Yay for spring!

This is my favorite time of year and this is pretty much why...

My whole yard is a compilation of flowers from one side to the other and I get so excited whenever I see the first blooms!  Between azaleas, day lilies, oriental lilies, knockout roses and hydrangeas (more on those later), my house is surrounded in some of nature's most beautiful accomplishments.  I can't wait to plant my butterfly garden this weekend so that I can add to the excitement in the backyard.  :)

Quote of the day

Any amount of happiness, no matter how long it lasts, is worth having.

Ahhhhhh... Family...

Today I ventured up to Bethlehem PA for my niece's christening and I have to admit, as much as I was going because this was a big deal for Elizabeth, blah, blah, blah... I have to admit I wanted to go because it was a chance to hang with my cousins. Grace, Joseph, and Erin are some of the funniest people on earth and there was no shortage of laughs!! I wish we all lived closer together. I envy people who grew up with their big and extended family around them all the time. I guess that's another unfortunate byproduct of being a military brat. :-(

Dear Thursday...

I OWN you.  Just thought you should know.

GPOYW

I'm still getting the hang of taking pictures of myself with this new iPhone.  I feel like every picture I take gives me an enormous forehead!  A friend told me it was user error (thanks Summer...) but I think it's just the way the camera on this phone was made.  For instance, I took this picture and you could see right down my shirt!  Thank goodness for cropping.  haha

See what I mean?  Check out that 'fard!!

Wow, God came near...

They say the Lord works in mysterious ways and I've really seen that today. Within a four hour window I learned of the death of one child and the birth of another. Interestingly, the baby that was born today was named Gabriel, the angel of God. Maybe his guardian angel will be the baby that went to heaven earlier... It's a sweet thought...

My heart is breaking

I just got the absolute worst news possible from a friend just now and the words stung as if I had said them myself. "We lost the baby. We went in for an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat." Stunned, I sat here wondering what to even write back. Oh my God. Why her? Why does this stuff happen to the best people. Tears streaming down my face, my heart breaking, I wrote her back, knowing nothing I could say would comfort her. So I prayed...

Ahhhh spring

This is going to be me tomorrow at lunchtime...

It's OK to be jealous.

WHY??

Why is good childcare so hard to find?  I feel like I've spent more time lately dealing with nanny issues than should be allowed.  Ugh.  Off to find another daycare for the baby...

Hail to the chief

So it became apparent to me this past week that my mind works in strange ways.  Well DUH, you say!  But honestly, it's really weird.  I went to pick up a friend of mine from work on Friday afternoon so that she didn't have to brave the metro yet one more day, and she works directly across from the US Capital building.  I mean, what a cool view you have when you look out your window!  What I also realized is that every single time I see the capital building... I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME I drive by, the first line of "hail to the chief" plays through my head. 

Don't know what Hail to the Chief is?  Click here

On the road again...

It has become apparent to me that I don't like traveling for work anymore. In the last three days, I have spent 12 hours on the road and another almost 12 hours in airports. Granted I had some successes with each trip this week, I'm so ready to just have some normalcy. How did I travel like this all the time?? I can't believe this was actually my lifestyle for over a year!

The 'Nothing'

There are many days that I believe that God is watching out for me. Yesterday was one of those days... I tried in vain to drive home from Washington DC to Raleigh and what should have taken me 4 hours or so took almost 12 hours! Not only was traffic particularly bad in DC, but there were incredibly bad thunderstorms up and down the east coast. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm terrified of storms... Lightning specifically. And yesterday's storm had plenty of lightning. The theatrics in the sky were unbelievable. Between the wind and rain, flashes of lightning would practically paralyze me as I drove. I took a picture of the clouds at one point because they looked like "The Nothing" from The Neverending Story. It was creepy.

What I found out later is that there were over 70 tornados in North Carolina last night. I would have been scared half to death during this storm because I was all by myself. Thank you God for watching over me and keeping me out of town while this weather happened.

Check out these pictures of the sun finally burning through once I got past the worst of the storms...  it was truly unbelievable.

So much for the diet..

I am working out of my company's DC location this week and the best part of coming to town (aside from catching up with friends etc!) is the fact that our office is located directly above Georgetown Cupcake.  If you weren't aware, they have their own show on TLC called DC Cupcakes, and the place is VERY popular.  And why wouldn't they be??  Their cupcakes are amazing!  So far since I've been here, I've had a key lime, chocolate banana, red velvet and 2 cherry blossom cupcakes.  Just totalling up the calories in those 5 cupcakes is giving me an anxiety attack.   Oh well, they are worth every single one...  :)

I always suspected...

So I was summoned to my 5 year old's school this afternoon because they wanted to discuss with me the results of the testing they did on my son last week.  I had requested that he be tested for the academically gifted program because he's been having a lot of behavioral issues lately and I suspected he was just REALLY bored in school.  Well, I was completely validated.  Brier scored off the charts in all areas, including three categories where he was in the greater than 99th percentile for the entire nation.  In other words, my child is an evil genius.  Yeah, I knew that already. 

Thought for the Day...