Thanksgiving trip

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!! Ours was pretty good and very eventful. We left Springfield Wednesday morning headed for St. Louis and it was a pretty easy trip. We gave some friends of ours a ride to Troy so they could spend Thanksgiving with their family in Hannibal, MO. It definitely helped the drive go faster and David was pretty content because he LOVES these particular friends - he's always sad when they leave! Once we got to Troy, we had to pick up my little brother from his friend's house then went and hung out at my parents' house. Since Wednesday was our anniversary, Jason and I went out to dinner and saw the new Harry Potter movie (thanks to my dad for watching David for us!!). We got home in the midst of tornado warnings which thankfully missed us!

Thursday was great. Well, the worst part was David waking up at 4:30ish and jumping in his pack n play... he wasn't making noise or anything... just jumping, lol. So he did that until about 6:45 (taking a few breaks of course) which is when I decided we needed to just get up. So we got up, lounged around for a little while and decided to get some breakfast and head to WalMart for some last minute things - including a news paper so we could get the Black Friday ads! We came home, got ready and headed to Jason's family get together around 11. It was a pretty good gathering though his grandma seemed pretty worried/confused with so many people over all at once. There were some rough times, but overall she seemed to enjoy seeing everyone. We headed over to my brother's house to see my family and it was great. My brother was dealing with an unfortunate personal issue and wasn't able to participate much, but it was nice of him to still let everyone come over. Mom did most of the cooking and everything was delicious. It was awesome to see all my family! Thanksgiving is really the only time I get to see ALL of my family so Jason and I try to spend as much time as we can with them. We really enjoyed our time there.

Friday was filled with Black Friday shopping and Jason got to participate in cleaning the sheep barn... yuck. David loved chasing the sheep, though! As a matter of fact, he loved all the animals! LOL My parents have two Golden Retrievers - one named Ginger and One named Buck. David likes Buck the best. Buck lives in the basement outside the room we always stay in when we visit. The first thing out of David's mouth when he wakes up is "BUH!!!" (his rendition of "Buck"). He just can't wait to see that dog! He'll peek his head out the door, say BUH! then giggle as he runs back into the bedroom. He'll then go put his face against Buck's cage to get kisses... the boy just loves that dog!!! Now when he hears our neighbor's dog barking, he'll get all excited and scream "BBUUUUUHHHH!!!"

We came home Saturday morning. I was so thankful that I cleaned the house before we left because when we got home, I was so sick! My allergies had been driving me crazy while we were at my parents' house since they have inside dogs and once we got home, my allergies turned into head cold/ stomach flu. Thankfully my stomach is now fine and I'm just dealing with the cold part... which is still difficult. At least my house is clean and I managed to get the laundry done yesterday :)

Overall it was a fun trip. We'll be going up to visit the week before Christmas since Jason has to work on Christmas again. At least he only has to work for his home care assistance guy - so far, he's not scheduled to work Christmas for his full time job. This year, they decided to let employees volunteer for the holidays which is great! He obviously got off Thanksgiving, will hopefully get off Christmas and volunteered to work New Years day. Anyway, I think our Christmas trip will be our last trip up to St. Louis before Ainzley is born but things are always subject to change.

Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.

Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.

I am going to opt out of the actual photo part as my computer doesn't like me trying to save pictures from the internet... crap happens.

Right now, I am enjoying not having any pets, lol. I grew up around A LOT of animals - dogs and cats of course, horses, chickens, ducks, turkeys, peacocks, sheep, I always had at least 1 goldfish, exotic birds and our family monkey (a ring tailed-lemur). It was always a lot of responsibility and work which I enjoyed at the time. Currently, however, I'm more focused on raising David, helping Jason through school, growing Ainzley, keeping the house nice (something that would surely suffer with a pet), and focusing on my own school work.

