Midweek Randoms

1 - How is it even the middle of the week??  Between summer & the long weekend, my days are all kinds of mixed up!  But that's ok, cause it's later in the week than it actually feels & that puts me even closer to...

2 - OBX!!!  Friday my family and I leave for Corolla, NC in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a whole week!!

I've lived in NC my whole life and have never been to the OBX!  It takes about 6 or so hours to get to Corolla, and even longer to get to some other Outer Banks towns, so growing up it was always easier for my family of 5 to drive to Myrtle Beach or Ocean Isle just 4 short hours away.

Our most recent family beach trip was in 2007!  Ro was just about 1 and 1/2!!

This will be my first beach trip without my partner in crime, though :(  Erin has a big girl job since she's all graduated now and recently started, so she will be working this year!  We will miss her!

Just a few pics from 2006 as well :)  This will be Jude & Wells' (the nephews) first family beach trip!!

Anyway....this Friday, we're all driving half way to split the trip up a bit.  I'm VERY excited for this first & can't wait for 7 days of sand, sun, and my family!  There's 16 of us going and this is Brandon's first WHOLE family trip...hope he survives ;)

3 - I got off to a pretty slow start with Pinterest.  I know I've mentioned it before, but in one sentence -

Pinterest is a website of virtual bulletin boards of different themes (you can choose your own board themes or use ones they give you) to which you pin your interests and things you like.  

I can send you an invite if you'd like, but be warned...its very addicting! :) Anyway (man I get off on tangents often!), I joined and pinned a few things, but between reading so many blogs and writing mine, I never got fully into it!  But now....I'm fully into it!  Here are a few of my board names and things I've pinned to each board:

All That is Delicious

A Girl Can Dream

For the Home

Holiday Celebrate

Look at all those great ideas on my boards!!  Addicting, right!?! 

4 - Right now I have unpainted fingernails and toes!!  Oh.my.goodness. it is enough to drive me crazy!  Not so much that my fingernails are unpainted, I can live with that.  But I cannot STAND having unpainted toenails, no matter the season, but especially in summer!!  My toes are out all the time and I want them to look cute, but they were looking pretty bad, so I broke down and took the chipped stuff off.  Now normally I would just repaint them and have a little "at home pedi", but I'm planning to get the real kit and caboodle, the whole shebang, a full mani and pedi tomorrow in prep for the beach =) So as crazy as it may make me, I'll just have to survive one more day of unpainted nails.  I'm sure it'll be worth it!

5 - I'm watching The View while writing this so a) its taking waayyy longer than it should for me to write this and b) they are interviewing the prosecutor from the Casey Anthony trail so its very interesting!!  So I'm signing off!

Happy hump day y'all!

Happy Birthday America!!

July 4th is one of my very favorite holidays!!  It's right up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving!  I just love a good opportunity to be overly patriotic, play at the pool, grill out, and watch fireworks :)

I love this!!  It really says it all.  I'm very thankful for all the military men and women giving of themselves for our country!  And of course their families who sacrifice their spouse, dad, mom, brother, sister, daughter, son, etc, while they go defend our nation!  God Bless!!

FYI...this is a bit of a longer post :) At least I warned you!

This was Brandon and I's third July 4th together!!  Can you believe it? Where does the time go!?  The past 2 years we've spent it with big groups of our friends at someone's pool making lots of food and hanging out.  But this year it seems most of our typical July 4th crew was out of town.  It was ok, though, because B and I didn't see each other much last weekend and well we just plain like hanging out together :)

Friday night we had a little date night and went to one of our favorite restaurants, Cajun Yard Dog!

They have awesome New Orleans' style food and decor and is kind of a little whole in the wall restaurant.  They're always packed so we usually grab a seat at the bar!  We always say they should expand, but it just wouldn't have the same atmosphere and feel if they did! After dinner we grabbed some froyo & caught a movie too :)

Saturday our apartment complex was having a pool party for all the residents!  That's definitely a plus about our complex, the office staff is always hosting little parties, leaving treats in baggies hanging on our door, or giving out goody bags on the way out of the garage...pretty sweet, huh!?

