Category Archives: shopping

week in review

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Although I haven’t blogged much in the past week, we’ve still been up to a lot! I figured I’d just lump it all together in one post, so prepare yourself for a gazillion photos. Here are our highlights!

Michael traveled for work for the second time this year so far. He was only really gone for a night, but he made sure to get extra baby cuddles before he left! (Check out his bedhead… I mean, handsome smile!)

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Most wives would revel in the luxury of having the whole bed to themselves. I’m not really “most wives”, so here’s what Michael’s side looks like when he’s not here. I have to fill the space up or I don’t think I could sleep. (I know you’re jealous of my giant stuffed dogs. Admit it.)
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We’ve also had some great brother and sister time!
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And a whole lot of exersaucer fun.

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And more…_MG_8593

…and more…
_MG_8603…and even more that’s not pictured, because really, how many pictures of a baby in an exersaucer do you need to see?

Michael and I had our first-ever XL pizza! I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one, let alone eaten it. We had a coupon to get it for free, and that just made it taste even better.

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Uncle Karl came over and we had a Mario Kart party… which really meant him and I were playing against other random people in the world. And by “playing against”, I really mean losing pathetically. Yep._MG_8612

Baby Bird is serious about her playtime. (This rattle is actually her favorite toy right now!)

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We’ve been working on sitting up, too._MG_8586

But mostly, she just falls over._MG_8563There’s been a lot of toe-grabbing going on, and apparently it’s only cool to wear socks that are soaked in drool nowadays.

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Kaya also had her first-ever playdate! Little Mia came over and we had a lot of fun. Kaya just couldn’t stop looking at her and smiling._MG_8625

She also wanted to grab Mia’s face and clothes…_MG_8632Some other things that I don’t have photos for:
– This weekend, I did my first 6-mile run since Kaya was born. It went really well and I felt so good at the end of it! I just might incorporate longer runs into my weekly regimen again.
– We went to Dairy Queen. Yeah… how can that not make the list? I have a problem.
– We also went to The Children’s Place, and they had a pretty big rack of clearance items for $3. Kaya really needed some jammies in bigger sizes, so I was super excited to see that there were a bunch left! We also found a dress and a couple of shirts. Our receipt told us that we “saved” about $101 off of the original prices- whoa! I love deals on things we actually need.

insta-jam for june!

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I took a LOT of pictures this month. That just means my life is super interesting, right?

1: We were having some beautiful June weather, so we went out for a walk one night. Of course, it started raining, and Michael didn’t have a jacket so we ended up waiting awhile under a tree!

2, 3 & 4: We stopped at the playground on our walk. I’m glad we’re both such big kids… but swinging while pregnant does not feel so good. Don’t try it.

1: Breakfast time for piggies! They are always so happy and alert when I greet them in the morning.

2, 3 & 4: Just plain cuteness! I love those Juni lips.

1: My first ever oven-roasted chicken. I even made gravy! It was so easy and delicious and definitely worth buying the whole chicken. We ate it for about a week I think!

2: Homemade stir-fry. This was a new recipe for me, too! I was so proud of myself for actually cooking some real meals this month (for some reason, I am just not easily motivated to cook during pregnancy. It’s so weird because I used to cook all the time before). I’m sure Michael appreciates anything that isn’t frozen pizza or hotdogs.

3: A wild bunny we saw when we were out walking! At the end of our walk, we saw a run-over bunny and I busted out sobbing because I thought it was the same one.

4. Panda came camping with us. I guess he was scared of the dark since he was hanging out by the lantern!

1: New sunglasses because my pink and purple ones broke.

2: Cheap clothes I got for munchkin. I’m super excited about those little overalls!

3: The free Target beauty bag I got in the mail. Yay!

4. Michael learned a hard lesson: never send a pregnant lady to the store alone, because she WILL come back with donut holes (not like he minds)!

1: As you already know, Kroger does not have rainbow Twizzlers, so I “settled” for this red pack of Starbursts instead. They were so good! Mmm.

2. The next morning, I woke up to this love note on the kitchen counter.

3. I fell and hurt my knee pretty badly. Michael came home early from work to take care of me, since I couldn’t even put any weight on it, let alone clean it and wrap it myself (we actually didn’t even have many first-aid supplies, so he had to go buy some. Lesson learned)! I’m so grateful for my buddy who is always looking out for me.

