30 Years in 30 Weeks - edition 23

So, I didn't waste much time being engaged. Before I even went back to school in January for my final semester, Mom and I went to a Bridal Show in Houston. I had my heart set on a dress I wanted, but, of course, once I put it on it looked horrible. Pale girls in white dresses just look like walking lips. I finally found one that I liked and that was it. I returned to San Marcos to finish school and do my student teaching while Mom and her friends used my wedding as their "trial run" for many, many weddings to come.

I really enjoyed my student teaching experience. I worked in the little town of Lockhart with three wonderful teachers. I moved out of my private apartment and in with my friend, Sylvia. I wasn't able to work many hours at HEB that semester, so I needed to save some money some how.

After graduation in May, I packed up and moved back home. For about a month, I worked in Shepherd assisting at the school in the Curriculum Department. Chris wasn't able to attend my graduation because he was in California for some training. He made it home about two weeks before our wedding - just in time for all sorts of stuff to go crazy. One of his second cousins was supposed to perform our wedding ceremony. Suddenly, he decided that he didn't want to do it. UGH. (just so you know, I've still never met this second cousin and really don't even remember his name) At this point, Chris and I were on our way to Odessa (a 10+ hour drive) to pick up his niece so she could be our flower girl. My mom jumped to the rescue (as normal) and found someone to officiate the wedding.

Our wedding day is a total blur to me. This is what I remember:
~It was hot
~I didn't eat all day
~It was hot
~My hair fell and we had to return to the salon to get it fixed again
~It was hot
~Chris' brother was *this*close* to seating his mom and dad together in the church (they were going through a NASTY divorce and this would NOT have been good)
~I was so happy that my friend, Amy and her mom came (see my earlier 30 in 30 posts for the full story)

Did I mention how hot it was? Evidently some squirrels had a little fun chewing some electrical wires connected to the a/c units the night before. And it's Texas. And it's the middle of June. I remember standing at the altar and whispering to Chris, "you blow on me and I'll blow on you." Mrs. Havard said that wasn't appropriate wedding talk, but...IT WAS HOT! ;0) I even have a picture of us praying and you can obviously tell I was blowing down the front of my dress. When we finally made it to the end of the ceremony and it was time for us to kiss, I remember Steve (the best man) telling us to hurry up. Mind you, we're Baptist...the ceremony wasn't *that* long!

So we got married. Chris was stationed at Ft. Hood so we moved to Temple. That fall, I got my first "big girl job" teaching at Rosebud-Lott High School. Never heard of it? Me neither.

Well THAT was a surprise!

So, last night the boys were wrestling on the couch. (Gotta love being the mom to boys, right?) All of a sudden, Caleb jumps up and starts throwing cushions off. I go into full-mom mode quickly saying,
"whatareyoudoing?couchcushionsstayonthecouchnotonthefloor!!!"
Then, he turns to look at me and says, "I'm looking for my tooth!" as I see a tiny bit of blood on his bottom lip. Long story short, we finally found the tooth. No, Cole didn't knock it out (which I kinda thought at first)...I just didn't even know it was loose! At this rate, Caleb will have a full set of adult teeth before he even starts school in the Fall. I'm sure there will be moms/grandmas blogging everywhere saying, "He already has adult teeth! There's no way he's only five! I'm sure he's seven at least." Hopefully we won't be a head taller than the rest of the kids, too.

Seriously...why do we have toys?

Meet our turtle. No, it's not real. Nor is it a safe, plastic toy. It's a garden "ornament" from the dollar store. Turtle came to live with us at our house a few years ago when Caleb HAD to bring him home from Nana and Pop's. Not sure what the attraction is, but now both of my boys have fallen for him. A few months ago, turtle was part of a hide-n-seek game around our house. Caleb would hide him in various locations only to be found later by me. Every time I would find turtle, it would throw Caleb into fits of laughter. I found turtle in locations such as the bathroom cabinet, the dirty clothes hamper, under the sink and in the bathtub. Sadly, turtle has had his share of accidents. If you look closely, he wears a small necklace of super-glue. Yes, turtle has lost his head a time or two. Fast forward to this morning... Cole woke up earlier than Caleb, so we had some extra special playing time. What did we play with, you ask? Obviously, turtle. We also had an old disposable camera (who knows what pictures are on it?), a blanket and some half-used deodorant. We hid turtle under the blanket. We took pretend pictures of turtle. We even had turtle "mell" (smell) the deodorant. Over and over again. Fun times...

If ever you want to send toys to my house, please reconsider. They will quickly be thrown into the pile in Caleb's room otherwise known as the "toy box" in favor of a laundry basket, some coat hangers, an empty water bottle and a super-glued turtle.

More craftiness

Needed a fix on scrapping for myself for a change! (I also finished up the Easter party invitations...but you family-like people have to wait to see those!) You can tell I just grab random pictures to play with...there is no method to my madness. Well, no method on *my* scrapbooks. I've developed a very efficient plan when it comes to stuff I'm paid to do!!

