Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Just too cool

Monk likes to put different glasses on Lilly and we take pictures of her. Here's one from after church.

She's such a good dog. :-)


Tag! You're it!


Thank you Nicole! :-D

  1. I always sleep on the side of the bed that is farthest from the door. 
  2. I always put on my right shoe first.
  3. I cannot resist chocolate. The darker the better!
  4. I always wanted to learn to play the violin, but learned how to play the flute, saxophone, and clarinet instead.
  5. If I forget my phone, I will go back and get it, no matter how far away from home we are.
  6. I sometimes get jealous that my daughter has more guppies than I do.
  7. I'm a dreamer. I sometimes see something in a store and say "I can make that!" but in reality, I really have no idea how to do it.
  8. My eyes are blue, but I have a light golden brown ring in both of my eyes as well. 
  9. I hate coffee.
  10. I'm addicted to The Sims.
  11. I really like to garden, and can't wait to have our own farm so I can grow more! 

The Rules
1. You must post the rules (and link up who tagged you.)
2. Post eleven fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you've tagged.
4. Tag however many people you want.
5. Let them know you've tagged them!

Nicoles Questions For me:
1. What's your best accomplishment in life up until this point?
* I would like to say just being the person that I am. I could be super bitter about the things that have happened in my past, but I try to not be.
2. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
* I really like it around here! If Sam could find a job around here that paid enough for us to have our dream farm, I would totally stay here! It's nice for the most part year round, I like the fact that if I wanted to go to the beach, I'm only 30-45 minutes away, and I like the kids schools. Tho... I have seen some schools around Raleigh that would be AMAZING!!!!
3. Describe your perfect date night.
* Perfect date night.. hmm... I would have to say, a nice dinner on the water, watch the sunset over the ocean, and hang out and just listen to the water lap the beach while looking at the stars. Amazing!
4. What do you think is your best feature?
* Hmmmm.... *I* think my best feature is butt... LOL 
5. What's your favorite picture of you an your hubby?
* Ha!! It's from right after we got married... Sam, myself and Jocelyn and her husband had all gone to our company Christmas party (That was actually in January.... LOL) and she took a picture of me where it looked like I was picking Sams nose... LOL 
6. If you won a million dollars, what's the first thing you would do?
* Pay off all of our debt, put money away for the kids to go to college, and start our dream of having our farm.
7. What's your favorite snack food?
* CHOCOLATE... or popcorn
8. What's your favorite meal of the day?
* Usually dinner! I lurv to cook!
9. Favorite guilty pleasure TV show?
* The Bachelor/Bachelorette I don't know why!!! I just love to watch them. *sigh*
10. Best book you have ever read?
* Oh gosh... ummm... that's a tough one! How about.... either The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd or One True Theory of Love by Laura Fitzgerald
11. Describe your perfect Sunday.
* Church,  lunch, dinner in the crock pot, and relaxation!

I'm going to Tag:
The Bug @ Bugs Eye View

My questions:
1. If you could go back and do something in your life over, would you?
2. What is your hidden talent?
3. If you could change your name, would you? If so, what would you change it to?
4. What is your favorite childhood memory?
5. What is your favorite adult memory?
6. Do you have any pets?
7. What size shoe do you wear?
8. If you could meet one person, past, present, or future, who would it be?
9. What is your biggest fear?
10. What is your favorite meal?
11. Which is better? Chocolate, Vanilla or Neapolitan ice cream?

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Project 365 - Week 3


Okay... this weeks P365 is going to be a lil thin... I'll admit.. I can't exactly remember what all I did this past week. I try to write things down in my house manual, but sometimes I'm not exactly successful! I'm also not very good at remembering to take pictures every day. I don't lead a very exciting life.. as my friend Nathan reminded me today I'm "just a housewife." *eyeroll* And yes... I know I'm late again... I'm so very sorry!

