Hi, remember me?

Hi, remember me? I am that girl who never posts anymore but still has lots to say! I am back (hopefully) and ready to fire away with posts!

I am sorry that it's been so long since I last posted. Between VBS at church and having a friend from Florida staying with us for 9 days-life has been busy! I am sure you can all understand...right?

Well, without further adieu: a weekend update from July! Ha, better late than never!?

Just starting out with some pictures from SKY VBS at church. We were so blessed by the kids in our "crew". I hope that each one of them grew closer to the Lord and learned they way he loves them-no matter what!

Friday evening we headed to Indianapolis to pick up Vickie. It was a long, boring drive for me. Sometimes I think I might be worse than a kid in the car...I just get antsy! We did drive through some MUCH needed rain, so that was nice! We got back to the house late and everyone was so tired. Vickie did eat dinner at Culver's though so she was introduced to the Mid-West well!

Saturday we had a great day at the farmers market and a local auction. I had never been to an auction before, except at church last year (which I loved) so this was a new experience. It was actually Vickie's idea and I am so glad we followed through. I scored the above milk glass vases and lantern for $10. That's a deal in my book!

Saturday night we went out to eat with some friends of mine from work. We had a great dinner at Streamliner and then went to Mel's house and watched the kids play for awhile. Vickie had her first tenderloin sandwich (a Mid-West staple) and liked it! We did leave and head home early because I started feeling really sick. It hit me the next day-must have caught something from one of the kids at VBS!

Louie was my snuggle buddy and stayed by my side while sick. I just love that pup SO much!

Sunday after church we spent the afternoon at the historical museum for our town. It was actually very fun and interesting. The museum is open at odd or inconvenient hours in my opinion, so I was thrilled to be able to enjoy it. After a couple hours immersed in history we headed to Peru for some ice cream. It's the best ice cream, and their turtle sundae is something to write home about. Trust me!

I have many more pictures to share from Vickie's visit to Indiana, plus what we have been up to over the past couple of weeks. I do hope to have those posts ready and posted soon. Stick with me, I promise I am working on it!

Oh, and Friday is my birthday. The big 2-6. Should I do something special on the blog for that? Perhaps 26 facts you never cared to know about yours truly?

Weekend Wrap-Up!

Happy Monday, friends! Why does it always feel like the weekends just fly by? I don't know if we will ever understand it, but they certainly do just fly by! We had a busy weekend full of shopping, gardening, playing with Louie, softball games and Mother's Day!

Friday we spent our evening laying landscaping material in the big project we were working on that I might have mentioned last week. We had planned on cooking dinner-like it was typed into our meal plan and posted on the fridge. Instead we decided to try a new to us pizza place; Portside. Well, apparently when I called in our order I called it into the wrong location so I ended up going to pick up our pizza twice. Let me tell you...I felt so silly walking in there to pick up our pizza and them not having it. Umm, hello blonde moment! After another 30 minutes I did successfully pick up a delicious deep dish, Chicago style cheese and pepperoni pizza. We loved it!

After dinner we decided since it was such a nice night that we would go ahead and make a trip for the mulch needed for our project. It was such a nice blue jeans, windows down, lightening bugs kind of night. We purchased 15 bags of mulch and quite a bit of greenery, too. It was a successful and fun Friday night!

Saturday was a busy and hard work day! We started out like this:

Louie and the plants we purchased Friday night. Cute right!?

We drove to Rochester, IN to pick up soil and flowers. This was the part of the project I was most excited about because I love, love, LOVE flowers and greenhouses! We spent most of the morning running around and picking up 15 bags of soil and flowers from at least 3 different locations. Then we we back home!

We dumped the mulch:

...and then we started dumping and spreading the soil. It turned out that we totally underestimated the amount of soil we would need. By a lot! So back in the car we went-Louie included! We picked up another 700 pounds of soil and stopped at McDonald's for a sweet treat (have you had the new cheery berry chiller? Amazing!) before heading back home to finish up this project!

I will say...I was ready to be finished!

We got home, unloaded, spread and started planting:

Above: Louie loved playing in the soil. I thought it was so cute-he would dig and lay down then dig some more. He was already getting a bath Saturday night anyways, so we just let him have fun! :)

Below: He also thought it would be fun to eat the flowers. Yes, eat them. He is such a silly dog! We were laughing out loud at his antics! Too funny!

