MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Can't believe Christmas is only a week and a half away? How did it get here so fast? I hadn't even started my shopping yet. This morning after I ran my morning route I had to run to Wal-Mart to get a few items. I decided it was now or never to get it started. We decided this year that we are only buying for the 2 nieces and 1 nephew. Within 45 minutes I was done with all 3. I love the fact they are old enough now that it was some what easy to find the "right" things for each of them. Wasn't able to find one thing I was looking for, but made up for it with something else so it was all good.

Our last day of school is this Friday until after the new year. I am planning on doing some relaxing with my feet up. Been swelling up a bit! Having some back pains but start seeing my massage therapist (upon the request of my dr. of course, what better way to get that done) on Sat. morning. Maybe I can start sleeping better too.

Back to my Wal-Mart trip this morning!
I did get a good laugh while in Wal-Mart. Don't know if anyone has ever witnessed the "associates meeting" they do on certain days of the week?!? They call all associates to a certain aisle over the loud speaker and they have a quick and brief meeting. WELL, this morning their meeting consisted of a little "cheerleading". ROFL! The guy leading the meeting cheered out and spelled Wal-Mart and they had to repeat each letter...when they were done they yelled Wal-Mart and it was funny because they did this several times only louder each time. If that doesn't make a person laugh, I don't know what does.

Bella is doing great! Went to the dr. yesterday and everything was good. I go back on the 28th for a 2 week visit and then we start the 1 week visits. OK, SO IT IS OFFICIALLY GETTING CLOSE! I just realized this by the way. HAHA! We have the room all ready for her arrival, minus a few items, we could do without in the beginning but will have to purchase at some point. :-) She is already being spoiled rotten by her Aunt Sam & Uncle Luke! They too are expecting in May, so they are excited that our kids will be so close in age. Adam was telling Bella the other night to "kick mom". I laughed and his response was "trying to get her to follow directions early". Yep, he is going to be a great dad! LOL. He is getting excited as well. He went into her room the other day to "straighten a few things up". He doesn't do that anywhere else in the house. HA! It made me laugh under my breath, because we all know if we laugh out loud, they won't do it again.

Adam & I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Our new year will be complete with a new addition to our home and family. We can't wait! She will be spoiled beyond belief of course.

It has been a long time.....

Wow, over a month since I last posted. HMMM..

So, what has happened in the last month you ask? We have been gearing down for baby. I think it finally sunk in after our appointment on Thursday of last week to Adam, that we are having a baby. He has been telling me that we aren't going to mess with the room for a while. On Thursday evening he tells me that I really need to get in there and tackle the closet in the babies room and decide where everything is going to go. We found out at our appointment last week we are having a girl. We hadn't chose any girls names because we were just sure we were having a boy. So after we got the sonogram, we were sittin in the room waiting to see the dr. I told him "you're going to have a daughter, and we need to find a name." He liked Anabelle, and I said "no, that is a cow's name in a christmas song, (lol)how about AnaBella and we call her Bella. We both liked the name and it just stuck. So she will be AnaBella Maryana Black "Bella". We have decided to decorate her room with a khaki colored paint and all the accents will be done in Pink Camoflouge. Those of you that know us, know just how excited we are about that. :O) Adam's parents got a baby bid and changing table for us and we received it Friday afternoon. It is really pretty and we are very thankful for it. We went Sat. night and yesterday and did the baby registery at Target and Babies R Us. I swear, Bella isn't even here yet and her daddy is already spoiling her rotten. I had to keep removing things from the registery that he "thought" we needed, but really don't. He got a little trigger happy with the scanner to say the least. LOL. It was fun and now it has us both even more excited about her getting here. One of the gals I work with has already outfitted her in 3 dresses, which by the way are ADORABLE. Thanks Trish! So as you can tell we will be pretty busy the next 4 months. I will be 20 weeks along as of tomorrow (Tuesday), so we are officially half way there. It has FLOWN by.

Summer is Officially Over!!!

I have been back to work for 2 weeks now. It has been nice getting out of the house, but tiresome at the same time. We have been working 13 hour days this week. We had to get all the students entered in the system since Tuesday's enrollment. We had to get each route set up, mapped out and directions typed up. WOW! We have our big all staff meeting tomorrow, which is the proof that summer is over. I am excited to see the kids on my bus route though, so it has made it more liveable. LOL.

