Gag Order

Lately I have been having serious jaw pain. I have been to physical therapy and my regular physician. I have been taking muscle relaxers at night to help with the clenching but it still hurts. I went to the dentist today and was told to go buy an athletic mouthguard. I am to wear this at night for a month. If , after a month, my jaw gets better I can go back to my dentist and he will make me an official guard that forms to me teeth.

So I went up the street to Target. You all know how obsessed I am with Target. VERY. After I strolled through the women’s clothing department and decided I shouldn’t buy anything I don’t need, I briskly walked to the Sporting Goods section. This is not where I am most comfortable.

My gigantic mouthguard in my tiny mouth

I see a small variety of mouthguards and I grab a clear one. The worst thing would be walking around my apartment at night with Will laughing at my big BLUE or BLACK mouthpiece. So I made the best decision and got the clear one. I also grab a case so it doesn’t get icky sitting around my bathroom sink.

Now, I have included some photos purely for entertainment. This thing literally does not fit in my mouth.

My entire life I have been told I have a small mouth. I understand this. My mouth is smaller than most 24 year olds’ mouths. But I didn’t understand it was quite this small.

Laughing and trying to close my mouth over the thing

I didn’t realize they are made in different sizes and I didn’t realize I needed a youth size!! I think the youth ones were lime green which is sad… I think the blue or black might be better.

All I know is this just makes me laugh. My jaw doesn’t feel any better after trying to shove this thing around my teeth!!

Look how long my face looks!!!

I still can’t stop laughing!

I’ll let you know if the youth one fits after I purchase one.

Will and I are giving up soda for a while. There’s just so much sugar and icky stuff adding to our not-so-good health… so we have given it up. In its place, for caffeine I have learned how to make a good cup of coffee.

Will wasn’t quite so lucky his first day without soda.

Will after a day of no soda

That was lastnight.

But… there is hope! I had the coffee maker all ready for him this morning and he went his whole day without a headache. Yay!

It’s been a while

I know, I know I haven’t written in a really long time. I have had quite a bit going on and don’t always have the energy to accomplish this at the end of the day. I just wanted to notify you all of two very important things in my life.

The first is this: love your toes.

I had to go to a foot specialist to get a plantar’s wart removed from my big toe (eww), and it hasn’t been a pleasant experience so far. Will accompanied me to this doctor last Thursday morning because I thought I would have to get a needle stuck in my foot. For that reason my husband came along to hold me hand. But it turns out the doctor barely even touched the toe. He just put a little acid on the wart and it’s supposedly going to magically fall off in a few days. It’s been almost a week and I still have my toe (yay!), I still have my wart, and I have a constant stinging pain in that toe. I know this is nothing in comparison to someone who, let’s say, broke their fifth metatarsal in their left foot, but I am sensitive to pain and, more than that, I really just want this issue to be solved.

Second thing: I love my husband.

Will and I have been married almost a year and a half and I am still dumbfounded by his kind heart. Last Friday I come home from babysitting to an apartment full of candles and flowers. This was following a bad day and a pitiful evening. I wasn’t exactly nice to Will before leaving to babysit but when I got home it was as if I was the greatest person on the planet. He really just amazes me all the time and it makes me smile thinking about his sweet gestures.

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Will and I recently got the copyright to ALL of our wedding pictures. This consists of five discs, each with about 2,000 pics on them. On these discs are pictures that were never posted onilne for designing the wedding album. Sadly, there are quite a few that I would have loved to put in the album but I really love the way we did the album anyway. So here are some of my favorite pictures from what I’ve gone through so far. Just one half of one disc.

When I look back at these I just can’t stop thanking God for that day and all the days since then. It was such a fun day and I feel like it pretty much set the tone of our first year. The ceremony was small, intimate, pretty location, friends helped out with a lot of things like the music and decorations… everything was so great and we were extremely layed back the entire time! Looking through these pictures helps anyone see how much fun we had. I’ve been criticized for not having more formal family shots but we can always get those printed and hang them on our walls instead of only seeing them in our album. Anyway, please enjoy some of my favs I’ve come accross so far.

Sew in Love

I am basically writing this for my grandmother because she loves to sew and I’m pretty sure I get all my creativity from her. I love sewing but haven’t had many opportunities while living in this one bedroom apartment since there’s no room for my machine. I’ve recently started setting up my machine at my parents’ house and spending some time there working on projects. I recently decided to make a traveling case for my work computer. The one that was provided by my employer is one with wheels and a long push-down handle. I decided to make a smaller one with some really cute material that I can just carry around seperately. So I did!

