80's party

Lee's best friend turned 30 last week, so last weekend we went to a birthday party for him. It was an 80's party!

I had fun dressing up for it. I got to wear a side ponytail, which is something I don't get to do very often! And I got to wear pink tights, so that was fun.

It was a little bit harder trying to decide what Lee was going to wear, so we found a Ferris Bueller t-shirt for him to wear.

 

It worked out pretty well because his friend dressed up as a version of Ferris :) I wish I had a good picture of him because it was pretty funny!

It was a fun party...now I just have to figure out when I can wear the pink tights again...

Think about such things

It's easy to get caught up sometimes in everything that's going wrong, but I have really have a lot of blessings in my life. I printed this out and I'm going to frame it as a reminder to focus on all the good things in my life.

It's me again!

Man, I'm a terrible blogger. I swear I'm gonna get better.

Since it's been about three months since my last blog, here's a little update on life:
I graduated! Now I'm on the job hunt...it's early in the process, so I'm still feeling pretty optimistic at this point.

Lee is taking FOUR classes this summer on top of his work so he can graduate in August instead of December. He'll finish his first class at the end of this month, he'll have a class on campus Monday-Thursday in June, another class Monday-Thursday in July, and an online class from June-July. The class he's taking right now isn't too bad, so hopefully the other classes won't be too bad either.

I'll be working at the pool again this summer, so that will give us a little extra money until I [hopefully] start teaching in the fall. That'll also mean that I have time to get pretty much everything done around the house to relieve some of Lee's stress when he gets home from class every night.

I got my wisdom teeth out Monday, and I look kinda like this guy:

My jaws are so swollen! Lee can't stop laughing at me...I do look pretty funny. I haven't been in too much pain though, mainly just uncomfortable. If I move around a lot I start to hurt a little, so I've pretty much just been resting all week.

I have lots of craft projects I want to try over the summer, and lots of books I want to read, so I'll probably be posting about all that soon.

Presidents Day Weekend

We've had a busy and fun Presidents Day weekend!

Friday night our cousin Lauren and her husband John came to town to stay with us and go see Wicked! I've wanted to see Wicked for years (we had tickets a few years ago when we lived in Memphis but we ended up moving that weekend instead) so I was extremely excited when I found out it was coming to Birmingham! It was so good!!

Saturday morning we got up and rode with Lauren and John down to the beach for Lee's (and Lauren's) grandfather's 80th birthday party. The party wasn't until Sunday so we just got to hang out with everybody Saturday night. It was a lot of fun :) 

Sunday we had the birthday party at a camp on the lake. Here's a picture I stole from my sister-in-law's facebook:

(I've decided that our next house is gonna have to be on the lake. Lauren and John live on the lake so Sunday morning I got up and enjoyed the view while I worked on a little bit of homework. The view made even homework more enjoyable.)

We got home around 8:30 last night, then today I went to Anniston to pick up our puppies from Lee's mom. She had had them since Wednesday so I was so happy to see them!

Ellie was quick to get back to her normal napping spot--in the closet under Lee's shirts!

I love spending time with our families :)

Little Update

Life has gotten kind of crazy again! I'm going to do a quick update today of everything that's been going on.

• School has been taking up most of my time lately. I'm still loving my cooperating teacher and 5th graders I'm with for my internship. I was nervous about 5th grade but I adore these kids, and my cooperating teacher is amazing. She's so helpful and fun to work with. I'm in my 10 consecutive days of full-time teaching right now, and it was overwhelming at first but I feel like I'm getting in the swing of it now. My last day in this class will be March 2, then I'll move to a 2nd grade class at the same school.

• I'm doing pretty well on the ten-pound challenge. I know I haven't updated like I said I would, but I'll update about it tomorrow :) 

• Last weekend we went to Lee's grandmother's house. She lives in the country so we decided to take the gun and shoot. Lee loves that thing!

me shooting

Lee coaching his mom

Lee shooting

That's pretty much all that's been going on with us lately. I haven't had time to read as much as I'd like :( I FINALLY got Mindy Kaling's book on epub from the library and didn't even have time to finish it before they took it away from me :(  Sad. I was liking it, just didn't have time to read for fun.

