As I’ve blogged about before, Jeff and I are going on a Royal Caribbean cruise in October for our 5-year wedding anniversary. He had his passport renewed right before our honeymoon, so his is still valid. But mine conveniently expired last month. Ugh. So I had to go through the whole rigmarole (y’all know that word, right?) of getting mine renewed. …
It has been a long, full, amazing first Mother’s Day for me. We spent all day with family, and it was just a special day. You can’t really ever know how much your parents love you, until you become a parent yourself, and experience this kind of motherly love for yourself. Having my little precious girl now, puts my own mother, and everything she does for us, in a whole new light. (I know it’s cliche, but wow it’s so true.) So thank you Mommy, for being the most amazing mother!
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This morning started out with a special Mother’s Day outing, all by myself! First, I went to Lucky Goat for a quiet breakfast. I had the chocolate caramel cold brew (which is the flavor of the month) and a pistachio muffin. Both were super yummy. Then I went to get a much-needed pedicure! …
This Friday has been full of lots of good things! This morning started out with a sweet Mommy & Me breakfast at Emerson’s daycare. She had strawberries & pancakes, and I had the most delicious blueberry scone in the history of ever.
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Today was one of those “regular” days where nothing big or extraordinary happens. It’s just normal. But there is still lots of “good” to be found in the normal.
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So a quick note first – Jeff and I both work downtown, only a couple of blocks from each other, so we carpool almost every single day, with a few exceptions when needed. He drives, then drops me off & picks me up each day. Today, he got stuck a work at little late, so I walked the three blocks down to his office. It was windy (I kept having to hold my dress down!) and warm. We’re not quite to the sweltering Florida summer yet, so it’s still tolerable to walk a quarter-of-a-mile at 5pm. In a few weeks, that will probably not be true anymore.
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After we picked up Emerson from daycare tonight, we ran in to Trader Joe’s for a couple of things. We ended up getting a few “extras” while we were there, and enjoyed a Chinese food feast for dinner! I slightly burned the chicken fried rice in the skillet (womp womp), but it was still edible. Both of us said our favorite was the little pork dumplings. So good, and it was all only like 10-ish bucks! Emerson had peas, strawberries, and some of the rice, which she loved!
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We’ve technically already had THREE birthday celebrations/meals for him in the last few days (dinner Saturday, dinner Sunday, lunch today), but today is finally his actual birthday! Today he turned 37. (He’s seven years older than me, FYI.) I just wanted to share a short by slightly sappy journal post, in honor of his special day today! I’m just so dang thankful that this sweet, freckled & bearded man is my hubby! He takes such good care of our little family, and makes me laugh with his cheesy jokes. So glad the Lord saw fit for us to find each other, almost seven years ago now. Praying for another great year of life for him, as a 37-year-old! Love you, Babes! …
Today started out by substitute teaching the 4th grade Sunday school class. We played ballooon volleyball to review the lesson.
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I got to enjoy a couple of hours all to myself this afternoon. Emerson was napping, and husband was running some errands. I cuddled up on the couch under my Grandmother’s quilt, and it was so cozy. It was quiet and peaceful and restful, and it was just so lovely.
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My Grandparents built their home together when I was a teeny-tiny newborn baby, back in 1988. They lived there for almost 30 years together before my Granddaddy passed away in August 2016. Since then, Grandmommie hasn’t felt quite up to living alone, and so last weekend, their cute little yellow house in the country was sold. Tonight she treated us all to a steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse, in honor of that house. I’ll miss that cute little yellow house immensely (that used to be blue when I was growing up), but I’m thankful for the years & years of memories our family made there. Gonna end this here now, instead of getting more & more mushy….
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I always have a book in my desk drawer at work, and pretty much every day I spend my lunch hour reading. Today was no exception. I started a new book which I borrowed from the library. I sat at the picnic table outside my office, under the shade of a beautiful magnolia tree, enjoying the perfect “springtime” Florida weather. …
After I graduated from Flagler College in April 2010, and spent my summer as a nanny, I started working for State Government at the Department of Corrections on October 1, 2010 as an OPS (Other Personnel Services) employee. Basically, you get paid hourly (not on salary), have no benefits, and no paid holidays. I started here thinking it was temporary job, and I would quickly find something different. Well, that didn’t happen, and so I just stayed. Then in July 2013, I got promoted to a new job in a new bureau, and I became a “career service” employee with benefits, insurance and a salary. And paid holidays! …
I’ve been inspired these last few days. Inspired to get back to more frequent blogging & writing. Inspired to remember the small details, as well as the big life events. Do any of y’all watch Home Town on HGTV with Ben & Erin Napier? It’s one of our favorites, and I’ve been obsessively reading entry after entry on her blog for the last few days, which is what has been inspiring me.
