I'm ok with it....

So, this weekend went by way too fast and while I had so much fun I finally realized something. I'm not 21 years old anymore and you know what.....I'm ok with it.

Friday night I went and had a nice meal with my mom, sister, Molly and chunky Charlie. We had a really nice time and it's not something we do often anymore because we are all super busy but I'm glad we got to spend some time together, just us. We went to Aspen Creek, that place is so yummy. We all had the spicy chicken salad and we at some shrimp that was supposed to be like Bang Bang Shrimp and some chips and queso for apps. (Molly's choice). The imitation bang bang was really tasty and spicy just like I like it. I will for sure try that again sometime. My salad was ok and I ended up tossing my leftovers when I got home because the smell was making me ill. Eww.

Saturday was AWESOME! I got up and was able to go for a run before the little bug even woke up for the day. I always get really excited when I wake up before the babe. These days it's becoming more common. I'm such an early bird. After I did a quick 3 miles I went to the grocery and then the hubs had to run out to Cabela's so me and the little one decided to go to the park. We went to Greenwood Boat Docks park for the first time and it was SO nice! They have this whole little water park and there are different areas for kids to play in. When we went there were people using a few pavilions for birthday parties and there were canopy's set up in different places. I honestly love it! And it's five minutes from home. You can't beat that and I  can't wait to take Charlie to play in the water area. She's going to have a blast but I'll  have to wait until it's not super crowded when we go. After we went to the park I called Ryan and he was almost home so we decided to go try out the new ice cream place on Dixie called Chillers. It was nice but expensive. I think we'll probably just support Valley Freeze from now on. We love that place and we would rather keep our money local when we can. After ice cream we went home and hung with the little bug until I had to leave to go get my massage. I've had a groupon since last November and it expired at the end of the month so I knew I had to get in there soon and just get it done. It was nice. I'm so chatty though and feel awkward during massages if I'm not talking so I talked to my therapist while she was giving me my massage. We talked a lot about books and kids and stuff like that. It was nice and the time just flew by.

After my massage I went to Farnsley Morman Landing for a mommy and me photoshoot with my friend Holly and her adorable daughter Max. We didn't have the ideal time for a photoshoot that's for sure. 4pm and in direct sunlight but we made it work and I have some GREAT images from that shoot. I know Holly will be pleased. :-)

When I left there I went and got a pedicure and then went home to relax before the little one had to go to bed.

......I feel like I need an entire new blog post for Sunday.....

Sunday arrives.

Morning routine with the kiddo commences and then I took her to my mamaws house to stay the night. After giving mamaw a list 1 1/2 pages long of dos and donts' of Charlie's routine she kicked me out and said they would be fine. Ha :-) I didn't doubt it.

I arrived at Cabo San Lois first, as I usually do. I swear, I can TRY to be late for something and I still show up early. I don't know how that's even possible. A kid hasn't even hindered my routine. Oh well, I guess I'll always be early for everything. A few of us hung around and talked for a while before the party really started going and that was really nice. Once more people started arriving and more alcohol started being consumed things got really interesting. Brian and Kristin really made sure this day was going to be fun for everyone. There were pool games, beer games, flip cup, beer pong, and cornhole. Everyone was pretty content doing their own thing and mingling.

I had a lot of fun on Sunday but I realized that my Saturday with my little family was more fun. I honestly love hanging out with my friends and being with them in general but I just can't drink and party like I did when I was younger anymore. And I'm totally ok with it.

I spent the better part of my 20s drinking, partying, playing Navy and acting like a goofball with my friends and now I just don't want to do that anymore. I'm not sitting here saying that I'm never going to drink another drop in my life or I'm not going to hang out with my friends anymore because that's not the case. (Unless they don't want me around) I'm just saying that I don't need to bong beers and get wasted to have a good time. :-)

On Monday morning when I woke up I couldn't wait to go get and see my little bug! I went and got me and the hubs some breakfast first, picked up my dishes from the party and then went to mamaws house to see what her and the kiddo were up to. When I pulled up mamaw was walking with Charlie in her stroller and Charlie had her superstar sunglasses on. She looked too cute! I hung out and talked with mamaw for a while then me and the bug went to the mall so I could get this scarf I've had my eyes on for months at Yours, Mine and Ours. They had ONE left! I couldn't believe it. AND it was half off because they are closing for the summer. I also got another scarf and t-shirt because the deals were just too good to pass up.

