Sunday, February 24, 2013

20 years

This summer is my 20 year high school reunion. It blows my mind that 20 years has gone by. It still feels like yesterday to me.

The reunion committee set up a page on Facebook for our classmates to discuss reunion plans and reminisce about the good old days. I'm having so much fun hearing everyone's memories and seeing old pictures. I'm so nostalgic for that sort of thing. Tonight I decided to dig through my footlocker to see what mementos I could come up with to share on the page. I have saved some really random things from high school. Mostly photos, but also yearbooks, a few silly love notes from an old boyfriend, dance pictures, etc. The thing I entertained myself with this evening was my day planner.

I carried a day planner with me everywhere my senior year. Back before the days of blogs I was still a record keeper. I wrote everything down in my planner and I kept a pretty detailed journal that year too. Of all the years of my life (pre-blog!) I think my senior year is the most well documented. It's fun every now and then to go back and read what I wrote. My day planner has all sorts of little notes that I jotted down, some of which are meaningless to me now because I have no idea what they referred to, and some which are really amusing to me now. I'm glad I kept that little memento of my senior year. It's fun to go back and look at it. Apparently I was really busy that year because the days are pretty packed! 

I took a photo of the February 1993 page of my day planner. Here's what I was doing 20 years ago this month. 



I was on the dance committee for the Valentine's Day dance so there are notes reminding me to call about balloons and supplies. I wore the most ridiculous poofy red formal dress to that dance, lol. I rented it from a dress shop and someone else showed up wearing the same dress that night. I remember trying not to stand to close to my dress twin all night. 

It looks like February 22nd was my nine month anniversary with my boyfriend. Remember when you were in high school and anniversaries were measured in months? This month is my 188 month anniversary with Shawn, by the way, lol. I just figured that out. I hope he sends me flowers. 

It looks like I jotted down reminders to send letters to a few friends who were in college and on missions for our church. I was a big letter writer back then. I used to send ridiculously long letters to friends who were away. I had a big plastic Tupperware tub that was full of stationery and colored pens and stickers and other obnoxious letter writing supplies. If you got a letter from me back then it was likely ridiculously decorated with several colors of ink and glittery stickers and it was most likely several pages long full of me rambling on about absolutely nothing. Much like my blog is today, lol. Nothing much has changed there. 

So I had a good time going through my planner tonight. I remembered several fun events from my senior year and I looked a lot of funny photos that are still stuck in the front of it that made me laugh. We all looked so young back then. Thanks to Facebook I have kept up with a lot of high school friends and I love seeing recent photos and hearing about what everyone is up to now. Most of my closest friends in high school were older than me and not in my class or went to different schools but I was friendly with a lot of people from my class and I'm looking forward to the reunion this summer!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Cute song

Nothing new happening around here, so I'm sharing a new song I like. I like the lyrics, it's a cute song and it makes me smile. It's been in my head for a couple of days so now you can listen to it and get it stuck in your head. You're welcome. :)


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love Valentine's Day. I know it's a cheesy Hallmark holiday but I love it anyway. I like the hearts and the flowers and the chocolates and the cards and how everyone gets a little giddy on Valentine's Day.

We decided not to do big gifts or anything for Valentine's Day this year because we're just about to shell out a fortune to get the house recarpeted (and actually, new carpet is a pretty great gift. I'll happily call that a Valentine's Day present!) so we went a little low key. I decided that low key is almost more fun because we found creative little ways to celebrate. Instead of getting Shawn a gift I wrote him a letter. It occurs to me that I don't write enough love letters these days. And really, I'm not all that sure that having to make the poor guy suffer through more of my wordiness constitutes a gift, but he seemed to enjoy it anyway. That's why I love him. :) He got me my favorite chocolates, we had a fun lunch together today and tonight we're going to get cheesecake and watch Nashville in our little basement hotel room. Cheesecake and Nashville are two of our favorite things. That may not sound like an exciting night to some but I've been looking forward to it all day! :)

So in honor of Valentine's Day and the fact that I'm feeling extra mushy today (I think it's all the chocolate I've eaten in the last 12 hours), let me just take a minute to say how much I love my sweet husband. I think I don't talk about him enough in my blog.

Shawn and I have been married for fifteen and a half years. He was my best friend long before he was my boyfriend, fiance and then husband, and he's still my best friend. I LOVE being married to my best friend. He's the person I laugh with and cry with and tell my secrets to. We're both homebodies and we love spending all our time together. We're kind of obnoxiously joined at the hip, lol. We can sit and talk for hours. After over 15 years we still haven't run out of things to say. :) Shawn makes me laugh on a daily basis. He's got a cheesy joke for every occasion and he always knows how to make me smile when I'm down. He's patient and loving and kind and works so hard to provide for our family. I'm proud of him, I'm in awe of him and I really really love him.

