Here comes Peter Cottontail....

Hoppin' down the bunny trail, hippity hoppity Easter's on it's way!

I love Easter. I'm not sure if it's the fact that everyone shows up to church (which makes for a nice time) and the weather is always lovely or what, but I just love this time of year.

Yesterday the kids got to do various Easter themed projects/worksheets and one of them was the "Bunnycopter". This is a super cute project to do with kids and my whole class loved it. I loved the fact that it gave me an excuse to let them go outside in the beautiful weather and play for a few minutes during non recess time.





Now that I'm FINALLY finished with this post, Easter has come and gone. I really gotta get better about finishing blog posts when I start them. We had a lovely Easter - church in the morning and spent the rest of the day with Casey's family.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrry Potter!!

I just finished Book 1 and I am totally stoked! It only took me 6 months, but I did it. Now on to Book 2.... hopefully it won't take me 6 months.

Oh and yes I know that I'm WAY behind on this trend, but a good book is a good book.

Why Not Minot?

Here's why not... it's WEIRD up there!

Last Wednesday I flew up to North Dakota to spend some quality time with my cousin Jen, her husband Chris, and my precious God daughter Abby.

(For those of you who don't know, my cousin and I are 2 weeks apart and are like sisters. We grew up very close, spending as much of our free time as possible together. I am very blessed to have her in my life. :) )

The trip up to Minot wasn't too bad. I drove to Dallas on Tuesday evening because I was flying out of DFW because it was several hundred dollars cheaper than flying out of Houston and I'm glad I did because it gave me an opportunity to hang out with my friend from high school - Sally. Sally and I were SUPER best friends in high school, lost touch for a couple of years in college, but are doing a much better job keeping in touch these days. We didn't do much but watch Bride Wars and eat animal crackers, but it was a fun night just getting to hang out. She is an absolute SAINT for driving me to the airport - love you Sal! My flights (DFW - to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Minot) went off without a hitch (except for the strange stares I got from the Mennonite population in Minnesota) and I finally made it to Minot. I was SO happy to see my favorite cousin and my beautiful God daughter. Abby turned 2 on March 5th and is SUCH a smart little girl. I am so proud to be her "AnSah".

The reason for my trip was to celebrate Abby's birthday and boy did we ever. Anyone watch iCarly? Well it looked like iCarly threw up all in my cousins house (we went a little crazy with the decor), but it was absolutely great because Abby LOVES "iCarlysam". We had a blast opening gifts and eating cake and I was sad to leave my family, but not so sad to be leaving the weird, judgey, cold, boring, Great Plains. (Disclaimer: If you are from the Great Plains or Midwest, I am sorry, but I just don't care for that area of the country). Here are a few picture of the party:

Jen and I posing as Carly and Sam. If you don't watch this show, you really should. Just watch one episode - it's so cute and funny!

Me and the Birthday Girl who seemed quite distracted by 6,536,294 gifts she got.
For the story about the bandaid on her head, see below.

At least Abby can tell how much of a princess I am - she decided I needed not one, but TWO princess crowns! So cute!

Blowing out her big girl candles!

Decorations

So about that large bandaid on that pretty little girl's head: The night before I flew to N.D. Abby was running through the house and fell into the corner of a wall and split her forehead wide open. 6 stitches and a dented wall corner later (yes the corner - with the metal part!) she had this lovely bandage on the entire time I was there. Ohhhh kids.

My flights back were not bad at all except for the fact that I had only got 1.5 hours of sleep before getting on the plane. By the time I got to Dallas and drove back to Houston, I was basically a zombie. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do to push through and finish that drive, but I made it thanks to my mom staying on the phone with me the entire way home. Love you Mom!!

And that.... was Spring Break 2010. Back to work (and now that I've finally finished this post that I started a week ago - I've already been back at work for a week!), but only 2.5 more months of school left!!!! WHOOO HOOO!!!