Take a look. I fell in love with this fabric and finally found a reason to buy it and make something with it! I padded the case and a thin wool layer. I actually quilted it with pretty yellow thread and lined it with some spare green fabric which actually matches perfectly. I managed to make a pocket on the front to hold my power plug and things like that. It’s got two things of Velcro to close the pocket. But I may change it a little with a flap over the pocket or something like that. The biggest challenge was the zipper! I’ve only done one zipper before this one and for some reason this one was just really tricky. Oh, and I did a little square with an “X” on the base of the handles to secure the fabric with a heavy computer inside. Anyway, I’m just going to post some pictures so you can see my work. 

Oh yea, check out me n’ Scooter!!

Savannah… the coolest city ever.

On Father’s Day weekend my cousin got married in Savannah, GA. My brother, my dad, and I drove down together on Friday afternoon to the DoubleTree hotel in downtown Savannah. We didn’t make it in time for the Rehearsal Dinner so we ended up just walking around town for about an hour. Well, we found River Street which was lots of restraunts, bars, and live music in the squares. It was actually pretty awesome. Then we met up with my mom and just had some fun in the hotel rooms laughing about who knows what.

Saturday morning we got up and walked to breakfast with my aunt and uncle, my other cousin Jonathan and his wife Jenny. Breakfast was sooo yummy; I had an order of “Scrambled eggs with cheese in a croisant”. YUMMM! Then we decided to just walk around town all stinkin day. It was super warm but thankfully I had packed my new light-weight summer dress from Anne Taylor Loft. It’s one of my new favorite things.

The greatest part about Saturday… besides the wedding… we’ll get to that in a minute but there is something important we have to discuss. The greatest part about Saturday was going to see PAULA DEAN’s restraunt and store! Oh my goodness, if only you knew how much I watch her shows and try her recipes… it was an honor to see all of her little knick knacks and cooking tools in the store. To eat at her restraunt you have to make a reservation three days in advance so we didn’t do that but it smelled good from the sidewalk. Needless to say, I had my picture taken with Paula and purchased a plate to put in my bathroom since it matches my shower curtain perfectly. I’ll probably use it for soap or something like that. Anway, it was a great event!

The wedding was very sweet. My cousin has wanted to marry this guy for quite a while so she was super excited. It was held at the Savannah Yact Club on the water, outside under an oak tree. The weather was beautiful with a nice breeze. They both cried during the ceremony and she was jumping up and down most of the reception. We were all very happy for them. This is a picture of all the cousins excpet Will, which everyone was sure to keep pointing out… I’m in the yellow.

So all in all I had a blast. Will and I are going to go to Savannah for our anniversary next year since we did Charleston this year. I know he’ll enjoy Savannah a whole lot more than Charleston. Savannah reminded me of a larger, more fun downtown Wilmington. Anyway, you should go there if you have the time. Maybe we’ll see you there!

Poor Penelope

For those of you who don’t know, my car’s name is Penelope Protege… that will help you through the rest of this story.

Over the holiday weekend Will and I went to his parents’ beach house at Sunset Beach. We got on the road around 3:30pm on Sunday afternoon planning to arrive home around 6:00p. A friend was having people over and we were going to stop by to hang out for a while. Well, after I took a little nap on the road we were about 20 minutes past Wilmington… the battery light comes on in my car. Within about thirty seconds the check engine light comes on… then Will noticed the temperature needle was way high. He decides to call his brother Jamie and his wife since they left after us. Just in case we needed help they weren’t far behind us. THEN while Will was on the phone with Jamie, SMOKE started coming from the engine!!

We’re flying down 40West and we have to pull over really quick before the car explodes. I literally jump out of the car because I thought we were about to catch on fire. We have no clue what to do and we look at the smoky engine but have no idea what’s wrong. There were no leaks, no hoses missing, no spraying except the mysterious smoke. We decided to let it cool, tried to crank it again and it didn’t sound so good. We wait about thirty minutes until Jamie and Whitney pull up behind us and we decided to try driving to see if we could at least get off the side of 40. Two miles after we set out smoke comes out everywhere again.

Thankfully Jamie has a membership to AAA so we call for a tow truck. After about an hour a guy comes and tows it back to Wilmington where Penelope is still waiting to be worked on. She hasn’t needed too much work the last eight years I’ve had her so I can only hope she’s handling it alright. The mechanic told us yesterday there is a hole in her radiator, she needs a new water pump, and numerous other belts and parts need replacing. This wonderful total comes to $1743.42… AAAH!!