We have been some canning fools the past few weeks too. We have canned green beans, cinnamon pickles, relish, blackberry jam and some chili sauce. After the count today we have 199 jars of goodies sitting on the pantry shelf just from this summers crop. Winter will be wonderful!!!!!!!! That doesn't count the stuff we have already eaten because the jars didn't seal. LOL.

Went to the dr. this week after a scare from waking up spotting. Everything turned out great and we got to see the baby move around. It was AWESOME. Although I can't feel it yet, it was still pretty neat. The baby was VERY active for the sonogram. SUPER excited now that we have seen movement. It was more exciting than hearing the heartbeat for the first time. We go back for a sonogram in Sept. and the dr. said we should be able to see the sex. CAN'T WAIT!!! Although I already (think) know it is a boy. HEHE!!

Hope everyone is feeling better these days and that those returning to school are having as much fun as I am. LOL.

Back to the daily grind.

So summer has flew past us once again. Time to get back in the swing of life. I have really enjoyed this past summer of nothings really.

I have to return to work on Monday. Talk about a rude awaking, they are wanting me to be there at 6:30am...couldn't tell ya the last time I willing got up before that time. Guess those early morning waking restroom breaks have been good for something. HEHE.

Our garage sale went GREAT. We had a yard FULL of goodies and lots of customers. Only had to haul off two truckloads to good will, it was all mostly bigger items. Those items one looks at but has no way to haul them home so they leave them behind. LOL. It did rain on us a couple of times but nothing that put a grinding hault to it all. We sat through it and managed to continue making sales.

I did get to go see Harry Potter with Christy, Jenn and Melissa. It was a great time and enjoyed a yummy breakfast at the theater. Thanks Christy.

Megan and Miss Nora came up this week and we went and walked around the Fair. We were also joined by my sis-in-law, niece and nephew. It was so fun watching the kids react to the animals. They loved it. It was even better getting to see Megan and Nora. I have missed talking them and seeing them. :-)

We had another dr. visit this month. Got to hear the heartbeat on the doppler machine. This is the 2nd time we have got to hear it, the first time we had an awesome sono tech that found it. I am 11 weeks, 3 days. Almost to my 2nd trimester. The dr. says everything is going great and as planned. We will get a sonogram in September and she said we shall be able to "see everything we want to see." Yes, we are going to find out what it is. We want to do the nursery accordingly.

I have for the most part been feeling Great. I was having a bout of stomach cramps and icky feeling days, but I realized it is true...you have to drink lots of water. I don't like water, never have liked water....so I am pushing myself to drink lots of the nasty stuff. HAHA!

I am going with Christy tomorrow to see "The Ugly Truth". Have heard nothing but great reviews about it. It looks funny and will make a great end to my summer vacation.

Hope everyone enjoys what little of summer is left. It has gone by way to fast.

The Dog days of Summer!!

Didn't know if anyone else was aware of how hot it is today. My sis-in-law and family are on their third night of no power. Thanks to the wonderful force of mother nature. We were fortunate and just had wind and rain. Never once did we lose power. Thank goodness!

I was working around the house today and thought I was just hot and sweaty because I was fearlessly going through closets and cabinets getting ready for the garage sale. I went outside with the dog and when I came back in I realized it wasn't much cooler in the house as it was when I was out in the shade. I looked at the A/C unit in the kitchen, it was blowing hot air. It is still not working, so I am waiting for Adam to get home to check it out. The animals and I are sitting in the bedroom with the door shut..the window unit in here is working GREAT!

I got a call today from work I am going to drive day trips on Mondays and Fridays for the next 6 weeks. It will be nice to have some money coming in. Surprisingly enough the summer is going pretty fast. Faster than I thought it would. Haven't done much really, just relaxing for the most part and dr. appointments.

Speaking dr. appointments. I go again next Thursday for another sonogram. She is wanting to do another one because of her words "you were 5 minutes pregnant when you found out". LOL. I figured it out way to early I guess. We did get to see the gestational sac last week on the sonogram. I have a feeling I am not as far along as the calendar says. But we will find out hopefully next week just how far along I really am.

Hope everyone stays cool. I know I am going too.

Wishing all you dads out there a Happy Father's Day!

