Maternity Style

I'm 16 1/2 weeks pregnant and I just bought my first maternity pants.  I really don't have a visible "bump" yet but most of my pants were getting uncomfortable.  I have really appreciated the elastic waist in my new pants.  This is for sure the only time in life when its acceptable to wear elastic waist pants to work :)

Hopefully as I get bigger I'll post some cute maternity outfits on here

Christmas

I had such a lovely Christmas with my family, I hated to come home and back to work today.  Looking forward to New Years with Barrett's family.

Barrett is the best

I love my husband.

The End

Christmas Tree Cuttin'

We found our Tree at Bottom's Christmas Tree Farm

Barrett's getting to work and Dad is helping

Git her done

Barrett conquered that tree

Awesome Mommy and Daddy

Finished Product

Thanksgiving and Family Time

We had the BEST Thanksgiving.  I loved having everyone at my house and cooking a ton of food.  And I don't just mean on Thanksgiving day.  I cooked Wed, Thursday, Friday and Saturday for everyone!  We also did a lot of Black Friday shopping and we spend time at Red Brick Brewery.  My loverly parents are still here and will be with us for almost another week which is great.  On Monday we went to the World of Coke and had a lot of fun.  

This bottle is made completely out of baseball equipment

The Pioneer Woman

Yeah, Logan and I met Ree Drummond - The Pioneer Woman.  She is awesome!

From Scratch

I roasted 2 small pie pumpkins and made my own pumpkin puree.  I used most of it for pumpkin pies but I have a little bit left that could go into bread or muffins.  I need to make more puree this weekend so I am fully stocked for Thanksgiving!

Guest Bathroom Work

I am overdo on some posts but there will be 3-4 this week for all the stuff I have missed.  

Several weeks ago we got to work on our upstairs bathroom.  There was a leak from the toilet that had to be fixed and the bathtub faucet dripped.  We ended up having to take part of the shower wall off in order to stop the drip so it was much more involved than we thought it would be but it all got done in the end.  We want to do more in that bathroom eventually so we ended up  just getting a new toilet.  But we only got new (kinda ugly) handles for the bathtub because to get something nice looking we will have to redo the pipes and we just weren't ready for that.  

I helped, There was one point when Barrett couldn't get a bolt off and I did :) 

Old cream colored toilet gone, now there is a nice new white one but I didn't get an after picture

Dora the Educator

Today Dora (and I) went to the Library to teach pre-schoolers about dog safety.

Weekend in the World (Disney World)

Disney World is the best.  I went down for a 3 day weekend to see my mom and Pat while they were there.  It was great and I also got to see Andrew and Lorri!  Take a look to follow out adventures.  Saturday we went to Epcot for the Food and Wine Festival and Sunday we went to a special brunch and then went to the Magic Kingdom for "Mickey's no-so-scary Halloween Party"

Epcot's Food and Wine Festival 

Yum - At "Greece" I got Grilled Greek cheese with honey and pistachios

Cranberry Bog 

Decorations for the Halloween Party 

I dressed up! 

 So Did most of the characters 

Trips with Mommy are so fun

Best Friends Visit

Oh my goodness, I almost forgot to blog this week.  Really I just hardly had time to look at my computer.  Work has been so busy with the craziest people.  But I digress - This past weekend was full of fun when Kathy and Walker AND Natalie and Brian came to visit.  I was bad and didn't really take pictures but I'll give you the run down of our festivities and mostly of all the delicious meals I cooked.

Friday Kathy and Walker arrived!
Dinner:  Creamy tomato and crab pasta
Dessert: Nutella stuffed, brown butter chocolate chip cookies with sea salt

Saturday we went apple picking.  We loaded up on Cameo, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, and Jona Prince apples.  We also got apple butter, cinnamon pear preserves and blackberry preserves, apple dumplings, apple fritters, fried apple pies, and a cup of apple cider.

Breakfast: Banana bread pancakes
Lunch: Apples
Dinner: Lemon Chicken Gyros and Italian potatoes

Sunday we went to church and after this is when we met up with Natalie and Brian

Breakfast: Bisquits and sausage gravy
Lunch:  Fat Matt's BBQ
Dinner: ?  I don't remember

Monday I went shopping and hung out with Natalie before they had to go home

Breakfast:  Pumpkin Muffins
Dinner:  Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup

My Cookies from Friday night 

Braves Baseball

We love Braves Baseball, that is all.

We won!  And think about this for a minute - Kimbrel struck out 4 batters in the 9th inning.  Pretty unusual

There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living

 - Nelson Mandela

Gardening

Last weekend Barrett finally got some of the nasty weeks and monkey grass pulled out of our biggest flower bed and we put mulch down to make it look nice and crisp.  This weekend I got some plants on sale and put them down.  I'm so happy with how it looks!  I wish I had a picture of the before, it was awful! Right now this first bed has hydrangeas and asters.  There are still some big open spaces that we'll fill as time goes on.  The bed behind this one that you can just get a peak at has roses but it is overgrown with monkey grass also.  Once all the monkey grass is pulled up we plan to ad more roses and extend the bed to the driveway.  We might spread out (replant) some of the roses that are there and mix in Double Knockout roses with them because we think those look so much prettier.  