Alice & Jennifer

Wow has this been a busy weekend! Friday Casey and I decided to take ourselves on a date (when you join bank accounts you really can't take each other on dates because we're both paying for it) to see the new Alice in Wonderland movie and have a bite to eat at a new pizza place in town. Unfortunately we had no idea how popular this new place is and didn't allow ourselves time for a 45 minute wait so we ended up eating at Which Wich? instead. All I can say about Which Wich? is that there are WAY too many options for someone as indecisive as I am, but they do make an awesome chocolate malt.

We finally made our way over to the movie theater and even though we were both skeptical about the new Alice movie, it surprised us both. You see, in our humble opinion, you can only make so many movies where Johnny Depp plays the same "tortured" character and Tim Burton throws his "crazy" spin on the directing. Tim Burton should just admit that he is in love with Johnny Depp and get over it. <--- joke. Anyway - we were very impressed by the actress (Mia something) who played Alice so it was a nice movie all in all.

On Saturday we both woke up early because Casey had to work that morning and I had a ton of stuff to do. I ended up dropping him off at work at 8am so that I could pick him up at noon and we could head straight to Longview for Jennifer Mawer's wedding. After dropping him off I got my nails done and went to Bed Bath & Beyond to get a gift for the lovely couple. When I finally got home I was surprised to see that it was almost 11 - how does 3 hours go by THAT quickly?? I am realizing that the older I get the faster time goes by. I always heard my parents say that, but I guess Saturday morning I really realized how true it is. When you're 5 years old, 5 minutes seems like an eternity, when your 25 it feels like 5 seconds. Anyway, I rushed over to get Casey and off to Longview we went.

Jennifer & Carl's wedding was by far the MOST fun wedding we have been to together. Jennifer looked ridiculously gorgeous and Carl could not have looked happier. The wedding & reception was a perfect mix of elegance and party atmosphere and we were so glad we got to hang out with all of our friends that we don't get to see often enough. So here's one wedding down, 3 to go this year! As soon as I get some pictures (I forgot my camera, ughhhhh!!) I will post them!

Today we got up and went to have breakfast with my Dad and then did a little shopping around Longview and headed home. We stopped through Nacogdoches and drove around campus for a while and talked about how much we missed the place and how much it had changed. I was surprised to see that they are tearing down Garner apartments! It kind of brought a tear to my eye because (and you know this if you went to SFA) Garner is such a big part of SFA history and tradition with the purple light at the top and everything. Anyway, I guess I was just feeling nostalgic and it made me a little sad to see such a big SFA symbol being torn down.

All in all it was a fabulous weekend and Casey and I are looking forward to all of the other weddings this year, especially our own! Hope everyone has a great week, here's a shout out to all of my fellow teachers who are on Spring Break! Whoo hoo!!!

Why can't anyone make a decent looking bridesmaid dress?

O. M. G. Okay maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but I have literally been looking for bridesmaid's dresses since November and I just simply can't find anything that I'm even 90% happy with. This afternoon Jessica and I went to 3 different places to try on bridesmaid dresses and came out with 3-4 maybes... and these were VERY big maybes.

Does anyone know of any cute bridesmaid dresses that are under $300? I have tried looking at department stores as well but since my bridesmaids are spread out all over, I'm not sure I can go that route. Here are my prerequisites:

*Must be knee length or shorter- I absolutely refuse to put my bridesmaids in anything tea-length.
*Must come in Black, Medium or Dark Grey, or a Dark Indigo Blue color.
*I love pockets
*I also love flower detailing
*I hate anything shiny- so that takes away taffeta, satin, or silk charmeuse as an option.
*I really really want it to be re-wearable. We've all got enough ugly bridesmaids dresses in our closet, my girls don't need any extra one.

Okay so if you could keep an eye out for me - that would be AWESOME!

