Feelin’ Good

I’ve sat down at my computer the last couple of days with every intention of blogging about my days… and each day, I log into Facebook or start reading some blogs and I get sucked in and then I no longer feel like blogging about my day. But today… today I’ve continued to tell myself that I WILL sit down and blog. I WILL just write until my hearts content.

I could sit here and vent about the horribleness that my life is, but in all honesty, it hasn’t really been horrible this past week. It has actually been pretty good and I’ve been enjoying my classes (for the most part) and especially enjoying my clinic placement, and my future hubby and my adorable lovable son, and NOT the crappy weather!

Last Monday was the start of my first full week back to school and the start of my off campus clinic placement. I have to say, the week flies by when you are out of the house by 7:30am and not back in it until after 5pm each day! Definitely flies! I enjoy being busy again and having something to do (I was feeling like a caged animal towards the end of winter break- what with the cold winter weather and all and not having a whole lot to do).

The one major downside that I have noticed though (besides getting myself and a sleepy six and a half year old up by 6:15am each morning) is the fact that I don’t get to see my little love bug but for a few hours at the end of the day before he goes to bed. And at least one of those hours involves some sort of cooking/eating supper. It has been a while since I’ve had a schedule that has kept me away until almost supper time each night and that equals sad faces. I know that it will be like this once I start my actual job as well and it will just take some time to get used it. It also means that both Ayden and I will cherish the time that we do get to spend together each night more. I know that many many families live like this, but I can totally see the one of the plusses to being a stay at home parent because you get to be with your child more than anyone else. Feeling a little guilty that my kiddo spends the majority of his away hours each day at the before school program and school, but alas I know it is best for us right now and that I couldn’t pull off being a stay at home mom or homeschooler like the ones who are truly called to do it.

In any case, like I said, Ayden and I will cherish the time we get to spend together anymore. I know I did when my mom wouldn’t get home until after 5pm each day when we were growing up… sitting in the kitchen with her talking while she cooked supper (fighting over her time with my brother and sister)… heck, still do it to this day when we go home to visit.

Tuesday was my first day at my off campus placement and I have to say that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT and my supervisor! She is the greatest and if I thought I wanted to be an audiologist before this, I know even more so now that I am going to LOVE my job! I’ve only had two days of the ‘real world’ experience of being an audiologist and it is great. My supervisor is SO nice and explains things great and lets me get right in there and be hands on. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE MY PLACEMENT! For the most part on Tuesday I just sat back and observed, but on Thursday I got right in there cleaning off hearing aids, doing hearing tests, and even an ear mold impression. It felt SO good to get back behind an audiometer again and test someone’s hearing. I hadn’t done that in almost two months because we didn’t have a lot of hearing evaluations towards the end of my last semester and when we did have one, I let my first year mentee do the testing to get practice. I think this is going to be a great semester and I can’t wait to go back each Tuesday and Thursday.

What’s better is that the day FLIES by with appointments AND I don’t have to stick there afterwards doing hours upon hours of reports like I did on campus… or have weekly meetings or any of that jazz, it’s great! Speaking of weekly meetings, apparently the first year students are having a weekly meeting each week as a whole, in addition to the one they have separately with their individual supervisors. We had this kind of weekly meeting our first semester of graduate school, but haven’t had to have it since. Katie and I scored big on that one!

Wednesday was another long day at school. We’ve only had two Wednesdays so far and I already hate them, haha! Only like 14 more to go I think. The afternoons are just TOO long and one of our professors doesn’t know when the class ends and tends to talk over and really that is just annoying when you have four and a half hours of class in a row with only two ten minute breaks… and then they talk over and it ends up being only one ten minute break. SUCKY!

I do have to say though, that so far I am loving my Pediatrics class (the professor is pretty awesome and her first quiz was super easy) and I think that my class with the good ole’ Dr. Henry (Pathologies) is going to be pretty interesting too. Dreading his tests, but so far liking the material that we are covering. I don’t particularly care for my Geriatrics class yet, but we’ve only had one, and the Practice Management course sucks sitting through, but I think writing the business plan is going to be fun and interesting to say the least. I am currently working on a cover letter and resume for that class.

