Happy Halloween Everyone!

What a great costume! Here is a Halloween post from a blog I follow that is worth reading. So fun, I just love Halloween!

Go Hogs!

Go HOGS!
Today is homecoming in Fayetteville and we get to go to the game. Josh and Melissa are still in law school there and have invited us for another game. We are so excited to 1. spend time with them and 2. cheer for the hogs! Here is a picture of Z from last year's game. She's actually wearing the same outfit just tweaked a little. :) Hope they win!

Loft Living

Tonight, I helped Nik and Meg move into their new loft. It's such a cool place, very open, modern and all around fun. I'm super excited to have dinner parties and game nights there, right Meg?
Tonight, made me extra excited to build our house and settle into a new home. Megan's extreme efficient packing guaranteed her a spot in helping me pack up mine. I unloaded her kitchen and it was a breeze because of the way she packed.
I also realized, that we have a lot of "stuff"! Okay, I'll say it, I'm a hoarder...and it's getting a bit ridiculous. I hate wasting things. You can reuse just about anything. For example: Meg was trying to decide what to do with all the empty boxes. She wanted to save them, her mom thought she should toss them. For me, it wouldn't even be a question. You keep the boxes. You can use them for gift wrapping, storage, packing, organizing and much much more. See, I have a problem and I realize it. So, I'm going to spend the next year to year and a half cleaning out my "stuff" and trying to not accumulate more!

I'm sure Megan will post pictures of her new home looking great! So, stay tuned

Louie

Louie, is my new favorite dog. He's just a large ball of fun!
We stayed the weekend with Scott and Lindsay while we were in St. Louis for Zac and Kristin's wedding. Louie is their new dog and he's awesome! Look how sweet his little face is.

NPR

As some of you may know my all time favorite radio station, NPR (National Public Radio) has been in the news more than usual this week. I will refrain from weighing in on the political discussion going on right now, but I will say for anyone who has never taken the time to dial in I would highly recommend it. Everyone I know who has ever given it a chance loves it and there's much more than just classical music and dry commentary on holiday treats a la SNL. For any music lovers out there one of my favorite programs is All Songs Considered. All Songs is a weekly broadcast that goes through all different types of music that you probably won't hear anywhere else. To be completely upfront, most of the music they play is my type of music; however, even on weeks where they choose a genre that may not be something I'd normally listen to it's still great to hear the new things musicians are coming up with and the commentary from host Bob Boilen helps to give some really valuable insight. The show is on every Friday evening on my local station, but I've found the best way to keep up with it is to listen to the podcast whenever I have time. Hope you enjoy!

What?!?!?!?!

So, in the mist of my crazy week (I'll talk more about that later) I thought about my birthday dinner (next month) and where I want the hubs to take me. Then I thought...how old am I going to be? (Long pause) TWENTY-SEVEN! What? Where has the time gone? I just graduated from college last year, right? As of next month, I am officially in my LATE 20's. Boo. Well, that explains all my wrinkles. Here's to 27, I think I'm going to embrace it. It's the classy way to handle the madness, right?

Okay, back to work I go. I just need to make it through Sunday!

Congrats Zac & Kristin

This weekend Becca and I spent a great weekend in St. Louis. We had a lot of fun with friends and family and I'm sure one of us will write more about that soon, but the main event was the wedding of my cousin Zac and his new wife Kristin. As Zac has often said, I have known him since he was zero and he has been one of my best friends ever since then. We spent a lot of time together growing up and were even roommates throughout college. It was so great to see him this weekend so extremely happy and I'm very excited to have Kristin join the family. I don't think I've seen him as happy as he has been since he's met Kristin. So congratulation Zac and Kristin, we all love you and I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend than being a part of your wonderful celebration. We had a blast!

Girls Trip to Nashville

Last weekend was girls trip. We've decided to make it a tradition every year. Each year, another girl plans it. We set a budget, pay throughout the year and when the weekend rolls around, we pack our bags and go along for the ride.
This year was supposed to be Megan's year and we were heading to Destin. However, with the oil spill and Meg's move to Springfield she handed things over to Christy who lives at Fort Campbell in Clarksville. Christy decided girls trip this year was in Nashville! I've never been to Nashville, and I was pleasantly surprised with how awesome it is. I can't wait to take Jarrod!

