P.S.

I just had a yummy frozen lunch, which is unusual. It was a Smart Ones chicken quesadilla. You should try it. It really does taste as goos as it smells. Again, unusual. Just thought I would share.

Update

So, it's been more laid back lately. So far there have been two full work days this week and so far this week I have left at 4:30 both days. I have been toying with the idea of putting this on my blog, but I figure why not? I could use some accountability: I have started Weight Watchers. I am on week 3. I have only lost about 4 lbs so far, but I don't weigh again until Friday. SO...if you have any recipes that you want to share, send me the links or email them or scan them and share! I may start sharing some of my favorite healthy recipes on here. I haven't really done any recipes lately. Sad times.

This past weekend was a whirlwind of showers. I went to a bachelorette party/shower for Caitlin on Friday night, a bridal shower for my friend Kim on Saturday, and a bridal shower for Caitlin at church on Sunday. I was so proud of myself because I went out the week before and bought gifts so I wasn't rushing around on the day of!!! (See any previous post where I talk about how I have turned into a procrastinator!) I didn't take pictures of the cards, but I made them. I used the pre-made blank cards you can get at Joann or Walmart and then cut squares of my wrapping paper and made them super cute. My wrapping paper was like squares with different wedding-type designs. I just wanted to share that because I had never thought about it until I was looking at that paper and I was like, wow this would make a cute card.

Shana did a good job summing up Caitlin's bachelorette party on her blog, but I want to talk about it, too. Lauren, Caitlin's wonderful sister, planned it and did a great job. We all carpooled down to Fuego, this tapas restaurant downtown. It was really good and we had good company too! Then, we came back for the "shower" time and Lauren made this yummy apple crisp (I didn't eat any of it, but I have had it before) and I made Margarita Punch, which is nonalcoholic but does taste like a real margarita. It's super easy, but things are always better when someone else makes it, so I always make it for the girls (I made it up, but I am sure lots of people make it my way, too). How can I say no when they shower me with compliments on my bartending abilities? One of the highlights: Shana was there! Yay! She and Josh came home from Louisville (where Josh is attending seminary) for the "Caitlin and Andy wedding shower circuit!" I can't share all of the pics, which were almost all good (b/c there are just too many for one post), but here are some of my favorites. All the ones Shana posted are super good too, but since she posted them, I won't. So, look at her post too if you want to see more good pics! The one up top is Caitlin surrounded by her gifts drinking margarita punch. Too cute! Then, there are pictures of Lauren (the hostess with the mostess) and me and Maggie and me. The last picture is a belly picture of Shana. She's just the cutest pregnant person ever. I had to share (I hope you don't mind Shana).

Kim's shower was a lot of fun too. It was great to see Kim. I know her because we used to go to church together and I worked with her mom, Teri at T&U. I still stay really close with my T&U friends. The shower was at Cheryl's house, my old boss from T&U who also went to church with us. It was fun because there were lots of people there that I like a lot who I rarely get to see. I ended up making bow-quets from all the bows on Kim's gifts, so that was a fun way to be crafty. Okay, the pictures from this shower are kind of small, probably because I saved them off of Facebook, so they probably are not normal size pics. But, there is one of me making the bow-quets and then one of Kim with her bridesmaid Cristy (Cheryl's daughter) holding their bow-quets. Fun. (Okay, I just tried a different way to save those pics from FB, so maybe they are better.)

Caitlin's church shower on Sunday was fun too and she racked up! I have my pics downloaded, but I haven't emailed them to everyone so I don't have access to them at work right now. That is for a later post.

200th Post & an Update

Happy 200th Post! Wow. If I had known this was going to be my 200th post, I might have done a contest or something witty. But, I really don't have it in me right now.

We filed our 10-K at work! Yea! Of course, we still have the proxy, and I have month-end stuff still going on and in April we will have quarter-end and the 10-Q, but whatever. We enjoyed the moment today! My boss left at about 3 and my other co-worker in my department, Linda, and I gave him about 15 minutes head start and headed out too! Did we feel bad? Nope! He had said not to stay late...so we didn't! I really do like most of the people I work with, so it's a good place to be. I do feel kind of stupid sometimes because the people in accounting seem to have higher than usual IQs even for accountants.

