muddy creek run

I'm the social committe chairman for our homeowners association, and last year I got the crazy idea to organize a fun run. It was a TON of work, especially since my co-chair bailed on me (still mad about that one) and we really didn't have a committee at that point. But it was successful, considering it was our first run, and I was excited for the next year when we could make it bigger and better.

Fast forward a year, and here we are; six days until the big event and I am SO ready for it to come. Being a race coordinator is hard work! It's like another full-time job. I have an amazing committee and very supportive board members that have done a great portion of the work, but still it seems that the run has consumed my life for the past three months. I'm ready for a break!

Anyway, I usually really love being social chair. I love the people I work with, and I love being able to serve my community, but in times like these when I'm in the thick of it, I think I must have been insane for taking on such a job.

Anyway, Missy did this awesome logo design for the run. Cool, huh?

So...

In October Brian's company told everyone of a big project they were starting in Dubai and asked if anyone was interested. Each consultant that goes over would stay for about a year and would still be considered a Dallas area employee. So we would keep our house, and they would basically pay for us to live over there; house, car, per diem included. We thought and prayed about it a lot and decided to submit our name. We both have an adventurous streak, our kids aren't in school, we would pay off all of our student loans much faster, and best of all, this would be an incredible career booster for Brian.

We never heard anything for months so we went on with life and kinda forgot about it. Then out of the blue last Tuesday, they sent Brian an email saying he was chosen for the Dubai team and wanted to know if we were still interested. I was gobsmacked. I mean, I wanted to go, but I really don't think I ever thought it would happen, especially after all the drama with Atlanta. And to make it worse, they wanted an answer that night. So we thought about it some more and said yes. This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity and I would regret it for the rest of my life if we said no.

So Brian is scheduled to go out in the middle of May, and the rest of us will come out a couple of weeks later to give him time to find a place to live and get things together.

I am still in disbelief and somewhat overwhelmed by all that needs to be done before we leave, but I am SO excited and can't wait for this new adventure to start!

Lots more details to share. Stay posted.

Expat \ˈeks-ˌpat\ n: somebody who has moved abroad: a citizen who has left his or her own country to live in another, usually for a prolonged period. See also: expatriate. "Brian, Mandie and their children will soon be joining the ranks of American expats in Dubai."

Dubai \do̵̅o̅ bī′\ n: port city in the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf. Home to this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and soon....US!

More details to come!

sprinklers

We have sprinklers in our back yard, but only around the perimeter of the house. So last weekend Brian, his dad and brothers rented a ditch witch and installed two more rows of sprinkers. It was hard work, but I think the guys really enjoy spending time together.

Here's Abby "supervising" and Brian "working." Just kidding, Brian. :)

Abby spent the whole morning out there with the guys. She was talking and joking with them (in her own little language of course) and decided to be in charge of the tool box. It was so cute! Obviously, because it seems like I didn't take pictures of anything else... I think its the hair. I love it!

Oh, and here's a picture of the damage.

Happy Birthday, Brian!

Brian's birthday was Friday and his day consisted of installing sprinklers in our backyard with his dad and brothers. (Pictures to come.) But he had a good time, and we had a fun little birthday celebration with him and the kids afterward. I did a baseball theme cause I'm getting him Ranger's tickets, and I thought it would be kinda fun to attempt a baseball cake. I think it turned out kinda cool.

Easter Morning


Abby really got into hunting eggs.



And discovering what was inside.




And sharing with Carter.


I really wish this picture would have come out clearer, but that's what happens when you don't use a flash in low light with my camera. It can't focus on the image very well.






After we hunted eggs I made pink animal shaped pancakes. Abby got the dog. That brown ball is a chocolate egg. :)





Grandma's House

We went to my mom's house in Ft. Worth for a big Easter party, with probably one of the biggest, most outlandish egg hunts around. Hunting eggs is a multi-generational activity and my family takes it pretty seriously.

The little kids get to hunt first, and Abby did NOT want to stop.






But then we reminded her that she got to open them, and she got over it pretty fast.