I have Friday off from class and I only work in the mornings for a little while. This past Friday I made Jay get up with Ayden and take him to school so I could sleep in. It was only fair because Jay gets to sleep in every day now, unless it snows out. He obliged and I slept until about 9:30 when I decided that I should probably get up and go to work for a little while.

Friday night we went out with my friend Kristi and her family to the Texas Roadhouse in Wausau which is about a half hour drive from our house. Fun plan, but the weather was crappy which meant that the roads were crappy too! Crappier than I would have liked, but we made it and the restaurant was PACKED! Food was good and Ayden and the other two kids ate well. And the hubbies (well future hubby for me) seemed to bond.

Kristi and her family came over again on Sunday night for some pizza and Wii play. The kids had a great time playing together, which they should, I mean Kristi and I are SO playing the match maker mommy role, hehe! It was nice to get to hang out with another family for a little while since it doesn’t happen very often… that and that Ayden got to play with some other kiddos.

We also had Ayden’s first pine wood derby on Saturday for Cub Scouts. He came in first for the first race that he was in against two other cars. Super awesome… and then it was all down hill from there. He placed second in the next two races and that was enough to push him through to the second round. Unfortunately, he was third in all three races in the second round and placed 18th out of 36th. Not too bad for his first year and given the fact that Jay made his entire car. Way to go dad, thinking you have a pretty stellar car for your son and it doesn’t even come close to first place, haha! But Ayden was okay with that and wasn’t really that upset. It was neat for the first half hour, but after that point, it just got long and was unorganized and I got antsy. I don’t like sitting around someplace that I don’t really want to be.

I was naughty and didn’t take any pictures this weekend when I should have, but oh well. Actually, I should start pulling out my camera a little more because it has kind of gone into hibernation since Christmas. We just haven’t done a ton of cool things that I’ve felt the need to get the camera out to document.

Class is DRAGGING on today… another 40 minutes to go! UGH!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Family Ornament Exchange

This past weekend we had the annual ornament exchange on Jay’s mom’s side of the family. It was decided that we would have the gathering at a hotel in Appleton for those coming out of town and so that no one would get saddled with having to everyone come to their place. Even though Jay’s parents don’t really live far enough away from the hotel to justify staying at the hotel, we did anyways. It was a lot of fun though because the hotel had a great pool and hot tub area and a nice place for everyone to sit and visit (that and Jay’s mom wouldn’t let us help pay for the room, although I think that evens out with the fact that I slept like crap because we had to share the room with everyone and I wasn’t in my own bed).

Ayden had a blast with the pool and it was actually pretty awesome. He literally spent ALL day in the pool! He was a wrinkled prune by the time that he went to bed and because he was SO tired, he even ASKED to go to bed! He NEVER asks to go to bed, hehe! I know that he had a great time playing with his cousins, especially since he doesn’t get to see them all that often.

Sadly, I didn’t take a single picture. Even though I love my camera and at times can’t put it down, I have a problem with not getting it out at family functions and taking any pictures. I need to work on that, might be nice to have some pictures of Ayden AND other people.

I also got some baby time in! Little itty bitty two month old baby! He was SO cute and tiny… baby fever setting in again, need to calm that down, haha! The only sucky thing is that the next time I see that cousin probably won’t be until May or June… boo!

I had an impromptu photo shoot with Ayden the other day. I needed something to edit and I hadn’t put him in front of the camera in this type of set up since before his birthday, so I thought that maybe it would be time again. Ha, like I really NEED any more pictures of him! I edited them all in a black and white vintage look because I thought they all looked pretty neat that way.

Here are some of the cute ones that I liked!Unfortunately, my six and a half year old son is starting to pick up the ‘fake’ smile that my brother and grandpa are famous for. I had to ask him to smile for real over and over… can’t have that ‘fake’ smile in any of my pictures, hehe!I love his little gap tooth smile more and more everyday! Now if he would just stop growing…This is one of my favorite of the bunch. I can’t believe that I haven’t ‘shot’ from above before. I’m so used to getting down to his level and taking pictures from straight on, but I really liked how this one turned out, especially since he is smiling normally!I really like the picture below this as well because its another good smile, but the one below that has become my absolute FAVORITE!!!THIS picture is my favorite right now! He really isn’t crabby in the picture. I just told him to give me a crabby face. If I had to pick something that I don’t like about it… it’s the fact that he looks so much older than six and a half and we cannot have that. I already talk about how he is growing too fast for me. Some days I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that he is six years old ALREADY!I really like this last picture as well. I think it shows his innocence more and that he really is still just a young kid.

