My Only Post on Leap Day

Last weekend, we had a great time in Trussville with my parents and sister. We celebrated Jenn's birthday (a little bit late), went to my friend Kayla from high school's wedding, and watched The Help (which is an awesome movie that you should see if you haven't yet!) and the Lion King (my favorite Disney movie ever). Overall, we had a lot of fun, and it was a nice, short getaway from house projects and other stuff for a few days. Poor Jenn spent a lot of the weekend studying. She's taking the MCAT  (the test to get into med school) in less than a month. I know she'll do great on it!!

Before the wedding on Saturday

Me with the bride! :)

We left Felix and Gabby at home by themselves again like we did a few weeks ago. Other than an overturned trash can and some bite marks in a Kleenex box, we think they behaved pretty well. Of course, all of their food was gone, so they were happy to see us again (so they could get more food!). Gabby got in trouble Sunday night for jumping on the loveseat (they're not supposed to get on the living room furniture), and so Travis got after her with the spray bottle. She went running, and he went running after her, and when he sprayed her, she HISSED at him....3 times! That was the first time we've heard her hiss since the first couple of days we got her. She then ran away into the dining room chair, but she immediately let him pick her up and started purring and cuddling. She's a mess! At least she doesn't hold a grudge for very long :)

Yesterday marked 2 months to go until the half-marathon we're running! I bought some new running shoes last week and some synthetic socks (1 pair for each of us) at First Place Athletics. My shoes were getting kind of worn out, so I'm going to alternate the new and old pair for a couple of weeks before just using the new pair all the time. The synthetic socks are supposed to prevent blisters, which we've been getting...especially on the longer runs. All I have to say is for $10-15 per pair...they better work good! This weekend, we're supposed to run 9.5 miles, so that will give the socks a good test I guess...

Mom is over halfway through her radiation treatments! Only a couple more weeks to go. Her biggest issue right now is just BAD itching. The area definitely looks like it would itch...it looks like a really, really bad sunburn. Hopefully, that will go away and get better really fast after she's finished with all 36 treatments. We need to be planning a big party to celebrate her finishing chemo and radiation!! Yay Mom!!

This weekend, if the weather cooperates, we are planning to start working on our flower beds. We are going to line the flower beds with some kind of landscaping stone/rock and mix some soil conditioner into the dirt. That might take most of the day on Saturday. It's hard to know since we've never done anything like this before. We're going to use the same stones around the trees in our yard and the mailbox, just to make everything uniform. Hopefully it will look nice! Once we get all of that done, we can start figuring out what kind of shrubs and flowers to plant. Our goal is to get everything planted by the end of March before it starts getting too hot outside.

Our big purchase for the week (seems like there's one at least every week!) was a network attached storage system. Yes, this was Travis's idea. It's something that has 2 hard drives that can store all of the files from both of our computers on it. It's like a backup system in case one of our computers crashes, and it also allows you to access your files away from home (I think). You'll have to ask Travis about the details...he's the tech guru in the family. We're not sure how much longer his laptop will live, so we wanted to get this thing up and running before it dies. It would really be a headache to lose all of our stuff in Quicken, budgets, retirement spreadsheets, etc., so we're trying to plan ahead and keep that from happening!

We've also ordered a weather radio online, although that was significantly cheaper than the network attached storage! With tornado season coming up really soon, we want to be better prepared than we were last year.

I did pretty good at CVS on Monday. I bought 2 tubes of toothpaste, a 4-pack of razor blades, and a pack of gum for $2.14. I started out with and ended up with $12 in ECBs. Not bad! :) 

Well, I think that's about everything new that's going on with us. We'll keep you posted on our house and yard projects coming up! :)

Happy Wednesday/Leap Day!

Erin

Running, Raisin Bran, and Other Stuff :)

We had a wonderful LONG weekend and are enjoying a short work week before another fun weekend. This weekend was our gospel meeting at church. We heard a great series of lessons on "Courage" from Nathan Williams. He was a great speaker and made several points in a way I'd never thought about before. I've never really thought of myself as courageous (I'm definitely more of a timid/cautious person), so I've got a lot of work to do! It takes a lot of courage to admit your mistakes, stand up for what's right, and practice self-control. I'm going to try to do a better job with all of that in the future!