GARAGE SALE...GARAGE SALE...GARAGE SALE

So here I am on summer break and keeping VERY busy.
I decided this past weekend it is time to clean out the house and get rid of the crap. I have 7 years worth of accumulations that have sat in the storage in the basement since we moved here. We spent yesterday, Adam didn't work, cleaning out 3 of the 6 closets. I am going to have a HUUUUGGGEEE garage sale. We haven't even started on the basement and I know I am getting rid of A LOT from down there. I am going to sort through all my holiday decorations (which I have TOO many for only being married 7 years, LOL), all the wedding decor I have inherited is going too. So if you know any new brides let them know about it. I have some really pretty decor that is easily interchangable to any color they would like to use.
My family is also cleaning out their homes and bringing LOTS of goodies into sale. If anyone has anything they would like to sale let me know and we will set up a time to get together. We had originally set the 2nd weekend in July as our date, but we may move it up to the last weekend in June. We have all started working at getting our stuff together and no one wants to sit with boxes all over the house.

We go Thursday morning for our sonogram. Can't Wait!!!

Other than that just been relaxing at home. Not much going on.

How fast life changes!!!!

So as most you know, I am pregnant. We found out on Tuesday. I was having some severe cramping in my lower abdomen area. I just thought it was a bowl problem or something I had eaten just wasn't settling with my system. Adam told me a couple weeks before "you're pregnant", how in the world would he know that I thought. So Tuesday morning when the pain was more severe I sat down and looked at the calendar. LOW AND BEHOLD I was a week late. LOL. So I went to WalMart and bought the home test. I came home and do you think I could pee? NO! I had to take my mother-in-law to an appointment at 9am so I stuck the stick in my purse (just in case) I had to pee while we were out. I couldn't pee for the life of me. HAHA! The one time I did finally pee, I totally missed the stick.
When I got home from the appointment I called the dr. due to the level of the pain. I just figured something was wrong and I would be in for an afternoon of tests. I told them I was late so of course the first thing they did was have me fill a urine cup....and YES, I filled the dang thing. LOL.
It came back positive, they even ran it twice. :-) So the dr. suggested I go ahead and call an OB since I have had female problems since I was 18 and I had even went through all the fertility testing a couple of years back. We went to the OB yesterday.
Nothing showed up on the sonogram. The dr. was pretty sure it is just to early to detect it. He said that the sonogram won't show anything until my progestrone levels are in the 1000's. With my history of always having very low progestrone they drew blood and if they are indeed low I may have to take a supplement. We will find all the results from the blood draw today.
I go back next Thursday for another sonogram providing all my levels come back normal. If they arent normal we will go from there.
So we are going to be pretty busy for the next 9 months. LOL. We are just praying for a healthy baby regardless of what it is. We would be excited with a boy or a girl. Doesn't matter to us.

SUMMER IS HERE!

So here we are...the first official day of summer break. IT CAN BE EXPENSIVE....have to watch it very close. We went and bought a water slide today, along with a swimsuit top and shorts. Swimsuit shopping for a 10 year old girl is a JOKE...what are parents thinking? The little girls in todays world must be A LOT bigger in the chest than we ever were. It was ridiculous!

We are starting the pool season tomorrow. Can't Wait! I am such a water bug. :-)

I am just planning on living pool side for now and then once the garden comes on we will be canning! Hopefully back to work by the middle of July. If not, just more pool time for me ;-)

Hope everyone enjoys the weather before we get tooooooo HOT.

School is almost out....

Here we are sitting with only 3 weeks of school left. Man has time gone by fast or what? I have been staying pretty busy at work. All the school field trips have been upon us for a couple of weeks now. On Thurs. last week we received a phone call at work that on Monday morning we would be having a corporate audit. Talk about crunch time. LOL. Lets just say I put in 47 hours last week. Which part of that consisted of working late Friday night and then again Sat. morning. So come tomorrow morning, things at work will be a little crazy for the day.

We went up Sat. evening to Adam's Uncle Roger's retirement party in Richmond, MO. He retired from BNSF Railroad after 41 years. It was fun. I got to meet one of Adam's cousins from Florida and her girls. Got to see some family we haven't seen in a long time.

Today, we had the DeGrande girls "Granny's Tea Party". Granny would have been 81 today. We had so much fun. My aunt Patty had a friend that is going into the catering business and she sent treats, and do I mean treats, for the party. She is amazing. I can say, so much for anyone being on a diet today. :) All the great granddaughters dressed up in their frilly dresses and wore their hats. They were so cute! They decorated straw hats, ate lots of tasty sweets, sipped tea and enjoyed each others company. Granny would have been so proud.

Now we are moving on to Graduation parties for the next couple of weekends. And then into Weddings. Lots to do!

