Blast from the Past

I used to dream about being a twin, cheerleader, and driving a black Jeep Wrangler.  And have a hot, blonde, quarterback boyfriend.  Why?  Because I wanted to be Jessica Wakefield.  So, imagine my excitement to find out that Francine Pascal is bringing Sweet Valley High to life again, but catching up with Jessica and Elizabeth ten years later.  So.freaking.excited.

Sweet Valley Confidential is due out in early 2011.  The publisher is doing a huge social media push on Twitter and facebook, and has been featured on CNN.com and PerezHilton.com, just to name a few.  I think this book is going to be HUGE and I hope it lives up to the earlier books.  It's going to be the first one added to my 2011 reading list.

I am currently looking into how to purchase a Team Jessica shirt and am sad I didn't see this giveaway before it was over!  

There was an interesting Tweet over the weekend, discussing Team Baby Sitters Club vs. Team Sweet Valley High.  My sister was a BSC and I was a SVH.  I don't think the two are even comparable.  :)  What was your favorite?

Weekend Wrap Up + Misc

First off, a big thank you for all of those who sent well wishes after my rant last week.  My day did get better.  Especially when I read, saw and heard different stories from others that made me feel like such a beyotch for complaining.  I know everything is relative, but hearing the hardship others have faced and are facing, a crying / whining preschooler is not so bad.  

Now to skip into the weekend activities - it was packed full.  Friday I ended up taking a 1/2 day off because I had so much to do before my Women's League Board retreat and bestie's shower.  I did have time to run by The Limited and Ann Taylor Loft AND successfully avoided the Dairy Queen that is in the mall.  I have had a craving for a Pecan Pie Blizzard and was very proud of myself for not grabbing one as I was walking by.  

Friday night, the Board met at Painting with a Twist for a team building / fun outing.  I wasn't the biggest fan of the picture that was picked for us, nor was I a huge fan of how mine turned out.  I am a bit of a perfectionist about things like this and I don't like to feel rushed.  It was all in fun, though.  I think I may go back again, but I would definitely pick a different picture next time.  Here I am with mine:

Afterward, we headed over to the Frisco Bar.  I had never been and didn't exactly know what to expect for a bar in suburbia.  :)  It was fun - there was a live band and there were a ton of people there.  Here I am with a couple of the other girls:

Saturday we had to be at our meetings bright and early.  It was a long, but productive day - we got a lot planned for the coming year and are doing a lot of fun, new things.  Afterward, I had to visit my BFF, the Versa Tan, and find white flowers for the shower.  I had no idea how hard it would be to find white flowers!  Four stores later I had enough for the three arrangements I was making.

Sunday was the shower, which took up pretty much the whole day.  Ava went with me because she had been reassured that there would be tons of babies there, plus she is slightly obsessed with bestie's belly and when the baby is going to come out.  I'm going to do a separate post on the shower because I have tons of pictures and I am waiting for a few more from one of the other hosts.  Here's one of Ava.  She was being such a little creaper when I was taking pictures.  It was very funny!

We picked up Bueno on the way home and ate and relaxed.  It was nice to be able to sit for a few minutes!  Can I talk about last night's True Blood for a second?  OMG - gory, gory, gory!  I think I had my eyes closed for 60% of the show.  Yuck!  It was really good but I could really do with about 1/2 the amount of blood that I caught a glimpse of.

This morning I woke up and could have sworn it was Sunday.  Realizing it was Monday was very disappointing!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! 

Weekend Wrap Up

This weekend actually ended up being a pretty uneventful one, which is nice because the next two weekends are going to be so busy!  

Friday night we had dinner with husbie's parents at On the Border.  Afterward we came home and hit the sack pretty quickly.  Last week was completely draining so by the time we put the kiddos to bed, I was more than ready to be in bed myself!

