Forgotten Blog

No I have not forgotten about my blog. Yes, I have been incredibly busy and it got put on the back burner. So where to begin....

Last time I blogged was January 10th and a lot has happened since then. Needless to say this may be a long blog with several pictures.

I will start with Jayci's birthday. It was January 25th. She turned 3 years old. I cannot believe that my baby is already 3. She is growing so much. Here are a few points about her right now.

• She weighs 32 lbs and 37in tall!
• She loves the color purple.
• She can say her ABC's and count to about 15.
• She recognizes some of her letters.
• Knows all her colors
• Recognizes some shapes.
• Knows right and left
• Can dress herself with some help.
• Doesn't stop talking unless she is asleep!
• Can do a back flip on the bar of the swing set (thanks to her Daddy).
• Can swing herself HIGH!
• Likes talking on the phone for real or on a fake phone.
• Loves her Daddy like crazy.
• Has best friends and can tell you all about them.
• Knows where she lives.
• Can tell you if you are not going the right way to somebodies house.

Over all she is a pretty good kid. She likes to push our buttons and see how much she can get away with. We are just trying to stay on top of it. Here are some pics from her birthday party. 1) Birthday Cake (Of course it and everything else was purple!), 2) Everybody doing Marble Art, 3) Jayci trying to bust the pinata' I made, 4) Elijah (my future nephew) & Gunnar (the one that actually busted the pinata') wearing their star sun glasses.

Visit from Mimi
My mom came for a week back in March. We had some fun but it mainly rained the whole time she was here . One day we had planned to go to the zoo but since it was raining we could not. Instead we went to a "different zoo" a.k.a Pet's Mart. Ha! Jayci loved it anyway! I'm glad she is still young enough to trick her into things like that. Pictures from that: 1) My mom and Jayci, 2) Me and Jayci, 3) Jayci and Kate after painting pottery

Easter

OK well honestly I did not take one picture of us on Easter Day so you are just going to have to believe that we all looked Great! Ha-Ha. I do have some pictures of the day before Easter when we dyed eggs and went to my Granddad's house. 1) Jayci dying eggs when she was just 1 year old 2) Jayci dying eggs now that she is 3. Notice the obsession with stickers still exists. 3) Jayci and her Great Papaw. 4) Jayci and cousin Parker. This is the only picture that she isn't looking at him like he is crazy or something. Ha! 5) Great Aunt Dot and Jayci playing in the bubbles in the sink. She played for like 30 minutes in those bubbles. Now I just need to teach her how to wash dishes and I'll be set!

Just some favorite pics:
1) Jayci swinging all by herself, 2) Jayci in her new raincoat, boots, and Princess hat, 3) Me with my big 3-year-old 4) Our Princess Eggs

OK well sorry for such the long blog. Hopefully, it will not be this long again before I get to blog again. Summer is coming soon so that is a great thing. I am out this summer so that means more time for my family and friends! Woo-hoo!! On the school note it is going good. I'm still there just ready for Summer and then Senior year. Just 1 year to go. I am so excited. I guess everything else is good around here. Oh yes, I am still running. Have lost about 30-35lbs total. Yea me! Getting better at running am still slow but am at least still going. OK well that is it for now!

Resolution update

OK well week one is down! Woo-hoo! I have learned 2 things about myself this week. 1) When I am motivated I will get stuff done no matter how late it is, and 2) I HATE running. Seriously, there is nothing about it that I like; especially in the cold. I got up this morning, still motivated as ever, and decided I would go to the park to run. OK really it wasn't morning it was more around 11:30 or so. Well I start by walking a bit then decide OK I came to run and that is what I am going to do. And that is what I did until my lungs felt like they were collapsing every time I took a breath in. I have never been one to run and I don't think now is the time to start. I think I will stick to the video's I bought a few months ago. At least I somewhat enjoy them and really they work out lots of muscles and parts at one time. Oh and I don't feel like I'm dying every time I try to take a breath in. Maybe one day I will try the whole running thing again...like when it is warmer!