On Saturday before the potluck, Travis and I ran our longest run yet...8 MILES!! I really wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, but somehow I ran the whole way without stopping. My time was 1:13:46, so that's about 9:15/mile pace. Right on track for a 2 hour half-marathon, which is what I signed up for as my goal time. I'm definitely not blazing fast (and not nearly as fast as in high school), but all I care about is finishing, so it's ok. Travis is doing great too! He finished probably 6 or 7 minutes ahead of me on Saturday. We've still got a little over 2 months til the race, so I feel pretty confident that we'll be ready for it.

Sunday night after church, we had a few people from church over for pizza and games at our house. It was a lot of fun. We ordered pizza from Marco's, which is probably about tied with Papa Murphy's for our favorite pizza. Much better than Domino's or Papa John's! We also learned a couple of new games, so that was fun. So far, we're 2 for 2 on having people over once a month in 2012. I hate to make it a "checklist" type of thing, but if we don't plan on doing it about once a month, we'll get busy and forget or not make time for it.

Yesterday, Travis had the day off for President's Day, so we went to Lowe's and Home Depot for a few things for our various house projects. Our big project yesterday was patching some of the drain pipe in our flower beds that had holes in it. It really didn't take too long...we just had to cut out the bad sections and replace it with new sections of pipe and then re-bury it underground. It turned into a messy project though because we've had so much rain lately and the flower beds were pretty much full of red mud! Hopefully, in a few weeks we'll get around to lining the flower beds with stone, filling them with some soil conditioner and mulch, and planting shrubs and flowers! Right now, they are still completely empty. 

Speaking of house projects, remember that to-do list from a few weeks ago? Here's how we're doing!

1. Hang the rest of the blinds we bought (6 *now only 4* windows to go!)
2. Hang pictures in the study (we know where they're all going to go...we just haven't hung them yet)
3. Repaint the window seat in the study (it's pink right now...definitely doesn't match)...we've bought the paint...just gotta do the painting!
4. Organize the guest bedroom closet (which has turned into the "junk" closet unfortunately) (haven't started this one yet)
5. Hang curtains in the breakfast room, study, guest bedroom, and our bathroom
6. Replace ceiling fans and light fixtures throughout the house (most of them are brassy gold...yuck)
7. Plant new shrubs in our flower beds
8. Plant the dogwood tree that Baugay gave us (DONE!)

So, we're getting there! Other things that could be added to the list are installing the key pad for our garage door opener, replacing the cabinet handles in our kitchen, and painting/touching up the trim in most of the rooms.

We'll just do a little bit at a time! Most of you have probably figured out that we don't work very fast, but that's ok. It's not a race, I guess!

I'm working tomorrow and Thursday, and then on Friday we're heading to Trussville for Jenn's belated birthday celebration and Kayla's wedding. Should be another great weekend! I'm assuming we'll be leaving the kitties behind (since Felix just LOVES to travel), so who knows what we'll find when we get back Sunday afternoon. I bet they love having the house to themselves for a few days...they probably sleep on the couch and tables, and do everything they know they can't do while we're here! Haha :)

Last week, I caught them napping on our nicely folded laundry. It was a nice, warm place to sleep I guess :)

KISSES!

Aww :)

By the way, if you are wanting to make an easy dessert for a potluck, this one is always a winner...Chocolate Trifle! It all got eaten at the potluck before I even got a bite. Oh well...I've made it and eaten it plenty of times before :)

Yum....I love chocolate!! :)

Oh, and one more thing: Can't end this without mentioning my awesome trip to Publix on Saturday night. I bought 10 boxes of Raisin Bran (one of my favorite cereals). They were various sizes and flavors, and they were all 50% off. After coupons, my total was $10.64. Best part is...I'm sending in the 10 UPCs for a $10 rebate!! Can't beat 10 boxes of cereal for 64 cents :) I love Publix and couponing!! As of next month, I've been couponing for 3 years now. It's definitely the way to shop :) We are able to buy way more stuff (and better quality) at Publix with coupons than at Wal-Mart, where I used to shop. Now, I try my best NOT to go to Wal-Mart. You don't save money there, in my opinion! Ok, I'll end my soapbox :)

Hope you're having a great day!

