Giveaway and cheap magazines

This'll be a pretty short post tonight...

One of my favorite blogs, Fantabulously Frugal, is hosting a pretty sweet giveaway right now. She's giving away three different gift sets with some awesome goodies. Like, REALLY good stuff. Check it out here.

You can enter every day until December 14! Even if you don't win the giveaway, this is a blog worth following. I've gotten a ton of good deals thanks to her :)

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On an unrelated note, Amazon has some good magazine subscriptions for $5 until tomorrow. I'm finally going to get that subscription to Real Simple I've been wanting for so long! I love Amazon so much!

Thankful...

This year for Thanksgiving we went down to Panama City to Lee's grandparents' house. For the past four years we've gone to Panama City and had lunch there on Thanksgiving, then turned around and gone to Eufaula and either eaten dinner there that night or lunch the next day. This year we decided we're going to start alternating where we go for Thanksgiving. So we spent Thanksgiving with Lee's family and we'll spend Christmas with mine, and next year we'll do the opposite. It was a little bit weird to not see my family on Thanksgiving, but Lee's family is awesome. I'm serious. I love his parents, brother and sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. I love being around them.

We went and saw The Blind Side again while we were down there, and it really made me think about how blessed we are just to have family that loves us. I have an awesome family, and I married in to an awesome family, and I've always known that, but I don't think I've ever taken enough time to just thank God for that. I'm going to make it my goal to take a little time every day to be sure I thank God for the family I have.

(Didn't mean to get off on a tangent there, but I needed to say that.)

On Friday I did a LITTLE bit of shopping with my sister-in-law. I'm not a die-hard Black Friday shopper...it kinda scares me...plus I've been a slacker this year and didn't really have a plan of what I wanted to get ANYBODY...so we went around 9:30. It was actually not very crowded when we got to the mall. I'm a little ashamed to say that most of the shopping I did was for myself. But I did get some really good deals :) I did buy Lee a Christmas present, but then I decided to go ahead and give it to him Friday night. (It was a game and I knew he wanted to play it, so I just couldn't help myself!) So that's pretty much why I wait until the last minute to buy gifts!

We came back to Alabama yesterday afternoon. We put up the Christmas tree last night and spent most of today putting up the rest of our decorations. I still need to get a couple more things after work tomorrow, so I'll put up pictures of all my decorations later this week :)

Our Babies

About a week and half before we got married Lee told me he wanted to go ahead and tell me what he was getting me for a wedding present. It was my last day at MailSouth and Lee was coming for our shower/goodbye party. He came into work and pulled up his email on my computer and showed me a picture of what he was getting me...
That's our baby girl Ellie. We got her at the end of May 2008. It took me about eight months to find a job after we moved to Memphis, and we didn't know very many people, so for those eight months while Lee was at work it was just me and Ellie. We love her so much! We worked really hard to get her to sleep in her crate at night. It took a lot of sleepless nights, but she finally got used to it. So what did we do? We decided that after all that, we enjoyed having her sleep in the bed with us!

Here's a picture of her as a ladybug for Halloween 2008:

And one of me and my baby at Christmas last year:
I finally got a job in January of '09, and we decided we'd hate for Ellie to be alone all day after having me at home every day, so we decided to get her a friend. About the same time Lee heard from the breeder we got Ellie from letting us know that they had a little boy if we were interested. (Lee had mentioned to her that we wanted to get a boy) So of course we jumped on that! Here's a family photo (ha!) of our new addition Bruce Wayne (I let Lee name him!)
Ellie didn't know what to think about BDub at first, and she hid from him most of the night:
I took this picture of him to show how small he was. That's a size 7 shoe he's chewing on (we really should've put a stop to that earlier):
After about a day, Ellie learned to love her brother and now they're the best of friends :) They're very protective and they *THINK* they're big dogs! They're really spoiled, and that's all our fault, but they're just so stinkin' cute it's hard to get mad at them! This picture is from the day we moved into our house in July.
They think any time there's a blanket or pillow on the floor it's for them! Ellie even sits on the decorative pillows on the couch!

We've finally gotten them sleeping in their crate at night. I'm not gonna lie though, if we go somewhere after work or are gone a good part of the night they usually sleep in the bed with us. We just hate for them to stay there all day and all night!

I don't sign their names on Christmas cards or anything like that (not that I judge the people who do, I understand, they're family too!) but these are definitely our babies. Ellie was with me through some pretty hard times in Memphis. And when I'm sick, she won't leave my side. It's so sweet. And Bruce Wayne is all boy! He's so playful and just has the best little personality. I never thought I'd be one of "those" people about my dogs, and I certainly never thought Lee would become one too, but they have just completely stolen our hearts!

on the mend...

I had my second doctor visit in as many weeks today. I finally got over the walking pneumonia stuff then Thursday I started feeling like I had a sinus infection. I was feeling a little better on Friday, and a lot better yesterday, so I thought it had probably run its course. But I woke up this morning with a really bad cough so I decided to go on in to the doctor, especially since Thanksgiving is coming up. I really didn't want to be sick for Thanksgiving! Lee felt like he had a sinus infection too, so he went with me.

We went in and they tested us for the flu and neither of us have that, thank goodness. Lee has a sinus infection and I think I did too, but the doctor said I had some kind of a virus. He gave Lee a z pack and he gave me some cough medicine, so it looks like we'll be okay by Thursday :) They gave both of us steroid shots too. Last time I went they gave me a steroid shot and it hurt, but at least the nurse TRIED to take it easy on me. This shot today HURT. This girl today didn't care! Lee got his first (he actually had to get two shots) and he told me later he didn't want to say anything because he didn't want to scare me, but it really hurt him too. We could barely walk out of the office it hurt so bad!! I hate shots.

