I love my hubby!

25 Random Things

This is something being passed around Facebook right now. I figured since I took so long coming up with these on there, I would also share them with my blogging buddies! Enjoy learning 25 random things about me! :-)

1. I met my husband my freshman year of college, we dated 4 years, and then got married.
2. I've been married to my husband, Scott, for 8 1/2 years now and I love him more and more every day.
3. I have a son, Ethan, who will be 5 on Feb. 3rd! He was an easy baby, and made us think we had the parenting thing figured out!
4. I have a second son, Caleb, who turned 2 last August30th. He was a difficult baby, but has gotten easier as he's gotten older.
5. We think we are finished with our family, and happy with having two children for many different reasons.
6. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior at 4 years old. I rededicated my life to Christ when I was 14 years old.
7. I am 30 years old. (And my Wii Fit age is 30 too!)
8. I grew up moving around the United States b/c my Dad was in the Air Force for 20 years. I lived in Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Alaska, California, Virginia, and Texas. Since leaving home, I've lived in North Carolina and South Carolina, which is my home now.
9. I work around 25 - 30 hours each week at Wolverine Coatings Corporation as their accounting/bookkeeping person and I love my job!
10. I grew up singing solos and duets in church almost every other Sunday and was always involved in choir, but haven't been involved in a choir since getting married, and I miss it! I hope to have time to join and revisit that love in my life eventually, but can't even begin to imagine adding another thing in my schedule at the moment!
11. I went to two different high schools, William Howard Taft High in San Antonio, Texas for my freshman and sophomore years, and North Stafford High in Stafford, Virginia for my junior and senior years.
12. I was Salutatorian of my graduating high school class.
13. I ran track and cross country in high school, and still try to run when I can. I would like to train again for some more 5K races, but again, time is the issue!
14. I went to Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina.
15. I changed majors 3 times in college - started out with American Sign Language, changed to Accounting, then changed to Education and graduated with a B.S. in Middle Grades Education with emphasis in Math and Language Arts. ( I think I really just wanted to be a wife and mother mainly, hence my indecision!)
16. I only taught school for 2 years - 8th grade Math, Science, and Reading; 5th grade all subjects; and 7th grade Math and Algebra. I decided I didn't like all the disrespect of the students and actually NOT having time to teach, but was just a discipline monitor all day. I like working with adults better!
17. I have never learned to cook. I love to eat, but don't like to cook. That can be a problem!
18. My mom and dad moved to SC from VA when Ethan was 6 months old, and my mom has been our full time childcare provider ever since, to which we are so thankful, since we both have to work!
19. I enjoy keeping up with friends I've met over the years through email, blogs, and now facebook!
20. I love taking pictures of my family.
21. I enjoy creating websites and blogs.
22. I sleep in almost every Saturday, while my husband gets up and has "Daddy and Sons" time with our two sons. I am very spoiled with this tradition! I hope it continues!
23. I am pretty organized, but not as much as I used to be. Having kids and a husband helped me to relax a little in my idea of a perfectly organized home! It's more important spending time with my family in my home than keeping it neat and organized now.
24. I am 5 ft 8 in tall.
25. I can't think of anything else, as this has taken me almost 45 minutes to come up with these!

Snow!

We got a little bit of snow yesterday . . . the first snowfall of the season here. (Not that we usually get a lot, but normally one to two times a season sometimes). Ethan and Caleb had fun going out and playing in what little snow we had, maybe an inch to an inch and a half before it started melting. It is very cold! Brrrrr!! Although the snow is fun, I'm ready for warmer weather. I would have a hard time living in a place that got snow more than once or twice in the winter time. I guess I have officially converted to a "southern" carolina girl!

Caleb

Ethan

Caleb & Ethan

Our house with the snow covered yard, after it had melted a little

We got a Wii!!!

After deciding we wanted to use some of our Christmas money on a Nintendo Wii a couple weeks ago, we couldn't find one anywhere! Online or in the stores were all sold out. But over this past weekend, while on a visit to our friends' house in Atlanta, we found a Wii at Costco (so, I had to get a Costco membership, but I know we'll use it)!! We are so excited. We stayed up until 3 am Sunday morning playing it with our friends, and there is still so much more to do. I love that it can be a family activity. Ethan loves the bowling and driving games so far. Even Caleb likes it! I'm sure I'll have pictures soon of us all playing it!!

