Rockport

We spent last weekend with my family at the coast in Rockport. We go almost every year and stay in my Dad's company's condo on the water. It's a fun getaway! I love Rockport - it is so laid back and charming! It was also my niece Grace's first trip anywhere! It was fun getting to spend a whole weekend with my Dolly!

We had several excellent meals - lots of yummy shrimp and an amazing italian dinner - YUM! Everytime we go, each couple picks a movie they want to share with the family and we watch them there. It doesn't have to be a movie no one else has seen - just one you think the group would enjoy. The movie you pick is always a secret until we watch it. This year we watched Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil (Mom & Dad's pick), So I Married an Axe Murderer (mine and Cam's pick), and Team America (Lizzie & Corey's pick). The guys went fishing Sunday morning and caught a ton of fish!

 

The weirdest thing happened on the trip down there! Lizzie, Corey, Grace, Cam & I were in the car driving in the dark down a two lane road. All of the sudden, out of nowhere, we ran over an already-dead deer that was laying in the road. It was scary and jarring, but we were relieved we weren't the ones to kill Bambi. Then THE SMELL hit us! The smell of death hit us and stayed in the car for about 20 minutes. It was terrible! If you've seen the movie Tommy Boy, there's a similar scene in the movie. I had a cherry limeade from Sonic and opened it up and we all started passing it around and smelling the lime! Poor little Dolly's tiny nostrils! Luckily the smell went away after awhile, but OMG, it was just one of those weird moments you'll never forget.

Sweet Summertime

Well hello there! It's 6:30 AM on a Monday morning and even though I'm off work, for some reason I'm wide awake. Might have something to do with a certain feline who decided 5 AM would be a great time to knock everything off my bedside table and paw the blinds in the bedroom repeatedly. She's been moved to the guest bedroom for solitary confinement and hopefully a little nap.

It's my third week of summer vacation and I'm so thankful for a break. It's much-needed after a long, tough school year. I really love my job during the summertime! ;)

We are still loving our new house! It's hard to believe we've been here for over three months now. We've been slowly getting some new pieces of furniture. Today we'll pick up the last thing we need  - a new chair for the living room to replace the old raggedy purple (!) recliner. The only other big thing we need is a dining room table, but that is several months off. We're in no rush on that! We're just excited to have what we do! We've had lots of visitors over the last few months - it's so nice having a house to invite people into! Cam's parents stayed with us last weekend and this weekend his brother, SIL, and nephew Logan were here. It's great having the space to have people stay with us!

We got a new puppy two weeks ago. Teddy is a Welsh Corgi and we're totally in love with him. He's sweet, tiny, and 100% puppy! We've been working on potty training and getting all that wild puppy energy out during the day. He's sleeping pretty well and usually gets up once a night to potty. He has little fits of crying here and there. It always sounds so sad and pitiful, but I'm trying to follow Cesar Millan's advice (yes, I bought his book!) and not respond when he cries at night, unless it's for something obvious like a potty break. He and his sister Aurora are getting along pretty well. If he gets too close, she will warn him by hissing and holding up her paw to swat him, but that's happening less and less. She's even let him climb on her when she was laying in the grass this weekend and has started chasing him around playfully! Having a dog is a whole new world for me and there are moments when, between both animals, I feel like I live in a zoo but overall it's been really fun!

Cam started a new job a couple weeks ago. It's going well and I'm so proud of him for taking a leap into something new! It's definitely a big transition to leave a job after almost five years and start over somewhere new, but this job is a huge step in Cam's career and a truly life-changing one for our little family. We are truly thrilled for the opportunity!

My niece Grace is four months old now and doing great! She is ADORABLE and very chunky, which makes us all very happy after her little 4 lb beginning! Dolly, as I've nicknamed her, is very beautiful with long, thick eyelashes and a sweet smile. We get to spend lots of time with her, which is wonderful. I've always loved babies, so it's very fun getting to be around her so much and watch her grow!

Well, I guess that about covers what's been happening here! I promise to try to write more this summer! Have a great week!

Life Update

I've probably lost all three of my readers by now due to my severe lack of posting, but here's an update anyway! The last couple months have been some of the busiest of my life. It probably would compare to the month or so before our wedding.