I sent him to school this morning not feeling good. Only a part of me feels bad for that though because I woke him up, he watched TV, had his chocolate milk, at breakfast, got his hat and mittens on, and then tells me he doesn’t feel good as we are headed out of the door for school. Umm… why didn’t you tell me that before we were walking to the car. And to top it off, he looked pretty pathetic when I left him at his before school care program.

I told him that he should try and make it through Great Escape and then if he still didn’t feel good when school started that he could tell his teacher and she would call me or Jay. I figured, someone would notice if he really wasn’t himself and would call us if he didn’t tell anyone and as far as I know, he made it through the day… I know for sure that he made it to at least 1:30pm because school hadn’t called by then, which makes me believe that he made it through the entire day because he only had an hour and a half to go after that. It was probably just because he ate his breakfast fast.

And because I’m still in class right now… I think I’ll just post this and try and pay attention for the last 20 minutes!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

And so it begins... yet again!

I had a post all started and half written, but it's on my computer and I left that at home and I am currently at Jay's parent's house for the weekend with nothing to do at least one textbook sitting on the guest bed waiting for me to pick it up and study for an upcoming quiz. But, per the usual, nothing school wise will get done during this weekend. (Well, maybe since we are staying here for the Packer game, I might be able to get some studying done then, because we all know that I won't be watching it.)

I had a full day of classes on Wednesday and I think that this semester is going to be a LONG one! We have two classes with the third year students and I already hate it, and we've only had one class so far! First off, the class is called Practice Management and the teacher is a crock! I'm sure he's a great man and maybe even a great professor, but first off, I can't stand his teaching method or the fact that he already thinks that us Stevens Point students are slackers when in fact we are not. Just because we are on the other side of the screen and look like we are half asleep, doesn't mean we actually are! Look at the class full of students in front of you, I don't think their expressions are any different, they are just bigger and clearer so you can tell that they are not asleep, but I can assure you, they are JUST AS BORED!

We have to write a business plan for that class and I am actually looking forward to that. See, I've worked in the small business development center on campus for the last five years and I see business plans written by clients each and every day. In fact, my boss helps these clients write them! And when I told her that I was going to have to write a business plan she oh so graciously offered her help to me too! So, not only do I already have a working knowledge of the types of things that need to be in a business plan and the formats they are usually in, but I have someone who helps people with business plans on a daily basis in my corner pocket. I knew working there for the last five years would pay off with something (besides a weekly paycheck and awesome co-workers)!

The other three classes that I had on Wednesday were actually pretty interesting and I think that I am going to enjoy them (even if one of them is with the dreaded Dr. Henry).

I have one more class that we haven't had yet this coming Monday and it is the second class that we have with the third year students. It wouldn't be so bad, but some of the third years think it is their duty to talk throughout class and interject with their opinions with whatever they feel necessary. I have to admit that at times they say some pretty funny stuff, but the other half of the time, I am actually trying to pay attention and can't even hear what the professor is saying. And talk about complaining! They do WAY too much of that. Can't wait for the semester to be over with already! But when I really think about it, I think that it will be a good semester (keeping my fingers crossed anyways)!

Jay and I took a drive to Rapids yesterday to find where my off campus placement will be. We found that it will take me just under a half hour to drive there. The way there is pretty simple and I'm hoping for good weather on most of the days that I will have to drive there. I am actually looking forward to it, but I think I might have already said that, at least once or twice or three times.

A month or so ago, my friend and I rekindled our friendship that had gone to the wayside for quite a few months before that, but we never really rekindled it the way that it was, or at least that is how I feel. We have been best friends since junior high and of course have had our disagreements and arguments, but haven't ever lost contact for as long as we had this last time. And it wasn't so much that we lost contact, but that we just stopped talking. I hold my feelings in and of course never confronted her about it and just let it go. I pushed it out of my head and said forget her, even though it still hurt me to think that we might never speak again.