If our apartment didn't have a $500 non-refundable pet deposit, I wouldn't mind having a puppy for David to play with (he LOVES puppies!), but besides the deposit, I've also developed an allergy to dogs... booooooo. It used to just be cats, but now it's both. Even hypoallergenic dogs get my nose going! I wouldn't want a dog to have to live in an apartment anyway. Sure, we have a larger apartment square footage wise, but we don't have a big backyard that I think a dog deserves. When Jason's graduates nursing school (hopefully in a year), we're planning on buying a house, with a fenced-in yard and a puppy. It makes me happy to think about

Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago

Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago



This pic was taken 2 years ago on our 1st wedding anniversary. We spent the day around Forrest Park. At this point, we were making David a bear a Build-A-Bear at the Science Center obviously before he was born. We made one for Ainzley not along ago complete with a Pink Cardinal's shirt and pink bow around her ear. Hopefully we'll remember to do this for all our children :)

Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend

Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend

This one is a toss up... mainly because I have 2 best friends. I know it's "cliche" or whatever, but of course there's Jason and my friend Kjirstin.

For Jason, it's actually a sequence of pictures from David's birth:




Obviously the first time he held David... it is so sweet! It's easy to kind of "forget" what he's like as a dad to a newborn since David hasn't been in that stage for quite awhile. I'm so excited for Ainzley to get here and to get to experience this all over again!!!

And for my dear friend, Kjirstin:



A beautiful picture from our wedding. She was my maid of honor that day and it was terrific to have her be there for our special day! Living in Springfield reminds me so much of the time we spent together and good times we had... I wish she would leave boring old KC and come back to Springfield! LOL I miss her

Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.

Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.

I LOVED mine and Jason's first date so that's what I'll talk about. First of all, I had no idea it was a date... I thought it was just going to be a group of people hanging out, lol. Anyway, we ate dinner at Jason's parents' house which was a first for a date - jumping right into the meeting the parents situation. It was us, Jason's parents and the missionaries. What's funny is one of the missionaries that ate with us that night happened to be in our ward after we got married... it's a funny coincidence. After dinner, we went to a roller skating rink which Jason had opened just for us (definitely a plus to know the owners!). We skated for a long time just talking and getting to know each other - it was perfect. Our night ended with a good night hug and a second date.

I loved the fact that the ice had been broken on our date by a group dinner but we had an individual activity. I've never been big into the whole group date thing. I feel like there's too many distractions and you don't really get to know the person you're supposed to be on a date with, lol. Jason's favorite part of our first date? It was completely free! A definite added bonus!

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today




This is the last thing I ate... about 5 minutes ago, lol. For weeks, I have been craving chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing - not something I get often since Jason severely dislikes chocolate. Yesterday, while I was sewing his Thanksgiving scrubs, Jason and David surprised me by making me chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing! They were delicious!!

FINALLY - Day one!

Day 1 – A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.





This pic was actually taken yesterday... but it's the first pic of me taken in a long time, lol. Yesterday was pretty good. We got up and ran our errands, came home and cleaned the house during nap time. It was so nice to have help cleaning! I normally wouldn't ask since Jason works so hard at both his jobs and school and I try to make the house my "chore", but I've been so exhausted lately and was trying to keep my back from hurting. Jason was a rock star helper!

After finishing cleaning, Jason played Mario Kart while I jumped in the shower to get ready for our date night! We had dinner at home with our friends who watched David for us. After dinner, we cleaned up, made puppy chow and left for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert. It was a late night but we enjoyed ourselves... especially since it was only our second date without David since he was born!

Today was pretty great as well. We had a lazy Saturday morning at home. We eventually decided to break out the Christmas decorations... yep, we're junkies! LOL Jason had to work so David and I hung out. We took Jason dinner and got home just in time to get ready for bed. After tucking him in, I straightened up the house and got our stuff ready for church in the morning.

I'm pretty excited about Daylight Savings Time tonight... an extra hour of sleep? Heck yes! Child permitting, of course ;)