Sunday, August 30, 2009

Shannon's Going Away Party

So this past weekend was Shannon and Mark's Welcome Home/Going Away party. I was so excited for everyone to meet Fenway and to meet Piper!!

The BEST blogger girls in Kentucky. Seriously. We rock!
All of the puppy mommies and their little babies. :)
Shannon's nephew C was WAY too cute! He loved playing with all of the army toys on the tables. Plus he was dressed up in his Air Force attire too, just like his Uncle Mark!
Seriously, Fenway only weighs 4 pounds (according to our last vet visit, I think it's more like 5 pounds now). Look how TINY baby Piper is! She was a super cute puppy.

My husband has problems. End of story. My poor puppy.

Shannon and Mark.
Piper and Fenway had a great time running around and playing with each other.

Good luck Shannon and Mark!! I know you will love your new home, and can't wait to see the rest of your story unfold on your blog! :)

Baby Sitting Riley

I'm just so excited!! This past weekend, after 16 months, I FINALLY got to baby-sit Riley for the first time! And I must say, we had a BLAST! She is just so smart!! We played in the tupperware cabinet...
She played her self-composed piece on the piano for me: (She thinks she's Ray Charles).
And modeled Ah Paish's sunglasses. They look SO much cooler upside down.
Or pushed to the side. What a diva:
And we even went exploring under the bed! We found a Bitty Baby, a Valentine Puppy, and even a GlowWorm!! Big things under that crib:
Jason stopped by too (in case you were wondering HOW I managed to take a picture of both of us under the bed). He brought a very speical treat to Riley: A chocolate milkshake! She was definitely best friends with him for the rest of the night.

I just HAVE to brag on Miss Riley for a minute. Ashley has been working really hard with 16 month old Riley to begin the potty training stage. She's been trying to get her used to being in the bathroom as well as being comfortable with sitting on a potty, and recognizing when she needs to go. In just a few days, Riley has really come a long way. She has gone from being scared to sit on her potty to being OBSESSED with her potty. She was having a great potty day when I showed up Saturday night, and it continued! She loved playing patty cake while sitting on the potty, and she managed to go potty THREE times that evening. As soon as we put her diaper back on, and left the bathroom, she was right back in there sitting on it. It was definitely a fun game to play, but she was also very productive! She loved waving "bye-bye" as we flushed the toilet. She also tried putting my sunglasses into her potty! Thankfully, I had already transferred the urine to the real toilet, and cleaned it. So no damage to the sunglasses, but I think my sister is about to have her hands full on the game "Let's see what we can flush."

Way to go Riley! We are so proud of you!!

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Honey I Love Your Love The Most...

And I Love College Football Games
I Love Not Acting My Age
And A Good Barbeque

Yeah I'm A Fan Of Faulkner Books
And Anything My Mama Cooks
Small Mouth Bass Have Got Me Hooked
On Sunday Afternoon

Yes I Love Good Cold Beer
And Mustard On My Fries
I Love A Good Loud Honky Tonk
That Rocks On Friday Night
And Hell Yes I Love My Truck
But I Want You To Know
Honey I Love Your Love The Most

Man I Love How Redman Taste
And Damn I Love My Nascar Race
Any Song Sung By George Strait
Is Country At It's Best

Yes I Love Good Cold Beer
And Mustard On My Fries
I Love A Good Loud Honky Tonk
That Rocks On Friday Night
And Hell Yes I Love My Truck
But I Want You To Know
Honey I Love Your Love The Most

I Love

Yeah I Love Scuffed Up Cowboy Boots
And Broke In Tore Up Jeans
A Four Wheel Drive Eight Point Bucks
And Rocky Road Ice Cream
And Hell Yes I Love My Dog
And Jack D In My Coke
But Honey I Love Your Love

Yeah I Love Your Love yea
I Love Your Love The Most

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Thankful Thursdays


I'm thankful for blogger Katie, who I stole this fantastic blog idea from.