Abby and Anna had matching dresses. So cute!




Another one of our family traditions is the guys go out and fly airplanes. this time it was the small styrofoam ones, but it changes every year. They always have a good time.

sgetti

They really enjoyed it, althought you can't tell.


Really.

a good day

Last Wednesday Brian and I took the kids to Fossil Rim with some of my family. We were in the car for about 10 hours that day and Abby and Carter were so good the whole time. I was suprisingly impressed, and relieved. Cause you never know how the kids will act, you know? Anyway, Fossil Rim was way fun, except for the 45 minute traffic jam at the zebras. Never thought I would feel so much animosity towards an animal.

I think the highlight of the whole day was when Brian took over the camera and went to take a picture out the window but forgot that the window was rolled up. He slammed his whole body into the window. It was priceless. I guess you just had to be there...



Missy took a lot of these pictures with her new camera. Good job, Missy.

poor little boy

Carter has another ear infection, and this time he's taking it really hard. He's had five doses of antibiotic and it's not doing any good so far. He's sleeping a ton and still waking up with a fever, so we're getting him re-checked today. Poor baby.

On a positive note, we had a great Easter and will post pictures of that later, along with our fun trip to Fossil Rim National Park!

hands

Recently we changed our office into a playroom for the kids, and we did this art project to fill one of the walls.

I bought four blank canvases and painted each a different color. Then we put our hand prints on them in white paint, which was easier said than done! But I think the finished product is kind of cool!

sweet dreams, sad reality

The older my kids get, the more I realize how different they are.

Abby slept through the night at five weeks. Carter slept through the night at nine weeks, but has never been very consistent.

Abby was very predictable and would stick to a schedule very easily. Carter is so erratic in his sleeping habits, and it takes hard work to keep him on a schedule.

Abby would coo herself to sleep in a matter of minutes. Lately, it takes 15 minutes of screaming to get Carter to sleep.

Abby handled teething very well. Carter, not so much. I took him to the doctor today because I thought something was wrong with him because he woke up every hour all night long. Doctor said he was fine, and that it was all due to teething. (Augh!)

I'm going to go insane if this keeps up. So I'm working extra hard this week to get him on a consistent schedule, and hopefully that will make him feel better and give me some peace.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my children equally as much. I've even come to find all Carter's grouchy quirks endearing. He's just not making my life very easy right now. I'm so tired.

poop reports

Well. It happened. I've reached the rite of passage that every woman in the LDS church must experience at some point in their life. The nursery. To some it is their dream calling, to others it is a dreaded, inevitable black hole. If I had to list all the callings I could have in order of desire, nursery would be close to the bottom next to den leader and adult sunday school teacher. But I accepted the calling because I trust that this was an inspired call and I'll take on any challenge.

So I spent today in the nursery, and I have to admit, I had a lot of fun. I actually think I will enjoy it! I am the nursery leader, so I get to organize things the way I want, the other nursery workers are really great, and I get to spend time with Abby and all her little buds.

But I swear, almost every kid in the room had a poopy diaper at one point or another, and no matter what we did we couldn't get the smell out of that room. We were still smelling butts as they were walking out of the room cause we couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from! So with me previously being in primary, Brian and I rarely had a chance to talk doctorine, and now it's even worse. From now on, all he's going to be getting from me is a weekly poop report. :)

carter and the techno beat machine

Carter had his MRI today to diagnose the source of his hearing loss. It will give us a better idea of what we're dealing with and if it's degenerative or not. Everything went really smoothly and Carter handled everything really well. We won't know the results until we meet with his ENT, so hopefully we'll meet with him in the next week or two.

Carter was fasting from 6am to almost 2:00 that afternoon. He was one hungry bug! This was the best smile I could get out of him while we were waiting to go in.

I just thought I would take a picture of his cute pudgy foot.

Here's Carter on the MRI machine. When the machine is resting, it makes this crazy dmm-tss dmm-tss dmm-tss noise that sounds a lot like a techno beat. When they're running the actual tests, its really loud (we had to wear ear plugs) and made a lot of different sets of abnoxious noises. It was really interesting.

