Happy Halloween!

Libby couldn't wait for today to get here. She was SO excited about getting to dress up like a princess at school! I took this morning off from work and volunteered in Libby's class from 7:30 until noon and I had a lot of fun. We still did our regular centers with math, reading, and writing but everything was Halloween themed and we also made two edible Halloween crafts. The children had a great time and I was happy to get the chance to help out in class. When I left at noon I had to go in to work. It was a busy afternoon but now I'm home and we are about to watch a movie. Ryan went by Blockbuster and rented The Happening so we are about to watch that. After the movie I need to finish some laundry and then get packed because tomorrow four of us are going on our Fabulous Fall Girls Weekend and it takes me a while to pack because I bring just about everything that I own! :-) I'll upload some pictures and email out the link soon of Libby this morning and some from her class. I thought it was cute that Libby dressed as a princess and Keegan (the boy who sits next to her in class) dressed as a frog. Libby didn't kiss him to see if he'd turn in to a prince, though. :-)

Chocolate apples!

Libby and I love to make chocolate apples each year before Halloween (we definitely prefer chocolate apples over caramel apples!). I had intended on us making the apples over last weekend since we were home for four days but somehow we just didn't have time anywhere in that four days to make the apples. We were at the grocery store yesterday so we got the apples and chocolate chips but we definitely didn't have time to make them last night. I promised her that we could do the apples tonight. We finally got home tonight at 6:45pm, had dinner, then started making the apples. It was a rushed process tonight so we get the credit for the experience tonight and not our artistic ability. After we made the apples Libby couldn't wait for the chocolate to set (as usual!) so she took her apple and ate the candy pieces then licked off all of the chocolate and then ate her apple. :-) After we took the picture I put the apples in the refrigerator so that the chocolate would set. We finally finished with the apples at 8:30 (which is Libby's bedtime!) and we headed upstairs and Libby did her homework and took a quick shower and finally got in to bed at 9:30pm. It was a busy, busy day from start to finish!

Libby's pumpkin masterpiece

Libby had fun carving her pumpkin!!! She drew the face and I cut it out because I wanted to make sure that she ended the project with the same number of fingers that she started with. :-) It didn't take long and that beautiful pumpkin became a glowing jack-o-lantern!

HSM 3

Well the movie that Libby has been anxiously waiting for finally opened on Friday. We were going to go on Friday and didn't make it but I knew that I had no choice but to take Libby one day this weekend before she went back to school (this was a four day weekend for us!). So today turned out to be the big day for her. My sister wanted to take her daughter, too, so the four of us went together. Libby L-O-V-E-D the movie!!! Absolutely loved it. Heck, I have to admit that even I liked the movie. :-)

Ryan's mom brought by a surprise for us today...she brought by this big ol' pumpkin for Libby to carve (I never carve my pumpkins...I'm not much in to jack-o-lanterns - I prefer my beautiful pumpkins to be untouched). So, tomorrow there will be pictures of Libby's masterpiece! :-)

63 - 5 !!!!!!!

Today was the homecoming game and the Gators played the Kentucky Wildcats. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch most of the game because I was guilted in to attending this family thing with relatives that I haven't seen since I was younger than Libby! The Gators had no trouble with this game at all...they won 63 to 5!!

The family thing wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I didn't recongnize anyone there besides my two uncles, my grandmother and my sister and there were about 60 people there. The only way people knew who I was for me to give my lineage! There were about 15 other children there and Libby finally warmed up to them enough to play with them and she had a really fun time. So, all in all something that I was dreading turned in to a pretty good day after all!

