Things I've learned in the past week...

So over the past week I have had a few pieces of wisdom come to me that I thought I would share :)

-You can't hang 20 wet t-shirts on a shower curtain rod...it will fall down and make a big mess!

-Life is about compromises

-I'm married to a local celebrity, I just need to accept it! :)

-No splash bleach is so much better than the runny kind...

-Texas heat is no fun!

-My husband can sleep through ANYTHING! (i.e. the shower curtain rod and clothes falling down)

-Never go to bed mad and always say "I love you" before you fall asleep

-I am disliked by some, probably even hated by a few, but loved by so many that the before-mentioned don't matter

-It's not what is said but how it's said that can really hurt

-People are not always what they seem at first

-I have more patience than I gave myself credit for

-Even at 27 you can ask for permission and not get your way

-Sometimes you have to realize it's not about getting what you want but what will make everyone else happy around you

-My line of work has made me very uncomfortable with certain things and people

-Being told that you look nice can make you light up inside like you never knew was possible

-Everyone needs a best friend to bring you back to reality when you feel your world is crashing down around you

-Mosquito bites are the devil!

-I really hate going over bridges...especially when you find out that a boat hit one, an accident occurred on another and when stuck on top for over an hour you can feel it sway!

A little toe-tappin' happiness:
You still need stars when you're wishin' at night
A best friend to set you right
A good laugh, warm bath
And a beautiful song you can sing along to
Good news that'll make you cry
All the little things that money can't buy
No wars, no more
Just a big rainbow outside my window


I'm sure I'll add to this as time goes on...

More wedding festivities!

So my sister-in-law got married this past weekend. It was a nice weekend to get married, hot, but nice nonetheless. They had a ceremony at home then a party after. It was beautiful, congrats to Jaclyn and Skipper. Best wishes for an amazing future together!

The James family

Me and my honey

Me and the beautiful bride

Thought for the day

Hadn't posted one of these in a while and thought today's was a good one:

"If we can get in the habit of thinking about and responding to life in a slightly less dramatic way, it can help us keep out perspective, see the bigger picture, and respond with more wisdom and equanimity."

I have been absolutely horrible this week, skipping out on my boot camp regime but I just don't feel like it. No good reason, I just am tired and don't feel like it. Jason's so sweet telling me it's ok, I work so hard and to get up every morning for 4 weeks straight at 4:00am only to rush home and very quickly get ready for an 8 hour work day; so I finally convinced myself that he was right and I did deserve a break every now and then and now was the perfect time! However, I need to remember to stay away from the fried foods! They are not good...not even in moderation!!!

It's Wednesday, that's Hump Day to many, and I wondered where that term came from...I mean I know the obvious, it's the middle of the work week. I found this for your reading pleasure:

Referring to Wednesday as "hump day” is a tradition in American English. It refers to the idea that a week — especially a work week — is like a hill. Monday and Tuesdays are days when you climb up, since they are the beginning or start of your work week. At the end of Wednesday, you’ve reached the pinnacle of the week, and your work on Thursday and Friday represents climbing down toward the weekend.

Hump day then refers specifically to that middle of the week point, where you reach the crest of your journey and begin to pace downward toward the end of the week. If you have a tedious job or just work hard, it can be comforting to reach hump day. Then, the weekend doesn’t seem so far off and nebulous as when you started work on Monday.

There is some dispute about whether Wednesday is truly hump day. Especially when the expression emerged, many people worked a six-day week, and had only the Sabbath or Sunday as a day of rest. Some suggest that in this context, Thursday would have actually been hump day. Also, if you are simply looking at the course of the week, Thursday is the fourth day of the week and in the direct middle, if your week begins on Monday. Yet, many people count the beginning of the week as Sunday, and that makes Wednesday the true middle, whether or not you are using “hump day” in reference to working.

