Start of summer—Kickin it off in OHIO!

It looks like each of my past posts have started with…it has been so loooong since I last posted. But, it is the truth it has been well over a month since my last post—that is partly because I was way to busy/stressed with the end of school to post and not a lot of exciting stuff happened during that time besides work, work, work….

As soon as school ended I boarded a plane to Ohio to visit my parents who moved here last summer. I have been here almost three weeks….. I knew I wanted to blog about my time here, but didn’t know how to break it up…not enough to do day by day—well knowing me I could stretch it out… I do like to talk I decided I will blog about it in weeks…. but then some things happened over the span of several weeks—so those things will be their separate posts (ex. my grandpa going into the hospital and the making of our coupon binder)

So here is week 1 in Ohio:

I flew in late Thursday night…. I mean real late like rolled in at 11:45pm! Friday night we went Downtown Dayton because my mom heard of this First Friday event that they do downtown…turns out it was kind-of “Austiny”…they had a lot of local bands playing at the local bars. So, we passed on that and hit of Spaghetti Warehouse for Dinner.

That Saturday we went to a Farmers Market in Cincinnati called Findlays Market…we were really going there because they were suppose to be having this German fest..but we lost track of that when we saw how cool the market was! For lunch we had Chinese—which is a big deal, because Jason hates Chinese so I hardly get to have it back home—and I LOVE IT!

On Sunday we went to a Strawberry Festival in a town nearby…they had a lot of arts and crafts and every strawberry type food you can imagine. We tried some Strawberry cheesecake. There I got the cutest collars for our dogs…when I get home I will post pictures of them in their new oh-so-cute collars!

Then Monday my dad went back to work and my mom and I planned a little picnic to take him at work. After our picnic, my mom and I went and swam at the pool there on Wright Pat Air Force Base. We swam and laid out (which we later found was a HUGE mistake). We had a great time followed by a game night that night. Then we woke up Tuesday and we were soo sunburned it hurt to move….so we pretty much hung around the house the rest of the week because we were pretty burnt!

That Thursday we had to take my dad to the airport, because he was flying to Texas because my grandpa was/still is hospital (post about how he is doing later). It was hard having my dad go, because here I came from Texas to visit both of them and he is leaving to go to Texas…but he has to be there for his mom and dad and I completely understand. It has allowed for some great bonding time between my mom and I !

Well I didn’t really think I could write that much from the first week here…but like I said I LOVE to talk!!

~Ashley

 

Light at the end of the tunnel!!

I know it has been a looooooooooong time since my last blog update…two months to be exact—that is sad, but school has just consumed so much of my time—and when I am not doing school I am exhausted for doing school stuff!! With just 15 days left of this year I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel…. YAAAY!!! With that I decided to update our well really my blog (because Jason has yet to ever post… I don’t know why I thought he would!) There isn’t much to update…. my life right now is school, school, school and I try to fit in some gym and sleep! Those last two sometimes get neglected..which is not good. Since there isn’t a lot of exciting stuff going on in my/our life I decided to take part in 5 question Friday which is hosted by Five Crooked Halos. So, here it goes…

1. Have you ever had roommates?

My whole life…Just the other day I was talking to our Housemate Lupe about having roommates and I realized I have never lived without someone else there…well from November 08- beginning of January 09 I kind of did, but not really). I went straight from living at home to living in a dorm at Texas State for my first two years with Jessica as my freshman roommate and Mallory as my sophomore roommate. Then I moved into an apartment with 2 ofy sorority sisters Carly and Mandy. Then my senior year I moved to a new apartment with 3 sorority sister—Carly, Misha and Gloria. Then that summer I went to work at Camp Honey Creek where I lived in a cabin with Jill and Katie. After that summer I moved in with Jason while I looked for jobs in the Austin area. Stayed with him until November when I bought the house we live in now… now I live with Jason (hubby) and Lupe (housemate). I don’t think I would ever like to live alone—I don’t even like eating alone!!

 

2. How many names do you/your children have? (i.e. Prince Charming William Phillip Arthur Louis John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt)

Well we don’t have children yet, but we do have dogs---they are just one named kids, Lilly, Bear, and Barley…we have talked about future kids names and they just have the typical first middle and last name…I heard all the names the Prince has and think that is just too many…as a teacher I don’t want to wish a name too hard on my future children.

