Press Secretary

As someone who sees more presidential news conferences than most, I have to say that I really wish Obama had picked someone other than Robert Gibbs. He is perhaps the least charismatic person who could have been chosen and I get the distinct feeling that he is trying to put everybody to sleep when he is talking. It could be a strategy, come to think of it! If all of your listeners pass out from boredom, then you don't have to keep defending something that Joe Biden said :P

Anyways, consider this my plea to the democrats to find someone with a personality.... if I must listen to your agenda 6-7 times a day, at least give me something to look forward to.

Is it over yet?

I'm ready to have my (reasonably) happy baby back... can I have him back? The past 6 days have been.... ummmm, difficult. He wakes up and he's unhappy; He eats (barely) and he's unhappy; He's about to eat and he's unhappy; You're holding him and he's unhappy; You're not holding him and he's unhappy....it's exhausting. It takes it out of me and I feel horrible for him... I'm just ready for it to be over :P

It's official... Micah is a cruiser :)

A Good and Bad Weekend

Luckily the good far outweighed the bad :) On that note, let's start with the bad and get it out of the way :P

The Bad- Micah got 2 more teeth this weekend! While that is exciting, it meant that from Saturday night through.... well, now....he has been a total mess. He will just bust out crying randomly and we just feel awful for him. He is slightly more happy now than he was Sunday or yesterday, so I am optimistic that he is feeling better :P

The Good- We got to see Leslie on her birthday (Happy Birthday Les!), we got to eat at California Pizza Kitchen, we got to hang out with a whole bunch of friends that we haven't seen in a long time and play Rock Band and Quelf, and we got to have dinner with some new friends which was delicious and fun :) All in all it was a really great weekend!

Compulsive Planning

I love to plan..... seriously love it. As a reference point, I had (as of March) done two trial runs for Micah's birthday cake, designed the invites and made his birthday banner as well as buying pretty much everything I need for the party..... in July :P What can I say.... I'm just hoping this tendency comes across as adorable and not supremely annoying :)

All this to say that when I found out that my childhood best friend was getting married in California this summer over Labor Day, I got instantly excited about all of the things that would need to be planned. The buzz is wearing off however as I am almost done planning all of the big stuff (yes, in May :P). Within the week I will have the wedding hotel booked in Pasadena, and as of earlier this week, I had the post wedding hotel in Anaheim booked. (As an aside, I LOVE Priceline! I got the best level of hotel in Anaheim for $55 a night!! Thanks Ben!)

I have looked at every day that we will be there and have a rough outline of where every activity will go, including the Aquarium of the Pacific, the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park, the beach, an Angels game and Disneyland. I plan on printing out a calendar (broken up by hour) and cutting out pieces of paper for each activity just so I can easily move them and get it "perfect". We have narrowed down our car options to two car types at the same rental place and have our flight booked.

I have managed to stop short of planning all of our meals (yet) and am trying to think of what else I can research.... I live for this kind of thing :) Before it is all over, I may go as far as printing a Disneyland map and marking it up to make sure we make it to everything we want to see while we are there (it costs an arm and a leg so I'd hate to miss anything :P)

I am SO EXCITED! And not just the planning part, I am pumped to see C get married and to get to meet her husband (who must be a seriously great guy if he landed her!) Woo Hoo for Southern California!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

That's right folks, it's that time of year again. The time of year when little girl's dreams come true, when fairies take flight and when fans become glued to the TV.... So You Think You Can Dance premieres TONIGHT!!! 7 pm on Fox and I am so pumped that it's almost unbelievable. After the talent that the show attracted last year, I cannot even imagine the kind of talent that we will get to enjoy this year... I am so excited!!!

If you've never watched before... WATCH! It's just the auditions this week, but it is still well worth tuning in. Behold, a dance from the first week of the competition last year.... oh yes, they are THAT good!

Bring Me Your Poor, Your Sick, Your Target Coupons.....

