Exciting News!!

I'm so behind in blogland. Yikes. 

I haven't read any blogs since last Wednesday and I haven't written either so please excuse me. I've been living in real life instead of bloglife and the two just didn't happen to overlap the last few days.

Don't worry though, I snapped plenty of photos to post up here recapping my 4th of July weekend later in the week. 

I'm a tad bit sleepy at the moment after all the festivities. Plus, my phone rang at 6:15 this morning because the air vent cleaning guy wanted to give me a courtesy call that his guys would be there in 45 minutes. Seriously? 45 minutes? All I needed was a pair of pants and a bra. 5 minutes would have been plenty of notice. Ehh. 

My vents are clean though which I'm hoping means my allergies will get better. Being the multi-tasker that I am I also had the septic guy out at the same time. Turns out neither of those things are cheap so let's just say I spent almost a whole weeks salary before 10am this morning. Lame. 

I seriously need a vacation right now to rest up from my weekend. Lots of fun. Not lots of sleep. 

And so this post isn't incredibly lame. I leave you with some exciting news...Seth should be moving home in 2 weeks! Cross your fingers, knock on wood, that nothing changes:)

How many of you thought the exciting news
was that I was pregnant?! Sorry:)

7 Quick Takes {6} (and a few past engagement photos!)

1. It's the weekend. Ohhh YEAH! Let's just say I'm super pumped for the weekend. I really have no idea why I'm this excited because I have no big plans but I'm just excited. Oh, and Downton Abbey Season 3 came in, sooooo... it's safe to say this will most likely be an unproductive weekend:)

No, I don't live in Ottawa, inter-library loan is a lovely thing:)

2. How cute is my littlest (age, not size) brother? I mean seriously I just love that boy (even when he's a butt head). 

He's in the army and currently stationed at Ft. Hood right now so I don't get to see him much. 

Super old, really bad photo of both of us from the day before his bootcamp graduation in 2009.
It's hard to take updated photos when I never get to see him:(

3. There are approximately 7, give or take 12, craft projects cluttering up my house and garage right now. I should be ashamed, but I'm not. 

4. I recently introduced my mom to blogs (and the copy/paste feature) and obviously she hasn't read many because she thinks I'm just HILARIOUS. To prove that my hilarious-ness is a figment of her imagination I sent her over to read Grace's blog Camp Patton. That women is truly hilarious. Oh, and Hi Mom!! 

5. Does anyone else ever get overwhelmed by all the things they want/need to do that they end up doing none of them? Yep, I have that problem and I have it bad. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my list of favorite tv shoes is longer than my list of to-do's, right? That's what I thought. 

6. This Pinterest chicken recipe is so good that I have made it twice this week. Twice in the past 3 days really. Go. Make it. Enjoy. You're welcome. (p.s. use less vinegar)

Who needs a side dish when you have chicken this good?

7. It's so hard to think up a #7 and I have no idea why since I have a million ideas but they all seem lame. So, I leave you with this...avoid poison ivy. It sucks and is itchy:( If you insist on getting poison ivy, I advise this: Scrub with a loofah or something similar to open up the little bubbles of poison and wash it with Dawn dish soap to get the oils out of your skin. While I'm not a doctor I was given this information from a pharmacist once, so I trust it, but you don't have to. It will save you from clawing the skin of your arms and legs though. Fortunately I have only gotten it twice but the first time was during engagement photos (2nd time right now hence the reason for this #7) so it was totally worth it:)

Most likely poison ivy culprit right here. 

See? Totally worth it! (Photographer here)

Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease!

Linking up with Jen at Conversion Diary. 

A Texas Saturday

After way too few hours of sleep, Seth decided 7:00 am was a great time to wake up and get our lovely Saturday started in Texas. I beg to differ. I managed to shower in the size of an airplane bathroom and got dressed for adventure. We decided to start our day by heading back to Tesky's to exchange the jeans Seth had bought since the button popped off when he tried them on. I don't sew. I also happened to stumble upon a pair of cute jeans that my husband insisted I buy and who's going to argue with that?

By the time we left Teskey's it was probably around 9:30 and we drove, over an hour, to a neighboring town called Bowie. I made Seth swing through the McDonalds so I could have a potty break and get an iced tea. Of course I got locked in the bathroom stall that apparently only opens from the outside?? Not cool. Luckily a kind lady freed me. From there we headed to a giant swap meet type thing in Bowie and walked around checking out the vendors for a few hours. Some of the stuff was normal garage sale type crap that you wonder about and then they had tons of rabbits and goats if you wanted to buy those. I was determined to take something home with me and when Seth held up a potato ricer to me I thought he was crazy. Until, he told me he thought it could de-seed tomatoes! I thought this was pretty sweet since I love to use my homegrown tomatoes to make salsa and homemade ketchup. 

After making ketchup last summer I told Seth I would never make it again because it was a pain to get the seeds out. Little did I know they make things to take the seeds out. Duh. 

So I spent my Seth's $5 and got myself a de-seeder. Along with a hamburger:)

We left the swap meet to head back to the camper where I managed a 30 minute power nap so I wouldn't be a huge grumpy butt later that night. Once I decided to wake up we got dressed in our finest Texas gear. Okay, it was just jeans, my new shirt and adorable boots. Then we headed down to the Ft. Worth Stockyards.