Next week will be the real challenge though. I start back to school on Monday and next week is especially busy. I also now have taken on, not 1, but 2 jobs. Yes they are both pretty much when I want to work or when they need me but still. Well, hopefully it doesn't overwhelm me too much and it will all be great!

Motivated

I'm going to start by saying that I have never been one to really like to exercise. However, with that being said, I have made the decision to start exercising on a regular basis. Not like a New Year's resolution b/c I always make those and break them in less than a week. This is more like a life change resolution. I made the decision to lose weight a couple of months ago and so far have been successful. I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months! So now that I have lost that I want to be able to keep it off, lose more, and not have a lot of flabby skin from weight loss!

For the longest time I have been using the excuse that I don't really have time. Between a husband, a 3-year-old daughter, and nursing school that doesn't leave much spare time. But just recently a friend from church has motivated me to do better (you can find her blog at www.kamamedders.blogspot.com). If you read her blog you will notice she is stay-at-home mother of 5 married to the minister of our church. Now I have never been very competitive, and I am not about to start, but I realized my excuse is just that, an excuse. I can take 30-45 minutes a day (or every other) to spend exercising. It will more than likely make me feel better about myself, sleep better at night, feel better during the day, & finally, the most important to me, have more patients and understanding toward my child and husband. Exercise will give me a way to release my stress and it will also release good endorphins to make me feel better all around. These are both things I said 2 months ago to some patients at a behavioral hospital. Finally decided to listen to myself.

I have started this journey by making myself a schedule for the next 2 months. I put it in my phone with a reminder and everything. After 2 months, I will reevaluate and switch it up if needed or just leave it the same. I also have written (typed) it out for the world to see. Hopefully this will work for me. I have started things like this before and just lack motivation to keep going. So if you see me and think about it ask me how it is going. I would hate for someone to ask and have a bad report. Oh and I will try to blog every now and then about how it is all going.
OK well that is it for now. Good luck to all that have made New Year's resolutions or if you are like me a Life Change Resolution!

Happy New Year!

Seeing as it is a new year now, I thought I should blog about December. It was just a busy month. I finished my first full semester of nursing school and passed! Jay's sister, Ashley, got married. Jayci was the flower girl in her wedding. She made it most of the way down the aisle clinging to Christian, Jay's brother, and not throwing flowers. Oh well she looked really cute.

Here are some pictures from the wedding. The first on is just of Jayci. Then there is one of all of us with the newly married, Dustin and Ashley Rhodes. And the last one made me tear up the first time I really looked at it. It is of Jayci dancing on Jay's feet. It really made me think about how much she is growing up. I mean she will be 3 this month. I know I have a few years before she gets married or anything but it just made me think about how fast time can go.

Oh yes and Christmas! It was really fun. This is the first year that Jayci has been really excited about presents. Last year it was fun but she was still more interested in the boxes than the toy itself. Needless to say she racked up on plenty of toys. The car she got from her Papaw and Nana. She is still not really sure about it. She likes to look at it and maybe even sit in it. But actually driving it is a different story. The other pictures of us on Christmas Eve in our "jammies", as Jayci calls them. This was something that my parents used to do. We could open one gift on Christmas Eve and it was always Christmas pajamas. This is something Jay and I decided we would start too. I mean who couldn't use a new pair of pajamas!?!

Well I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I know I am looking forward to 2009. We start the year out with Jayci turning 3 at the end of the month and then who knows from there. Just have to wait and see!