Saturday morning I did some laundry and then we went to the pool.  We stayed for a couple of hours and it was so flipping H-O-T!  We stayed in the water most of the time, it was simply too hot not to be.  We were planning on going to our friends' for our monthly Steak Night until we woke Ava up from her nap and she was running fever and looked like she felt like poo.  We made the decision for me to stay home with her.  Ava and I had a nice, quiet evening.  We hung out on the couch and watched movies and after I put her to bed, pups and I laid in bed.  I'm still trying to finish Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin.  It is a great book, I can't wait to do a review on it, but I am still a ways from finishing it.  I also discovered Sirus radio's 90's on 9.  How have I not known about it before now?  It is fab!  Husbie got home and had brought me my fillet, Kristin's a-mazing potato casserole and a brownie.  He brought his computer down and worked in bed while I read.  It was fun talking about all of the 90's music we grew up with.  This made us feel very old!

Yesterday I got all of our laundry done and a lot of stuff done for bestie's shower next weekend.  I cleaned the house for awhile and then needed an escape from all of that domestic bliss, so I went to Nordstrom to pick up my Lancome gift presale (woo hoo!).  It was insane in there, which is exactly why I do my anniversary sale shopping online!  I made dinner and got little bit to bed so we could watch True Blood.  I have to admit that I end up looking away for 50% of the show.  It is a bit lot gory, but I really like the storyline!  It took me awhile to get into it, but husbie got me hooked on it during the first season.

Ava did not sleep well at all last night.  One of us was up with her almost every hour last night so I am completely dragging today.  Apparently she is feeling much better today and has hardly coughed.  I talked to her a few minutes ago and she sounds very spunky, so here's hoping she continues to feel better AND we all get a better night's sleep tonight!

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!  

Oh, lastly, welcome to my new followers!  I hope you enjoy reading my blog and I look forward to reading yours, too.  I am going to do a special giveaway when I reach 25, so stay tuned.  :)

Truly Outrageous!

My very first purchase with my own money was a Jem doll.  All you you early 80's girls should remember Jem.  I went to Eckard Drugs (CVS has since bought them out) where my brother worked to buy my Jem doll from him while he was working.  I loved everything about her from her pink hair to her pink lame' outfit.  If I remember correctly, mine lit up and maybe did some other jazz.  Regardless, she was awesome!


Last week I was on a hunt to find a Princess Peach Halloween costume for Ava (strange choice, but she is obsessed with her) and looky, looky what I found:

That's right, it is a Jem Halloween costume!  Ever since we moved to suburbia and had baby #2, husbie and I haven't been on the Halloween going out circuit.  That might change this year!  I really want to be Jem.  I am sure it is super dorky, but I don't care.  Austin was trying to think of something he could wear to go with, but the only thing we could find was him being Jem's manager, and I'm not sure people would get that.  I know Halloween is a ways off, but it's never to early to start planning.  

Any ideas? 

   

Weekend Wrap Up

Finally we got to see some sun yesterday!  It seems like it has rained for weeks in Dallas, and it basically has.  Friday I really wanted to take the girls to the pool but it was...raining!  So, we went to open bounce at Pump It Up instead.  Wow.  There were probably 50 kids and 30 moms crammed into the bouncy house room.  It was tight and there were definitely 'traffic' problems, but the girls had a great time and wound up exhausted.  Afterward, we headed over to one of my favs, Hobby Lobby, to get stuff to make crafty wall art for the girls' playroom.  I had already picked up all of my crafty wall art supplies when we cut down an aisle and saw the cutest hot pink and lime green wall art - all 50% off!  So, I ditched my crafty wall art project and grabbed pink and lime pieces instead.  Here are a few of the ones we got:

Haley and I got everything hung up while Ava was napping and I proceeded to clean the entire house (to promote forgiveness of my Hobby Lobby spending from husbie).  We had to meet him at Hertz after he dropped off his rental car late Friday afternoon.  He came home to sparkling clean house and his favorite dinner ready-to-go.  (I'll have to post the recipe for my quick and easy chicken enchillada soup later, it is yummy!)  He did forgive the Hobby Lobby spending and thought the playroom turned out really cute.  Right before dinner we gave him his early birthday surprise.  He LOVED it and was totally surprised.  We relaxed the rest of the evening, which was really nice.

Saturday bestie came over while Austin went to play golf and we went to go check out baby things.  We had a funny moment that I completely forgot she was preggo until she turned around and whoa!  There was the belly!  ;)  We had fun hanging out and gabbing.  She brought me my birthday present, a super cute Vera Bradley towel and cosmetics bag.  I love VB!

