Wow- what a week!

(...and a lot of "w's" in that title!)

This has been an exiciting and exhausting week. I have so many details to each story, but I will try to stay on track and give you a good overview.

Wednesday night Jesse had four tickets to the Astros' game, so we invited Chase and Rebecca to go with us. About half way through the game, Chase tells us that Rebecca has been having contractions throughout the entire game. By the end of the game, they are steadily about 5 minutes apart. Naturally, as first-time parents, they were alarmed by this, since she is still not officially due for another two and half weeks. When we got in the car to head home, she called her doctor, who wanted her to go to the hospital and have everything checked out. Better safe than sorry, right?

So we went to Memorial City Hospital and they hooked her up to machines and started running tests. The baby's (Natalee's) heart rate was pretty high, so Rebecca drank some water which calmed it down a bit. Her contractions remained fairly consistent, but she was not dialating and her water had not broken. Rebecca and I walked around the maternity area for about an hour trying to get her water to break, and no such luck. Around 3:00am they decided to send her home; she was definately having contractions, but labor was not progressing at a rate for them to admit her. So we all headed across town to go home.

Thursday mornng, I talked to Rebecca and she said she was doing okay. Her contractions were still consistent, but still her amniotic sac remained in place. Throughout the day, she and Chase went on many walks...around Walmart, the neighborhood, etc. I spoke to Chase around 6:45pm and he said her contractions were feeling stronger, but still nothing to get back to the hospital about. I went to sleep.

At 9:45pm my phone rings, and it is Chase telling me Rebecca's water broke and they are headed to the hospital. I know that even at that point it can take awhile, but Jesse helped convince me that this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I would be mad at myself if I missed it. So, I put on my clothes, sent some emails to work taking a personal day on Friday, and headed to the hospital.

When I got there, I was the only one there- I just knew his family and her sister would have already been there! I went to their room and it turned out that her "water breaking" was inconclusive, according to their tests (so the families were waiting to hear more- Chase never called me back and told me to wait!). And on top of that, her contractions had pretty much stopped since she "felt the leakage." The baby's heart rate was normal, and the nurses/doctor were pretty perplexed. We waited a few hours and Rebecca started having contractions again, which were slightly stronger than they had been the past 24 hours. Around midnight they ordered an ultrasound to see if the amniotic sac was still in place around the baby.

I have never seen an ultrasound before, and it was simply amazing. As they rolled over her head, you could literally see her little face- it looked as if baby Natalee was looking right at us! She just looked beautiful. I think seeing her like this made Chase and Rebecca feel better, as they were starting to feel pretty frustrated and concerned by this point.

After the results from the ultrasound came back, the hospital would not let her leave. They gave Rebecca something to help her sleep through the night, and said the doctor would be in first thing in the morning to decide what to do. So, I hugged them both and came home (got home around 2:00am).

I have since talked to Chase, and they have gone ahead and induced Rebecca. It looks as if her amniotic sac has a leak (so it did "break," it just did not "pop" and gush out like some mothers experience). With a leak, it would be more dangerous to sit and wait for it to all leak out and could potentially add stress to the baby, so the doctor wanted to induce. They went in and popped the sac for her, and now labor has begun! Unfortunately, the doctor said it would still more than likely be a long process and she probably would not deliver until this evening at the earliest.

Jesse and I are going down there again this afternoon, and I hope to get some good pictures of mom, dad, and baby Natalee to share with everyone! I will keep you posted...

More pictures from the party

Here are some more pictures from our beach vacation lunch:

Tammey won first place from the drawing, and I dont think I have ever seen anyone get so excited!

Some of the girls...Ana was sure getting into something!
We all entered the "most festive dresser" contest- I actually won 1st place!! (I think they felt sorry for me wearing the stupid green headband thingy.)
George and Woody, deep in discussion about technical documentation. Woody even dressed up!
Me and Joanne (my new HP team mate). We went together to get our shirts this week- they were even on sale!
Lisa and Rebecca were our hula dancers- they were hysterical, as usual.
Pres and Vice-Pres
Collin, Chris, and Shauna- I think Chris was the only one in the entire office who did not dress up for the party, and he is even a TIGER officer!
A great time was had by all!!

