Blogger 411

I saw this on a friend's blog and thought it would fun to share some relevant and some random information with y'all!

1. How long have you been blogging? And what got you started on blogging? Has your blog changed?
I have been blogging officially since Mother's day this year, so only two months! My blog hasn't had much time to change yet!

2. Did you go to college? If so where, and what did you study?
I did, I spent three years at Oklahoma State University, moved to Washington and got married before my 4th year, so I've been working on finishing up online at Columbia Southern University ever since. Yes, still not done...whomp whomp. If you're counting, that's 7 years of college under my belt folks, and still no BA. I studied nutrition and exercise for two semesters at OSU, and the rest of my years have been spent studying marketing and finance.

3. Where have you traveled?
I have been to most of the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Belize.

4. If you won the lottery, what would be the first thing you would buy?
A different house and all new furniture, of course! (well, new to me...lots would be antiques!)

5. What are your 3 biggest pet peeves?
1. Grammar
2. Driving like an idiot (that includes fast idiocy, and slow idiocy, and all other types of driving idiocies)
3. Pets (har har...get it? But for real...not a fan.)

6. What is your favorite movie?
I like so many now that I don't think I can pick a favorite. But for the longest time, in like, middle school, My Best Friend's Wedding was my favorite movie! I could watch it over and over!!

7. What is your drink of choice; wine, beer, or liquor. Or Water, Soda, Tea?
I quit drinking alcohol for the most part after gaining 26lbs my freshman year of college! So I don't really have much of a taste for it. However, back in the day my only drink of choice was diet coke with either vodka (vanilla smirnoff in particular) or whiskey. Nowadays my only drink is water! I prefer to eat my calories rather than drink them, so water it is! 


8. What is something you enjoy to do when you have me time?
Projects around the house! Or sleeping!! Sleep is a big one. My kids don't think I need much, but they are mistaken. I also like to read and look at house eye candy on the internetzz. 

9. If you could have a $10,000 shopping spree to one store, which store would it be?
Oh my. One store...I would have to say Whole Foods so I could get grassfed meat for my family instead of the CAFO crap in the grocery stores. We {try to} eat Paleo in our house, so eat A LOT of meat, but the quality is not great and that concerns me. I would love to be able to afford $6/lb ground beef and pork chops from grassfed animals! 
If that answer is too boring, I would also LOVE to spend $10000 at a good flea market and get some awesome antique furniture, fix it up and start a shop selling it.


10. Share with us an embarrassing moment of your past? Or present. 
I am lucky enough to have gotten by so far without any catastrophically embarrassing moments in my life, but recently I have had the top button on my button up shirt come undone a few times in public. This happens to be a very crucial button that keeps my boobs inside my shirt, so it's not cool when it pops open.

I also farted on my husband's lap once. Which may not be embarrassing for a lot of people, but I am not a "fart and poop in front of my husband" kinda gal. So as far as he knows that is the only time I've ever farted in the last 4 years. Is this TMI? I think it might be...

11. What day would you love to relive again?
This is a hard one. I've never had any really particularly awesome days. My wedding was just kind of whatever, my childbirths were cool but awfully painful so I don't think I'd relive that again for the same kid...I guess I don't really have an answer to this question. Although it would be nice to relive any day when I weighed 125lbs. I would appreciate it more this time around!


12. If your life was turned into a movie... what actor would play you?
I was told once that I looked like Sandra Bullock in my driver's license photo. But I do not at all look like her. So it wouldn't be Sandy. It would probably be Kristen Wiig from SNL/Bridesmaids, etc. I am way not as funny as she is, but I am a big spaz and pretty awkward. So if she could be more awkward, in a less funny way, she would do a great job playing me. 


13. What are the jobs you had in high school/college/the early years?
In high school I worked at the Hot Spot tanning salon in Mandeville. Then I worked at three more tanning salons in Stillwater, OK while I was in school at OSU. Then when I moved to Washington, I worked for a psychotic chiropractor for 3 weeks, then spent a year working for American General Finance (now Springleaf Finance). And that right there is my whole resume, folks. I have been a stay at home mom since I was 21 weeks pregnant with Abigail. 