My niece, Grace Catherine, arrived on February 15th. She is healthy and beautiful! She was born 5 weeks early so she was on the small side (4 lbs, 11 ounces), but she's growing like a champ and is now close to 6 lbs! My sister Elizabeth was in the hospital for several days before she arrived because they discovered she had preeclampsia, which was the reason for the issues she'd been having. It was a relief to find out what was the culprit, but still a bit scary. The high-risk OBGYN decided that it was best not to wait any longer to deliver so all of the sudden, Grace was here! Everyone is in love with her and she is an absolute blessing to our family! Elizabeth and Corey are amazing parents and I'm so proud of them for handling all that has been thrown at them with such grace (haha - see what I did there?). Newborn Gracie

Grace at almost 3 weeks old

We closed on our house and we are so happy!!! We moved in last Saturday in a near-biblical downpour! We were so lucky to have a ton of help from our wonderful family and friends. A lot of people would've looked at the forecast and bailed, but everyone was so incredibly generous and helpful. Cam and I can't get over the fact that this house is ours. We've said "This house is awesome!" at least 100 times to each other in the last few days. We are pretty settled and enjoying making the house our own. It is so nice to have space to spread out. I don't think we realized until we moved how stressful living in such cramped corners was and what an effect it was having on us. This is dumb, but I love looking around my new living room and seeing space inbetween the furniture in the room! Before everything was pushed together within an inch of it's life! Aurora the cat is also enjoying her new home, especially the backyard!



Hope this blog post finds you well! Have a wonderful week!

Tuesday's Gone With the Wind...

For the last couple weeks, I've been dreading today. I ended up scheduling my annual teaching observation for this morning and some pretty extensive dental work for this afternoon. I told Cam this morning that if I could just get through this day, I'd come home and get in bed and rest all evening. Between buying a house and fighting allergies and a sinus infection, I am completely spent.

The morning starts off pretty good. My lesson was really fun, if I do say so myself, and I felt like my observation went well. I do the same dog and pony show for my other four classes and race out of the building at 3:30 to try to beat the schoolbuses so I can make it to my 4:00 dental appointment. This is when things get interesting:

- Dentist needs to fill 3 cavities. I haven't had that many cavities in years, but I'm going to a new dentist and maybe he's just more thorough than my last one. One of said cavities is huge and is actually in a tooth that already has a filling beneath the new cavity. Dentist hopes this won't turn into a root canal, but he won't know 'til he gets in to the tooth. The decay is massive! He drills and drills until there is barely any tooth left, telling me every few seconds, "I'm really close to the nerve!" Ok dude, I don't need to hear the play-by-play. He gets to where he can literally see the root of my tooth and isn't sure he's going to be able to pull this off without a root canal. This is not a stage of dental misery I'm quite ready to enter just yet. I can't stand getting old. Finally he decides he can try just filling it, with possibly a crown. He pulls out all the stops, putting several different things on the tooth that will fight bacteria and hopefully get the tooth to regenerate itself. Then he fills the rest of it, thankfully with no crown needed. He refers to it as the "taj mahal of fillings". In the midst of this two hour filling, I get a massive cramp in my foot. Here I am--laid out in the dental chair with two different people's hands in my mouth. My cramp is getting worse and worse, so I say something and try to stretch it out. They warn me not to move, as this point in the process is critical. I try to "mind over matter" this cramp until I just can't anymore. I tell them again it's cramping (they thought I said itching the first time, probably because there were fifteen different things in my mouth) but I'm still not allowed to move. I gingerly reach down and pull my foot up to stomach, butterfly style, and hold it to get rid of the cramp, which has now moved into my ankle. This is pretty much my worst nightmare. My foot cramps are chronic, and I always knew they would put me in some awful situation like this. Luckily I held my pose until we could take a break so I could stand up on it. Eventually it goes away, appoinment ends, and I make another appointment for two weeks out so they can fill the other two cavities they didn't get to today and check on the status of my "life support tooth".

-I leave the dentist's parking lot and immediately can tell something's not right about my car. Something feels strange, but I'm not sure if it's my tires or the rough road. I drive along until I can tell I have a flat tire, make it to a nearby middle school (I just can't seem to get away from those), and pull in. My tires not just flat, it's blown out with a big rip in the side. I call Cam and he drops everything to come help me (love that man so much!). He gets there and starts changing the tire. I play on my phone calmly. I know my strengths and car repair is definitely an area where my assistance would hurt, not help. This is when things turn into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm:

-The jack bends and Cam has to switch mine out for his truck's jack.

-He puts the donut spare tire on only to discover that it too is flat.

-I take his truck to the gas station to buy a can of fix-a-flat so we can at least get to a gas station on the spare to air it up before taking it to NTB for a new tire.

-Cam needs me to back the car up a little once he uses the fix-a-flat so it will seal, or something.

-We then realize my car battery has died after sitting half-cranked for so long while fixing the flat.

-At this point I'm laughing so I don't cry.

-We jump the car. This is when my Dad arrives on the scene. We told him he didn't need to come, but my sweet parents couldn't rest after they heard about the flat donut.