Boys + Mud = Fun

Well, fun for them anyway. It has been raining soooo much lately. Our backyard looks horrible. Cassie (our lab) loves to dig, so we have several mudholes to play in. Plus, I guess it's fertilized pretty well back there because the grass seems to grow at a rate of five times that of the front yard. So, yesterday, Caleb was bugging me to let them play in the mud. I gave in. Enjoy the pics and revel in the fact that you didn't have to clean them up or carry Caleb to the bathtub afterwards.

"All Boy"

I did this layout for a contest at http://www.blueprintsketches.blogspot.com/ The pictures are of Caleb B.C. (before Cole) playing at Mom and Ben's house. I can't believe how much he has grown!!!

I really need to figure out that scan and stitch program to get better pictures of my pages!

We love Aunt Sarah!

Chris had three whole days off this past weekend, so we did some "family stuff" together Friday and Saturday. We were supposed to have field work day at the baseball park on Saturday, but it was raining all day. "Family stuff" quickly translated to doing stuff inside...like wrestling and playing Wii and tearing up the house. Sunday, we left Daddy at home to finish putting locks on the kitchen cabinets (we never had to child-proof with Caleb - he listened) and play on the computer. We drove over to Jan and Jason's to meet the twins. Of course, JR and Caleb had a blast playing together. Cole was entertained by Aunt Margaret (he thinks she's a pretty good playdate!) I could just kick myself for not taking any pictures!!! Instead, I'll show you the framed layout I made for Kyle and Reed...bad picture but you get the idea. There are a lot of "girly" details like stitching and lace, but Jason didn't seem to mind!

From there, we went to stay the night with Nana and Pop while Aunt Sarah was visiting. I love these pictures I got of them on Monday...isn't Sarah's new haircut cute???


Oh...and here's another picture from a recent t-ball practice to show you how much taller Caleb is than the other little boys.

More Cards!

Paper Bag Album - Baby Boy

Okay, so I didn't have to do a diaper cake afterall...they never got the diapers to me! Yay! So, this is the "baby boy" paper bag album I'm sending to work with Chris tomorrow. They are doing the big events for Baby Days then. Cross your fingers that some people will pick up my business cards and start placing some orders for custom stuff!!! For those of you unfamiliar with paper bag albums, these are made from lunch size bags that I stitched together in the middle and then punched holes in the binding for ribbons to make it cuter. There are journaling tags tucked in the open ends (tops) of the lunch bags.

30 Years in 30 Weeks - edition 22

This first picture is of my cousin Kelli, my PaPaw and me at The Lakehouse (and you can see my cousin, Laci, peeking through the door). We were all there celebrating Nanny & PaPaw's 50th wedding anniversary, which was just before my 21st birthday. The Lakehouse was always so much fun. I remember one summer when we were much younger, Kelli and I stayed there for several days and spent a lot of time fishing out in the backyard. Kelli went to step over a perch basket and fell into the water in her new white shoes. I remember she freaked out, but Nanny and I were laughing so hard at her. Thankfully, the water was low that summer and we finally managed to tell her that all she had to do was stand up and she would be okay. EVERYONE was welcome at The Lakehouse. Even though Sarah wasn't technically their granddaughter, Nanny and PaPaw always asked if she would be coming with me and often made sure she got a present from them at Christmas, too.



The second picture is just a random one that my friend, Amanda, took of me one night when we went to Austin before she moved back home to Utah. I chose to include it here because Chris said it was his favorite that I sent him while he was spending his time in Bosnia. He left in February, just a little over a month before my 21st birthday, and returned in mid-September. It was hard "dating" a guy that wasn't even on the same side of the world, but, looking back, I think it was good. He had (limited) access to email, we talked usually once a week on the phone and wrote LOTS and LOTS of letters. My mom even had some of her classes write letters and bake cookies to send to his entire unit. Chris was a good boy and had all of his buddies send thank you letters back, too. :) Since he wasn't here physically, we were almost forced to get to know each other on a deeper level. To most people, he doesn't appear to be a big sensitive guy, but he really is. I feel like I really got to know him through those letters...stuff it would have taken years to find out otherwise.



Like I mentioned earlier, Chris came back in September. He was HUGE. Besides pulling guard-duty, I think the only thing they had to do in Bosnia was work out. I couldn't even reach my arms all the way around his shoulders (and I'm not a petite girl)! Anyway, he came home and I tried my best to fit in time to see him while working 30 hours a week AND taking 21 hours that semester. That Christmas (well, technically one year to the day after we met), he asked me to marry him. We went to eat at Outback Steakhouse for dinner and then drove around looking at Christmas lights. Poor Chris was a nervous wreck the entire time and I was completely oblivious. We finally went back to my apartment to open presents from each other before he finally proposed. I called my friends and they all just said, "Yeah, we knew. Congratulations!" This last picture is us and my little sister, Sarah, in front of the Christmas tree at home. Hmmm...maybe I need to post that picture on the refrigerator for some weight-loss motivation.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Altered frame and some cards

Made the frame and matching card for a swap. The rest are just a few cards I'm sending to my #1 customer.