Since January 1, 2010, she has written a daily journal online, just looking for something good in each day. (P.S. – I stole today’s post title from her.) She took a few months off starting this January when she had their sweet baby girl, but she has written almost 3,000 entries by now! And I want to start documenting daily now too. Especially now in this season of life with an infant, who won’t be an infant for much longer. These are sweet moments & days, and I want to cherish every bit of them that I can!
So because of all this inspiration & creativity that’s bursting to get out, I’m going to start my own daily journal here. Well, maybe not daily, but a few times a week at least. I want to find the good in each day, and write it down to focus on those good things. It’s true that life with an infant is sweet, but sometimes it’s also incredibly hard. But years down the road, what I want to remember the most when I reflect back, are the sweet times we spend as a little family, and the cute things she does that she’ll so very quickly grow out of. I want to remember the good times of each day.
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On January 1, 2018, I started using the app called “1 Second Every Day.” The app just records and keeps tiny little 1 second videos, and then you can compile them whenever you want. (I just added the music and title using a simple video editor on my phone.) My goal is to record video every day this year, and then make a large video at the end of the year. But I will also compile one for each month throughout the year. You can watch January , February & March if you haven’t seen those yet.
On January 1, 2018, I started using the app called “1 Second Every Day.” The app just records and keeps tiny little 1 second videos, and then you can compile them whenever you want. (I just added the music and title using a simple video editor on my phone.) My goal is to record video every day this year, and then make a large video at the end of the year. But I will also compile one for each month throughout the year. You can watch January & February if you haven’t seen those yet.
Most of y’all should know how much I love books & reading. We have multiple bookshelves in our house that are bursting at the seems. I have hundreds of e-books on my Kindle Paperwhite. And I frequently borrow both “real” books & e-books from our local library. Since 2014 (when I started meticulously keeping up with it on Goodreads), I’ve read 235 books! If you follow me on Instagram, I often post photos of the books I’m currently reading.
I’m “one of those” that believe the book is almost always better than the movie version, and I try to make sure I’ve read the book before seeing the movie whenever possible. So when I read a book and watched the movie version all in the same week, I decided this would be a fun “series” to start on my blog, of reviewing both the book and the movie. …
Murder on the Orient Express (Book + Movie Review)Read More »
Emerson is a sleep fighter. The first few weeks of her life she slept like a champ. You know, like most newborns do! But then something changed. And girlfriend no longer wanted to nap… She wanted to stay awake and be a part of everything. We diagnosed her jokingly with “Baby FOMO.” In case you don’t know, FOMO stands for “Fear Of Missing Out.” And my baby girl definitely has it.
One trick we learned early on though, is that she loved the sound of running water, or white noise. The first time I tried it out was back when I was still on maternity leave. I turned on the kitchen sink full blast, and just stood next to it holding her for like 10 minutes while she calmed down. It would calm her down & put her to sleep whenever she was super upset and crying. Then we found this video on YouTube, and we still use it all the time when we’re out & about. We open it on one of our phones, and put it in the car seat with her, and it works like a charm every time! So when she moved into her own room/crib (she slept in our bedroom until about 6.5 months old), we knew she needed a noise machine in there. We ordered this one from Amazon, and it works great. One of the settings sounds almost identical to that YouTube video, so that’s the one we use every night. It has a timer for 15, 30 or 60 minutes, and we keep it on the 60-minute timer.
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Slowly but surely, I’m going to get this whole “series” written about Emerson’s birth. Actually, this might be the third and final post, if I can wrap everything up without the word-count for this post being 4 billion words…. So if you haven’t read PART 1 and PART 2 of my birth story, you should start there. I left off with Emerson being pulled out of my belly via c-section at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, July 9, 2017, at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital (TMH, for y’all non-Tally folks), and her being wrapped up like a burrito, and placed on my chest.
Then Emerson was whisked away from me, while I was kept in the operating room. Jeff went with Emmie while they got her cleaned up, and took all of her first measurements. She was 19 3/4″, and 7lbs 2oz of perfection. 
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Picking & deciding on a name for your first baby is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things in life! Or at least one of the hardest things about pregnancy! Since all of you should already know what we named our child (considering she’s 8 months old today!), it’s not like this is some sort of name-reveal post, so I’ll just start by throwing this photo out right in the beginning!
I was one of those girls in high school who had picked out the first & middle names for my four (FOUR?!) future kids… Then when we found out that I was pregnant, names immediately started swirling around in my head. But those names I liked so much in high school didn’t do much for me as an adult now…
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