Memory Lane

Last weekend one of best friends from high school had a baby shower so I went home for it. Before we left on Sunday I got out my mom's big box of old pictures and started looking through them and found this one:
That's me and Sunny when we were probably about four, eating boiled peanuts. We both still LOVE them [which explains why I was so happy when Lee made them for my birthday!] and daddy had some waiting for us when we got home...and then went and bought more when we ate up what we had!

Life is [and always has been] good when we're eating boiled peanuts with our daddy :)

Ready for Fall

Where is the fall weather? I mean, school's back in and it's football season again, so where's the cooler weather??

I am usually a summer girl. I love the longer days, the beach, the pool and all the other stuff that goes along with it. USUALLY. It seems like the older I get, though, the more I love fall. Not hot anymore, but not cold yet [because I definitely HATE cold weather]. So I'm definitely looking forward to fall...even though we only get about two weeks of it here! [I'm exaggerating but fall really doesn't last very long]

We had some fall-ish weather over Labor Day weekend that really got me ready for it! Now it's back in the 90s every day :( So I've decided this weekend I'm going to put up my fall decorations to kinda try to trick myself into thinking it's cooling off!

We don't have a whole lot of fall decorations because I'd rather spend the money on Christmas decorations, but I try to get a couple of things every year. Yesterday I got some fall flowers to put in the living room to replace the orchids [haven't decided if I like them or not yet] and some hand towels for the kitchen. I can't even remember what all we have already.

This afternoon I found this and thought it was a really cute idea:
I'm not crafty at all, no matter how hard I try, but I think I could do this. AND it's pretty cost-effective! I think I'll take a shot at it this weekend. I'll report back on how it turns out :)

Birthday Weekend :)

My birthday was Thursday. My sister-in-law makes the best cookie cakes ever, and she made me that one. She's the best.

The kind people at ESPN gave me college football for my birthday! I had been not very patiently waiting for football season to come back since January 7, so the start of college football was just about the best present I could have gotten :)

The only thing that wasn't so great about football season starting on my birthday was the fact that I had class until 8:00 Thursday night, and the South Carolina/Southern Miss game started at 6:30. So I missed most of that game :(

BUT I have an awesome husband who made it up to me! I got home, and he had pizza and beer waiting for me, and these:
He went to the farmers market Monday and got the peanuts, and then Monday night I started talking about wanting boiled peanuts. He said he thought the farmers market was only open on the weekend, but that he would get some for me the next time we were in Tuscaloosa on the weekend for a game. I told him that was fine and well, but that meant I couldn't have them during the game Saturday (and then I pouted for a little while). I'm pretty sure his response was something like "That's too bad, I'm sorry." Then he changed the subject. When I got home Thursday night saw the crock pot out I still had no idea! I thought he had made me cheese dip. I was so excited when I saw that they were boiled peanuts! He had never made them before, but they turned out really good!

This was also waiting for me:
That's the shirt that he got for me to wear to go with my other present: tickets to the Texans/Titans game in December! I'm so excited! I've liked the Texans since they drafted Demeco Ryans in 2006, and now they have two other former Alabama players, so I for sure love them! And we're pretty close to Nashville, so I'd always kinda liked the Titans too. I can't wait for the game! (And yes, I realize that I got a short sleeve t-shirt to wear to a football game in December. We didn't really think that one through. Guess I'll just have to layer)

And Lee had flowers sent to me Friday afternoon.
I think they're pretty, even though they aren't what he ordered. He was hoping to surprise me with them Friday afternoon, but the florist called me Wednesday afternoon to set up a delivery for Friday. I've never had a florist do that before. I doubt he'll be ordering from them again. But to me, the thought he put into it was way more important than what they looked like.

Friday night we went to dinner at The Melting Pot. It was so good! We went there for my birthday last year and decided to go for my birthday again this year. Here's a picture of us after dinner:
When we got back from dinner my parents got into town and they stayed with us until today. Yesterday we watched football all day while we counted down to kickoff of Alabama football. My sister, brother-in-law and nephew came, and Lee's mom and stepdad came. We cooked out and ate a ton of food and just had a good time. We had a cake from Edgar's that was decorated for football.

SO, SO GOOD!

