32 and owning it

Today's my birthday. For some reason, in my mind I'm only turning 27. In reality...I'm 32. But this time, no jokes from me about how I'm 29 again. No freaking out that I'm "thirtysomething." Cause I've been here for a couple of years now, and it's not so bad, now that I've gotten used to it :)



Really, I'm just so thankful for the wonderful year I had, hopeful for the year ahead, and very grateful for all of the sweet birthday wishes I've gotten from friends, family and even strangers.



It's been a great day! I got some big birthday hugs from all of my sweeties this morning then got decked out in a new top and painted nails, and headed to work for a meeting, feeling pretty darn good.



I took the rest of the day off for a lunch and movie date with Adam, with some power shopping thrown in on the side. We went to the mall and ate a Five Guys burger and fries, then saw the Avengers, which we thought was really good.



Had it not been for the meeting in the morning, I would have taken the whole day off and had more time to shop. But we had about 45 minutes for some quick stops in Forever 21 where I picked up a couple of new bracelets, Sephora where I got a free lip duo birthday gift and face lotion, Bath & Body works where we got some new hand soaps and a new lotion, Victoria's Secret (free panty coupon, holla!), and Urban Outfitters where I got another bracelet and some earrings to match my F21 bracelet. Whew! I guess it was a good thing we didn't have more time to shop ;)

Then we picked up the kids and headed to Chick-fil-a for dinner and play time.



And we get to celebrate even more tomorrow with my mom and sister. One word: Lobster! YUM.

Cheers to 32 years!



PS: I'm so excited I got some good pictures of me and this kids today!! Happy birthday to me!

PPS: Is it weird that when I went back through and read this after I hit publish, I sang "32 and owning it" to the tune of "Sexy and I Know It?" 

Mother's day

Mommy, I love you
For all that you do.
I’ll kiss you and hug you,
‘Cause you love me, too.

You feed me and need me
To teach you to play,
So smile ’cause I love you
On this Mother’s Day!

(from Aidan's card to me)

My Mother's day was great. I spent pretty much the whole day with a perma-grin on my face, marveling at the fact that I've got the three most amazing, sweet, wonderful, fantastic kids in the history of ever (and next I will talk about rainbows and unicorns, because I'm clearly in that kind of mood, haha!).

But really, I feel so incredibly lucky. I love love love being a mom and I love my kids more than words. I don't even need a holiday to make me feel special. Although a day that's all about my kids having to be nice to me certainly isn't a bad thing!

The kids woke up (way too) bright and early, excited to give me the cards and gifts they made, as well as a gift certificate for a massage and pedicure. They went on a super secret mission with Daddy to purchase this, so they were all excited about it.

We lounged around the house all morning and watched the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (much anticipated since finishing the book a couple of weeks ago). After naps, we headed to Adam's parents house for some yummy dinner and family time to celebrate with our moms.

Grandmas, moms, and sisters. We're so lucky we got to spend Mother's day all together.

I'm lucky because I have great kids, but I'm also beyond blessed that I have an amazing mom and mother-in-law. Adam and I wouldn't be the parents we are without them, so that's kind of a big deal!

And of course, the day wouldn't be complete without water balloons and play time in the sprinklers!






It wasn't even all that warm that day, and it was about to rain, but they had such a blast! Lorelai wasn't so sure about it at first, but with some encouragement from the boys and from the audience above, she got plenty wet.








She and Raina were so cute together.




And the kids were all cute on their own, too. Love those sweet faces!







And the boys were silly as always.



I just love it when the cousins get together. We did get one normal picture of them before things got crazy :)




The one disappointing thing about the day was that I was super upset to discover (after the fact) that so many of the pictures of me and the boys were out of focus. The one at the top of this post was the least terrible, but even if the picture isn't perfect, it still captured the memory of a wonderful day. I'm thankful that I got any at all, and can't bring myself to delete them, so I just have to embrace them at this point.



I also captured the memory of Lorelai being completely uncooperative after a long day and too many pictures. Note to self: don't wait until the very end of the day to take pictures, and put the camera on full auto for a few, just to be on the safe side (dreaded flash be damned).



I hope everyone else had a fantastic Mother's day, too!

(PS: check out my awesome Mother's day last year here. I gotta admit, I kind of missed my manicure from Aidan this year!)

iPhone photo dump {week 16}

After missing a couple weeks due to being on vacation and just plain lazy, I've got some new iPhone photos to share from this week and last week.