Later that night, my brother and SIL, a nephew and my sis came over for dinner and games.  I found a really great roasted chicken recipe to make since our grill decided to go out on Saturday.  Grr.  I'll have to post that one, too!  

Sunday we saw the sun!  It was amazing.  We went to the pool for a few hours.  I love our neighborhood pool - they have a really nice set up that allows husbie and I to lay out right next to the kid pool so we are super close to Ava but can still have some relaxation time.  Haley is a super swimmer and had 5-6 of her friends there to play with in the big pool.  I wore this Victoria's Secret swimsuit.  I did have to exchange the bottoms.  I was right between sizes, so I decided on these.  I like bottoms with ties so there less chance of the 'muffin' effect.  Lol!

As you can tell, Ava really loves her new fishie floatie!

We pretty much hung out and didn't do a lot for the rest of the day, Haley and I watched a couple of my old dance competition tapes that my mom had found.  It was fun to see all of our very 90's costumes!  

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

So completely cannot wait...

...for husbie to get back from his work trip today so I can give him this:

I am soooooo excited!  It's an early birthday present, which I was going to hold until the day in August, but his BlackBerry is crapping out and his frustration ith it is growing rapidly.  And, I am NEVER able to surprise him.  So, this will totally throw him off.  :) 

July 4th Weekend Wrap Up

Our July 4th weekend was pretty laid-back, we never felt like we were rushing from place-to-place, which was nice.  I was out of the office Friday as we were attending my husband's step-grandfather's funeral.  Papaw lived a long life and died in his sleep last weekend.  We were very sad to hear of his passing but it is, I think, somewhat comforting to know that he went so peacefully.  The service was very nice - one of the grandchildren did a great job with the eulogy - telling funny stories about Papaw, many that I had never heard before.  The burial was quite a bit South of here (about 100 miles) and driving back up 35E, we saw some interesting landmarks.  We stopped at Dairy Queen for a little Blizzard snack (sorry, carb desert!) and this is what we saw:

This used to be some kind of arcade at one point.  It is closed now, otherwise we totally would have gone in to check it out.  Right next to it was this:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is a caterpillar made out of domes.  Apparently whatever town we were in has some sort of 'Dome Institute.'  I'm going to have to learn more about this!  I'm not sure if there was anything inside the caterpillar or not, but I really want to find out.  I'm going to try to decipher the website on the side (thank you, crap BlackBerry camera).

Friday and Saturday we contended with the rain leftover from Hurricane Alex.  We had tickets to the Frisco RoughRiders, our minor-league baseball team, and were taking my parents.  About 30 minutes before we were planning on leaving to head to the ballpark, a huge deluge of rain came through.  So, we waited it out and headed to one of our favorites, Kenny's Burger Joint, to have dinner while they finished the first game of their double-header.  We headed over to the park half-hoping that the game would be delayed to Sunday, but no such luck.  But, as soon as husbie went to buy us ponchos, it stopped raining!  :)  Go figure.  Here's Ava all wrapped up:

They did a fireworks show after the game, which was really impressive.  Ava loves fireworks like a fat kid loves cake, so she was super pumped.  We finally got home around midnight and let her do a couple of sparklers before bed.  Considering her usual bedtime is 8:30PM, she did exceptionally well staying up that late!

The rain finally subsided by Sunday morning.  Husbie earned mega brownie points by letting me sleep in until 11 AM!  I don't remember the last time I've slept that late.  I battled major sinus issues all weekend, so I definitely appreciated getting some extra zzz's.  We went over to our neighborhood pool for a bit, then after Ava's nap we headed to hang out with husbie's parents and go to Rockwall's fireworks celebration.  It had cooled off just enough in the evening to the most pleasant temperature I remember on the 4th in Dallas.  Socke Monkie joined us for the festivities.

Yesterday we took it easy and hung out around the house.  I worked on some of the decorations for bestie's baby shower and we also went to my parent's for lunch and swimming.

It was a great weekend!  I'm super pumped about having a 3-day work week and having a sibling cook-out and game night at our house next weekend.  Just have to get through the next 3 days!

Happy Monday Tuesday!

COHEN