15 January

Kimberly left today, but we all went to church at Discovery, which is our home church. That is our associate pastor with the awesome mohawk. There are approximately 15 boys at our church with mohawks now, and countless girls with bright pink, or green, or blue in their hair as well. Bug is disappointed that I won't let her color her hair. We went out to eat at The Kettle after church. We normally just go home and have something at home, but, we splurged a bit. It was nice. :-)

16 January

I started the seeds today for Ivy Hill. It made me think of Lindsay, and how I wished that I could show her the plans for our future farm. Our farms would have been completely different, but, a farmer is a farmer, right? I miss her. We also fixed Monks bed! A while back his friend Joey broke it, and we just hadn't managed to fix it. We either forgot about it, or we didn't have the money, but we got it done! He was SO happy! He said he felt like a king sleeping in that bed. It made me both happy and sad at the same time. I wish that I would have just fixed it a long time ago, but, it's done now. I'm sure in the next few years I'm going to have to get him a new bed anyways. He's going to want a more "grown up" bed, I'm sure of it. I know I always wanted a bigger bed when I was a teenager. Hopefully when Sam gets out of college (if he ever goes!!) we can buy/build a house that has big enough bedrooms that both the kids can have full sized beds instead of twins!

17 January

Today Bug and I went to get hair cuts. She got quite a bit cut off of hers! I was very sad. She wanted to look like Amanda Bynes, but, it didn't quite work out that way. It's okay... it still looks so cute! I also made spaghetti for dinner. Not only did I make sketti, I also made a loaf of french bread, cut it in half, made garlic bread topping, and then made it into garlic bread. My GOONDESS it was good!! So.. I thought I would share it with all of you. :-)

Garlic Bread Spread
2 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 cups flat leaf parsley leaves, lightly packed (I used about a Tablespoon of dried)
1/3 cup grated parmesan
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 400. In a food processor blend the garlic cloves until finely chopped, add the parsley, Parmesan, basil, and salt, and oil. Scrape sides if needed. Blend until smooth

2 Cut bread in half horizontally, spread mixture on both sides. Wrap each half loosely in aluminum foil

3 Bake bread until heated through (about 15 minutes). Unwrap top of bread and bake for another 3 minutes. Cut each half and serve warm.

18 January

Today I had my MRI for my knee. That's about it. LOL

19 January

Today I had a date with Nicole! We took her puppy to the kennel, went to Starbucks, we went out to look at her new house, and then we went back to her house to look at scrap books. LOL It was a very fun day! I love hanging out with Nicole. :-)

20 January

Happy Gotcha Day Dusty dog!! Two years ago today we brought Dusty into our home. She was SUPPOSED to be a foster, but, she was so sweet and wonderful that we couldn't get rid of her. We totally failed Fostering 101. Dusty usually sleeps with me, but Bug wanted some Mommy time and curled up in my bed. Dusty decided that she wanted to sleep in there too, so she just snuggled right up to Bug! It was so cute.

21 January

I'm not going to lie... I have NO idea what we did on Saturday. I THINK we might have gone to the PX and gotten a bunch of meds... but I could be mistaken. How sad is that? I can't remember an entire day!

As always, if you want to join in on the fun, you can go to Saras blog and join in! If you don't want to join in, you could just look at everyone elses week! Should be lots of fun! :-D 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Project 365 - Week 2


Yes yes I'm a little late. Sorry!! This week was not exciting at all. I only have a few pictures to show because we were completely broke, waiting on a paycheck, and I basically stayed home and cleaned and waited for our paycheck to come in. 

08 January


Buggy had a sleepover with a couple of her friends last night. I made a GIANT stack of pancakes for everyone. The one girl I swear had to live under a rock. She didn't know how to cut a pancake, didn't know how to make hot tea, and even said she had never HAD tea before! GAH! How do you get to be almost a teenager and not have had tea or know how to cut a pancake?! Flabbergasting! 
After breakfast and a bit of clean up, I sent the girls home so we could get ready for church. We LOVE our church. We're not a huge church, but, at the same time, we're not a super small church either. We had grown big enough to have the need for 2 services, so, I guess we're doing something right! :-)
We then went to Walmart and had to pick up a few things. The kids spotted a display of suckers and asked if they could have one. We decided that we would all get one. Four giant suckers for $2... not a bad deal in my book! 


09 January

I get the kids off to school, get my workout in, throw a load of jeans in the washer, do some dishes, then I clean the kids bathroom. This is when my week decided that it was going to take a DRASTIC turn towards crappy week. I've told the kids that because it's THEIR bathroom, they need to be responsible enough to clean it, but since I have company coming over on the weekend, I decide that I would go ahead and help them out and clean it. At least that way I KNEW that it would be clean at least once that week. This is where I'm glad it was me and not one of the kids. I spent the rest of the week stressing about the hot water that was trickling down the kids bathroom tub drain.