That wraps up our Saturday. I will post before and the final after of the big project tomorrow-so check back!

Sunday we went to church matching, although that was not planned at all:

We left church early because I had a low blood sugar (42) and we needed to leave to make it to Kokomo in time for our oldest niece's championship softball tourney game. It was so much fun!! Here are some pictures from the game:

After the game (they won!) we went to Chili's for dinner with Stephen's Mom & Dad, Sister and her family. It was a great afternoon to spent at the ballpark and we really enjoyed our time! Plus we got to see Stephen's mom on Mother's Day! Win, Win!

Driving home we saw the sunsetting, which was beautiful! I wish I had snapped a picture earlier, but I do love a hit pink sun in the sky!

The End.

Update & Vera Bradley

This past week was an exciting one if you live anywhere near Indiana or if you are a Vera Bradley fan. Well, lucky for me I fall into both of those categories. The 2012 Vera Bradley Outlet Sale took place in Fort Wayne, IN last Wednesday though Sunday. Oh what fun! Do you remember my posts about this sale last year? (Here they are!) Well, we had a great time at the sale again this year!

Back in January, one of my best friends Brooke decided she wanted to go. After a couple conversations she found she had an entire group of people who wanted to come with her. The more the merrier, right? Well, that's exactly what I was thinking! Brooke, her mom Lisa, sister Brinley and sister-in-law Kelley arrived at our house Thursday evening after driving from Lexington, KY. I was SO excited!

We spent Thursday evening catching up with each other and watching Grey's Anatomy. Of course the anticipation for the sale was building...actually, I could barely sleep Thursday night. Don't judge!

Friday morning we woke up and were eager to get ready and hit the road. Our shopping time was at 2:30pm, but we wanted to get lunch and get in line WAY before that. Before leaving Stephen took some picture of us all in our matching shirts that Lisa made. She is so talented-don't you love the shirts?!

LOVE this girl and am so blessed and thankful that we met on a Carnival cruise many years ago!

Louie was not too happy that I was getting ready to leave...but still, how cute is he?!

And an up close view of our shirts. Glitter? Yes, Please! Thank you, Lisa!

We grabbed lunch at Chipotle...because you know how I love that place! After lunch we headed to the sale to claim our spot in the line. Luckily, we were early enough to be pretty close to the front of the line...maybe 30 or so people were in front of us. I call that success. Now came the not so fun part. The waiting in line. Ugh. We waited in line for 2 hours before our time to shop. It wasn't all that bad though, we had plenty of people to people watch and we got LOTS of comments (and looks) about our awesome shirts!

We mapped out a game plan and decided to try and stay together. Well friends, that doesn't work. There are just so many tables and people and Vera bags. Thankfully though, our bright shirts worked to our advantage in locating each other when we were separated. Perfect! 

Finally, we were in!

Here is a shot of the inside:

We shopped for almost our entire allowed time and got some great awesome deals. For example, XL Duffel for $39.99? Nice to meet you! Angle Tote for $19.99? Nice to meet you as well! :)

In the end we bought LOTS of things and ended up saving almost $1,000 total with all our purchases combined. Thanks for a great sale this year, Vera!

Oh, and we are featured on the Vera Bradley blog today. Check that out here.

After shopping we did some more shopping at Kountry Kitchen and Target. We also got some dinner in there at Cheddars, which was delicious as always. We headed back to my house and spent the night making lollipops and cupcakes and playing some fun games of Catch Phrase. It was such a fun day! 

Saturday morning we woke up and decorated cupcakes...and then ate them for breakfast! Soon afterwards the gang was back on the road and headed home.

After they left, our day consisted of making laundry detergent and doing a lot of laundry in between taking naps. On Sunday we taught Sunday School, went to church and then went to see The Hunger Games. Oh my! I finished the book a week or so ago and was ready to see the movie the next day, but I had to wait for Stephen to read and finish the book too. Well, he did and we got to see the movie. Amazing. We both really enjoyed the movie, but agree that the book was better. There are just some details that can't be captured on film and your imagination views them better anyways! :)

Have you read or seen The Hunger Games? What did you think?

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Weekend-Wrap Ups-2 weekends!

Well it seems that life and it's schedule has prevented me from posting some weekend wrap ups in a timely manner...again. Let's hope that this does not become a trend like it always seems to...moving on now...

