The Vacuum

Brady's new favorite toy.

I can't wait till he's old enough to do chores!

Sorry about the lack of updating. Blogger is terrible to upload pictures to. It take so long. However, I've been taking an online course to finally know how to use Photoshop Elements which we purchased over a year ago! Now I know how to resize files so they'll upload A LOT faster. The only problem is it takes time to open them up, edit them, & resize them. So I'm not really saving any time :( I'll try to get better though.

We've been staying busy with different activities. It's Wednesday so we had our weekly playgroup. We usually meet at a local park, but this morning we met at another mommy's house. We had a lot of fun. Brady loves playing with the other babies.....and all of their fun toys!

When we got home he crashed and I've been wasting time on the internet! I need to clean very badly so I'll be doing that this afternoon, as well as grocery shopping, before heading out to my Bodypump class tonight at 5:30.

What We've Been Up to Lately

I realize I've been MIA for a LONG time. We've been busy and truth be told I just haven't felt like blogging lately :) Apparently 2009 has been THE year to get married because we have been invited to 6 weddings so far.

A couple of weeks ago Rob's good friend, Jason, and his fiance, Kim, had a beach wedding in Destin, FL. We were so excited for this wedding and to visit with a lot of old friends that we hadn't seen in a few years. I had never been to a beach wedding before so I didn't really know what to expect. But it was so gorgeous and fun. Here is a pic of us on the beach after the ceremony....too bad Brady's not looking.

Then the following weekend we headed to B'ham to see Austin & Melissa get hitched! We had a blast on this trip. Their wedding was also on my birthday which made it even more special. Here's a pic of the new Dr. & Mrs. Cox! Austin is a good friend of Rob's from pharmacy school.

Here's a pic of Rob & I. Rob served as a groomsman, that's why he's all dolled up in a tux. Thank you to Britni, for helping my fashion-challenged self find a dress the DAY OF the wedding!

You will never believe what happened in our house earlier this week.....

a SNAKE (the one above) slithered it's way into our house from, get this, the BATHTUB DRAIN! Yes, that's right it came out of the bathtub drain, I saw it with my own eyes. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. On Sunday afternoon I walked into the spare bathroom to throw something away and out of the corner of my eye I saw something slip down the tub drain very quickly. I only caught a glimpse of it, but thought it looked like a big slug. However, it moved so fast I knew it couldn't be that. So I convinced myself that it was a roach of some sort, got some bleach, poured it down the drain and closed it up. That gave me the heebie jeebies, but down here in this heat we've been known to have some random bugs crawl out of our drains before.

The next night I gave Brady his bath like normal and not thinking, left the drain open overnight. Tuesday morning I went into the bathroom to grab a tissue and about DIED when I saw a snake in the tub! It was sticking out of the drain a good 12 inches. My initial reaction was to reach in there and close the drain so it couldn't escape, but it's tail end was still inside the drain. I ran out to the family room where Rob was sleeping on the couch and was hysterical. He jumped off the couch and went to take a look, but the snake had gotten scared and went back down the drain. Rob could only see his head peering out the drain. He ran to the garage to find something to kill it with and came back with some pliers and a screwdriver. He poured more bleach down the drain hoping to either kill it that way or get it to come back out. It eventually slithered its way back out into the tub and Rob killed it. Snake blood was all over the tub. Eww! Now I'm constantly checking the tub drains to make sure they're closed. I also look VERY closely in the toilet before I sit down! I seriously can't believe this happened. I had heard of stuff like this, but always thought it was more of an urban legend. It better NEVER happen again or I'm moving back to Ohio whether we sell the house or not!

5 Years!!!

Happy Anniversary to the most amazing man ever! Seriously. I respect you and admire you so much. You are my best friend. You keep me focused and grounded. Thank you for taking such good care of me. My life would be nothing without you. You really are my everything. I love love love you!

