shopping

whew! What.a.week! Brads been working on a insane project for school all last weekend and this week. Thankfully its finished now, just waiting on the grade. The point of this is, thats he's been crazy stressed out and not able to do anything except school and work, which led to me being stressed too lol. Last Saturday he needed the house distraction free, so I loaded up Raelee and headed out for a day of shopping. The goal was to get a new dress for me for church (which I never found), but Raelee ended up with 2 dressed instead hehe. Her clothes are just sooo much cuter! We went to almost every store in the mall I think. Every dress I found that I liked, either was not in my size or was waayyyy too  expensive. I did however find out that Childrens Place is AWESOME! I don't think I've ever been in there before, I really don't go to the mall much. Anyways, they were having an awesome sale, so Raebabe got a bunch of new clothes. My favorite for her is her new skinny jeans. So.stinking.cute! I also bought her some little sneakers. When she tried everything one, she looked sooo grown! I had to let her run around in her diaper after, so that she looked like a baby again.

Valentines

Brad and I are not elaborate Valentiners. We usually do cards and dinner at home. With Brad normally cooking. Well Brad had class last night, so dinner was on me. Every Monday night we watch the Bachelor, so I though it would be fun to have a dinner date/cocktail party(grape juice)/rose ceremony while we watched the Bachelor(BTW I'm loving the DVR). This was all a surprise to Brad. So I spent the day getting all my supplies ready, thanks Lindley for the help. I assembled the dinner early, to make things easier. Thank goodness I did! I'm pretty sure that everything that could have gone wrong did. It started with loosing Raelee's shoe at Walmart. Then the cooking disasters started. First I heated up a pan with a tad of oil to cook the chicken. Well, I forgot that the chicken was frozen, and I had already taken it out of the bag. So I'm trying to defrost the chicken under the hot water, now that I'm typing this I'm wondering why I didn't just use the microwave. Anyway, the pan started smoking, filled the house up with smoke and set off the smoke detectors! Lindley and I had to open all the windows. So the chicken was still frozen, so I decided to put it in a pot of boiling water to defrost it. I started the water boiling, I dropped in the chicken and walked into the dining room where Lindley was making valentines. Of course, the pot boils over, like WAAAYYY over. The whole underside of the stove was full of water. I was scared to use the stove until I could clean up the water, but I had to wait for the stove to cool down first. Of course, there might have been a few burned fingers in this process. So finally the chicken's defrosted, I chopped it up and put it in the pan to cook, when Lindley pointed out that I hadn't clean the smokey, burned oil out of the pan first. Oops! At this point, I didn't care what dinner tasted like, I just wanted it done! I was making chicken divan btw. In the fridge it went to be cooked later. Moving onto dessert. I was making chocolate pudding, easy peasy, so I thought. In fact, this whole dinner was supposed to be easy and stress free! Go to wisk the pudding, and no wisk to be found. So I tried using a fork, 10 mins later, the pudding was still liquid, so I finally got out the mixer, which worked, it just made a mess. So everything's ready, just needs to be put in the oven and assemble around 9pm when Brad would be on his way home. I did the night routine with Raelee, put her to sleep around 7:30pm, then showered and dressed. I was just starting on my hair and makeup, when Brad called to say he got out of class early and was on his way home. Yikes! So I was rushing around, putting everything in the oven, and setting up the coffee table and lighting candles, and sprinkling rose petals outside, AND doing my hair and makeup during Brad's 30 min. drive home. I didn't make it. I called and had him wait at Walmart until everything was ready. In the end, everything looked and tasted great, and it was fun watching the bachelor all dressed up in our fancy living room. Phew! I'm glad next year Brad will be back in charge.

 the living room and porch

 dinner

Raelee with her valentine balloon from grandma and grandpa

steps

Some of Raelee's first steps. So fun!