Monday evening we went to my mother in laws side of the family for a bbq. It was SO nice to just hang out and relax with family for the day. Charlie was being a little goofball as usual and all she could say was gah gah (dog) because there were two dogs there. She loves dogs and animals. I'm just over cautious when it comes to dogs and her because I was attacked by a dog when I was younger and my mom was too by our own dog when I was in high school. You can never be too careful because you just don't know what's going to happen.So anyway, Monday was super nice and relaxing and I'm glad we got to spend some time with family.

Wow. That was a SUPER long blog post. Weekends are crazy. I'm 3 days behind on my 365 project so hopefully that gets caught up soon.

I hope everyone had a great weekend. As you can tell, I did!

xxx

Ryan

Just need to POST THESE! Whew. That's better.

I'm seriously slacking in the blog department! I promise I'll get caught up eventually but things have been so busy with little bug I haven't had time to think! First things first. In order to get back on track I need to post my recent 365 images. I know some of them are posted in previous blogs here and there but I need to get them all on one blog to focus. Ha!

So, here they are:

Day 93.

Day 94. Just a reminder.

 

 Day 95. Chopped off my hair. 

Day 96. Sweet girls birthday party.

Day 97. Recipe Here

Day 98. April Showers

Day 99. Macro love.

Day 100! Isn't it obvious?

Day 101. Sleeping love.

Day 102. Backyard play time. (This photo scored me another feature on my 365 group!)

Day 103. Senior session stopping traffic!

Day 104. Happy birthday to this sweet girl. 

Day 105. New shoes for the big girl.

Day 106. Frosty macro morning. I laid a blanket out in my backyard and shot for about 20 minutes this morning. I'm sure my neighbors think I'm crazy. :-)

Whew! Now that that's over I can breathe! I'm currently working on editing a senior session which will hopefully be on the blog by the end of the weekend and of course I'm still shooting my 365. The weather is getting warmer so I'm trying to spend more time outdoors with the little one. She loves being outside.

Last Saturday we had a photoshoot scheduled for Miss Charlie's cake smash session with my friend Carla over at Carla Thompson Photography. I'm not going to post all the pictures here because her blog showcases them so beautifully, so I'll just post the link if you want to check them out. It's HERE and I'm totally in love with it and all the images she captured. Those are amazing memories that I will have forever!

I went back and forth about doing Charlie's cake smash myself but I don't have much to work with in that department and I really wanted to be able to watch little bug have fun with the cake instead of worrying about my settings and exposure and composition and all those fun photographer things. Carla did amazing and I got to get in some of the shots too! Yay!

Ok friends, that's all for today until later! Hope everyone is having a great day!!

xxx

Ryan

Progress, ear infections & cranky babies. Oh my!

Hello my loves! Hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful Friday! Today's weather is going to be GREAT! I cannot wait to soak up some sunshine and longer daylight hours this weekend.

I have a busy weekend planned, some plans cannot be talked about yet but on Sunday we have a birthday party to attend for our friends little boy. I cannot believe he is one already. Seriously, all the 2013 babies are growing up too fast. So many of my friends were pregnant last year, it's awesome that our kids are going to get to grow up together and be friends!

So, this week has pretty much been hell. I picked Charlie up from daycare on Monday night and she had a fever of 101. I gave her some tylenol, gave her a bath and she conked out pretty early. Throughout the night she kept waking up screaming and she was burning up so we kept the tylenol coming every 6 hours and on Tuesday morning I called into work so I could stay home with her.

By noon her fever was still climbing and at one point it got up to 105. When we saw that, we called the doctor and they told us to come in right away. Turns out little bug has a double ear infection. Our poor girl has never been this sick before and I just feel awful for her. We got some antibiotics, switched to Motrin to bring down the high fever and then headed home. Ryan had to go to work so lucky me was stuck with a crying baby by myself at night. Yay!

On Wednesday I came into work for a few hours but then left because our girl was still having a rough day at home and daddy needed to get some rest before work. I was pretty much ready to pull my hair out by the end of the second night. I have never seen her so mad and upset but I'm sure she was in pain. Poor girl finally started to feel better yesterday (Thursday) and she didn't have a fever anymore so we sent her to daycare. YAY!

She is still on the antibiotics for another 7 days but she seems to be getting better. I'm so glad!

