{dresses, cake pops, cameras, and corn mazes}

It was one super busy weekend over at our place... it was go go go pretty much the whole weekend, but in the same respect, it didn't seem like it flew by which is always kind of nice too. I like weekends at home where we have a few things to do and aren't sitting around doing nothing all weekend, but yet it doesn't seem like I blinked and there went the weekend either. I'm sure that you can all relate!

At first I didn't know if a lot of our weekend plans were going to go off. I was having a pretty up and down week with everything. It seemed that with every good where was an equal downer to accompany it. The week started out good with me getting 20 survey responses back for my capstone project (I'm now up to 82 survey responses back already and my original goal was 100). I didn't think that I was going to get so many back so quickly, but I wasn't going to complain.

Tuesday was your average clinic day. It went well and I enjoyed it. Nothing too good or bad happened then. Wednesday was a day full of ups and downs, but mostly towards the end of the day. I did a little bit of shopping Wednesday morning after work because I don't have class until the afternoon. I had a 30% Kohl's coupon that I could not pass up, hehe! Then I sat through my almost four hours of class. It's getting brutal folks, let me tell you. Ugh!

During that class I was checking my email (among other things, hehe) and found out that I was awarded an amazing scholarship that I had applied for the previous week. The amount was almost twice the amount that I had originally thought I might get if I was awarded the money so that was amazing. I called Jay on my way home that night, mostly because I couldn't wait another ten minutes until I got home to tell him the good news. That's when he delivered the bad news of the day... his truck wasn't working and Ayden was sick with a fever and sore throat. Ugh again!

Turned out that Ayden was still pretty sick on Thursday morning so I stayed home from clinic. My original supervisor had the day off and I was going to go in and observe someone else and see a bunch of cochlear implant stuff. I was pretty excited about it, but it turned out for the best because me having to stay home with Ayden meant that Jay could take my car into work that day because as I previously said, his truck wasn't working. Ayden and I pretty much lounged around all day in our pajamas because he wasn't feeling so hot. Thursday was also Jay's birthday, but because Ayden was feeling so down in the dumps it sort of got pushed to the wayside. We didn't go out to eat or anything or make him a cake, but we made up for that on Saturday.

By Friday Ayden was feeling a little bit better and I went ahead and sent him to school. This was the fourth week in a row that he had missed at least part of a day during the week, if not a whole day. The first week was for his annual check up, the second week was for the ENT appointment for the bead in his ear, the third week was to actually removed the bead, and this past week (the fourth week) was because he was sick. Hoping this week he gets to go all five days, lol! I'm going to start getting calls from his school. However, before Ayden got dropped off at school, we had to run Jay to work because his truck still wasn't working. Trip one to Wisconsin Rapids that day.

I worked for a while after dropping Ayden off and then came home and cleaned the house for awhile before Ayden got done with school and we had to make trip two to Wisconsin Rapids to pick Jay up from work. By the time we had gotten home my friend, Niki, had arrived. She lives in Green Bay and was coming to spend the weekend with us. We don't see each other nearly enough and it was WAY past due for us to get together. We had an amazing weekend together and the weather was beautiful!

She had recently purchased a new camera, the one that is the version just above mine and we spent the weekend playing around with it and me teaching her different things with it. It was a lot of fun!

After we got home from picking Jay up at work, I made supper and then Niki and I were out the door again for trip number three to Wisconsin Rapids for the day. This time it was for me to try on some wedding dresses for the first time. The place was a small little boutique and it only had a small selection of wedding dresses, but I tried a few on and sort of got an idea of what I might like. It was more for fun than anything. I couldn't go shopping and buy something without my mom. I think I will probably go with my mom and sister sometime next summer and really start looking and buy. They say about a year to a year and a half in advance. I am really in no hurry right now, although it did sort of seem kind of surreal trying them on for the first time and actually thinking that at some point I would be getting married.

Here are three of the four dresses that I tried on. I really liked the first and the last one, although the red in the last one would have been a different color had it been ‘the one’, but alas it wasn’t.The rest of Friday night was spent teaching Niki how to use her camera and the different modes on it. It is definitely a learning process and she was having such a great time.