Though many may view hump day as a very positive thing, Wednesday gets something of a bad rap at times. The rhyme that describes children born on each day describes children born on Wednesday as “full of woe.” Wednesday may be thought of as gray days, unhappy days, or unlucky days according to folk literature. Nevertheless, for many working people, the arrival of hump day is one for cheering, and whether that day is windy or gray, it still means that Friday is close at hand!

I sure hope I wasn't born on a Wednesday...

Wedding for my baby turtle

The time has finally come...my lil' was married off this weekend...tear...now it's time for babies! Hilary was the last of my lil' family to get married. It was a gorgeous wedding!

My family - Carly (gran-lil'), Hilary (lil') and me...the "big"

Me and my honey...he was so handsome!

Me and the beautiful BRIDE!!!

Jason dancing with the bride...right before she left for Hawaii!!!

The group minus a few...getting ready to send Hilary off

The beginning of the craziness

June has already started off super busy! We got back from Chicago and I had to hurry and clean the house and get it all purdified for a Premier Jewelry party. I know, I have too much, but I was a guinea pig and I got a lot of really neat things!

We (by that I mean a sorority sister and myself) are in the process of interviewing some potential new house mothers for our girls. We were thrown into it very quickly and met with some amazing ladies over the course of 3 days! Hope to have that taken care of soon!

Work has been super busy, Jason and I go pretty much the entire day now and don't speak...it's crazy to think that we used to not be able to go 30 minutes without talking, now we can go an entire day! Ahhh...young love! :) Totally joking! It's nice, it makes for good conversation at home in the evenings...that is, when he's not working late or I'm not at meetings or such. I have begun cooking a lot at home...Jason teases...calling me all domesticated and homely! Silly boy!

We finally have our yard looking super healthy and GREEN! I have flowers...yes, I actually managed to keep them alive this year! The rain has helped me out a lot in that sense, but I have pretty flowers in the front of the house! AND...my hydrangea from the wedding last year has survived, there aren't any blooms on it but it's a thriving plant and I hope to have some blooms on it by next year!

He went fishing this past weekend with a buddy of his, caught some flounder...yummy!



Yea Jason said they aren't the most flattering of fish...he did a lot of night fishing, I hung out at the pool at the Crowley's...nice relaxing weekend for us both, just what we needed!!!

Wedding this weekend...super excited for Hilary and Randy!

Go Cubs Go!

My sweet hubby had this brilliant idea to go to Chicago for a long weekend, he just had to go to a Cubs game. Me being a White Sox fan, you can imagine my excitement...especially when we got to Chicago and Jason was buying me everything under the sun in Cubs gear! It was a fun trip though, quick, but a lot of fun! I think I ate enough Chicago style pizza to last me a lifetime though! We made our rounds as quickly as we could in Chicago, visiting as much as we could.

Started off with some chocolate!!! Can't go wrong there!

Holy Cow! Then we went for dinner at Harry Carey's, after dinner we walked all over Michigan Avenue getting back to our hotel

Stopped by Buckingham Fountain...it's HUGE!

We even made a friend at the Lincoln Park Zoo :)

Parked outside the Navy Pier...guess this is how they roll in Chicago...however, notice the lil' street tires, they can't even get some good tires for these things!

We had a nice evening dinner cruise, really good food and $12 drinks...it was windy though, we tried so hard to get some good photos with the city in the background but everywhere we went it was super windy and my hair was a mess!

Their hockey team is in the playoffs, the Blackhawks...can you spot the Blackhawk in this photo?!?!

Yes, you are seeing right...we are sitting in a plexiglass box about 103 floors up from the streets of Chicago in the Sears Tower! It was AWESOME!!!

Jason and the Chicago Theater...we just had to go to it!

We made it to Wrigley Field! Harry Carey's statue outside the stadium

Jason was so excited...he has been talking about Wrigley field for as long as we've been together!

It wouldn't be a trip, for me at least, without a photo with a cop car! This guy was super nice though, he showed us a good restaurant to eat at around the ballpark!