Next topic. Today was my weekly weight in and round 2 of my diet bet weigh in! I have officially lost 16.4 pounds since January 5th. I am SO excited. I'm 3 pounds away from my pre baby weight and about 15 lbs away from my ultimate goal. I'm also noticing a difference in my figure not just the scale! Here is a few progress pictures. Please disregard the no makeup face and messy hair in the last shot. I had just come in from a run :-)

The day before having Charlie. SO SWOLLEN. Crap. Probably shouldn't have went to the Spring Football game. ha!

Three  weeks after having little bug.

Now! I really notice the weigh loss in my face the most right now.

 

Had to move some of hubby's crap away from the mirror to get this shot. I really miss my closet. Boo. Haha.

So yeah, that's what I have going on right now. I have been seriously focused on losing this weight for the past two months. I feel SO much better about myself too. I have a ways to go but seeing progress has definetly made the journey easier. Not to mention the fact that so many of my friends are super into fitness right now, we are all kicking our own asses and it feels great.

I just wanted to update everyone on my life and my journey. I'm ready for the weekend and some fun! I'll be back to update everyone on Sunday!

xxx

Ryan

Ready for sunshine!

Progress and daily life update!

Hello my followers!

I know I haven't written an actual blog in a while but I promise it's only because I've been so busy lately. I say this all the time but I will be SO glad when Ryan's night shift is over. Looks like it will be just in time for summer too. That makes me happy because we will get to go out and do stuff together with Charlie while the weather is nice. It hasn't been terrible during the winter but I would hate to spend the summer nights without my love.

SO! As most of you know I started a weightloss competition on January 5th. I'm in one with all my friends, who are totally kicking ass by the way, and considering most of us girls had babies last year we totally rock for wanting to get back in shape as soon as we could. (I'm a little late, my kid is almost 1 :-) ha)I'm also in another one on a website called dietbet.com. Totally genius idea and concept but you really have to be focused to at least win your money back. I bet $125 that I would lose 10% of my body weight by July. I'm well into that bet, I've already lost 6% and I fully intend to lose the 10% plus more. My friendly diet bet ends in April so I really need to kick my butt into gear for the next two months.

I've really been focused on eating right and staying away from fast food and garbage that I know my body does not need. I haven't totally kicked the diet cokes, I maybe have 2 a week but I know I need to give those up too because really they do absolutely nothing for me. I've been running 3 miles a day 5 days a week and sometimes my weekend runs are a little longer. Running at 530  in the morning is really the hardest thing ever, especially in the cold, but I would rather knock my workouts out early so I can spend time with the little bug when she wakes up. My pace is getting better too. When I first started running again my pace was like 12:50 per mile. haha. I'm back down in the 10's now so that makes me smile. 

I've decided not to run the mini or any of the triple crown races this year. Those races take so much out of me and by the time they are done I don't want to run again for like 6 months! So, I've decided to take this year off and focus on fun running for ME!

I'm still working on my 365 project and it's coming along. Shooting everyday has done wonders for me. It sometimes hard to think of things to photograph though. Especially in the winter. Especially this winter. IT'S BEEN SO FREAKIN' COLD! Ugh. I'm so ready for it to be over, but nope, snowed again last night. Jeez.

So yeah, that's what's been going on with me lately. I'm also planning little bugs first birthday party! That's probably a whole different blog I should write because there is no way a 1 year olds birthday party should stress me out the way this one has. More on that later. Probably after the party.

I'll be posting another blog later with the 365 update and following that up with a special blog about a special client of mine having TRIPLETS! I've snuck some in on Pinterest. Check the link--->

Hope everyone has a great day!

xxx

Ryan

I Promise...

Hey-o friends! I've finally crossed over to the "I don't want to be pregnant anymore, please get this child out of me" phase of my pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I love being pregnant, I really do, but doing the smallest things these days is SUCH a chore. Yesterday I vacuumed the rug in my living room and swept up the floors and after that I sat in the chair and actually fell asleep. Knocked right out. Granted, daylight savings time threw me off yesterday and we did get up and go to church super early but seriously....I never fall asleep sitting up in a chair. Haha.

This weekend was really nice. Not only was the weather gorgeous but Ryan was home the whole weekend! Even during the day! Haha. Saturday night we had our maternity pictures done by my sis in law's sister Candace and I cannot wait to see them, Ryan said Candace is now in charge of doing all of our pictures because she doesn't make him do weird things and pose in weird positions haha! I just love him.

