7 Things

Excuse the randomness of this post- there are so many things I want to talk about but don't have time to create separate posts for 

1. Will and I ran Monday and Wednesday evenings, and I did some weights Monday and Tuesday evenings. Not sure exactly how far we went Monday, but last night our goal (or rather Will's goal for me) was to make it to the stoplight, which is almost exactly two miles from the point we start running. I had a different goal in mind that was about half a miler closer, but I tricked myself on accident and I ended having to go all the way to the stoplight. See, our running path is along a road with 4 stop signs from where we live to the stop light. I thought that my goal was the fifth stop sign, so I told myself I could not stop running until the fifth stop sign. Turns out the 5 stop sign is really the stop light. I actually felt pretty good breathing-wise, but my shins were killing me. I found myself repeating some mantras to help get me through, mainly "Pain is temporary, pride is forever," "sweat if fat crying," "no matter how slow you are going, you are still lapping people sitting on the couch," and last but not least, "I'm going to eff that stop light!"
We were going to walk all the way back but the sun was setting and the mosquitos were coming out so we were forced to run part of the way- probably another mile. I still felt pretty good, but my dang shins! I don't think it's shin splints because I've heard those described as shooting pains and it's not really that. It just hurts, almost more when I stop and walk than when I'm running. Will said we should probably look into getting me new shoes, which stinks because I just bought these.

2. Yesterday I was sitting in the living room working on homework when I heard what I assumed was a huge airplane fly by. I heard these fairly often growing up, so it's usually no big deal. But yesterday, OMG. It was so loud and it seemed like a huge plane because it lasted so long. And there were 3 of them. I was just waiting to hear a huge explosion and then see a ball of fire coming towards me. Cause I have an over-active imagination or something.
I texted Will and asked what the heck those things were and he replied that he had no idea what I was talking about. I explained what I heard, and told him NASA should really be on top of these kinds of things, especially when citizens are worried about dying. He just said "ok babe."

3. Also yesterday while doing homework, I was snacking on some Fritos (Best Chips EVER) and I thought they were a bit saltier than usual. Then I remembered that we took them to the beach with us and ate some right after getting out of the water. Soooo, I'm still not sure if the extra salt and crunch were sand and ocean salt or just the chips.

4. We're driving home tonight for my family reunion this weekend, as in we're leaving Houston after five and probably getting to Canyon a little after 4 in the morning. Yuck. My cousin and I were in charge of this year but do to us both being extremely busy we got a pretty late start on planning. We finally got the details worked out and invitations made, but I left my mom in charge of mailing them and I'm not sure they went out when she said they did; thus, I have no idea how many people are coming. It's really frustrating when you work so hard to plan an event and people don't have the courtesy to at least RSVP so we know how many to tell the caterer. Urg, this has been a frustrating weekend to plan.

Since this is our only trip home before I go home for good we're planning on taking some of our non-essential stuff so we don't have to worry about it next month.

Well, we were planning on it but my dad just told me that my brother (who is riding home with us) also has a ton of stuff to take. I seriously do not understand boys sometimes. Most of them are awesome in that they can try on clothes in approximately 7 seconds per piece of clothing, can pack in a backpack for a 5 day trip, and can shower and get ready in less than 9 minutes. But the others who can't do all that, take 7 minutes per piece of clothing, don't  understand you can wash clothes at you destination and you don't need to pack everything you own, and take longer than I do to get ready.
Rant over. For now.

5. Anyway, I thought this would also be a good time to show where we are living this summer:

We did have our awesome blue comforter on the bed and it was really cute with my Turkish rug, but we took it off so we could take it home this weekend.

This is our room when  you walk in the door. We are living with the couple who's twins I watch during the day. The twins are still sleeping in the parents' room so Will and I really have to whole upstairs to ourselves. Through the door in the back left is our bathroom:

LOVE this awesomely big bathroom.

The other side of the room. The furniture is all theirs but the wicker truck thing is mine.

AND there are two closets. More Awesomeness.
So that's our little "suit" that has worked out really well this summer.
This is where I usually hang out all day:

I sit on the loveseat with my lap top and water bottle and do homework, read blogs, check Facebook, and a whole lot of other time-wasting things. Until a baby cries, that is. Which is extremely often. So I really don't sit on my butt all day.