WRIGLEY FIELD!

Jim Belushi sang in the 7th inning...again, Jason was super stoked!

We had so much fun but were ready to come home! Cubs won, the family sitting next to us laughed at us shivering, it was 72 degrees at the game, I looked up weather back in Texas and it was 96 degrees...they told us that was a nice day in Chicago, I said, "this is a cold front in Texas..." It is definitely the "windy city" though, my hair was a mess the whole time we were there! It was nice to come back to Texas...of course, once back, our first stop back was Wings...needed to get some of that Chicago out of us!

Bachelorette Hilary!

This past weekend we went to Austin for a bachelorette party for my lil' sis, Hilary! We had a blast. We rented a house on Lake Austin, fully furnished and with an amazing view and everything! The owner was on the premises if we needed anything but we just relaxed and laid out by the pool most of the time! The second day/night we had a lingerie shower for her and then went out to dinner then came back to the house and played some good old "high school" drinking games!

View from the side of the pool...it was so nice! We had amazing weather all weekend long!

Our decorations around her cookie cake

Our beautiful bachelorette!

The group before dinner

After dinner at The Hula Hut!

Can't wait for my baby turtle to get married!

The Policeman

At the Law Enforcement Memorial Service this was read by the speaker; brings chills to me when I hear it, and makes me very proud to be married to one of the many who wear the blue.

23rd Annual Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony

This week our local law enforcement agencies held a memorial ceremony to honor those fallen officers, I am pleased to share with you the coverage from that ceremony. Jason is the one that carries the wreath.

Birthday and such

Well it's official, I am an active member of Jr. League now! Woo-hoo! We had our "graduation ceremony" this past week, just in time for my birthday week.

This was what was left of us (our provisional group) at the end of the ceremony! Group photo!

This was my smaller provisional group with our amazing advisor Tamara!

Birthday was good, I was a little under the weather that day, some of the girls from the office took me to lunch, Jason got me a bouquet of fresh spring flowers and took me to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants and i couldn't even have my favorite dessert! Was feeling much better though by the time crawfish rolled around on Saturday! We made about 100lbs of crawfish and didn't have any left!!! Bubba got me some Truman chocolates...YUM! They were so good; we had so many "cooks" this year helping with the crawfish. I got lots of nice lil' gifts from co-workers and friends, my honey got me a Tony Romo jersey!!! I LOVE IT!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Fun time with the family

So Jason and I have been trying to get Trey to come with us to Bridge City so we can show him around, get some crawfish and go gambling in Louisiana...well it finally happened!

Me and Bubba at the state line...there is a trail all through the swamp behind us but for some reason it was blocked off :(

My two silly boys!

I have no idea what this is...it was really cool looking though

So we went out and ate some good crawfish one night and then went gambling the second. Bubba played on one machine for about 5 or 6 hours on the same $5! Yes, you read right...F-I-V-E dollars! Jason and I managed to just about break even! Oh well, it was fun! Now birthday week for me...woo-hoo! Crawfish boil in less than a week!

Duck Jam

We love us some Texas Country! Duck Jam is a two-day event hosted by the Ducks Unlimited club and has two days worth of concerts in our area. We had a blast!

Finally got to hang out with my bubba...seems like I have to make an appointment to see him these days! :)

Don't quite remember who was playing in the background...

Jason will kill me for not knowing who this is...he was very excited to get this photo though (Jason that is)

Note to self

When working late at the office I learned a few things that I thought were noteworthy:

1) The courthouse really makes some weird noises late at night
2) You are always on video
3) Silent alarms sound when you open the front doors
4) Sgt. over security gets a call no matter what the hour is that the alarm goes off...
5) It's very awkward when your boss says "so how was the office at 1:45am?" and you have no idea how he knew you were there?!?!

