Happy birthday to me!

I mentioned we were getting a pretty big tax return, and it just happened to come in the day after my birthday! Yay! We already knew that we were going to be getting a new washer and dryer with it, we've been shopping and debating on them for 2 years now. I didn't know that my husband had his own plans for it as well.


Happy birthday, Amy!! I've been looking at these cameras for years. He got me a great package with a couple of lenses, several extra batteries, cards, cords, and a lovely organized case to keep it all in! I've taken a few pictures with it, but I haven't had a chance to get the software loaded or even read the manual, which I'm told you really need to do with this camera.

I'm really going to hate this

I just worked out for the first time in over a year. But honestly, I haven't really done much working out at all since my freshman year at ASU. And boy, does it show! Not that I look terrible, I mean, I don't look great, but I have had two rather large babies in the last 2 1/2 years. I mean that it showed in how little I was able to do. I was winded and my muscles were burning after stretching! Over the last several years, I've been super motivated to lose weight and get in shape for about 2 days, then I'll find something to get in the way and quit. But not this time. I've said that before, but this time I mean it! (I've said that before, too.) I know what once I get to a weight that I'm comfortable with, it won't take much to maintain it, hopefully meaning I won't have to work out everyday. I'm pretty active chasing and playing with the girls, so I don't think I'll have to be a slave to the gym to stay fairly fit. I don't have to get back to my "playing weight" and I have no desire to be able to run a marathon or anything like that. I just want to be able to get off the floor without groaning and be able to wear whatever clothes I want.

Here's what I'm doing:

I bought these DVDs several years ago and have used them on and off(mostly off). There are several workouts included. I'm doing cardio mon and wed, and weights and abs tues and thurs. I did really good on these workouts for about a month, lost some weight and felt really good, but then I got pregnant with D'Laney and was so sick for the next 9 months, I could barely walk, much less work out.


For our birthdays, Cameron and I got this weight set:

It is so cool. It adjust from 5lbs all the way up to 55lbs, all in one neat little package. We both prefer old fashioned free weights to any new-fangled machinery, and this keeps us from having bar-bells all over the house.


I was able to do most of the weight and abs work this morning. I had to stop a couple of times to tend to D'Laney, and then had to stop about 5 minutes early to feed Brynna. I did all of the arm work, though, and that's one of two areas that I'm really wanting to target. The other area is my stomach. That will take a good long while, though, because it was just over three short months ago that they were being severely abused:


Yeah, they'll need a lot of work.

HELLO!

Cameron got several Best Buy gift cards for his birthday a couple of weeks ago, and used them to get a system to help him record and mix his music. Basically a studio in a neat little box, from what I understand, which I really don't try to. Saturday morning he got it all out and set up, and the girls and I sat around and pestered him while he tied to figure it out. D'Laney really got a kick out of it, though. She seems to have inherited his musical genes. She sang into his microphone all day, although the only song she ever wants to sing is "tinkle tinkle little start" (She puts a T at the end of every word that ends with an R. We're working on it.) While Cameron was working and D'Laney was singing, Brynna fought a nap with everything she had. And she won, with the help of her sister.



D'Laney helped her daddy with the sound check.

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.