Ready or Not, Here it Comes

Yes, it is true. The deceptively evil four letter word, white frozen puffs that fall from the sky, have officially decided to show up. I have been living blissfully in denial all Fall long that Winter was far from ever reaching us. Even though the Christmas decorations have been up since the beginning of October, and Christmas music has been playing at Walmart since Halloween (huge pet peeves!! Christmas season starts AFTER Thanksgiving!), I have still been able to block the idea of bitterly cold weather out of my mind. That all ended quite abruptly yesterday when customers were coming into work talking about the snow. Yes, SNOW!?! Seeing as how NO ONE knew it was supposed to snow, and still desperately clinging to my state of denial, I didn't believe them. Until I saw it... Falling ever so lightly, but with all the power of Jack Frost himself, I saw it. And felt it. Holy cow it was cold out! At first I had a mix of emotions and questions. How did I not know about this? How could I ever survive the cold and make it home alive in my tiny cardigan? But on the other hand, I might have thought, "Oh how exciting, our first snow." But if asked about it, I will deny it till the day I die :) Turns out I did make it home alive and unfrozen thanks to my trusty little car's heater. I guess it's time to really start getting my winter gear out. Which I wisely did for mine and Hoosier's walk this morning. Ryan even told me when we got back that I was freezing cold and that I smelled like winter. Sad day... But I must give a thank you to North Face for making such wonderful products to protect my poor hands from the freezing cold.

Life lesson learned in all of this winter mess? Living in denial may keep your mind in warm and fuzzy thoughts, but your body frozen. Remember that next year when nature plays evil games on you.

Well Hello, 23

I firmly believe that every birthday should not only be celebrated the day of, but for that entire week..or month.... whichever you prefer :) So here's my life in a quick recap. In the last 22 years I have: been born, started school, went sky diving, "finished" (temporarily) school, gained a new parent and some more siblings, met the love of my life, got married, and started the intense work of developing a fetus... give or take a few extra details. In just a few short days of being the newly mature (anyone actually buying that?) 23 year old that I am , I have already added a few new highlights. For one, I started a blog, thanks to my wonderful and technologically savvy friend, Sara. But seriously, I must say (and I have about a hundred times on Facebook) that I had one of the best birthdays ever. It started off right, a day early that is. My oober amazing husband Ryan kicked it off by throwing me a party including all the foods of the gods, aka chocolate and oreos :) He LOVES surprising me, so true to his nature, I was unaware of my birthday plans until the moment I needed to know about them. As soon as Ryan got home he kicked me out of the kitchen and set to work making me what we had been referring to as my "cake stuff". Yes, it's true. I didn't even know what kind of cake I was getting! That's how secretive he gets when it comes to my birthday, Christmas, or even surprise dates. Anyway, when our friends started showing up, he let me in the kitchen to see what he had been up to and it turns out he set up a chocolate fountain and had made me the BEST oreo cupcakes known to mankind. Seriously, they were so good! So we spend the evening enjoying our delicious chocolate dipped everythings and oreo cupcakes. The next morning we woke up early to go to breakfast at a local restaurant called Uptown. They have the best food! I had creme brulee french toast. For all you B-towners, if you have not had this yet, YOU MUST!!! Before we left though Ryan gave me 2 of my presents, princess fruit snacks (yes, I'm really 3, not 23) and some new mixing bowls that I had been wanting. At breakfast though he gave me my "last" present which was a gift card to get a mani/pedi later that day with a friend. I was super excited and I must say that it looks pretty darn good :) After I got home from getting spoiled I was told we needed to leave for dinner. I thought we were going to the Olive Garden for dinner, but alas, I was clueless as to our real plans. We started driving up north towards Indy when he finally told me we were going to Red Robin instead. I was pretty excited needless to say. As we were driving Ryan kept "accidentally" missing turns. This has never ever happened so I should have figured out then that something was up, but I remained clueless still. We finally turned off onto the airport exit which I thought was weird but he told me that you had to drive through the airport to get to the exit. I'm so gullible!! I believed him. We got down to the arrivals though and Ryan pulled over. I was so confused until I looked up and realized that standing next to me was my friend Sara, who just so happens to live in Utah. I started crying because I was in such shock, which made her cry, and we just hugged. It's been almost 2 years since we have seen each other. Can we say best friend ever?!?! Best surprise ever! She told me she had been planning this for about a month and she and Ryan kept it from me! The rest of the weekend was spent with late night talks, glow sticks, giggling like we were 12 again, shopping, talking about Baby G and how our lives were changing, and how we were real grown ups now. Let's just say that 23 has definitely been a great year for me so far. Thank you to all of those in my life that made me feel more loved than I thought possible and giving me the best birthday weekend ever! So lucky number 23, this year we are starting off with a blog, spending Christmas at home in our house for the first time, going to be welcoming Baby G into the world! and going to the Bahamas. I wonder what else can we expect this year?...