Ten on Tuesday

1. This is an oldie but goodie that I haven't put up on the blog yet..

2. I have been trying to get back into card making again.  Here's a few cards I made recently (within the past few weeks)

3.  I test drove a Chrysler Town and Country last night.  The price is right, so I will probably buy it.  I did have a little mini breakdown afterwards when we were leaving the dealership.  I really love my Alero and it has been the car of my 20s.  It will be so sad to give it up and start driving a mini-van....

 

4.  This also means I have to clear out the Alero.  I keep my LIFE in there, so it will be quite an undertaking.  Blankets, jackets, chairs, random water bottles, and of course a ton of other junk.

 

5. We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday Friday at school.  These are my coteachers in third grade.  I was lucky that Ryan happens to have a "thing three" shirt.

6.  Seeing that picture reminds me to blog that I got a major haircut.  Here is a quick selfie...

Now that the wedding is over, I was ready to chop off all my dead tangly ends.  It is a teeny bit shorter than I thought it would be (the girl assured me that I would be able to put it up in a ponytail, but there is NO WAY that can happen), but I was happy to donate my hair to Locks of Love.

7.  I am making this soup for dinner.  So ridiculously easy and so yummy. 

 

8. Anyone watching The Biggest Loser?  I am not feeling this season.  First of all, the episodes are two hours long now, which seems like an eternity.  Second of all, all of the characters are whiny babies.  Yesterday was makeover week and Ryan and I realized we still don't know some of the contestants names, even this late in the season.   Not feeling it.

 

9. We are getting amped up for our Disney trip in May.  Ryan's sister is going to be an internship down there so we are excited to visit her (and the fact that she is hooking us up with some Disney tickets doesn't hurt either!).

 

10.  Snow is in the forecast for tonight.  I am crossing my fingers for a two hour delay.  It would be so lovely! 

 

Have a great Tuesday!



Isaac turns 8

It has been a while since I have logged into blogger and sat to type.  QUITE a bit has happened and hopefully I will get back on top of things soon.  One of the first things that has happened since I last logged in was Isaac has turned 8!!  This year his birthday fell on President's Day. 


modeling a Padres shirt from Aunt Kathy


We celebrated with our traditional trip to the Sixers where Isaac got a special greeting from the Sixers flight squad and also a Sixers lunch box, cup and baseball hat. 

Isaac also got a new iPad mini as a birthday present from his father and grandfather.  He has been loving messaging family members and playing around with the apps.  He also got three full uniforms from his favorite European Club soccer teams. 

He is still missing a front tooth and the other one is barely hanging on by a thread.  He has turned into quite a book worm this year, working his way through all of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and is now working on the Lunch Lady and Big Nate series and he tears through Sports Illustrated for Kids every month.   He still thrives on being active and loves soccer, basketball, football and baseball. 

Sometimes I can't believe how big he has gotten!  Happy Birthday Little Man!



random thursday

Welcome to another

I am really enjoying this link up.  Today's *random* topic is

1.  Growing up, I totally had a crush on Wesley Crusher from Star Trek the next generation.  I am the queen of the nerds.

 

2. My current embarassing celebrity crush is Justin Bieber...  I know, I know, I know.  But I can't help it.  His music is so catchy and he is so cute.   I even have a poster of him up in my classroom that my secret santa bought me.

Click here to read about the time Ryan surprised me with tickets to see him in New York for my 31st birthday.  And yes, we just went by ourselves and we did NOT bring our kids.  Terrible, right?

Who are your embarassing celebrity crushes?

goal update

Here is another update on my 101 in 1001.  I'm making pretty good progress I think.

Goals:

31. Find a great shade of red lipstick and feel confident wearing it.  - in progress

I bought this tube of red Cover Girl lipstick on a whim at Walgreens one day. I slapped it on casually one evening to try it out and it wasn't exactly met with rave reviews.  Isaac and Ryan both had reactions that can only be described as "disturbed", which certainly didn't make me feel confident about wearing it.  They both seemed genuinely upset by the color. I thought it was a bit too orange but not THAT bad.

  I went to take it off but found that I couldn't. It must be a long wearing formula because it would. not. come. off. Even the next morning it was still quite visible on my lips. I ended up taking a makeup removing wipe and aggressively scraping it off my lips. My friend Diana sells Mary Kay and gave me a ton of samples of lip stuff so the search continues.

61.  Get a physical.  Completed 1/21/2013  Not too much to report.  It was fine.  It has been a while. 

93.     Watch 5 football games with Ryan without complaining.

• Superbowl 47 - 2/3/2012  - I wasn't too impressed (aside from Beyonce's half time show-- LOVED that).  I mostly browsed blogs and surfed the net, but Ryan seemed genuinely excited that I was watching with him.  It occured to me that he often does things with me that aren't of much interest to him, for the sake of spending time with me, but very rarely do I do him the same favor. 
 

YOLO Monday

I posted before about how I was starting to feel just overwhelmed with things. The universe decided to give me a bit of a break. The court case I was going to be a witness in was settled, so I don't need to devote time to prepare and go to trial. I am a little disappointed, because I thought it would have been a fascinating thing to be a part of, but it is nice to have something instantly taken off my plate. I sorted out my health troubles, and am on some huge horse pills antibiotics that left me feeingl much better. I finally made progress on some things for the wedding that I just felt stuck on thanks to my devoted and patient mother.  Also Isaac is on a new medicine that seems to be helping with his vomiting. So those are all big improvements from this time last week.
 
Ryan, his mom and his sister joined me for the Home Show in Philadelphia. The night before I decided to make some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to bring along as a snack.  Typical me though, somehow I forgot to put the flour in and this is how they ended up.  Whoops.

