A first

So we were sitting down watching Wipe Out tonight with Carter, as we normally do on Tuesday nights, when out of the blue Carter gets off the couch, turns off the TV and said he wanted to "go night-nights"!! Yeah. . . how random is that?! He totally started walking to his room and everything.

You would think we would be like SWEET! and put him to bed, but no, we were really into the show and bribed him with cheesecake to sit back down and finish watching it with us. I'm sure we just lost a few points in the parent contest.

He tried going to bed again like 10 min. later but we persuaded him to keep on watching. Have you seen the show? IT's funny! And we didn't want to miss any of it. How selfish are we? Of course once the show was over he wanted nothing to do with going to bed. I guess that's what we deserve though, eh?

I had a bunch more written, but the stupid internet went out and I lost all of it. Now I'm too emotionally and physically exhausted to write it again. Just know that a lot of venting took place.

Whohoo

So I know this is a one time thing, at least for awhile, but who cares! Carter went potty on the toilet!!!!!! YAY!!!! That's all.
Until next time. . .
Cass

ABC Tag

So I've actually been tagged to do this a couple of times. I forgot. My bad. So here's to Tiffany and Claudia, and anyone else who might have tagged me with this!

A= ADVOCATE FOR: Lucky Charms--eating just the marshmallows. Just kidding. Totally the family and being a stay at home mom if you can.
B = BEST FEATURE: the fingernail on the index finger of my right hand.
C = COULDN'T DO WITHOUT: Bo says s'mores. Really it's chocolate. and marshmallows. and graham crackers.
D = DREAMS AND DESIRES: To live in a place with soft grass and no humidity
E = ESSENTIAL ITEM: the phone
F= FAVORITE PAST TIME: reading
G = GOOD AT: pretty much everything :) Bo told me to put a smiley face so you would all know I'm kidding. But am I?
H = HAVE NEVER TRIED: I'm like Tiffany, snowboarding and snow skiing
I = IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS: Bo says I would go on a cruise every day for a decade. Me? a new wardrobe, no debt, a house, and a savings account. I like to have a nest egg. So sue me.
J = JUNKIE FOR: Homemade Oreo Cookies. Oh baby. and Bo.
K = KINDRED SPIRIT: Lindsay Hobbs-- I hope she reads this!
L = LITTLE KNOWN FACT: I pull on my eyebrows when I'm tired.
M = MEMORABLE MOMENT: Bo's and my first kiss. Now that is a story.
N = NEVER AGAIN WILL I: stop taking birth control. haha. jk. Ummm. . I honestly can't think of anything. Maybe go to thriller movie at the movie theater. I actually jumped out into the aisle once. no joke.
O = OCCASIONAL INDULGENCE: is there such a thing? shopping for clothes. I haven't done much since I was married.
Q = QUOTE: "Bakers don't quit!" Given to me by my mother who knows how many times. FYI Baker is my maiden name.
R = REASON TO SMILE: Only a month and half left of this pregnancy! And Carter and Bo. They crack me up.
S = SORRY ABOUT: my "impeccable" way of saying things. (Briana ;) ) I have a knack for saying things and having them come out the wrong way.
T = TAG SOME FRIENDS: Jackie, Stephanie S., Briana
U = UNINTERESTED IN: Staying in Texas for residency
V = VERY SCARED OF: spiders. and bugs. I hate bugs.
W = WORST HABIT: See S and L
X = X MARKS MY IDEAL VACATION SPOT: anywhere but Texas. hahaha. really it would be Italy.
Y = YESTERYEAR DECADE OF CHOICE: huh? I love the time I'm in now.
Z = ZODIAC SIGN: Cancer

26

I turned 26 on Friday. Yeah. I'm kinda sad about it. I loved the early twenties and now I am no longer in that group. Someone tried reassuring me by saying that I was getting closer to the 30's and that the 30's were the best!!!! Yeah, sorry but not that comforting. :) I guess that's life though, right?
It was a great day. I got a blank recipe book from Bo so that I can put all my random loose favorite recipes in it. I have so many recipes written on scraps of paper and shoved in misc. books. He, and Carter, also gave me some ymmy chocolates and Enchanted, the movie. My mom gave me a cute stiching that says Believe in a crafty frame, and my sister got me a cute figurine of two sisters. Bo's mom also sent me some chocolate and a recipe book, and my friend Stephanie gave me some candy and Dr. Pepper. Are we seeing a trend here?? :) Man these people know me well. I have had such a sweet tooth with this pregnancy. I love all my presents and am so grateful to everyone for thinking of me and spoiling me!
I had told Bo that all I wanted for my birthday was dinner and a movie, so that night we went to a Hibachi Grill with Carter (oh baby was it GOOD) and then we dropped Carter off at a friends and went to The Dark Knight. It was a long movie but way good. Heath Ledger did an AWESOME job at playing the Joker.
So that was my birthday. It was a great day!!