This wrap-up includes pictures and details from the past 2 weekends, starting with the day we returned from vacation in Florida. We arrived at home around 9pm Saturday evening and even thought it was dark outside I could see our tulips had bloomed. Who do you think was excited!? Raising and waiving hand energetically: this girl! Tulips are my favorite flowers and I had been really looking forward to their bloomage (totally just made that word up) in our yard. They are beautiful AND I have taken basically a hundred pictures of them already!

Sunday we had some errands to run, which included grocery shopping. We had basically no food in our house once we got back form vacation. Apparently we did a really good job of eating everything to prevent it from going bad the week before! :) We snapped some pictures before we left and were just enjoying the spring blooms and nice weather in Indiana!

The above bush is near our back walkway into the house and it smells amazing. Seriously, love it!

These sandals were a Florida purchase at Kohl's and I love the pink flowers, so girlie and fun!

Above: our Red Bud tree. I always wanted a Red Bud when I lived in Florida and even looked into purchasing one. When we realized one of the trees on our lot was a Red Bud, I was pretty excited!

Below: Even Louie likes the Tulips!

After we went grocery shopping and did things like that it was time to get dirty in the yard. We cut our grass for the first time of 2012 on March 25, 2012. We also did a little weeding and some sign fixin' too. It was such a nice day outside!

Our reward for the hard work in the yard? Pulling the grill out of the garage for the spring/summer season and grilling steaks for dinner! I am so thankful that Stephen likes to grill and is good at it. Dinner was delicious!

The grill master!

Now onto last weekend...

Friday afternoon Stephen finished fixing our sign that had been beaten up this Winter and we took some pictures with the sign and the tulips. Louie was not in a picture mood though...oh well. Friday night we went grocery shopping (our normal Friday night date...we live an exciting life people!) and got dinner out at a Mexican place. I think we were both so happy that it was Friday since last week at work had seemed long and overly busy...just exhausting. You can bet I slept in on Saturday!

Stephen wanted to cut the grass on Saturday morning, but it was kind of chilly outside and the grass never dried enough to cut it. I did get outside to take some more pictures of our Tulips though!

I LOVE the above fire ones!

Saturday we left the house after lunch and headed to Indianapolis to shop at GardenRidge and have dinner with some good friends of ours. I warned Stephen that he might not like GardenRidge, but he actually said it wasn't bad and that he would go back. WOO! We were shopping specifically for pots for the front steps and a patio table, which we got both. We also got some other things that were not on the list...but that always happens, right? Well, it always happens to us at least!

Some pictures before we left:

LOVE

boy oh boy...

Sunday we taught Sunday School at church and went to late service. In the afternoon we spent time outside cutting the grass and putting up our new patio table that we purchased on Saturday. It was much warmer outside on Sunday, so that was nice. Actually, it was kind of hot at times! We had to get some water outside for Louie because he was panting non-stop. He likes laying on the bricks in the shade...I think they are cool for him!

Our new table and umbrella:

Can't wait to grill and eat dinner outside with Stephen & Louie!

We ended Sunday with a trip to RedBox and Dairy Queen. Did you know that DQ now has frozen hot chocolates? Well, they do and they are SO good. We got a large blizzard and a frozen hot chocolate to eat throughout the week, but they messed up and gave us 2 large blizzards AND the frozen hot chocolate so we really had a lot of ice cream. In fact, it's still in our freezer! Oh and the movies we picked (I picked) were Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Dolphin Tale. We both really like Dolphin Tale-so cute! Twilight was okay...I will say the movies are getting better and better. It's a great improvement from the first one for sure!

Oh and in other news...I had an exciting Monday morning. By exciting I really mean, not so much exciting at all and lots of stress. I hit a deer on my way to work at around 7am. I drive through the country to and from work so hitting a deer is always a risk and I have seen them many times on my commute. I did not see this one until he was collided with the front of my CRV. I felt so bad for the deer! Unfortunately he died and my car basically did:

I am driving a rental car (per our car insurance-thank goodness!) and waiting for the body shop to tow the CRV in for repairs. While I would have much rather not had to deal with this on Monday morning...I am thankful that I was in the CRV and not my old Civic because it would have been much worse. I am also thankful that I was not injured at all. God is good! I was upset about the car for a little while because well, I loved the CRV and its still pretty new to us but I have to remember that it's just a car. There are other things in life much more important!

Hopefully repairs will start tomorrow and I can be back in the CRV soon! I hope it's soon because the rental car really stinks!