Hope everyone is finally getting dried out. I am off to the School Day @ the K on Thursday and then to Theater for Young America on Friday of this week. Hope everyone has a good week and stays dry.

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter. We have two different dinners to attend today.

We spent yesterday with the nieces at a few Easter Egg hunts. LOTS of kids running a muck to get their loot picked up.

Friday Christy and I took my niece to see the Hannah Montana Movie. Oh my goodness, it was awesome. Never once would I have ever thought I would say that. I will definetly pay to see it again AND buy it on DVD. It is a great story. Even made me tear up. A friend of mine took her daughter yesterday and said she even had to fight off tears. If you have a chance, it is a great movie.

Well off to getting my cakes iced for the day.

What is up with this weather?!?!?!

Don't get me wrong...I would love to have a good snow to play in but come on, snow one day, 70 degrees the next. JEEZ!

Can't say that we have been doing too much. Stuck inside for the most part due to the crazy weather.

We had my nephew Colby's 1st birthday party last Saturday afternoon. He got so many new toys. My sis-in-law and I created and decorated a Firetruck Cake for him. Which was uber cute if I must say so myself. :)

My mother-in-law and I finished my quilt on Tuesday. It looks really good on our bed. I love it! Now I am on the lookout for some curtains that will match.

I had a gal order a cell phone cake for this week. Didn't have a clue as to how I was going to make it work. Adam suggested that I use hershey's kisses upside down for the buttons. Low and behold, it made it look really cute. The gal LOVED the cake and she told me today that her daughter loved it as well.

Don't have any other cakes on the books as of right now, unless my creative juices can't contain themselves. Who knows what I will do next. ;)

Hopefully the weather gets nice and I can start getting out in the garden to work. Can't wait for the fresh veggies to come on and be in the kitchen canning it all for the winter. Nothing beats the fresh veggies straight from the garden.

WOW....where in the world has March went????

So here we are closing in on the last week of March. Where in the world has it went? I guess life has just been too fast this past month.

I went out with Christy, Jen, Melodie and Amanda on the 7th. I am sure everyone has seen the pics. We had a blast. Definetly have to do that again ladies. It is always fun to get out and let loose for an evening.

I hosted the Family Slumber Party on the 14th. We had so much fun. I do have pics, just haven't added them on here yet. We played a game that I made up. It is a kazoo type karaoke game. My mom has an AWESOME video of us all taking our shameless turns on the kazoo. It is amazing how many people can not make a kazoo work. We stayed up until 3am. Yeah, we were feeling young again....that is until we woke up the next morning. HAHA! My great-aunt came, which was a wonderful surprise to all of us. We of course, shared family history and everyone had lots of questions that had never been asked before. It was nice to hear the history of how our family has become who we are. Can't wait for the next slumber party, sure to be LOTS more questions. It surely got everyone to thinking. LOL.

The week of the 16th was Spring Break. Didn't do much. I went shopping with Christy one day, and then kept my niece Gracie and we went fishing. We did pretty well, not much worth keeping, but it kept her interested.

Then on the 21st we had to TWILIGHT RELEASE PARTY at Christy's.....which was by far a GREAT party. Thanks Christy! Christy and I started out our morning by leaving Paola by 7:15am to get to Target to get our copy of the movie. Which had the best deal of all the stores that were carrying it. 3 disc set for 17.99. ROCK ON!!! We were so excited!
We had lots of great food and company for the party. Can't wait for New Moon to come out...we are already making plans for when it comes out.

Went back to work on the 23rd and we found out that for the next 2 weeks our daytime "office" jobs have been put on hold. Budget cuts...don't we all just love the economy. They have assured us that we will be able to start back up by the 2nd week of April. So I have been enjoying my daytimes here at home.

Hope everyone is feeling well. I know the crud is going around like wild fire. But it will to pass with the nasty crappy weather. Not much else going on as of right now.

SPRING BREAK!!!!

It has finally arrived. The weather is suppose to gorgeous this next week. Can't wait to get outside and work in the garden and flower beds. Will be planting potatoes on St. Patty's day. Just like the good ol' farmers almanac suggests. :)

Tomorrow night I will be hosting the "Wilson Girls Slumber Party". All the girls on my mom's side have been invited to come party and have a sleepover at my house. It is going to be a blast. I have made up a couple of games for the evening, have karaoke, air hockey, darts and of course the Wii.