But anyway basically what I wanted to write about was our experience at dinner on Saturday night. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings on Dixie and we had a good time. The food was good, service was good and it was just a good time. But while we were eating there was this guy sitting behind us with what looked like his son. They had placed their orders and they were waiting on their food I guess. The guy was probably our age, maybe a little bit older and his son was in the 7-10 age range. Old enough where you can have a conversation and talk with them and they know what's going on. Well this guy sat at this table behind us and played on his phone the entire time they were sitting down waiting. He didn't even acknowledge his son that was sitting directly across from him just staring off into space looking bored. It broke my heart. I told Ryan that I really wanted to say something to him or at least strike up a conversation with the little boy so the dad would know what a dick he was being by playing on his phone the whole time and not giving the kid the time of day. 

I know we live in an era where technology is all around us and it's part of our everyday lives, but when did we start putting technology before our children? When did people stop caring about what was going on with their kids and instead all they cared about was who was posting what on Facebook or Twitter. I sit here and think about all of these children taking guns to school and the ones that are bullied that end up committing suicide and I think to myself, what if they tried to talk to their parents about what was going on in their life but all the parents did was play on their phones, tablets and computers all the time?

At another table across from us in the restaurant there was a family of four,  a mom, dad and two little girls eating dinner as well. The little girls looked about 4 and the smallest was about 7 or 8 months or so and those parents did not have their cell phones out once. They were actively engaging their kids in conversations, playing with them and devoting all of their attention to them. I don't even know who these people are but I left there feeling grateful for them and the good job they were doing parenting those children at that time.

I'm a child of technology. I love my Kindle, my iPhone, my computers and all of that mess but I can promise you that I will never put any of these material things before my daughter or before any of my future children. I will talk to them, play with them and give them my undivided attention whenever they need it or even when I think they don't need it. So what if I miss what's going down on Facebook? Facebook and social media will never be more important than my child(ren). 

So if you see or hear a little less of me online after April, it's ok. I'm just enjoying precious moments with my family that I will never be able to go back and re-do.

Until next time........

Well would ya look at that?

So much for keeping up with my blog last year huh? Let's just say I had A LOT going on over the past 11 months and couldn't really find the time to sit down and tell my little three followers on my blog what was going on with my life. Besides, they know, we're real life friends too!

Since the last time I've posted, one of my baby sister heads got married, I stopped running, and I've gained oh about 30 pounds or so. Yeah....that happened. But at least it's for a good reason. I mean, you can't really grow another human being in your belly without gaining a little weight ya know?

Pregnancy is pretty awesome, it's about the only time in my life I've been able to eat whatever I wanted and not really felt bad about it. I always said that I would have never wanted to be pregnant in the summer but I already feel like that might have been a better plan. It's SO hard to stay active in the winter! Walking outside sucks because it's freezing, walking on the treadmill is boring, and I can't go swimming. Maybe next time we will plan this out a little better haha. And boy do I miss running. I never in a million years thought that I could miss running the way I miss it right now. When I hit the 10-14 week mark in my pregnancy that's when my shortness of breath started and I haven't ran since. The last run I went on was with Ryan and I managed to squeak out a measly 1.5 miles. Some of my friends have become such awesome runners and I'm SO jealous of them every time I see their Nike posts on FB. I'm counting down the weeks until I can run again......sigh.......

So let's talk about this magnificent little human being that is currently kicking the crap out of me right now. First of all, the little bean is a girl and her name is Charlotte Leigh. Charlie for short. I'm so obsessed with her nickname. I should have just named her Charlie but I wanted her to have the option of a girls name and a boys nickname. Kids weren't always the nicest to me since I had a boys name, although now it's more common for a girl to be named Ryan. Not the case when I was 0-15 years old. Anywho, she is due on April 14th and I hope she comes a little earlier than that. I'm so anxious to meet her and I know Ryan is too. Everyday I feel like my belly grows another inch so if she does stay in there another 7 weeks I'm not going to be able to function properly anymore. And that could be a problem considering I plan on working until the minute I go into labor! Yikes!

Miss Charlie has another baby shower this weekend. She's already had one and she is very blessed and lucky to have so many people that love her and can't wait to meet her. Ryan finished painting the nursery a couple of weeks ago and I love it. I think it's so cute and it's exactly what I pictured it looking like. The idea came from Pinterest and Ryan drew his vision for it all free hand. Here is a picture of the progress....

The longer tree branch extends over the crib. My husband is super talented. I'm thinking I should be his manager and rent his services out to others for a reasonable fee. Hah! In all seriousness.....I love this room and I can't wait for Charlie to be in it!

Well, I that's all I have time for today. I do hope to really start keeping up with this more regularly! Thanks for reading friends!

Ryan & Charlie!