With the conference being just a hectic time for our office and all on the committee, things do come up at the last minute that have to be done, it's just inevitable... So sure enough, we had things come up so I volunteer to take care of everything, the "yes woman" that I am and night owl too, to stay up at the office until all hours of the night working on things and when I have reached my limit of exhaustion I finally decide to go home. So construction going on around the office and certain areas are blocked off...I had to park in a particular parking lot that is far from the "private" entrance we normally get to use. Well, at 2:00am I'm not going to walk around the courthouse with large plastic tubs and all my conference materials, it's just a little scary (of course I probably shouldn't have been at the courthouse that late anyway...) So I proceed to go out the front door. Now the first trip was difficult, I had a dolly, but it's a cheap one, and with two large tubs, and two boxes on top of that I managed to get out the doors with only knocking everything off once! The second trip was carrying a large white board...not heavy, just awkward in size...again, hitting doors and everything...it was difficult to say the least. The third trip was just me leaving, empty hands. Now I thought about getting someone from the jail to help me, it would have been the smart thing too now looking back because little did I know that the camera is always running by those doors and that those doors have a silent alarm that triggers when opened and gets the night sgt. called in the middle of the night...oops! Do you think that the jailers thought to come and see who was going in and out? Of course not! How about come and help a lady struggling and walking outside in the dark? Of course not! It's funny now, but at the time I just knew I was in trouble when my boss walks up to me at the conference (and keep in mind, at this point I have been up all night long, only cat-napping for about 30 minutes) and says "so how was the office at 1:45am?" you can imagine my shock because I knew he couldn't have known...well that night sgt. caught him and let him know. So...needless to say...I won't be up at the office late anymore...

Conference was amazing! Had over 400 attendees, my speakers were all amazing and had great reviews! I'm so glad to be a part of such an amazing group of volunteers putting on a conference of that magnitude. Surprising, I can't wait for next year's conference to see what it holds for us!

I survived!!!

First boot camp down and I survived! Sure, there were days (lots) that I wanted to just quit and give up but I knew that I wouldn't be proud of myself for doing that. We weighed in and got all our measurements taken again this morning and I managed to shed 8 lbs in the first session, lose a total of 6 inches over the different areas I was working and shaved about 2.5 minutes off my mile run! Go ME! And no I don't do photos of before and after. Most importantly, though, I feel so much better about myself! I can walk from my car to work (usually a few blocks) and not get winded! I can take the stairs instead of the elevator and not get winded! I can eat healthy and can actually be full! In 4 short weeks I feel as though I have morphed myself into this completely different person! I am actually excited to start my next round! And it does make you feel good about what you're doing when people start to notice that your body is changing and give you compliments! We get one week off and then we will start back up. I am glad we do have the next week off because I have a conference at work that I have to deal with and will be tied up next week.

Boot camp...ugh!

So I decided to try a round (or 3) of boot camps with Trevor Carney at Innovative Fitness. First off, I can't say enough good things about this group, Trevor and his team are phenomenal and looking at photos I can't wait to get going, but first I have to get myself over this "hump" of working out at 5:30am! I initially signed up with a friend thinking it wouldn't be so bad working out with someone, well she ended up having to quit so that left me alone to do this, I have already set up a payment plan so I am kinda stuck for the next three months. The first week (last week) was a little rough but tolerable, this week is starting to get a little more intense and Trevor has me doing this Fat Flush, a diet that is high in fat and lots of water intake to help flush "bad fat" out of my system...today is my last day and I can't wait to be done!!! My energy levels are kinda low so I'm happy to start eating some protein again. I have noticed, even though it's only been two weeks, I have begun to notice the changes in my body, even my energy levels are up! So bring it on Boot Camp! Getting up early has been hard...I mean, I'm an early morning riser, but 4:00am is a little early even for me! I have to rush to get home and shower and get ready in about an hour's time...for anyone who knows me, that's just about impossible! So instead of making it to work at 7:45am, I've been running in at about 8:05am. I hope it gets better as I get a system down...