Next Sat. evening I will be attending Christy's Twilight Party. Super stoked about that. Can't wait to watch the movie "again". I am in the middle of the 4th book. Haven't had much time to pick it up and read this week. But will work hard on this week off to finish it up, it has to be passed on to my sis-in-law. She is also attending the party with me.

Other than that, not much else going on. Will be posting again this week along with some pics from tomorrow nights festivities.

Hope everyone enjoys the weather this next week. Get outside and blow the stink off, as my grandpa used to always tell us!

Where has the time went?

I didn't realize it was so long ago since I have posted.

So what is new with me?

I am still attempting to finish the twilight series. I am "just about" finished with book 3. I have found book 3 harder to read than book 2. Book 2 seems to be what everyone is talking about as the hard read. I actually enjoyed book 2.
On President's Day, Christy and I went and saw the movie. GREAT! GREAT! GREAT MOVIE!Can't wait for Christy's birthday/Twilight Release Party. It will be so much fun!

I am in the process of planning a "ladies night Bunco" for this Sat. evening and also planning a "slumber party" for all the ladies (aunts, cousin's, great aunts, etc) on my mom's side of the family. SURE TO BE SOME FUN TIMES HAD THERE! Not sure if I am prepared for all the night owls staying at my house. LOL. I will guarantee everyone that there will be some fun pictures to share. HAHA!

We are just sitting around the house patiently awaiting the arrival of Spring. Have been contemplating what flowers I am going to plant this year. We are planting a LARGE garden at Adam's parents house, so my summer will involve lots of gardening and canning whatever we can get canned. SAVING MONEY BABY!

This week I have been spending my days at the in-laws house. My M-I-Law and I are building a new "Single Irish Chain" quilt for my bed. We got the top piece all cut and the small blocks all stitched together today. All we have to do is sew all the blocks together and the top piece will be done. Can't Wait! It is going to be gorgeous. :)

So other than that, we are just our busy ol' selfs. Only going to get more busy as the weather gets nicer. Hope everyone is doing well and staying sick free.

Speaking of sick free...have to share that I was officially puked on 2 weeks ago. A kiddo on the bus was making his way to tell me he wasn't feeling well and didn't make it. YEP, he hit me. Literally! Just another chapter in the Ol' Legends of a Bus Driver. I really do love my job. LOL.

Later!

So I finally did it!!!!!!!

I bought the Twilight book. Last night within just a couple of hours of off and on reading, I completed the first 6 chapters. I read a little bit this morning, but had things to do, so haven't picked it up yet this evening. So far it is a good read. We will see if it will keep my interest long enough to get through the entire 4 books.

Other than that, not much else going on. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

It has been a long time......

I haven't posted in a while. So what have we been up to? Not much really! Christy and I went and seen a couple of good movies over our Christmas Break. The Curious case of Benjamin Button I have to say was my favorite of the two. GREAT MOVIE! Then we watched Bride Wars. It too was good.
I have been staying busy with work. I am now an "administrative assistant" between my morning and afternoon route. I like it. Keeps me busy! We have been staying VERY busy this past week, we are due for an audit at some point this week. One of those we know they are coming, but we don't know exactly when. Nice to have a heads up, but stressful in the same sense that we are busting our rumps to get everything done they think they need.
I am going tomorrow to find the Twilight book. I have so many friends that are reading the series, I have to catch up. So according to what they have all told me....it will be a week or two before I come out of the "reading closet" to once again join the real world...we will see if I am able to put them down. HAHA.

Christmas Undecorated

Today was a great day! Went shopping with good friend of mine. We are two of the biggest bargain shoppers you will find. ;) We drove over to Harrisonville to the Hallmark store on a mission for a few ornaments that we hadn't been able to find. They had a great selection leftover. We were headed back and decided to run to Overland Park and see what others we could find. After hitting several Hallmark Stores and CVS pharmacies, all of which had all their ornaments marked down to 50% off we ventured to one last Hallmark. Thanks to the salesclerk at the previous store. WOW, did we hit the jackpot? They had all their Christmas items marked down to 75% off. What's better than getting a $15.00 ornament for $3.75. We were SUPER excited. We did some other shopping on deals and both walked out with AWESOME receipts:-)

So this evening I decided to take the decorations down. I am kinda sad to see them go away. Not only that but I have a few that I have bought this year that we really didn't get a good chance to enjoy. They will be on the front of the tree for sure next year.

Hope everyone is having a great start to the New Year. Hopefully we will all have a chance to "hang out" more this year.