Dear Santa,

I am realizing, as it is 2 days before Thanksgiving, that it is time for me to make my Christmas list!  I have had a mental list, up until this point, but I know I am going to (if I haven't already) forget to mention things to those involved until it is too late!  So here goes:

UGG Cardy Classic Knit Boots in Black

I really wanted these last year, but had lots more important things on my Christmas list that were prioritized above them.  I love to wear boots in the winter and end up wearing my leather boots all the time.  I would really like to have something more casual to wear on the weekends and these would be perfect.

The Entire Victoria's Secret Clothing Catalog

Thanks to WorkWear Wednesday, this one probably goes without saying.  I love VS's clothing, so cute and so affordable!  Their loungewear is super cute - the Steelers tee is definitely on my list and I really like the sweatshirt & sweatpants on the top right.  Who am I kidding?  I would like everything!  :)

Somewhere Fancy to go on NYE

So I could wear this dress (or something quite like it)! We haven't been out for NYE in years (other than last year's fail of a dinner at Del Frisco).  I think it would be fun to go to a big party where I would get to wear sparkly cocktail attire.  I'm sure I'll be sporting yoga pants and a t-shirt as usual this year, though.  There's always hope for next year!

Reebok Easy Tone Apparel

I don't usually spend lots of money on work out clothes, but I might make an exception for the new line of Easy Tone Apparel.  Reebok has built resistance bands into the tops and pants in this collection to help increase muscle activation.  Very cool!  I found out about it from chatting with one of the Reebok girls at Dick's Sporting Goods a couple of weeks ago.  I'm all about anything that will help me maximize my workout!

Belkin Pro-Fit Armband for iPhone 4

I am still not completely sold on wearing my iPhone on my arm to work out - the phone is almost as wide as my guns.  My big.scary.guns.  But I digress.  So, this is pretty much the smallest armband I could find, in that it doesn't add to much bulk to the already bulky phone.

8GB iPod Nano in Pink
Just in case my whole strap-an-ipod-the-size-of-a-calculator-to-my-arm thing doesn't work out, I would really love a new 8GB iPod Nano in Pink (of course).  Our first Christmas together when we were dating, husbie bought me the 1st generation Nano, which I still use!  It works like a champ, other than when it sometimes freezes and won't turn off.  This doesn't happen very often and the sucker is 6 years old.  Solid investment!  Now the Nano has cool clips so you don't need above armband for the gym.  

And here comes the section in which I realize I am a completely boring adult...

KitchenAid Porcelain Cookware Set 
We need new cookware baddddd.  We have a combination of our pre-marriage cookware and it has gots to go.  Granted, this is something we could/should just buy for ourselves, but there's always a list of things ahead of it that seem to be more important.   I like that this set is red and got excellent ratings from Target.  Granted, I would really like an ah-may-zing set from Williams-Sonoma, but I don't want to take up that much of the Christmas budget for something boring like cookware!

KitchenAid Riveted 18-pc Knife Block Set

Pretty much the same applies to our knives as our cookware.  Old, mis-matched, not dinner party kosher.  I could buy them for myself, but decor is soooo much more fun than knives.  And the taste of certain gift givers does not affect knife purchases. 

Sony VAIO Signature Collection EA Series in Arabesque Black
This one is really going out to my Work Santa (our CFO).  I'm up for a new laptop in the next few months and I LOVE this one.  I think it would be a really hard sell - since it is SO girly.  It would be pretty funny if I left the company and they hired a dude to take my spot.  Ha!  He'd probably take one look at the laptop and run the other way.  Regardless, if I was buying a personal laptop, I love this one.  Sony also has a 8" netbook in Crocodile Pink.  It is so.freaking.cute. 

Of course there are a million other things that I can think of, but I'm trying to be realistic here.

Let's do a fun blog hop here!  Send an email to me at applesfalling(at)gmail(dot)com with what your wildest Christmas wish would be, along with a link to your blog.  Next Tuesday I will put up everyone's Christmas wishes with hyperlinks to their blogs.  I think everyone enjoyed the last one about 'something not everyone knows about you' and hopefully this one will be fun as well.  Send me your links by 8PM next Monday, December 29.

Little Ponies Soccer 2010

Ava's soccer team had their second-to-last game today (before the massive thunderstorms and tornado threats came).  It's hard to believe the season has flown by so quickly!  In typical crammer-style fashion, I just submitted the photo book I made for her coaches 2 minutes ago (it is 2:18 AM - eek!) and paid the exhorbidant overnight shipping rate to get the book here by Friday.  Just in time for their last game next Saturday.  It took forever, probably because I have 700+ photos from the season.  Craziness.  

Here's the final project.  I hope they love it!  Her coaches are so sweet and patient with all of the girls, I wanted to do a bigger-than-usual something for them and give them something they could keep for a long time...