Busy, Busy

Well it is the end of the semester (finally) and boy have we been busy. Not only am I busy with school but with family too. My mom came in from Illinois with Greg (her boyfriend), Allie (Greg's youngest daughter), and Alex (Greg's nephew). We had a lot of fun. They got here on Friday and that night we went to Cajun's Wharf for my mom's birthday. I was really worried that Jayci would act out while we were there; however, she proved me wrong. Well, honestly she was asleep for the the first part of dinner; she woke up right about the time the food came! But for the last half of dinner she was excelent!!! She stayed with my mom that night at the hotel and LOVED every minute. She wanted to go back the next night too. Oh and before dinner my mom, Allie, Jayci, and I went and got our nails done! It was so fun just hanging out with the girls. Jayci was sooo cute she thought she was such a big girl getting her nails painted. Saturday we just layed around for most of the morning, which was great. That afternoon we went to Playtime Pizza. If you haven't been there you definitly should go. Just make sure you have plenty of money to go through b/c it can get expensive. Well, maybe it was a little more for us since we spent 5 hours there. Yep I said 5 hours...I would recommend 2-3 hours at most. But we had a really good time. Here are some pictures of us getting our nails done and at Cajun's.

These are pictures from Playtime Pizza. They had one of those fun photo booths and we took full advantage...As you can tell Jayci Loved it (Actually we all did)!!

The next weekend my friend Celeste and I took our kids to The Wonderplace. It is a bit pricey (mainly b/c you have to pay for the adults too) but it was a lot of fun. Because it is a little pricey I was going to opt out of going but my very good friend Celeste offered to pay so I said ok. We got there and told the lady we had 3 kids and 2 adults. OK wait let me say this when you go to The Wonderplace as a family you get the second adult free. So the conversations continued like this:

Lady: So it's all together?

Celeste: Yes...all together (b/c she was paying)

Lady: Like together b/c well I just didn't know if...

Celeste: Yea all together...

So the lady went ahead and rang it all up, giving us the 2nd adult free. Afterwards she kept telling Celeste how hard it must be to have 3 kids to chase after!!! Apparently (we think) the lady thought we were "TOGETHER." Oh well we got one adult Free!!! Anyway, here is a picture of Jayci doing a puppet show and buying groceries and Hunter playing with the big car center. Nathan was too busy running from one thing to another so I didn't get a picture of him.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know I plan on it!!!

Pumpkins & Pictures

A couple of weeks ago Jayci's Aunt Cori bought her a little pumpkin. Last Friday, when Jayci and I were hanging out, I thought it would be a good idea to carve it. I remembered how much fun I used to have carving pumpkins. I guess Jayci is a little young still because I did most of the cleaning out and carving. Well on Monday of this week I suppose Jay really wanted to carve a pumpkin and talked Jayci into wanting to carve a pumpkin too. So he went and bought a bigger pumpkin to carve. This time she still did not want to "clean" the pumpkin out. We finally talked her into at least sticking her hand in the pumpkin for a couple of pictures. There are pictures from both of our pumpkins below. The big pumpkin in the picture is a chiminea that Jay's mom, Brenda, bought us from the place she works. We love all the fun stuff she brings home.

The pictures below are some that my good friend, Kasie, took at the park. She took a lot more but I couldn't put all of them on here. In the last picture is Kasie's (and Kevin's) daughter, Kate. Jayci and her are so cute playing together (when they are not fighting). Jay and I are so blessed to have this family as friends. Thank you Kasie for taking such beautiful and timeless pictures of Jayci.

Updates

Well I finally got a free moment and decided to update our blog. There are several things that have gone on since my last update. The bottom picture is of from when my mom visited a couple of months ago. The picture of Jayci and Parker (the little boy) is from a visit at my pawpaw's house. It was a very fun day. Parker and Jayci played so good together. I love that she has someone to play with. Another picture is of her and her papaw. She spent the night with her Memaw and Papaw. They took her to Sunday in the Park with church. I also took Jayci to the fair on Monday with her Papaw and Uncle Christian. She was in a major culture shock at first. But after the Funnel Cake, Petting Zoo, and a Corn Dog she was ready to go. It was so much fun seeing her have so much fun.

Anyway, School is going good. I start my psych. rotation on Tuesday. I am actually more excited than I thought I would be about this rotation. Well I am a little nervous too but still. I think I will be ok.

Sorry if this post was a little sporadic like. It is like midnight and even though I can't sleep I can't really think about what to write either. Hopefully, I will do a better post sooner than it took me to do this one.








Jayci has decided that she is a "Ladybug Princess."