6. A lot of times at night my mind will start racing with all the things I have to do the next day and then I can't go to sleep because I'm thinking about all this stuff. So I try to make a point to make a To Do list when I get in bed. The list I made last night was ridiculous. It was a list for the next three days, with today's being the longest. Well well, at 11:15 this morning I had almost completed it. Blogging was on the list so now I'm killing two birds with one stone. Not that I'd ever actually kill a bird. Here is my list for today:

1. Email Dad re: trip home
2. Call caterer and confirm Saturday lunch
3. Call Mom re: lunch and center pieces
4. Paint toenails
5. Do nails
6. Clean bathroom
7. Vacuum bedroom
8. Laundry (2 loads)
9. Girls' laundry
10. Online class 
11. Finish packing
12. Call and arrange packet pic- ups
13. Email K about errands
14. Unload and re-load dishwasher
15. Make sure all forms for weekend are done and saved to PDF
16. Figure out clasp for wrap bracelet
17. Will- original contract
18. Text J about movie
19. Blog
20. Give girls bath

Woo hoo! Almost done with my list and everything in red is "In progress".

7. And finally, I think the Hubs deserves some recognition for being so awesome. He's worked so hard all his life to be successful and we're so close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. He's amazingly patient with me and uplifting when I feel upset about something. He has been so kind to me when he comes home from work an hour before I get off and helps me with the twins because it's usually their hardest time of the day. He put up with me being really cranky for an hour or two when he gets home because my days are long and mentally tiring, even though his days are just as long.

Memory Lane, Part 2: Our First Apartment

We I came back from Turkey in March of 2010, Will and I knew we were going to go ahead and sign a lease on an apartment soon (before we got married in July). I was planning on waiting until the end of May, but Will got impatient and wanted to do it THEN. I had one apartment complex in mind because I knew it was cheap, but it wasn't really in a safe area and they were really dirty and small. Luckily my in-laws decided to drive around for us and found the place we ended up renting. I was at work when Kathey called and said I needed to ask off for 30 minutes so I could come look at the place. At first I wasn't super thrilled because it was such an odd layout, but it was almost 100 square feet bigger than the other and not much more expensive.
We signed the lease that day and we were so excited to finally have our own place. I lived there alone until we got married in July. It was a good first apartment, but ultimately we were really tired of it by the time our lease was up this past April. Will and I are both pretty OCD and having all the rooms be rectangular made it really difficult to arrange the furniture in a position we were comfortable with. Whenever we had friends over (which was often, and there were usually a lot... once I counted 16 people!) almost everyone had to sit on the floor because of lack of seating.
I took these pictures right before we packed everything into storage and moved out. Somehow I don't have picture of the kitchen... boo! It's wasn't anything to talk about, but I thought it was cute :)

When you first walked in the door you came into the living room. Our apartment was essentially one huge rectangle with three small strips breaking up the inside. Here's the view from the door:

To the immediate left of the door was a built-in desk where we kept our laptops, desktop and other desk essentials. We hung a graphic grey/black/white shower curtain from a tension rod to cover up the little nook when not in use. You can see the nook to left of the "W" wall.

To the right you can see the edge of the entry closet. If there's one thing about this apartment I can't complain about, it's the closet space. This was a pretty huge closet that I kept all my craft things, our winter coats/jackets/cold gear, etc. in.

To the right of that wall is the wall you see walking in. We put our TV here (It's across from the couch), a dresser we got at a thrift store and painted to keep all our DVDs and Will's video games, and a storage ottoman.

Going in a circle, this is the next wall (opposite the closet and desk). You can see the edge of the doorway that leads into our bedroom). I hung a picture collage out of frames we got in a pack of 13 for $13 last year at Walmart at their after-Christmas sale. The two big ones were just empty frames :) The cubby bookshelf kept our favorite books and our souvenirs from all our travels. The bar table on the right was my birthday gift. We didn't really have an ideal place to put it, but at least in here we could use it for studying or to put food and drinks on when people came over.

This is the last wall in the living room... pretty much what you see is what you get. We kept a lot of blankets next to the couch because it could get really cold in the winter. The AC unit was really crappy. When I took this picture I was standing in the doorway to our bedroom. We had to put a floor fan where I was standing to blow the cool air from the AC into the bedroom during the summer. Ghetto fab, what can I say?

Moving into the bedroom, this is what you saw from the living room. The curtain hides the kitchen and kept out the hot air in summer/ cold air in winter. The door to the left is the bathroom (so you had to go through our bedroom to get to the bathroom). No comments on my orange mirror.

If you keep turning to the left when you enter the room, this was what you saw- our bed with my cat Maggie. Excuse, it was actually Maggie's bed, where she allowed us to sleep :)

To the left was Will's closet (seen in the first picture) and the built-in dresser that housed Will's stuff and our extra linens.

 Moving on, you ran into the bathroom. It was tiny.