University of Florida Homecoming

Today was the University of Florida homecoming parade. As I've mentioned before homecoming is a B.I.G. deal here in Gainesville. All schools are out, the university is closed, and half of the businesses in Gainesville close, too. The homecoming parade is today and Libby and I had all intentions on going. However, it started raining last night and pretty much hasn't stopped. It's wet, nasty, soggy, etc. outside! So, we decided to stay home. What was supposed to be a fun day of being out enjoying the homecoming parade turned in to a day of chores. :-( But I'm nearly done...all the cleaning, vacumming and moping has been and I'm now half done with the laundry. At least that gets it out of the way and I won't have to worry about it tomorrow!! Tonight our friends Jordan and Amanda are coming over and Ryan is cooking dinner for them to thank them for keeping Libby for us when Ryan took me up to see the fall leaves Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Dillard, GA and Highlands, NC

We went to visit Dillard, GA and Highlands, NC this past weekend. Ryan took me there for our second anniversary and it was the perfect place to visit for some beautiful fall weather and pretty autumn leaves. We had a wonderful trip. It was sooooo nice to get some alone time together!!! We never ever get that much alone time together. It was just a really, really, really great trip. Ahhh!

I've been having an amazing time since Friday which started off my long weekend of fun when Karen and Debs spent the night. Today I was back at work trying to get caught up on a few things and I'll be at work tomorrow until 2:30 and then I will go pick up Libby and take her to her ballet class. Ryan has a softball game tomorrow night and we may or may not go because it's an 8:50 game. Usually we don't go to the late games but Libby is out of school on Friday so we may go tomorrow night. School is out for the University of Florida's homecoming - which is a HUGE deal around here. Schools are out, daycares are closed, some businesses are closed, it's crazy. I'll take Libby on Friday to see the homecoming parade and she's hoping that we can score some tickets to see High School Musical 3 Friday afternoon. :-)

Pumpkin weekend!!

This has already been a really great weekend!! :-) Last night my two best friends Debs and Karen came to spend the night with me. Debs brought some pumpkin fudge and Debs, Karen, Ryan, and I all tried it Friday night and it was decadent. Absoulely amazing!!! Bright and early Saturday morning (okay, as bright and early as I want to get on a Saturday morning!) our friend Kristina met us at my apartment at 7:45am and we headed out to Starbucks for a quick breakfast. Debs and I both orderd the pumpkin spice latte (our favorite during the fall) and I got a pumpkin cream cheese muffin that was just divine. From there we headed out to the McIntosh Fall Festival - about 20 minutes outside of Gainesville. I L.O.V.E the McIntosh Fall Festival...I go to it every year and although I start celebrating/decorating for autumn on September 1st this is my first "official" fall activity. We walked around the festival for about two and a half hours and we all found some great stuff to buy. After lunch we headed back to Gainesville and had lunch at this great little place that we love - Mildred's. We had some delicious quiche and some great potaTOE soup (hee hee, Karen, Debs, and Kristina will get that because of what we saw at the McIntosh Fall Festival today). It was so delicious! Then we ordered a slice of pumpkin cheesecake for the four of us to share and it was as delicious as it looks - and you can see from the picture above that it looks yummy!! :-)

After lunch Kristina had to go pick up a birthday present and Debs had to head back to Jacksonville and Karen and I headed to Libby's school because they had their fall carnival today which is the big PTA fundraiser for the year. Each class works a booth and our class was going to have the dunk tank. Karen came with me to the carnival to help out at the booth, too. We got there thinking that we wouldn't be able to miss the dunk tank but there was no dunk tank to be found!! We found out that the dunk tank was broken so instead our class had the sponge toss. Teachers volunteered to have soaking wet sponges thrown at their face for 30 minutes at at time. Karen and I got there at 12:30 and were signed up to work until 3:00pm. Some of those children have an arm on them...they were throwing the sponge as hard as they could at the teachers and it was stinging the teachers faces. I kept trying to tell the children to just smack the teacher and not hurt them but some of those children seemed to be letting out some pent up frustration that they had with some teachers! :-)

What a great weekend so far!!

Pumpkin patch

Today we finally made it to the pumpkin patch!!! We went at about the worst time of day in regards to picture taking. I picked up Libby from school at 1:45 and we went straight to the pumpkin patch so the sun was high and B.R.I.G.H.T while we were taking pictures. That coupled with the fact that she was worn out from school and not exactly in the mood to take pictures and we ended up with pictures from the pumpkin patch but not that "perfect shot" that I had my heart set on. But we had fun there and she picked out a few small pumpkins (her favorites) and then it was time to head to ballet class. It was a busy day but a good day!

