Happy Halloween!

First of all, happy birthday wishes go to Wanda, my mother-in-law, and Abby, my cousin-in-law. Just like every other weekend, this one will be crazy-busy. We are contemplating going to Shiner to the Halloween Party hosted by Dawn and Scotty Machacek. I'd really love to, it just depends on what's going on this evening here for Wanda's birthday. Saturday morning we are heading to San Marcos again for the last football game that we can attend. The last one is on November 15th, but we are going to Wyatt Wagner's wedding instead. We plan on finding a hotel and leaving Sunday after I get some shopping in.

So, everytime I think about Halloween, I recall several things from my childhood that scared the bejesus out of me...special thanks go to my parents for this. I had to have been about 5 years old at the time. We were riding in our white Buick. Dad driving, Mom in the passenger seat, Jamie, Shawna and I in the back. Come to think of it, I was probably 4 since I don't recall Jill being a part of this horrific event. We did our trick-or-treating and then went to the awesome haunted house in Shiner. I remember at the very end they had someone come up out of a casket and then you slid out the door. That part was kinda scary, but I was fine. We get in the car and start to leave when Freddie Crougar(sp?) starts walking to the car and scratching on the windows. We had the window down and immediately start rolling it up, but Dad was rolling it down since he had controls for all windows. It was HORRIBLE! We were all screaming and on top of each other trying to get to one side of the car. That probably wasn't his all-time high of parenting, but it's really funny looking back on it. It made for a funny memory!

Here's to another very fun and memorable Halloween!

Gotta Love Halloween

I haven't dressed up in a costume for Halloween for several years. The last time I remember dressing up was when we went with Ross & Ryan to the St. Paul carnival. It was very last minute and I dressed in hunting attire. When I worked at Fuentes, we always dressed up as 100 year old ladies on the 100th day of school. It was one of the most fun days of the year. I've always wanted to have a Halloween party, but it always sneaks up on me and I never have time to plan one. This year we have had several opportunities to dress up. A party in Wharton on October 25th, but we already had play tickets. Halloween Bunco last night and a party in Shiner on Friday. Well, it happens to be Wanda's birthday on Halloween so we still are up in the air about if we will get to go to the Shiner party. So, last night was Bunco Halloween Style hosted by Jill Boenisch and Krystal Cox. I was very leary about dressing up. I figured I'd dress up and end up being the only one in costume. Finally, at 5:45 I decided to go for it. Who cares if I was the only one in costume?! I put on Mom's nun costume that she wore several years ago. I spiced it up a bit by putting a pillow underneath it and being preggo nun! I felt like a complete idiot driving around town in the costume. I wonder if people thought I was really a nun?!? I finally find the house and nervously walk in. They have it decked out with Halloween decor and several people that arrived there before me were dressed up as well. It ended up being a BLAST! By far it was the best Bunco party yet...complete with jell-o shots, green eye-ball spiked punch, and other goodies. There was another girl there that subbed for us that was dressed up as her husband, who is a preacher. She and I ended up starting out at the head table as partners and won every game! We had God on our side! I ended up winning the roll off as well as the BEST COSTUME award so I shared one prize with the preacher! It was so much fun and I'm so glad I didn't wuss out. If we get to go to the party on Friday, I'll be sporting the preggo nun costume again and I'm trying to talk Nick into Larry the Cable Guy. I'll post pictures soon.

My honey...

Never ceases to amaze me. This weekend he took me to Of Mice and Men at the Plaza and Pat-A-Cake. He had arranged for Jamie and Robert to come also without me knowing. They showed up Saturday around 6:00pm as I was waiting for Nick to get ready. The doorbell rang and I quickly had to pull the pillow out of my shirt...I was showing Nick how cute it would be to be pregnant! LOL! Robert proposed to Jamie Friday night so it was good to see them since we weren't going to until November 8th. She has everything booked for October 17th, 2008. That means I really need to start dieting now. If we got pregnant right now, the baby would be born in July so I wouldn't be a huge, prego bridesmaid. If we get pregnant on our initial planned time, I would be a house! I told Nick that we should just wait until after October, but neither one of us wants to wait a year to start trying.

Showing off our bling!

Baby on the way!

I was so excited and stunned yesterday when Gina called and said they are expecting Baby Beach # 2 in July. Yes, Gina was the pregnant one in our wedding which took place 7 months ago! Avery is almost 6 months old and going to be a big sister! Of course it wasn't a planned pregnancy, but they are so ecstatic. We've decided that instead of having babies we'll let Gina do it and we can just pick one of her's since she'll have one of every age! I told her that I was bummed because we really haven't had a chance to drink with each other since she was pregnant with Avery. She's trying to convince Nick that we should have a baby so her and I can be sober together. I doubt Nick will fall for that.