I'm thankful for the moments when my sweet puppy curls up in my lap for a nap.

I'm thankful that the parking meter man didn't come while I was on campus today, since I forgot to put money in the meter even after my husband gave me coins to use.

I'm thankful that sweet Riley is starting to call me "Ah Paish." (Aunt Paige)

I'm thankful for my bloggy world, for I can actually say what's truly on my mind without worrying about my husband's ears falling off.

I'm thankful for Dr. Pepper, for it is keeping me awake today.

I'm thankful that tonight is Big Brother night!

I'm thankful for customers that will come into the office and interrupt boring tasks.

I'm thankful that I had parents that always wanted to help me enough to get me going, and then let me make my own decisions

I'm thankful for Riley's hugs, for they don't happen nearly often enough. :)

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Competition

DISCLAIMER: I always feel the need to put a disclaimer in these types of posts. I am not, in any way, discussing any situation or person in specific in this post. I actually starting thinking about this topic while watching a television show, and it expanded when I logged on to Facebook and saw an interesting "comment" made on a wall post. These are simply my general thoughts, and not to point fingers at anyone.



What is it with people constantly competing with one another? I'm not a very competitive person. In everything, I always seem to just know that there will always be someone else better. I remember being taught by teachers to do MY best and not to worry about others. There will always be someone better. Someone faster. Someone smarter. Someone prettier. Someone sweeter. Whatever the case may be, it's out there.

I never worried about it. I have never seemed concerned with what others could do that I couldn't. Sure, I tried to learn from them to improve myself, but I never felt the true need to surpass someone else's accomplishments. I made my own goals. I stuck to my own plans, and I didn't care who had my same plans and did them better. For the most part, I've been content with my own life. Sure, jealousy and selfishness captures me just like it does everyone else. Once in a while, I catch myself wrapped up in other people's lives, and compare them to my own. Then I remember: We are all on different paths.

I look at my two best and closest friends and see just how different our lives will be. I'm already married, settled with my love and puppy. One is off to an incredible journey of graduate school to study law, and the other is off to New York for a fabulous adventure of making it on Broadway. Does this really make one of us better than the other two? Of course not. It makes us different. We all had different paths we wanted to take. Different accomplishments. Different lives. And I think these differences are what makes us such fantastic friends. We are able to support each other in a way that isn't competitive.


I never felt the need to compete in academics with my friends. Maybe I should have, and then I could have graduated with that 4.0 instead of a 3.5 in high school haha! I can't say that I did my very best in high school. I did just enough to keep my parents satisfied. School wasn't important to me then, but my dancing was. I pushed myself in my dancing. I did well. Sure, I had crappy performances and bad days in class like everyone else, but I was good. There were girls in class better than me, much better. I always just pushed myself to doing the best that I could possibly do, and that always kept me content. I guess you could say that I chose to compete with myself, not others.


I continued competing with myself and not others on into college. Academics became much more important to me, and I began to work harder. I can honestly say that I have no idea if I ever had the highest grade in the class, or the lowest grade in the class on any given assignment. I didn't care. I always pushed for a better grade than I got the last time. In my department, a lot of teachers post grades outside their office doors according to the last 4 digits in your social security number. I always walked by, looked at my grade, and moved along. I never stood there to analyze other scores to see how I measured up. If I was pleased with my performance, then there was no need for me to know how others did. I always competed with myself, and finished my education very pleased with the results.

I see competition in so many aspects. I obviously see it at work, since I'm in a sales position. There is competition among companies, to gain the most customers of good quality. There is competition among agents within our company, to sell the most. There is even competition in our little office, pushing each other to sell the most.


I also seem to find it in so many little areas of life. Sometimes, we even compete in the negative areas of our lives. People always seem to think that they have it the worst. Let me explain by a completely fabricated scenario:
Person 1: Man, I had a terrible day today. I was so busy at work, and I have the worst headache. I'm just ready to head home.
Person 2: You think your day was bad? Try living in my shoes. We were SLAMMED at my job, I have a headache, and a stomach virus. And when I go home, I don't get to rest because I have a big project that I have to do for school. Once I finish that project, I have a huge test to study for.