Reasons to Smile

1. It is sunny outside and the high today is supposed to be in the 60s. After the cold weather we've had the past few days, I thought winter was coming back for a while. I'm glad to welcome warmer temps though! Hurry up, spring!

The kitties love the sun, too!

2. New pillows for our bed! This was a much needed purchase, I promise. Our pillows were so flat and worn out...we should have replaced them a long time ago. So, I got new ones at Kohl's today. Of course, they were on sale and I had a 30% off coupon, so they ended up being about $15 a piece...regularly $69.99. Not bad! Hope they're comfortable!

3. While I was at Kohl's, I conveniently looked in the clearance section and found some really cute Valentine's decorations for our house. (Travis, I know you're shaking your head. You can skip to #4 if you want to.) I got 2 kitchen towels, a cute sign to go on our mantel, and a hanger for our door. It was all 70%, and I could resist. Now, someone please remind me next February that I bought this stuff so I can pull it out again! :)

4. We had a great Valentine's Day supper last night. Travis got off "59 minutes" early from work for the holiday. Only government guys get off early on Valentine's Day! Haha :) Like we usually do each year, we decided to stay home and cook together rather than go out to eat like most people. We had Cajun shrimp, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, and Derby pie for dessert. It was a great meal! Next time, I'll definitely have to set some shrimp aside for me without so much cayenne pepper, but Travis thought they were perfect. Thanks, Cheryl, for the recipe! We don't usually exchange gifts for Valentine's Day, but we did give each other cards, and then we watched the Alabama basketball game. It was a fun evening just being together!

5. This one still has Travis smiling. The bathroom fans that he was so excited last about last week are now installed and sucking moisture out of the air after every bath and shower we take! I wasn't quite as pumped as he was still is, but they are quiet and seem to be working better than the old fans. I keep saying this, but whoever buys this house from us one day will really be getting a gem. If they could only know how much research Travis does on everything we buy for the house...

Isn't she lovely? Isn't she won-der-ful?

6. Our bathroom is now officially complete as of this weekend. We got curtains hung over both windows without too much trouble. They are sheer and cream-colored, and they go really well with the shower curtain and towels we have. Yay for another finished room! Next up...hanging blinds and curtains in the study and guest bedroom.

It's hard to tell what they look like in this picture, but they look good. Just trust me!

7. Mom is now over a third of the way finished with radiation! It seems like it's going by pretty fast to me, but I'm not the one having to drive downtown and back every day like she is. So far, she hasn't really noticed any side effects from the radiation, but her doctor said that she may not have any until closer to the end. March 20th is still set to be her last day! Way to go, Mom! You're almost there!

8. Tomorrow is my little sister's birthday! She's not so little anymore though...Jenn is turning 22 and graduating from college in just a few months. That's so weird!! Happy birthday Jenn!!! I know you've been taller than me since you were probably 7 or 8 years old, but I can't believe you're almost finished with 4 years at Auburn. Still seems like we should be playing school with our Beanie Babies or playing Rollercoaster Tycoon on the computer!! Love you lots! Hope you have a great day tomorrow! :)

9. Felix and Gabby are always making us laugh. Even when they misbehave, it's hard not to be amused by it. I wish I could have caught this on video a little while ago....Gabby was being Miss Curious Cat as usual and investigating what I'd bought at Kohl's. I'd already taken the Valentine's decorations out of the bag, so the empty plastic bag with some tissue paper inside was lying on the bed. Well, somehow Gabby got the handle of the bag twisted around her head and she couldn't figure out how to get it off. It was hilarious trying to watch her get that bag off. She danced around and around and finally started to panic when it still wouldn't come off, so she ran so fast that she somehow finally slipped out of the bag. (No, you don't have to call PETA...I wasn't going to let her suffocate or hurt herself). She is just so entertaining! But, we also found another chewed-up antenna behind the TV yesterday...bringing the total count to 4 antennas that have been chewed through since the kittens arrived at our house in August. We figured out that they Gabby is jumping up on the back of the TV stand to get to them. What are we going to do with her??? :)

10. I'm working tomorrow instead of Friday now, so three cheers for another Friday off! I was going to go up to the hospital tomorrow morning anyway to see Patrick, one of the teenagers at church, before his surgery, but now I'll be there working anyway, so that works out great.