Well, we did start talking again, but I don't think our friendship will ever be the same. I'm sad to say that I no longer call her my best friend. We talk occasionally, well... we text occasionally, but never talk about anything the way we used to. I think we are on different wavelengths in life now. She is no longer someone that I feel I can call on a whim when I really need someone to talk to. I hate even typing that, but its true. So much of what we talk about just scratches the surface of our lives, but I just don't care to even try and let her in anymore. It sucks, but I think our friendship is beyond repair at this point. Maybe we've completed what we were supposed to as friends and it is time to move on. I don't know... or maybe not and I'm just being the selfish bitch who can't move past what once was and create something new?!

In other news... I shoved asked Ayden nicely if I could take some new pictures of him today and he obliged caved when I said that his cooperation would affect whether or not we would get dessert at HuHot tonight. I got quite a few cute pictures of him. I really just wanted some new material to play with on my computer and because the weather is SO cold here, I just couldn't go outside to take some pictures because I'd probably literally freeze my fingers off. I got one shot in particular that has become one of my absolute favorite pictures of Ayden and because I liked it so much, it was the only one that I edited of the bunch so far. And... because I didn't bring my computer home with me, I can't even post it on here right now. I do promise to post it in an upcoming post, with probably a few other ones that I will have edited by then. The only thing that I don't like about the picture is how old Ayden looks. My oh my, he NEEDS to stop growing, like YESTERDAY!

Okay, its 10pm now and Ayden is STILL up and playing Wii with Jay and Uncle Steven... I think it is time mommy intervenes because there is a certain point that a child can stay up to where he will no longer sleep in anymore. I'm sure other mommys would agree. You know, doesn't matter if you let your child stay up until 10pm or midnight, they will still ONLY sleep in until 8am! And me, I'm about ready for bed too!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Finished, new project, and shaving cream art!

We now have two new pieces of art hanging in our house (and two old photo displays waiting for new pictures and a new house to hang them in, since I ended up having to take them down to make room for the new ones) and I really like how they turned out!

I hung the first one that I made in our Jay’s and my room since he wouldn’t let me take down one of the hunting paintings that we have hanging in the living room (maybe at our next place?). Oh well, at least it was able to get hung somewhere!Here is the second piece that I created so far. I only did the four the in the middle. The two on the outside (the car and airplane) were given to Ayden at one of his first birthdays by an auntie. I thought they worked well with the colors, except I didn’t realize it until after I hung them that they are different sizes. Oh well, still looks cool I think! I think I like the first one better than this one, but this one is still cool too. I love the bright colors on them!Here is some shaving cream art that Ayden and I created the other day. I was looking around for some easy at home things we could do together and this was SUPER easy and fun!Interested in making your own with your kiddos?! Here is how it works (if you haven’t already had this fun)…

What you need is shaving cream (foam or gel, but if you have gel, you just have to mix it with your fingers to get it to be foamy), a small flat container (the top of a pail of ice cream, a cake pan, cake pan cover, something of the sort), paper (we used white card stock because it was a little thicker), ruler (plastic one will probably work best, but I’m thinking a wooden one would work as well), food coloring, and something to mix the food coloring with.

Fill the container with a small layer of shaving cream. Add a few drops of food coloring (less is more), mix food coloring around with toothpick or fork, or whatever you’re using, lightly press down paper onto shaving cream, pull up paper, lay flat on table (shaving cream side up), and use ruler to scrap off excessing shaving cream, enjoy your creations!

Ayden and I had lots of fun mixing the food coloring around and trying different things, like the amount of pressure we put on the paper when we were pushing in down into the shaving cream and how we used the ruler to scrap off the excess shaving cream. And best of all, if you use good smelling shaving cream, your hands smell really good afterwards when you are cleaning up! In our case, I was out of the stuff I have and we had to use Jay’s, which meant that my hands smelt like a guy, haha!

I have one more canvas project that I am working on, hoping to get it finished before the semester really gets started, but watching paint dry SUCKS!