Vacation from work...at work

My company has a specific recreation and event team who periodically throw parties and family events for the employees; I have recently been selected to be Vice-President (since Amy left us!!) and Shauna stepped up to take her place as President. This month we planned a beach vacation...at the office. Here are some pictures!

Happy July Birthdays!

George and EJ blowing out the candles...
A good time is had by all...especially the birthday boys!
Here are some of the decorations:

The hallway leading up to the "party area."
Fun!
Aren't those plates cute? (I picked those up, hehe.)
One of the festive tables
The drink corner: I made two different punches, one shower-type juice punch and one slushy punch. Both turned out okay, but I sure wish someone could have spiked the punch bowl!
More pictures to come in the next post...

At the lake

We were up on Lake Travis for Hayden & Lauren's baby shower this weekend, hanging out at her parents awesome lakehouse.

I caught the sunset up on the storm tower on Saturday night...tell me this is not a cool picture!
Jesse and I on the boat dock, about to head out to the lake Saturday afternoon. You can already see a little pink in my sholders and face from that morning, and yet we went out again, just so I could get good and fried. :) Always.
On the jet ski- Jesse and took one of the jet skies out with Kyle and Lindsey, and we followed the boat of the rest of everyone out to this waterfall area. Unfortunately there were only a few drips from the waterfall because the lake is so low. You can tell from this bottom picture...the water is supposed to cover all of those rocks behind us. I believe they said the lake was about 25 feet low! People's boat docks are stuck up on the rocks, unable to get to water, and others have had accidents as they have unintentionally hit the bottom, as it is so low! Pray for rain for the Austin area so Lake Travis begins to fill up again!
We had a lot of fun, and now I'm trying to convinve Jesse to buy a jet ski...keep your fingers crossed, 'cause I doubt it is going to happen any time soon. Hehe.

Hayden and Lauren's baby shower

This weekend we all celebrated Hayden and Lauren's soon-to-be daughter up at her parent's lakehouse in Austin. We had friends come in from Dallas, RoundRock, Houston, and even New York City! It was a great time to hang out and catch up with friends, as well as enjoy Hayden and Lauren's "last get-together" without a little one.

Here are some pictures from the actual baby shower:

Hayden practicing his reading skills...
The baby cake made of diapers, pacifiers, rattles, etc. (I took this vertical picture so you could see Lauren's cute, pregnant tummy!)
This was the most special gift of all. Brittany, our friend who lives in NY, came up with an idea about three months ago for each of us girlfriends (and Lauren's female family members) to embroider a square for a special baby quilt made of the colors of her nursery. Brittany sent each of us a pattern, supplies, and very detailed, helpful instructions, and we each completed our square and then mailed them back to her. She put together this beautiful quilt, and surprised all of us by hand delivering it to the shower. The neat part is that she added the initials of whoever completed the square to each one, so Hayden and Lauren know exactly who all participated. (Mine is the very bottom, right corner...the umbrella.)
This was the gift Jesse and I put together for them. This basket had about 10 pair of baby girl shoes, from infant size, all the way up to 18 month. There are tennis shoes, light-up sandals, black and white patent dress shoes, and many more. And of course the socks to go with them!
Another picture of Brittany giving them the quilt and explaining all the different parts of who did what to put it together. (Hayden and Lauren were still in shock at this point.)
It was a really great weekend. I cannot believe nine months have flown by so quickly! Baby Haley Grace is due in three weeks, and I know all of our lives are about to change. I am so excited for them and ready to have her here! I know the rest of us will all shower this little girl with love forever!