14. Show us a picture from high school or college.
I love looking at old photos of people, so I am going to post a bunch of these! 

This is me and my dad at the Sweet 16 for the sophomore girls at my school. I was 15 here though.

This is me and my baby boy Pepsi. He was my first horse that I got when I was 11 and he was 3. 

I love him!

This is me and my husband in 2004. I was just starting my senior year, and this was in Mississippi after one of his fights. {he won, hence the medal :-) } There is a better version of this floating around somewhere where Patrick's eyes are open, but I don't know where it is. :-(

This is one of my favorite pictures from college, I think it was the beginning of my sophomore year. These girls were my best friends at OSU! 

15. If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?
I would go to Greece! Hands down, I think it is so beautiful, I would LOVE to go there for FREEEE. I am hoping to eventually pay to go there anyway, but if anyone out there wants to foot the bill, you are more than welcome to!


16. Show us the most current picture of you or you, or your family, or anything of meaning to you. 

This is my family at our photo shoot in early June. I <3 my family! 

17. Where do you see your life 5 years from now?
Hopefully somewhere WARM! We should be living in the south somewhere, maybe with one more kid. But mostly I hope that we are all happy and healthy! And that my house is pretty and my husband and I don't get divorced over decor disagreements...ahem...

Baby Weight

I am still working on ditching my baby weight (from BOTH babies) and just wanted to share that I made it back down to 142 this morning! This is exciting for me because I've been here twice before, since Bubba was born, and this time I am determined not to go above it again!! A little background, I came home from the hospital weighing 150 after having Abigail, got down to 137 on a good day, usually 140ish then I got knocked up again! Came home from the hospital at about 150 again after losing 9lb 12oz in St. Joe's Emergency Room. So I'm officially 12lbs from my goal of 130 as of today. I know this isn't that exciting to most people, but it's exciting to me and this is MY blog so I'm sharing :-) Maybe if anyone is interested I will do a post about how I lost weight once I hit my goal.

New Wheels

We have two beasty vehicles. We had a bouncing baby girl in June of 2010, and quickly figured out that having her in her carseat in the back of my beautiful 2-door brand new Accord would not be fun. Keeping in mind the fact that we want about 4 kids, we went out and bought the biggest vehicle we could find after selling my Accord. We found my 2006 Expedition all the way in Aberdeen, took it home and have had a love/hate relationship with it ever since. I loved having an Expedition, but this particular one came with some problems that we didn't see before purchasing, like a stupid air conditioner that according to Patrick only has two settings, "off and hurricane." And a power window motor about to poop out any second on the driver's side window. I go on Ft. Lewis a lot, so a working driver's side window is a must! And last but not least, the GAS. We have two gas guzzling vehicles, one of which is driving 18 miles to Fort Lewis and 18 miles home every.single.day. Well, except weekends. Most of the time. Anyway, with gas being over $4/gallon, we decided it was time to get something smaller and spend less money on gas since we don't have enough kids to necessitate our actually having the Expedition. I did lots of shopping around online, and settled on the Ford Escape/Mercury Mariner (same car). We finally came home with this lovely 2009 Mariner with only 39,000 miles (as opposed to my 85,500 mile Expedition!):

 

The power windows work great, and it has FOUR actual air conditioning settings that do indeed each feel different! It's a 4cyl so we are hoping to cut our gas bill down significantly!

Some day down the road, when I am knocked up with baby number 4, this snazzy little number will join our family: 

The redesigned Nissan Quest is the first minivan I have seen that has a body style that is somewhat acceptable to me, and has all the convenience and functionality of a minivan! I am not gonna lie, I'm kind of excited about it....Does that make me a loser? A mom? A little of both? I never in my life thought I would be excited about a minivan...

