I never thought I'd say...

Do you ever say a weird sentence and think, "I never thought I'd put those specific words together,"? It happens to me at work. Here are a few that I have noticed recently and their context:
- The lizard is not a tissue. (To a kid sticking a squishy lizard toy up his runny nose)
-Put the penguin on the tractor. (Some arctic animals ended up with the farm set)
-Is the mustache under your leg? (Mr. Potato Head's pieces were all over the place)
I will have to keep up with sentences like these for a volume II on this topic!

surprise

Last night I had to work late and Marcus suprised me with roses, chocolate, and a sweet card. What a great husband!

Happy Birthday Marcus!

Marcus's birthday wasn't ruined after all. I woke up on saturday and my stomach bug was gone. Last night we went to The Gaucho, a Brazillian restaurant with lots of meat on swords. It was good and I even felt like eating. After dinner we went to Cory and Brittany's for dessert. Today he got to open his presents. Since he guessed his first two gifts (a new Bible and a cable college football package), I also threw in a Wii game and an XBox game for him. What a lucky guy! To top it all off, tonight was the BBQ cookoff at church. He loves meat and video games, so I think he is pretty happy.

At The Gaucho

Sharing grilled pineapple with Elijah

Eating ribs at the church BBQ cookoff

yuck

This has not been the best week. Tuesday I lost my voice, which is really inconvenient when your job is to talk to kids all day. I don't have any paid time off yet at work, so I made it through. It only lasted for about 2 days so it wasn't horrible. Today I woke up with what I think is a stomach virus, but at first I thought it wasn't too bad. I went to work, but only made it through one session and came home. I have been laying on the couch all day which means I am fairly sick, because I usually want to be up doing things. I am finally starting to feel a little better now. Marcus's birthday is sunday and I still haven't done any shopping for him or run the errands I needed to do today. I really hope tomorrow is better and I don't want to ruin Marcus's birthday. :(

observations

This has been another not too exciting week, but here are a few observations I have made (some of them are not new observations):
1. Mysterious puddles disgust me. At church last night there was a puddle on our table and Marcus kept putting his arm really close to it. Gross! The chances it was just water were probably good, but you never know.
2. I love kids with funny names. With my job and the population I work with I get to hear alot of exciting ones. Two good ones I've heard this week are Pharoah and Realitee. Don't worry, they aren't my patients so I am not breaking HIPPA.
3.I really don't like driving on interstates. I had to drive a ton for work today and now I am really tense. I think I spent more time driving than working with kids.
4. I am bad at surprising people. Marcus already knows what both of his birthday presents are, so I am trying to come up with one more.

I love Sunday afternoons

Sunday afternoons are one of my favorite times of the week. After having lunch with our friends from church, Marcus and I come home and put our pajamas back on. Then I cut coupons and organize them (it doesn't sound exciting, but it's fun to me) :) and then take a nap for two or three hours. I always try to do my shopping and cleaning on Saturday so that Sunday can be completely relaxing. To top it all off, tonight is homemade ice cream night at church!

some websites I like

Here is a list of some of the websites I look at when I have free time - like today. I read some more often than others. Most people already know about alot of these, but I thought it might be fun to list them anyway.
www.caringbridge.org/visit/nowell
I don't know this family personally, but received the link in an email foward. I have been reading this every day for several months. I am fascinated by premature babies and it makes me so happy to see the progress that this sweet baby has made. Her parents seem like great people and their family still needs lots of prayers.
http://www.hungry-girl.com/ This is a fun website and you can sign up to get daily emails from them. They have good recipes and some useful dieting tips.
www.tripadvisor.com Marcus and I LOVE to talk about where our next vacation will be. This website is full of reviews and pictures of resorts and hotels.
www.chowhound.com This is pretty much the trip advisor of restaurants. It has helped us to find some cool places in Tulsa that we might not have known about otherwise.
www.allrecipes.com I love this. I have found some of my all time favorite recipes here. Try the California Chicken Spaghetti and the Broiled Parmesan Tilapia. Yum!
www.thenest.com This has some good advice on finances, decorating, cooking, etc. -all the stuff newlyweds need to know.
www.coupons.com These coupons don't seem to change very often, but who doesn't like printable coupons?
www.sammoon.com I love going to Sam Moon in Dallas. It is so fun to look at the cheap purses and jewelry and even better to not have to make the trip.