In other news, Ethan and Caleb did redeem themselves from their last public appointment. Last Thursday they had their well visits, and both behaved well for being in there a total of 2 hours! I was still thankful to have my mom come with me and help out, but there were no tantrum outbursts like earlier in the week, thank goodness. Ethan was 36 lbs, in the 24% for weight and in the 52% for height (I don't remember their heights though). Caleb was 30 lbs, in the 60% for weight and in the 70% for height. All was well and healthy with both of them!

I don't have any recent pictures, but here are a few still from Christmas time that were on my parents' camera:

Ethan and Jill

Caleb and his Pig

My neice, Wendy (So cute in this picture!)

New Glasses . . . and Other Things

Please ignore the hair and no makeup look, but notice my new glasses! I am so happy I got new glasses today with non-glare lenses and they are stylish enough that when I am too tired to fit my contacts in my eyes, I can wear these out and feel like I made the "choice" to wear them, rather than out of necessity. In fact, I might just choose to wear them to work tomorrow! The glasses were the highlight of my day . . . the rest of my day was not so much of a good highlight. In fact I think I was angrier at Ethan and Caleb than I've ever been before. I had to take them for their eye glasses follow-up appointment for the first time since they got their glasses. Most of the time, I try to either take one child at a time to appointments, or have my mom or someone else go with me to an appointment with both boys. But today, I had to take them both by myself. Everything was actually going great through both of their check ups, but then as the doctor was trying to talk to me about what to do next, Ethan and Caleb got in a fight over having the same toys they had brought into the office. I tried to negotiate the toys for a quick trade, but neither one was willing to budge, so I had to take all the toys away and put them in my bag. At that time Ethan and Caleb proceeded to throw the loudest screaming and crying tantrums times two in a small, echoing doctor's office. I sat both of the boys in separate chairs and told them they needed to be quiet, but they kept on and on and on . . . for almost 10 minutes straight, which seemed like an eternity. The opthamologist proceeded to try to explain to me the course of action, but it was almost impossible for her to talk or me to hear, with how loudly both of the boys were crying. The only thing I think I could've done differently, after looking back on the situation now, is maybe ask the doctor if we could have a moment for me to finish disciplining the boys without having her talking to me and me trying to listen to her and give them time to calm down from their in office "time outs," but I was so overwhelmed at how badly they were behaving, that I wasn't thinking 100% clearly. After we got home, Caleb went straight to his room for his nap and I put Ethan in our room (since the boys share a room and Ethan doesn't normally nap in the same room with Ethan), and I MADE Ethan stay an hour in the room away from me. I needed the time more than him to cool down. As the afternoon went on, we had an in depth talk about behavior etc. etc. . . . I hope something sunk in. Most of the time, the boys do really well behaving in public, but boy did they make me angry today! I guess we all just do the best we can. I did the best I could in the situation I was in. We have another appointment at the end of the week for some well visits, but my mom will be able to go with me to this one, thank goodness!

Short update on the eye doctor visit, without the tantrum episode included, . . . . basically still neither Ethan or Caleb are using their right eyes, even with the glasses. So, the next steps are either dilation drops in their left eyes to blur the vision in that eye, to make their brain have to use their right eyes hopefully to see. OR to use patches over their left eyes to accomplish the same goal. Although the patches would be hardest to enforce, Scott and I both feel we would like to try the patch option first. The dilation drops would have to be given once a day for four weeks, and can have side effects such as flushing, fevers, constipation, and irritability . . . which we don't really want to subject their bodies to those, if possible. So, we're going to try the natural route first with the patches. I have to call tomorrow to find out how that all works for getting the patches.

So, that is an update from today! Thanks for reading my long post all of my blog readers, at least 2 out there! :-)

Christmas 2008

We had a really nice Christmas with all of our family . . . there were so many more good pictures, but here are some to share! Now, we are already back into the regular swing of things in our regular life. Sometimes it's a little sad to have to say goodbye to everyone and go back to the norm. But I am thankful that our "norm" is pretty great! I haven't felt like blogging a lot lately, but I'll try to get on and update more when I'm more in the blogging mood! :-)