I had kinda been dreading my birthday this year, but thanks to my awesome husband and family (and nice facebook messages helped too!!), it turned out to be really good. Presents and stuff are nice, but to me there is really nothing better than spending my birthday kicking off football season with the people I love :)

Today is Beautiful

One day earlier this week I was walking back from class, and there was a guy behind me who just seemed so HAPPY. He spoke to everybody he passed, and then he said, "Today is a beautiful day. I'm gonna enjoy this day." Then he looked at me and said "How 'bout you?" So of course I said I would, because who would say no? But then I realized that I had not once that day taken time to think about how gorgeous of a day God had given us. The weather had FINALLY cooled off a little bit, the sun was shining, and it really was a beautiful day.

I want to be like that guy. I want to be thankful for all the blessings I do have in my life instead of harping on the little things that aren't going my way.

I got this email from my dad this morning that reminded me of how I felt that day. I don't usually send forwards, but I wanted to share this one, so here it is:

"A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way." I wrote: "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it."
Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story:

Be thankful for what you have.. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.
The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling…
And even more beautiful, is knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

If you appreciate this message, please share. You may touch someones heart today and forever. Enjoy your weekend with a heart of gratitude...

"Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out."

OWWW

I am HURTING today. Lee and I are on Day 3 of P90X, and I am some kinda sore! We started the P90X on Monday night, then we got up early yesterday morning and did Day 2, and we were SUPPOSED to get up before work and school this morning for Day 3, but when my alarm went off I could BARELY move. I'm not hurting as bad right now as I was last night though. Last night I didn't want to move. I parked myself on the couch and read a book and tried to move as little as possible. It was hard to not move, though, when you have two spoiled dogs who have to be on the couch with you all the time, but jump down any time they hear ANY noise, then want to be picked back up. (They CAN jump onto the couch, they just don't know it...that's probably for the best so I can at least kind of control when they're up there and when they're not)

So anyway, my arms, back, and now legs are killing me AND it's the first day back at school for the fall, so I'm walking around campus with a backpack (which obviously is not good when your back hurts...at least I don't have any books to carry around yet!). I told Lee that if we are going to deal with being this sore, we HAVE to finish this program, and not quit a month into it. I'm not exactly following the meal plan, but I do feel like if we stick with this we'll get some really good results.

To make myself just a little more pitiful, I had to go get a shot and a TB test today :( I don't do well with needles at all, so I was really dreading it, but ready to get it over with. This was my third attempt to get all this done...third time's a charm :) The first time I went to health center on campus the line was almost out the door, so I left, thinking I could just get it done at the walk-in clinic close to my house. So I went there yesterday to find out that they could do the TB test but not the other shot I needed. So this morning after my first class I went back to the health center. I tried to make an appointment for this morning so I hopefully wouldn't have to wait so long, but they said that because they had not treated me there before that I could only come in as a walk-in. That just didn't make any sense to me, but whatever. The line wasn't nearly as long today, and I was only in there for about half an hour. And it didn't hurt too bad. I've had the TB test before so I knew it wouldn't be bad, but I wasn't sure about the meningitis, so I was a little worried. I told the nurse about my issues with needles and she did a good job distracting me so I wouldn't get all nervous and forget to breathe or anything (yes, that has happened to me before!). And now I've got an awesome band-aid with the Tasmanian Devil on it where I got my shot :)

Funny Little Story

I had a job over the summer that I had to quit last week because it didn't work with my school schedule. It was a pretty well-known retail chain that sells soap and lotion and stuff like that. I enjoyed the job and the people that I got to work with, and it seems like a really good company, so I hate that I had to quit, but I just couldn't make it work.

But anyway, back to the story. My last night there was last week, and we had gotten some new Halloween themed hand sanitizers. A girl came in with what I'm assuming is her mother (it could be her aunt, friend, whatever, but for the purposes of my story we'll go with mother) and they were looking at the hand sanitizers. I had not seen the new Halloween ones yet so I was looking at them with them, and we were smelling them and showing each other the different ones. The mother saw one called "Vampire Blood" and showed it to me and her daughter. The daughter looked at me as serious as could be and said, "Is that really what vampire blood smells like?"

How do you respond to that?? I just stood there for a second trying to figure out what to say when the mother laughed and reminded her that vampires aren't real. I took that as my cue to walk away and let them shop around on my own (and so I could turn around and get a little laugh out of my system)

I'm glad I was able to get a funny little memory for my last night there!

Lee's consultant

Lee's working from home today and look who's helping him out:

She has no idea she's not a person!