I made a slide show of the pictures from our snow day the other day. There are two in there that our friend Kelly from church sent us as she had her camera at church and was snapping pictures of everyone outside playing in it. Some of the pictures in the slide show are just because the snow was so pretty. Some are to show off what great pictures our new camera takes. Some are to show how stinkin' sweet our kitties are.

Like this one:
I know it is blurry and it actually turned itself sideways just now. I was actually standing in the chair to take pictures out the window and Maxwell got up into the chair with me and started rubbing against my legs. For some reason, maybe because I was too close, the camera didn't focus on his little face, but isn't this just so sweet how he pushes his head into my hand.

Here is the series of events:

He got up and started rubbing my legs

Then he went to see what Sampson was looking at

Then he came back over to me

He rubbed my legs some more. After this is when I bent over and started rubbing his head. Too cute.

Well, it's supposed to be beautiful this weekend. I am going to try to get out and enjoy it some!

Snow!

It snowed today. A lot. It started (I think) right around lunch time. We were at church, so I don't know what time it started here, but it snowed (hard) for about 5-6 hours. It is just sitting in the grass, on the sidewalk, and the streets. The streets look kind of slushy. It has stopped now. It is supposed to be freezing temperatures tonight, so hopefully it will dry up fast. It was a lot of fun to be at church while it was snowing. We were all out in it, watching the kids throw snowballs at each other (and sometimes at us). It was really beautiful. When we got home, we had lots of birds all day. It was interesting to watch them. We have a bird that is not in our bird book called Common Birds of Atlanta. It is solid black and has a small red stripe just above a small gold stripe on each wing. I'll get a picture of it next time and upload it to see if anyone knows what it is.

Not this past Thursday, but the Thursday before that, I got a hair cut. I will post a picture so you can see it. I had about 6 inches cut off, layers cut, and some long bangs. I like it.

We took a bunch of pictures today at the house, but we have not downloaded them yet. Such is life lately.

I am still working 10-12 hours a day. We should file our 10-K this Friday, so hopefully it will ease up some. I know I will still have a good bit of overtime, because we still have our proxy to file and then it will be time to do our 10-Q (for quarter end), but I really don't intend to work this much for that much longer. It's kind of crazy. I am glad to have a job and I do like my job. But, enough is enough. My understanding is that it is much better this year for our department than it was for them in previous years. So, for that I am thankful.

Scott is still working away at his same job. They keep having layoffs, so we are trying not to be nervous about that. The good thing is that with the two companies they have, they really do need to keep 2 IT people. So, that is sort of a little bit of piece of mind.

Anyway, that is a brief synopsis of our status. I know I have not been good about writing. Hopefully I'll be better about it soon.

Weird

Last week, I had a rabbit run out in front of me on two separate days, in almost the exact same spot. The same rabbit! Isn't that strange? The first time was a very close call. I was very close to home. I was just getting up a little speed after stopping at the stop sign and this rabbit dashed out in front of me. I am sure that if someone had taken a picture of my face, it would have been comical. I only had time to take my foot off the gas, and open my mouth hugely as if to scream and suck in breath. I didn't see him go across the street on the other side of my truck, but I didn't feel the inevitable bump I would have felt if I had hit him. I don't know how I missed him. Lucky rabbit. Then, the stupid thing ran (a little farther) out in front of me to cross the road two days later! I mean, it's not like there's a lot of traffic on this road...

Anyway. Weird.

Random

So, I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to. This is mainly because I have been working a lot. I get to work at about 7 every day and usually don't leave until about 6ish (which means I am gone from my house from about 6:15am to 7:15pm every day), unless I have somewhere to go like Small Group. Obviously I'm not getting home early on those days either. Then, usually when I get home I have been having things I had to get done for various responsibilities I have. Our company is traded publicly and that means we have to file a 10-K each year with the SEC. With a 10-K, there really aren't "extensions". (Well, I think you can file an extension but it's only for a few days, I think so why bother.)

Two Fridays ago, Scott and I went to the Fox to watch the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace. I liked it, but there were a few pretty confusing scenes. I had to work late so we missed the sing-along with the Might Mo so I was kind of bummed about that and felt guilty.

