that she has a pool right down the road from us! It’s so nice to be able to go over whenever we want! Christopher took a 2+ hour nap while Stephen and I swam and played around.

Last night, my parents came over to help us finish some projects around the house. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on the blog yet, but Stephen and I put our house up for sale last week! We are still getting a few last-minute things together (like finishing up painting jobs, de-cluttering, etc. My mom helped me to stage the house and I took pictures last night! But more about that later – this post is getting long enough as it is!

Today we had a pretty relaxing day at the house. I worked on laundry while Christopher watched – wait for it! – SHREK! (I have to add, just before I snapped this picture, Christopher was actually leaned over the arm of the couch facing the TV, but he moved as I was grabbing my phone to take the pic) I also got registered for an online class at RMCC, which starts tomorrow. My month-long break from school was SOOO nice and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I’m not counting my break as over just yet, even though I start this class tomorrow… it’s online, so it doesn’t count! I start back to classes at Henderson a week from tomorrow. I’m taking two classes at HSU, and one at RMCC… I’m hoping that 9 hours isn’t too much to take on for a summer session, but it will make my fall semester SO much easier. I love summer sessions and would actually like for all classes to be offered on a 4-6 week-long schedule… I just think that even if the classes are hard, you just push through it and it’s over so quickly and there’s not as much “busy-work” as a normal semester.

Just a sweet picture of Baxter – crazy dog. ♥

Anyway… that’s about all that’s been going on around here!

birthday pictures

2011-06-23T23:15:00.001-05:00

Now that I *think* that I have Christopher’s birthday invitations finalized, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite pictures that my mom and I took on Monday evening. I’m not including the ones that will be on his invitations, but I will share the invites after I order them.

That having been said, I’m probably going to order several of these pictures as large prints or maybe as canvas prints, if I can find a good deal for canvas ones. I have NO idea how I will choose between these great photos, plus my three favorites that I’m not even including here… help! Which ones do you like?

His birthday isn’t until August 18… but I’m trying to take care of as many details as possible now, so that I don’t have to worry about them during my summer classes. (The LAST summer of [undergraduate] classes that I will EVER have to take!)

ogres are like onions

2011-06-23T14:40:00.001-05:00

So.

Christopher is 22 months old (ack!) and all over the place. I’ve been trying to get him interested in TV since he was about a year old – I bought him a portable DVD player and a Mickey Mouse DVD for his first birthday. He wasn’t interested in Mickey, so we tried Veggie Tales, Sesame Street, Dora… he would watch them in the car for maybe 15 minutes or so before getting bored with it. And at home – forget it. He wasn’t interested at all! I’ve tried all different sorts of children’s programming recently and nothing was working.

It’s not that I want him to be a couch potato. And to be honest, he’s really good about independent play, so it wasn’t something that I pushed. Just every now and then, when he was bored ~~and ripping my house to shreds~~ I would try to get him distracted by TV.

Anyway, this past weekend, I remembered a few friends whose kiddos loved Shrek, (and honestly, I love it too) so I told Stephen to pop it into the DVD player and see if Christopher would like it.

And since Saturday, Shrek has played on my DVD player approximately 3541 times.

Okay, not really. But I would say that we’ve had Shrek on at least once a day. Sometimes twice.

Don’t judge me.

Christopher LOVES it. He normally sits and watches it for about 20-30 minutes. After that, he gets off the couch and start playing around in the living room, but he never leaves to go (destroy) another room while Shrek is playing.

He asks to watch it. If the TV gets turned on, he comes into the living room and grabs our black DVD remote and goes “Rawwwrrrr rrrooaaaaarr raaaaaawr.” This means “Shrek,” because at the beginning of the movie when Shrek is scaring the village men who are supposed to be hunting him down, he roars at them to scare them away. The first time Christopher saw that, he thought it was SO funny and he roared at me. Afterwards, I would ask him -- “how does Shrek go?” and he would roar… so now he just ROARS at me when he wants to watch it.