nothing new

I haven't blogged in awhile and really don't have alot to say. Marcus and I have both been so tired this week. We have basically had dinner, watched the Olympics, and gone to bed early every night this week. I do have a cute quote from work today: I was working on answering "when" questions with a little girl and asked "When do you go to the doctor"? She replied "When you are dead". My kids say so many cute things throughout the day, but I usually forget the majority of them. I also had a little boy wipe his green and runny nose on my pants, so I had a lovely stain on my thigh for most of the day. That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to post soon.

meeting baby Claire

Last weekend I got to meet Colleen's baby Claire for the first time. She traveled all the way from North Caroline to Arkansas to meet her family and friends. She was so tiny and cute. She slept most of the time that I was there, but that gave her Mommy and me some great shopping time. Here are some pictures Colleen took. I look super-awkward and poor Claire looks scared in the first one.

I didn't get any new pictures of Colleen and me, so this may call for another old-school post.

not a bad day

Today was one of those days where lots of little things nearly drove me crazy, but when I think about it nothing that bad happened. Alot of the annoying stuff was just my clumsiness which I should be used to. I always drop stuff and run into walls and doorways and have several bruises to prove it. I probably should have gotten physical therapy or something when I was little to work on balance and coordination! This morning I got to my first daycare and things went great with the first kid. Then I got to her brother (whose behavior was horrible last week). While I was setting up a game for us to play, he ran to the cubbies, grabbed scissors and cut the blinds (as in on the window). I was trying to run over to stop him, but he is a speedy little thing. Then he kept licking his hands and smearing spit everywhere. Needless to say, he did not get a sticker today. This afternoon I worked with an 11 year old boy who said speech is for babies, refused to play any games or look at any pictures cards, put his head in his shirt, and told me about twenty times that I was making him miss a movie in his class. After leaving his daycare, I was stuck in traffic and didn't even get back to the office until 6. I was shaking and so tired by the time I finally got in the car to come home.

When I got home, Marcus made my day alot better. He ordered pizza for us so I wouldn't have to cook. He also took out the trash, put up laundry, and emptied the dishwasher. Now I feel much better. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little more smoothly or at least I will manage to stay calm.

the perfect store for me...

I had the chance to see another great friend from college, Colleen today. It has been wonderful to see friends from Harding two weeks in a row! I went to meet her sweet baby Claire and we even got to go shopping. We found the coolest store near her parents' house in Van Buren, AR. It is an entire store of Target closeout stuff. They have clothes, bedding, electronics, and all kinds of other stuff. You have to kind of dig to find good stuff and most of the clothes were either extra small or really big, but it was alot of fun. I bought a very cool floor lamp, a little planner for my purse, and two packages of bubbles for work for just over $13. I was quite excited and the lamp is very cool. I just hope it works :). More on my visit with baby Claire next time.

top rack only

I have a couple of different water bottles I take to work and sip on throughout the day. One of my favorites had a "top rack only" warning on it for the dishwasher. Well, it was too tall to fit on the top rack, so I usually washed it by hand. On a few occassions I have not played by the rules and washed it on the bottom rack of the dishwasher. I have never had any problems - until now. Yesterday I was about to unload the dishwasher and I smelled burned plastic and the botton rack would not pull out. My lovely bottle lid had fallen through the rack and melted onto the heating element. I had to cut the lid from the bottle, because it was attached by a little plastic piece and then pull as hard as I could to pry it off the heating element. I know that dishwashers get really hot, but this is crazy. Here is how the poor lid ended up.
All the dishes that were in there with the water bottle smell like burned plastic too. It's great. I have learned my lesson about following the dishwasher's rules.