Scott's dad's birthday was Jan. 31, so we went to Provino's with his parents and Grandma for his birthday. I love Provino's. And, it's the perfect place to go for your birthday because you get your meal free.

Saturday morning I went with some girlfriends to see the movie Bride Wars. I wanted to see it but I was not 100% sure it would be a great movie. But, it turned out to be really good. I actually cried during this movie.

We went to an awesome Super Bowl party at our friends Rob and Cheryl's house, like we have for many years now. It was a lot of fun. We (the ladies) didn't really pay any attention to the game until about the last 5 minutes, so it was great for me. I do feel the need to go online now and catch up on the commercials that I missed though.

Scott is staying pretty busy as well because he is kind of picking up my slack at home since I am working so late.

Our house is still for sale. We have not had many people come to look at the house lately. We are going to have to go through each room this week and really do some cleaning up because we have kind of let ourselves slide. Scott told me that he heard the housing market might start picking up a very small amount, so we want to be ready in case it does.

We finally got our Christmas present to ourselves: an SLR camera. I absolutely can't figure out how to take a good picture with it. I am going to have to read the manual to be able to take a picture with the flash successfully. Somehow the red eye reducer is always on and it turns into a strobe light and by the time the picture snaps, the cats have already turned away or run off. I can't blame them really. Anyway, wish us luck!

Sorry I don't have any good pictures, but maybe next time. I am at work right now, so there really aren't any available. Plus, we just haven't really taken a lot lately.

Blogging Award

I have received my first real blogging award from Carrie at Thoughts, Ponderings, and Musings. Thanks so much Carrie! I feel really special! I am going to proudly display my award on my side bar and pass this award on to some of my favorite bloggers:

Jennifer at Jordan Family Happenings

Erin at A Full Heart

Josh and Shana at Stringer Family Happenings

Callie at Coupon Callie

Maggie at Shadburns R Us

Pass it on!

Christmas and New Years Eve

Hello blog readers! I know I have not been as good about blogging as I used to be, but maybe I will get better in a few months once work slows down. I'll tell you more about work in another post. The purpose of this post is to talk about our Christmas and New Years now that it is January 17!

Well, shortly before Christmas, my friend Kim from work had a gingerbread cookie decorating party and Scott and I went and had a good time. It was a lot of fun decorating cookies and hanging out.

On Christmas day, Scott and I went to his cousins' house (Molly and Glenn) who live in Monroe. This has become a Christmas day tradition in his family. We had the best steaks you can imagine and everyone brought sides and snacks and just hung out for a few hours. It was nice. I didn't take any pictures though. I put Scott in charge of that and well, you see what happened...

The Saturday after Christmas, we went to Scott's parents' house for our Christmas with his family. We exchanged gifts and then had a really good lunch. It's always nice to all get together at the same time. There are pictures in the slide show.

On New Years Eve, Scott and I had tickets to the Chick-fil-A bowl, since Georgia Tech was in it. They played LSU and lost in a really embarrassing way. I was disappointed and it takes a lot to get me disappointed about football or any sport for that matter. Oh well. I took some pictures there and they are in the slide show in this post. Notice that we did not take any pictures after the game had started. By the time half time rolled around, we were so far in the hole points-wise that there was no returning. I figured they would at least score a few more points to make us competitive, but no, sadly not. BB&T had provided everyone with a flyer about the bank. Bad idea. All the people on the Tech side started making paper airplanes with these flyers and seeing how far they can go. Remember, this is an engineering school, so some of them were going pretty far. We were on the far end of the field and there were planes from our section making it out to the 50 yard line. Some time during the 4th quarter they announced they would start arresting people for throwing anything from or in the stands. Most of them stopped. That was kind of the exciting part of the night. People were cheering when a plane would go especially far. Kind of sad. Oh well. We were driving home from the game when the clock hit 12. We did not do anything at all on New Years Day and that was quite nice.

On Jan 3, we had Christmas with my family. We had party-type foods and exchanged gifts. I have pictures in the slide show. We had a lot of fun visiting with each other.

