I've been TAGGED!!!

So I just got "Meme"ed and now I am being "Tagged" by 2 different people. This blogging stuff is like chain letter central or something. But I enjoy reading everyone elses so I will play along. If you would like to read who tagged me you can look at my friend Courtney who I met at church here in Rockwall or my friend Lauren who I went to seminary with. Courtney and Lauren are actually a lot a like in that they are VERY girly and love Celebrity Bakery! Here we go!

10 Years Ago:
10 years ago was 1998 and I was about to graduate from High School. I drove a 1992 Ford Thunderbird and loved hanging out with my best friends Allena, Whitney, and Janice. I still keep up with all of those girls to this day!

Things on my to-do list today:
1. Take car to discount tire to purchase a new tire (we had a flat yesterday).-done
2. Get caught up on charting at my office-done
3. Watch American Idol-will do
4. Cook dinner (chicken rice cassarole)-done
5. Pick up car from tire place-done

If I were a billionaire:
I'd give each of you 5 Million Dollars and still be loaded...I think I would keep my job and work part time because I really love it and I don't do it for the money. I would keep my house but I might splurge on a new Lexus for me and a BMW for Josh!

3 Bad Habits:
Grind my teeth
drink too much diet coke
text while I drive sometimes

5 Jobs I've had:
-Target Worker (fun discount)
-Biology Department Admin at UMHB
-Cheer Coach at CTCS...GO LIONS!
-counselor and File Sorter/shredder (with Lauren)
-Family Therapist at Lakepointe (current)

5 Things people don't know about me:

I only paint by big toe and the one next to that sometimes because that's all you see in my open toed shoes.
I bite my nails when I am driving. I didn't realise i did this until Josh started finding nail bits in the floor board after I drove his car. I bite them and then put them down there for some reason without even realizing i do that.
I am addicted to reading blogs...it's such an escape for me...I'm glad it's not illegal!
I can make my eyes look in opposite directions
I was in band in high school...i played the xylephone

Ok! There it is! Ummm...I tag Beth Ward and Amy Tyner! GO!!

Every Girl Needs Fun Jewelry

My mother-in-law came to visit a couple of weekends ago and brought Kate a ladybug jewelry box FULL of fun plastic jewelry. Kate is super into jewelry and won't even let me get out of the house with bracelets or necklaces on most of the time because she takes them off of me to play with. She spots jewelry on nursery workers, grandmas, and my friends. She will sit for several minutes and play with whatever sparkling or shiny treasures that she can get her hands on...that's a long time for a an almost 16 month old who is into EVERYTHING! Last week I took her to the doctor for her shots and when I had to get her down to only her diaper she did not want me to take off her necklaces and bracelets. You should have seen her walking around in only her diaper and plastic jewels, she got a lot of smiles. When we left they gave her even more bracelets to add to her collection for being such a good sport about her shots. Here are few pictures of her playing with the jewelry from Meme...she's so happy!

Josh's Birthday

Sunday was Josh's birthday...he is offically 29 and creeping closer and closer to that "point of no return" that we call "30"!! We had a really fun morning with the fam and enjoyed getting to relax and take it easy as well! Josh's family came up and spent the weekend and kept Kate while Josh and I went to dinner on Sat. night! On Sunday we had a good breakfast and relaxing day. Here are some pictures of our celebration:

We started off going out to eat for breakfast at The Original Pancake House in Plano. This was SO GOOD and was perfect for a group that requires 3 high chairs and 2 boosters!

After breakfast we came home and Kate slept for almost 3 hours and Josh got to play his X-Box "Call of Duty" game. This is one of his FAVORITE activites here lately. He didn't just play it, he pushed our loveseat up right in front of the tv, poured a big Dr. Pepper and propped his feet up. It was much more like an event! After Kate woke up, we took her to the park and I made spagetti and bread for dinner.

Kate enjoyed our Spagetti dinner and afterwards got the opportunity to dig into a vanilla cupcake with cream cheese icing (her daddy's favorite!)

That required a GOOD bath to get all of that spagetti sauce and icing out of her hair, but it was worth it to watch her enjoy the celebration! This girl LOVES food!!!

It was a fun day as we love to celebrate our Josh because he is such a WONDERFUL husband and daddy! He takes care of his girls everyday and it was fun to get to celebrate him! Kate got him these flowers and we made him these cupcakes...

What a fun day! Josh is a year "wiser" and the most amazing guy that I know! I am the luckiest girl in the world that I get to grow old with him! I look forward to many more birthdays...beyond our 20's and even 80's...when we have false teeth and a steel rod in our hip. That makes edging up to 30 not see that old afterall!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE!!!

The Valentines Great Escape...

Josh and I decided to try out a new restaurant in celebrations of Valentines...that's never a good idea! We made a reservation at this "diner looking" place that is near downtown Rockwall. We picked it because it looked casual and cheap...2 good things for us! We thought it was cute that they had run an ad in the Rockwall magazine about "making reservations" so we called ahead and booked a spot! We arrived about 10 minutes early and made our way inside. Needless to say it was VERY FORMAL and we are VERY underdressed! This place looks just average from the outside, but is extremely classy on the inside. They showed us to our table and brought us the menu, which showed each part of the pre-planned 5 course meal. At the bottom it said $40 per plate...that's right...2 Jeffersons...PER PLATE!!! That doesn't even include drink, tip, ect. So just to recap, this place is neither casual or cheap, and we were now trying to decide what excuse we could give the waiter so that we could leave. We finally decided on making something up about Kate and quickly made our way to the nearest exit! We ended up at a little Italian restaurant just down the road (that we have been to in the past), and it ended up being a lot of fun! Our total bill with wine and tip was only $28.00!! So there's a valentines that will go down in history for us!