4. One morning I woke up to this surprise- a cute game on the tablet! It’s called Kinectimals and Michael knew I would love it, so he downloaded it before I got up and then woke me up to surprise me.

1: I surprised Michael with freezie pops! Who knew you could get a big box of them at the Dollar Tree? He was thrilled!

2: We went out for milkshakes, and ended up getting an extra one for free because they messed up my first one. YUM!

3: Poor Michael studied for HOURS for this network intrusion exam he took at work. He passed, of course!

4: We got a piano! Michael was and still is so excited about this and I can’t wait to hear him play more often.

1: Balloons my mom got for the double baby shower we had with cousin Nicole!

2: After years of hearing about this place that Michael’s grandma used to take them to for ice cream, we finally got to go! It was delicious and worth the 3.5 year wait! Haha.

3: Lelia and Jeff are kind of weird, but we let them have ice cream with us too.

4: We had two HUGE storms. One of them hit while we were out of town at my parents’ house, where it wasn’t nearly as bad. A lot of people lost power and a lot of trees have gone down. What a mess. I’m grateful that our power didn’t go out though, because my pigs would have been pretty hot without the air conditioning.

bookin’ it, shutterfly style

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I was beyond excited to go to the post office yesterday! No, I’m not being sarcastic- I had a photo book waiting for me! This is the first photo book I’ve ever made, actually, which might be a little shocking if you know how much I love photography.

The best part was that it was FREE with a coupon I had (except for shipping). Still not a bad deal! And despite the rampant number of technological devices around the house that will let me look at any pictures I want at anytime, there is just something you can’t beat about a physical book to touch and admire. I know that in a couple years, I will love sitting down with Munchkin and showing her all of my most favorite memories and people.

Michael even got his own 2-page spread! What a lucky kid.

insta-jam for may!

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Here are my Instagram photos from the month of May! Of course, we have to start off with a round of food photos… If they make you drool, at least try not to get any on your keyboard.

1: Finally found rainbow Twizzlers at Walmart… my favorite thing!

2: Chinese buffet with Michael and his mom. My other favorite thing! We even tried a new restaurant!

3. Ice cream sundaes at home with my mom. Another favorite! We discovered that Kroger makes a pretty-darn-good “triple brownie” flavor. Good for us economical folks who can’t splurge on Edy’s all the time!

4. Dairy Queen blizzards on our anniversary date. Do I even need to repeat myself?

1. Michael finally got his Xbox. He’d been asking for it for so long and it was great to see how happy he was when he finally brought it home!

2. Browsing in JCPenney, we came across “many much moosen!” pillow pets. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to get acquainted with some Brian Regan.

3 & 4: Michael found this 500-piece puzzle at the dollar store, and it’s actually really nice! It also makes for a fun date or activity to do together.

1: New beads for my wire-wrapping projects!

2: An owl pendant I ordered along with the beads… but it turns out that he’s HUGE and I have no idea what I can use him for. I still really like him though!

3. On Mother’s Day, my primary kids gave me their coloring pages from class. So sweet.

4. A “seahorse jumping out of the water” drawing by another little boy in my class. I love its stripes and spikes!

1: Maggie, after her haircut and bath! She loves being clean and having short hair, especially now with summer!

2: This is how Juni eats lately. She stands up on her hind legs, sticks her head in the hay trough, and just nibbles away. Crazy pig!

3. Clothes from my mom for baby 🙂

4. Clothes I got on clearance (AND with a coupon!) online for munchkin. I can’t wait to dress her up!

weekend deals

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I did something this weekend that I wouldn’t usually do. Actually, I had never done this thing before, and even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have gone around talking about it.

I went shopping this past weekend. At a thrift store! What?!

And I realized just how awesome it can be! With my belly finally starting to grow, I have started to think about how on Earth I plan to cover it up in the next few months. And you know what? I don’t want to spend a ton of money on maternity clothes that I am hardly going to wear.

So I bought someone else’s things that look new, and only spent about $28 instead of what would cost about $150 (and that’s a conservative estimate)!

I couldn’t go shopping without getting something for baby girl… so she got some $1 apiece pants! I LOVE these because they aren’t just PINK like so many other baby pants out there… and there are no ruffles on the butt!

sugar and spice

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For once, that blog post title isn’t referring to my sweet tooth.

We are having a little baby GIRL!!!