Follow up

I feel that I should follow up on my last post and some of the comments that were left. I am still listening to country music, but I think that one of the reasons for my current state of flipping is that they haven't had a lot of new stuff come out lately and I am kind of tired of listening to the same songs over and over again.

Now, my sister mentioned that she loves that song Just Dance by Lady Gaga. I know the song she is talking about and it is kind of catchy. However, Lindsey and I saw her perform it in person when she opened for New Kids on the Block back in October and let me tell you, it could have ruined the whole song for me. That was the only song she sang that was really entertaining, honestly, but that is not the reason for our dislike of her. I can't think of any other way to say this but, she is a freak. I know that's not very nice, but let me explain. First of all, Natasha Bedingfield was the first opening act, and we really enjoyed her. I did not realize I knew and liked so many of her songs. When she finished, she informed us the the New Kids would be out in a few minutes. So, that kind of tainted our reaction anyway. When Lady Gaga came out, we were all standing up and screaming thinking it would be the New Kids. So, she comes out in this white shiny outfit that makes me think of a wedding dress right out of the Jetsons. It is a corset-type top and a short shiny tutu-like skirt. She had on extremely tall high-heeled white boots. She was flanked by several male dancers wearing very Jetson-esque outfits. She danced kind of weird during her first song. At one point in time, she began crawling around on the stage and we had a great view of her underwear. Seriously, she was getting weird and half of the crowd had already sat down. I think my mouth was hanging open by this point. The next thing I know, her dancers yanked her skirt off and she was dancing around in that horrible corset and her underwear. It was weird. I mean, who opens for a group who will have a mostly 30-something female audience and dresses like that? Anyway, freaky in every way. By the time she was done, the only people still standing and cheering were obviously drunk. If it hadn't been for them, I am sure if she had stopped singing, you could have heard crickets chirping. So, anyway, that is the explanation about the comments on Lady Gaga. I like that Just Dance song, but it does bring back those memories of her strange performance. Obviously the song and Wendy's comment bring the same type of memories back for Lindsey as well. Our memories will forever be burned with the disgusting images of her prancing around on stage mostly undressed with the weirdly-dressed dancers.

What Rock Have I Been Under

Does anyone else out there listen to country radio that reads my blog? Did you realize that Cledus T. Judd is no longer working for 94.9 The Bull? I was totally bummed when I realized this on the way to work this morning. I go through phases in my radio-listening patterns. Sometimes, I'll go for weeks listening to my Bible on MP3 on the way to work. Sometimes, I'll put it on 101.5 (Kicks) or 94.9 and listen to whatever comes on, usually only switching if they start talking about something that gets on my nerves or if a commercial comes on that I can't stand to listen to. If I can't find something on either of those stations, I check out the Christian radio stations and the Fish to see if I can get good signal and if they are playing a song I like. Well, then I go through phases where I don't listen to the DJs at all or the commercials, I just flip like crazy until I find a song I like and sometimes even if I find one I like, I will keep flipping to make sure there isn't one on that I like better until I get back around to it. I have 3 FM channels with 6 presets each, so I have a lot to choose from! I was especially into doing this when I had my Grand Am and I had the radio controls on my steering wheel (but I only had a total of 12 presets then). Well, recently I have been flipping. I have been listening to the country radio stations a lot less, and pop and hip hop a lot more. I listen to 94.1, 99.7, 95.5, 98.5, and I always flip by the oldies stations to see if they are playing a song I recognize. All of those DJs get on my nerves except Steve & Vickie and they teeter on it. I try not to listen to anything vulgar, but when I am listening to 95.5 The Beat, it's usually hard to tell what the people are saying, but I like the beat. SO, I have been in a flipping phase - that is my excuse for not realizing that my favorite radio DJ had been fired a week before Thanksgiving. I read an article about it online today when I got to work just to make sure he wasn't out sick and they just failed to mention him. Apparently lots of radio stations aren't even giving their DJs a full year to pull up ratings even though it sometimes takes years to build a following.

Whatever. I was just shocked and wanted to share with you the fact that I now feel like I have climbed out from under my country radio DJ awareness rock.

More blogging to come soon, I hope.