My favorite thing about Shawn is that nothing phases him. His boat can not be rocked. I'm neurotic and easily overwhelmed and I think too much. Shawn is calm and patient and happily tackles whatever life throws at him. (Which probably explains how he's managed to stay married to me for all these years, lol). I admire that about him and I am grateful to see some of those traits passed on to our children.

I love being married to Shawn. I love how happy the house feels when he's in it. I love knowing that I always have someone in my corner. I love watching him with our kids, hearing him sing at the top of his lungs with Clarissa and sitting down with the boys and helping them with projects and teaching them about life. He's a good man and I'm grateful for him every single day. I don't know how I'd survive without him.

Happy Valentine's Day to Shawn and to all of my blog readers! :)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Decisions, decisions...

I'm knee deep in redecorating this week!

We've decided to re-carpet our house. Our house is 16 years old and still has the original carpet. It has held up amazingly well over the years but it's finally starting to look worn and it's time for a change.

I've wanted to recarpet for quite a while because I was ready for a change but now that we've finally decided to do it it's stressing me out! First of all, recarpeting your whole house (or the majority of it, anyway) is a huge pain because you have to move everything out. We're recarpeting everything upstairs, which is four bedrooms, so all that furniture has to go downstairs. Matthew has a gigantic loft bed that is going to have to be taken apart to get it out of his room. I'm not looking forward to any of that.

We're also recarpeting the formal living room, dining room and den on the main floor (the rest of the main floor got new flooring a while back), so all of that furniture is going to have to be moved out. We decided not to do the basement this year, so at least we don't have to get all the basement furniture upstairs. We're going to wait and do that next spring.

So that is a huge job that I'm not really looking forward to. I AM, however, looking forward to everything being moved back in when it's done, all nice and new like a new house. That part sounds nice!

The other part that is stressing me out is actually picking carpet! Shawn and I went to the flooring store last week to look at samples. We brought a few things home and I've been looking at them for days and I can't pick one. I'm kind of terrible at this sort of thing. Just picking out a paint color stressing me out. This is like picking out a paint color except that you can't change it if you hate it. I don't want anything too dark, too light, too brown, too grey...it's tricker than I thought it would be. I think I've narrowed it down though and now I'm just waiting for the carpet place to get a few bigger samples of the colors I like to make sure I like it.

Once I pick something out it will be another week or so before we can get it installed. I'm hoping for the end of February or first of March.

In the meantime I decided that this would be a great time to redecorate Josh's bedroom. When we moved here we had the whole house painted and to make it easy I just had both boys room painted light blue and Josh has decorated it over the years with awards he's gotten and school project posters and things but it doesn't really have a cohesive theme and it looks like a little kids room. It was a great little boy room but he's going to be 13 in May and I decided to make it a tradition that when the kids turn 13 they can redecorate their bedrooms and pick out what they want. It's time for a teenage bedroom. I would make him wait until he actually turns 13 but it will be easier to paint at the same time we rip out the old carpet so we decided just to do it now.

He decided he wanted a green bedroom and he picked out some great bedding from Pottery Barn that is a plaid with greens and browns and blues in it. I really like it. Tonight I went to Lowes and picked up a bunch of green and brown paint samples so we can start figuring out a paint color.

Again, I'm not super great at this. I'm not an interior decorator. I'm not good at picking out colors and coordinating things. Josh and I sat down tonight and looked at the paint swatches against the bedding and we narrowed it down to a few. We'll mull them over for a few more days. He's excited to paint. He has to do a project for Scouts and painting a room will work, so I'm going to teach him how to do it and let him do a lot of the painting work himself. I'll supervise and probably do the trim work but he can roll the walls. That will be a fun project!

For decorating we decided to decorate with his hobby, which is filmmaking. We found some cool vintage Star Wars posters that we're going to frame and hang and I'm looking for some sort of metal film reel artwork or something. We're still looking around for decor.

Once all of this is done I think we're going to love it. In the meantime making all these decisions is freaking me out, lol. Most women I know enjoy interior decorating. I don't really. I like things to look nice and I know what I like when I see it, but trying to come up with ideas and coordinate colors and put a room together isn't really a skill I posses. I rely on my friends a lot, who are good at this sort of thing!

So that's what is happening here these days. We've been busy getting ready to redecorate and the kids have been super busy with school. Matthew is doing a big research project for the gifted program and then another research project for his regular class at the same time so we've been at the library helping him get books and get the information together.

This week Josh has to pick out his classes and electives for next year. I'm really proud of him because he decided on his own that he wants to take honors English and honors science next year. He had to go around and get teachers signatures and then write an essay about why he thought he'd be a good candidate for honors English and he has taken the initiative to get all of that done on his own. His teachers approved him and he's really excited for the challenge. I'm really proud of him. His filmmaking teacher has also asked him to be her teachers assistant next year, which he can do as an elective, so that will be really fun for him. I'm proud of him. I still can't believe he's officially going to be a teenager in a few months. I'm still in denial about it, lol.