Evaluation

My performance evalutation at work was supposed to be yesterday but it didn't happen because everything was just too busy. We finally had the time to do the review today and of course mine was EXCELLENT! I knew it would be excellent but reviews always make me nervous. :-) Not one single complaint...just praise, praise, praise about how much I do, how helpful I am, and how responsible and dependable I am. Didn't we all already know that? :-)

I have to work half a day tomorrow so I don't get to volunteer in Libby's class :-( but Libby and I have plans to go to the pumpkin patch after I pick her up from school tomorrow and before ballet class. So, unless it rains again I should have a picture of my little pumpkin in the pumpkin patch tomorrow! :-)

Columbus Day

Today is Columbus Day which is a federal holiday. You would THINK that since the Federal Reserve Bank is closed for federal holidays that financial institutions would be closed, too. We can only close when Fed is closed so federal holidays are very important to us! :-) However, these days a lot of financial institutions decide to remain open on Columbus Day. Ryan's bank where he works is one of those financial institutions that chooses to remain open on Columbus Day. SunState where I work chooses to close our offices but it certainly isn't a day off for us. Honestly, though, I would MUCH rather be at work all day than have to sit all day doing what we have to do on Training Day. We have our Training Day each year on Columbus Day. It is the longest most boring day of the year for me every year - and today was my 10th year attending Training Day (I can't believe how long I've been employed at SunState!). Training Day is the one day a year when all employees from all of our offices meet at once at a conference center and we go over all of our mandatory compliance training. Our attorney came to remind us how important it is to follow all the rules that are set in place by the federal gov't for us to follow...the consequences could be as stiff as a fine of 10 million dollars and 30 years in federal prison - federal prision as in no option for parole!!! Most of those rules are set in place for front line staff (tellers and member service reps) but some of those rules apply to my position in the Accounting department as well. I always follow the rules, run all saftey checks, and document all verification but it's still scary to think of a fine of 10 million dollars and 30 years in federal prison! :-) They also had presentations on I.T. security (which was nothing new at all) and a presentation to remind us that drugs don't belong in the workplace. Darn! Just when I thought of starting an addiction to drugs! :-) We are usually there from 8:00am until 5:00pm but today we got out at 4:15pm which was a wondeful treat since we were all expecting to finish with the compliance training at 5:00pm. I picked up Libby at 4:30pm and she was VERY happy to see me walking through the door early to pick her up.

Tomorrow it's back to work and time for our bi-annual performance evaluations....keep your fingers crossed that it's a good one for me! :-)

51 - 21 !!!!!!!!!!!!

My wonderful Florida Gators played LSU last night. It was a night game at home - which to me are the best games. I LOVE The Swamp at night. It is just so beautiful and the energy is always electrifying. It's just wonderful. We didn't go to the game but I just wanted to mention how amazing night games are for the Gators. So, LSU came to town ranked #3 in the country....but they certainly didn't leave that way!! The Gators ran all over LSU and won the game 51 to 21. It was wonderful!!! So, LSU left Gainesville ranked #13...ouch! :-) My beloved Gators are now ranked #5 in the nation...ahhh, how sweet it is!! :-)

The game was finally over around midnight and then we then had to drive home from where we were watching the game. We couldn't take the normal way home because I live in the area of Gainesville that is close to campus and close to where all the fans go to either get of town or get to their hotel rooms so my side of town gets VERY packed just before and just after the games. It seems that every single one of the 90,000 fans that were in attendance last night all converged near where I live so we had to take a very strange way home but I was lucky enough to be able to bypass most traffic.