Jay has been a cookaholic these last few days! First he made a cake, then banana bread, and now potato soup… all without me having to ask him to make any of that! The banana bread was by far the best (even if it was out of a box and all Jay had to do was add some butter and bananas and maybe some milk)! I don’t care for potato soup. It’s too bland for me and not creamy enough. It needs more flavor, probably some cheese, and a few more veggies to be really good! His grandma makes something very similar (green bean soup) and apparently the whole family really likes it, but I don’t really care for it. Once again, too bland. Now her cakes, give me one of those ANYTIME!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

DIY Canvas Art

Our local arts and crafts store (Michaels) is currently having a sale on just about EVERYTHING! I literally could have bought just about everything in that store! I can be artsy fartsy when I want to and not just an amateur photographer. Okay, I like to be artsy fartsy every now and then.

Michaels had two packs of canvas on sale and being inspired by a classmate who had created her own canvas wall art, I wanted to try it myself (and because I was watching some old episodes of Trading Spaces the other day and they were doing some wall art as well). A two pack of large canvases was $15 and a two pack of medium canvases was $10 and because it was buy one, get one, I got two sets of each size! I just couldn’t pass up the deal. You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure!

Not that we have any space on our walls to hang any new wall art… but I figured, that we will be moving sooner or later and will have make room at our new place. Or maybe will just make room at our current place too!

Here is a picture of the almost finished project I started today. I am totally loving how it is coming out, especially since I am definitely no artist and I free handed the tree (off of a different picture I saw). After looking at the picture on here, I see even more areas that I want to ‘fix' tomorrow besides the ones that I already knew I was going to. But I think that it is going to turn out really cool when I am finally finished!I already have an idea for the other two big ones that I have and I think I might have an idea for the four smaller ones, but not completely sure about those ones yet.

Guess what came in the mail today?! My book of photography and wowsers… it is AMAZEBALLS! I absolutely LOVE it and know that it was worth every penny I paid (almost $90) for the 80 pages! It turned out fantastic and is book store quality, although I wouldn’t pay $90 to actually buy it in the store. Definitely won’t be getting another one printed anytime soon, but the quality really blew me away.

Here are few pictures of the book, although they don’t really do it justice because it is SO much better in person. The size of the book is 12x12 (probably what increased the prize as well).I even added a dedication page to my favorite boys!I put so many of my favorite pictures in it from the year 2010. Maybe I will make it a yearly thing, where I make a book of all of my favorite photos from the previous year?! Who knows?!

I went to campus today and printed a TON of stuff! Like literally almost a full ream full of paper I already printed for my classes and they haven’t even started yet. A few of my professors had uploaded some documents for the semester already and I wanted to get a head start on printing stuff. The majority of the things I printed were long articles that we will have to read throughout the semester.

But that is about all I want to do when it comes to school already. Don’t want to get too far ahead of myself before the semester even starts, now do I?!

I heard from my off campus supervisor earlier this week and now I am SO excited to start my placement. I’ve heard really good things about her and from her email she seems very friendly and said that she doesn’t want me to fear the placement at all and that she is there to teach me things and not make me feel like I don’t know anything. The placement days will last from about 8:30am-5pm, which means I’ll have to leave by about 7:45am to drop Ayden off at school and head to Rapids which is about a half hour drive and I will get home most likely around 5:30pm on those days. Not too bad.

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Moving again, at least two more times…

No, we are not moving again, at least right now. We are ‘stuck’ in our current place until at least the end of May 2012. That sounds like a LONG time, but I know that it will fly by and I really do like our current house (although there are things I would definitely change).

Plusses include: it’s a duplex, we canNOT hear our neighbors, private backyard, clothes line, basement play area, two bathrooms, separate office, semi big garage, only semi busy road, close to Ayden’s school.

Minuses include: small bedrooms, small closets, small living room and kitchen, NO natural lighting (at least not enough), small bathrooms, BASEMENT play room (it’s too cold for me!), can’t paint walls, can’t have more pets, basement needs new carpet, just overall outdated.

Alas, a lot of the things I would like different kind of cancel out with a lot of the things that I like. I liked the layout of our old place better, but it was in an apartment complex where we could hear our neighbors ALL of the time! I’d rather not hear our neighbors and have the layout we have now.

