The Dirty Thirty

So, I have reached the next chapter...my 30's. At least I have heard a lot of people say that their 30's were their best years.  Here's hoping...

Will was great and made sure that I had the best possible birthday. We spent a night away from the kids (this just does not happen) which was nice.  He took me to National Harbor and we just walked around, shopped a little, ate dinner at Rosa Mexican (they make the guacamole right in front of you - so good), had drinks and just relaxed.  A good way to celebrate a new phase.

One thing I really love about the National Harbor is the Awakening statue.  I just think it is really intriguing. That is the arm behind me.

The peeps store - yes we bought some for stocking stuffers

Part of the Awakening. There is also the knee and foot.

I met the lady depicted in this mural. She picked crabs for me in Maryland when she realized how pathetic I was at breaking the poor things legs off.

My little lovies helping me blow out my candle.

Here is to the next chapter...

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

18 Months

I have been horrible at writing lately...sorry, sorry.  I promise to catch up soon.  It is such a busy time of year with birthdays and holidays. 

Meli had her 18th month check-up the other day.  I went in worried that she has not gained any weight.  She is a grazer when it comes to eating so it can seem like she is not eating a lot.  Turns out that she has gained 2 lbs since last July - so that is great!!  The doctor said in the second year they are happy if they gain 2 lbs total.  So we are good.  She is 23 lbs and 31.5 inches long.  Still blonde (somestimes more of a strawberry blonde), still blue eyes and still stubborn, happy and just loveable!  Her personality is blossoming and she is hillarious.  She cracks herself up - which is the funniest thing.  Meli still loves to dance and now enjoys singing.  What a beautiful daughter we have!

This is not the best picture and it is a few months old, but I have not been the best at taking pictures lately. Need to get better before the holidays...

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

Halloween

"On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises from his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys to all the children.  - Linus

Sadly, our plans for Halloween did not work out.  The TKD party got canceled due to all of the storms that had happened.  Colin was still able to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and had a good time with daddy.  Meli was a little grumpy that day, so she stayed home with mommy and passed out candies.  Colin was a knight again for his school party and then Ironman at night. I made Meli a tutu for her witches outfit but she was so grumpy she did not last long.  It still looked cute though.

"I am Ironman"

Our little grumpy witch - pictures were not easy to get. She had a headband with a miniature hat and a little broom.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Halloween!


"Hold on, man. We don't go anywhere with "scary," "spooky," "haunted," or "forbidden" in the title. ~From Scooby-Doo

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

Progress Report

So we have been on the healthy lifestyle for over 3 weeks now.  Almost 4.  I have been doing pretty good.  I can see the toning that I want happen.  Will has been doing super good!  He has lost 20lbs in a little over 2 weeks!! He is not really wanting to lose weight so he was actually a little sad, but I told him since he cut out sugar and a lot of extra carbs he was probably losing fat quicker than making new muscles.  I am so proud and impressed with his commitment.  He has not been eating sweets.  For anyone that really knows him you now how big of a deal this is.  He has cut out a lot of bread and extra things he just does not need.  He does his workout routine 3 days a week and then runs the rest of the days.  I think I need to kick it up a notch. He is making me look bad! 

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

 The B Family

Billy Goat Trail

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” L.M. Montgomery

One of my favorite places in Virginia is Billy Goat Trail.  It is a trail that borders the Maryland and Virginia border (separated by the Potomac River). It is a beautiful place and a good workout.  Will and I took Friday off so that we could go hike it while the kids were at daycare.  It was nice to have the time alone together and to enjoy the beautiful fall weather.  I love this time of year.  The colors were so gorgeous!

“Autumn...the year's last, loveliest smile.” - William Cullen Bryant

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

Scary Lil' Pumpkins

This week we decorated our pumpkins.  We decided to try multiple styles this time - painting and carving.  Doing both helped ease the blow for Colin that he was not allowed to actually carve.  Scoop, yes...carve, oh hell no. 

Colin scooping out the pumpkin seeds

Meli giving the pumpkin a "kiss-kiss"

Our pumpkins - a ghost, a cat and a spider

The other three - another spider, Colin's "red, white and blue Hulky" and the carved one that Colin told Will what he wanted and daddy carved it.  What masterpieces!

"When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers, ‘tis near Halloween."

          

 ~Author Unknown

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

No More Appointments!!!

I have had my final eye appointment. I realized I never really talked about the procedure...and a few of you considering this route have asked for my thoughts on the process. So here it is...

 I had my eye surgery almost a year ago, so I am glad to be done.  The only reason it was a little extended for me is because of my left eye. Well and the fact that making appointments around my travel schedule is not always easy. (It also did not help that I got conjunctivitis while in Italy).  The reason my left eye took longer is because I had a scar that went over the area that would be the flap. Since that is not ideal I had to have PRK which is an older version of Lasik and does not use the flap concept.  The actual procedure is easier than the iLasik but post-procedure is more (much more painful) and the healing process takes longer. I can attest to that since I had both procedures done...but sometimes easy and convenient is not the best choice.  Plus, I highly trust my eye doctor's advise.  He has been doing this for several decades and is one of the top in the D.C. area (which is saying a lot).  He told me that if I were his daughter PRK is what he would have me do.  If I would have gone with iLasik for both it risked the chance of causing warping with my left eye in years to come. So we went with the safer.