Sneak Peak

2011-06-22T01:00:00.001-05:00

My mom and I took Christopher around town tonight to get some pictures for his birthday party invitations. How is it possible that he’s going to be TWO in less than two months? He’s getting so big!

I took 312 photos… and I actually had quite a few of them turn out nicely! (Thank goodness Granny was there to help!)

Here is a cute sneak peak of my almost-two-year-old in his birthday shirt!

Trip to Fayetteville

2011-06-21T13:40:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Stephen needed to go to Fayetteville to cover the State All-Stars baseball and softball event, so Christopher and I decided to tag along for the ride!

The trip to Fayetteville is about two and a half hours, but it goes pretty quickly. We called in a pizza at Gino’s (I can’t go through Ft. Smith without it!) and ate it in the car on the way.

We had fun watching the boys play (a boy from Mena was the starting pitcher) then about halfway through that game, we headed over to watch the girls softball game. Christopher and I stayed in the parking lot for part of the girls game, so that he could run off some energy. We drove through a little piece of U of A’s campus. The whole town of Fayetteville is so pretty and I love the campus. If I could re-do college, I would go to Fayetteville, but when I was 18 and deciding which college to attend, the size of U of A scared me.

After we finished with the softball game, we drove around Fayetteville just looking at some of the town. We really had no idea where we were or what we were doing, but it was fun. We have discussed moving to Fayetteville or the NWA area after we graduate from Henderson, so it was neat to drive around a place where we might live in the future! We passed a park that had tons of people out in it with dogs and kids. It looked really neat; nothing like what we would see in Mena.

We ended up going to a Home Depot. I have never been to a Home Depot where people were so friendly! Everybody who worked there was nice and offered to help us. We were wanting to buy a rug for our back porch, but we weren’t sure if it would fit in my car. They let Stephen go out and see if it would fit in the car while I stayed in the store with Christopher, that way we wouldn’t have to ring it up, pay for it, and then if it didn’t fit, take it back and return it. (It fit, so Yay! for a new rug!) After we left Home Depot, we went to Logan’s Roadhouse for dinner, then headed home around 10:00. We had such a good time and really enjoyed our mini road trip.

Visit with Great-Grandpa

2011-06-14T21:28:00.001-05:00

Stephen’s grandmother passed away near the end of May, and even though we had planned to go to the funeral, Stephen ended up having a VERY late night at work the night before and he didn’t get home until 5 in the morning, and we were needing to leave the house at 8 in order to go to the funeral. So, we made plans to go to visit his grandfather the next week, on Memorial Day.

Stephen’s grandmother, Jerri, had only seen Christopher in person one time, when he was about 6 months old. We didn’t have a lot of time to get away when Stephen worked at Walmart, then I started school full-time last July, then Stephen started school in January and started a new job in February, and time just goes by SO quickly. Unfortunately, we never made the trip back to visit Stephen’s grandparents and it makes me so sad to think that we don’t even have a picture of Christopher with his great-grandmother. I hate it that we just kept putting it off and she ended up passing away just a few weeks before summer break, when we were planning on making a trip to visit. However, I do know that Jerri loved reading my blog and she enjoyed it very much. She checked it daily and left me lots of sweet messages. She loved all of the pictures I posted of Christopher and printed them all off on her home computer and made a huge book of pictures of just Christopher.

Anyway, on Memorial Day, Stephen and his mom and I, plus Christopher, headed to visit with Stephen’s grandfather, Ernie.

We had a really good visit and Christopher loved spending the day with his great-grandfather… and I think the feeling was mutual. ;)

Way to Go Mavs!!!!

2011-06-12T22:47:00.001-05:00

The Mavs won the NBA Championship tonight!!!! Stephen and I are Mavs fans (he made me one!) and we even went to a game when we first started dating.

Whoa. Skinny Stephanie.

