14 days and counting!!

We leave in 14 days!! I can't believe it! Time was dragging SO bad through January and early February and now... we have 2 weeks left! I'm getting things all ready. I've emptied out our 72 hour kits. I do this every April anyway, so a month early is no biggie. We have a lot of usable things from them that we'll take with us to eat on the road. I just got back from Walmart where I picked up all our replacement food for them. Now I have the task of putting them back together. THEN I get to organize and plan out our road trip! I've also gotten a small emergency kit for the car made up, complete with foil blankets, water and bandages. I am so eager to get going. I'm still working on the office and Mariska's room but I should be done organizing the house before our trip.

I also went and got 2 new tires for the drive. We needed them pretty badly, but the other 2 on the car are just fine. It's been a pretty busy day with the tires, Walmart and just as I got home from all of that, Brent called to say that he has an hour and a half for lunch, for jury duty today. So I made up the girls a quick lunch and we met at a cute little restaurant my old boss opened called "The Dish". They had really great burgers and onion rings and I tried my first Sweet Potato Fries and LOVED them! So now I'm home and so full I can barely stand up straight and decided to procrastinate the house work with some random blogging. So here are some pictures to make it not such a complete waste of time...

14 days people!!

18 DAYS!

We only have 18 days left until we hit the road!! We are SO excited. I am seriously itching to start getting things ready, but I'm not letting myself yet because then I'll have nothing to do in 2 weeks.
Today Brent isn't at work, because he was called to Jury Duty. He's been at the courthouse all day and still hasn't been seen. They said jury selection could go until 6 today, and if they don't get through it all by then, he'll have to go back tomorrow. Not so much fun. But he also welcomes the break from teaching for a day.
I am trying to get the house more organized and functional. I want to get our closet with our food storage and emergency essentials more organized and I want the office turned into a more usable room, that's less office and more toy room, so we can get some of these toys out of the living room! It's proven very difficult. Brynley is my shadow and I can't get much done while she's napping because I don't want to wake her up! So it's slow going.
My hair is seriously short. Great Clips was having a big $6.99 haircut sale and I thought, "That's about $10 less then what I'd normally spend, I should do it". So I went in and thought all went okay, but it's hard to tell with my massively curly hair. So, I didn't see how horrible it was until Sunday morning when I straightened it for church. ICK! I HATED it. Brent said it looked "okay" (I know what that means)... but to me it looked like a shaggy half-mullet. So after church I went straight there and had them even out the layers more and round them out. In order to do that she had to take about another inch off the length... now I pretty much have to straighten it, or else I'll look like Justin Timberlake. At least I have about 3 weeks of growth before we get to Utah.
That's it for us for now. Brynley is walking all the time now but still not saying anything. Mariska is still obsessed with princesses and getting married. Other than that we're all just waiting and waiting for March 12th...

Unbelievable!

This is a record snowfall for DFW! It's the most snow they've had in one day ever and the most snow total since 1982! Mariska is having so much fun!! We let Brynley touch is some, and she did not appreciate it, so she's staying inside. Brent had the day off today due to the snow and he spent a lot of time outside with Mariska, after which we all enjoyed some hot chocolate. Unbelievable!!

"BOOO!"

I am what you might call a "Valentine's Day Scrooge". I hate it. I don't hate love, cuddling, gifts, or chocolate... but I hate Valentine's Day. To me, it's completely pointless and a huge waste of money. Why does anyone need a designated day to express feelings? And hello, isn't that what ANNIVERSARIES are for?! Not to mention Christmas, and birthdays. Although I will readily admit I stink at birthdays.

Just for the fun of things, I'm okay with a small box of chocolate or a flower, although nothing over about $5, simply to acknowledge that it is a day that everyone else seems to be into. Although, anything over $5 makes you a sucker.

This Valentine's Day we are celebrating by making a box of chocolate chip cookie brownie bars. And I'll probably make a fun dinner for Mariska that might involve red food coloring. Other than something that simple, what's the point? It's just another day on the calendar. Nothing special to it, again, that's what your anniversary is for!

Ramblings

This post isn't about anything in particular. Nothing too special is going on right now, but I'm in the mood to blog. The last couple weeks have been so long! Two weeks ago I strained my lower back and so I didn't work out all week waiting for it to get better. And as soon as I was gearing up to get back into a good routine, both girls get sick, which inevitably means, I get sick. This is the 3rd week in the last 6 that I haven't been able to work out because of my back or being sick and I'm SO frustrated! And like clock work right on schedule I can feel myself slipping into my depression of mood swings, wanting to sit and do nothing and constantly feeling bad about myself. So I'm taking today to seriously rest up and then tomorrow, no matter how I feel I'm going to force myself to start working out again.

We have LESS than 6 weeks until we leave on our trip to Utah!! We are SO excited! I sure hope February goes by a heck of a lot faster than January did! January crawled and it nearly killed me! So far we only have one thing scheduled... that's to get together with our friends from Logan on Friday March 19th for dinner. So keep that in mind when scheduling things please, we won't be available Friday night. But we are so excited to get together with everyone! We hate being so far away all the time!

Anyway, so here are some pictures of the last couple of weeks, including one of a nice little war wound Mariska got during a play date. I'll post again soon!

Can I get a "Woot woot"?!

Okay, I know I'm not as good at couponing as some people, but I'm just beginning too... SO, can you guess how much I paid for these 11 items??

Brent guessed $10, what's your guess??

The answer is in my comments....

Christmas 2009

We had a great Christmas! Mariska was so excited to leave out cookies for Santa. I worked until about midnight on Christmas Eve and so we were up until about 2 getting everything set up. Mariska was up bright and early and we were all lucky to wake up to a "white Christmas"... well, as white as you can get down here!

After all the gifts were opened, Brent started to work on our Christmas dinner. We made a honey glazed ham, rolls, rice pilaf, a failed attempt at caramelized brussel sprouts and a nice raspberry walnut sauce to pour onto a duck. I really liked the duck, although I think the sauce would be great on just a plain old turkey. Our friends Scott and Mary came over and we had a good time with them. The rest of our break was just relaxing and getting the house cleaned up. Now we're back to normal life and working on those New Year resolutions!

It's been in the 30's and 40's down here lately and it's killing me! I've become almost obsessed with getting our electricity bill as low as we can get it and hearing the heater run is torture. And yes, I know Utah is way colder for way longer... but the reason I'm having such a hard time is that the mild winters down here are supposed to make up for the ridiculously brutal summers! The electric bills October - April are supposed to be low enough that the unbearably painful bills of May - September aren't quite so bad because then you can say, "well it's lower in the winter".... but not so this year! That's what's killing me, I know what's still to come this summer!

Anyway, my New Year resolutions are to do my visiting teaching every month and to lose at least 20 pounds by about April or May. All the junk is now out of the house and I'm going through sugar withdrawls. I've worked out some but haven't lost any actual pounds yet, but I feel good. I'm also counting down the days until we leave for Utah... 66 left today. And I've also become obsessed with planning said trip and making it as cheap as possible. I'm SO excited!! Anyway, sorry to just ramble at you, it's what I'm best at... hope you're all well.