 

Highlights:

• I had a wonderful mother's day (which I'll blog about eventually...hopefully!)
• We took our first trip to the new farmer's market that just opened up right around the corner from our house. Got yummy veggies and pretty flowers for our sisters as a thanks for helping with the kids.
• Lorelai has become obsessed with sunglasses. So cute!
• I had a productive week at work (granted, it felt like the longest week ever, which is odd since I would have assumed my first week back from vacation would feel like the never ending week). 
• I've been enjoying some yummy Honduran coffee we got from a craft market in Isla Roatan.
• I've also been enjoying a lot of baby girl snuggles (and accessorizing with her hair bows she leaves laying around all over the house, just to explain the random picture above of my head).
• We celebrated my mom's birthday on 5/12. Happy Birthday, mom!

Lowlights:

• All of my kids were on their best behavior while we were gone, and now 2/3 of them have given up on it. And surprisingly, Logan isn't one of them. He's been really great, but Aidan has had a bad attitude, and Lorelai has been super clingy and having major meltdowns at night.
• Speaking of Lorelai's meltdowns, she's cutting molars on top of the whole "mommy and daddy left me for a whole week" thing, so that's just really bad timing.
• She's also more obsessed with her paci lately, to the point where she's started asking for it as soon as she gets home. I'm starting to get really worried about what a nightmare it'll be to break this habit...
• Mentally getting back into work was tough. Ugh. I really miss not having to do anything boring or mentally difficult :)
• I didn't get any good pictures of me and the kids on mother's day, which I didn't realize until Tuesday when it was too late to do anything about it. They all ended up out of focus or just not good, which makes me SO upset. 

PS: Since photobucket got rid of their collage tool, I've been experimenting with some iPhone apps so I can make a collage with my instagram photos and upload them to photobucket without having to mess with my computer. There are a bunch out there but Pic Collage seems to work fine, even though it doesn't have a 3 x 3 square layout. I guess the 2 x 2 square will have to work for now. Just FYI in case anyone else was looking for an alternative to photobucket collages.

Linking up with a good life.

The cruise (finally!)

We've been back for over a week and I'm just now getting around to uploading pictures and blogging about our absolutely wonderful vacation. I guess I'm still in lazy vacation mode :)

Sigh. I miss this.

Actually, I'm in exhausted and bummed out post-vacation mode. I've been more interested in vegging out at night and catching up on the huge backlog of DVR'd shows and the 535 unread items in my google reader than blog. Either way, I've been super lazy.

Anyway, we had such a great time on our cruise! It was a great mix of relaxing and exciting. Despite a 3am wake up call for a flight at the butt crack of dawn, and a rainy start in Miami, we had gorgeous weather the whole time, and our pasty white selves didn't even get sunburnt (too badly at least).

Thank goodness for Starbucks in ATL!

Adios, rainy Miami.

In hindsight, I really wish I'd taken our good camera so I could have gotten some better pictures. But we figured it would be too much to lug around when we were on our excursions, so all we took were our iPhones and a new waterproof video camera (which also took still photos, but not the best quality).

For some reason, we didn't take a ton of photos while we were on the ship, and Adam and I didn't even really get many pictures of each other or of us together at all, which kind of sucks.

I guess we were having too much fun relaxing...




...water sliding

...playing putt putt

Thanks to the kindness of a stranger for any pics of us together that aren't taken blindly at arms length :)

Please note that I kicked Adam's butt with like 3 holes in one.

...eating (I may or may not have had two desserts with dinner most nights, and yes that is a huge plate of chocolate desserts from the chocolate bar, don't judge me ☺)

    

...seeing shows, exploring the ship and gambling. Ok, so Adam did all the gambling and I tried my best to stay as far away from that nasty ashtray as I could. It was so smokey and unventilated, I couldn't stay in there for long without getting a headache. Thankfully he didn't need me to gamble away all of our money ☺. Just kidding! He ended up about even, and had fun doing it. The fact that cruise ships have casinos was one of the deciding factors when we chose this vacation over some of the all-inclusive resorts we looked at.

The atrium, our dining room, and the main theater.

Our room.

I liked our room, and I'm so glad we opted for an outside room. I didn't miss having a balcony like we did on our honeymoon, but I would have really missed waking up and not being able to look outside to see where we were and what the weather was like, or watch as we left ports. The bathroom was small and the shower didn't get as hot as I'd like it, but it wasn't too bad. The only disappointing thing about the room was the bed, which was was not comfortable at all. I got used to it, but Adam never did. Oh, and the fact that we must have been over the engine or something because our room was really warm. There was a noticeable shift in temperature as you walked down the hallway and got close to our room. It was a nice break from the cold air on the rest of the ship (I hate being cold), but it made it kind of hard to sleep at night. I wish I had complained sooner, but they sent a tech to look at our unit and said it was within normal limits so they didn't do anything. Bummer.