***I know I have a lot of blogging to catch up on! I'm going to try to crank out a post or two in the next couple days!***

N'awlins, Baby!

What a long day, I can barely keep my eyes open right now. We took a little trip to a REAL CITY today, as opposed to this backwoods, country town we live in called Mobile. New Orleans is only a 2 hour drive from our house and even though we've lived here for 4 years, today was the first time we visited there....with the exception of a little shopping excursion I took last year:) The main reason for our adventure was so we could go here:

Yup, GROCERY SHOPPING! I am disgusted with Mobile's lack of organic groceries, especially when it comes to meat & cheese. So I convinced Rob we needed to take a little road trip, even though he rolled his eyes at me and accused me only eating "snobby beef". BUT, when we got home from our trip today I hear him in the kitchen saying "I LOVE WHOLE FOODS!" He was so excited to find a grocery store that gave out so many samples while shopping.....especially of beer & wine!

Unfortunately, Brady did not get to sample those...

After we were done shopping, we packed everything into a cooler and decided to head down to the French Quarter. Here are some photos of our drive in.

OK, so I know you can't see much in this photo because of the guard rail, but we were driving past the REALLY old cemeteries and you could see that MANY of the mausoleums were destroyed and falling apart, some completely torn open. I remember during the hurricane Katrina mess sitting in our apartment without power and listening to our battery powered radio as they were discussing the mess in New Orleans. They were talking about dead bodies that had washed up out of the cemeteries floating down the flooded roads. Eww! After seeing these destroyed mausoleums that's all I can think of - maybe this cemetery is where some of those bodies came from!

This guy was hilarious. It's a real person dressed up like a robot, dancing and doing "robot moves" complete with sound effects. I think he was mad a me that I took his picture and didn't give him any money! He had to have been HOT wearing tin foil and all that paint on his face - it was 100 degrees today!

Here's Rob & Brady

I forget the name of this place, but apparently it's some famous landmark and I thought it was pretty - I know I should remember the name.

Street Car coming into the station...

I took this one for you mom - I know you love the steam boats! Sorry I couldn't get a better picture, it had just pulled in and there was no place for me to stand to get a better shot. 

Rob & I had been talking about taking another trip to New Orleans for the 4th of July weekend, but I think we've decided we're going to pass. It's simply going to be too hot. The heat today was miserable and having Brady makes it even more difficult. Speaking of which....guess who turned 8 months old today!!!

He is trying so hard to crawl, but just can't quite get it. He loves sticking his tongue out, he falls asleep on his own now and sleeps THROUGH THE NIGHT! Usually from 7:30p.m. - 6:30 the next morning. Although he's been doing this now for a couple months - thank goodness, cause I was about to lose my mind! Frank is his best friend and anything he does is the funniest thing ever - I've never seen a baby laugh so hard before. We plan on trying some egg yolks and beef this week - yay for our organic grass-fed beef we bought today at Rob's new favorite store!

It's Gettin' HOT in here..............

Whew! We have officially reached that part of the year where I refuse to go outside. Today's high was supposedly 99 with a heat index of 107, but as you can see from the thermometer on our back door it was a little higher - and this picture was taken around 5:30 this evening, NOT during the middle of the day. Ugh, I miss snow!

Of course what else is a wiener dog supposed to do when it's this hot out? Poor Frank doesn't even get to go on walks with us anymore, he's can't handle the heat. We had to stop taking him a couple weeks ago when he started laying down in the grass and hiding under cars to stay in the shade during the middle of a walk because he was too hot to finish. Poor thing, I think he's mad at us because of this. 

Here's a sneak peak at Rob's Father's Day present. I dressed Brady up in one of his ties and bought some D-A-D wooden letters and painted them black. I was trying to get a decent picture of him holding each one, but our photo shoot didn't go so well. It was very hard trying to get him to look at the camera and hold each letter in a way that you could actually see it. Instead I bought one of those "photo cubes" and am going to put a few of these pictures in it as well as some others and give it to him. I don't think he has any pictures of Brady at the pharmacy so this will be a good way to display a lot of photos without taking up much space. 

