on the edge of my...rocking chair

I'm sitting here listening to the Lady Wall Hawk regional semi-finals basketball game on the internet. The game is here in Midland, but I had a cranky toddler earlier, so we didn't go.
I'm rocking my baby, my second baby, but I have knots in my stomach as if I were still playing. It's hard to believe it's been 9 years, 9!!, since our trip to the state tournament. These girls that are playing were itty bitty second graders that year, and now they're seniors and headed off to play in college. Gosh, I'm old! I'm so proud to be from Wall. I only went to school there for two years, but it will always be my hometown. Those two years were two of the absolute best years of my life. I made lifelong friends that are my dearest and best.

Way to go Lady Hawks! We just won in overtime, so I'll get a chance to watch them in the finals tomorrow! A win sends us back to state! Last time Wall had a team there was my sister's junior year, and they got second. The time before that was our team and we got third. So now it's time for gold! I think it was pretty understood that whoever won the game tonight would have the tourney sewn up, but there is one more game to take care of. Bring on Idalou at 1!!

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is a month long celebration in our house. It's my favorite holiday! Not only do we have a ton of Irish blood, all of our names are Irish names (by coincidence) and I just love all things Irish. The source of my love is probably the fact that St. Patrick's Day is my birthday. I used to think they had parades in the big cities just for me!
The day after Valentine's Day, my heart wreath comes down and my green decorations go up. And I have about 10 St. Patty's day t-shirts that I'll get good use of for the next month.

Taxes

I hate taxes. They have been our major source of stress since we've been married. As a self-employed welder, we had to pay lots of taxes, lots and lots of taxes. It didn't help that we had terrible accountants who did absolutely nothing to help us (we even had one that cussed Cameron one time.) We apparently didn't know how to keep books like we should. We would think that we finally had it all figured out, then we'd still have to pay 2 to 3 times more than other welders that made around the same in a year that we did. It was so frustrating! Finally, after we had gotten out of the self employment racket and were doing the previous year's return, we found an accountant who was wonderful... a little crazy, but really really good at her job. She showed me exactly what to put where for the maximum deduction, etc, and saved us thousands that year. For our '08 return, Cameron was still self employed for some of the year, and worked for a company for the rest of it, so we still had to pay some taxes, but not much, and I did the return myself. This year, however, was the first year that we were completely employed by someone else, so I was very curious what kind of a refund we'd get, if anything. I just finished, and holey moley, we got a refund! A big one!! At least it's big to us! It's probably a lot more than what we'll get from here on, because Brynna was born in '09 and we had to pay all of our doctors and hospital bills out of pocket, so we got pretty big breaks for that. I'm so excited. I called to tell Cameron and it left him speechless, which is very hard to do! The last two years have been the most stressful for the two of us, 99% caused by finances. This just seems like a little gift from above, a little "don't worry, I'm still looking out for y'all, you'll be OK." I've shed many tears over taxes, but never from joy!

So here's the deal...

I have about 3 months worth of blogging to catch up on. And the longer I've waited, the more there is, and the less I want to do it. According to my mother, that's quite a pattern in my life. So I'm just not going to. I'm just going to pick up from here on. I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, either, but what I have taken I have on Facebook.

Here are pictures from Brynna's birth and the hospital.

Here are pictures from Christmas.

Here are random pictures taken since.

Here are the pictures from her newborn shoot with Keva.

Even though we've been slightly reclusive, we're doing really well. D'Laney has the croup right now, so we're battling that, but otherwise, we've been illness free. Brynna is growing like crazy. Her two month well-baby is on the 22nd, so I don't know an exact weight, but Cameron and I weighed her on our little scale here and she weighed almost 12 lbs. D'Laney was six months before she hit 12 lbs! She nurses well, and often, obviously. I do get 3 to 4 hour stretches of sleep at night, though, so she's also very kind to her momma! But during the day, it's every 1 1/2 to 2 hours. D'Laney is adjusting pretty well, but we are seeing a little more of the terrible two's than we'd like. Lots of whining and testing her boundaries, but overall pretty mild stuff. I'm slimming down pretty quickly, which I did not expect. I've lost all of the baby weight and then some, but I still have a pretty good way to go before I'm at a size I'm comfortable with. I don't weigh myself much, I don't believe in a number, but I would like to feel like I did when I was in really good shape, and looking that way again would be an added bonus. I haven't starting doing much exercise, Brynna and D'Laney are pretty much to credit for the loss thus far, but I'm finally starting to feel recovered from the surgery, so if I can just find the time and energy, and motivation, I'll get right to it!
So that's as much catching up as I'm going to do. And I am going to start posting on a more regular basis, it's good for my sanity.