Fun with the family

I hung out with my parents and youngest sister, Julie, Saturday night. I went over to their house thinking we might go out to dinner or to a movie, but then my dad pulled out four gift cards to Dave and Busters. It may be hard to believe (since you all know what a fun, party girl I am), but I have never been there before. It was a blast!

We did not get there until late, and by the time we arrived we were all starving. So we ordered drinks and dinner...and even dessert. Talk about splurge night! I was so brave, I even tried two new drinks: Haiwaiin Mai Tai and Long Island Peach Ice Tea. Both were very good, though I preffered my mom's Strawberry Margarita the best. :) Julie and I split a triple chocolate cake, and to be honest, I dont think there was any cake in that slice of cake- only fudge, brownie bites, and mini chocolate chips. Needless to say, I'm sure my caloric intake was off the charts!

After dinner, we went into the Midway Gameroom, and I honestly do not think I have ever seen that many people and games in my life. I have never been gambling or to any place like Las Vegas before, but it was exactly how I imagined one of those type places would be. Lots of lights, excitement, people blowing money playing games, and smiles on everyone's faces. (I guess people dont always smile in Vegas, as I'm sure people lose lots of money... but you get what I mean!) We all four got to race each other on the speedway- my dad barely beat me. Julie and I played air hockey, and we were tied 6-6 until I put a fast one by her and won 7-6! Mom spent most of the night at the Roulette table, but it sure payed off! We came back to find her with an entire bucket full of tickets! Of course, I spent the greatest amount of time (and effort) at the Skeeball lanes. I think I could play that game all night. What a great time!

Between the four of us, we won over 2,300 tickets and each got a fun D&B souvenier to take home. This was definitely something new and fun for me, and I really enjoyed the night with my family. I can't wait to go back again!

Finally a vacation!

Jesse and I have been talking about taking a vacation for the past...well, forever! We have not gone anywhere in over two years, and even then we were with his family. We have not had a vacation by ourselves since our 1st anniversary, and before that, our honeymoon. Needless to say, we are both craving time away to relax and enjoy being together again.

We started looking a couple of months ago really seriously trying to plan a cool vacation. Last week we finally made a decision and a commitment (the bill is paid!) for a week in Solimen Bay, Mexico!

I found this little place literally right on the beach. It is located in a bay, surrounded by corral reefs. My main desire is to snorkel and Jesse really wanted to kayak. This location is perfect for both. It is a two story building, and we chose the top level. It is small, but has a full kitchen so we can cook if we choose.

This view is from our balcony- you can see how close we are to the beach! Literally the "front yard!" The kayaks down there are owned by the property owners, and so we have free access to them all week, which is perfect since Jesse wanted to kayak anyway- now we dont have to spend money on renting.
This is the kitchen. Not huge, but big enough for us have access to what we need and keep bottled water, etc in the fridge.
This is the front of the villa. Again, we have the top unit.
This is our balcony. As you can see, there is a nice table out there (I can see us eating many-a-meal out there), two hammocks, and a built-in grill that is not shown. Ah- heaven!
Like I said, the place is small. This is about it (with the kitchen opposite the futon). But it is nice, it is air conditioned, and we are going to either be on the beach or in the hammocks anyway!
I am so excited- it is going to be hard to wait until the end of September!! I'm sure it will be worth it to go for an entire week. :)

Rest assured that there will be more pictures come our return!

Dont play catch with a 12 lb. ball!

It is raining today. As a matter of fact, it is supposed to rain all week. Rain for Jesse means a day off work. Yes, he still has to wake up early, go in to work, and try to wait it out, but most of the time soggy soil equals afternoon nap for Jesse.

Today, he decided he wanted to go work out, and I said I would go with him over my lunch break. So, we headed up to the gym and began our respective workouts. He started out on the bike, and I began on the elliptical machine. Then we did some weights together, and finally began our ab finale.

Sidenote:
Luckily, the way the gym is set up, there is a mini hall that dead-ends, and they keep a lot of the ab equipment over in that corner (which I appreciate, because it is kind of hidden, so no one can laugh as you are dying trying to complete crunch #3 of a 25 set!) I was very thankful we were hidden in the corner of this small hallway, as you will hear later!