Going out with our boots on!

We made it to the stockyards at 3:59 just in time to watch them walk all of the huge longhorns down the main road. I'm not going to lie. I was expecting 100 or so but there were only about 5 longhorns. Still kinda cool though. From there we walked around looking in shops which were all pretty touristy. I could tell Seth wasn't feeling it and that he needed a Mt. Dew. STAT! I made it my mission to find him one since I was there to have a good time and I wanted him to have fun too and apparently he needed some Dew to "dew" just that.

Pretty sure these were real cowboys.

Take the bull by the horns.

Hey ya'll!

At this point I was obviously hungry again so we found a cute little outdoor eatery that was in between several buildings called the "Love Shack". They had burgers and nachos and stuff like that so we stopped to relax, have a drink and eat some delish nachos. The music and people watching was great as I wrote our names on a brick wall. Don't worry, everyone was doing it.

Um...yum. 

Our names are there...written in pen since I don't carry sharpies around in my purse.

More people watching was done as we walked around waiting for the rodeo that started at 8:00. I've been to rodeo's in my past but never one in Texas so I was expecting something pretty cool. We went in early and got great seats. Close enough to get hit by cow patties as I think Seth described a little more colorfully. Then the rodeo started. Bull riders trying there darndest to hang on for that 8 seconds that seems like an eternity. Girls flying round the barrels on their horses while trying not to tip em over. Calf ropers doing there best to throw those cute little baby calves to the ground. It was great.

The Coliseum where the rodeo took place.

Checking out the animals before the rodeo.

Let's get ready to rumble!!!

It's a bit hard to focus on a bucking bull. 

Or horse for that matter. 

The rodeo ended about 10 and we headed over the the worlds largest honky tonk, Billy Bob's, where we got in free with our ticket stubs. There is a small bull riding arena inside BB so we watched a few more brave fellas try to hang on for dear life as the bulls tried to kill them. 

Side note: Seth's Dad was a bull rider back in his younger days. Apparently he was pretty darn good to because he would enter the 16 and under competition and win and then enter the adult competition and win that also. I would love to see some video footage of him riding because I can only imagine at this point. Maybe I will post a picture of him riding a bull sometime. It's pretty neat. Plus I know he lived to tell about it:)

Performing at Billy Bobs that night was, Diamond Rio. They may be oldies but they are still goodies. Haha. Seth kept cracking up at how old they were and how they probably used to jump higher back in the day. I enjoyed the old women down front who were pretty darn excited to see there favorite boy band. I obviously made Seth stay until the end of the concert so we could hear, "I'll start walking your way, you start walking mine..." while we watched the diehards out on the dance floor. At that point I let him drive me home to pass out, from exhaustion of such a busy day as opposed to the two Malibu and pineapple drinks.

Diamond Rio was jammin'

Last photo of the night. Too bad it's fuzzy.

Sunday morning we managed to sleep in a little later before getting up for breakfast at a local diner. I then packed up and headed back home to a full size shower and happily awaiting puppy. Luckily I will get to see me husband again Friday which makes for shorter weeks:)

Ya'll come back now, ya hear!

What I Wore: Easter Outfit:)

Hope everyone had a fantastic Easter. Mine was wonderful and filled with family (and food).

My hubs and I got up early (7:55) and scrambled to get ready.
I have a lot of hair to curl and wanted to make sure I didn't forget all the food we needed to take.

Fortunately, rushing to get ready is something I am a champ at (because it happens way to often) and my husband thinks he is a Nascar driver so we made it to Mass 25 minutes before the 9:30 start time. Plenty of time to get prime seating on a busy Easter Sunday.

I love Mass on Easter Sunday. It's great how so many people are dressed up and celebrating that Jesus died on the cross for us and rose on the third day to save us. It is an amazing feeling to know that you are loved so much.

After Mass we stopped by my parents to put food in the fridge that would be going to Seth's family easter. We then headed over to my Aunt Roberta's for a giant family meal.

By giant I mean over 50 people. The food was excellent and there was tons of it since we all took stuff.
We took a crockpot of green beans, a green bean casserole and an angel food cake that was fluffy like a cloud.

After stuffing our faces and watching the kids hunt eggs we packed up and headed over to Easter at Seth's Grandma's house.

Here we were met with another big family and tons more food. Surprisingly, we remembered to pick up the food from my mom's house so we had a platter of fresh fruit and another angel food cake.

Is there anything more Easter-y than fluffy angel food cake? I think not.

For the Easter Egg hunt at his Grandma's, Seth thought it was the right time to teach kids that...

Life's not fair.  

The day before he had his sister, Sara, spray paint an egg gold. Then he stuck $20 in the egg and hid it for the kids to find. Basically, he was expecting all the kids to complain that Life's not fair when only 1 kid got the $20.

What really happened is that I learned Life's not fair when your husband takes the $20 from your purse to teach a lesson that nobody even cares about because they got candy.

Oh, and Happy Easter. Here's what we wore:)