I know you are laughing. You've seen this happen before. Maybe you have even done this before. Of course, a little friendly competition never hurt anyone. I'm a huge lover of board games and card cames, and always play to win. FUN competitions are great, and can create a lot of laughter.


We (myself included) would be such better friends to others if we could learn to listen to their problems without bringing up our own in attempts make their problems seem obsolete. Regardless of what is on my mind today, it is not as imporant or severe as what is on someone else's mind. When that person wants to share what's on their mind, we should put aside our own thoughts just for a few short moments. Let's make others feel important, and that their lives are worthwhile as well. Why are we always competing in everything else? Why do we always find it necessary to prove to ourselves and others that we are the best? Why can't we just be our best selves, and let that be enough?

Monday, August 24, 2009

Did I Mention that Jennifer Creed is Awesome?

I have been promising you guys a peak at my GORGEOUS wedding album for a while now. Let me do ANOTHER Jennifer and Chris Creed rave and show you how fantastic this album is! We had a great evening with Chris and Jenny just a few short weeks after the wedding to see all the photos, as well as start the discussion of our album! Other than Jenny's amazing eye for creative pictures, I was obsessed with the albums she advertised. Take a look at my very amateur pictures of our beautiful album. Then go on over to Jenny's post to see HER take on our album, and an album of another beautiful wedding just a few weeks after ours.

Without further ado:


I just LOVE the cover. Not only is it a beautiful, strong, soft leather, it is also two of our wedding colors! There were so many cover options, from colors to textures, it was definitely a hard choice! We made this decision quickly, otherwise I would have NEVER made my mind up!

One of my favorite layouts we selected. Jenny created SO many beautiful spreads to be featured in our book, and we had to cut them down to fit within our budget. It was extremely difficult to decide which spreads to keep and which to eliminate, but I think our final selections managed to tell the story through our eyes and Jenny's creative eyes.
A view of the intro spread, and a semi-decent view of how thick these pages are. They are SO thick and sturdy, I love it. When we passed around our album, many tried to take their fingernails to "separate" the pages thinking that they were stuck together. That has been the only downfall to such thick pages: I'm afraid someone will ruin a corner because they are trying to "separate" pages. When someone tries this, it's definitely easy to just throw in there "Isn't it fantastic how thick and sturdy the pages are?" So far, we have been able to prevent damage. I LOVE how the pages lay so flat on either side so that you don't lose a single detail of a photo that is in a crease. You can leave the book open without having to worry about it turning pages FOR you too!

And another view of the thick pages, and probably what ended up being my favorite spread in the album. We have it open to this beautiful page in our foyer, for everyone that enters through our front door to see their fabulous work and designs.

Jenny and Chris, thank you AGAIN for being so fantastic. I must say, I don't think there is another photographer out there that is so excited to deliver your finished product, that they will drive all the way downtown and search for you at a summer Concert in the Park. Believe it or not, that is exactly what Jenny and Chris did. We were already out for the evening, and I received a text from Jenny that our album had been delivered to her house that day. We were leaving town the next morning, and she wanted us to have our album for the weekend and asked us if she could meet us where ever we were at so that we could see. Now, that, ladies and gentlemen, is genuine love for your job, products, and customers.

I have to say, as I've said before: I HATED wedding planning and all the bittersweet lessons that come along with it. The ONLY reason I would ever go through another wedding (vow renewal included) would be to use these two fantastic photographers again. Jenny, I hope that one day I can convince you into some family pictures when that time comes! :)

Not My Child! Monday


I love Not Me Monday! I haven't participated in a while, mainly for lack of creative ideas. Not that I've been perfect, I just couldn't think of ways to make it funny enough. Anyway, head on over to MckMama's blog and join in on the fun! This week is Not My Child! Monday. Since I don't have any children, I chose to do a slightly different rendition and do a Not My Puppy! Monday. Since Fenway is my baby and all.