 The pedestal sink, without a pedestal.

 More ghetto fab storage. The cabinet didn't close all the way.

The bathtub even had a frosted over window in it! How awesome for those mornings when it was -5 degrees in the morning and I had to take a shower!

This is the wall to the right of the bathroom. Circular tier table that I LOVE and Will absolutely HATES. It was in the living room until we got the bar table. We didn't have anywhere else to put it, so there it went.

And the last wall was my closet and the water heater. Pretty awesome indeed.

Looking at the pictures everything looks so... college-like. Like we tried really hard but couldn't quite make it look good. It makes me really sad because we did put so much effort into making it feel like home. I think the white walls and ugly wood made it feel that way. We can't wait until we have a house of our own that we can paint and hang as much crap on the walls as we want. But for our rent being $395/month for 750 square feet of space, we got one of the best deals in town and we loved it while it was ours.

A few other pictures from the time we were there:

Freska is an attention slut.

Our first Christmas as a married couple.

Freska stole a lot of the ornaments and hid them behind the tree in the corner.

Packing it all up

Our "Courtyard"

Our tree :)

All in all, it was a fantastic place for us as newly weds, but I'm not sure we would ever stay in a place like that again. Even if we end up getting an apartment when we move to Houston, we have both agreed it's worth the money to get a two-bedroom and a place that was built later than the year 2000 (although we didn't have much choice in Canyon since almost every complex except for one was built before then).

Memory Lane, Part 1: Will's 21st Birthday

I want to do several posts about fun/ important things we've done in the past year or so (including several about our wedding, how we did everything, etc.). I plugged in my old camera this morning and was so excited to see my pictures from last year's trip to Costa Rica, among other events. When my computer crashed last fall I thought I had lost all of those pictures.I don't want to do the wedding posts just yet because I think my MIL might have some photos on her computer that I don't have, and I don't have all our engagement photos/bridal portraits on my computer and the disks are in Canyon. Hopefully I will have time to grab them when we go home for the weekend.
This post is about Will's 21st Birthday :)

I made the invite and put it out on facebook for all our friends.

Will was in Houston last fall so I had plenty of time to get the party ready and planned without worrying about him seeing everything. I wanted it to be a space rocket/ NASA theme since that's where he's working. I got most of the decorations from a party store in Amarillo. I made a paper chain and banner to hang up in the living room. Sadly, I don't have a picture of the decorations and food I made (although you can kind of see it in the background of a few pictures).

Our kitchen was so tiny!

I made a rocket ship cake. Plain chocolate cake for the base and I used rice crispy treats to create the rocket. The making of the rocket was... interesting. Harder than I thought it was going to be and it took A LOT of effort that it did not look like a male body part...

Definitely not the prettiest cake, but it was fun to make and tasted good.

He had a fantastic time, so that's all that matters :)

Crazy Beautiful Time

One day last week I kept track of (almost) everything I did during the day. It was a pretty typical representation of what my summer has been like :)
7:45 Wake up- I pretty much throw on a t-shirt and shorts, brush my teeth, and put in my contacts before heading "to work", or downstairs

8:00 Dishes- one of the first things I usually do during the morning is unload/load the dishwasher with the bottles from the previous night

Got some beans soaking so I would have them to eat on for the rest of the week.

8:05 Feed- the girls usually wake up and want to eat any time between 7 and 9 a.m. If Dusty hasn't "gone to work" yet (he works from home), he usually helps me feed them in the morning. Sometimes, if they aren't screaming too badly I do it alone.

Let's eat!

9:05 Done- it takes about an hour to change diapers, feed, burp, rock, and cuddle the two of them so they'll go back to sleep.
9:08 Brylee- looses her pacifier. This usually happens constantly throughout the day.
9:38 Brooklyn- wakes up. She is pretty easy to lull back to sleep when you give her back her pacifier. Sometimes I put her in the swing and she always goes right to sleep.
12:50 Brooklyn- she is usually the first to wake up hungry at feeding time. I try to hold which ever one wakes up first for a little while to make sure she's hungry before waking the other to eat.

Feed me!

1:00 Brylee- wakes up hungry too, so I change them both and get the bottles ready. Their parents have a king size bed so I prop them up on a huge boppy and feed them both at the same time. Sometimes one gets to lay on my lap. Two or three times a week I give them baths after this feeding.

We've watched a lot of Martha this summer while eating.

They usually get 'mat time' after their noon and 3/4 pm bottles.

I usually change about 8 diapers a day.

I usually put one in my lap and one next to me on the Boppy and use one had for each.

We looove bath time (but only if we're not hungry).

