guilty pleasures

Their favorite is fudge bars.

My favorite is them.

devil ducks

Our new favorite place is the duck pond park, so yesterday Brian met me and the kids after work for a picnic. We went down to feed the ducks, and man, were they agressive! Abby was holding some chips in her hands and one of the ducks, I'm gonna call him Buck, hit Abby's hand with his bill and knocked the chips out of her hands. Feistly little fellow. This same duck also had a fun time taunting Carter, and Carter did not. like. it. at. all!

There was only one white duck in the flock and he and Buck seemed to be friends cause they never left each others side. Both of them had this strange ability to beg and almost jump at food. Brian thought it was great fun.

I think this last picture is hilarious. Look at Buck cocking his head behind the white duck.

expensive shoes

I went to a class last night and on the way home I stopped by Ross cause I haven't been there in a while and I had the "bug." I found these great pair of shoes for $16.99! I was a little hesitant to buy them cause this is the first pair of dress shoes I have EVER bought that weren't black or brown, (well, or beige or white) but I love them!

So then on the way home a cop stops me for a broken tail light. Oops. Oh, and the registration and inspection just expired, and to top it all off, there was no insurance card in the car. So I got three tickets last night, and a warning. *sigh*

If I hadn't stopped to buy those shoes, maybe I could have avoided this whole thing. My awesome pair of $16.99 shoes just got a lot more expensive.

So how many pairs of shoes do you own, and what's your craziest pair?

balloon festival

The Plano Balloon Festival was this weekend, and we weren't able to go on Friday or Saturday, so this evening we grabbed a few friends and went and parked a ways a way to watch the balloon launch. It was the very last launch and I don't think all the balloons went up this time, but still we got to see about a dozen balloons or so. The kids enjoyed it, especially at the end when the dinosaur popped up over the horizon.

None of these pictures were SOOC (straight out of camera) and definitely not this first one. Sometimes the funnest part of taking a picture is experimenting with it afterwards.

This one flew directly over our heads, and it was really low too. So cool.

Here's the fun flying dragon. I don't know how they keep that thing in the air!

Wouldn't you say the basket is in an odd place?

why I do it

I love blogging. I love being able to keep up with friends and read about other peoples interesting lives. I like to do polls and talk about unimportant things on my blog, but ultimately, this blog is my journal, photo album and scrabook rolled into one. To me, blogging is the best way to document my life, and so sometimes I take a step back and make sure that the things I write and the pictures I post are things that my family and I will appreciate in the coming years. Because, right now, this is the only record of my little family that we have. Sometimes I feel like I go a little overboard with the pictures, but to me, pictures are the best way to capture a memory. I don't know. Maybe there's no such thing as too many pictures.

With that said, here are a few more... :)

Carter likes corn.

And slurpees. I get this face a lot.

They both love to peek into our neighbors yard.

What a girl!

so upset

We went to Breckinridge park last night to enjoy the beautiful weather, and I took a ton of pictures with my father-in-law's camera. We were about done, and I started fiddling around with the settings, did something I shouldn't have, and lost all the pictures I had just taken. I was so mad. Now I know not to mess with that function anymore! Anyway, here are some of the pics I took after the fact.

As we were getting our things together, Abby discovered there was more to life outside the playground, like this beautiful pond, for instance.

She stood and stared at it for the longest time, and when I told her we could go down and try to see the fish, she got super excited.
But the most exciting part was throwing rocks into the pond.
Moments like this, with my little family, I don't ever want to forget.

abby demonstrates the perfect running stance

And if you're in the mood, a dramatic fall is always impressive.

boring?

I just organized the shirts in my closet, and I discovered that all I have are solid colored shirts! No stripes or patterns to be found! I do have have about every color in the sun, and they obviously aren't all the same shirt so I do have a lot of variation, but I can't believe they're all solid! Is that boring?

What about you? What's in your closet?

hot stuff, snot stuff

Abby insists on dressing herself now days, and I'm really trying hard to not squelch her creativity, but at the same time I have to keep some control or the rest of our life is going to be pretty difficult. Look at that smirk! She really thinks she's hot stuff. Thank goodness we didn't leave the house that day.

Carter has a cold. Sorry. I have to document these things for posterity.

in the spirit

My fabulously talented sister, Missy, did this awesome blog design for me. She's also doing five other designs for me so our blog will have a new look for the different holidays and seasons. Don't you love it?

She can do one for you too! Just visit her blog for more information. http://designsbymissy.blogspot.com/

recovery

Surgery went well. They ended up taking out a large portion of my cartilage (instead of repairing it) so my recovery is going to be pretty fast. The doctor said I will need to walk with my leg brace on and with crutches until this coming Friday, and then after that I can go without if I feel able. I'm able to walk on it now, but its pretty tender and I still have very limited mobility. I will have to do physical therapy for a while to get full range of motion back. The pain is getting better but it's still pretty bad so I've been on pain killers every four hours. Earlier today I tried to go down to just one pill instead of two at a time to see how I felt, and the pain was terrible! Ugh. I hate being dependent on medicine, especially this stuff. I've been having some crazy dreams and it makes me a little loopy, so I will be glad when I don't need to take it any more.

So the doctor said I will need people to help me with the kids this week, so some wonderful ladies in my ward have volunteered to bring meals and come over to help me with the kids. Its gonna be a very interesting week. I just hope I don't go stir crazy.

knee surgery

Well, Labor Day started out great. We went to the lake with family and some friends to play in the water and jet ski and we had a great time. After we were done I put Carter in the car and sat in the front seat, but then saw that Brian needed help packing the car, so I went to get out of the car and pop, my knee locked into place.

Back up six years: I was training for a marathon then and was running about 25 miles a week, so that, along with the bad knee gene from my dad, weakened my cartilidge. One night I was at a party at a friends house and we got in this huge pillow fight, with teams, baracades, points, you know, the whole thing. (can you tell guys were involved?) anyway, I went to hit someone and stepped wrong on a pillow and twisted my knee. Right then my weakened cartilidge tore and the twisting motion caused it to fold in half and lock my knee in place. The only way to fix that is to do arthroscopic surgery. They sewed up the cartilidge, I healed, and my knee eventually went back to normal.

I know that at some point I reinjured it because my knee has popped out of place several times since then, but I've always been able to somehow get it to unlock. But not this time. It's locked at a 90 degree angle and I can only get it to move up and down about 10 degrees or so, and I definitely can't put any weight on it. My knee really hurts and my whole leg is under some serious stress. So we were able to get an appointment today (which is a miracle) with an orthopedic surgeon and an MRI confirmed that I did have a torn meniscus, so he scheduled me for knee surgery tomorrow at 1:30 (which is an even GREATER miracle).

So the surgery can go two ways. They can repair the cartilidge and I will have to be in crutches for six weeks. SIX WEEKS? No walking without them. OR they could go in and see that my cartilidge is unrepairable, and in that case they would remove the cartilidge completely. Since there would be nothing to heal, I would be able to walk as soon as I feel I am able, BUT because there is no cartilidge there to protect the joint, I would not be able to run again, EVER. I could walk, bike swim and other low impact exercises though. And later in life I might have a greater chance at having arthritis in that knee. So I don't know which way I would prefer it to go. Being in crutches for six weeks with two little kids will be miserable. But having limits placed on my physical abilites doesn't sound too appealing either. But its really out of my hands, so we'll just have to see.

Oh, and to make it worse, Abby and Carter both have diahrrea. Thank goodness Brian is healthy. So pray for me and our little family, and I will keep you posted.

Oh, and if this post doesn't completely make sense, I'm blaming it on the muscle relaxers.