I was almost surprised when the ultrasound technician said “girl”, just because so many people have been saying “boy” for so long! We are so excited to welcome a beautiful little princess to our family. I can’t wait to meet her and kiss that cute little forehead!

During the ultrasound, she was moving a TON! As soon as the machine started, we could see her ROLLING! She definitely gave the technician a run for his money. I’m glad he was patient and got a picture of her face for us, though! We probably saw her in 4-D for about one minute. I’ve always thought those pictures are so weird and blobby, but she still looks pretty cute!

After our appointment, we went on a shopping date to Target (we still had some really old gift cards… possibly from our wedding, even)! I think I was singing my own made-up song “We are having a little baby girl!” the entire way there! It was so much fun to look at all the colorful, ruffly, PINK clothes they had. To make it even better, everything I got was half-off, with the exception of one dress.

I decided that I wanted to make cupcakes with pink filling to deliver and surprise some of our friends on Saturday. (I got the idea from here). The silly poem on the card was all my own creation, though!

It was so much fun to see everyone’s faces when they bit into their cupcakes and saw PINK!

About 135 days to go!

disguise

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Two days ago, I went to the grocery store (wow!!) When I walked in, I forgot to grab a basket, so I ended up carrying an armful of lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots to the check-out. Of course, I was buying all these precious vegetables to maintain a perfectly-balanced diet and good health.

Just not… my health.

Yes, I confess, I am an undercover, in-disguise, deceptive vegetable-buyer.

It's not that I don't eat vegetables, because I do.

It's just that well… almost all of those vegetables were for my pigs!

Yesterday was also our two-year anniversary since we started dating! Two years have really flown by. I am so blessed to have my buddy! 

And, Maggie is going to be in a photo contest starting tomorrow! So keep your eyes peeled so you can VOTE for her to win!

firsts

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This weekend has been great! =) Yesterday we went clothes shopping together for the first time! It was fun, but guess who ended up getting more clothes? Yeah, Michael. haha! But it's cool, since he really needed some new things, like pants and polos… At the end of the day, I did get a cute new dress.

What else was great about yesterday? We went to our first movie (at the theater) together! (Yeah, I know, kinda sad that we've been married almost a year and haven't even been to the theater together… whaaaat?!). Michael surprised me by just driving there and beckoning me out of the car! I love his surprises. Anyway, we saw "How to Train Your Dragon", which I only heard about just last week… We did the 3D version and it was fabulous! I loved it. Especially the dragon- he was cute!

Michael also introduced me to the Dairy Queen "Blizzard". I got something called "chocolate extreme" but really it tasted kinda like nuts, not chocolate. weird. At least I finally tried one right?

Today I surprised Michael with a chocolate cake. Yum! =)

Michael decided to be a duck with his pringles:

And Maggie was cuddly. She even had a bath today! =)

Turkey day weekend!!

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This Thanksgiving was awesome because we were lucky enough to visit Michael's family from Wednesday evening until Sunday!  Michael's hand was glued to a Wii remote… go figure.  We did have a few "battles" against each other, but sadly I was not victorious in anything =(

Thanksgiving dinner was yummy! Mmmm mmm. I was exposed to what is probably the best dessert ever: chocolate mint freeze.  I love it, and so does the rest of the family- an entire pyrex dish of it was gone in less than 24 hours.

I also got to help Michael's Mom make some candy!! It was a great learning opportunity for me, since I've never done anything like that before.  We made peppermint bark and peanut clusters.

And, for the first time ever, in my entire life, I went out on Black Friday!  It was definitely crowded and some stores were messy… but hey, I had fun.  It's one of those things you should do at least once just to experience it and say you did it.  Plus it was just fun spending time with Michael and his mom =) We had to take the ferry over there, so I got to feed the seagulls who fly at the back of the boat.  Basically, they were CRAZY!?!

We also went to visit some horses- I met such a handsome dressage horse named Walter… and he loves licking people's hands!  It was so fun.  I love horses.

Horsey!

Maggie and Juni did really well on the trip. They met a lot of different people on their trip: Michael's mom, grandma, and great-grandma, plus a family that came over for a barbecue. Maggie did really well with everyone but Juni's just as shy as ever! They started bickering on the way home today, so I was glad to get them back into their regular cage (which is about 4 times bigger than the travel one).

I am very very grateful for family and making great memories all together =)