With all of that being said, we’ll most likely have to move at least one more time before buying a house which sucks. And that means, at least two more moves, probably in the next five years. At this point, I HATE moving! I like change, but the work required, hehe, not for me!

Because my externship will most likely not be in this area, Jay and I will have to find someplace to move for that, and then find a more permanent job after that and then buy a house. Oh joyous world! I would love to find an externship that would allow us to continue to live in this area after my third year. That would mean Ayden would get to stay in his current school (or at least the current school district) and we could potentially be house hunting by this time next year. Of course, we could only do that if Jay had a more stable job and was bringing in more money. We are pretty much paying for everything ourselves now (with regards to utilities and such) with the exception of property taxes. It’d be a nice thought, but I have a feeling that I am getting a little ahead of myself.

I have dreams of what our own place could look like, dreams that I know probably won’t come true for another ten years or so. I figure at that time I’ll only be 34 and that isn’t too old to have my dream house and family, right?! My time will come, it’s just a matter of having the patience until that time arises. Sound like any other areas of my life (needing patience for graduating, getting married, and having more kids). I can see all of the possibilities that are just out of my reach. I’ll just keep reaching and watching my finger tips get closer and closer until I can grab hold and take off! Just watch, my time will be here before I know it!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Phone the hills… the jewelry is in!

We got our sled on this weekend, well more like tube on! I can’t believe that we have been living in town for the last five and a half years and have not once been to the sledding hills in town! To be honest, I’ve only known about them for the last two or three years, but even still. They are amazeballs! It was probably best that we hadn’t gone until this year because Ayden is big enough to walk up the stairs by himself more than just one time.

We only were at the hill for about an hour and then Ayden wanted to leave because he was hungry. It was my fault, we didn’t hit up the hill until noonish and we should probably have eaten before we went, but I wanted to go before a lot of other people got there and it was too crowded. There wasn’t a ton of people there when we went so that made it better (and easier to get some pictures)! Ayden went down the hills quite a bit by himself, but he had trouble carrying the tube up by himself so he found out that if he went down with mommy or daddy, they would carry the tube up for him. Little sneak! It was lots of fun, but we found out that we didn’t go as far in our tube as we would have if we had an actual plastic sled. Who would have thought?! I’m sure we will be back there before the end of the winter season! Ayden and I even got Jay to go down the hill with Ayden a few times. At first he said that he didn’t want to because he wasn’t wearing any snow pants and he didn’t want to get his legs wet, but I secretly think he enjoyed going down with Ayden. Plus, they went farther when Jay went with him!I took another self portrait, but you can’t really tell that I got my hair cut with this picture. I just like how it turned out, so I thought I would post it. I’m fairly picky about what pictures I do and don’t like of myself and this was one of probably twenty that I took trying to get one that I liked.Jay and I got our new phones last week and they started working this weekend! Yeah! We originally had the phone on the left, and we were upgraded for free to the phone on the right without having to extend our contracts. Turns out that a new phone company has taken over for our current one and they were implementing the 3G network when they switched over and our old phones were not going to be compatible with it and so they were upgrading everyone who had old phones to phones that would work. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to pick the new phones and were just upgraded to the new lowest model that would work. I think the new ones are pretty sleek looking, but not something I would pick for myself if I were upgrading. The best part is that we can upgrade again in August (although at that point we’ll probably have to sign another two year contract). The only thing I need to do now is upload my ring tones that I had been using on my old phone to the new one. 

I was feeling kind of crafty today and decided that I wanted to redo my necklace holder. I mean the one I had was doing its job and it was neat because Ayden and I made it together, but I needed one with more holders. I had been looking around at stores for something that I wanted, but I couldn’t find something that would fit my needs. So I took matters into my own hand went from this…… to this! And all for only $3 (which was the cost of the hooks)! We had the wood in the garage, and it was already the perfect length when I went searching through our scraps. I sanded it a little bit, stained it with some stain that we had (probably could have put a clear coat of gloss over it too if I wanted to wait longer) drilled holes for the hooks, and screwed the hooks in. I have one hook left over! I really like how it turned out, especially because it didn’t cost me hardly anything and now all of my necklaces have their own hook! It also made me go through all of my jewelry and purge what I no longer wear.Other than sledding, we had a pretty relaxing weekend… cleaned, did laundry, relaxed, cleaned some more, folded some laundry, and read a book. Not ready for my last week of break because that means I’ll have to start studying again. Ugh! Going to enjoy it for all that it is worth! Enjoy every second! (Might even get another book in there!)