New Year's Weekend

2011 ended on a high note and 2012 isn't starting off too bad either!


Friday night we went to a Japanese steakhouse with a couple of our friends and then we went to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I haven't read the books and I had no idea what the movie was going to be about, but I LOVED it!  I'm not gonna lie, I was confused for about the first half of the movie, but I thought it ended up being really good :)  One of the friends we went with has read all the books and she suggested watching the first movie then reading the second two books, so I may do that.  

Saturday we just hung out for a while.  Lee brewed some beer and I did a little shopping.  That night we went over to some friends' house to watch the Auburn game and celebrate the new year.  I didn't want to take my big camera so these are some that one of my friends took:

Me and Lee, obviously

This one cracks me up...they are being so silly and I look like I'm trying to get away from them!  Look at my earrings, I must have been moving fast!

New Year's Day was one of the laziest days I've had in a long time, and it was AWESOME!  We slept really really late then just hung out on the couch watching movies and TV and reading all day.  We watched The Help because I got it for Christmas and Lee hadn't seen it yet [it was just as awesome this time as it was the previous two times I had seen it!] and Star Wars.  In my 27 years on this Earth, I had never seen Star Wars.  Shameful, I know.  But now I've seen it and...well, I didn't hate it.

I think the dogs enjoyed the lazy day, too!

It's been a great start to 2012!  I've got a really good feeling about this year!

I'm back...for real this time...

Well...

I keep saying I have a blog so I can have memories of everything that's going on in my life, but then everything that's going on keeps me so busy I don't make time to blog about it.

That's going to change.

Now.

I got a new camera for Christmas so hopefully that will encourage me to take more pictures. [Not surprisingly] I had been bad about that too. Now I just have to learn how to use it :)

Here's a picture taken with the new camera on Christmas Day:

Well hey there

It's been just about forever since I've blogged. The whole reason I started a blog was so I would be able to look back one day and remember everything that was going on in my life. The problem is, here lately there's been SO MUCH going on that I haven't had time to blog about it. But I'm going to get better. I'm gonna try to set aside a little bit of time every week to document what's been going on.

School is really tough this semester. Our teachers told us that this semester would be a little better than last semester, but that was inaccurate. It's been way more demanding. But I've only got a few weeks left, so I just have to power through. Then I'll be student teaching next semester :) Lee stays really busy with school too. He has class two nights a week until 10:00, so we haven't seen much of each other this semester. It'll all be worth it in the end, though.

We've had lots of birthdays and other family celebrations to keep us busy pretty much every weekend. Plus it's football season so my Saturdays are all pretty much accounted for. Roll Tide.

Due to the above [and being sick off and on all semester], I have hardly worked out AT ALL this semester. That's about to change. I may not work out for a long time, but I WILL work out at least four days a week. I have the Zumba DVDs and there's a 20-minute workout on there. I can do that.

Yeah...come on Carly...

via

In other news, I got an iphone the other day, and I'm already obsessed with instagram! Here are a couple of pictures I took of our babies:

Spoiled thang

He's pretty ferocious, huh? [He was yawning!]

Finished

I am finally finished with my summer class! I had a paper due at midnight tonight but I went ahead and finished it yesterday! It was so hard to get motivated, but we're having a family party at our house tomorrow so I need to spend all day today cleaning up. It's such a relief to be finished! The class wasn't that bad, and I really like the teacher, but it's nice to have a few weeks without that hanging over my head :)

So now my plans for the rest of the summer are to finally finish Harry Potter [I'm about halfway through the last book and I should finish this weekend] and read as many other books as I can before school starts back. I'm taking the Praxis in a few weeks so I'll study for that too, but that shouldn't be too bad.