 The right eye was a breeze post-procedure.  Both procedures only took 15 minutes once I started.  Cannot beat that. They are really good about not making people wait around.  They had a wonderful staff... For the right eye, the flap was created, which was not necessarily painful but there was definitely an awkward pressure. Then right away the lazer was used and not even noticeable. iLasik  uses Intralase with Advanced CustomVue to make it the best available and the only one approved for Naval aviators and NASA astronauts. That helped boost my confidence since my eyes are very important to me (I was a little nervous). I did my right eye after Christmas and then a week later I did my left.  My vision was instantly improved.  I was trying to see 20/15 from the get go.  Even with my left. Each visit my vision improved. The right had no issues with halos or haze.  The left did but that was to be expected and not really a big deal.  The only thing that really bothered me was having one eye ahead (vision-wise) of the other...this made working on my computer a little difficult.  For the first few days, I had great vision with distance but up close was a little blury.

My procedures came with a lifetime warranty.  So as long as I do my yearly vision exam I can have it all redone when my vision starts to go poorly again.  Another plus to this, is that the PRK removed most of the scar - so I should be able to do both eyes with iLasik then.

This is one of the smartest things I have done.  It is so nice not to have to worry about contacts.  Plus, just waking up in the morning to clear vision is amazing. I highly recommend looking into it.  See what deals are going on and just make sure you go to someone you trust and has good recommendations.

I have to say.  There are things I miss about the west coast, but D.C. definitely has some of the highest quality when it comes to healthcare providers.  I have been so blessed with all of my doctors so far. I know in some areas it is usually hit or miss.

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

Making Progress

I have to brag about my husband.  He is doing such a good job with working out and eating healthy the past few weeks.  You can alreay see a significant difference.  Now I have known this man for 7 years or so...and in that time I have learned that he has a certain weakness for sweets - but every since he decided to really commit himself to getting back in to his firefighter shape he has been so good.  This is the man that would sneak down at 2 AM and eat the chocolate chips from my baking stash.  I am just so proud.  He also had a training plan put together for him from a co-worker of his that was a former professional rugby player from Australia. He has been sticking with it.  Even running on his off days.  The workout plan is not an easy one either. Very intense. We are both making an effort to make sure the other has time to do their workout for the day.  It is so much easier have a workout schedule when it is part of you job requirement (like Will's firefighting job) or when you are playing sports.  I am so glad that we both got to this point at the same time.  I will have to post some comparison pictures in a few weeks.

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family

Pumpkins, Ghosts & Sugar Cookies

Colin's face painting

A few weekends ago, we had a day of Halloween/Fall preparation.  We got the kids costumes together, decorated, did a few festive crafts and baked some Halloween sugar cookies. Colin decided that he wants to be Iron Man this year. It was such an important and tough decision.  If we do multiple events, I may see if he wants to use his Marine BDUs (battle dress uniform) as well.  I am making a little witch outfit for Mae.  Nothing fancy.  I wanted to make something simple that she would not mind actually wearing it for a long period of time. 

Colin and I made a monster box, a spooky house and did a Halloween painting during our craft time on Monday.  I just love this time of year and thanks to pinterest I have found some good crafts to try. We will be making these bat pumpkins next weekend. We bought some little pumpkins for it today. Last weekend, we made this felt pumpkin face and this spooky painting.

This was the smaller one

This weekend we decided to go to the pumpkin patch. We were planning on going next weekend but it is getting colder quickly here so we did not want to risk the good weather. We tried a new place this year. We enjoyed the change but I think our original place may be our favorite. The nice thing about this one is that we did get a free pumpkin per person.  The neat thing about this patch is that it had quite a few animals.  There were two turtles...HUGE turtles.  It was so weird to see them move their heads and limbs.  I never really noticed how odd they look.  It could be that we were just very close to these guys. Very wrinkly.

 Meli loved the animals.  There was a section where they were in stalls and you could feed them and then they also had an open area where you could pet the little guys.  Colin enjoys the animals but he does not really care to touch them.  I must have a thing for pigs.  I adored this little guy below.  Meli did too.  She was chasing him around a bit. I think he was chasing Colin, poor guy.

 Meli's approach: get in their face 

Colin's approach: say "hello" from a safe distance. 

The boys, as in Will and Colin, LOVE the big slides. Thankfully this place had them as well. Meli went down the big ones for the first time and loved it too. I know that Will really wanted to go on the zip line they had but it was sadly only for kids.

 I thought his head was stuck at first.  We tried to get Meli to do the same thing but it was not so successful.  We got some pictures of her walking away though.

 This is the closest we got. Once I left there was no hope.

 I was so glad that they had a measuring thing. We have taken a picture of Colin at one of these every time we have gone. I love looking at how much he has grown.

 I love this next picture...our two beautiful kids.  Colin is such a good big brother. Meli balances the sweetness and pestering fairly well.

 They do have a good relationship.  They annoy each other but are good at recognizing when one needs hugs, even Meli will do that for Colin.  They also make each other laugh a lot.

Had to get the boots.  She loves them Grammie!

Mommy & Meli

The place also had a lot of playthings.  There were bouncy gyms, pirate ships, a haunted buses and then little areas for toddlers to play. 

Once we are able to decorate and carve our pumpkins I will post pictures.

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

 The B Family

Book Recommendation

I just finished a book that I just have to share.  It was an interesting and different type of story.  The book is, My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock. I just loved it!  She was a blogger for celebrity gossip (who apparantly make very good money) but lost her job when the economy went sour.  She became a bit lost and had no idea what to do...until she came across a quote of Eleanor Roosevelt's - "Do one thing each day that scares you".  So, she takes the year from her 29th birthday to her 30th doing exactly that.  It really is a good book.  It was also neat reading about someone who is my age that comes across similar issues.  I also learned a lot about Eleanor ( I will be picking up a book she has written next). I highly recommend this book, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-year-with-eleanor-noelle-hancock/1100567891.

~ Love, Hugs & Kisses ~

The B Family