Just a quick Update

This past week in photos:

I picked out some pulls for our cabinets since the white paint attracts grubby finger prints! Here they are:

I downloaded a free trial of photoshop and have been playing around editing photos all week; here is one of my favorite transformations:

My generous parents are getting Photoshop Elements for my birthday so expect lots more fun pictures in the future, and fancy schmancy graphics here and on the website one day.

Patrick was working overnight all week before last and then spent 3 days in Georgia this past week so I've just been waking up to this handsome little man and about 10 minutes of raspberry blowing every morning. Just imagine that video in the previous post, only right next to your face in bed at about 5:30 am.  Good thing he us so cute or he'd be kicked outta my bed for sure!

Now I'm going to take a minute and brag about how my almost two year old (sniff sniff, tear..) shovels spoonfuls of broccoli into her mouth like it's chocolate cake. She loves "brock-y"! 

That's all for now! Stay tuned because I am going to be making a pair of curtains for my friend soon and will post about it here. Custom curtain orders will be available on the website in the coming months so keep an eye out for that!

Potty, Pins & Pictures

We had a huge event in our house yesterday. HUGE. Abigail told me "poop!" then grabbed my hand and led me to the bathroom! I plopped her on the potty on top of her kiddie seat cushion, then we waited. And waited. She was all kinds of excited, asking for sugars every 5 seconds, smiling so big I could see all of her teeth. She was SO proud. Except she never actually pooped. But she sure thought about it! I'm thinking this is a big, good step in the right direction toward potty training! With any luck, she will be potty trained to at least poop in the toilet by the time bubba starts eating solids (at which time I will be switching to disposables with him). Then Abigail can go back to cloth since she will hopefully just be using diapers for peeing. Fingers crossed!

In other news, I made this:

I had this frame in her room before; it was black, and had ribbons strung across the opening to clip her bows to. Except Abigail doesn't wear bows because I failed at girly-mommyhood when she was a baby and never got her used to having something on her head at all times. So she just takes them out and hands them to me whenever I try to put bows in her hair. Sigh. Anyway, I found a very small pin of baby feet in an old purse, and I know they were important and that I got them around the time she was born, I just can't remember where they came from...woops. Mom fail #2. Or 2 million. I wanted somewhere to keep it that it could be displayed and not get lost. Ah-ha! Pin board. I just spray painted it and used some leftover fabric from her curtains.

Bubba got a new toy on Thursday.

He loves it! He is past the stage where he is ok laying in his bouncy seat when I need to get things done, and he arches out of his bumbo, which seems a bit dangerous, so we have graduated to exersaucer. He thinks it is the bee's knees. I love it too, because Abigail plays with him in it. Well, mostly she plays with the toys and he watches her while he smiles and laughs. Sometimes he plays with the toys too. It's wonderful. I really have to keep an eye on the dog when he's in it though, he keeps trying to chew on poor Bubba's feet!

In other news, I have discovered photo editing. It's so cool to take my crappy pictures and make them look better! I am trying out a free trial of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements for 30 days to see which I would like to buy. Anyone feel free to weigh in on which one you use, and why you prefer it! I know there are a lot of people out there who are hobby photographers and real photographers, so if you're reading this, please help a sister out!

And because she's awesome, here's a picture of Abigail to round out the day:

Hello Blog-land!

Today is Mother's Day, and so I thought it would be a good day to kick off my newest entrepreneurial adventure! I am starting a website called woodlawnlane.com where I will sell not only the best cloth diapers I have ever come acorss (the AMP diapers from Canada) but also some housewares like fun money envelopes for people interested in starting their own cash-only system to get out of or avoid debt a la Dave Ramsey, made to order curtains and pillow cases, some other items for babies like iron on monthly onesie decals to document babies first year, other vinyl decals for around the house...all kinds of things! I am just starting out on this website and blog now, so please be patient with me as I try to get them both looking nice, while taking care of my two small babies! Keep checking back here for updates about both the website AND my babies! 


Happy Mother's Day!