We headed over to the ab hall, grabbed a mat and a medicine ball, (12 lb. medicine ball to be exact), and began exercise number one. This exercise consists of one partner lying on the pat, while the other partner stands on their feet. The two toss the medicine ball back and forth, and the one on the mat does a sit up with each toss of the ball. Pretty simple, right? The only thing you have to be able to do is stay coordinated and focused...oh yeah, and know how to count! On my second set of 20, I tossed the 12 lb. ball to Jesse who was supposed to hold it, as I had completed the set. He had lost track of the count, and tossed it back to me, and since I was not paying attention, or looking to catch it and toss it back, it hit my square in the face. Yes people, I had a 12 lb. medicine ball hit me in the face, right on my nose.

I immediately fell over, all dramatic like you would expect in a movie, and instinctively started to cry. Jesse of course panicked, crawling on his knees to see my face and make sure my nose was not broken or bleeding. The throbbing set in at once, and has not really subsided since. Needless to say, I have been holding a bag of frozen corn on my face all afternoon. :)

12 lb. medicine ball + Melody's face = NOT PRETTY

The really ironic and funny part of the story is the fact that just Sunday morning I woke up with a giant fever blister forming on my bottom lip. It continued to swell all Sunday, until Sunday night Jesse finally got me some Abreva and forced me to put it on three times before bed, to try and stop the swelling sore. So, tomorrow when I go into work for a few meetings, I will have a puffy lip, swollen eyes, and a bruised nose. LOL. People are going to think I was severly beat over the weekend! I told Jesse he better hide...

**Note to self:
Do not throw a 12 lb. ball at the face of another human being, unless certain they will catch it!

Tory's wedding

This weekend I went up to Tyler so that I could attend Tory's wedding. I know she and Chris have waited a long time for their marriage day, and I was so thankful to be able to share in the special moments.

Isn't her wedding cake beautiful? I did not eat any of this cake, but I was all over the chocolate groom's cake. It was chocolate cake, with a chocolate fudge center, with chocolate (white and milk chocolate) covered strawberries, served on a warm plate. Man, that makes me excited just remembering...
Here is the picture of all four of us ex-Systek girls. Tory caught our eye as she was preparing to cut the cake (naturally I was one of the first in line), and so we were able to chat for a few minutes afterwards and get this picture with the bride.
The wedding ceremony was one of the sweetest ceremonies I have ever been to. Don't get me wrong, I love weddings, and I tend to cry no matter what. But these two were so sweet and loving towards one another, it made me cry. Chris looked so tenderly and so lovingly at Tory that everyone witnessing could see his love for his bride. It was an amazing moment, not only for them, but for all of us who could see the love.
I think Tory was one of the most beautiful brides I have ever seen. The entire wedding was simple, elegant, and super classy. Every single detail was fixed to the nines, without being over the top. You can tell that a lot of time, effort, and thought went into making this the happiest day of their lives.
I had a great time at the wedding. I was so thankful to get to spend time with my girl friends, Shelley and Sarah again. I truly miss our daily interaction (even if it was at the horrible place), and I look forward to getting to see them and "catch up" as often as we can. Now that the weddings are over, we will have to come up with new reasons to get together! Babies, anyone?? (JUST KIDDING) I guess we will have to hold out until Danielle gets married...

Thanks for being my dates and my friends! I'm so lucky to have both of you in my life.
CONGRATULATIONS CHRIS AND TORY VEY!

