I Heart Shoes!

Baby Shoes!  Awww...they get me every time!  I'm not exactly sure why, but maybe because cute little baby feet go in them!  Anyway, here is a preview of Baby Bentley's fabulous wardrobe!  You can check out some more photos from the maternity photo session at Amanda Claire Photography

It's the End of the World as We Know It

And I feel fine!

Well today isn't over yet, but it almost is.  I feel safe enough to say we survived!  I'm so glad the world didn't end today, seeing as how I hadn't seen my husband or sweet boy since Thursday morning.  I would have been really upset if the world ended and I didn't have Ryne and Adam here with me!

Today for me is finally over though.  This week is finally over as well!  We've had some crazy weeks here recently and I'm hoping that it starts to calm down a bit.  Last Saturday, Adam and I attended the wedding of his coworker, or his office wife, as I like to call her.  She is one of the sweetest girls I've ever met and it was such a blessing to be part of her Big Day!  After the wedding, Adam and I met Mom and Dad to pick up Ryne.  We put Ryne in the bed for a few hours and then Adam and I started packing the car for the beach.  Adam slept for a bit on the couch, but I stayed up because I was going to drive the first leg of the trip.

Side Note:  I had a late night run to the post office that night and on my way home, I came up on a street fight...on a very bad part of the road.  I ended up having to call 911 because a guy was getting the snot beat out of him, right in front of my car, in the middle of the road.  At one point the fight moved into the other lane and an oncoming truck came around the curve and almost hit the two guys fighting.  I was trying to give a play by play and description to the 911 operator, but all I could get out when I saw that truck coming was "Oh my God!"  Now I am waiting to see if I have to go testify as a witness.  Fun stuff.

Back to the beach trip:  Adam and I were supposed to split the driving roughly half and half.  Well, sleeping beauty looked so comfy in the passenger seat and I felt sorry for him, so I drove five and half of the seven hours.  We left at 12:30 am and didn't stop until 6 am.  I got roughly one hour of sleep as Adam drove the last hour.  I figured I'd get a nap once we got to the beach house, but noooo, there was too much going on to stop.  So over a 38 hour time period, I had one hour of sleep!  That's dedication, people!

The beach was nice.  It wasn't very warm.  A few days were spent laying out with a light jacket on.  The wind was just too cold.  Ryne had a blast!  He loves the water, but doesn't like getting his hands very sandy.  He will play in the sand but the salt water/sand mixture that got on his hands near the water seemed to freak him out a bit.  He fell down in a puddle and got up without touching the ground with his hands, which were out by his side like an airplane!  Ha ha!

If you read my last post, then you know I took a flight back on Thursday to make a cake for a very good friend of mine who got married today!  Originally Heather was supposed to get married last Saturday, but there were issues with the church so they moved it back a week...after I had committed to make her cake and after we had already planned our beach trip.  I'm a woman of my word, and I will do just about anything for my amazing friends, so I flew back on my $11.99 plane ticket to make the cake!  That's friendship, people!

Heather was an easy bride, so to speak.  All she asked for her cake was that it be square, incorporate her color (plum) and have purple roses on it, like her bouquet.  I kept it simple, especially since I was under a bit of a time crunch, but she and her husband loved it.  Michael came up to me at the reception and said it was the best wedding gift they could have received!  That warms my heart!

I'm so glad I got to be witness to another happy couple getting married today!  It makes me value my own marriage more, since I was the first of my friends to tie the knot (almost 6 years ago!)!  My high school Latin teach was at the wedding and said she has been married 48 years!  Whoa!  I can't imagine, but I guess I have 42 years to think about it!

I've heard a lot of advice about a lasting marriage the past two weeks and here's the summation of it:

Keys to Long and Happy Marriage:

1.  a sense of humor
2.  a short memory
3.  fight like cats and dogs (ask anyone who's been married over 40 years and that's what they'll tell you!)

And my favorite wedding toast:  "May all your pains be Champagne!"

Wonderful Weekend!

We had such a crazy busy weekend!  It was Adam's 32nd birthday, a friend's bachelorette party and then Mother's Day...all in one weekend.  In a way I think I took on too much this weekend but it all seemed to work out and hardly anyone knew (except Adam) that I felt like the candle was burning at both ends.  Composure!  Love it!

Friday, Adam and Ryne went out on their Mother's Day shopping trip.  Ryne ended up giving me some much-needed gift cards for shopping and salon/spa purposes!  He knows me so well!  That evening, Ryne went to stay with Adam's parents so we could have a date night to celebrate Adam's birthday.  Adam decided to keep it simple, so we went to see Thor.  I wasn't all too excited to see it at first, but it was actually a very good movie and the leading man was quite a hunk!  We were in a theater with some interesting people.  One guy was audibly depressed during the previews that Captain America is opening July 22nd and not on July 4th.  Good point!  The night was low-key, but fun!  I think Adam finds it hard to celebrate getting older these days!