My puppy is certainly not spoiled. Jason and I would never give a dog so much attention, especially when we know that attention will eventually have to be shared with other little ones in the house (in a few years of course!). So I definitely do not love showing off adorable pictures of his mischievous actions. Of course I'm not using a carnival blog set up to air out the dirty laundry of things children did this week to talk about my puppy! Nope! Not me!

Fenway is not known for stealing laundry. If you change your shirt and drop it to the floor while you put on a new one, of course it will still be right where you left it 15 seconds later. My puppy would definitely not steal your T-shirt, jeans, towel, sock, or any other article of clothing that is within his reach! Nope! Not Fenway! So of course Fenway would never steal one of my flip-flops for his chewing pleasure! And when Momma took away the flip-flop and put it on the coffee table out of reach, he definitely did not just go get the other flip-flop! Once they had both been taken away, he definitely did not try to jump up on the coffee table to try to get them back. Nope! Not Fenway!

Since I've made it very clear that Fenway does not try to steal things that aren't his toys to play with, he definitely did not try to take Daddy's hammer while he was working in the yard today. He did not lay beside it and stare at it intently, and then move to his Daddy's side while Daddy put it into use, and then charge after it as soon as Daddy put it back down to attempt to take it away for playing. Nope! Not Fenway!
And of course, the hammer was not way too heavy for our little guy to drag off, so we were great puppy parents and did not laugh during his attempts. We would never laugh at our little guy!

All right guys! Happy Monday! We all know that I LOATHE Mondays, so let's cross our fingers for a good one! I'm hoping for an exceptionally good week for me and for all of you!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Our Beautiful Patio!

I truly love our beautiful home.  It is absolutely perfect for the two of us, plus a little extra room for an expanding family that will hopefully come in a few years. When we bought our home, it was only a few years old, with not much outdoor decoration.  It made it difficult to decide on how much we liked the outside of the house before we bought it.  We knew how much we loved the inside, but both agreed that the outside was just so "blah."  We decided to jump in feet first, buy the house, and take a stab at what we could do on the outside.

Here's a picture of the backyard before we bought the house.  No, that guy is not Jason.  Actually, I have no idea who it is.  I got this photo off our local PVA site, since I had no "before" shots.  Aside from the lack of patio furniture, this was our back yard until a few weeks ago:
BLAH! So plain!! Ignore the grass too-that's in way better shape now too!

And after all of our hard work, and Jason's finishing touches: TA-DA!
See those blocks of concrete around that larger slab? Jason and I laid those to make the patio bigger, for more room!
My hubby hard at work.
Our pretty new park bench.  I can't wait until that butterfly bush gets much bigger to make that a shady area for reading.
Isn't it pretty? We left that corner open on purpose, to make it all seem to flow together, instead of still having just a "block" of patio.  You can thank my husband on that creativity!
An overall view.  The grill will be on the edge closer to the bench once we put just a bit more sand down to make it more secure.


My boys.  After a long afternoon of finishing touches and chewing sticks.  I'll let YOU decide which boy did what. :)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

"Your Blog is Fabulous!"

I'm so excited! One of my new bloggy friends, Katie, gave me my very first blog award this morning!! Katie and her sister-in-love (isn't that so much sweeter than sister in law?) Lyryn, found my blog just a few weeks ago! Anyway, Katie has a beautiful blog, and really lets everything out there on her blog. It's difficult to put so much emotion and thought into a blog, simply because you don't know who will come across and read it. Katie has definitely passed that fear, and I LOVE reading about her. Here is my first bloggy award!!Cute isn't it?! Once you receive this award, you must follow two rules:

1. You must list 5 obsessions.
2. You must pass this on to 5 other people.

Obsessions
1. I am obsessed with my sweet puppy Fenway.


