Wii Would Like to Play

Well, it came!! Josh and I decided to spend a part of our stimulus check on a Nintendo Wii because we've been really, really wanting one. So we found a Target bundle that came with the the Wii Fit (which we really wanted) and a console, controller, etc. We bought that the other night, and it came yesterday. Needless to say, you can guess what we did Friday night!!

We made Miis; here is Josh with his Mii.

It really is as cool as it looks on the commercials. We spent a lot of time playing some of the Wii Sports games- boxing, especially.

I turned out to be surprisingly good at boxing, but by the end of the second round I was literally sweating. So it really is a workout! We also tried the Wii Fit, and it actually walks you through being weighed and checking your balance and all kinds of stuff. Then it tells you your "Wii Fit Age" and your BMI... and your Mii changes to reflect your BMI... not sure I like that it made my Mii quite so fat! But it does let you set goals and that kind of stuff. And it has aerobics, strength training, all kinds of stuff. So we're cancelling my membership to the gym, since I haven't been in over a year (like since I got pregnant), and it's a little hard to go anyway with an infant!

Anyway, it was a very fun investment, and it'll be great on youth lock-ins and such. The funny thing is I'm actually sore this morning from too many rounds of boxing! Guess I really was getting a work out!

HATU

Happy Anniversary To Us! :)

Josh and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary last Thursday, on the 22nd. It's been a wonderful couple of years, that's for sure! Here's the breakdown...

Year One, May 2004-May 2005: The year of firsts-- first apartment: a TINY one bedroom, so little the dining room was a wide spot in the hall and there was A closet for storage. First pet: Tess... who became Truman on her (his) second visit to the vet! And the not so fun firsts that come with learning to be a husband and a wife: first screaming fights, and slamming doors! First year of youth ministry... more fights, and lots of growing! Our first anniversary, spent in the same suite as our wedding night.


Year Two, May 2005-May 2006: A second house: this time a duplex with a real yard. We had a great time painting and decorating our new house. A second pet: Isabelle, who has certainly made life interesting. Lots of trips to SDC, we got in the swing of things for youth ministry, not so many fights! :) A really fun Spring Break trip to Jacksonville to visit Jess and Mike. A scary decision to start trying for a baby in the fall.



Year Three, May 2006-May 2007: Started this blog... and am using it to keep track of the memories now! Truman caught a mouse and let it go in our bed, one of the great stories of our marriage! My last summer of softball. More fun trips to SDC, and a Cardinals game in the new stadium. The worst float trip ever (think flat tire, getting lost, being late, setting up tents in the dark... the list goes on)! Josh made the decision that he was being called into full time ministry, and started taking classes at SBTS. A fun trip to KC for Josh's birthday- a concert, a spontaneous night at a hotel, and going to IHOP at midnight... pretending we were in college again! Our last spontaneous trip because we had already found out we were pregnant in January... found out it was a girl the week before our anniversary... bought a house in May.



Year Four, May 2007-May 2008: Moved into our new house, Isabelle went to doggie jail (told you she made life very interesting). Experienced the joys of full term pregnancy together (midnight leg cramps, gestational diabetes, waddling). Josh went on his first youth trips without me. HAD A BABY in September. Life hasn't been the same since! The last half of this year of our marriage, we have been learning some all new things-- like how to be a mommy and a daddy at the same time as we are a husband and a wife. I have fallen even more in love with my husband watching him become a daddy. He loves his little girl with all his heart.



All in all, it's been an amazing ride! I love the new(ish) country song "You're Gonna Miss This" because it is so true! The second verse even talks about a new bride in a tiny apartment, looking forward to owning a house and having kids. Her dad tells her that she will miss this little apartment, and that's so true. There are many times I think of that first carefree year, when the biggest responsibility we had was a cat! Not that I would trade our life, but it certainly has changed!



To celebrate, we took an evening away from our sweet baby girl and had some husband and wife time! We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie (definitely worth seeing), went out to eat at Sophia's, and capped the night off with a trip to Encore. Encore is a restaurant that is a cafe by day, and turns into this high-class dessert bar at night. You can go and get these awesome desserts and wine (or coffee, which is what we chose!). I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures from that night, but I found pictures of what we got: a chocolate pyramid and an apple dumpling. They were pretty fantastic, but my favorite part was my caramel macchiato- it was superb!


The Apple Dumpling...

The Chocolate Pyramid...

The beautiful flowers my husband surprised me with. I absolutely LOVE daisies. It's so fun because I know that as soon as the daisies start showing up in the road ditch, it must be almost time for our anniversary, because we used "road ditch" daisies in our wedding, and were TOTALLY stressed out when they weren't blooming until literally THE WEEK OF the wedding!

It was a great evening celebrating the four years we have spent together. I still have trouble believing God blessed me with such an amazing husband to spend my life with. I wouldn't change a thing about him, and I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives together. Sometimes it feels like we've been married forever, and sometimes it feels like we just got married yesterday. I think that's a good thing... :)

City Museum

So, this is a little late, but I'm realizing as I work on this why it's so hard for me to keep updated on my posting... most evenings 'Lena and I are home by ourselves while Josh is at meetings. Elena is wonderful, she is FASCINATED by the computer. She loves to look at the screen, loves the noise the keys make when you pound on them, everything about it. So I start typing, and I have about 1 minute before she makes it1 `to me and helps... there was an example of her "helping!" qsv czx xdddddddddddssssssssaaaa
When I pick up the computer to move it away from her, she starts crying, and follows me. This whole "mobile" thing makes life very interesting!! So there's my (not very good) reason for not keeping up with the whole blogging thing! But I'm hoping to get several done tonight, so here goes!!