STICKERMAN and a new helmet

It rained ALL DAY yesterday. We were cooped up in the house except for one small errand that we ran. We were bored. We were tired. We were stir-crazy. We checked the mail and found great Valentines from Nana and Pop. Then, from out of the shadows, a super-hero appeared....(cue super hero music)....STICKER-MAN!!!




Plus, after practice the other day, we stopped on the way home to pick Caleb up a new helmet. The boys love wearing it around the house, except Cole likes to wear it backwards...

30 Years in 30 Weeks - edition 21

Okay...you get two pictures for this episode...mainly to show you how much I worked on ruining my hair (surprisingly, it survived). See, I met some really good friends while I continued to work at HEB. One of them was Amanda (she's the butterfly with the green eyelashes). At first, she thought I was total hick because of my accent, but she quickly got over that and we became very good friends. Okay, back to my point. Amanda changed her hair color as often as she did her underwear. Pretty sure her hair has been just about every color. While I never went for the hot pink or "dreamcicle" orange like she did, we colored my hair a lot, too. The first pic is from a Halloween party in October. The second is from Christmas of the same year. Please note that if you try to lighten hair that has been colored dark auburn, it will turn a lovely shade of orangey-yellow.

I finally moved out of the dorm shortly after I turned 20. I moved to a cute 3-bedroom apartment with Cary and Jaime - two girls that were my suite-mates at the dorm. That was a pretty interesting experience, too. I won't ramble on about that.

That December (the 18th to be exact), I met Chris. We (Amanda, Sylvia - the other girl in the Halloween picture, and my other friend, Lydia) went to a dance hall in Austin. It was called Midnight Rodeo at the time, but was previously Dance Across Texas and then several other names, I'm sure. Anyway. I had absolutely NO interest in talking to guys that night. See, James (the evil ex-boyfriend from my last post) had somehow found my email address and had emailed me from Bosnia and made me feel all angry and stuff a few weeks prior to this night. We were having a good time, just being silly girls and dancing a lot. At one point, I was walking around and suddenly felt my arm being jerked backwards - almost out of socket it felt. I swung around ready to give someone a piece of my mind and it was Chris. He asked me to dance. I took a good look at him and thought that *maybe* he wasn't in the ARMY since he had on a Texas A&M hat. (Most soldiers were pretty easy to identify with their "foreign" ball caps.) So, I said yes and ended up talking and dancing with him the rest of the night. When we left, I gave him my phone number and thought I'd never hear from him. BUT - he called me the next evening and hasn't left me alone since then. We realized that we actually had a lot in stuff in common - the obvious name similarity, both of us were born on the 31st of a month, born the same year, liked the same music, both of us had been raised Baptist, both of us were from Texas (this is very important!), both of our last names started with "G" AND his parents and my dad actually had worked together at some point!

So, yes, I gave in to dating a soldier again. What he failed to mention to me was the fact that he would be leaving for Bosnia in a little over two months. I'm not sure I would have stuck around if I had known that from the beginning. Fortunately for him, he waited until after I was "hooked" to unload that information on me. Oh wait. *HE* didn't tell me...his MOM did! I must say though, I'm glad I stuck around...

Congratulations Tessie and Jamie!

My friend, Tessie, had her new baby boy this morning! Congrats to Tess, Jamie and big brother, Ayden. Welcome to the world, Seth!!!

T-Ball Begins

Caleb had his first t-ball practice yesterday! He was a little anxious about it Friday night, but when he woke up yesterday, he promptly told me that he was ready for practice and excited to meet new friends. It went really well. They ran bases, practiced "the alligator" to field a ball, and hit the ball off the tee. Cole drank some milk and ate dirt. There are ten boys on his team. They were so cute running around the bases in those batting helmets...they looked like bobbleheads! He easily stands 5-6 inches taller than anyone else on his team. We have a few more weeks of practice and then games start on March 8th. Caleb is really looking forward to getting his ROCKIES uniform soon!

Paper Bag Album - Baby Girl

So, "Baby Days" is next week at Chris' store. Like usual, he "volunteered" me to make some diaper cakes as door prizes. (Don't worry - the store gives me all the diapers to make it with) This is the fourth time I've been "volunteered" to do so. Of course, I know nothing of my "volunteering" until after the fact. Truth be known, I'm pretty tired of the diaper cakes. So, I made the executive decision that I will only do ONE cake this time (instead of three like usual) and then do some paper bag baby albums to donate instead. Pretty cheap...I had about a dozen paper bags laying around and I'm only using papers that have been sitting in my stash for a while now. I'm also going to attach a business card on them in hopes that I can get some local scrapbooking customers!

Anyway, here's the first album I've finished...a month-by-month baby girl book. I think I'm living vicariously through others that have/are having a little girl.