Hello my blogtastic friends, consider this a plea for help in making my budget work :) To keep costs down, I use Target (Up & Up) formula, wipes, and diapers. They are SO MUCH cheaper and the only downside is that there are never coupons. Ah, NEVER say NEVER :) Target mailed out a book full of coupons this week including really good ones for formula, diapers and wipes!! This is my official plea to send them to me if you aren't going to use them!! They expire on June 22nd, so act fast! If you don't live in Houston, that's ok... I accept mail in donations :) If you need my address, let me know and I will email it to you.

I know this sounds semi-desperate, but living on a single income isn't overly easy and I am simply not sure when the next time (if ever) they will put out coupons is. If you can, send some my way.... thanks guys!!

Family Life

Last weekend, Nate and I attended the Family Life marriage conference in Sugar Land. I have to admit, I went into it not too terrible optimistic about the experience. My parents had a certificate for us to go for free and I mostly agreed to go to get my mom off my back (sorry Mom, it's true!). Well, I am SO GLAD I did!! It was a really great conference and Nate and I learned so much about taking our marriage from functional to amazing.

Anyhoo, I HIGHLY recommend going to one (they are all over the place) whenever you get a chance. They will be back in Houston next year around the same weekend, and as of now, Nate and I are planning on going...

http://www.familylife.com/site/c.dnJHKLNnFoG/b.3204559/k.F5BB/Attend_a_conference.htm

10 Months!

Micah is 10 months old today!! Wow, that is really freaky to say. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, and yet it's hard to remember life before him. He brings so much joy into our lives and we just have a really good time together :) At 10 months Micah is

~a very accomplished crawler
~a dancing fool
~a stair-climbing wunderkin
~a two-toothed wonder
~a pull up champion
~and a vocal dude

In an interesting side note, when Micah gets frustrated with us now, he calls us by our first names... "Naynaynay" and "Abby" It's crazy :P Oh, and in the picture above, you can finally see his teeth! We love you bubs!!!

Art Car Parade

I had to load them up in groups of two, but I got a few pictures of last week's Art Car Parade unto the blog! If you live in Houston and you've never been to the parade, you absolutely MUST find a way to go at some point in your life. It is just so supremely weird, it'll blow your mind :)

Micah and Evan size each other up~

The Gator mobile!

I have no idea how they made this one, but it's pretty magnificent up close~

Classic, tiny... lots of fun~

Ummmm, giant rooster~

The peacock feathers go up and down (as does the drag on the car :P)... it's pretty cool! Dad, I noticed this year that the feathers are on a hand crank... I thought you'd appreciate that :) ~

I loved this one..... It's pretty simple, but the more you look at it, the more detail you notice~

I've always wanted a drive-able pair of bunny slippers~

Thwarted

Well, the post I was going to do about the Art Car Parade will have to wait as the Blogger picture uploader is going berserk and won't let me add any :P If you've ever been to the parade, you know that pictures are a must. Anyhoo, as a fun tidbit... Micah started doing the white boy baby dance yesterday... so cute!

Tally

As of Saturday our totals were 2 teeth, 0 pictures :P So I leave you with this that I just think is cute :)

"Oh, when did he start doing that?"

Sooooooo.... Micah likes to try out new skills while someone else (other than Nate or I) is watching him. Because of this, we weren't entirely surprised when my sister-in-law Amy asked us how long he had been climbing stairs...... WHAT? Hmm, that's new :P We looked over and sure enough, he was on the 5th or 6th stair (under Amy's watchful eye, thank goodness) and he had gotten there without any assistance. Yikes. I was suddenly really glad that the previous owners of our house had little girls and left a gate installed at the bottom of our stairs that allows us to close them off.

Two days after his first stair climbing experience, Micah followed me up our entire staircase without Nate having to help or catch him at any point..... he's growing up!