I'm really going to try to take a lot of pictures at the party tomorrow night and post those next week!

on the mend

After being sick off and on for two weeks and going three days with no voice, I finally sucked it up and took myself to the doctor after school on Tuesday. They drew blood, swabbed for strep throat and flu, and took some x-rays...not fun! Then the doctor came back and told me I had walking pneumonia...again. I had walking pneumonia about a year and a half ago, and I'm just about tired of getting it! I felt a lot worse this time than the last time, though. So they gave me a steroid and an antibiotic shot, and four prescriptions to get filled.

I finished up one of my prescriptions today and I should finish another one tomorrow. I really don't like the way it's made me feel...I mean, I'm feeling better than I was, but I've just been kinda woozy and haven't had much of an appetite. I feel like it's affected my mood, too :(

I feel almost 100% better, I'm just still trying to get my energy back. I've gotten a lot of rest this weekend, but I still feel drained. I've only got four days of class this week, so hopefully I can get back to normal by next weekend!

I'm Pitiful

I've been sick for going on two weeks now. It started last Tuesday afternoon, and every time I've thought I was getting a little better I ended up getting worse. I can think of at least 3 nights in the past two weeks that I've gone to bed around 8:00. I got home from class Friday morning around 10:30 and got back in the bed and stayed there all day. I finally moved to the chair in the living room around 4:00. It's just really gotten a hold of me this time! Guess that's what I get for taking generic vitamins :(

I've felt a little better for the past couple of days, and I feel pretty much better today except I have NO voice. I sound pretty pitiful, but I feel a lot better. Yesterday we went to the store and got me some Mucinex. That's the stuff right there! I had never used it before but it has made a HUGE difference. We got that and some Hall's vitamin C drops. I've had so much orange juice lately I can't stand it anymore so hopefully the drops will help.

I think poor Lee has it worse than I do, though. He's not sick, but I've been pretty much out of commission, so he's done EVERYTHING around the house for the past week and a half. He's always helpful around the house, but he's done all the dishes and laundry, kept everything clean, taken care of me, AND done all his homework for school. I don't think he's had any time to just relax and enjoy himself, but he hasn't complained once. Gosh I love that man ♥

This is an old picture I found of us from May 2007...we had just gotten engaged about a month before :)

We're about to take advantage of the nice weather we've having today [and the fact that I'm feeling a little better right now!] and take the dogs for a walk, then it's back to do more homework!

Know What's Awesome?

My computer is connected to the internet right now through my phone. We're at a friend's house who doesn't have wireless internet, so Lee hooked it up so I could get on and watch my online lectures through the phone. Maybe it's not a big deal to any of yall, but I think it's pretty cool! Thanks for setting it up for me, Lee :)

Now I'm off to study...since that's the reason he set it up for me in the first place!

I hope everybody's having a good week so far!

Another weekend gone

I really think somebody does something to make time go by faster on the weekends...I just don't know where this one went! We had a good weekend, just kinda busy!

Friday after my class was over I went over to Sunny's to help do her hair. We had fun hanging out, and I love seeing my sweet little nephew :) And I think her hair looks good :) After that I went home with every intention of studying (yep, on a Friday night...you WISH you were as cool as me! haha!), but I ended up working on a birth announcement for Riley instead. I think it turned out pretty good. I'd like to start making them for people, but I need a lot more practice. I might post it on the blog if Sunny decides to send it out.

So yeah, no studying Friday night. Saturday the PLAN was to get up, study, clean up (like serious cleaning), and then we had a wedding to go to. So of all those things, only one actually got done, and that was going to the wedding. When we woke up we decided to take the dogs for a walk, and then by the time we got back from walking and got showered and all that it was almost lunchtime (yeah, we slept kinda late!). So we ate some lunch and then we went to Lowe's and Academy because we need a new weedeater and Lee wanted a grill from Academy. We bought neither. When we got home it was almost time to leave for the wedding! Then after the wedding some friends called and we went to see Get Him to the Greek. I thought it was pretty funny. THEN when we got home I finally studied some.