Christopher Tyler is also a Mavericks fan…

We just got home from Ft Worth this evening, so we were able to pick up some new Mavs clothing while we were there. This is C-Monster showing his support tonight.

Here’s the best part of this post. These pictures crack me up! They were taken during the last few seconds of the game (when there was still action happening, but there was no way that the Heat were coming back to win it) and I said to Stephen, “Let’s take a picture of two happy Mavs fans!”

Picture Number One: Stephen looking at the TV

ME: Stephen! You’re not looking at the camera!
(P.S. Check out my new Mavs shirt! And yes, that shirt that my husband is wearing is the same one he wore at the game we were at THREE years ago!)

Picture Number Two: Stephen STILL watching the game

ME: Stephen! You did it AGAIN!
(Although I must admit, that grin on his face is PRICELESS! He was SO excited!)

Picture Number Three: We were both laughing and my hand was shaking because of it, so when I finally got a picture of Stephen looking at the camera, it turned out super blurry. My eyes are all crinkled up from laughing, too. But it’s a great memory. :)

Dallas Mavericks: 2011 NBA Champions!!!!!

Weekend

2011-06-05T21:02:00.001-05:00

Happy Sunday! We have had a busy week/weekend! Believe it or not, this is the first time that I’ve even opened my laptop in probably 3 days, which is CRAZY for me!

We had the Lum & Abner festival in our town this weekend, which is always fun.

Just for fun, this is a picture of me two years ago on the weekend of Lum & Abner. Our friends had their baby girl the Friday of the festival and this is the picture of me and their new baby.

I remember this weekend SO well. After this sweet girl was born, I got really excited about meeting Christopher! I am about 30 weeks pregnant in this picture.

{I should mention here that I have been having some serious baby fever recently - and this picture isn’t helping!}

Last year at Lum & Abner, Christopher participated in the baby crawling contest and got 2nd place. The next week, his picture was on the front page of the paper!

We had a lot of fun this year, too! The pictures are on Stephen’s work camera so I’ll have to do an update later with this year’s festivities!

Last night, we played Charades with my family. Always fun times… especially when it involves my brother trying to get my dad & Stephen to guess Puss in Boots. Enough said.

Today, Stephen and I were planning on staying at home but we ran an errand this morning and on the way back home we stopped at his mom’s house. She was swimming in her pool so we decided to swim, too! It was our first time to get in her pool this year and we had a lot of fun! She has a leak and has had some problems getting everything balanced and clean this summer, so the water isn’t clear, but we got in anyway. :) Christopher wasn’t too sure about it at first but he ended up loving it!

Isn’t that little floaty cute? My MIL bought it last summer. Christopher loved it! (And I love not constantly having to hold him!)

We ended up having lunch at Nana’s and watching a movie with her while C napped, then we headed home and I worked some more on my landscaping project! It didn’t go as quickly as I had hoped last weekend, and it has been HOT and yucky here this week and we have been busy with other things, so I am still working on it. It looks SO good and hopefully tomorrow I can take some “after” shots and then post them on here.

After I had worked in the yard for a few hours I took Bella and Jasper for a long walk and when I got home, Stephen had chicken, corn, and mashed taters ready for dinner. YUM!

Now we are watching the Mavs play and trying to wind down for bed! I have great plans to start getting up early and running in the mornings, but in order for that to happen I have GOT to stop staying up till midnight then sleeping till 9:30. The weather here has gotten hot in a hurry and it’s usually 80+ by 8 or 9 in the morning and then it only gets worse! We’ve already seen upper 90s this week and I know that it’ll stay that way till September… so if I want to run without having a heat stroke, I need to do it at 6:30 in the morning!

Hello, Summer Break!

2011-05-28T23:27:00.001-05:00

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

2011-05-19T22:55:00.001-05:00

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

2011-05-18T21:06:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-05-15T21:54:00.001-05:00

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!)