I just tried to post pictures of them and for some reason my iphone saved them as a weird format and blogger isn't letting me post. Oh well, they weren't that great anyway.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Spring is in the air and we have had some of the nicest weather that I've seen in Houston in a loooooooooong time. I don't even mind the occasional rainy day right now because I am so SICK of cold, cloudy days. With Spring coming I have been in the mood to get organized and clean, clean, clean. I recently decided that I had WAY too many ill fitting, stained, holey, boring, old (insert another icky word) clothes that I NEVER wear that are just cluttering my closet and my mind. Last night I spent 3 hours in my closet doing nothing but trying dresses on (I had over 50) and restyling the ones I was iffy about. (*Some of you may think that 50 is a ridiculous number of dresses for one person to own, but some of these dresses I had been hanging on to since high school thinking that I would wear them sometime- yeah right!*) I found myself daring to put pieces and colors together that I normally never would have and it felt amazing.

For those of you who don't know, fashion is a very big part of my life. While some people enjoy creating clothes by sewing them, I am much more of a stylist than a creator. Not to brag on myself, but I really do have a knack for putting pieces together that most people wouldn't and also for styling people according to their body type and what flatters them most. I think that's why I've always done well when working in retail stores.

Okay - slight subject change. I have been doing some real soul searching lately and trying to decide what matters most to me in my life other than the big 3 -(Faith, Family, Friends). I have always considered myself very worldly and a "Jill of all trades" but throughout my life I have bounced from one hobby/activity to another (softball! golf team! speed skating! theatre! photography! high fashion! gardening! cooking! baking! running! weight lifting! scrapbooking! ETC!) and never stopped to take an inventory of these things and decide which ones I had time for AND truly enjoyed. Because I love or have loved all of these things, and don't have enough time in my life to do all of them, I need to pare them down a bit. Fashion is one of those things that I am incredibly passionate about and it truly is my artistic release. So I've decided to keep that one. Fashion editing and styling is something I can do at my own leisure and right here in my own closet, I just have to stop being lazy and start planning my outfits a little better. I won't be focusing on fashion in this blog, but expect the occasional picture when I get really excited about an outfit.

Speaking of exciting outfits- this was my Valentine's Day dinner outfit and I meant to post it but kept forgetting. I am not sure why I loved this outfit so much other than the fact that I love that color blue and I love these tights. I really loved my makeup that night as well, so I took a close up picture of my face.

Now that I'm off my fashion soapbox I'm off to Crush Wine Bar for my friend Krystal's 21st as well as our friend Graham's 28th birthday. It feels weird celebrating someone's 21st when I'm about to be on the downside of 30, but here goes!

I am a crummy blogger.

Here's why - I have three - yes three - blog entries that are halfway written that I have yet to finish. A lot of the time you will see me post something and if you look at the date stamp on the blog entry it could be a week to 2 weeks old because I just let it sit and forgot to finish it.

For those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 18 and have been on and off of medication for it ever since. Over the past 2 and a half years I decided to try to see how life would be without it and I came to the realization a few weeks ago that my life at this point is just not manageable without the medication.

Does this make me feel like an incredibly weak person? Yes.

Do I feel a million times better about myself and my life when I'm on the medication? Yes.

It's a Catch 22 for me - because I hate the fact that my brain can't fully function without this medication, but when I'm on it I feel 100% more organized, put together, and productive. It's something that I will probably struggle with for the rest of my life, but it's worth it to me to take the medication because my life runs so much more smoothly with it.

For those of you who don't know much about ADHD - it's not just the "crazy kid" who's running around tearing stuff up and can't pay attention for 2 minutes. It's a lot more complicated -especially when you're an adult. Casey found this article on MSN one day and when I read it I literally cried. I had never found the words to explain ADHD to other people or explain my struggles with it and how it can affect the relationships a person has. This article really explains it well. It describes my life perfectly. I am the consummate example of someone with ADHD - I am constantly struggling to stay on top of things, I walk into a room to get something and see something that I meant to do and end up doing that for an hour and not doing what I originally came to do.

Anyway - I just thought I would share this with whoever (if anyone) reads my blog. Expect 2-3 blog entries that have been half written to be finished in the next day or two and finally posted.