Self-Inflicted Spending Hiatus

Thanks to being a total moron, I am on a self-inflicted spending hiatus. Two evenings ago I went to the ATM machine and left my card in it! I realized this after 1.5 hours of grocery shopping in Wal-Mart. The guy was checking me out and I began to flip out. I left the groceries there and was going to come back for them later. The card wasn't in my car so I sped through town to the ATM and immediately called my bank in Shiner at 6:14pm. Luckily, someone answered and said there was no activity and cancelled the card. I had no idea that after a few minutes the maching sucks in the card. If I would have known this, I wouldn't have paniced so quickly. I'm sure you are wondering why I didn't write a check out. #1-I'm out! #2-I've also managed to lose my driver's license. Why didn't you use a credit card? My husband doesn't believe in debt! Need I say more? So, the card is, of course, not in the machine. I end up going to Nick, which is making hay at the time. Get him off the tractor, tell him my dilemma, run to get a check out of his truck, and then back to Wal-Mart to get the groceries.

I'm so mad at myself! I guess it was a good thing that it happened because now I will stop being lazy and combine my account with Nick's. I am a bit nervous that I won't get to vote since I don't have my license.

Our oh, so crazy weekend

Friday we jet out of Wharton at 5:00pm. We were making good time until I had to use the restroom in Flatonia. That was about a 2 minute stop. We get back on I-10 and a few minutes down the road, I ask Nick if he grabbed the apartment key out of his truck. Of course not! Now what? Do we go on or head to Shiner? A trooper is behind us with his lights on....looks like we are Shiner bound since we'll be getting a ticket. Instead, the trooper zooms past us and the cars ahead of us are putting on their brakes. We ended up coming to a complete stop for 1.5 hours. We walk around, call Jake's apartment to see if they will let us in and they won't. We are starving at this point. It ended up being a major accident with 2 life flights. We decide to head to San Marcos and just find a hotel if we can't break into his apartment. We get to Luling and Nick looks at me and says he just thought of something crappy. What now? Well, we decided to leave our season tickets at Jake's apartment so that we would have them no matter what. We figured that we would probably end up leaving them in Wharton if we didn't keep them in SM. We never thought about what we would do if we forgot the key to the apartment. We finally make it to San Marcos. Food was the only thing on our minds. We had been talking about River Pub the whole trip so that's where we headed. We get there at 9 and there's a 30 minute wait, which is ALWAYS the case. 9:30 we are seated. Since we both get the same thing every time, it didn't take us long to order. We're sitting there about to gnaw our arms off until 10:15 when some lady comes and says they are "plating our food up right now." No prob! Our food comes out and it is COLD! I was soooooooooooooooooooooo mad. I look at the waitress and ask if she can explain why we waited 45 minutes for cold food. Nick and I ordered the same exact meal. It wasn't like one took longer than the other. I HATE cold food...I'm definitely my father's daughter. I didn't get the nickname "Chip" (off the old block) from his old buddies for nothing. She says that the computers are down in the back and they had to handwrite all of the orders. And......???? That wasn't a good enough excuse for me. She said that she would take it back. Ha...so they could spit in it, no thanks! So, I eat it cold and Nick is ticked at me because I was complaining. Needless to say, it wasn't our best, most fun dining experience with each other. As we are eating, he says that all the hotels are probably full. That would be our luck, which is also like my father's! We stop at several places and most of them only had a room or two open that were smoking and some I'd rather not stay at. We finally found one decent place for a decent price and called it a night. Saturday was a much better day. We spent several hours shopping at the Outlet Mall and then we had Herbert's, which was a much better dining experience. The food is always smoking hot and delish. We contemplated buying tickets to the game, but I opted for spending the money on house stuff. I don't mind going to the games, but I'd much rather shop. The season tickets were just an excuse to get to go to San Marcos anyways. That evening we head to Shiner. Sunday we hung out with the parents and Jill and Tom for a while. We went back to Wharton pretty early. We took the backroads to Nada, which is normal for us. I see a deer looking right at us in the ditch and start pointing and trying to tell Nick, but it wouldn't come out! There was also a motorcycle in the other lane coming, which he thought I was pointing at. The deer runs out right in front of us and Nick slams on the brakes. We barely, and I mean barely miss it. I'm pretty sure that the deer might be missing some hair off the side of it, but that's all. That's all we would have needed to end the crazy weekend, but we lucked out.