On Saturday I had a photo shoot for a friend and her family and it went really well. There was a mom, dad, and six little kids. Six kids to photograph that were 7 years and younger. I have to say that it definitely was chaotic times, but because we knew each other it wasn't too bad and the weather was beautiful and the kids were pretty well behaved for the most part and most importantly, I did get some super cute pictures. That took up a good portion of the morning. We all went back to my place for lunch and then the family left again shortly before 2pm. A little while later, Niki and I headed out again to go to a different park to play with our cameras some more. It was just too nice to stay inside all day long (although that is pretty much what Ayden and Jay did). We had fun at one of my favorite places in Point (Jordan Park) and got some super cool pictures. The funniest thing is that we both have these really nice cameras now and neither one of us got a picture of the both of us the whole weekend. Ayden did take a few pictures of both of us together with his camera, but his camera is super old and who knows how they turned out!

We were going to go to a corn maze on Saturday night, but it got a little late and we had been running around all day and so I didn't really want to go. Instead we made some cake pops for Jay's birthday. It was my first attempt at making them and I think that they turned out rather well. It wasn't too hard to make them so I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to mess anything up. Basically you bake a box cake according to the directions. Wait for it to cool and crumble it up and mix in about 3/4 of a can of frosting until it is about the consistency of meatloaf. From that you roll out some cake balls and put those on a pan and into the refriderator or freezer for about 15-30 minutes to harden a little bit. After that you melt your dipping candy, put a stick into the cake balls and dip in the candy. Our candy didn't end up being as runny as I would have liked in order to dip the cake balls evenly, but we spooned it on and it worked fine. They just didn't turn out as smooth. Afterwards before the candy hardens, sprinkle with decorations. We ran out of the melted candy and had to melt some chocolate chips for the last 10 or so cake pops, but it tasted just as good. The box of cake makes about 35-40 cake pops and they were super yummy! And they are almost gone. I think I might like them a little bit better than an actual cake. Usually when we make a cake at our house only half of it gets eaten before it gets too dry or goes bad. That's what happens when you only have three people in the house and two of them are watching what they are eating.

While we were at Jordan Park I took some of my iconic fall pictures and I am in love with how they turned out! I just love fall! The colors amaze me and I could really just sit outside in awe of them ALL day long!Sunday was the corn maze and it was a lot of fun! I wish I would have known about it in previous years because apparently this was their 5th year doing it and it wasn't all that far from our house and it wasn't expensive at all. It took us about an hour and a half to get through it. At one point Ayden wanted to give up and go back out the beginning, but we wouldn't let him. He got back into it after that and we all enjoyed it. Once again, Jay was a party pooper and stayed home. Well, actually, he was working on his truck with some friends trying to get it to work again and they think they succeeded which would be awesome! I'm keeping my fingers crossed!Niki left Sunday afternoon and Ayden and I relaxed the rest of the day. I needed some down time because I felt like we were going going going all weekend.

My workout ambition has grown increasingly lacskidasical lately... I've begun to workout less and less and in fact, I am giving myself this week off. Ha! I think I've gotten into too much of a routine with what I am doing and I am getting bored with it and don't want to do it. Thinking about trying something new. We'll see. I just need something new and easy for me to follow since I am not very coordinated.

I haven't really given any more thought to moving since my last post. The days sort of just keep flying by and I hope it continues that way so I don't have to sit and dwell on that fact just now. I can't do anything about it so I don't need to dwell on it.

My 'to do' list is continually getting longer and longer and my ambition to do anything just keeps getting shorter and shorter. It is actually a big bummer because I know that there are a lot of things that I should be doing, but don't actually do. Joyous world, right?! I currently have 82 surveys that I need to go through individually and record the answers down onto my excel spreadsheet so I can analyze the data and I am sure that by the end of the project, I will have well over 82 surveys to record. I told myself that I was going to record at least 10 surveys and I didn't. I also told myself that I was going to work out and read over my capstone proposal and neither of those things got done either. Instead, I crawled into bed at 8:30pm last night and watched some TV before falling asleep. 

Tonight after supper (I am writing this during my lunch break at clinic today, you know, instead of eating lunch, lol, actually, I did have a Special K protein meal bar for lunch), I have to head back to campus to work on a lab with Katie. We get to explore the BAHA implant and answer a bunch of questions about it. Not really looking forward to it as it is probably going to take a good two hours, but alas, it needs to get done. Maybe tomorrow after I am done with work I will record some surveys instead of watching TV. I should really go to the library or something to record the surveys instead of going to the grad room on campus because that will make me work on them and then I won't be at home watching TV and doing nothing, but when I have two or three hours open during the middle of the day and I have class until almost 7pm that night, the last thing I want to be doing is more school related stuff, you know?! But it does need to get done... I will think about it, lol!

And I think that this post has become long enough, what with all the pictures and everything...

CIAO! LOVE ME!