GOOOOOO GATORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

October 11, 2008

Where I work we have a monthly lunch celebration and the way it works is that each person in on the committee twice a year. Twice a year you have to come up with an idea/theme, set up the room the day of the lunch, get the food ready, and when it's all over you have to clean up. It's not a bad price to pay when you get to sit back and enjoy the work of others for the other 10 months of the year. I'm always on the October committee because everyone at my work knows that October is my favorite month of the year. So, yesterday we did the October luncheon and the theme was a Fall Celebration (I'm sure you all saw that one coming!) :-) I was in charge of desserts so I made three of them (it's a good thing that we get reimbursed for everything that we put in to putting the luncheon together!!)...I ended up baking for FIVE HOURS Thursday night. The last thing that I made was finally finished at 1:15am. I finally made it to bed Thursday night/Friday morning at 1:30am and it was time to get up at 5:45am. Ugh. My the end of the day yesterday I was starting to get delirious from lack of sleep! :-)

October 9, 2008

Today when my alarm clock went off I convinced myself that it was actually Saturday and I went back to sleep. Miraculously I woke up 20 minutes later and realized that it as actually Thursday morning so I shot up and got ready and got Libby ready. We went to school and I started volunteering right away. It was a normal day volunteering and then I leaft at 12:15 to go home to get some lunch. I was back at school at 1:45 to pick up Libby and the plan had been that we would go to the pumpkin patch between the time that I picked up Libby from school and when we had to be at ballet. However, the skies were black when I picked up Libby. We made it to our car just in time for it to start absolutely storming. So, it looks like the pumpkin patch is off until next Thursday. :-(

Ballet went well and after that we came home. Ryan's softball game was cancelled because of the rain, too, so we got home about 4:30pm today. We are never home for that long on a Thursday! :-)

October 8, 2008

As promised there hasn't been anything interesting going on this week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were all the same same day just played out three separate times. Libby is now in bed and we are watching Iron Man...we saw it at the movies but Ryan liked the movie so we are watching it again tonight.

Tomorrow I'll be volunteering in Libby's class from 7:30am until about 12:15. I'll leave for an hour to go home and then I'll be back at school at 1:45pm to pick her up. Usually we go to the park after school but tomorrow we are planning on going to the pumpkin patch so that I can get my annual pictures of my sweetie pie sitting with all of the pumpkins!!! After the pumpkin patch we are off to ballet and we should hopefully be home by 5:00. So, hopefully tomorrow I'll have some pictures to post. :-)

Tomorrow is Ryan's niece Deandra's birthday...she is turning 6 tomorrow. She is only nine months younger than Libby but about half of Libby's size! :-) The picture above was taken on Mother's Day this year. Happy birthday Deandra!

Today was our anniversary - well, one of our anniversaries. :-) Today was the two year anniversary of our first date!!! We went to church with Ryan's parents and then after church they took us out to lunch to celebrate our anniversary and his parents told us that they are ready for us to get married. How hilarious. They are going to have to keep waiting a bit on that one! :-) It will happen - eventually - so for now they just need to be patient.

After lunch Ryan went over to his friend Brett's house to watch the football games. Yes, it's our anniversary but I know how much he loves his games so he went over there for a few hours. I came home and finished some laundry and then watched one of my Christmas movies that I have on my DVR...I should be watching something Halloween-ish, but I was in the mood for Christmas today! :-)

Libby came home at 6:00 (yeah!!!) and we made a quick trip to the grocery store, came home and had dinner, gave Libby a bath, let her read for the 20 minutes that she reads each day, and then it was bedtime. Libby played for a while with Ryan but she likes to treat him like an amusement park...she climbs on him, has him swing her around, toss her around and she just loves it. She wanted to do that tonight but with Ryan's broken finger he couldn't roughhouse too much with her tonight so she was a little disappointed. Now she is in bed sleeping soundly and I'm finally finished with everything that I needed to get done so now I'm just relaxing for a bit before I head off to bed to start my busy week!

Go Gators!!!!

My beloved Gators just beat Arkansas 38-7!! The game started off pretty shaky but in the second half my Gators finally showed up and started actually playing the game. Last week wasn't as good of a week for my Gators but I don't ever talk about games that we don't win so I'll just leave it at that. I just hope that they take the momentum from this game and practice hard all week becase we play LSU next week - at home! It's an 8:00pm game and I LOVE night games at the swamp. The Swamp (our stadium) is impressive during the day but it's absolutely beautiful at night. Ryan put in to get tickets for the game next week through his job but I'm not expecting that we'll get the tickets because that is a big game!

Other than watching the game I've spent my day doing laundry and cleaning up. Always a fun way to spend the weekend! ;-)

How sweet!