-We caravan in three different cars to a gas station to air up the tire. And get gas...did I mention my gas light had been on for a whole day by this point?

-We make it to NTB an hour before they close at 9. They convince us it's best to buy two tires instead of one, since my other one is almost at the point of not passing inspection. $400 later and it's Happy Valentine's Day to us (yeah right, we'd never spend that much on Valentine's Day)!

-On the way home, I try to turn the radio on so I can reset the clock after the battery debacle. Then I realize that Honda has this lovely anti-radio theft device that requires a car-specific code to reset the radio after the battery has been disconnected. The code is nowhere to be found in the owner's manual, which says I'll need to get some other serial code from the radio and then a dealer might be able to give me the code to unlock it. I start debating whether I really need a radio in my car anymore. After some help from the internet, I find a secret sticker in the car with the code printed on it. I would tell you the location, but then you might come steal my car radio. ;)

The End.

If you made it through this one, bless your precious heart.

I'm back...

Hello again! I got behind with blogging after the holidays and then everything has been crazy for the past month and I just didn't know where to even start.

Here's what we've been up to lately:

- We had a great Christmas. We got to spend two weeks together and see all the people we love the most!

-Two friends and I held a baby shower for my sister recently. Everything went really well and I'm so happy my sister got to enjoy herself! The last month has been a rollercoaster for their growing family. Tons of back and forth about a possible issue with amniotic fluid that might lead to an early delivery for my niece. Everything is still a bit up in the air, but is being monitored very closely. There was talk of even delivering as early as 34 weeks (that's this week!) but now it looks like she may go to full-term. Who really knows? As the doc says, "the baby rules". And to make things even worse, my brother-in-law got laid off in the middle of all this, but he just accepted a position with a great company. He is such a hard worker and his new company is lucky to have him! We have all been saying our prayers for them and I'm so glad things are starting to settle down a bit.

-I lost nearly 10 pounds in January, but have probably gained the majority of it back in the last two weeks. I'm a little frightened to get back on the scale...eeek!

-In not so fun news, we've been trying to get things sorted out after our apartment was flooded in early January. The apartment complex is liable as they were doing work in the apartment above us that caused the flood. They've been taking their sweet time in reimbursing us for the several hundred dollars in property that we lost, but it's looking like everything's going to work out. It could have been much worse, but is there ever a flood that doesn't feel major to you when it disrupts your home life and your finances? January was quite a rough month for me and my people.

And now for the big news....

-WE FOUND A HOUSE AND WE ARE BUYING IT, Y'ALL! We put an offer on a house we really love a week ago and after several days of negotiating, we agreed on a price and signed all the paperwork this weekend! We are so excited! And nervous, if I'm being honest, although those nerves are subsiding a bit as we check things off the list. The house is beautiful and in a fantastic neighborhood! We looked at this house three times over the course of our house hunting. It's actually the first one we ever looked at, which reminds me of a wedding dress (so many women end up picking the first dress they tried on). We knew we needed to look at other houses to really know what was out there, and over time, it just became clear. We originally planned to close at the end of March (our lease is up mid-April), but in the end, the seller needed to close sooner to make the deal happen...so we are off to the races! I just can't wait to have something that's truly ours! Plus having two sinks won't be too shabby either! I'm praying the inspection goes well on Thursday so we can be one step closer!

Have a great week!

Two Years

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

-Emily Bronte

Happy Anniversary Cam. I love you.

The Daily Grind

Well because I know you've been on the edge of your seats wondering, I want you to know that I still have all of my teeth. Although I will tell you that last week at work was so stressful that there was a brief period where I thought I might grind all of my teeth away and end up in a loony bin just in time for Christmas! Even though things have gotten better at work this week, I'm noticing that this teeth grinding/jaw stiffening thing has become a habit for me. Now that I'm aware of it, I realize I'm doing it almost all the time. I'm also noticing I clench my hands too. I wonder if other people notice me doing this? I hope not...I don't want to appear stressed, even if I am. I've been told several times that I seem calm...that makes me laugh. If they only knew! It also made my Mother laugh when I told her because she knows the truth-lol! Let's just say I've been known to worry myself over every little old thing - big and small. It's my nature, but I'm trying to work on it. Back to the pressing issue of my teeth: I checked out night mouth guards at HEB the other day and decided it was not worth $15 to help a problem while I'm sleeping when it's occuring during the day. And really, what is more sexy than a woman sleeping with a night guard all up in her grill? Cam would be so happy - lol! I'm so thankful to have a nice break coming up to rest my mind and body and focus on the things that are most important in my life.

"Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble." George Washington

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."
John 14:27