These bed in front of the house had some really big, gnarly bushes that we pulled out.  On the right side of the steps there are several gardenias but we are going to move them back closer to the railing and put edgers in so that the bed ends at the edge of the steps.  Right now it comes out really far and it'll look better with clean lines.  We also need to trim back the huge rhododendron on the right and on the left side we have gardenias and azaleas.  The little box sitting onto of the railing will be mounted to the front like a window box.  It has dianthus in it right now.
I could use some help on this - I am also thinking about staining the front porch a fun color so that we can give the front of our house some color.  If I do that I think I'll paint the door a complimentary color.  What do you guys think about this?  I am thinking a dark blue stain on the porch and a lighter blue for the door.  This might be a project for early spring but I want it done now!

And just for good measure a picture of my lovely pups.  And don't you love my Mississippi State Door Hanger?!?!?!

Puerto Rico

Barrett and I went to Puerto Rico last month for a (slightly late) 5 year anniversary trip.  We had a great time.  We spent a ton of time relaxing on the beach and got a lot of reading done.  We also ate great food, explored Old San Juan, hike in El Yunque rainforest, and kayaked in a bioluminescent bay.  

DIY

Last week while Barrett was out of town I took on a home improvement project.  Our basement carpet was horribly stained and we knew it had to come up so I took the liberty of ripping it up.  We will soon put down tile which will be so much easier to clean and still look finished.

Just Getting Started

 

Moving Along

Look at that Pile of Nasty carpet

Other Direction, With a blanket for Reggie to lay on

New Goal

Its been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely time....

I don't have any excuses, I just didn't feel like blogging and I didn't think I had anything worth sharing. Sometimes our life gets a little boring around these parts, but boring can be good.

I've made a new goal for myself and I hope you all keep me to it.  I want to try to blog once a week.  I figure some times I can tell about fun things we've done but some weeks I might just put up a quote or picture I like or maybe a book or movie review.  I think by keeping it simple like this I can stick to my goal.

So today's post will be a quote, next week stay tuned for vacations photos (we went to Puerto Rico).

I am only on, but still I am one
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something
I will not refuse to do the something I can
           - Helen Keller

Family Weekend

A few weekends ago Andrew and Lorri came to visit and we had such a fun weekend. Jam packed with activities and lots of yummy food.

They got here Thursday night. On Friday I had to work but when I got home I made soup for dinner and we relaxed and hung out.

Saturday started with Monkey bread and a trip to the Farmer's market. Lorri and I then went for a 5 mile run and we did it at a pretty good speed for both of us. We ate paninis for lunch and then went to Red Brick Brewery for the tasting and tour. After the beer we went to eat italian food with Logan and Andrew (friends from small group)

Sunday after church we ate lunch at Ghengis Grill and then Lorri and I went shopping at the outlets. I got some christmas presents for people so I am well on my way to having all my shopping done :)

Sunday night I made Chorizo Tacos for dinner and we played games until we all got too sleepy.

I was sad to see them leave on Monday and can't wait for their next visit!!

I think I enjoy putting up new backgrounds and changing font colors on this blog more than I enjoy writing it.

Can't wait for Andrew and Lorri to visit this weekend and for a beautiful fall weekend off of work!

Maybe I'll have a good post after our weekend together

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

I truly truly believe that I have the best husband in the world. This past weekend was my birthday (Iiiiiiiiiitttttt's My Birthday!! - for Kathy) and Barrett and I had a whole wonderful weekend of festivities planned.

Friday - Dinner at Legal Seafoods, So delicious!

Saturday was of course ruined by the fact that I had to work but after work we enjoyed National Cheesecake day with lunch at the Cheesecake factory and then went to Matthew and Lauren's house to swim. Every time I try to swim there it rains and today was no exception but it only sprinkled so we stayed in the pool. Barrett made a yummy dinner of sausage and cauliflower spaghetti and stuffed portobello mushrooms. Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting followed with a long game of dominos.

No birthday is complete without presents and Barrett got me a Le Creuset oil and vinegar set, a Le Creuset oval dish and 2 disney movies (Beauty and the Beast and Bambi).

Sunday I got a very generous gift from Barrett's family - a bike! I picked out a silver Fuji flat bar road bike. We plan to ride it on a nice trail close to our house and take it on vacation with us! Sunday night I had to go back to work to check on patients and while we were over there we used a groupon I bought a while back to go bowling.

Thank you Barrett for a great weekend!!!