Pregnancy Pic!

Twenty-five pounds and I can't for the life of me figure out where it has gone!

This is me at 7 months.
I tried finding a picture of me at around the same time when I was expecting Carter, but I can't find it on the computer. Oh well.

The haircut story

So I've actually had this haircut for about a month now, I've just been a slacker about explaining the wonderful story about it.

To start, this is the result after 3 haircuts. That's right, count them. 3!!!! Yeah. . .

When I was in Washington I had a spur of the moment decision to get my hair cut. I didn't want to get anything to drastic, really just a trim. I went to this walk in place in town, yes it was cheap, and maybe that's what I get, but seriously I'd been there tons before and have always had decent cuts. Anyways... as you can guess, I came out with the WORST haircut ever. This is no exaggeration friends. It really was the worst. All I asked for was a trim and maybe a little bit of layering. I came out with my hair at least 3 inches shorter and that wasn't the worst of it.

Seriously. It looked like Carter had taken scissors and cut my hair, I know what you are thinking. . . I'm exaggerating a tad. NO! The "layers" were not blended in, you could see where she had just grabbed a chunk of hair and just full on chopped it off. These hairs of course were cut like 3 inches away from my scalp. I had super short chunks randomly through my hair and then 3 inches down would be the next random layer. The sides were not even AT ALL, and oh it was just a mess.

Now I'm not super picky about hair. Hello, I grew up using Suave, and it wasn't till last year that I stopped using it. But if I can tell it's a bad hair cut, then you know it's got to be bad. I showed my friends and even they all agreed that it was pretty bad. Needless to say, I was in tears. I really was.

I called up my mom's stylist that night and begged her to fix it, so the next morning I headed over to get it fixed. She took one look at my hair and I'm not kidding, she said "wow, you got butched!" Yep. Thank heavens for her, she fixed it and blended it all in and made it look normal again. The only problem was that it was still too much layering. I tried getting her to take off the bottom layer, it kinda looked mullety (if that's a word--probably not but you get the idea) still and when I asked her to maybe trim it off, she suggested waiting till it was styled first.

Oh friends. If you could only see how she had styled it. It was all I could do not to break down crying right then and there. You would probably have wet your pants. I know I would have if it wasn't my hair. She grabbed the smallest barrelled curling iron and curled the bottom two layers up in tight curls. She also "fluffed" my hair up on top a ton. Seriously, I looked like a mixture between Mary Tyler Moore and some one off of Grease. AHHHHHHHHHHHH! Where were my hot pink pants and bright makeup?

I went home still bawling. The hair looked so much better, but when you only wanted a trim in the first place. . . . Thank goodness for my sister. With no beautician license and a pair of sewing scissors, she cut the bottom layer off that night, and now it looks pretty good.

I've gotten good at styling it, and have even come to like it, but still. . . what a nightmare.

You think I would've taken pictures, and I'm sure you would like to see them to get the full picture, but honestly friends, I couldn't. It crossed my mind at the time, but I just didn't want permanent memories or that disaster. It was that bad.

Bo just said, "Our girl needs to be ugly Babe, 'cause I can get mad at ugly kids."
Thanks hon.
That is part of the reason Carter is so spoiled. You try punish him and he's just so stinking cute, you can't.