Random favorites

Favorite Season: summer, I can't wait to see you!
Favorite activity: going to the beach.
Favorite Store(s): Anthropology(but I'm too poor to shop here), IKEA( but I'm mad at you right now), so the winner is Target.
Favorite hair product: TRESemme. LOVE their dry shampoo. When I straighten my hair I use this and can leave it without washing for about 4 days. Awesome.
Favorite soap: Dove.
Favorite movie theater: Overall AMC, but I kinda like Governors lately, and IMAX has the best popcorn.
Favorite TV Show(s): How I met your mother, modern family, the bachelor, american idol, and so you think you can dance.
Favorite shoes: Reef flip flops and sperrys. Oh and my Croc navy blue ballet flats.
Favorite book series: The work and the glory. I've lost count on how many times I've all the books.
Favorite house repair peeps: Mills Well Service, Brian's Septic service, Harper and Revell air conditioning, Nature's Finest Lawn Care.
Favorite Gas Station: Pan, but now we have a costco card, so we go there. It is cheaper, but Pan was nicer.
Favorite Place in Tallahassee: The Library.

Alumni

We spent the day at Brad's high school alumni baseball game. We were excited that Brad's parents were able to come watch too. We thought it was going to be rained out, but it stopped just in time. The field was crazy muddy though, yuck, Brad's catchers mask, glove, cleats, and shin guards are nasty. For real going to have to hose them off. Brad's team won state champs in 2001, the year before he graduated, so they had a reunion a few weeks ago. It was cool to be able to meet some of his old team mates and friends. BUT how in the heck was that TEN years ago? For realz time is going WAAAAYYYY too fast! Anywayz, the Alumni team won, hehe, so that was pretty awesome. Came home to hot showers and naps, cause we were FREEZING and soooo tired cause we had a date night last night, and stayed out too late( our movie didn't even start until 11pm). We saw "True Grit", which was an AWESOME movie, but my favorite line from the movie applied to how I felt waking up this morning after only a few hours of sleep, "I done got old".

 leaving on a date

 at the gane

 Brad catching

 whoohoo! go Brad!

name on the wall :)

Raelee has had a few accomplishments this week. We're very proud of her. She:
*took 10 steps on her own.
*loves to push the table chairs all over the house.
*Helps me take clothes out of the dryer.
*Climbed a picnic table by herself. Crazy baby!
*let me do her hair in twist and piggies for the first time. Soooo cute!
*started blowing kisses.
*Learned how to get down off our bed by herself. Still makes me nervous though.
*Had her first M&M'S..sorta. I was in the kitchen making Rae's breakfast, when I realized she was being to quiet. I found her under the coffee table with a Costco sized bag of peanut M&M'S, shoveling them into her mouth. She had green colored drool all over her face, they definitely were melting in her mouth. Rae wasn't able to chew them, so she was sucking all the shell and chocolate off and had a mouthful of peanuts. Scared.me.to.death. She was NOT happy when I fished them out of her mouth.
*Whenever she can get a hold of clothing items, she now holds them up to herself and smiles, like she's trying them on. So cute. She puts Brad's ties up to her neck.
*Reads her books out loud to herself in her babble.
*Has her front teeth coming in.
Our lil bug is growing up!
P.S. I have some super cute pics of some of these accomplishments, but my computer is being dumb and won't let me upload.

10 things about me!

1. I LOVE to read. I am a speed reader, which usually is good, but when ever I find a really, really, really good book, I always wish I could make it last longer. Example: I read the Hunger Games series in 2 days, and that was off and on during that two days.

2. I probably will never eat oreo cookies again due to an incident that involved eating the whole bag. By myself. Not proud of this, but it cured my cravings for oreos.

3. I'm not good at letting friendships go. I know people move on in life, but its hard for me to see someone that I used to be super close to and now we don't even talk. Sad.

4. I LOVE to be outdoors. From seeing my paleness it's obvious that I haven't been in awhile, but I can not wait for it to warm up so that Raelee and I can have some adventures.

5. I HATE 12 hour shifts due to some days I never even see the sunlight. 

6. I LOVE having 4 days off every week, wish it could be more hehe.

7. I don't like doing things alone. I love to have a friend with me. I'm going to be super sad when my little bro leaves on his mission for two years, cause he's normally my shopping buddy.

8. I have tons of projects for my house, but lately am lacking the motivation to get started. 

9. I'm in LOVE with DVR. It has changed my life.

10. I love dancing crazily around the house to good tunes( Brad does too). That's probably why Raelee has some awesome dance moves for a baby.