They hired a DJ and supplied some good BBQ and eats for the day!  The DJ held a hula hooping contest, among other trivia contests and such, for prizes! Here I am practicing for the hula hooping contest!

Once we started the real contest, it got down rather quickly to me and one other girl and the DJ thought the contest could go on forever.....so she thought we needed 2 hula hoops!

This was quickly my demise as you can see and I missed out on winning the awesome prize of a cool t-shirt and a pass for a cruise around lake norman! Ughh, I was so close!!  I wanted a rematch, but no one else cared it was on to the next contest!  We didn't really participate in any of the others as our TV show theme song knowledge isn't exactly up to par and we just hung by the pool!  After a nap, we went out for some dinner and a couple drinks.  I think all of downtown's friends were out of town, too!  We felt like we were the only ones in the restaurant!

Sunday was rather lazy!  We slept in, then went to the pool but decided we were pooled out cause it's so stinkin' hot!!  We attempted a work out, then stopped by the grocery store to pick up some food!  We were feeling fajitas and some chips and salsa and then just laid around and watched a movie.

Monday was pretty much more of the same =) went to the pool for a bit, worked out for a bit, watched some tube, then put on our red, white & blue to go celebrate America!!  We hadn't done anything overly 4th-of-July-ish all weekend and I was itchin' to celebrate my USA!!!  Downtown Charlotte has a great fireworks show (that cannot be seen from the rooftop of our building, btw!  Learned that the hard way last year!) so we headed to Elizabeth Ave which is a prime spot to watch!

Woke up to this crazy kitty on my head Monday morning!

We were hoping to hit up some Nothin' but Noodles but they were closed :( the only open restaurant on the street was....1800 Mexican Grill!  Ha, what better way to be patriotic than to eat Mexican on July 4th (and two nights in a row!)!?!  Shortly before we left, the heavens decided to open up and it was storming just a bit, but we figured we'd still give it a go!  Just our luck, the only other open place on Elizabeth Ave was Elizabeth Creamery!!  We got some ice cream and headed to the car to wait out the rain & religiously check the radar on my iPhone :)

When I saw the rainbow, I knew God would allow for fireworks!!!  And that He did!  There were the cutest little girls in the parking lot with us & B had a hard time differentiating their squeals, wows, and oohs and ahhhs with mine!  Haha, I just love fireworks and feel about 7 when I see them!

I put B on camera duty, but it's hard to capture a firework at the exact right time, try as he might!!  These don't do it justice!  They were so awesome, I thought, and lasted a good 20 minutes!  So worth our 90 minute wait!

I sure hope you and yours had a most spectacular 4th of July....full of fireworks, red, white & blue and those you love the most :)

My new favorite show

Have y'all been watching this show yet this summer??

We've been watching here at our house and it is my new favorite show!!  Well really it ends up, B and I watching it "together" while talking on the phone since he's traveling on Monday nights.  Hah, whatever works right!?

We've been fans of The Biggest Loser for a while now and avidly watched the past few seasons!  Plus I heart Bob & Jillian!!  I have Jillian's "30 Day Shred" DVD (which I highly recommend!) and she kicks my boo-tay whenever I can't make it to the gym!

But Biggest Loser is 1- a commitment and 2- a contest!  If you wanna see the change in these people, you are committed to the season to see how much they lose.  And these people are trying to win cash money, honey.  That's definitely a large motivator for many and they really play it like a game sometimes!

Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition, however, is not quite the commitment (for the viewer that is ;) and it's not a contest!  In 60 minutes, you get to see day 1 to day 365 and all the sweat, blood, and tears in between!  There is no cash prize at the end per say, but the trainer, Chris Powell, does motivate them with prizes such as a home gym or a new car, etc, at the end of each 90 day challenge.

Chris (I'm on a first name basis with all the trainers, clearly) moves in with his "trainee" for the first 90 days to get them started.  The transformations these people make is truly amazing!!  They sometimes lose like two whole me's in a year! Whoa!