As far as the rest of the ship, we really loved having the water slide. The pools weren't very big and we didn't hang out in them much at all, but we used the heck out of the slide during our two "at sea" days. There was also a really nice adults-only lounge deck with a bar and nice, cushy couches and lounge chairs. We were able to be under the shade on the couches some of the time, and in the sun on the lounge chairs, and didn't have to worry about loud kids or anyone smoking. Very relaxing, and there was a nice breeze (to put it mildly--I almost lost my hat, but at least I didn't get too hot!).

We got off the boat at every port, too, and had an amazing time on our excursions.

The Carnival Glory

I'm going to have to do separate posts for those though, because I started this post on Monday and I'm just now finishing it on Friday. See, I wasn't kidding when I said I was being really lazy! (Side note: I'm almost all caught up on our DVR'd shows and I only have 14 unread items in my google reader now, so I did accomplish something, ha.) I got out of my blogging groove. I guess that's what a week of this will do to ya ☺

  
 
Why, yes, there is a Fat Tuesday at Mahogany Bay in Isla Roatan, Honduras. I felt bad using their free wi-fi (the only free wi-fi the entire trip, ugh) without buying anything ☺.

We really missed the kids, but we were able to buy a (ridiculously expensive) wi-fi package and do a few minutes of FaceTime with them from our iPhones just about every day, which helped them and us not miss each other as much. I took some videos from my phone and was able to upload them to YouTube using the free wi-fi in Roatan, so they got to experience some of what we were seeing in (almost) real time.

I also made a video of me singing the ABCs to Lorelai and a couple other messages to the boys that my mom was able to play whenever they needed more mommy. My mom said that was really helpful. She also said the kids were all perfect angels while we were gone, so we're really proud of them for coping so well. Especially Lorelai, although we're dealing with the fallout now in the form of some serious separation anxiety. She's literally been attached to my hip since we've been back and wants me to hold her all the time. As hard as that makes it to get stuff done, I can't complain. It's my fault for leaving her, after all!

Speaking of my mom, she graciously rearranged her whole week to stay at our house and watch the kids, and my sister, Adam's sister and his parents all were on hand to help out as well. We wouldn't have been able to go on this wonderful vacation without them, so we're just SO incredibly grateful.

Stay tuned for more pics from our excursions to Tulum, Belize and the Cayman Island turtle farm!

Justice did not prevail

I have a heavy heart and I'm seriously ashamed of my state right now. The marriage amendment passed and discrimination was written into our constitution, beyond all sense and reason. Is it not in direct defiance of the 14th amendment where "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"?

Haven't we learned our lesson by now after Jim Crow laws and the ban on interracial marriages? How is this even being debated in 2012?

As saddened as I am about the passage of the marriage amendment, I'm proud to be surrounded by so many like-minded friends and neighbors who are up in arms about its passage. In my neighborhood, I haven't seen a single sign supporting the amendment, and I haven't seen a single Facebook friend post openly in support of it. I'm also extremely proud of my county which was one of only 7 counties (out of 100) that voted against, and with a whopping 70% majority at that.

I signed the change.org petition and although it'll be a hard fight that should have never have had to happen in the first place, I'm hopeful that change will come before my children are old enough to be affected in any way by this serious injustice, and before anyone can convince them that discrimination is ever okay.

When they grow up and look back on this historical injustice, which will hopefully just be an ugly bump in the road to full equality, I hope they'll be proud that Adam and I stood on the side of justice and equality for all.

One of my Facebook friends, Mike Frost, posted this eloquent statement, and I wholeheartedly agree with his words:

"I am a North Carolinian. I represent and respect a diversity of the people of my state regards of their gender, race, religion, nationality, an especially, their orientation. I stand up for the rights and freedoms of those who are oppressed and marginalized for their differences.

I do not let the voices of the majority who would seek to restrict the rights and freedoms of a minority speak for me; I speak with my own voice because it is my personal freedom and civic duty to do so. With that voice I say this:

While I respect the outcome of the vote on Amendment One, I reject what it says about me and the others who voted against it along with me. Neither I nor the people who voted against this are bigoted and ignorant. We are sad, embarrassed, and full of regret that we couldn't do more to prevent its passage.

We are also loving, caring, and welcoming, and we welcome and respect the diversity that everyone of different backgrounds brings to enrich our beautiful state. From the mountains to the sea, you will not find a more beautiful nor diverse place in this nation to call home - nor will you find a more committed group of people seeking to fight for the rights of those who are downtrodden and disrespected.

Please don't judge us on the outcome of this vote. Judge us on our willingness to stand with those who can't stand alone. Judge us on how passionately we fight to overturn this amendment and laws like it. Judge us on our willingness to stand up and say, "This is wrong and we will not let it define who we are." Most of all, judge us for our willingness to embrace you for your differences and say, "Welcome, we're glad you came. Won't you stay for a while?"

We are the 40% (and growing)."

 I encourage everyone who feels the same to sign this petition and continue to fight for justice and equality for all citizens in whatever way you can.