Happy 33rd Birthday to my old man!

 Tyler turned 33 this year and he looks better than ever! We celebrated the day by working, working, and more working. Ok, so maybe just a little exaggeration. He woke up to a tasty breakfast, accompanied by a shipley's donut for dessert. He then opened his first gift, a lulu lemon sweatshirt. Tyler LOVES lulu lemon and has way more clothes from there than I do.

He went to work and to his surprise I stopped by on my way to work to deliver him and his office an ice cream cake from Culver's - His favorite ice cream.

After work I surprised him with dinner at our favorite restaurant, Uchi's. It is absolutely amazing. I really have no words to describe it. Tyler and I are not big "foodies" but the food at Uchi's is an out of this world experience. If you ever come to Houston, go there!

After dinner we came home and he opened his last present - a sweater from his other favorite store, Nordstrom. Haha, maybe it's my favorite store but I've converted him to buy everything from there instead of the salvation army or consignment stores.

I have a silly husband

I have a silly husband....but I think we all knew that. This is Tyler having the time of his life juicing. BTW, I think this is the worst chore possible. It takes forever to prep the veggies, then juice them, and THEN clean up. However, I love the final product. So clean and healthy.

Prego

Here's about the only picture I've taken while being pregnant. I got huge so fast. This is only at 3 months! I need to take another picture since I'm almost 5 months but can't seem to get up enough courage. I am exploding!

My mother-in-law gave me this book titled "Pregnancy Sucks". It is hilarious! Although there are many great things that come with pregnancy it honestly does suck getting fat, nauseous, tired, and not to even mention the rude awakening I'm in for on delivery day. It was fun to read and I couldn't put it down. It was refreshing to hear the truth from a woman who has actually gone through pregnancy rather than a male doctor who has not had the privilege to bear a child.

One day I was feeling extra obese. I went to get the mail and found the lovely gym advertisement of an overweight person with rolls of you know what. Haha! The picture captured everything I was feeling. I couldn't pass it up and had to take a picture of it.

This was my first adventure in a maternity store. I was DYING when I saw the foam "bump" to try on with your clothes. We both thought it was hilarious. Of course the first thing Tyler had to do was try it on. He looks so good prego! Too bad men can't do it for us. By the way, I feel in love with A Pea in the Pod maternity store. Ok, not that I'm really in love with maternity clothes, I was just ecstatic when I actually found some cute and comfortable pants. I spent an arm and a leg for them but they are worth every penny!!

Christmas Eve/Christmas Day

We stayed with Whitney and Kory for Christmas this past year. Mostly because it is so fun to watch kids on Christmas wake up with the excitement that Santa Clause came. And, because we love the Jackson's! We started of the night by Tyler getting Annie hyper. Go figure. For the future, Tyler is not allowed to play with our kids on Christmas Eve. He is commanded to be the most boring parent ever! I guess the alternative is the famous Chamberlain "purple medicine" trick. All the sudden our child is "sick" and needs a little something to help them sleep. haha, thanks mom for the secret. 

Annie loves her uncle Tyler. But then again, who doesn't?

Brotherly love. Every time these two boys get together, this is the result.

Having fun on Christmas Eve building a train set for Annie.

Christmas morning! Whitney sure looks cute for getting such little sleep.

This picture explains her all too well.

The result of Christmas....I'm sure this was the scene in many households that day!

Until next year Christmas!!! Can't wait for another good year. Hopefully the best year yet!

Annie Kaye

We were able to go to Utah for Christmas last year. Probably the last trip for a while since baby will be born this year and finances change. Vacations are so expensive as is and I'm sure adding a baby in the mix won't make it easier.

We were able to attend my nieces dance recital. We rarely see our nieces and nephews so it was fun to spend some time with Annie Kaye on her special day. This was her very first dance recital. We got there as soon as they were lining up and to our surprise, thinking she didn't even remember our names, she nudged her friend and pointed to us saying "LOOK! Those are my friends!" She was so excited to see us.

There is something so sweet about little girls in tutu's trying to dance but can't remember a thing they're doing. Her class was so adorable. Annie definitely was the leader of the pack and demonstrated each move before the others could even process what was happening.

We love you Annie! Can't wait to see you at the next recital

Holiday Concert 2012

Next came these little rascals....my students! Here are a few pictures from our Holiday Concert back in December. These kids work so incredibly hard and am so proud of them. It's always so stressful working up to a concert and I get so stressed out, making a mean teacher. But, when all is said and done and when the concert is over, I am the happiest teacher out there.

Where to begin?

So many things to blog about and so little time! I just got home from work and am absolutely exhausted. Must be the cute baby in my belly that drains all my energy. Or, it could be the 50 children I teach each week.  It's so terrible of me but I haven't blogged since last July! So much has happened and I want to blog about everything....just one a day (or month!) at a time though.

So much has happened since July. Probably the biggest news is my small little family is expanding! We are expecting a baby boy in June 2013. Couldn't be more excited about that. I'll blog later how the experience has been so far. But for now, let's back up. As I have mentioned before, Tyler and I bought our first home this past summer. We have loved making it OUR home and have learned a ton of little things along the way. Things you wouldn't learn living in an apartment - something we have both done for a very long time! One of the first purchases we wanted was to buy a BBQ. However, other purchases took precedence over another way of cooking our food. We felt we could wait to add that convenience. To our surprise, my parents gave us a BBQ for Christmas!!! yeah! We couldn't be more thrilled.

This is taken on our very petite back patio. Even though it's tiny we fell in love with it when we saw the house. And yes, this picture is taken in December! Summer all year long here :) ok, so it's not so fun after all. I just want to make it sound awesome so we'd get more visitors. Our door is always open.