Mother's Day

Soooo, I had about 5 different things from this weekend that I thought about blogging about today. I LOVE days like that! You mean I get to CHOOSE?!!! It's so much nicer than scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. All that to say, you'll be hearing about my weekend for the rest of this week :) This weekend, Ben and Amy came in town with the kids and we had so much fun hanging out! The guys did an AWESOME job with Mother's Day, surprising us with our favorite flowers, cards, and an effort free (i.e. they cooked) fajita lunch. Way to go boys!

After lunch, we decided to try to get some pictures of the gang. We started by attempting to get the three kids together and all facing the camera... it's much harder than it sounds, and this was the best we got :P


The boys are still small enough to comfortably share the same club chair (even without fighting!)

Insane attempt #2- get all three kids with Grandma. There are actually some cute ones in this series, but none where all 3 kids are smiling/paying attention :P

Amy with Evan and Laney~

Micah and me~

They have the same barber...

Sad, but cute

This is the result of a couple of factors... Micah is teething and was in pain last night. He didn't want to eat and kept grabbing for the spoon. Result- Food on his hands. He was also really tired and grumpy. Result- Vigorous eye rubbing. Put 'em together and what do you get? -->

Filters

Let's face it, blogs are not exactly the consequence free areas of expression that many like to tout them as. The things that you write about can cause you problems both personal and professional. This is why I have my filters :) What's that? You want to know what my filters are?!! Well, sure!

1) My "Sensitive Info" filter. The question- Do I want a complete stranger to have access to this information about me? If the answer is no, the filter comes into effect and stops me from writing my address or SS online... which believe me is SOOOOOO tempting :P

2) My "Overshare" Filter. The question- Would I want my dad to know this about me? Cause my dad reads my blog, and frankly anything that it would make me uncomfortable for him to read doesn't need to go out to the general public. This is why my labor blog basically said how long it was and what time he was born.... nobody wants to know much more than that :P

3) My "Hassle" Filter. The question- Is this post going to offend my audience or cause an outcry of any variety? Frankly, I don't want to deal with the backlash of writing something overly controversial.... offended people are perpetually unreasonable.

4) My "truth" Filter. The question- Are the facts that I'm conveying true? The reasons behind this are multi-faceted... I'm not keen on being a liar, I don't want to look stupid, and referencing number 3, I don't want to deal with the comments if I don't have my facts straight.

5) My "No-fly list" Filter. The question- Is this post going to put me on any government lists? Let's just say that my old boss got put on the no-fly list accidentally and even after the mistake was discovered, they told him that he'd be on 10 years before he could be removed. He goes through a lot of hassle to fly now and I don't want none of that :P

Micah has a tooth!!

Pictures to follow when~

a) it sticks out enough to be seen in a picture
&
b) I am somehow able to get a pic of him, mouth open, showing it off

It could be awhile :P

Reincarnation?

I've never believed in reincarnation.... in fact, it goes against pretty much everything I do believe in. Because of this, I was hesitant to believe what I was witnessing. Well, I've gotten over my disbelief and now I know it's true..... Micah is the reincarnation of my childhood cat, Cricket. Crazy? Maybe not. Here are the circumstances that helped me arrive at this conclusion~

~ Micah is inexplicably drawn to my shoes. He likes all shoes, but he is MUCH more interested in mine. Cricket used to go nuts waiting for me to take off my shoes and she would nap with her head inside or on top of my shoes... something about the way my feet smell :P

~ Yesterday, I was using the facilities and I saw a hand come shooting underneath the door trying to get in.... Cricket used to wait outside the door and push her paws under as far as they would go to try to get under the door somehow.


~ Now that Micah crawls, he likes to hang right around your feet so that if you aren't watching, it's VERY easy to step on him... also a Cricket specialty.

~ Cricket had what we called kitty mind control which she once used to get an entire roast to throw itself off of the counter and into her reach.... Micah has a similar power, even if he hasn't gotten up to the roast level yet.

~ Two words... excessive drool

Now, you don't have to believe me, but I think the evidence speaks for itself ;-)