Click here to view this photo book larger

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.  :) 

Birthday Weekend Recap

This comes WAY late - but here's my birthday week recap!  Really, instead of birthday week it should be called food bender.  It kicked off Thursday (6/3) night with me coming home from work and husbie suggested we do my birthday dinner with his mom that night, since she was already at our house (and I suspect that he didn't want to cook dinner. Yes, I said 'he')  Anyway, I had a meeting scheduled with the Board VP I am replacing in my women's league at 7:30, so this meant our only option, pretty much, was Chili's.  I have never been a Chili's fan, but the one up by us had a good run for a year.  We keep remembering that one good year, which is why we keep going.  Then we had a horrible experience there on Easter Sunday, after which we swore we would never go back.  Well, we did.  Dumb.  Dumb.  Dumb.  They were so ssssssllllllllloooooooowwwww, food was not amazing (not to mention I can never find anything healthy there that I like, and the stuff that is bad for you is SO bad).  I had to leave early *note - we had been there for an hour at this point* to head to my meeting.  Good times.

I was off work on Friday and putted around the house with Ava, then headed up to Haley's last day of school party, like the good little room mom I am.  It was HOT.  We've decided next year's party theme should be an 'every event involves water' one.  The kiddos had a good time and after we headed over to Sonic to get Sparkling Lemonades.  If you haven't had one, go get one.  Now.  They are yummy!  Here's Haley's class at the party.  She's the one on the left in the white shorts.

Friday night I headed down to Northpark to have a dinner and movie date with my sister, her best friend and her daughter who, incidentally, is my age and her birthday is 4 days before mine.  I hadn't seen Rachel & Robin in forever, so it was fun to catch up.  We had dinner at Luna - MUCH better birthday dining choice.  Yummy margaritas, salsa, soup, etc.  We headed up to the movie theater and saw Sex & The City 2.  Movie was good, I liked that it was WAY less stressful than the first.  Carrie's first outfit out was amazing - my sis said she heard it was a $100K ensemble, by the time you added the Loubouton's, jewelry, etc.  And that diamond, don't get me started.  Gorgeous!  I actually gasped.  I would be perfectly fine toting that little baby around on my ring finger!

Saturday morning we lounged around and took the girlies to the pool.  My fav thing about our neighborhood is that we have an awesome pool!  The girls love it and we love it, mainly because there is an upper section that is shallow with lounge chairs in it.  We sit in the chairs, Ava swims around in front of us, and Haley swims in the big pool.  There are always a ton of Haley's friends there, too, so she doesn't have to stick around with A in the baby pool.  Saturday night we took them over to my mom's who kept them while we went to Benihana.  Yum yum yum!  I got the standard - hibachi fillet - and a peach sake sangria.  It was delish and I would almost go back to just sit at the bar and have a few of these little glasses of heaven.  *Note to self - I must learn how to make these!*  Here we are when I got my birthday ice cream and songs.  Yes, we are a little scorched from our earlier pool time. 

Sunday morning, we met the girls and my mom at church, then headed over to Mattito's for their brunch buffet.  This has become a favorite birthday tradition of mine.  Mimosas and all of the yummy Tex-Mex you can get.  Yes, please!  More swimming and a nap followed.

I took off work on Monday (my actual birthday) and headed over to the gym for my very favorite dance class.  Sadly, our teacher is moving to Austin at the end of the month and our last class is on the 28th.  :(  So, I'm trying to get in as many classes as I can between now and then!  Afterward, we took the girls swimming there, they have an enormous waterpark.  Here are the girls lounging in the kiddo area.  By the time Monday night rolled around, I was SO sick of eating out that husbie grilled some fillets and we picked up some ready-to-go twice-baked potatoes from the store.  He also got me a small cake and some ice cream.

Much of Monday, I spent thinking about this little guy.  He was born to Megan and Brent at 8:55AM on the 7th.  Lucky for him, he got the best birthday on the planet - shared with me, and Prince.  Lol!  He is such an amazing little fighter.  Prayers are still needed for him, though!  Check out the Send Love to Cohen blog and his facebook page to stay up-to-date and see what kinds of specific prayers are needed for his healing.

Lastly, I got a nook for my birthday!  I really love it.  I love to read but have been slacking off lately in lieu of pointless reality television.  I'm hoping this will help with it.  From now until the end of  June, Barnes & Noble is giving $50 gift cards with the purchase of a nook.  Basically, this pays for a cover (highly recommended) and a light (not mandatory, but a good idea).  They will let you split your transactions so that you can use your gift card at the same time as when you buy the nook.  I plan on doing some book reviews on my blog and should have one ready to go over the weekend.  I'm currently reading Best Friends Forever: A Novel.  The jury is still out on this one, so stay tuned.

All in all, it was a great way to spend my birthday weekend!  Lots of family time and WAY too much food.  :)

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Coach Coupon - I can't use it, but you can!

I arrived home to one of my very favorite pieces of mail, a Coach coupon!  Sadly, I am not going to be able to use it, thanks in part to my little crunchy crunch, which you can learn more about here.  So, I'm sharing it with my readers, or to be exact, one reader!  

  

Just leave me a comment with your favorite Coach style and I'll select a 'winner' Wednesday morning and have it in the mail to you Wednesday afternoon.  I'll email you to get your mailing address - coupon is for 25% off any purchase from a Coach store.  I don't have a lot of readers yet, so this one should be pretty easy.  :)  I know it's not a super fab giveaway, but 25% off at Coach is a pretty darn good deal.  If I were shopping with it, I would get the new Julia bag which is SO adorable!