Awwww! Don't you just want to melt? He looks so little and helpless.

Here's Carter in recovery. It took him a while to wake up from his little cocktail they gave him. I think it's funny how his robe matches his skin. I didn't realize how... peach.... he was until today.

want a professionally customized blog header?

My fabulously talented sister, Missy, is giving away a free, custom blog header on her website HERE. All you have to do is leave a comment on her blog.

drastic

I've been a slave to hair color every since I colored my hair for the first time ten years ago. I did it myself, with a cap, and it wasn't pretty. But once you color your hair, its really hard to go back. Ever since then I've PAID to get my hair done, and the rest of you hair color slaves out there know how expensive it can be.

My hair had always been blonde, but it's gotten darker with every baby and so it just seems ridiculous to keep spending the money and pretending to be blonde. So I bit the bullet, embraced my inner brunette and got my hair colored for the last time. My hair is naturally lighter than this, but I'm hoping time and the summer sun will fade it a little.

So anyway, what do you think?

mmm! chocolate!

Brian is out of town, and since today is our anniversary, I decided that we still needed to celebrate. So we got Outback Steakhouse to go and me and the kids had steak and chocolate cake. Abby is never really that interested in food, but man, when I opened up the chocolate cake she took her fork and dug right in! She was taking huge man-size bites and I swear she ate probably 1/3 of the cake by herself!

Could her mouth get any bigger??? That's just unnatural looking.

As you can see, Carter loved the cake too.

4 years

I met Brian on a blind date, December 2003. He was at BYU finishing up his masters and came home for the holidays. We had a nice time, but I really wasn't that interested. Brian graduated that spring and then moved down here to get a job. We were in the same singles ward, had a lot of the same friends, but I had a pretty serious boyfriend at the time. And Brian, the fearless dater, was having fun asking out all the girls.

That summer my relationship ended and, excited to be single, I decided to go with a bunch of friends down to the Guadalupe river. A few people, including Brian, wanted to go down a day early and camp out. I decided that sounded like fun and called up Brian to see if I could ride with him. So we rode down together, and that's when I think I started to think of him a little differently.

We didn't really start exclusively dating until the first week of October, but after that it didn't take long for us to know that it was right for us to be together. Six weeks later we were engaged, and four months after that we were married. Today is our four year anniversary, and I am so grateful for the blessing of a righteous, supportive husband and the life that we have together.

snow

We didn't spend much time in the snow yesterday but we did manage to get some pictures.

Our Bradford Pear tree bloomed last weekend, and then got iced over. I think the tree's going to be okay though.Abby was really enthralled with the blanket of snow on the ground. Getting her outside was a challenge though. Took pictures from inside of a bird cleaning itself on the snowy fence.

Here's Abby sampling the snow.

voting nightmare

So we moved from Denton Co. to Collin Co. almost two years ago. I did a change of address form and updated my voter registration form also. I EVEN got back a voting card with my correct address and everything. So last year I went to vote in the city elections, and my name wasn't on the list. So the workers there called higher authorities and they said I just needed to re-submit my voter registration form. So I did. And a few weeks later I got a letter saying they denied me again. They said they cross-check my information with the DPS, mail, and SS databases, so maybe something wasn't matching up. Hello? My address has been the same for two years, my drivers license says I live here! So me being a loyal voter, submitted my registration AGAIN, and double-triple checked it to make sure everything was correct, and submitted it before the deadline. Well, that was a month ago. I haven't received any word yet, and according to the voting database, I still live in Denton Co.

This really ticks me off. I am a US citizen, and because of that, I have a right to vote. But I can't.

love

Abby and Carter are developing such a strong bond the older they get. They are most happy when they are playing together, and no one can make Carter laugh like Abby can. Granted, no one can make him cry like she can either.

Although having children 17 months apart is hard sometimes, knowing that they are going to be lifelong friends makes it so worth it.