We got up nice and early and drove into the city for the Home Show.   There was a groupon for admission tickets so we ended up getting two tickets for free.  Ryan's mom was so excited to see that  Action News from Channel 6 was there.  She volunteered to be interviewed and we were all tickled to see that they included her interview on the 11:00 news.

 Here is a picture of the a screenshot.  You can see me and Ryan and his sister Katherine behind us.

The Home Show was a lot of fun.  There were so many neat displays and my "Maybe SomeDay This Might Be Within the Budget Wishlist" keeps growing.  I ended up getting some cleaning products, a soup mix, scheduling some consult appointments with a home security system and an organizer.  We also spent quite a bit of time at the Sleep Number Bed display.  We might be buying one of these in the near future.

It was a fun day and nice to spend some time with Ryan's family.

What else?

How fun is this sweatshirt I got from super clearance from Forever21?

I don't remember exactly how much it was... definitely less than 10 bucks.

I actually watched the whole Superbowl for the first time, ever, I think, since Isaac and Ryan really wanted me to join them.  I really enjoyed Beyonce's performance, especially her all girl band.   Fingers crossed this week goes quickly.... Only a few more weeks till our wedding!

Random Thursday

Hey, hey! It's not Friday yet, but welcome back to another

 

I have my very own Random Thursday button now.  How frickin' sweet is that?

 

When I met Ryan, there were probably about two shows I watched with any kind of regularity.  Ryan loves TV and he has hooked me on so many more shows that I really enjoy: Under Cover Boss, CatFish, Switched at Birth, The Carrie Diaries, Joe Schmo Show to name a few...  He also has a penchant for truly *bad* TV (American Idol and The Bachelor, I'm looking at you...) 

 

At any rate, the topic for this week is  
 

Here are some I wasted my life on... (and I hope I am not dating myself too much with a few of these)

1. Who Wants to Marry a Mult-Millionaire?
Long before The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, there was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?  This aired when I was in college and is one of those shows I remember us all piling into a tiny dorm room to watch.  It aired as a two hour special.  I remember as I watched it feeling partially fascinated and partially disgusted.

2. Dinosaurs
Creepy Jim Henson Dinosaurs.  The main joke was the baby always hitting his dad in the head with a frying pan shouting "Not the Mama!"  Fun fact: the series ended when an asteroid hit the earth killing all dinosaurs and had a "Warning, this may be disturbing to young viewers" message before it aired.



3. Dora the Explorer
I was lucky that when Isaac was a preschooler he took only a fleeting interest in this show.  It could have been so much worse.  She addresses her viewers directly and then stares creepily at you during an uncomfortably long pause while you have to decide if it is less bizarre to answer her or ignore her.

4.  American Idol
I'm sorry but this show just needs to end.  I have never gotten into the series really.  When I worked at a group home, the staff would often put it on in the evenings, so I have sort of followed other seasons in a disinterested way.  I have caught a little bit of this season and it has hit a new low now that this is the panel of judges:

Nicki Minaj is HORRIFIC.  Enough said.

5. A Baby Story on TLC.
 It pretty much has the same plot: a lady is pregnant and excited and then she has a baby.

Quickly

• I ended up in the emergency room Friday night after I finally called my doctor about a nagging ache in my side.  That combined with my low grade fever, nausea, and general feeling of "blah" left him convinced I could have appendicitis.  Two rounds of blood work, an IV bag full of fluids and a CAT scan later, it turns out I just have a terrible UTI. 
• Wedding planning is still causing me to lose a lot of sleep.  There are a few important elements still aren't in place, RSVPS that haven't been returned, things I still need to do, people that need to be called, etc, etc, etc.  I either can't fall asleep at night and/or I wake up at night for whatever reason and then my mind starts racing and I can't fall back to sleep.  No bueno.
• Isaac is also throwing up all the time in school (but never at home...).  Their policy is barf = you have to go home that day which has necessitated a lot of juggling around of schedules on the part of me, my mom and Ryan.  One of us has to drop everything to pick him up, and then watch him for the rest of the day as he runs around the house, fever free and full of energy, eating everything in sight.  I dunno if he is making himself throw up, or faking it, or if he might have some kind of reflux or what, but it's getting old.  Yesterday when the school nurse called me at work again, she sort of got the brunt of my anger.  I was like "I'm a working mom!  I'm a teacher! Did anyone actually see him throw up?"  He got a big lecture from me last night about faking it, and I scheduled him a doctor appointment later in the week to rule out reflux or something.  Any suggestions or ideas on that front are welcomed. 
• In addition to all that I have going on in my life, in a moment of temporary insanity I agreed to be a witness on a courtcase.  I was just served my subpoena last weekend. A lady I worked with when I bought my house was fired from her company for shoddy work performance and is now suing them claiming she was fired because of her race and gender.  The company I guess started going through their files and found my scathing write up of my experience working with her and now wants to use me as part of their defense.  Which I think is actually really interesting and I would like to be of assistance.  It is unfortunate that the timing is early February.  
• Anyways, this isn't meant to be a list of complaints.  There are so many good things happening in my life right now too. My parents and Ryan's parents finally met each other at a nice dinner hosted by my parents.  I think everyone was a little nervous but all was well and the world didn't end.  We also had a nice birthday dinner for my dad on Sunday and played Apples to Apples.   My brother Tom inspected my car, so miraculously the 2003 Alero remains roadworthy for another year (or until she is replaced by a minivan or SUV crossover, you know, whichever comes first).  There was a Groupon deal on tickets to the Home Show in Philadelphia, so we are taking Ryan's sister and mom next weekend and they seemed so pleased.  Ryan and I have seen some great movies: Argo and Silver Linings Playbook.  Highly recommend both of them.  Finally, my brother gave the three of us tickets to the car show in Philadelphia and we had a great time.  Here is a picture from there:

 

So that's the update!