Beauty and the Beast

So I have been so excited for this past Thursday to come for the past couple of weeks. Brad and his girlfriend, Brandi, invited Thomas and I to see Beauty and the Beast in Jacksonville. I had everything all planned out and we get all ready to go, Thomas takes Aiden out to Robbie and Michelle's and while he is gone, our little window A/C unit falls out of the window and breaks, so Thomas comes back and is all upset that he has to deal with this while in his nice, dressy clothes. Luckily we had one in the shed that we could use in the meantime in our bedroom because there's just no sleeping in there without an A/C, but as he is carrying it inside, all the water drips down onto his clothes, but we noticed quickly and it was all the clean water that got on him, so he didn't have stained clothes or anything.
So we get that in, and they come and we drive out to Jacksonville. We finally get out there and as we are walking around The Landing, trying to find someplace to eat, I start having terrible contractions. I was walking in heels, it was hot and humid, and I hadn't had enough water to drink that afternoon. All the things that you are supposed to avoid doing if you don't want to deal with Braxton-Hicks. Also, keep in mind that I just had a straight C-section with Aiden. Never started labor, never was induced, just cut open. So this is the first time I've felt contractions like this. It sucked. A lot!
So we eat at a nice restaurant and then it's time to walk to the Times Union Theater just a couple blocks away. Entire time I'm fighting through contractions. We get there and there is no one there. Period. No. One. Brad knocks on the door and a security guard answers and it's obvious he's had to deal with this all night because he tells us that it's not at this theater, but the FCCJ South Campus twenty minutes away.
Fantastic.
The website we bought the tickets from gave us directions to the Times Union Theater. Not the FCCJ Theater. So we decide that we're just going to miss the play because by the time I walked (ever so slowly) back to the truck and got in, drove there, found a parking place, it would probably had been 45-60 minutes later and then we wouldn't be let in until intermission and we would have missed half the show.
So we went to Orange Park and saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince again. It was awesome, again, but more awesome this time because it was a nice theater and the tickets were only 5 dollars! Hooray!
Then by the time we got home, it was about midnight, so we decided to leave Aiden at Robbie and Michelle's and I would pick him up the next day. It was very disconcerning. It wasn't like he wasn't well taken-care of, he absolutely was in very capable hands, it was just weird to have my house so empty. Who knew that the absence of 28 pounds could make a house feel so barren?
All in all, it was a fantastic night, despite stupid websites.

My Crazy Colorful House

I have tried to explain to my family just how colorful this house is, but I have a feeling that it is lost on them. So here are pictures.
These are the colors that were here when we moved in. Jeannie, Thomas' aunt, lived her before us and she is very much a painter and this is very much her taste. She pulls it off amazingly well and I loved it when they lived here, but I'm afraid that I'm just not able to pull off the things that she is able to with such ease. Wall colors included. But I'm afraid they will stay these colors because I can't paint because I'm pregnant and Thomas has to work all the time and really, who wants to paint on your days off? Especially in this gross Florida humidity that would take forever to have the paint dry.

This is our entryway (pink) looking into our kitchen (yellow with blue floors) looking into our guest room (painter's tape blue).

This is our living room (purple) looking into our office area/Aiden's play area (mint green with copper tile accents and a retro corner).

This is Aiden's room. Pink, very pink, with one green wall. This will change as soon as I am able to paint.

This is our guest bathroom that is painted either school bus yellow or road line yellow.

This is our front door. Very purple. It is this color on the outside as well. When we moved in, I was telling the phone company where my house was and told them they couldn't miss it because it was a pink house with a purple door and turquoise shutters and the lady just laughed and after a pause said, "You're serious." Yes, yes, I am serious. But, it is a subtle pink, not in your face pink, so it's okay.

Our retro corner in the office area/Aiden's play area.

Our guest bedroom with the painter's tape blue on the top half and on the bottom the purple. One wall is entirely that purple with a forest green bookshelf built in. Looking into our yellow kitchen with blue floors.

Somehow I missed our room, the "dressing room" and our bathroom. Thomas was probably getting ready for work or something when I took these pictures. Or more likely, it was just really messy and I didn't want to take pictures of that.