Ready for the weekend!

When am I not ready for the weekend from August until June? Nick and I are headed for San Marcos this evening to relax and reminisce. We do this quite often, but this is the first time in forever that it will just be the two of us there. The plan is to go shopping in Austin tomorrow after we hit up a few places in San Marcos. I'm thinking Kirby Lane for breakfast and River Pub for dinner. Sunday will be Herbert's for lunch. We've got to stuff ourselves this weekend because the diet starts back up on Monday. I've decided that I've got lots of weight to lose before we get pregnant and that could take years! However, yearsssss is not in our plan. That means I've got to get on the ball and hit it hard.

Wednesday we went to TGIFriday's and did lots of shopping. We bought more blinds for the house and pulls for the cabinets. Nick decided that the cabinets are going to be our rainy day project....I'm just praying for the rain to happen soon! He's even excited about the handles so I think it helped to get him geared up for the job he's going to do. As we were hanging out, we laughed about how it was when we were dating and celebrated our 6 month anniversary, 9 month, 1 year and so on. October 15th is still a special day, and it always will be. The gifts have ceased and the elaborate evening to the River Walk on that day has been put to rest. We have a more important day to celebrate in a few months and I'm ready to plan something! We're thinking a cruise somewhere, but nothing set in stone yet. He did surprise me with tickets to Of Mice and Men, which will be at The Plaza Theatre next weekend. Oh, he also promised Pat-A-Cake. That's a major deal for him! He's not a big fan of the $10 sandwich. Hence the reason, I can only eat at Jason's Deli when he's not around! :( So, we did celebrate our 3rd year anniversary of meeting/dating and it was great. The weekend will be just as great.

3 years ago

3 years ago today, my life was forever changed. I was gearing up for the Bocktoberfest at Pat Caka's farm. (Pat, a great friend of our family, died 2 weeks ago.) Ross and Ryan somehow talked Nick into tagging along with them to the fest. He caught my eye when he first walked up, but I didn't talk to him. However, a little while later I did ask him if he wanted a drink, but he declined. For reasons I won't mention. Just think...Party Jenny! We went our seperate ways to the concert, but ended up meeting back up that night after the fireworks. From that moment on, we were and still are inseperable. I'm so lucky that God led me to my soul-mate. It's really scary sometimes how "right" everything is in our relationship. We were definitely made for each other. There is no place in this world I would rather be than next to my babe. He's my partner and the love my life. I cannot believe how fast 3 years have gone by.

As engraved in your ring....ALL MY LOVE!

The Nightmares Can Stop!

Why on Earth am I still having nightmares about my wedding? Here's last nights dream... For those of you who haven't been in our house, we have 3 sinks in the upstairs restroom. It works out quite well for a family dominated by girls. I'm in the shower and ask what time it is. Jamie or Jill tells me it's 2:20pm. I was thinking I had plenty of time until I realized that I put 2:00 on the invitations. It's been 6 months! I was on time and it's a done deal! Hopefully that was the last one.

On a funnier note...Early Monday morning Nick was talking up a storm about hand tools and how to use them correctly. I think one was a rubber mallet because he said, "You have to hit it softly on like, say, um a bookcase. Ok? We good?" I woke up and started asking him questions back. I've never seen him teach a class, but I'd imagine it's exactly what he sounded like that night. Poor thing was so exhausted Monday evening from all the teaching he did at school and through his entire night's sleep.

6 things I've learned:

This was supposed to go on the last post, but I ran out of time.

6 things I've learned in the last 6 months:

6) Once you're married, the past is finally the past. All we worry about is the present and the future.

5) Paying bills is much nicer when there are two incomes.

4) Just like a child, a man needs consistency and constant reminders. Constant reminders to put the lid down, to pick out your clothes to be ironed for the next day, to rinse your dirty dishes before you put them in the sink, and to put the milk back in the fridge are daily issues. (Well, almost daily!)

3) It's really hard when we disagree because we are both stubborn-headed, middle children. We have both learned to walk away and chill out for a little while. When we come back to each other we laugh at our stupidity.

2) I have a partner in anything and everything I do.

1) I live for him and know there are great things ahead of us. I can hardly remember they days when he was not in my life.

I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful husband to spend the rest of my waking days with. I always wonder why I have been so blessed with the best man on Earth. I'm just one lucky girl. If the rest of my life turns out half as great as it has been, I should have no complaints. I'm looking forward to the "heck of a lot more."