An update

The past 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. The kids have been out of school since their 1/2 day last Monday. I started my first graduate class last Monday. I'm taking statistics for social workers and it's really kicking my butt. Everyone I tell that I'm taking a stats class has only negative things to say about it but it's actually not that bad. Since it's tailored for social workers, I can see how it will apply to my future studies and career. It's a lot of homework though. Especially between Monday night to Wednesday night. It's really hard to get my homework done with the kids home. Tuesdays is the day that I to to therapy and WW so that makes it extra hard. I can't change my therapy appointment but I am thinking of changing my WW meeting.

This is how I spend my Tuesday mornings now...breakfast and stats reading.



Breakfast is typically a lot of fruit, a vitamuffin and turkey bacon along with my constant glass of sugar free peach ice tea (6-7 WW points for the whole meal).

In other news, I got new glasses which I love.



Abigail (she now prefers that over Abby) and I went to Build A Bear on Friday because that was the day that they released the pink Hello Kitty and I had to have one.




Abigail got a blue bear, but she was kind enough to groom both her bear and my Hello Kitty.



During out girl's day out trip to the mall, Abigail also had her photos taken for her 9th birthday (even though it's 6 weeks away).
She brought along her stuffed strawberry friend Berry to pose with her. Here are some of my favorites.









Josh and I also got to have a date night and go to our favorite restaurant.



And finally, yesterday we went to my aunt's surprise 75th birthday party! She had a great time and was truly surprised.

Play day!

Our hot water heater is broken and can't be fixed until Tuesday or Wednesday which is really frustrating and made us sad, so we needed a great day out to cheer up.  We drove up to Freeport to pick up our fab new orange chair (see post below) first. Then we found a cute little family restaurant to have lunch and decided to search for a park because the weather was turning from gloomy to great. We found a fun little park in Rockford off of Alpine Road that kept Abby (and maybe us too) busy for awhile. We also got to check out a microbrew in Rockford's downtown area for beer, rootbeer and pretzels.



I love seeing my girly girl climbing, running and playing SO MUCH after all the time she spent in casts, braces and in physical therapy with her brokey leg bad luck.



The biggest hit at the park was this slide made out of rollers. I didn't try it, but Abby and Daddy did.

Orange-alicious!

We bought this chair I've been admiring on Cragislist for the past 2 weeks today. It's going to go in our living room. I love it.

Walking to the park

The weather has been getting better & better so Abby and I went to the park yesterday.

Dandelion wishes....



Pretties....

My container garden

I started up my container garden last week in the hopes that we won't have anymore overnight frosts in our area.  It includes flowers, tomatoes, banana peppers and Josh's salad bowl. All the non-edibles have been fertilized so hopefully they will get more bountiful & beautiful as time goes on.











The pepper plant was already very well started when I bought it. It won't be long until we are enjoying some of the peppers.



Our deck totally needs a power washing. I'm hoping that our association will repaint our porches so that I don't have to do ours.
Some changes that I'd like to make are:
*a new door mat. Ours is so faded.
*adding a little more to the container garden like basil and some more flowers.
*replace chair pads & possibly repaint our chairs because there is some paint chipping.
*make a solar mason jar light for our table using this method.

Sofa City Sweetheart!

After much debate and a lot of sitting on sofas, we finally made a choice.  I'm so excited to have comfy seating instead of our couch which due to being broken both hurts your back and bites you in the butt. Last night we placed our order for the Karlstad sofa and footstool from IKEA. We picked the dark brown colored slipcover.  I love that it has a slipcover because we can wash it or change it out later on if we want to/need to. These are the pieces we bought.




We plan to push the footstool against the sofa for that chaise-y feel, like so.

Morton Arboretum

Yesterday Josh and I went to Morton Arboretum to enjoy the gorgeous weather and the spring colors. These are some of my favorite photos that we took yesterday.