Sally Ride at UT Arlington

In Junior League, we have to attend 2 'trainings' per year. Sometimes they are part of a general meeting, thus, dual credit. Other times, you have to go somewhere else, on your own time, to get the 'training'. The training I decided to go to was the Lecture Series- featuring Sally Ride. She was the first woman in space. She shared some awesome pictures and some very interesting facts (and opinions). She was a great speaker. Anyone who can interject a funny story or 2 every 5 minutes has my attention.

Some interesting things that I learned:

*The astronauts all like to take sunset/sunrise pictures. And they all look the same.

*When you are up in space, a sunrise takes place every 90 minutes, so they have lots of opportunities to catch 'the right one'.

*The astronauts can see the lights of Houston, New York and the smog of LA from outer space.

*For NASA to find the first group of women astronauts, they placed newspaper ads in a select group of college newspapers.

11 loads of laundry...

Laundry, laundry, how I despise thee.

Socks and shirts and all the rest,

Laundry, laundry, can you help me?

How I've learned that laundry won't do itself.

The mantra, a woman's work is never done, is definitely in reference to laundry. I will never, ever FINISH laundry. No mater how 'on top of it' I may stay, (or not stay) there will always be more to be done. You know what makes laundry bearable? Having a front load washer and dryer. Yep, we have definitely gotten our money$ worth out of them, just because it puts me in a good mood just to walk into the laundry room and see them. To know that I am washing my clothes 'smarter' (less water, less strain on the clothes, less waste) makes it a tad bit more bearable. However, I can only do so much in a day...

Date Night at Del Frisco's

For the last 5 years, we have celebrated our anniversary at Del Frisco's. We have had the same server, Michael, who has an incredible memory. Not this year though, he was promoted to host.

This anniversary I am visibly pregnant. This is good and bad. It means I got a prime seat at the bar while we were waiting for our table, but bad, because I only got to watch others enjoy yummy sounding drinks. However, I got to make up for that once we ordered our food. Del Frisco's makes mac and CHEESE! Seriously! Even though it probably had over 247 grams of fat, it was a little taste of heaven. Yum, YUM, YUMMY! I saved 1/2 of it to bring it home, so I could enjoy it again.

We had a great night celebrating 10 years of marriage!

NO Electricity?!?

It was inevitable. Most of Arlington lost power, so we knew it was a possibility for us as well. The good part? We did not lose it for more than 24 hours, whereas our less fortunate neighboring subdivisions were without for 3-4 days! We made the most out of our outage. We headed to Chik*Fil*A for a few hours for lunch and playtime. We were all prepared to go to mother's house to spend the night, since they were out of town for a cruise. But after I took the kids to the gym, John called with the good news that our power was back on. SWEET!

11.5 inches of Snow!

So much for Global Warming! This is C-R-A-Z-Y! 2 huge instances of snow in North Texas? Talk about not VERY often does this occur. The kids have thoroughly enjoyed the time off from school AND getting to have snowball fights with dad, complete with a bunker to hide behind. I am not much for being cold, so I darted out there, took some pictures and came right back in to the warmth of our house. I did not mind at all if the kiddos wanted to stay out there with John all afternoon. As long as I am warm, I am all good. :>0

Playing in the Snow Pics

What a fun day this turned out to be! This is the second snow of the winter season and the kids are just LOVING it! I am not particularly fond of the snow, especially when it is as wet as this snow is, but I do love to watch the kids (and John) play in it and have such a great time. Rare are days like this in Texas!

Snow! Snow! SNOW!

Seriously, here in North Texas we might get snow once a year. But to get it twice in one winter? I cannot even think of the last time that this has happened. The snow that we got today is not some slight covering of the ground. It is some major snow that is snowball fight worthy. Fort-building and snowman-building quality snow. Enough snow to get us out of a day of school! In fact, they canceled school the night before. Which was wise, because it was not much better the next day. The kids are thinking that this is commonplace and have no idea how rare this much snow is in North Texas. Probably because they have seen way more snow than this in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, they think it is the same.

Oh well, time to dry their snow suits again so they can go out again one more time before bedtime!

Sewing Tooth Fairy Pillows

I am a room mom for Natalie's kindergarten class. The other co-room mom is always busy, so i end up having to do whatever project all by myself.