FUTURE DISHWASHER

Kate loves to help me do the dishes. The only problem is that I load them and she sits on the door and unloads them onto the floor. Sometimes she takes the silverware and places it in the top rack to free up some space for me in the silverware holder. It doesn't matter what she is doing, she stops and comes running into the kitchen whenever she hears the water running and dishes clanking. I hope she's that excited to do dishes later on...that would sure make life easy! She also checks the dishwasher and tries to open it up every time she passes by. She even went over to our dishwasher at church the other day and was pulling on it to open. She really LOVES playing in dishwashers...not sure what that means about her future, but if she grows up to be a dishwasher maybe Josh and I can eat for free. Either way, it's really cute right now!

Getting Older...

We recently redid our life insurance policies now that we have stuff and we have a kiddo. In 2 weeks we are meeting with an attorney to do our wills in the event that we die young and unexpectantly. All of this planning for an unwanted event makes me feel sort of sad and like a real grown up. I know we have to plan ahead for the sake of Kate, but it's still hard to think about all that would go into making sure she is taken care of. I feel confident that our families would make sure that she never goes without, but I just can't imagine not being the one that does that in her life. All in all I guess this preplanning is just making me feel more grown up than ever and coming to grips with the fact that we just don't know the future. I would hate to leave her with our debts and no nest egg for the future, that would be terrible for her. At least this way we can have a peace that no matter what the Lord has in store, she is going to be fine.

MEME

I was tagged by my friend AMY to do a MEME...this is where I have to tell 6 random things about myself and then tag someone else. So here we go:

1. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE cheery diet coke from sonic with easy ice. I go there at least 3 times a week during "happy hour" to purchase one for $0.92...that's cheaper than a bottle coke at my office...and it's SO much better. I recommend trying out this drink, especially if you like Cherry Coke Zero. Very Yummy!

2. I HATE unloading the dish washer. This has become my sweet husband's job for the most part because he knows how much I hate it. I'm not sure why, but I just do. I don't mind washing dishes or loading the thing up, its just unloading.

3. I HAVE to drink 2 cups of coffee every morning or I feel as though I can't function. I have 3 favorite coffee cups that I rotate and hand wash on a regular basis, even though we have an entire cabinet full of clean coffee cups. I make my coffee first thing and either drink it on the way to work, or on the days I am home I drink one while I play with Kate and the second after she goes down for her morning nap. My morning coffee is like an event for me, and I have to have it. While in seminary I studied what makes up an addiction and i concluded that I might be an addict when it comes to this area of my life.

4. I have a pair of houseshoes that I wear every single day of the year, summer, spring, fall, or winter. They are holey and horrible looking, but they are my favorite. My mom gave them to me 3 years ago for Christmas. They are the Brookstone houseshoes that are navy blue...they are pure heaven.

5. I love to read and find myself reading several books at one time on a regular basis. I thinks its because I recommend so many books to others so I am always trying to find good stuff...so if you know of any please let me know!

6. I like to grocery shop and create a menu every two weeks. I enjoy this for 2 main reasons. First, we only have to make one massive Wal-Mart run every 2 weeks, and second, on nights when Josh say's "what do we have to eat for dinner?" I can just go to the list on the fridge and read off what's left on the menu. I can't assign meals to each day because I am too much a rebel and won't eat what's assigned (I guess that's another quirk), so I just list it all and we mark off meals as we go. Super easy and efficient! Also, it helps with our new budget which would make Dave so proud!

Ok...now that we are all feeling a little closer I would like to tag Courtney and Heidi. I'm doing 2 instead of 1, there I go breaking the rules again (there's that rebel side).

Future Millionaire...maybe!?!

So Josh and I have been attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University (online that is). Josh's parents are true believers and have offered on several occasions to "put us through the school of Dave" and we finally decided to take them up on it. I think we put it off because we assumed it would be a total beating and make us feel completely poor and helpless, but it acually has done the opposite. We've realized that we have made a lot of common mistakes but nothing is irreversible in the world of money. So today I am telling you that according to ol' Dave, Josh and I can be MILLIONAIRS by the time we are 70! I know that sounds like it's just in time for us to need knee surgery, false teeth, and hearing aids, but at least we will be able to make a better future for our children and their children. So here's the deal...if you put $100 a month into a 12% return investment, after 40 years you will have $1,176,000.00. That's right OVER a million dollars...isn't that crazy! It just takes DISCIPLINE and CONSISTENCY according to Dave, but I think it just takes setting up an automatic draft. The crazy thing is that most of us have that extra money each month, it's just failing to plan what to do with it. So tomorrow starts today and when we are 70 we will be living "high on the hog" for not much effort on our part! Thanks Dave and if you haven't ever done his stuff I recommend it. We are doing the 14 week FPU class online. It's well worth the $100 and if we all do it, we can all be millionairs together...how fun would that be!