Catch Up

I have been so reclusive when it comes to blogging lately. I've pretty much been on my own everyday for the past 4 weeks (including weekends) because Ry has been working so much. He usually gets home around 10 at night so it's just been Ethan and me all day long, everyday. Needless to say I've been a little frazzled and just haven't been able to blog much. It would end up just being a vent session. So things have been better this week and I've actually seen my husband for more than 30 minutes before he falls asleep. The past 4 weeks have also been full of rain so no pool time! Boring! You can only go to the library, mall, or grocery store so much. So that is my excuse for not blogging very much.

New Website

I found a cute website called5 minutes for mom. It has great giveaways and fun things to see. Check it out on my sidebar.

Rain Rain Go Away!

I swear we will be floating away with all this rain! It seriously rains every single day and it's always a torrential downpour! Every night we have severe thunderstorms and last night was the loudest. The house was shaking, I was totally freaked, and of course I was having dreams of our house getting struck by lightening and burning to the ground. Our yard is totally squishy and is really really long, but we can't mow it since it's way too wet. My garden loves all the rain though and it is totally growing a ton and all the rain keeps it a little cooler than our usual humid/heat blast. I just wish it would be sunny long enough for us to go swimming. Our neighborhood pool is closed due to flooding and the chemicals are off balance and my parents pool overflowed yesterday! They had to syphon off a ton of water all night long and I think my mom is doing it again this afternoon. This year is the most amount of rain on record and I totally believe it. It has been crazy!

New Feature

Check my sidebar for my latest feature that I've add to my blog, "What's New On My I Pod." I have a few itunes cards to use so I was surfing for some new music this weekend. I found a few oldies but goodies like Whitney Houston. I totally remember winning her tape during a magazine drive in 1st grade. That song brings back a lot of fun childhood memories like driving around in our blue Aerostar Mini Van. Like the one featured below except ours was two tones of blue. Talk about flashbacks! Any music recommendations? Let me know!

File Folder Games

Thanks to a tip from my friend Hilary a few months ago, I've started my library of File Folder Games and I'm currently working some new ones. I made a bunch when I first got the book and now Ethan's gotten a little tired of doing the same ones so I'm making some different games to spark his interest. These are really great as quiet games for church or to just play at home. It's a good activity to teach him to sit in a chair and work on something too. The previous games that I did were matching shapes, dressing a teddy bear, and Noah's ark (animals). This time we're doing some that works with colors, fruits and vegetables, and items in "Grandma's Purse." Really cute. It doesn't take too much time and all it entails is getting photcopies, coloring, cuting stuff out, laminating, and attching velcro. Not too strenuous. Plus, I love to color stuff with Ethan so it's fun to do together. And when it's all done, "Voila", quite child. Check it out.

Giving a Talk

I just finished reading through my talk that I'm giving tomorrow in church. The dreaded "new move in speaking assignment" has been handed down and I will speaking with my lovely husband tomorrow. I get kind of nervous before I speak, but I really don't mind the actual speaking part. The part that I don't like is all the awkwardness afterward. A few of you may actually agree with me on this one...I just hate the onset of comments throughout the rest of church, "hey great job", "loved the talk", "you did great", blah blah blah. Sometimes I wonder if people truly feel like you did a good job or they just see you in hallway after and feel obligated to say something. Now I do have to say that I can tell the super sincere comments are real, it's just those other random ones that get me. Anyone else feel this way? I also hate the whole "sit and stew" part of giving talks. You get your little assignment a week, 2 weeks, a few days before you give your talk and then you "sit and stew" about how you'll talk about it, researching with a big pit in your stomach. I always feel tons better once I get it actually written, but it's even better when you sit down and it's over. Anyway...I'm speaking tomorrow so be grateful it's me and not you.

Super Mario

I found this video on You tube tonight and I had to put it up. If only I could be that cool and be able to play sweet songs like Mario Brothers. I do have a funny story that goes along with playing songs from Nintendo... Back when we were living in California, before we even had Ethan, Ryan and I were going out to play games with some of our friends. As we were walking out of our apartment, we heard somebody playing the flute and their apartment just happened to face the parking lot. Well, we listened for a second and figured out they were playing the theme song from Mario Brothers so we stopped and listened for a bit and we started cracking up. Who practices Mario songs with their flute on a Friday night? We thought it was so funny and joked about it that whole next week and would walk by their apartment on purpose just to see if the "flutist" was playing some more renditions of Mario. Well, that next Friday we were going back out again and there was music coming from the flute apartment and this time it was the Zelda theme song! You have to understand that the whole first month of our marriage we spent trying to beat Zelda. Not even joking, we were Nintendo junkies. I'd like to paint a little visual for you...I had printed off the Zelda map from a website so we each took turns navagating and beating level after level, late into the night, night after night. It was so much fun! Thank goodness for 10:00 class, right? So to hear the lovely Zelda music, it took us right back. Anyway...the flutist is still a big joke in our family so finding some Nintendo music on You tube made me think of our favorite apartment music.

Blog Update

Sorry for my lack of blog posts, what's my problem?! We've been busy with things here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. We had crazy storms come through lately and one storm completely blew over the top of one our trees. You should have seen me out there trying to cut it down with hedge clippers. I swear the Direct TV guy across the street was cracking up. We may have to remove the whole thing if the HOA doesn't approve of our topless tree.
Friday was our ward activity night, Ry and I were on the panel for the "Newlywed game." It was a lot of fun especially since we won! Booyah! Good thing Ryan knows how many purses I own and what's my favorite night time snack.
Saturday was my sister-in-law's birthday. We started the day off with a morning at the spa. We both got one hour massages, that was phenomenal! The lady told us we looked like a bunch of slugs afterwards, which we did. I could have crawled in a hole and stayed there for a week! I got home and counted down the minutes before Ethan took a nap so I could lay down. It was the most restful nap I have ever had in my life! Anyway...later that evening we went to Cheesecake Factory and did a little shopping to complete the big birthday. Quite a fun day!
This week should be a good one. I'm teaching piano lessons now to my niece and nephew so I have my first lesson this week. Wish me luck! Oh, and I'm also headed to Girls Camp for a few days to fill in for the camp nurse. Hopefully I'll only have to deal with some sunburns and slivers. So that's all we've been up to. I'll post some better stuff later.

New Links

Please take a special note to the new links on my side bar. They are my latest blogs that I love to peruse. I haven't updated my side bar in awhile so I needed to add all the new people to blogger and friends that I have met since I've been in Texas. Oh, and if you've been added to the side bar and you don't want to be, just let me know.

My New Do

I've been trying to grow out my hair since August and now I'm ready for a change. So I went for a nice summer haircut on Saturday morning. It was taking me a ton of time to blow dry my hair with it being so long so now I can have a cute cut and do my hair in half the time. So here are my before and after shots.