March...my how you flew by!

Man oh man did the month of March just fly by! Between work and the Rodeo, a wedding anniversary and a birthday, the month just flew by and I don't know where it went! We spent the first three weeks going back and forth to Houston for the rodeo. It was fun, but we can't do that too much longer...the final show we went to was Brooks & Dunn, The Final Rodeo Tour. It was an awesome show! Jason and I went early to go and walk around. Over the week we were gone on vacation a lot of baby animals were born so we got to see them all, soooo cute! We got our boots shined too since my clumsy self fell just a few times and scuffed my boots all up :( and Jason let me make my own rope, pink and green of course!

Baby piggies :)

I managed to come back home and get really sick...just in time for a busy weekend for the both of us. I was busy working at the Downtown Derby, a 5K Fun Run downtown to raise money for Jr. League and Jason was busy with Blue Bunny, an Easter egg hunt on a football field put on by the Police Chaplins. I had the worst ear infection that I ended up having to go to the Urgent Care after everything to get some medicine, then went home and literally slept for about 8 hours straight! Monday was Jason's birthday, he had jury duty all day long though so we went to dinner to spend some time together.

Jason doing an interview at Blue Bunny, he's so famous!!! :)

So now it's time to gear up and get ready for a conference for work, and to think, Jason and I are wanting to start a family this year...we are so busy, I don't know when we are going to have time!!!

Vacation - Vacation - Vacation!!!

Woo-hoo for going on a vacation! I can't believe that it's been a year already! It seems like it was just yesterday that Jason and I were going on our first date, now we are celebrating our first anniversary! We were at the Houston Rodeo on Wednesday night and left out of Houston first thing Thursday morning.

Boarding the plane; at this point, all lines of communication to the "real world" were turned off...my phone was turned on "Airplane Mode" so someone would still be able to play games!

So once we arrive we ask for an upgrade, we told we could ask for one but had to wait until we were checking in. We were early so they told us we would have to wait a couple of hours for a room. We were hungry so we got our resort wristbands and went on our way to eating, and drinking! We go to check in and get told "oh Mr. James, we gave you the best room in the resort," and at this point I'm thinking "yea right, just give us our room keys!" We get on the elevator, they start at something like 14, all the way up to 22...our floor. Ok, so top floor, still, I'm thinking lil' ole rinky-dink room. No...we get off the elevator, see 4 doors, these are huge suites, we walk to one of two doors that has a doorbell on it and walk in. We have a full living room, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom with 2 sitting areas, 1.5 bathrooms, and 2 balconies! Above is our bedroom, I am standing at our closet and in the first sitting area, those windows are one of the balconies.

Here is the view from the other balcony, looking down towards the beach and all the resort pools. It was really pretty at night, all the pools have lights in them...none of the photos came out good enough to post.

One day we went on a "jungle tour" that was really just through some swamp area, very choppy waters and snorkeling with fish swimming in between our legs. Jason enjoyed it, I guess I liked it too.


Then one day we went to a prvate island that had dolphins everywhere! We met this really nice couple from New York there, gave us their information and said to look them up when we go back.


This was a restricted area of that private island, we climbed all over trash and barriers to get some photos close to the water like these. We took lots since we weren't supposed to be there :)


I just couldn't resist! The waves let me know they didn't like we writing in the sand since they washed away the bottom corner...then the next ones came and took it all out!

View down the island from the other balcony...it was breathtaking!


This was on our anniversary, made reservations at this really nice restaurant in our hotel and were both too sick and burnt to even eat anything, ended up going back to the room without eating anything


We had to! It wouldn't be a trip without this!



Our last morning there, we realized we hadn't gotten some nice photos of us on the beach, this really nice couple got some for us.

Cancun was so much fun, nice and relaxing. It was good to be back, I think both our families breathed a sigh of relief when we called and said we had made it back safely. Apparently there was a lot of killing and such going on in Mexico...who knew?!?!