Our trip to IKEA

So this actually happened a week and a half ago, it's just taken me awhile to blog about it.
It all started with Bo having the day off on Friday, June 27. We decided to go up to IKEA to get a dresser for the kids room. I have tons to do to get ready for the baby, and dresser was much needed.
We did pretty good at getting out of the house at10 in the a.m. and were driving on the freeway, over halfway way there (it takes a little over an hour to get there), when we see this metal strap/rod poking up out of the freeway--it was part of the bridge. YEAH. . .There was no way to avoid it. We had cars on both sides of us and hence we couldn't swerve around it. We heard our tire make this weird noise, knowing it was popped, and took the next exit off so we could see what happened.
Sure enough, our tire was torn. yippie. The tire was only a year old too. Stinking freeway. Bo got out and started to put on the spare, while I had the wonderful job of calling the police to report it. After talking to like 5 different operators, I finally got through to someone and they sent the police over. After I got off the phone, I looked back on the freeway, and right where we had hit the piece of metal, another car was pulled off to the side. How much you want to guess the same thing happened to them? A tow truck eventually came to help them.
Anyways. The police gave us a claim to file and mail in, and off they went. So about an hour after the tire incident, we start heading off again, thinking we'd just go to a tire store and get a new tire. That's when all the lights came on. The check vehicle soon, brake, anti-lock brake, and traction lights all came on. SWEET. We called GEICO, our car insurance peeps, told them the story, and then decided to head back to Galveston. No IKEA for me. Let me just tell you, I was pretty darn upset.
After taking it to Firestone and getting it checked, we found out our allignment was ruined too. Lucky for us, they think the lights all came on because the spare was on, because once the tire was replaced, the lights went away and haven't come back on. So . . . total damage was just allignment and tire. $200 worth. It could've been worse I guess. All I can say is that the stupid Texas Department of Transportation had better pay us back! We have a baby coming and I really don't have anything. I got rid of it all when we moved from Alaska down her to Texas. We packed only what we could fit in our car.
They'd better pay back too. It wasn't like this was some garbage in the road, it was PART of the stinking road! It was a metal strap that had snapped and curved up out of the crack to get us!
We got our car back early Saturday, and then Bo was sweet enough to take me back up to Houston to get my dresser. What a sweetheart. The dresser looks good too. I can now clean out the closet!

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July friends!
We started off the day going to Palm Beach, a little water park at Moody Gardens here. We spent a couple hours playing in the water and then headed home for a much needed nap. That evening my cousin Jackie and co. came down from Clear Lake and we headed over to a friends for a barbeque. The food was good, especially the salad. Stephanie made this super yummy salad that she needs to post on her blog. Oh baby it was good.
After the BBQ everyone came over to our place to play the Wii. The boys had fun playing Mario Kart while we women folk chatted. At about 8:30 we headed over to the beach to watch the fireworks.
It was a way fun day and I was glad I was able to share it with family and friends. I love America and am glad that I am lucky enough to have been born and raised here. I hope I never take this country for granted. Sadly, I'm sure I do, as I know a lot of people do. I hope that I, at least, can do better at appreciating the US.

So of course I take my camera around with me the whole day, and all I remember to take pictures of are at night when it's way dark. Go me!

In the back are is Jackie and her husband Lincoln, along with little Brigham in the stroller. Ben is on the right, with Jana a little ways behind him.

Carter and Ava relaxing as they wait for the fireworks to start.

I can't help but take pictures of us. I love this man!

Isn't this a cool picture of the fireworks?

Hanging out at Grandpa and Grandma Bakers'

Carter had so much fun going home to WA in June. I swear he would wake up and the first thing he would say is "outside?" He wanted to be outside non stop. He loved riding the tractor, lawn mower, and our horse Babe with my Dad.

He actually has this little toy tractor that has a Little People farmer on it and he calls the farmer Grandpa.
Here are some pictures!
On our way to the Tri-cities to attend one of the weddings my Dad fell asleep. Carter started copying him. It was funny. Carter would pretend to sleep, then peek open an eye at my dad to see if he was still sleeping, and then pretend to go back to sleep. He cracks us up.

Carter and my nephew Emerson out on the lawn mower. My dad just bought it and he loves it. He kept telling me I should go take a ride on it. Then again, maybe he was just trying to get my lazy bum to go mow the lawn. . . .My dad on Babe with Carter and my niece Ivie. As you can tell, it was a month full of cousins!

Why is my dad driving the tractor on the gravel you might ask? He's leveling it out and making it look all nice. That and he's getting rid of the weeds. Who cares though, as long as Carter is happy and I don't have to watch him!

I love my boys!

Who knows what they are doing.

I love that he's having the time of his life on the trampoline.

Carter kissing my dad on the cheek. What a cutie. He is such an affectionate kiddo.

Oh baby what a hunk!

He thinks he's one cool dude.

Of course it is

So Bo and I were watching the news this evening and they were talking about it being Hurricane Season. They put up a graph indicating the peaks of the season, which is from May to November, and right there with the highest peak was September. I started pointing that out to Bo, and just as I was doing it, the anchor was saying that the actual day with the highest probability was September 10. Bo and I immediately started laughing, me a little hysterically. Of course it would be that day. For those of you who are in the dark as to why this day of all days would cause a reaction from us, let me just inform you that September 10th is my due date. YEP. So of course the day that would be THE peak of Hurricane Season would be the very day I'm due. I was already a little stressed that I was having my baby during hurricane season, now I'm beyond. Yes, I know the odds of a hurricane actually coming on that day are still slim, and yes I know that the odds of me having my baby on that day are even slimmer, but still people. COME ON!
I called my mom and sister to tell them, and they are trying to convince me to come to Washington to have the baby. Not gonna happen, but don't think I'm not tempted to be somewhere else.