While Tyler BBQ'd our first meal, I enjoyed myself in the front yard. And yes, once again, this is December! I love how green our yard gets even in the winter. This was our first time trimming trees and bushes. It ended up looking ok but I could definitely use some lessons.

I believe I was 3 months pregnant in this picture. The funny thing is I thought I was HUGE when Tyler was secretly taking this picture and I was so upset. Haha, little did I know, the worst was yet to come. And still, the worst is yet to come. I am so dreading the second half of my pregnancy!

Happy 40th Heath!

My brother in law, Heath, turned 40 last month and we surprised him with a fun weekend in Austin. They live in Dallas so we met them in Austin - a nice in the middle meeting spot. It was a much needed vacation for all of us. We floated the San Marcos river, shopped 'til we dropped, and fed our faces with WAY too much food. 

Here we are at the most delicious (& expensive) restaurant we have ever eaten at - Uchiko's. Seriously, it was the best food I have ever tried. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  I have never eaten food of that caliber before. The best part....desert. Sweet polenta ice cream. My only regret -we shared it. I need my own next time!

 Don't mind me, I'm just cooking my  steak on my very own hot rock. 

Compliments of the San Marcos River. 

No vacation in Austin is complete without spending a whole day at the Pottery Barn outlet. Dangerous.

My most favorite find. Originally $800. My price - $190. Thank you discount! Just reaping the benefits of working there. Now I need a job at Nordstrom to make my life complete!

I've been keeping an eye out for this piece. Found it!

Thank you Hill's for such a fun vacation. Wish we lived in the same city so we can always be on vacation :)

So behind!

Can't believe I haven't blogged in almost 2 months! So much has happened. First things first, we bought a home! So exciting. We have loved every bit of it and can't wait until we're all finished moving in. The home search was quite labor intensive for us. Tyler and I take forever (and I really mean FOREVER!) to make decisions and have to check out all our options before deciding. It took us 3 months of seeing over 40 homes to finally finding the perfect one. The second we walked in the front door we knew this was the house we want. It took us a full day to really decide on the offer we wanted to put in. We finally decided and put in our offer. Sadly, the realtor immediately got back to us letting us know the sellers had already accepted another offer earlier that day! Tyler and I were crushed. We then decided we want to rent apartments for the rest of our lives! We were so sick of the home buying process. A few weeks later we received the best email ever - an email from our realtor letting us know the house we wanted went back on the market!!! Tyler and I wasted no time and immediately put in our offer. Within a few hours the sellers accepted and the house was finally ours!

Here we are signing our lives away!

WE NEED VISITORS! COME TO TEXAS!

we.love.sunday's.

Sunday game of Yahtzee by the pool. Yep, Yahtzee. You'd think we were old fogey's but that's the only 2 player game we had! Anyone have 2 player games up their sleeve? Or better yet, anyone want to come visit?! Oh and bring a camera because we need one!

Ready, Set, JUICE!

I've had it. Had it with headaches. Had it with no energy. Had it with nausea. Had it with the dizziness. Had it with just about everything! I have seriously tried everything to get rid of this pain. Seven years worth. I am convinced that it might be the food that I'm putting in my body. Ok, halfway convinced. I have been reading a lot about juicing and healing and wonder if juicing might help. So, I bought a juicer and decided to do a 10 day juice cleanse. That way I can detox my body and then add each food group slowly in to my diet. Then I can hopefully target what it is that makes my head hurt. Tyler is gracious enough to do it with me! Tomorrow is officially our first full day but we decided to do a tester tonight.

I let Tyler give it a shot....

And of course he had to give me his best face. That's why I love him. There's never a dull moment when Tyler's in the room. He makes a crappy situation in to something fun. 

I was going to post the recipe we tried but ended up not liking it. There was too much fruit. Not to mention, Tyler was in charge of reading the recipe and he left out an important ingredient - coconut water.  That would have helped it out tremendously. So with that said, I'm in charge from now on! 

Excited for day 1 tomorrow!

Caught you!

Hilarious! So the other day I wondered where Tyler went. I knew he said he was going to shave but couldn't find him in our spacious 900sqft apartment. Until I saw the light on our deck. I looked out the blinds and this is what I found! He attached my handheld mirror to a cord hanging from our storage closet! haha Pretty creative but white trash at the same time. To his credit, he said he didn't want to get hair all over our bathroom floor. Instead he decided it was better to sweep it off our deck on to our neighbors deck :) 

We love baby Amelia

I think we need one of these.

Amelia May Buhanan

Bike hunt

I have been wanting a bike for so long! It didn't have to be expensive - preferably as cheap as possible. We looked at Walmart, Target, and Academy. I ended up going with one from Target. And the best part was it was only $49! It was actually $200 but we got lucky and paid basically pennies. It's not the best quality, but hey, it works. 

Tyler wants one now, too!

Free time

What do we do in Houston when we have some free time? Yep, Croquet (or "la croix" as I once called it). We usually go to a park - either Discovery Green or Memorial Park. We don't really know all the rules but end up making them all up! We still have a lot of fun with friends and love having competitions. I love playing games! I've been wanting to play bocce ball and badminton so badly. Can't wait to have a backyard to play!

The joys of teaching

Recent student quotes:

Student: Is your husband in Italy?

Me: No, Why?

Student: Because you're happier when he's here!

Student: I am having a hard time rememberizing this song.

Me: Did you get to memorizing this song?

Student: Sort of, but some of it is still soggy.

Last week one of my cute students made this for me. Thought it was cute how she spelled my new last name. I have a feeling it will be spelled like this the rest of my life!

I was struggling with bad behavior in some of my group classes. I got fed up and asked some of the good kids what to do with those who misbehave. This what they came up with!

These little kiddos make me laugh each and every day. However, at the same time, they can sure make me lose my patience! I guess this can serve as preparation for when I have kids of my own :)