Just cute pictures.

Aiden absolutely loves his "goggie" and gives her hugs all the time. I love that they are becoming such good friends and play together all the time.


Aiden frequently sits on Zelda and then tries to sing the Bonanza Theme Song while bouncing up and down like he is riding a horse. Zelda sits there patiently and when he's done, she'll give him a big kiss on the face and then walk off. She's a really good dog.








Aiden loves to have his picture taken and has a new crazy face when he smiles. I love it.

Fourth of July Weekend

So for the Fourth of July, we went out to the "compound" (the property where the family lives, and we used to live) and had a nice BBQ. We were going to go to neighboring cities to see fireworks, but decided last minute that it wasn't worth it for the three of us seeing as how Aiden probably wouldn't even remember it in the morning. So, we went out on the boat on the Suwannee River. This was my first time on the boat and it was pretty awesome. Aiden was very hesitant at first but as it turns out, he has much better sea legs than I do. But honestly, who's that surprised?
We were out with Pop-pop, Daddy, his cousin Zach, Aiden and myself and it was fantastic to just ride along with the wind blowing in our faces. Aiden especially loved that and would stick his tongue out like a dog when we would be going fast.
I wish I could say I took pictures the entire time, but I was way too much of a nervous Nelly and was busy making sure Aiden wasn't in the way of the fishermen and I was also the official cutter of hot dogs for the boys because I couldn't fish because I don't have an up-to-date fishing license, but here are some pictures when we stopped at a beach near the end so Aiden could play in the water.
And just so you know, the water is supposed to look like that. At least, it always does because of the tanic acid created from all the leaves that fall in it. It's essentially a tea river.

Catch up.

I was just looking through my posts and noticed that I hadn't actually posted two of them from our trip out to Utah. I'm sure that I was waiting to upload pictures that coordinated with them, but seeing as how it's a huge fiasco to do that because I have to load them onto the desktop and then put them onto a jump drive and then load them onto the laptop so I can actually get them online because a lovely lightning strike fried our phone lines and anything connected to them, leaving Thomas' XBox and our desktop without access to the internet, it's just all too much of a hassle and I really have no motivation to jump through all those hoops.
So I just went ahead and posted them. I have no idea what they say, so if they seem incomplete without pictures, I'm sorry. One day I'll be motivated, which may be soon because there's a lot of things piling up that I should get off my camera.

Bah Humbug!!

So last night as we were driving home from Nana and Pop-pop's, we heard something hit the underside of the car. Not seeing anything in the road, but fearing a flat tire, Thomas told me to keep driving so we can get as close to town as possible so we wouldn't have to change a flat tire in 3 feet of grass on the shoulder of a county road. Luckily we came up on a paved road that had a church just a little ways down and we were able to park on the cement slab in front of the church. We were able to change it and get home just in time for it to get dark.
Then this morning, I go up to Wal-Mart to get a new tire, but hoping they might be able to repair the flat one. I arrived there at 9:00a and after walking around the store for 45 minutes, I go back and ask them if they've had a chance to look at it. Of course they haven't and it'll be another hour and 15 minutes before they "might could get a chance to look at it." So 45 minutes and a cup of fried okra later I then decide that if I'm going to have to put up with a screaming, impatient child, so is the T.L.E. department my local Live Oak Wal-Mart supermarket. So I stand there in the middle of the department, not sit in the waiting room lest they forget I was there, and let them hear what they were doing my child. After that, they were quick to tell me the tire was shot and I'd need a new one. Ten more minutes and I was out of there.
I hate Wal-Mart with a passion, but they're the only ones that had a road hazard protection and with mine and Thomas' luck with flat tires, we need it. Since I have moved here to Florida just under four years ago, between his old Ford Ranger, my Jetta, our Alero and his patrol car, we've had at least 10 flat tires. None of which could be repaired, but instead had to be replaced. Sometimes I miss paved roads everywhere that are free of branches that lay just right to pop a tire and the lack of little critters that will run under your tires at the last second, inevitably popping a tire with one of their stupid, little bones.
So, $110.00 later, we are back on the road again without a little donut slowing us down.