Clarissa is still loving preschool and doing great. I tried curling her hair again for church on Sunday and it looked super cute. I'm officially jealous of her hair, lol.

So there's the update from our house! I'll keep you posted about the redecorating!




Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Nail update!

I realized that I haven't done a nail post in a while so I thought I'd give you an update.

I continue to be obsessed with nail polish and I'm super proud of myself that I've managed to keep my nails pretty for over six months! I spent the first 37 years of my life with ugly fingernails. I still can't get over the fact that they're long and healthy and that I'm managing to keep them that way! 

For the most part I don't do designs on them much anymore. It's fun but it's time consuming and the novelty wore off after a while. I paint my nails 2-3 times a week but generally just in a solid color. I tend to like dark cream colors. This winter I've been loving greys and browns and blues. I've also gotten good enough at painting my nails that now I love dark vampy reds. I used to have a really hard time with reds because I find them hard to apply. Every little mistake shows and they tend to stain. It takes a lot of practice to paint your nails red and have it look good. It was really only about a month ago that I finally felt brave enough to pull it off and now I kind of love it. 

But today I decided to take a break from the browns and blues and vampy reds and go with something a little more fun. In honor of Valentine's Day I decided to do some nail art and do Valentines Day nails. I don't wear pink very often. I'm not really a pink person in general. But I do love Valentine's Day and in February pink seems like fun, so I decided to give it a try. 

Here's what I came up with today. The base color could have probably used another coat, but I'm happy enough with it. The dots are kind of fun to do but are a little time consuming. I had fun playing around with them this afternoon. 

Maybe I'll be back with more Valentine's nails later this month! 


Monday, February 4, 2013

Happy Birthday Clarissa!!

Guess who's four! We've had a fun day celebrating Clarissa's birthday today. This morning we opened presents (lots of My Little Pony!) and then this afternoon I did a photo shoot with her.

I decided for fun I would attempt to curl her hair for the pictures. I've never curled her hair before. I wasn't even sure if her perfectly straight and silky Asian hair would curl. We gave it a try though and it was super easy and turned out so cute! Clarissa took one look at it and declared it princess hair, so I'd say it was a success. :)

Tonight we're going to eat Clarissa's favorite meal (spaghetti) and then eat chocolate cake with pink on it, which was Clarissa's request. Our cake lady made a cute My Little Pony Cake, which Clarissa hasn't seen yet but will go nuts for.

We normally do a fun activity for the birthday kids big day, but we're still battling the sickness so it's on hold for now. Everyone is better except Matthew, who still had a fever all weekend. He stayed home from school today but seems to be better this evening, so hopefully after this we will be sickness free. We might have to do a fun activity later this week.

I can't mention Clarissa's birthday without mentioning her birth mother, who is on my mind today. I know that today is probably a hard day for her. I pray for her and I hope that she has found peace. I'm so grateful for her sacrifice and I wish I could give her a hug today. I wish that she could see what an amazing person her daughter is growing into.

So now I'm going to go give my sweet birthday girl and extra squeeze for her birth mother and ten extra squeezes just because she's so cute. :) I love that kid.


Friday, February 1, 2013

It's February!

Woohoo, another January has come and gone and I survived it. It was cold, it was dark and we spent second half of it sick, but we survived it. Today the sun is out, the snow is melting and I'm happily moving forward.

There is still some sickness lingering in our family. I still don't feel super great and Matthew had a fever this morning so he stayed home today. It's been a weird cold that appears to go away and then reappears a few days later. Weird.

Monday is Clarissa's birthday! Can you believe that she'll be FOUR?! I can't comprehend that the time has gone by so quickly. She's super excited and every time I ask her what she wants for her birthday she just tells me a chocolate cake with pink on it. That's my girl. :) We are looking forward to celebrating her birthday with some fun activity but I haven't decided exactly what yet. I'm waiting to see if we're all over our sickness first!

Today I'm super excited for Josh because he is being honored at a school assembly for being on the honor roll and he was also chosen to receive a special character award that I believe is voted on by the teachers. I'm really proud of him for how well he's doing in school. He's such a great kid.

In book reading news, we're still a bit behind. We're having a hard time getting a consistent reading schedule that works for everyone. Between being sick and having other things going on in the evenings we're still tying to work out the kinks in our plan. Josh has had a lot of homework and studying to do lately and Matthew is doing a big research project for the gifted program and that has kept both of them busy in the evenings and I hate to cut into study time for other activities. It's really just a time management issue and I haven't felt well enough lately to address it, but now that things are getting back on track I'm going to find a way to make it work. In the meantime the kids are reading consistently on their own. Matthew is halfway through the final Harry Potter book, which is a gigantic book, and Josh is getting close to finishing up the Hiding Place. Every day he reads and then we discuss it, which I'm loving.

So all in all, things are going good here. I wish the sickness in the house would hurry up and go away, but January is over, the sun is shining, we get to eat chocolate cake with pink on it on Monday, there are books to be read and that sounds like a happy life to me. :)