This weekend, we're looking forward to our gospel meeting at church (several lessons about courage), lots of good food, game night at our house Sunday night after church, an 8 mile run on Saturday (Are we really excited about that? Not sure...), and Monday off for President's Day!

So many reasons to smile today! :)

P.S. Do you like the latest blog redesign? Let me know!

A few things...

1. We had a great weekend in Trussville! We ended up leaving the kitties here because we drove straight to the Vestavia singing. They survived for 48 hours on their own, although they were all out of food when we got back Sunday afternoon! They probably ate it all by Friday night...ha! The singing was wonderful, as usual. There were almost 700 people there, and we got to see lots of friends we hadn't seen in a while.

2. On Saturday, we ran 6.5 miles!! Didn't know if I'd be able to do it, but it actually wasn't too bad. Travis finished several minutes ahead of me, but I'm ok with it. I blame it on his longer legs... :)

3. Speaking of running, last night Travis officially signed up for the half marathon! Now, we just have to book a hotel for the night before. The race starts at 7 AM, so we definitely don't want to drive up there the morning of!

4. I wish I could tell you about all the interesting people I meet at work. I've got some pretty crazy stories! You can blame HIPAA for the lack of details. But, in the past few weeks, I've had a patient who managed to take his "valuables" back to surgery with him and another patient with a really "interesting" invention. At least my job keeps me on my toes! :)

5. This Friday we are getting new bathroom fans installed in both of our bathrooms. Now if that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will. Oh wait...Travis is the only one who is pumped about it. Hah :) It's going to change his life...

6. Last week, I got suckered into paying $24.50 for a year's subscription to Tennis magazine. The guy was raising money to go to Paris. He was nice. And I'm too nice to say no. Please don't ring my doorbell and try to sell me something. You know I'll buy it.

7. Have I mentioned that Travis is tutoring a high schooler from church? The subject is physics. Better him than me! I'm glad I never had to take physics in high school or college. I don't think I missed out on anything but a lot of confusing concepts and equations. Travis liked it enough to make it one of his majors though! He's a smartie :)

8. My best friend from high school, Kayla, is getting married on the 25th of this month! Can't wait to see her and meet Zach!!

9. This Friday night, we are going to the Hesters' house for a Valentine's dinner with some other couples from church. Should be a lot of fun! The Hesters are probably the most hospitable people we know....we're trying to do better at that this year. It's hard to top them though!

10. Our house smells like homemade chocolate chip cookies right now. I just made some a little while ago. I've already eaten two, but I'd like to eat more. They're just hard to stop eating once you start! That's one bonus about running 3x/week. I don't have to worry quite as much about how much I eat. You gotta have some kind of reward for running that much, right? :)

How's that for a lot of random information? Here's one more tidbit...two verses from a recent daily Bible reading. It's good stuff to remember and put in practice!!

Ephesians 4: 31-32
³¹ Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. ³² And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Erin

The Fat Cat

Well, Felix might not be happy with me for telling you this, but he was labeled "obese" at the vet last week. I have to say that shocked me a little bit. We knew he was getting to be a pretty big cat, and he does have a saggy belly that hangs down (mostly skin though), but apparently it's bad enough that they called him "obese"! I wonder if they use the BMI scale for animals...haha. Anyway, Travis took him to the vet on Friday to get his nails trimmed (because we sure can't clip them ourselves like we can with Gabby!), and that's when they told him that Felix was getting too big for a cat his age. They asked Travis how much we feed the cats, and he told them 4 CUPS A DAY. No wonder they thought he was getting fat!! What Travis meant to say was 4 scoops a day...each scoop is 1/3 cup. Haha. We know that Felix definitely eats more than his fair share of the food, but it's hard to keep him from doing that, especially when we aren't home all the time. So, poor Felix and Gabby are on a diet now. We've cut them back to about 2-3 scoops a day to see if that helps any. I can tell they are hungry though because they always eat everything in their bowl and they meow for more food. We'll see how long this lasts...