Nothing to post

For those of you who actually read this blog from time to time, I apologize for not writing in awhile. I officially have nothing to post. I was kind of hoping to do something new, exciting, different, and above all, fun this weekend, and I was looking forward to telling you all about it. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

Jesse had to work this weekend, and though he did not stay long, he still had to wake up at the crack of dawn (which meant he had to go to bed early). On top of that, he was hoping the weekend would be a relaxing weekend, since we have not had one in awhile. Needless to say, we spent the majority of the weekend watching dumb movies on the couch, napping, trying to texture our new room addition and going to bed early. The highlight of the weekend is a toss up between going to Panera bread and enjoying their excellent soup and baguettes, and taking Jersey for a walk to the pond in front of our neighborhood and laughing as she tried to swim clear across the entire pond to chase after some ducks. It's not that the weekend was bad, boring perhaps, but not bad. Jesse and I had plenty of quality time together, so that was nice.

I think I have come to realize one of the drawbacks of working from home. When I'm at home (what seems like) all-the-time, it creates a desire for me to want to get out and go do something. Jesse on the other hand, works 60+ hour weeks outside in the hot sun, and when he is off work, all he wants to do is relax at home. Gonna have to give and take on this one...

Happy 25th Birthday Jesse!

What a birthday!

I feel like we have been celebrating all week long.

Sunday night we went to The Aquarium with my family to celebrate (as described in a previous post).

Tuesday night, Jesse went to a friend's house for bible study, so I was able to go get his cake, go pick up his present, get it wrapped, and clean up the house.

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 5:15 am to make blueberry and banana nut muffins for breakfast. This is a big deal, because I never make breakfast, much less at 5:15 in the morning! I put a candle in one of the muffins and made him blow out the birthday candle and make a wish. He says he hates that cheesy stuff, but it did get a grin out of him, and that's all I wanted.
When he came home from work, he saw the stack of presents (you can see in the first picture). He immediately guessed what it was, though he did seem surprised by it. We spent the next hour putting his grill together. Jesse never gets overly excited about anything, but he seemed happy with it. Then to top it all off, his new Adidas shoes arrived a day early, and they fit perfectly! I think that got the biggest smile of all. His parents and our sister-in-law and nephew (Gina & Elijah) came over and helped us celebrate Wednesday night with hamburgers, salad, fruit salad, and cookie cake for dessert. It was a fun night.

Thursday night, we had friends come over to help celebrate. Chase and Rebecca, Hayden and Lauren, and Thomas all came over, and we grilled chicken breasts, with wild rice, green beans, salad, and strawberry shortcake for dessert (and leftover cookie cake). It was a very nice night to sit out on the patio, listening to music, hanging out with friends, and enjoying good food.

Tonight, we are going over to his family's house to celebrate with all his brothers/sisters/parents/grandma. I believe we are having pork tenderloin (yum), so another good night of food and fun company!

Talk about a week of celebration and good food! The diet starts again Sunday!!!

Happy Birthday Jesse; I hope you have enjoyed the week, and realize that so much celebrating comes out of the overflow of so much love for YOU! I love you babe, and I hope it was a special for you, as you are to me!

Jesse's early birthday

Jesse's birthday is tomorrow (May 10), but we celebrated with my family on Sunday night, by going to the Downtown Aquarium. None of us had ever been, and I was very excited. It was a fun place, with very cool aquariums throughout the restaraunt, and to top it off the food was superb!

Jesse is going to have a lot of fun surprises for his birthday over the next few days...I will post more as it all plays out...!

Even more positive...

This morning when I walked in the office to my desk, there was a beautiful plant with small yellow flowers sitting there with a card. Joanne (my new teammate) had given it to me with a very nice thank you note for "all my help." It really made me feel good! She certainly did not have to do that, after all, helping her is my job, but it was nice to know she appreciates it.

After spending a little more time with her over the past few days, I think she is going to work out just fine. She is starting to show more interest and gets excited when something works correctly. The past few days she has spent the majority of the time on our client, and has begun asking many more questions. Perhaps she just needed to finish wrapping up her other work to truly transition to this team. I had further confirmation today when we went to get her badged, she said, "I hope they actually let me stay on this team and do not pull me off this time! It will be so nice to stay on one client for awhile." I agree! I hope that she does not get pulled off, and I hope she genuinely wants to stay and become 100% part of this team.