2. I am currently obsessed with a new TV show I found on TLC called Cake Boss.

3. I am currently obsessed with blueberry bagels with cream cheese from Panera Bread. They are SO yummy, I think I could eat one every morning!
4. I am currently obsessed with my beautiful wedding album by Jennifer Creed. Once I locate my camera with the photos of it, I'll blog it! Promise!

5. I am ALWAYS obsessed with my beautiful niece, Riley. Who wouldn't be? She's BEAUTIFUL!


Now it's my turn to pass this award on to some of my other favorite blogs to visit!! I love reading these beautiful stories by these fabulous women! And in no particular order:
1. Shannie @ FortCox
3. Britney @ DaveandBritPlusOne
5. Lyryn @ Breaking Through
Thanks again Katie! This was so much fun, and it really made my morning!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Adoption

Before I create my next blog about how incredibly fantastic Jennifer Creed is, and share my beautiful album with you-I've got something else to share.

A new bloggy friend of mine recently began a giveaway on her post.  I normally don't participate in giveaways, but this one was for the cause of adoption.  A few of her friends have began a long process to adopt a precious little girl from China.  She opened this giveaway to raise money for the expensive and lengthy process for her friends.  Go over to Lyryn's blog and check it out.  

This giveaway tugged at my heart a little, since Jason and I have always wanted to adopt. Although we would like a couple little ones of our own (SOMEDAY, not anytime soon for those of you that are wondering), we also have future plans to give a child the love that he/she deserved from their biological parents couldn't or wouldn't.  

Anyway, go check it out!

Friday, August 14, 2009

Jennifer Creed

So I haven't posted my HUGE rave over my wedding photographer, Jennifer Creed. She is FANTASTIC!!! I have two posts just for her, one with my favorite photos, and the second gushing over the beautiful wedding album she created for us.

Let's get started shall we?
This is one of my favorite shots of the back of my dress. I LOVE the lighting in this shot, it makes it look so vintage.
There are several of these shots that I just love. We had a beautiful first dance, and she got so many great shots of it!



Oh gosh, I just love these by the willow tree and pond. What a beautiful golf course!!

ULTIMATE favorite. This picture has its own two page spread in my album. Simply beautiful.


Inside the hotel.


In my room right after I got dressed.


I think this shot is just so neat, especially with the train of my dress the way it is.


Look at that sweet man. I love that Jenny's husband, Chris, got this fabulous picture of his first expression after he saw me.

Is he cute or what????

Our rings. I have no idea where she set them up to do this, but it's gorgeous.

Love this photo of the two of us. One of my favorites.
Taking a moment together.

In the lobby of the hotel. Love this one too.
I love this one because he looks so dang hot in it. HAHA!

I never thought the exterior of this hotel was very pretty until Jenny took this shot. How gorgeous is this?!?!
One of my favorites with me and my ladies.

My wonderful hubby helping me jump the fence.

In the glass elevator.
A beautiful shot of my dress in the hotel room.

This one just seems so soft and peaceful to me.


Jason loved his Chucks! :)
One of my favorite ceremony shots.
This shot HAS to make the top 5 favorites. Jenny worked SO hard on this, and so did the wedding party! They literally RAN across the shot, and in circles trying to make this work for us. Fabulous!
Jason just looks so happy in this picture. I love his smile.
This shot is just so dang COOL!! I think she got some weird looks from some of the family while they were watching her work on this shot, but she definitely knew what she wanted to get!

Last but CERTAINLY not least, Jason's favorite shot of the day. He LOVES The Beatles, and the Abbey Road album is his favorite. This is an imitation of the cover of that album. Jason LOVES it.
If there is ANYONE that is engaged, you HAVE to contact her for your engagement photos or your wedding. Jenny and Chris are absolutely phenomenal, and they did everything that we ever could have asked for and more. They worked their tails off all day long to make sure they got every picture they possibly could from the day. Even after I told them that they could head home, seeing the exhaustion in her face, they stayed with us. They stayed with us until the moment we left our reception, and even a few moments after to get some photos of hugs and tears. Check out her website, and CONTACT HER!!!