Here's Brady hangin' in the laundry basket with his clean dipes, we had just taken then down off the clothes line. That is the one good thing about this heat - I can use the line and clothes dry VERY quickly!......and yes, I know I'm a redneck hippie for using a clothes line, laugh if you must. 

I bought Brady Mr. Ducky to bathe in and he LOVES it. Now he can finally sit up and play with some toys. Too bad he's almost already too big for it. On the package it said for ages 6 months - 2 years, yeah right! Not when your 7 month old is as big as a 2 year old! Speaking of which, he will officially be 8 months old tomorrow!

Did you ever see a cuter face? Aww, my own real life Kewpie doll!

"Mom, that camera is scaring me!"

Brady got a package in the mail from Grandma A. on Thursday with a new outfit in it! He was VERY excited! Thanks Grandma!

Here he is modeling his new clothes! See that tongue hanging out? He's been doing that a lot lately. Rob calls it his "Michael Jordan tongue". What's really gross is that Frank likes to lick his face when I'm not looking and I know he's gotten a few good licks of this already. Of course Brady squeels and thinks it's the funniest thing ever. EWWW!

And lastly we had some "nakkie time" tonight. Brady's got some red bumps on his belly where the top of his diaper hits and I was trying to air him out. I don't think it's diaper rash, but maybe more of a heat rash. Hopefully it clears up soon.

P.S.   I'm trying out a new format tonight - hopefully the pictures appear a lot bigger than normal.

Yeah, I lied...so what.

***This first picture is just me testing out a new way of uploading photos! The rest of this post begins below.***

I know I promised I'd post more photos weeks ago, but I'm just plain lazy and I despise blogger and how long it takes to upload photos. Below are a few that I uploaded previously. You can see more by clicking here - on my facebook page.

We've been trying to stay busy lately. Rob has been working a lot. He picked up 5 extra shifts this month, which will definitely give us a nice chunk of change to put towards paying off the Acadia. He just got home from a 14 hour day. What a good hubby I have, working so hard! Brady and I have been trying to find indoor activities to keep us busy since the temps here are now in the mid-high 90's. However, we have been venturing out in the evenings when the weather is a little more bearable so that I can run using my new (old) jogging stroller that Rob found for me on craigslist. I was so excited to get it. It feels so good to run and really break a sweat again. I gotta lose 20lbs so that we can start working on baby #2! Ha! Isn't it funny how women always want to lose weight so they can put all right back on? 

Brady is doing great. He's still only got 2 teeth (bottom two). It's so hard to believe that he will be 8 months in just 5 days! He loves playing with all his toys and can sit for forever by himself now. I can tell he wants to crawl so badly, but can't get himself up on all fours by himself. However, if I put him in that position he can stay like that for a few seconds at a time. Today he took a 2 hour nap in the morning and then a 3 hour nap in the afternoon. He actually slept so long we had to cancel our trip to the park this evening. He started eating yogurt a few days ago and LOVES it. We're going to try some broccoli tomorrow and then some chicken later in the week! I've also started giving him pieces of banana as a finger food, which he loves and does great with....when he can actually pick them up. Most of the time he just gets frustrated with them because they're so slimy he can't get them off the tray. 

Still no news on the house. We gave our agent till the end of this month then he's outta here and we'll try our luck at FSBO.

Just a Preview

We've been home from Cincy for almost a week and things are just now finally getting back to normal. It's past my bedtime and I'm too tired to post a lot of photos, but I will try to find time tomorrow to add more. I thought I'd go ahead and share this one though - Brady went for his 1st ride on the swings while we were there. He had a great time, although I pretty sure he was more excited about watching his cousin, Macy, on the swings than he was about actually swinging himself.