Here is a rundown of our schedule...
Friday morning after waking up at Christy's in Clarksville, she welcomed us with an amazing breakfast on her back porch (see picture below). Then we headed out to get a tour of the military base, which, by the way, if you've never had the privilege of touring a base, it's really cool. We stopped by a cute winery to taste a few wines, then headed on to the hour drive to Nashville. In Nashville, we did all kinds of fun stuff. We went to the Parthenon and saw men playing soccer in speedos. We walked on the campus of Vanderbilt, ate some lunch then shopped a bit.

We ate a fabulous dinner at the Wine Loft and had a crazy fun night at the Piano Bar. Talent in Nashville is amazing. These guys playing the piano and singing, blew me away. We sat at a table in the front, we were in own little world, singing our hearts out and requesting a billzon songs. It was fun just being with the girls.

Saturday we headed to Franklin and saw the "stars" mansions on the way. Beautiful, beautiful homes! In Franklin, we shopped, had lunch, went to the spa (my 80 min facial was to die for!) and bought food for dinner at Whole Foods for a picnic at a local winery where they had live music.

Sunday we headed home to our "real lives". The first check of reality was when Megan got a speeding ticket leaving Nashville going 70 in a 55. Poor Megan!

I will defiantly look forward to Girl's Trip every year. There is something so refreshing about being with girls who truly care about you and just want to laugh like we're 15 again. Love you girls!

The amazing breakfast that Christy treated us to

The lovely ladies that went!

Our crazy night at the piano bar

The cupcake shop...cupcakes are my most favorite thing to eat

Our Whole Foods picnic

Our final toast to Girls Trip 2010

Daddy Daughter Weekend

So it's been a very long time since I have contributed anything at all to this blog. In fact, the last time you heard from me was the night Zeda was born. Becca has been trying to get me to write again for a while and even though I can give a lot of excuses as to why I haven't written anything since then, I think the best one is that Becca has just done such a wonderful job with keeping everybody up to date that there's been no real reason for me to try to compete (score some good husband points for that comment, I'll probably need them by the end of this entry). However, this weekend Becca is out of town with some of her girls on a trip to Nashville, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to come out of retirement and tell everybody about the fun weekend Zeda and I have had together without Mommy.

Becca actually left Thursday night, so Baby Z and I got a couple of nights together before the weekend started but I wanted today to be a fun day for just the two of us. After the typical morning ritual of wake, eat, play, sleep, wake, eat, Zeda and I got all our stuff together and headed out. The first stop was the recycling center! I know, not what you'd typically consider good bonding time, but it desperately needed to be done and you can see below that Z was pretty excited.

After recycling, a quick stop at Lowe's (sorry I needed some things while I was already out), and sitting in traffic forever because of stupid Farm Fest (once again sorry but living by the fairgrounds during Farm Fest is horrific) we headed to the Zoo. The Zoo was a ton of fun and Zeda really loved it. It's so funny to see her ooh and aww at the animals. She gets so excited and I know she's trying to tell me about them if I could just understand her. We basically went through the whole place. She loved the ducks, the otters, the giraffes, and especially the elephants since she can make their sound. The last picture below is toward the end of the trip when it's past her nap time. Can you tell? The first picture she has stuffed a cookie in her mouth, not tobacco like it looks like :)

When we got home Z went straight down for a nap without any problems. Another thing Becca has been asking me to do for a while is hang up Zeda's swing she got for her birthday. So while Zeda was taking her nap I finally decided to hang the swing. When she finally woke up I took her straight there (after of course grabbing her a banana) and showed her the new swing. She really liked it a lot and actually asked to get in it a second time a little later. Mommy is going to be so happy.

Now aside from hanging swings, I have also been working on some landscaping work while Z has been taking her naps. Fortunately, for me Zeda is a great helper around the yard. She had already helped me Friday when I was moving the landscaping blocks throughout the yard by taking rides in the wheelbarrow (here's where the points from earlier start getting deducted), so I figured she could help some more after her second nap of the day. She started off by cleaning her house while I was working: that's a broom in her hand in the first picture below. After a while she realized daddy was having so much fun playing in the dirt that she should come join him. And that's exactly what she did. She picked up dirt clots and threw them down on the blocks. She even grabbed the mallet I had been using to position the blocks and started beating on the new border as well. It was pretty stinking cute to watch.

Just like any good day with Daddy should end, Zeda desperately need a bath after all her hard work. She spent some quality splashing time before she got into her Halloween PJ's, got a few more of the roughly 56,000 books I've read to her this weekend (I think she may like books), and then laid down for the night. It's been a great weekend and I just love spending time with my little girl so much. I wouldn't trade this time for the world. That all being said, Becca you need to hurry home: we all miss you very much!