This morning we got up and went to church. We're trying to find a church around here to join, but it's hard because it seems like we're never here on the weekends. We want to find one with a lot of people our age because we really want to get involved in Sunday School, but we just haven't found one that feels right yet. When we got back from church we took a nap (I love Sunday afternoon naps!) and then I studied again. Well, I call it studying. I had to miss a class Friday to go to an orientation for my online class. My professor puts his lectures online so I was watching that and taking notes. I need to actually STUDY them tonight.

Tonight I made Ricotta Parmesan Chicken from The Fairhope Foodie. It was really good! If you have a Publix near you (or even if you don't), you should check out her website. She makes a weekly menu based on what's on sale at Publix that week. This is the first thing I've made from her website but I'll definitely be making more! Now we're just hanging out watching the NBA Finals...Lee's always been a big Celtics fan, so I'm a Celtics fan by marriage :)

Last Day at "The Coupon Place"

Tomorrow's my last day at work. I work at a shared mail company and one of my friends called it "the coupon place," and I thought that was pretty funny :) But my time there is almost up. I worked there from the time I graduated from Alabama until Lee and I got married. When we got married we moved to Memphis, so I obviously had to leave my job. The day I left they had a shower for me and Lee. It was May 5, so it was a "Cinco de Carly" shower. They had me a pinata filled with candy and money!
When we moved back to Alabama a year later, I was excited and blessed to get my job back (well, a really similar job anyway). I work for an amazing company. It's a company that really cares about its employees. I work with awesome people that I have the honor of calling my friends. And now I'm leaving again.

I know going back to school to be a teacher is what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing. I know it. The way everything is working out makes me more sure of that every day. But it's still sad to know that I won't be seeing all these people every day anymore. The good news is that I'm not moving away, and I know we'll still be in touch. We're already planning more lunches together and we're going to see Eclipse in July, but it won't be the same as seeing them every day. One of my best friends at work is pregnant and I'm sad that I won't get to see her every day and see how much she's growing, but I know that I'll be around to go visit that little boy when he gets here! I just have mixed emotions right now. It's good to finally know what God's plan is for me, but it's hard to leave my comfort zone. This job and this company is what I know. It's scary to leave all that to make such a big change. I'm just so thankful that I was given the opportunity to work at this company back in 2007 and again in 2009. I've got some great memories, and some great friends that I'll never forget ♥

'Cause I'm spontaneous like that...

All day at work Friday I thought about the beach. My brother and sister-in-law and nieces were going down there. My parents were going down there. I wanted to go down there. So at about 4:45 Friday afternoon I emailed Lee and told him I wanted to go to the beach. His response was "Huh?" I said "I've been thinking about the beach and I want to go this weekend."

I'm not a terribly spontaneous person [I feel like I used to be though], and Lee is less spontaneous than I am, so it was hard for him to just pick up Saturday morning and drive five hours to the beach. We didn't have any big plans, but we were going to clean up and little things like that, so after work I went to the gym then came home and cleaned and washed clothes all night [until I fell asleep on the couch around 10!] Then we got up early Saturday morning and left at 7 to head to the beach!

We got down there around noon and went to the pool to hang out with the family. We stayed around there for a few hours, then we went over to Lee's grandparents' house to see everybody for a little while...except Lauren...I want to see you next time, dangit! Then Saturday night we went out to dinner with my brother and sister-in-law. It was SO much fun spending time with them. I miss them so much.

Sunday morning we went to the beach so my sister-in-law could get some pictures of my nieces. I actually took my camera this time!

My adorable nieces

This might be one of my favorite pictures ever...she wanted to feel the waves splash her feet

Mama got splashed!