Ok, one more post today and then I'll be finished. The funny thing, though? I've thought of enough for three different posts today and I probably won't have anything to say for the next six weeks! :-)

So as I mentioned in my last post, Sunday is our 2 year anniversary. We celebrate the 5th and the 19th of every month. Ok, celebrate is probably a bit much to describe it - we acknowledge the 5th and the 19th of every month. October 5th was our first date and October 19th was when we officially declared that we were dating exclusively. :-) The story goes that Ryan faxed me at work asking "Will you be my girlfriend check yes or no" :-) So, today since our anniversary is on Sunday I received a fax that said "How about 2 more years Yes or No". I got the biggest smile when I saw that...it was just very cute of him to send that. So, I printed it out, put a giant check mark in the yes box and faxed it right back to him.

How cute is he??? :-)

Broken finger

In my massive first blog I forgot to mention the news from last night's softball game! Ryan had decided that he wasn't going to play last night because he didn't feel like playing a late game that started at 8:50pm. However, at 7:30pm he received a phone call that they were short on players and really needed Ryan to play so he decided to play. He went to the game and came home with a broken middle finger on his right hand! Someone threw in the ball from the outfield and Ryan was playing shortstop and the ball hit his hand and his finger is swollen to about four times the size of his other fingers! The weird thing...he had to go up to bat at the top of the next inning and he couldn't use his right hand much since his finger was hurting to badly so he had to over-compensate with his left hand and he ended up hitting an inside the park homerun - with a broken finger! He came home and showed me his finger and I tried to get him to at the very least ice his finger but his is S.U.C.H A G.U.Y!!!!!! He refused to even ice his finger! Today he has his finger in a splint and it still looks like a sausage is attached to the middle of his hand. We are going to church with his parents on Sunday so hopefully the three of us can gang up on him and somehow get him to go in and get x-rays on his hand.

Speaking of Sunday...it's our 2 year anniversary! I can't believe that is has already been two years! :-)

Ok, so I may start blogging...who knows. :-) I really don't find that my life is that interesting but I know that I like to keep up with my friends through their blogs so there may just be people who would like to keep up with me through my own blog.

I'm not making any promises...I'm nearly certain that I will not keep up with this but for today, at least, I'm posting an entry! :-)

It was a long week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were the usual - up at 5:45am, get ready for work, get Libby up and ready for school, give her breakfast, pack her lunch and head out to go to school at 7:10. Walk her to class and then get back to my car at 7:30 to head to work. Arrive at work at 8:00 and work non-stop until 6:00pm. Leave work at 6:00 and pick up Libby from her afterschool daycare by 6:20pm. Get home around 6:45 and luckily for us Ryan usually has dinner waiting for us just as we walk in the door. We have dinner and then Libby and I head upstairs to work on homework. Homework is usually finished around 8:00pm, then it's time for a bath, and then in to bed for Libby to start her reading. She reads for 20 minutes a night and by then it's 8:30pm and time for Libby to go to bed. I always lay down with her and she is usually asleep by 9:00pm and that is when I start doing stuff that I have to do every night...like cleaning up, going through Libby's backpack and preparing for the next day. I usually get to bed sometime between 11:30pm and 12:30am and then it all starts again the next morning. Thursdays are a little different...I take Libby in to school at 7:30am but I stay in her classroom and volunteer. I help out until noon and then I leave school and go home or run an errand or whatever I need to quickly get done and then I'm back at school at 1:45pm to pick up Libby. Libby always likes to go to the park across the street from her school so we go there from 1:45 until she is ready to leave - usually around 2:30. Ballet starts at 3:30 so that doesn't leave us much time to get anything else done. Ballet is over at 4:15pm and then we finish up any errands we may have had for that day and then we finally get to go home and Libby gets some play time before it's time for homework and dinner. Ryan plays softball on Thursday evenings at alternating times so two out of every three weeks we head to softball sometime after dinner to watch Ryan play (each third week his game is at 8:50pm which is too late to have Libby out).

Long blog for my first time but it basically updates you on our daily life. From here I will just now be able to post little blurbs about what is going on...