Saturday, I had a million things to do!  I had to make cupcakes for my friend's bachelorette party that evening.  I decided to make Margarita Cupcakes since Cinco de Mayo had been just a few days earlier, we were going to Sips N Strokes later that evening with the girls, and in honor of one of Adam's family members who passed away this time of year a few years ago.  What better way to celebrate a life than with cupcakes!  I also had to finish editing a ton of pictures for another friend who was going to be at the bachelorette party, and also some pictures of River to give to his mother for Mother's Day.  Adam was gone visiting his grandmother with his parents and Ryne during most of this, so luckily he didn't feel left out on his actual birthday.  I also had to go buy some cards, bags and gifts for all the occasions we had going on this weekend, so I was busy up until the moment I sat down at dinner for the bachelorette party.

We started the bachelorette party at PF Changs.  I had the lettuce wraps for my entree.  They are SOOO good, but my lettuce kept falling apart and I ended up looking like an idiot trying to eat them.  Finally I gave up and just at the chicken stuffing part with a fork and let the lettuce be.  Afterwards the server told me next time I could order shredded lettuce and just eat it all with a fork!  Will do!  [We will skip over the embarrassing gift-opening part at the restaurant and pick up at Sips N Strokes.]

Sips N Strokes, for those of you that don't know about it, is an art studio that allows you to bring in your own beverage (alcoholic or non) and the instructors teach you how to paint a specific painting and then you get to keep it!  It was so much fun, especially since some of the people there were a little heavy with their sips!  At the beginning of class the instructor asked who the Type A people were.  I raised my hand, because I am quite a bit of an A, but I realized as we were doing the paintings that I'm not as A as I thought...or maybe I'm an A and some of my friends are A+ and A++!  Some of the girls were super picky about every little thing.  Finally, one of the instructors said "take a sip!"  I thought it was hilarious!  I just wanted to have fun and learn something new.  I knew mine would not be a masterpiece and it isn't!  I am highly critical of myself, especially with anything that is creative or artsy, but I decided to just do what the instructor told us and move on - it can always be changed, redone or thrown away later if I'm not happy with it.  There are definitely some changes I'd like to make, but overall, I think we all did well!     It's also interesting to see how different the paintings look at the end.  We all had the same instructions yet everyone's looked different.   It was so much fun and we all bonded so well together and tried to help each other "fix" our paintings!

Sunday, my alarm didn't go off, which seems to be happening more and more lately.  I use the alarm on my phone and the stupid thing has been messing up a lot lately.  I think this poor Android needs to be put out of it's misery.  Anywho, I was disappointed that we didn't wake up in time to go to church, or at least the service that has childcare provided.  We ate a good breakfast and decided to go out and let me redeem some of my gift cards!  Later that evening, Mom, Dad and my brother came up for dinner.  We wanted to cook for Mom, give her Mother's Day gifts and let them see Ryne, since they feel like 2 days without him is a lifetime!

All in all it was a wonderful weekend!  I'm surprised that it went off without a hitch given the amount of stuff we had to cram in one weekend.  It may not seem like much on here, but all the little dull details and errands add up with this much stuff going on in a few short days.  We have two weddings coming up and then things will slow down a bit...even though I kind of like being busy!

Easter Weekend

Our Easter weekend was hoppin'!  It started out on Good Friday.  That morning my brother graduated from college, which is a big deal!  Adam stayed home with Ryne, and it was a darn good thing too because the commencement speaker was TERRIBLE!  Ryne would have been bored to tears, as I was during the speech, and would have probably been carried out screaming anyway, seeing as that's kind of become the norm here lately.  Anyway, Ronnie did graduate and River did very well during the graduation and was so excited to see his daddy walk across stage.  River also liked playing with Ronnie's tassel - maybe that will be motivation to wear his own tassel one day!  Adam and Ryne joined us later at Parkside Grill for some yummy lunch, where Ryne ate like horse goat!

Mom and Dad took Ryne back to there house to stay the rest of the day and night.  They wanted Ryne to come down for a slumber party of sorts with River, and Adam and I had a Baby Party to attend to that night!  Ryne and River played well together all day and even dyed Easter eggs that night!  Mom put Ryne in the bed with River later that evening and Ryne rolled over and started screaming in River's face, so Ryne ended up in the pack n play by the end of the night!  Maybe we'll try the big boy bed another day!

Friday evening Adam and I drove up to Kodak to my best friend's house for her Baby Party!  I've never heard of a party like this but it was so cool!  Charlotte and Kris went to the OB Friday morning for an ultrasound of their baby to find out the sex of the baby and check out all the inner workings of Baby T.  They asked the ultrasound tech to write the sex of the baby in a card and include the ultrasound pictures of the gender-specific parts in the card.  They went to Magpies bakery and gave the sealed card to them. Magpies put gender-specific colored icing (blue or pink) between the layers of the cake, and covered the outside of the cake in sort of an ivory color.  So basically, Charlotte and Kris would have to cut the cake to find out what they were having!  So of course, they invited about 30 of their closest friends to come eat some fabulous food and view the cake-cutting.  They even did a drawing for a prize, if you guessed the correct sex of the baby.  I just knew it would be a girl...until I started taking pictures of the cake!  I noticed a faint line through the icing, that no one else noticed!  So when they cut the cake, I knew the icing in the middle would be...BLUE!  They were so excited!  Now Ryne will have another little guy friend in September!