We left around lunchtime Sunday to get back in time to go to our LOST party...I haven't watched since about the middle of last season...I had just gotten all confused...but Lee was really mad with the ending. It was a quick trip, but I'd do again in a heartbeat. It was such a fun weekend. It's worth the five-hour drive to spend time with my awesome family and be at my favorite place on the planet. Plus, one day we'll have kids [good Lord willing], and it won't be quite so easy to just head down there for a couple of days!

Two Years

This was me and Lee two years ago today:

Yep, today is our second anniversary! I remember thinking that May 17, 2008 would NEVER get here, and now it's our two-year anniversary! Time really does fly.

In those two years, we've:
~Moved to Memphis
~Gotten our two babies, Ellie and Bruce Wayne
~Moved back to Alabama
~Went back to the jobs we had BEFORE we moved to Memphis
~Bought a house
~Watched LOTS of football
~Gone to Atlanta to watch our beloved Crimson Tide win the SEC Championship Game
~Watched on TV as the Tide won their first National Championship since 1992
~Welcome another niece (my brother's second little girl) and another nephew (Sunny's first baby, who was actually due on our anniversary!) into the family

I'm sure there are lots of other things that should be on the list, but I can't think of them at the moment.

Lee is still just as sweet to me as he was when we started dating :)

It's been a good two years, and I can't wait to see what our future brings!

Happy Anniversary, Lee! I love you!

I'm Back!

I'm really going to try to be better about updating my blog. We've just been so BUSY! (Which is one of the reasons I should update my blog more, so I can look back and remember what all we had going on!) My goal is to try to update at least twice a week.

The biggest thing that's been going on is that I'm going back to school! I'm going back to get my master's in elementary education. I know, it's a pretty terrible time to want to be a teacher with proration and all that, but this is really what I think I'm supposed to do. So for a couple of months all I did every night was study for the MAT. That test was SO HARD...but I passed! To get into school I had to place in the 50th percentile and I was in the 82nd! I was so happy I almost cried. I had only been nervous before one test in my entire life (Finance at Alabama...I had to pass the class to graduate. I had to get seven questions right--out of 50--to pass the class and I wasn't sure I did that...but I did...and I graduated with honors!), and the anxiety I had before that test was nothing compared to the anxiety I had before I took the MAT. I literally almost made myself sick.

It's going to take me a little over two years to finish up. I have to take some liberal arts classes that I didn't take my first time in school over the summer, and the classes are only offered during the day, so that means I have to quit my job at the end of this month. I turned in my notice Monday, and my last day is next Thursday. I'm excited about going back to school, but I honestly work with some of the best people you'll ever meet, so I'm sad about leaving everybody. I'm hoping I can find a part-time job soon.

In other news, Lee and I went to see Love and Theft, Lady Antebellum and Tim McGraw in concert Friday night. It was part of my anniversary present from him, which was really a sweet gift considering Lee really doesn't like country music at all!

We didn't get to see any of Love and Theft because we were already running a little late and it took us a good half-hour, 45 minutes to find a parking spot. (Note to the good people at the Verizon Wireless Music Center: Do something about the parking situation. Something is seriously wrong there.) We got in, paid $18 for two beers, and got to our seats right when Lady Antebellum started. They were amazing.

Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum...she's just gorgeous

Tim McGraw was awesome too. He just has so many good songs!
Both of these pictures are obviously of the big screen at the concert. We actually had pretty good seats, it was just hard to get a good picture of the stage.

So that's a (not so) little update on my life lately!

Weekend Recap

What an awesome weekend! As soon as I got home from work Friday we went to Lee's aunt's birthday part. It was really good to see all his family. His stepsister is pregnant, and I haven't seen her since they told everybody. She's already got a little bump! Here's a picture of some of us from the party:
This is is me and Lee and his brother and sister, sister's roommate, brother's girlfriend, stepdad, stepsister and her husband, and cousins. Sometimes I forget how short I am, and then I see one of these pictures :)

About an hour after we got home from the party, my brother, sister-in-law and nieces got here. We stayed up talking until about 1:00, then my niece woke me up at 6:00 Saturday morning. Any other time I might would have been irritated about getting up so early, but I love them so much, and don't get to see them as much since they've moved so I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible.