This project, that we were giving to the kindergartners for Valentine's Day, was tooth fairy pillows. This was one of the most difficult of the 'give-aways' for kindergarten. First we had to cut out the fabric, write the names on the pillows, sew them partially, stuff them and finish sewing them to completion. Ummm, yea. This was definitely something that I could not do all by myself. I had to join the other moms and help in a collective effort.

It actually was pretty fun once we got started. There were 5-6 of us, sitting around Kelly's dining room table, doing different stages of the process. Kelly was sewing, some were pinning, some were stuffing, some were removing pins and some were busy talking and not accomplishing anything. We ran out of stuffing, so I volunteered to make the Wal-Mart run to get more poly*fill. We finished all 103 of them by 1pm. I sure hope these little kindergartners appreciate all the work that we put into making these!

Cooper's Baptism

Cooper accepted Christ at Beach Club in November of 2008. (Beach Club is a Bible club that is held after school for 12 weeks each sememster.) We had talked about when he would get baptized, but he was never adamant about doing it.

Once a year, our church has a church-wide baptism service. Cooper expressed his desire to be baptized in that service, so we set up a time with Keith Smith for an interview. After Cooper passed with flying colors, he was good to go. John and I accompanied him up on stage and watched him get baptized in front of the whole congregation. I could not have been more full of joy for him and his decision to follow Christ. I had been praying for that for him since before he was born.

Our 10th Anniversary

How did I spend out 'actual' 10th anniversary? At a Junior League Leadership Retreat. Thank goodness John is so understanding about my Junior League stuff. Once I got home, we got to celebrate for real. We went to Del Frisco's in Fort Worth, like we have the last 5 years. My favorite part of the whole meal? A special 'macaroni and jalapeno cheese' side dish. Oh. My. Goodness. There were probably 65 fat grams in each bite, but oh-so-worth it!!! Yum, yum, yummmy!!
We had such a great time, just sitting there, talking and taking our time eating. (Which is SO rare!) Mother was babysitting for us, so we were in no rush. This could be the last really nice dinner we have before Claire gets here!

JLA Retreat

What are the odds of getting 15 women together and 3 of them being pregnant? Pretty good if you are in the Junior League of Arlington right now. Overall, in the whole league, we have over 20 women pregnant. On the Board Of Directors, there are 3 of us that are pregnant and all due within a 2 week time period.

The benefit of being pregnant when you are on a retreat where there are not enough beds? There is a rule that if you are 8 months pregnant, then you get a bed as your sleeping surface. I LIKE that rule! I had brought Cooper's sleeping bag and Natalie's Hello Kitty blanket and pillow. However, sleeping on a bed was a much better alternative to making a palette on the floor!

We spent 1 night, 1 full day and 1/2 a day in a meeting. With the same people, in the same room. Granted we were doing different activities and brainstorming, but still, you can only look at the same parts of the walls for so long before you start getting antsy. I think that my body and brain are not made to sit still for so long. I purposefully drank a LOT of water, so I would have to get up and go to the bathroom, which happened to be downstairs. (I'm so sneaky like that!)

I did get up early and go run in the freezing wind. I am quite sure 1/2 those girls thought I was nuts, being pregnant and all, but oh well. I had to get it in before I headed home!

Rabbit Trail Meetings

I cannot stand going to a meeting where the agenda is not printed out and passed around. If that simplet action step is done, there is an 80% chance of staying on track with the agenda and not chasing rabbit trails. The ELE Women's Club Executive Board meeting I went to tonight? Could have been over and done with in 45 minutes or less. Not the case. I have never sat in a meeting with so many rabbit trails in all my meeting sitting experience. There were nine women in this meeting, yet 4 of them dominated the chit-chat and unnecessary comments and suggestions. We (obviously) were not following Robert's Rules of Order. That was painfully clear. I'm not going to complain too much. Otherwise, I'll get volunteered to be President or something...I think my plate is full enough. (Serving on the executive board for ELE Women's club, PTA and Junior League.)

Running @ 7 Months Pregnant

I love to run. Really. I love to run, usually. Right now, though, running is not my favorite activity. Maybe I had a bad run today; I hope that is it. I just felt heavy and awkward. I wore my heart monitor so I could stay 'in the zone', but it was such a struggle. I knew I had to run an out and back, because if I did loops, I would have stopped after the first one! I felt like I had the kind of run where people who saw me probably thought, "Why doesn't she just walk? It would probably be faster." I do not know haw many more runs I will be going out on, but it sure will not be too many, that's for sure!