Speaking of the kitties, they've been in a somewhat destructive stage lately. Is that equivalent to the terrible twos? Their favorite activity as of late is chewing/shredding toilet paper. Sometimes they'll just unroll it onto the floor, but other times we find it shredded into tiny pieces. So far this has only happened in our bathroom, so I guess they haven't figured out that the other bathroom has TP! If this keeps up, I'm going to have to start really finding some good TP deals at the store. It's not very economical to throw half of the roll away because the cats ripped it up! We also found shredded Kleenex on the floor the other day...they had knocked the box off the table in the living room and had some fun with the tissues inside! Anything we leave on the floor is fair game, so we've found trashcans knocked over (small ones), pictures frames knocked over, socks carried off to a different part of the room, etc. The other day I went to grab a Styrofoam plate out of the pantry, and I found that the bag had a huge hole in it, and several of the plates on top looked like this:

Guess we need to start leaving the pantry door shut all of the time! I had no idea that kittens could be so destructive...I thought that was a puppy thing! Guess they showed me. We're trying to teach them not to do these things, but they're very sneaky, and they either do it at night or when we're not home. The squirt bottle doesn't really work when it's not used right after they do something wrong. Anyone have any suggestions about how to deter them from bad behavior? :)

Friday night turned out to be a very nice evening! We had a few families from church over for supper, and everything turned out pretty good! We had chicken spaghetti (thank you Mrs. Johnson for the recipe!), cheddar bay biscuits, salad, derby pie (from Mom's cookbook) and fruit pizza (from the Pioneer Woman). The biscuits were really good...I just used milk instead of water and added some Old Bay seasoning to the batter and the butter mixture. They stuck to the parchment paper for some reason, so next time I might just spray the pan and not use the parchment paper. If you try the fruit pizza, just know that it makes a lot! Bake the sugar cookie part for 12 or 13 minutes. I did 15 minutes, and it was little dry. It's pretty good though!! I took most of the leftovers to work, and everyone really liked it.

Mom had her first radiation treatment Monday, and it went well. I haven't talked to her since Monday night, but I'm assuming she went back yesterday for #2. She's supposed to go every day (except on the weekends) until she does 36 total treatments. She said it was pretty uncomfortable lying there perfectly still for an hour on Monday, but the rest of the treatments should only take 15-20 minutes. She's almost finished!!!! Yay Mom!!

Running is going pretty well I guess. We're just running 30 minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays and then a set number of miles on Saturdays. This Saturday we're supposed to run 6.5 miles! Eek! We'll see how that goes. Less than 3 months til the half marathon!!!

On Saturday, we planted the dogwood tree that Baugay gave us. Thank you, Baugay!!!! I can't wait for it to grow and bloom (hopefully pink) flowers. She wasn't sure if it was pink or white since she's got both kinds in her yard. Right now, the tree is probably only 4 feet tall, but one day it will be so pretty! We planted it in our backyard near the playset. Travis did the hard part (digging the hole), so I just got to be the assistant. That's usually the way it goes for our projects, but I like it that way! :)

Tonight is my last night of teaching the K-1 Bible class at church. I made a big crossword puzzle, word search, and fill in the blank worksheet, so hopefully that will be fun and a good review of what we learned. It was fun teaching by myself for the first time, but I'll also be glad to have a break for a while too!

We're planning to go to the annual Vestavia singing with RJ Stevens on Friday night. Last year was the first year we didn't go since we started dating in 2006, so we're really looking forward to going back this year! They always have a huge crowd! We're planning to stay for the weekend with my parents and (hopefully) take the cats with us. Last time, that didn't work out so well (i.e. Travis and Felix in a cat fight), but maybe we'll have better luck this time. To get him to the vet Friday, Travis just threw a towel over him and scooped him up into the carrier and he didn't even put up a fight. Maybe that will work two weeks in a row!

Well, I think that's about it as far as "news" goes around here. Happy birthday (one day late) Gran!! Hope you had a great day yesterday!! Now, I've got to go check on the cats...they're getting into something again.....

Hope you have a wonderful Wednesday!