We had Sunny's baby shower Saturday afternoon. I don't have pictures, but this time it wasn't for lack of effort! I took my camera with every intention of taking lots of pictures, but I didn't think to check the battery Friday night and when I got it out at the shower it was dead :( But my mom had her camera so I took lots of pictures with it. She didn't have the cord with her to put them on the computer, so my dad has promised he'll send them to me either tonight or tomorrow. THEN I'll post them! She got lots of stuff for Baby Riley and we got to see some really good friends that we hadn't seen in a while :)

After the shower we went over to Sunny's house to have a cookout for my mom's birthday. My grandmother's birthday was last week too, so I got them a strawberry cake from Edgar's...the best cake ever! (Pictures of the cake are on my mom's camera too, so I'll post them as soon as I get them from Daddy) We got home at about 9:00 Saturday night and I fell asleep as soon as we got home and slept until 7:30 Sunday morning! I think I finally caught up on sleep!

NOW I'm just trying to make it through this week to get to another awesome weekend. A-Day, Alabama's big spring scrimmage is this weekend and one of my best friends from home is coming up for it. I'm going to be sure to charge the camera battery before Saturday!

This & That

I got behind on the blog again...I swear I'm gonna get better! I've been so busy lately, and a little bit (okay that's an understatement) stressed out. But the stress levels are going down and I'm starting to feel at peace with everything. I'll post about all that later, but for now I'll just do a little update on life :)

I came home one day last week to Lee in the kitchen floor with a bunch of towels. There was water all over the floor and we couldn't figure out what was leaking. I got some more towels and started trying to help dry off the floor and Lee opened the freezer door...water was dripping from the ice bucket. Whew, okay, the ice maker's broken, no big deal. Then I started thinking...wait a minute...I'm pretty sure the ice wouldn't melt just because the ice maker quit working. Yeah, definitely not. EVERYTHING we had in the freezer had thawed out. Boo! So then we looked at everything in the fridge. It wasn't working anymore either. Not cool. Literally. Thankfully we still have our home warranty so we didn't have to pay too much to get it fixed, but it still sucks to have to throw out ALL your food. That was last Wednesday. We had cooked a pork loin in the crock pot that day so we got a bag of ice and kept it in the cooler all night, then we both took some to work the next day to keep in the fridge there. We were going out of town for the weekend so we weren't too worried about that.

The guy came to look at it Friday and said he'd have to order a part. So we were without a refrigerator or freezer until Tuesday. Lee went to a fast-food place Monday morning and got a whole bunch of packs of jelly, so we've pretty much been living off that since then. (They're both fixed now, I just haven't been to the store yet!!)

This weekend we went to the beach with my parents for Easter. My dad has a friend who's a pastor down there that he had not seen in a long time, so we went to his church Sunday morning. He seemed so excited to see my dad! The weather was BEAUTIFUL down there. I love the beach so much. It was hard to come home.

I've spent most of my time after work this week trying to get all the weeds out of the yard. We were THAT house on the street. I was really embarrassed. I was afraid we'd get a letter from the HOA telling us we needed to do something about our yard! We finally got most of them up, but I noticed more already yesterday. Plus it rained pretty hard last night so I'm sure I'll spend more time this weekend pulling more.

We're gonna have a busy weekend this weekend, too. But I'm so excited about it! Tomorrow night we have a birthday party for Lee's aunt. Then my brother, sister-in-law and nieces are coming up to spend the night with us. There's a shower for Sunny on Saturday, and it's my mom's birthday. Then Saturday night my sister, brother-in-law and nephews are spending the night. One of my best friends in the world is coming up for Sunny's shower too, so I can't wait to see her! So that pretty much sums up my life over the last week! How have YOU been?