3. Did you watch the Royal Wedding?

Well…it’s like reading Twilight—I don’t want to admit it, but yea I watched some of it. I totally made fun of my mom who was just in la la land telling when it started on Friday and how she was going to try and get up at 4 AM!!! I thought she and the rest of the world was craaaazy for hyping it all up…but just like Twilight I said I would give it a try to see what everyone was so into…before you know it I was a bit hooked and I was watching the different programs on all the channels.

4. What is the messiest room in your house?

Master bedroom and bathroom by far! Every time we clean we put all of our effort and time into the other rooms in the house… you know the ones guests see. By the time we get to the bedroom we are either out of time or exhausted…so it always gets pushed to another time. It is my goal this weekend to START with those rooms and move to the others!! I will keep you posted if I meet my goal!

5. What is your ideal mothers day?

Having my mom here in Texas where she belongs and spending the day with her doing whatever she wanted to do and having someone else pay for both of our activities

I have always LOVED questionaires and quizzes like this!! Hope you enjoyed! This tired teachers is heading to bed before 10:30 on a Friday night…I know how lame!

We are a pair of productive homeowners!!

This was the first time Jason and I both had off for Spring Break…yay for him working at ACC!! My parents made the trek from Ohio to Texas with their three dogs (Bayley and Bear Sr.—the parents to our two labs and they brought Abby who is the sister to our two labs). They drove non stop starting Friday afternoon and getting here Saturday afternoon…what can I say they LOVE ME!!! While they were making the journey here Jason and I were power cleaning the house in record time and making room in our garage for 6 DOGS! When they got here we had a mini family reunion with all the dogs which ended with…Barley the smallest dog having a bad case of little man syndrome and trying to stir up trouble—in his crate he went…Lilly not being able to get a long with her sister Abby (who looks just like her)… and Bear Jr. being the hostess with mostess.. anytime there would be little tiffs between relatives he was there to make sure everyone was okay. After the re-introductions we all realized we hadn’t eaten all day them due to their driving and us our speed cleaning, so Jason and I took them to the big Golden Coral on Parmer. I told Jason last time we ate there (which was a year ago) that I will only eat here when I have gone all day without eating…there is soooo much food there!! Sunday we went to church and guess where we ate again—Golden Coral….we vowed that was our last time until next year! Over lunch Sunday we discussed plans to lay grass in our backyard…this is when us acting like adults starts….

We decided to lay 2 pallets of grass…for all those that don’t really know what 2 pallets means (which I definitely didn’t know) it means we had enough grass to cover 900 square feet!!! We shopped around and found a nursery where we could get 1 pallet for $95! I will take that any day…because the stores were selling 1 piece for 1.29ish and buying it as a pallet it came out to 45 cents….I sound so educated on grass buying—which I am now! We ordered the grass Sunday and planned to go pick it up Monday. Monday morning I wake up and make the fam so good hearty bacon and eggs for breakfast…also very adult of me! We send the boys with my mom and dads new Avalanche to pick up a pallet of the grass to find that one whole pallet won’t fit on the bed of their car so they had to cut them in 1/2. When they get back with 1/2 a pallet we realize that we are going to need more than our little red raider wagon to haul it to the backyard…we called around to borrow a wheel borrow with little luck, so we decided to invest in one…more grass laying and gardening are definitely in our future with a yard this size! For the rest of the day my mom and I drove to North Austin to pick up 1/2 a load at a time..that equals 4 trips! Jason went and rented a tiller and the boys (Jason and my dad) tilled and prepped the ground for the grass.

Here you can see the dirt patch and only SOME of the grass we laid!

Finally around 4ish we started laying the grass.

Here is Jason and I lying the monumental first piece of grass (please excuse me looking a hot mess in this picture… I was working haaaard!!)

Once we started laying the pieces out it went pretty quick! Luckily it gets darker later so we had some extra daylight, which really helped! We continued laying grass while my mom cooked us up some delicious chalupas!

Here is some pictures of the final product and our hired help!