I feel much better today. :)

A positive note

After yesterday's long, boring, and negative post, I thought I should post something positive as soon as possible.

Today, I finally decided I could no longer wait around for answers from my manager, so I began to ask others for help in the initial setup/training of our new team member. I think he must have found out, because suddenly this afternoon he became very helpful and friendly again! Anyway, to make a long story short (which by now you all know I am not good at that), today I actually got some things accomplished! I called the HP help desk and found a work around for her access, we called another manager at HP to get the short-cut for her new access card, and I volunteered to take care of her badge process tomorrow morning. On top of that, I set up her training sessions at HP for next week, and still managed to get two docs out for review today!

In the end, she was very "impressed" with me, and said I was "spoiling" her. On top of that, my manager saw that I was stepping up and handling things so he did not have to. Hopefully, it made a good impression on both of them.

Though it is not much, it is something I am proud of, and I feel much better having accomplished this small task!

Feelings about work

WARNING- Long Post!

Amy's last day at work was last Friday, and though I knew that things would be different once she left, I dont think I realized how hard the transition would hit me.

I have been very fortunate in my past work environments; every single time I have changed jobs, someone has "taken me under their wing," looked out for me, and just been my friend. I have made many of my close friends from work, and continue to keep in touch with a lot of them to this day (Emily, Christie, Anna, Desha, Shelley, Sarah, Tory, Danielle, and now Amy). I guess I have been pretty spoiled!

The way our office is set up, everyone is broken into teams that each support an individual client. With a setup like this, it would seem that team members are naturally closer to one another, since they spend a great deal of time together. Up until now, that has been true (minus a few weeks time when a certain someone was on the team, and life went to hell in a handbag!) When I heard that Amy was going to be leaving, I immediately started to worry about who would replace her on our team. It has been a very confusing couple of weeks, wondering what was going to happen, who would take her place, and what my role was supposed to be on this new team. (Background: Before, Amy was the team leader and I was her "assistant," you might say. She was held responsible for pretty much everything, and I just helped out where necessary. Amy had been supporting our client for over 5 years, and became excellent at every aspect of this job.) So now, there are these big shoes left empty, and I do not know what is supposed to happen. Am I supposed to step up and take her job of delegating projects? Am I supposed to train someone new? Or are they going to hire someone and place them over me? It was a very confusing time.

At one point, I felt very good about everything, because our client sent out a nice email explaining to everyone that I knew enough of what happens to continue to support them without interruption, and that I would naturally "take this opportunity and run with it" (her words, not mine). But then whenever I would ask my manager at work what was going on, he ignored me and acted like everything would be fine, without answering a single one of my questions. They even pulled me into an interview with a potential new employee to get my opinion of her for our team. So, with no direction from them, and no answers to my questions, all I could do was assume that they were going to hire someone new for our team, and that they expected me to train them. In the back of my mind, I was excited, because I thought this was my turn to be the one to help someone else, "take them under my wing," and do for someone else, what others have always done for me.

Needless to say, things did not play out as I had assumed they would.

I received a phone call from Amy last Wednesday (2 days before her last day), telling me that our manager had told her that he was going to pull another employee with our company on to our team. She is nice, friendly, and has a lot of experience in tech writing, though not writing directly for our client. Amy seemed okay with it, though nervous as to what I would think. After I got off the phone with her, I received another phone call, this time from our client, who had also heard about the "new team member." (Keep in mind, that my manager has yet to say anything to me about any of this.) If I'm being honest, I was very surprised at their decision to do this, and quite intimidated, as this lady has 12 years of experience. I finally thought I might have a shot at being able to give something back to someone, and yet this lady will not need anything that I have to offer. I then sent my manager an email asking what he wanted to happen next, since he had gone ahead and pulled her to our team, despite the fact that she was still working on other projects for other teams. I never heard a response.