Saturday morning, we woke up to a text from our realtor that said we had a viewing at 4:30.  Adam and I were expecting to pack and leave for Kingston for Easter dinner with my family, but the viewing threw a temporary wrench into that plan.  We had to clean like crazy!  We had a spill on the carpet from the night before that had to be cleaned up with a steam cleaner.  So we had to go get that and then put fans on the carpet in hopes that it would dry before the viewing time.  We got the house spotless in just a few short hours, showered and then packed for Kingston.  Ryne had been outside all day at Mom and Dad's - no nap. He hunted eggs all day and ran all over the back yard trying to love on my dog, Hannah or "Nanna" as Ryne calls her!  We had a fabulous Easter dinner:  shrimp, steak, some kind of roasted onion, etc.  It was all so good!  I think Dad was excited to break in the new grill!   Later that evening we went to Adam's parents' house to see his brother and his family.

Easter morning, we woke up early...because Ryne woke up early, and started getting ready for church.  We showed Ryne his Easter basket, which was an Elmo basket, filled with everything Elmo!  At first Ryne didn't seem interested until we started pulling stuff out of the basket.  Then he'd say "whoa" or "wow" after each item was pulled out!  It was so cute!  While getting ready for church, we experienced the power outage, like the rest of Kingston!  I thought I'd be going to church with a raggedy ponytail and wrinkled clothes, but luckily the power came back on with enough time for me to straighten my wavy mop of hair.

Ryne did pretty well during church, until the last half - the crying room was full so we ended up sitting in the back of the church.  He couldn't sit still after awhile and started getting fussy.  He just wanted to go outside and who could really blame him on such a beautiful day!  Finally Adam took him out and then right before communion, I left as well so that Adam could come in for communion, since I can't participate in communion at the Catholic church :(.  We were able to stick around long enough to get a little Holy Water on us - Thank the Lord!  Ryne and I walked down the street and looked at bushes, trees, flowers and cars.  As we walked back towards the church, the people living right next door to the church decided to try to pull a fence post up (during the service) with a big, loud truck.  Ryne was fascinated by it all!  He stood there and watched until they finally got the post out.  Ryne is really into some man-work:  mowing, climbing ladders, weed eating, etc.

After lunch we headed back to Adam's parents' house for lunch and some fun with the water hose! Ryne was soaked, head to toe from playing with the water hose, but he had SO much fun!  He just wants to be outside, and I don't blame him, since we had wonderful weather this weekend!  I guess ABCs, 123s, puzzles and books are going to be on the back burner this summer.  Although, yesterday at Mom and Dad's house, Ryne got the water hose again and instead of playing with it, he studied it - like total concentration on the water coming from the hose, how it hit the porch and where the water went.  I think he's learning a lot by being outside, even if it's not ABCs and such!

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

Wonderful Weekend!

This weekend was full of fun times!  I kinda hate for it to end!

Friday, we celebrated Open Day with Adam's parents.  We had tilapia instead of hamburgers and hotdogs because of Lent.  I had some parmesan cheese handy, so we had some fabulous tilapia!  I found a little fun note in the cookbook about tilapia.  Apparently, it is believed to be the fish that Jesus used to feed the multitudes and is also called St. Peter's fish.  We had a great night and Ryne liked showing off for the grandparents!

Saturday morning I woke up and started baking...Red Velvet cupcakes!  Yum!  A friend of mine is getting married in a few weeks so we celebrated her bachelorette party on Saturday.  She is marrying a minister and we are all old maids now, so we celebrated with dinner and cupcakes.  I think her story is rather amazing.  She basically fell in love with the minister from another state, and decided to pretty much drop everything and move to be closer to him.  I guess God works in mysterious ways sometimes and sometimes, leaving your job, home and friends to be with someone ends up being your happily ever after!  I'm so glad they've found each other and I know it will be happily ever after!

Today, we had lunch and saw a movie with my best friend and her husband!  We don't live all that close to each other, so we don't get to see each other all that often.  We had lunch downtown at Latitude 35, which was quite good and then saw Limitless at Regal Downtown!  The movie was pretty good.  If you don't already know, it's about a guy who takes a pill that sort of changes the brain in an amazing way.  I wish they made a pill that I could take that would make me awesome at everything and focused!  I have a feeling I could be "Super Mom" on a pill like that!

I always feel so refreshed after spending time with my bestie!  I truly think that, although I don't have all that many close friends, I have some of the most amazing friends!  My best and my oldest friends are probably the two nicest, most well-rounded, lovable people that I know!  They are such a blessing in my life and I love them dearly...no matter how far away they might be!