We worked some more on Tuesday with the added help of my nana and Ray on cleaning up our Rose Bushes, pulling weeds, laying a few more squares, and rolling it with a giant roller! Now we are doing our best of giving it plenty of water and keeping the dogs off of it as much as possible! We are pretty proud of ourselves for being such productive homeowners on the first two days of our Spring Break. I can’t say the rest of the week was spent being so productive, but we did get to visit/spend time with family which is always a time well spent! We are so thankful for my parents who helped so much on their vacation!!!

It’s been a whiiiiile…..

So, it has been since Halloween since I have posted….how sad. But, that is what school does—consume my life..along with the Christmas season, celebrating our one year anniversary in December, traveling to Ohio, and starting a new semester. I would still go and read all my friends blogs and keep up with them, and every time I thought I really need to update ours…but then told myself no one really reads it so why bother. Well, tonight I just pushed pass the thought about no one reading it and decided to post. I am not going to recap everything that we have done since Halloween, but we have been busy.

As of late our weekends are starting to fill up as they normally do in the spring, with weddings, showers, parties and little projects we plan. We just celebrated our 5th Valentines together at our traditional spot Macaroni Grill…. I like this tradish because it has a lot of meaning to why we continue to go there and because it is uber expensive! We started going there for Valentines day 5 years ago when I was still in San Marcos going to Texas State and Jason was in North Austin…we would meet half way at the one in South Austin. It is that 1st Valentines day where Jason 1st told me he loved me by drawing it on our table

That piece of paper is now framed in our living room! Then the next year I was still down in San Marcos so we said lets meet up again at the same place…since then the tradish just stuck—but we now go to the one up here in Round Rock. It’s cute and doesn’t break the bank. This Valentines we said we weren’t going to do anything, so we can attempt to save money…but sure enough my prince charming snuck a bouquet of my favorite flowers (which he recently learned were gerber daisies!) and a huge balloon that sings. That balloon has been a huge hit in my classroom…we have mini dance parties throughout the day You should see the moves my kids have they are hilarious—they just let loose!

Well, there isn’t much else going on with us…but a lot is going on with our friends…we sometimes I live through their exciting lives and then come back to mine when it gets too much… for example a lot of my friends are pregnant and due soon. Which leads everyone else to the question, “Does this make you want a baby?” Answer always the same, “Nope!” I do have to admit I find myself looking up crib décor and baby clothes and sending the links to my friends who actually need those items…but I am glad it is not me at this time. We are planning on waiting another 3ish years before we add someone else to our little family of 5 (us and 3 dogs). Jason jokes that he will have 2 princess babies to take care of..me and our future child. It is like a compliment/burn—compliment that I am a princess…burn that I am a baby (which is sooo not true!) I am very happy to be the friend to all these girls who will be bringing in little bundles of joy into the world soon…so I can be there when it is fun and leave when it is not and learn how it’s done!

Well, that is about as much news and rambling that I can think of!! It feels good to be back…now let’s just hope all this rambling is read!

Happy Halloweeeeeeen!!!

I am not going to lie Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I used to like it when the costumes were cute and creative, not throw on a scary mask and you are some dead something. Then when I got to college it was just an excuse to dress a little skimpy. Then I meet Jason and he loves Halloween and scary movies. So, this year I attempted to make more of an effort to get into this holiday. It started on Friday where we decided on our couple costumes, which this year we decided to be an angel and a devil. It wasn’t much of a costume for me, since I am often mistaken for an angel ;) We got all our gear Friday night and we even got the dogs some Halloween shirts…they weren’t too happy about them. Then Saturday afternoon we went to Laura’s 2nd annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. This year we were not allowed to use stencils….so I brought a stencil of a snowflake and free handed 95% of my pumpkin. Jason decided on the batman sign. We were much better and more confident carving this year, compared to last year (which was my first year ever really carving a pumpkin). Last year we made a Superman sign and a Christmas tree…you try and figure our who made what :) Since Jason used a stencil for his and I traced one tiny piece of mine we lost some points. So, we didn’t win this year, but I don’t think I will ever win—because the winner’s pumpkin got points for being Halloween themed….a scared cat.. I mean come on. It doesn’t really get more creative than a snowflake…oh well I loved it and that is all that matters.