Last weekend (before Memorial Day) we went to the City Museum in St. Louis with the college kids from church. Josh teaches the college Sunday school class, and it's been a fun new ministry for us. After we went to the City Museum with the youth in January, the college kids have been dying to go. So we finally had a weekend off to go, and we had a great time! Trips with this group are way more relaxing then youth trips because we don't have to worry about anyone- everybody is a "grown-up," even if some of them (particularly my husband) are really just big kids! But the City Museum is the best place for big kids!! :) Since I had Elena in January and didn't get to do much of the fun jungle-gym stuff at the museum, we brought Mom along this time to watch Elena... it was perfect! I got to go and run around with my husband, but still got to feed Elena whenever I needed to. We had a blast, and I think the pictures speak for themselves!!

On the way there... everbody pretty much passed the time by making faces at Elena!

Some of the fun things to do at the City Museum...

the outside- a huge jungle gym with all kinds of metal tunnels bars to crawl through. You can even go up in the plane, it's pretty cool, and TOTALLY exhausting!

There are no words...

A giant ball pit for grown ups. Josh and I didn't make it into the ball pit, I'm still a little gun shy after the whole glasses thing!
One of the sky-high tunnels to crawl through. Pretty cool!

"IT ROCKS TOO MUCH FOR ONE HAND!"

And fun stuff inside! A slide in the "skateless" park, which is a huge section that looks like a skate park, only you run around it instead of riding a skateboard. It's pretty awesome.
Ruth, Charlie, and James in the mirror tunnel.
Charlie and Ruth on the "gerbil wheel." It was pretty funny, because you had to run the same speed as the other person, or you fell down. So, of course, Charlie tried to make Ruth fall down, because he's a brother and that's what they do!
The whole group: Ruth, Tara, Charlie, Josh, me, Elena, Corey, Andrea, Missy, and James. We were a little worn out, because this was the end of the City Museum!

We were so worn out that we decided to leave the City Museum early and head to the Galleria. We were planning on going to dinner there (The Cheesecake Factory-- YUM), but headed there early and went to see a movie- Prince Caspian. The movie was great, dinner at the Cheesecake Factory was AWESOME, and we headed home exhausted. They weren't as excited to talk to Elena on the way home!

Woohoo, one post down, and it only took an hour and a half! We'll see about the next one... it may be tomorrow! :)

New Me!

That was then...
This is now...

Well, it was bound to happen, and eventually it did! Part of my birthday present was money to go get my hair cut. My last hair cut was in October 2006, so it was high time for a cut! And, since I'm a mommy, I went for a mommy cut! I like it a lot, though it is much shorter than I've had for a long, long time (like since 3rd grade)! I cut a full 10 inches off, and it's now laying on my kitchen table, waiting to be mailed to Locks of Love. Kinda weird to see your ponytail sitting on the table! I can still pull my hair back into a tiny ponytail, though the bangs definitely don't stay in. The bangs are really just longer layers, but I could (with a lot of gel, mousse, brushing and blow drying) part my hair on the side and have the pull across the forehead bangs. But my hair naturally goes to zipper head with a part straight down the middle, so most of the time my bangs are really just long layers.

Anyway, thought I'd pass along the pictures! :)

P.S. Don't you love the self-photography?!

Finally, I know!

Well, I know it has been far longer than is excusable since I've posted on this blog. I have a lot of reasons, but no really good ones! One is that I'm just ridiculously busy. Between my work (crazy since it's the end of school), church, and, you know, Elena, I haven't had much time to update. And the time I have had, I've updated the Baby Blog (because, let's face it, that's what you all want to see anyway! :) Also, things have not been great with my job, so I haven't really been in the mood to blog. Not that I don't like my job, I actually love it. I get to do something a little different every day, I get to work with teachers and students all over the district, and I get to learn something new almost every day. That part I love. The part that isn't going so well is the politics behind working for a school system. If you live in Columbia, you're probably well aware of the situation (tax levy failed, much talk of cutting people, positions, and programs, rampant dissatisfaction with the administration, low morale and lack of community support for the schools). Well, my position was one of the "70 new positions" everyone is upset about, and it is now the middle of May, and I don't know what I'll be doing next year because the Board of Ed. hasn't voted on the budget yet because they're having disagreements with the administration on where to make the cuts. SOOO, with all that up in the air, plus being busy, I've been a little too cranky to post!

Like I said, lots of reasons, but no good ones! So, to compensate, here are some of the things we've been up to lately, in pretty much random order...

The Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt: One of my favorite youth events, we moved it from downtown Columbia to Rock Bridge Memorial State Park. Since the adults weren't allowed to help, Mom, Ruth and I tried really hard to keep from cheating... and failed miserably! But there were only two girls, so we felt sorry for them. The girls did dominate the guys, though- we won by like 30 points!!

Taking a picture with "roots"

Hugging a tree!

Laney hanging out on a vine

With the weather so nice, we've been taking lots of walks with Elena and Isabelle... clearly, everybody loves it!

Our church had a 30th anniversary celebration. I thought the centerpieces were really neat... and I had just gotten my new camera, so I had to play with it! :)

The flowers my wonderful husband got me for my birthday... along with a box of chocolate covered strawberries from Elena (what a smart little girl she is!) and, of course, my new camera!

Celebrating my birthday with my family... lemon cake, what else? I'll have lots more cute pictures from this party on the baby blog... whenever I get a chance to post there! Probably tomorrow... but I make no promises! :)

That's a lot of candles...

Well, I can't promise to not ever go that long without posting again... but I'm going to do my best! I am only going to do the Baby Blog until September, so then I will have lots more time! I'm sure my schedule will really free up then... or at least that's what I'm telling myself!