11 January

My Spiderplant is blooming!!!!!!!!!!
I got this little plant as 4 tiny little starts from my friend Meridith. She told me that her plant was dying, and that she knew I loved plants so she wanted to brighten my day with these little guys. That was about a year and a half ago, and now I've finally got my OWN starts! :-)

13 January

FINALLY PAYDAY!! The very first thing Sam and I did was go get the stuff to fix the shower. We talk to a very nice man at Lowes who tells us where we might be able to find the shut off valve for our house. (It wasn't there.. but it was close!) We buy a new faucet, some caulk, a new handle piece for the toilet, and some gorilla glue to fix the broken toilet lid. (Yes.. I know... very redneck-ish, but it worked!) We get home, I put one some old clothes so I can low crawl about 100 feet to find the water shut off, then low crawl back about 100 feet.

That crawl takes forever... trust me on this! Now, the only way to actually get to the back side of the shower to get the parts off of the shower... we had to take the wall panel off of Monks side of the wall!!!! It was a mess!! (hence the first picture...) We actually had to make THREE trips to Lowes that day. The first time to get the stuff, the 2nd time because we bought the wrong faucet, and the 3rd time because the PVC pipe was so brittle that when I tried to tighten the bolt on the new faucet it broke! Sam helped some... but I did the majority of the work myself. After all was said and done, I low crawled about 400 feet, changed clothes 3 times, and FINALLY got to take a long hot shower! (No long hot showers since Monday mind you, only short, luke warm ones at best.) I was going to make homemade pizza, but by the time everything was said and done, we ordered pizza and soda. My friend Kimberly showed up about 6:30 to stay the weekend.

14 January

My best friend is having a little girl in April. Her favorite color is red, and she is by FAR not the the girlyest girl I've met. She doesn't like pink, so getting her cute little baby clothes is sometimes tricky. She also doesn't like flowers or anything like that on her baby clothes. SO! We all had gone to the PX to do a little shopping and I found this ADORABLE baby outfit, but I knew she wouldn't like it because it was pink. I then started looking around and I found several I really liked, but then I found the one in the picture. I knew she would LOVE it... so I bought it. I also got an ACE bandage because my knee decided that it did NOT like something that I did to it, and it wanted to swell up and be a real pain in the knee!! We ended up renting some movies and staying home the rest of the day.  I had a really great time with Kimberly over the course of the weekend.

I know that there were no pictures for January 10 and 12... but literally all I did was housework. Boring picture.. ;-)

If you want to look at what other people are doing for their P365... check out Saras blog here!

Monday, January 9, 2012

The smack down!

Have you ever had one of those moments when you get smacked in the face with something and then realize that it's totally a God thing? 

Sam and I have been arguing quite a bit here lately. Mostly because I think that he should go out and get a job until he goes back to college (see previous post here) which is another very sore subject with me. Anybody that knows me knows that I'm a worrier. I worry about everything. Small things like: is my hair okay, does my butt look big, does my food taste good, but also bigger things like: are we going to have money for groceries, will we be able to maintain our household bills, how are we going to make these repairs to the house/cars/garden/etc. I also worry about other people: I hope Crystals' son is okay, I wonder when Nicole is going to know the final word on her house, my friends' friends' aunt is in the hospital. Sometimes its very taxing to worry so very much about things that I know I don't have any control over. I know I shouldn't worry so much, but I just can't help it! I've ALWAYS worried about everything! Well, okay, that's not entirely accurate. When I was in HS I worried about everything BUT homework! ;-)

Well, there for a while I hadn't been reading my Bible. (I know! I know!) Well, last night I got into bed, finished my conversation with my friend Kimberly, and decided that I would pick up The Good Book and read some. I had been reading thru Proverbs before I had stopped, and apparently I was meant to pick it back up at that point in time. When I opened my Bible to where I had stopped, Proverbs 17:1 stared back at me

Better a dry crust eaten in peace
than a house filled with feasting - and conflict.

Talk about floored! I stared at that verse for a while and milled it over. I then continued reading and another one smacked me right in the face. Proverbs 17:9

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven,
but dwelling on it separates close friends.