2:05 Back to sleep- the afternoon is my chore time. I usually finish doing dishes, wipe down the counters, do their laundry (about once a week), etc.

Laundry

 

2 online classes this summer

2:40 Done with chores- time to get back to my online class/ blogs/ Facebook/ CKI duties.
3:47 Brooklyn looses paci
3:52 Brooklyn looses paci
4:00 Feeding time for Brooklyn
4:30 Will comes home. I didn't wake up Brylee because Will likes to spend a little time with them when he gets home. He feeds Brylee.

6:00 Brooklyn goes to sleep
6:20 Jessica get home. When she comes home and the girls are still awake I try to continue watching them long enough for her to change and pump if she needs to. She takes over after that.

Our evenings have varied quite a bit. At the beginning of the summer the four of us usually ate dinner together, but since the 4th of July things have been a bit more hectic, so we usually eat at separate times. After Will and I eat, do dishes, and go on our run we usually settle in our room to watch True Blood/ blog/ play WOW/ watch House Hunters. Though my day is fairly busy with the girls, the summer has been pretty low-key as a whole, just the way I like it.

He made deelicious fried rice for dinner

Woop! We ran 1.5 mi straight!

Foam rollers are the. best. thing. Ever.

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After my little rant last week about getting back into shape, I am proud to announce that Will and I ran four times last week. On Tuesday Megan came over and we did a total of 2.5 miles and ran about 1.5 in different spurts. Wednesday Will and I ran by ourselves. We went much slower than the day before but we did 1.5 miles running all together, then walked back for a total of about 2.5. Thursday we went to Pearland and ran with Megan again. I have no idea how far it was, but the point was that we did something good for ourselves. My shins were bothering me at the end so I iced them all the way home and they seemed to be better the next day. Our last run of the week was Saturday morning in some drizzling rain. I rolled my ankle almost halfway through, so we ended up walking all the way back. I am really proud of us for sticking to it and getting outside, but it's so hard to keep my chin up when I look at how out of shape we are as compared to this time last year. I keep telling myself that it took longer than a day to get to where we are and it's going to take longer than a day to get back to where we were.
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Other exciting things from last week:
We had a date night on Friday. We ate at the Olive Garden (their pizza is the best!) and then went and saw the last Harry Potter movie at the dine-in theater (we had dessert). I never read the books and I'm not sure that I've seen all the movies, so the fact that it is over didn't break my heart too badly. Not gonna lie though, the movie made me wish I understood more of what was happening. I tried to ask Will a few times during the movie but he just ignored me :) I have to admit, I really enjoyed the movie.

Saturday we went on our run in the morning then came back and relaxed at the house. Around noon we made the drive out to Galveston to meet Megan and her boyfriend for lunch and an afternoon at the beach. While waiting on Megan and Brent to look at some apartments (Brent is hopefully starting school there in the fall) Will and I killed some time on The Strand. We had no idea it existed, but it's basically a historic city center with a lot of shops. It felt like a pretty tourist-y area with all the shops selling the same things, but it was fun to explore an area we'd never been to. We didn't buy anything, although this cat planter was tempting as a Christmas gift for Will's mom.
Over lunch we debated going to the beach because it was cloudy and it looked like it was going to rain. We ended up meeting some of Megan's friends at their house walked to the beach. By the time we got there the clouds had cleared up and it was perfect. I wasn't expecting it to be much fun because Will had always spoken poorly of Galveston, but it was actually better than South Padre (were we went for our honeymoon), and it was fun to be there with friends. We stayed for the afternoon and went home around 6 pm.

That evening we got a text from Megan saying she and Brent had cancelled their evening plans because Meme was horribly sick. She had gotten sick earlier in the week and the medication she was taking was making her nauseous and just all around yucky. Will drove over to stay with Meme so Megan and Brent could go out since they hardly ever get to see each other.
Sunday morning we had planned on going to church with Megan and Brent but we got a text message saying they had taken Meme to the emergency room at 5:30 that morning. Will immediately went to the hospital, where they had admitted her. Apparently her infection had spread and was making her really ill, but nothing life-threatening. When Will came home we went over to her house to get it picked up and Will mowed the yard so that when she comes home in the next day or two she doesn't have to worry about anything. We stopped by HEB on the way back to our house and picked up some flowers and a book for her. At home Will got cleaned up and I made some chocolate chip cookies for Meme and anyone staying with her at the hospital. We were at the hospital until around 8 pm.

It was a crazy busy weekend, and next weekend will be no different. My family reunion is in Amarillo and I'm in charge of it. Better call the caterer and make sure everything is in line!