I think I love this show in part, though, because it may be my dream job!  Not to be a trainer on a television show/contest for morbidly obese people so much......but to be a trainer/life coach/motivator/teacher!  I think as a personal trainer all of those jobs kind of get rolled in to one.  I'm a people person and obviously I enjoy teaching and helping people (I'm a special education teacher, remember!? :) and I think I could still teach and help people as a personal trainer, just in a slightly different way.

Now let's be real, I've mentioned my love/hate relationship with working out & food and I definitely don't have it all figured out when it comes to weight loss and training!  And clearly I am not exactly qualified at this point...I'm pretty sure, Bob, Jillian, & Chris all have schooling in exercise science, nutrition, and whatever else health wise is available.  So, I would probably need a lot more schooling! 

Nutrition, exercise, and overall healthfulness, though, have really become an interest of mine as I've grown up.  For now this is just an idea/dream that I think I could do part time or on the side once I have kiddos if I don't venture back to conventional teaching!  

So don't be surprised if one day I'm working in a gym as a personal trainer....but don't be surprised if I'm not ;)

Recap & a Peek Ahead

Phew!  I've been to 3 bachelorette parties in the last 6 weeks and am still living to tell about it!! :)  haha

My friend Dana's party was this past weekend in Banner Elk, NC which is in the mountains.  We kept saying, "What happens in the Elk, stays in the Elk!"  Haha, nothing too crazy really happened, we just thought it was an appropriate saying for a Bachelorette party ;) We had an amazing house with 13 girls and all of us had a bed!  It was an awesome house, I would go back for sure!

Saturday started out pretty chilly, but turned out to be a gorgeous mountain day! Upper 70s, all sun, no humidity....perfect for tubing down the river just relaxing!

That night we had dinner at a great tapas restaurant!  It was such a great weekend and I'm SO excited for Dana!  The wedding is just over 4 weeks away now...woo hoo!!

I got home and spent some much needed time with the hubs before he left for work again on Monday.  I'm CAN'T WAIT for our loooong weekend coming up! And, the 4th is probably my second favorite holiday after Christmas, but that's whole other post :)

And just for fun...here's my countdown list as of late:  (you know I have one ;)

-2 days til hubs is home from work!

-3 days til a 3 day weekend!

-5 days til the 4th of July!!!  Happy bday America!!

-10 days til we're off to Durham for a little baseball (at least hopefully, still tentative for now)

-11 days til we are BEACH BOUND!!!  Toes in the water, toes in the sand :)

Bring it on!!  Be blessed y'all!

My week in Instagram

I've seen many blogs do this lately so I thought I'd hop on board!  Instagram is one of my most favorite iPhone apps so I'm happy to share :)  It allows you to apply fun different filters to your photos and then share them through their website and your fav social media websites.

*Disclaimer - If you follow me on Facebook or twitter, chances are you've probably already seen most of these!  Most people take pictures of their children or very artsy things...I mostly take pictures of my cat and attempt to make non-artsy things artsy!  Ha

A little family froyo on Father's Day!  Just chillin' with the uncle

My snuggle bunny during the week!

He looks harmless, but he likes to jump up and knock around that picture!

Why can't he always be this cute!?

Or this cute!?

Best part of babysitting - being a kid yourself!  Just swinging in the back yard :)

Super Connor!

One of my most favorite flowers

Heaven.  Oh my word!  Probably the best afternoon snack ever!  But not the healthiest :/  oops!

Lemon Drop Cupcakes!!  I have no words....SO GOOD!!

One last Benny pic.  He loves grocery days :)

If you need a weekend activity in the kitchen, go check out Jennifer's blog and get the recipe for Lemon Drop Cupcakes!  They will rock your world!  But if you're pregnant and not ready to be in labor, don't eat them!  Apparently they are labor inducing so "they" say!!  I just made them cause they looked UH-may-ZING!

And I'm taking them to a bachelorette party this weekend!  This is my friend Dana and I a few weeks ago at our friend Alex's Bachelorette Party and now it's her turn!!!  Dana's getting married next month and I'm so, so excited!!  Her fiance proposed right after our wedding reception :)  So I'm off to work out and pack for a weekend in the mountains!!

Happy weekend y'all!!