Again I milled it over for a while and continued. The final smack down of the evening was issued with Proverbs 17:14

Starting a quarrel is like opening a floodgate,
so stop before a dispute breaks out.

At this point I put down my Bible and chuckled. I said "Okay.... I got the message" just as Sam walked into the bedroom. He said "Got what message?" and I explained to him what I was reading. We talked about it for a bit, then went about our business for the evening. (Mostly because it was almost 10 and I was sleepy!!) These were things that I NEEDED to hear, and I'm sure glad I did!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Project 365 - Week 1


It's that time again folks!! Project 365... or should it be 366 since this year is a leap year?? Anywho!!

I'm not going to waste any time... just jump right on in! :-)

01 January

This is my lovely Mommy and myself. We watched football on Sunday. This was Moms last full day here. Her and my Step Dad got here on Christmas Eve, but Kevin wasn't able to stay as long as my momma. Monk turned 13 on the 31st, so momma wanted to be here to celebrate with him. We had a lego cake. Oh.... and Sam retired from the Marine Corps. WAHOO!!

02 January

The kids went back to school today. Mom and I hang around for a while until it was time to leave for her to catch her flight. I was sad most of the day, and was really sad after she left. :-( I miss my mommy! Sam and I indulged in our guilty pleasure and watched The Bachelor. All I can say is JENNA IS CRAZY!!!! 

03 January

Yes yes... I know Jillian isn't on The Biggest Loser any more... but I love her SO MUCH!! I usually throw a few choice words at her from my living room 6 days a week as I feel like I'm going to die. (Oh yea... I started working out again on the 1st!) I also watched Celebrity Wife Swap (another guilty pleasure...) but I spared you from pictures of Gary Buseys' teeth. You can thank me later. Another rather boring day today. 

04 January

A mostly boring day... except for soup!! I LOVE me some potato soup! I made bread bowls as well. I was going to throw in some bacon for a nice "loaded" baked potato, but when I got the package out I was greeted to ONE slice of bacon. I think SOMEONE *cough*Sam*cough* made some without me knowing.  It's okay tho. Bug didn't want bacon anyways. 

05 January 

I can't help it... I'm a GIANT fan of Grey's Anatomy. I'd never even watched the show before I met Sam, but he watched it and got me hooked so now I am utterly addicted! I mean... why wouldn't you want to be addicted to Derek Shepard, Mark Sloan, Alex Karev, Jackson Avery (drool!!!), and Owen Hunt?! Good question, eh? I know it's not like REAL doctors or anything.. but it's okay! I like the eye candy. :-D

06 January

This makes me a bit sad. I found out that they're taking EM:HE off the air. :-( :-( This is one of the "feel good" shows that we would watch as a family. There is only going to be one more, which is next Friday, and that's it other than a few specials sprinkled here and there. I have my issues with EM:HE, but, for the most part, it was a great show. I wish that I could somehow find a way to keep the good deeds of this show rolling. Maybe someday after I win the lotto.

07 January

This was Monkeys FAVORITE day this week. A few months ago, our Xbox petered out. It gave us a red ring of death and wouldn't work. Well, Sam and Monk decided that they would try and take it apart, clean it up, and see if it worked. They worked for a good 10 minutes getting the case off of it without breaking any of the parts needed to keep it held together. Finally after taking it apart, getting it to work, and then dropping it and having to take it apart again, they finally got it fixed. We basically just used it for a DVD player when it was in the living room, so we told Monk that since he helped fix it, that he could put it in his room once it was clear of the the junk. I don't think I've ever seen him clean his room that fast!! Bug had a couple of neighbor girls spend the night and I went to bed early. Sam got everyone into bed around 11 and then fell asleep in the couch. Oops! 

If you want to take part in the P365, just head over to Sara's blog here and link up!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

She wen and did it!

So, my older sister Kris finally joined the blogging world! If you want to check it out, she's here.
She told me it wasn't "fancy like mine," so I told her were to find free backgrounds. She's still playing around with it, but it looks pretty good!
Check her out, leave her some love, welcome her to the blogosphere! :-)

**Yeah... so I posted that via my phone and didn't realize that it was a screwed up link... Sorry about that!! It's fixed now and you should be able to visit no problem! :-D