CIAO! LOVE ME!

Too BIG too FAST!

My little Ayden NEEDS to stop growing! I have come to realized that at almost six and a half years old, I can no longer carry my baby around. Case in point, I could only carry him from his bed to his bedroom door this morning before he got too heavy. (Maybe its me?! Hehe!) And by carry, I mean on the hip carry. I can give him piggy back rides and cradle him like a baby for longer, but no more on the hip carries. Maybe its because he is getting so tall and his legs hang down so far or he's so darn scrawny. In any case, its sad. :(

And to top it off, he lost his first tooth last night! That officially makes him a big boy! He did great with it though! The tooth has been loose for quite a while now. We were just waiting for it to come out, but we weren't pressuring Ayden to pull it or anything. Well, last night he was eating an apple for supper (see, we just give him good tooth pulling foods to eat instead, hehe) and he turned to me about halfway through supper and told me to look. Lo and behold he has blood dripping out of his mouth and his tooth had almost come out, but not quite. I took a Kleenex to wipe up the blood and in the mean time grabbed his tooth and pulled it the rest of the way out. It was literally, just hanging there. Ayden did so great, he didn't even shed a tear!

Once it was out, I gave him a Kleenex to hold at the spot where the tooth came out to stop the bleeding and then I went on a tooth hunt because for the life of me, I couldn't find the tooth in the first Kleenex I used. The darn thing was so tiny that it was stuck to the Kleenex and I didn't even notice! After I found it, I had Ayden take it to go show Jay, but then he dropped it on the floor in our living room before he could show daddy. Tooth hunt number two! Took me a little longer to find it the second time, but I found it and in an envelope and under his pillow it went for the tooth fairy! So excited that my baby lost his first tooth, but he can stop growing any minute now... I'm serious! He has another loose tooth and it is just a matter of time before that one comes out too! Think he will have another apple for supper tonight?! Haha!We went out to eat with one of my old friends the other weekend. She brought her boyfriend along and we had a good time at Olive Garden... yummy! We haven't gotten together in a LONG time, so it was good to see her again. Unfortunately, we just don't have the same relationship that we did a few years ago and I'm not so sure that we ever will. Time changes people and people grow apart. Either way, it was good to get together, even if just for lunch.I'm thinking about getting my hair cut. I haven't gotten it cut since probably last summer, if not before then and I definitely think it is time for a change/upgrade. Usually I let it grow out pretty long and then chop it off and do something drastic. Not this time, at least not yet, hehe! Jay doesn't want me to get it cut, he likes it long and would rather it be longer than it is now than shorter, but I need a change. I would love to get it colored too, but we don't have the money for that right now. I kind of already know what I want to get done and am hoping it turns out good. I'm a girl of change and I think it is time!

And because I wrote this earlier in the day before I called to make a hair appointment and then didn’t post it, I actually got in for a hair cut today and below is the result. You can see a before and after by scrolling up to the picture with my friend and scrolling down to the one below. Didn’t get an actual day of before and after. I really like how it turned out and I think I will be able to recreate it tomorrow, hopefully!These few weeks of break are killing my diet. Oh wait, what diet, haha! Actually, they just aren't doing my body any good. I wasn't dieting, but during the semester I hardly eat lunch because I am gone at school all day. I eat WAY less than I am now and I am moving around more and being more active. I know that I could eat less and move around more while I am on break, I am just lazy. There, I said it. I am lazy and enjoying a few weeks without any stress and its making me gain weight! Ah! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't in the winter and freezing cold outside (and most of the time in my house because I am a thermostat nazi and don't turn it warmer than 68 degrees most of the time because heat is expensive and unless I am super cold, we don't keep it any warmer)!And because our cat doesn’t get enough face time on my blog… here is a lovely picture of Diesel!

CIAO! LOVE ME!