Amy and I spoke with her a little during those last few days, and tried to teach her a little about our client and the way things are done on our team. Amy did most of the teaching, since she knows a ton more than me, and it was her last chance to share her knowledge with us before she left. The new lady told us that she was trying to wrap up some other projects, but that she would love to start learning more Monday.

Well, Monday was two days ago, and I do not think she has "joined" the team yet. I do not feel that I should have to baby her, seeing as how she knows a lot more than me anyway! I would think that she would take some initiative to come ask questions, follow me to meetings, learn about our database tools, etc, but once again, I assumed wrong.

I genuinely feel that she will be a good team member, if she wants to be on this team, and I cannot tell yet if that is the case. I know she is a quick learner, so she probably does not need any of the hands-on training that Amy had to do with me. I guess I just do not know where that line is. My manager has not told me one single thing, and has blatantly ignored 3 emails I have sent asking questions. I give up already! No one will tell me what is going on or what should be happening here.

All of this would smooth over much easier if I could see her becoming another good friend. Friendship has a way of smoothing over the rough spots; sure there have been times I have been frustrated or irritated with work issues from every single girl I named earlier, but they never escalated into any problems, because I knew that we were friends.

I guess I was hoping that despite I was losing a friend (at work) in Amy, someone new would come along and I could be the kind of friend to them that she has been to me. When you are new to a company, you have no choice really but to cling to your teammates, and then they very often become your friend. This lady does not need me as friend- merely a teammate, and an inferior teammate at that. I like having friends at work, and I know now that it is going to be a very lonely place for awhile.

Whew- I'm sorry this is so long and so negative. I dont mean for it to be, I just needed to get it all out. I know that things will work themselves out in the end. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing my job to the best of my ability and trying to be nice to everyone. We can always hope for the best!

Thanks to all of you out there who have started out as "work buddies," and have grown into great friends. I miss working with all of you, and I realize that I took our friendship at work for granted. You're all the best, and I'm sure that your co-workers today have found as much a friend in you as I did. :)

April showers bring May flowers

I do not think it was the rain that brought the pretty flowers...more like Jesse's hard work! I just love colorful flowers; they make the whole yard look happy!

Time to get healthy!

Over Easter weekend, the Shulse family decided to step up to the plate and help my mother-in-law lose some weight. For those who don't know the history, I will not really get into it, other than to say she has some very serous health problems that cannot be fixed until she loses some weight. Jesse and I took her up to the gym Monday, and he showed her how to use all the weight machines. Luckily, she was not too sore yesterday, so I went up with her again and we worked out on the cardio machines and then did some light weights.

Our plan to "help HER out" is really helping all of us to get healthier. It is so hard to try and exercise by yourself, and exercise in itself can quickly become boring and routine. I like knowing that someone else is helping push and encourage me, just as I can push and encourage others. I am pretty sore today, and it makes me feel good. I like feeling that I have accomplished something; even if the only accomplishment was that I pushed my weak muscles too far.

I would like to lose at least 10 pounds, so please pray for me to endure these first few weeks which are always the hardest. I'm ready to do it, and our motivation to help my mother-in-law has also motivated me to step up and help myself. It is time to lose some weight, tone some muscles, and start to feel better!

Yard of the month

Our neighborhood is full of nice homes and people who take good care of their belongings. The yard is no different- you can find people out at work in their front yards at any time of the day. I bet that is the reason they no longer have a "yard of the month," simply because it is too hard to name a winner!

When we first moved into our home last year, Jesse was very burnt out from work and did not particularly enjoy coming home and working in the yard, after working on the golf course all day long. This year, he has been outside almost every single afternoon doing something. We took some time last week to pull up our old flowers from the winter (which were drying out and dying) and we planted new flowers for the summer.

Now, I know without a shadow of a doubt, that despite the other nice yards in our neighborhood, Jesse has earned an honorary "yard of the month" in my mind. Look what a nice job he does! I'm very blessed to have such a talented husband!