After the carving we came home to get our gear on. It was pretty fun getting dressed, since I had to paint Jason’s face red. At first it looked like he had the measels, then a really bad sun burned and finally he was starting to look devilish. It was a lot of fun helping Jason get into costume, because he was just soo excited to be dressing up. The last time we dressed up he was superman and I was a Christmas tree in 2007…notice a pattern :). After spending about an hour or more getting him painted and beard glued on I got ready in like 15 minutes… like I said being an angel comes natural to me—not a lot of dressing up. Then we were off. We were only 2 hours late to his brother’s Halloween movie party. We got there and took some pictures and before you know it I was changing into comfy clothes and Jason’s beard was off…all that for only a few minutes in full costume….oh well the main thing is Jason was so excited to get dressed up it made up for all of it!

Sunday, we hung around and watched the poor Cowboys…bless their hearts..they are just no bueno this year. Then off to 5 o clock mass. After mass we rushed home to post up in Jason’s office, which is much closer to our front door, to pass out candy. We got a pretty good amount of trick or treaters. All in all it was a really great Halloween weekend. I even watched way more than my 1 scary movie per year quota… I think I watched like 4 or 5!

Now just 1 more holiday until my favorite holiday ever… CHRISTMAS!!!

P.S. Jason just saw Bernard (the elf from the Santa Clause) in the Adam’s Family Value and said I can’t wait to watch the Santa Clause… I love him :)

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Here we are at Laura’s getting our carve on!

My snowflake up close!

Jason’s Batman pumpkin

Everyone’s pumpkins lined up for the announcement of the winner!

Here is our final product all lit up at home!

Devil and Angel :)

The Boys!

The whole gang

and the Devil and Angel live happily ever after :)

This is how our weekend ended…all tuckered out waiting for Trick or Treaters!

Five Question Friday!!

Yay it's Five Question Friday!!!

I thought I would take a little break from organizing... I have organized our hall closet and most of Jason's office...now I am just trying to get the house cleaned up for Jason's birthday party tomorrow...

1. Did you have a favorite blanket or toy as a kid? If so, do you still have it?

Well I used to have a lamb chop baby that you could play with as a puppet and she would suck on her pacifier. My parents just gave her back to me in the BOXES AND BOXES of stuff I had at their house from BIRTH! I also had a lot of stuffed animals and I have a lot of the ones that mean a lot to me.

2. Do you dream in color?
I am pretty sure I do...but I will look into that to make sure.

3. How tall are you? Do you wish you were shorter or taller?
Well, I thought I was 5'6" but last time I went to the doctor they said 5'7"--I'll take it. I am pretty content with my height...but if I had to choose I would be a few inches taller.

4. If you could have anyone's (celeb or other) voice as the guide on your GPS, who would it be?
hmmmmmm Johnny Depp has a nice accent...some others would be... Will Smith, Ben Affleck, or a comedian like Steve Carrell or Zach Galifianakis

5. Do you return your shopping cart to the corral or leave it wherever in the parking lot?
It depends how close it is... I really try and do my best to take it back or give it to someone, but if it's really far and I'm in a hurry I have been known to leave it...

Disgustingly weird accidental find!!!

So you might be thinking why in the world do I have this picture up…..well I was looking at our blog and admiring our  6 followers and our 1 comment average on each post…thanks to my loyal friend Katie all the way in JAPAN!! Well, I thought I don’t have anything to really write right now, so I will be adventurous and click on the next blog…..it was an entire blog dedicated tooooo extra long fingernails (which is not practical, but not out of the ordinary) but then there were pictures of extra long toenails….that is when I think I threw up in my mouth a little. It does not help that I hate feet, but here is the grossest picture of feet..especially the lady picking up a banana. The reason this is so bad/gross/disgusting is because people choose to do this to their feet…it’s not like they are born with gross looking feet…no they chose to hide or throw out their clippers and grow those claws out. It is just unexplainable and I thought I would share…

What do you think about long toenails? Sexy or disgusting?? Ok if you must see it from another angle… here ya go…

Now what do think :)