Wordless Wednesday

Real Simple Bargain

Deal alert: Amazon is selling 1-year subscriptions for Real Simple magazine for $5.00! That's only $0.42 per issue. What a bargain!

Flashback Friday

UNT friends:
Kevin, George, Tim, and Steve
I see Elsie the dog in there too!
Not sure what Kevin and Steve are doing,
though it looks like typical behavior.
This was taken November 9, 2007, which I believe was
the night we told our friends we were pregnant.

It's a Date

Last week our friend, Matt Blackmon, was in town teaching a class at DTS. We had dinner with him while he was here, and I guess he sensed that we needed to go on a date, because he offered to keep Reese for us one night. We took him up on his gracious offer, after we realized it had been 8 months since we'd been out alone.

This is a picture of us with the Blackmons in the summer of '07 when we visited them at their home in Pennsylvania. Valerie was about 2 months pregnant (I think) with their son, Calvin. I was 1 month shy of being pregnant with Reese.

Valerie, Matt, Aliza, George, me

Matt teaches a class at DTS each summer, so we saw him exactly one year ago. It was especially fun to see Matt this year, because he's lost about 80 pounds! Here's what he looked like this year:

Jenny LOVED Matt!

Matt is working on a book about his weight loss, so if you want to know his secret, you can read about it sometime around January.

George and I decided to eat dinner at Posado's for our date. He especially loves Posado's, because of the free frozen yogurt. George has the special "talent" of making really tall ice cream cones. I made him stop at this point:

The little girl coming out of the door said, "Whoa!

Look at that ice cream cone!"

And here we are enjoying a quiet drive after dinner. No screaming coming from the back seat!

After dinner, we drove to a neighborhood in McKinney called Adriatica. It's a beautiful replica of a Croatian village. I would love to live in one of the unique houses there. It's still under construction, but I took a few pictures.

I love this door!

Tower

An occupied home with a lot for sale to the right.

Look at that huge front door!

There was also a quaint chapel in the neighborhood that I didn't get on camera. It overlooked a pond, around which Adriatica is built. I plan to go back in a month or so to check on the progress of the neighborhood.

It was wonderful to have a date night with my hard-working husband. Thanks, Matt! I hope we don't wait another 8 months to go out again.

4th of July

This 4th of July was a replica of last year's. Reese and I went to my sister Stacy's party, while George worked 8 1/2 hours. We've missed out on fireworks the last 2 years, and I love fireworks. I hope we'll get to see some next year!

Reese and Jessi in the pool. I was having allergy
issues, so I didn't feel like getting in to swim.

This is the banana split cake I made for the party.
It was yummy! (By the way, Blogger decided the
picture should be vertical. Arg!)

Last 4th of July - Look at Reese's fat cheeks!

This year - sitting in the same spot
(different chair now). What a big boy!

Reese 's First Swim

Despite George being a former competitive swimmer, lifeguard, water polo player, and all around aquatics guru, it took him 14 months to finally get Reese into a pool. We took him swimming a few weeks ago at Jini's house. Jini was George's boss when he worked in Plano.

Reese was cautious at first, but loved the water. Jini even scooped Reese underwater to George. There were at least 6 people in the pool who work in aquatics, but I was a nervous wreck! You see, even though George vowed to never date, let alone marry, a non-swimmer - I am just that. I can keep myself afloat, but that's about it.

Here are some pictures of Reese in the pool.

Shannon (Jini's daughter), Reese and Jini

George, Reese and Shannon

George had just put Reese's face in the water.

Just chillin on a raft.

Hey, this is fun!

George has to work on the 4th of July, but if I can muster up enough courage to put on a swimsuit, I'm going to take Reese swimming at my sister's house. I haven't been in a pool in at least 7 years. I told you I'm a non-swimmer!

Thrift Store Remix - Mirror

My sister, Jessi, has been working on redoing her bedroom.

Nope, that's not Katy Perry. I promise.

The walls of her bedroom were painted in colors similar to the ones on her shirt. Each wall a different color and even the ceiling was painted. It was LOUD, just like her. : )

Now she's thinking about redecorating with black and white, and Jessi spotted this pretty frame when we went to Ikea. I convinced her we could find a similar one at a thrift store for much cheaper.

A few weeks later we ran across this mirror:

It's much smaller than the Ikea frame - this one is only about 8 inches tall. I think it was only $3.99. It turned out really nice with a coat of black spray paint:


Spray paint makes everything look better. Now I've decided I need to find one like this for myself!