I didn't get to put up the Christmas decorations this weekend since we've been kinda sick. Lee didn't want me to put them up until after Thanksgiving, but I was going to do it anyway...looks like he got his way :)

We DID go see The Blind Side last night. I know New Moon was the big release of this weekend, but I really think everybody should go see this movie. It was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. You will be a Michael Oher fan for life! (Plus, Sandra Bullock's character hates Tennessee as much as I do! Ha!)

I'm looking forward to short week at work and spending time with family this week we don't get to see nearly enough!!

Back to Reality

I'm finally starting to feel better. For some reason I assumed I would've felt better Thursday than I did Wednesday, but I was completely wrong. I felt awful. I woke up Friday morning feeling a little better so I went in to work until about 2. Then I came home and went back to sleep. When Lee got home we went to get some food and I thought I felt good enough to go to Costco...I did not. That completely wore me out! We came back home and tried to watch a movie but I didn't last very long. I think I fell asleep around 9...then I woke up at 4 Saturday morning WIDE awake. I guess I had finally gotten enough sleep! I MADE myself go back to sleep until about 8 though.

I felt a lot better when I got up yesterday morning, but I still spent most of the day just taking it easy. I did wash some clothes, but that was about it. I'm feeling almost 100% today. We got up and went to church this morning and then we spent most of the rest of the day cleaning the house. I am DETERMINED to not let it get that messy again! Lee spent most of the day working in the computer room and he got it all organized and hung pictures on the wall and everything! It only took us four months to get pictures up in there! Now maybe someday we'll hang some pictures in the dining room...

I'm planning on starting my Christmas decorating next weekend, so I'll post some pictures if I do!

Sad News

After Lee left for work this morning he called and told me I needed to turn on our sports talk radio station because three University of Tennessee football players had been arrested for armed robbery last night. I listened to that for a while then read a few articles about it. Apparently one of the guys was in the store at the time and may not have had anything to do with it.

I obviously don't know the whole story about what happened, and I don't know if any of us ever will, but I think this is such a sad situation. There are so many talented athletes that get free rides to college and a chance to make millions playing in the NFL (or whatever professional sport they play) and then throw it all away with something like this.

It really frustrates me, too, when people make comments about all the "thugs" playing at UT. I'm not a UT fan, never have been, and I certainly don't care for their coach, but come on, there are guys who do bad things everywhere. Yes, even at my beloved University of Alabama. (Jimmy Johns, anyone?) People make mistakes. I just hope these guys can take whatever type of punishment they may get and straighten out their lives.

Okay, enough about that. I've pretty much done nothing but sleep all day. I haven't even had a shower...gross, I know, but how could I with all the sleeping I've been doing? I just hope I can sleep tonight since I have to go back to work tomorrow! I've decided I really do not like this cough medicine they've got me taking. It's disguting. It takes everything I have to take it, and I have to take it three times a day! It makes me feel more sick than I did before I took it. But if it makes me better I'll keep taking it.

I guess that's all I have for today, seeing as how I've done nothing all day :)

Here we go!

So I've decided to start another blog. I'm kinda boring, so I might not have much to blog about, but at least with it being close to Thanksgiving and Christmas I can at least blog about the holidays! I really want to do this so I can keep a record of our lives.

I started feeling really sick on the way to work today so I called in and went to the doctor. They drew my blood, swabbed my throat and my nose. When the guy came in I felt like I needed to warn him that I was not good about getting my blood drawn. I've had a couple of pretty bad experiences with needles so I always panic a little bit when I see them. But this guy was awesome! It didn't hurt at all! I had to thank him for being so good at his job :) Then they swabbed my throat and nose...I've had my throat swabbed before and it was not pleasant, but having your nose swabbed was just awful. He made it really quick, that's just not a fun experience.

So THEN, after all that, the doctor came back in with a look on his face that let me know he didn't have good news. He let me know I had walking pneumonia. (I had heard of that before, but I didn't know anything about it so I looked it up on webmd when I got home--looks like it's basically just a mild case of pneumonia) Anyway, he gave me three different prescriptions to fill and told me they were giving me a steroid shot to make me feel better--guess that one hasn't kicked in yet--but seriously, I have to see ANOTHER needle today? One a day is plenty, thanks. But I acted like a grown-up and didn't cry or anything! Ha! Baby steps. That one hurt pretty bad, but the nurse was nice so I didn't want to tell her she hurt me :)

So I had to stay home from work today and again tomorrow. I'm sure resting all day will really help, but I just HATE missing work when I haven't planned to be out. But I had a fever when I got to the doctor so they probably didn't want me there anyway.

Here's some other stuff that's been going on with us lately:
Lee and I bought our first house back in July. We're loving it so far...the homeowner's association, not so much, but that's a different story. It's so nice to have a fenced in backyard so the dogs can run around! Now if I could just keep it clean!

My brother, sister-in-law and nieces moved to Mobile last week. I hate them being so far away, but it's a really good opportunity for them. They've already sold their house and Birmingham and have found a house down there, so everything's working out great for them.

My twin sister is having a baby!! I'm so excited! I can't wait to find out if it's a boy or a girl so I can start buying clothes!