Did I mention that I haven’t gotten a paycheck in two months and we’ve been pretty tight lately??! Well after an evening of debating Will calls the mechanic back and tells him to fix only what is necessary…  We are hoping to get about another year out of Penelope before we have to sell her.

She has been my only car since I learned how to drive. How many people can say they still have the same car they got when they were sixteen (unless they’re currently seventeen or something)? She’s been the best little car. And I don’t care what anyone says, the monkey front plate and the Tweety bird floor mats are perfect for her.

For now I am driving my dad’s second car which he kind of gave us for our anniversary… just not legally ours yet. Just pray that she can get fixed and it won’t cost us our entire savings account! And pray that she will last a long long time once we get her back.

Anniversary in Charleston

Will and I celebrated our first year anniversary last Monday. May 5, 2007 we got hitched and it was the coolest wedding ever so we had to celebrate a year later with a pretty awesome trip to match. We are very short on money these days so we decided to stay at his parents’ beach house in Sunset Beach and take a day trip to Charleston.

Staying at the beach house was great beause we’ve never been down there by ourselves. We’re usually with the whole family when we are able to go. Here is a picture of the living room. The house is actually on a golf course a couple miles from the beach but we managed to get completely sun burnt anyway. We spend four hours on the beach Thursday and since it was cold and cloudy, we both roasted. Crazy how that works.

Friday we woke up and drove a long three hours to Charleston. On the way we stopped and purchased a fashionable hat to protect my face and shoulders from the sun. It was too hot to wear sleeves so a hat was a necessity. I got some interesting looks but hey, I didn’t roast anymore so it was well worth it. We walked for a few hours and saw all the cute little things that make up Charleston. Oh, on our way in we accidentally took one wrong turn and ended up in the hood. It was scary even at 12:00 in the afternoon. We made sure to stay clear of those streets while walking around. All in all it was a whole lot of fun! Check out my hat!

Saturday we woke up and had to clean for quite a while before leaving. Everyone that stays at the house has a strict list of chores before you can leave. If the next visitors don’t think you did a good job cleaning you’re not aloud to come back! So we vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms, washed sheets and towels, brought in the deck furniture and all that good stuff for a couple hours. Then we managed to get on the road where I was able to sleep peacefully most of the way home. My family has always picked on my ability to sleep in cars. My dad always says I would be asleep before he got out of the driveway when I was little. I don’t know what it is but you get me in a car, especially in the sunshine, and I’m out cold for quite a while.

So anway, we had a great anniversary. We’re still recovering from the amount of sunburn we received but at least we’ll be looking really really tan for quite a while afterward.

Cooking Lesson

One of my grandmothers is in town for a couple weeks from Atlanta and when she visits I always try to find something to do with just the two of us. Last visit she taught me how to make yummy buttermilk biscuits from scratch. This time it was a cooking lesson on Fried Apple Pies.

You kind of have to know my grandmother for this to take effect, but she is a woman who can sit in a room for 8 hours without moving, without speaking, simply reading or just looking at the room. She’s the most peaceful person in the world and never ever expects anything from anyone. She truly is a remarkable woman and I am so very proud to one of her four grandchildren (five, counting Will). When my dad was growing up my grandmother would get up every morning and make eggs, bacon, and biscuits. She told me today that she loves cooking but since she lives alone now she doesn’t really get the opportunity to cook too often. Granddaughter to the rescue!

From now on I will refer to her as MaMa, (pronounced MawMaw), since this is what we call her anyway. This is a picture of MaMa making the first pie as an example for me to follow. There are no photos of myself making the pies because MaMa doesn’t really know how to work a camera.

Then I made the remaining nine pies and took pictures of them before and after the oven. I think they turned out pretty good. The first six are a little crispy because apparently my dad’s oven runs a little warmer than MaMa’s. We fixed that with the final four.

Overall I had a really good time learning how to make this little pastry thing. I told her I could open up my own bakery and all I would be able to make would be biscuits and fried apple pies.

During my lesson I learned a great deal about MaMa and her childhood. She gave me a little summary of she and her siblings and the things they used to do. There were nine brothers and sisters and she was number six. The oldest three are no longer living but the remaining six are totally awesome. Apparently they all lived in a three bedroom house and she shared her bed with at least one sister at all times.

There’s something about older people that I just love. I never really cared much before but since my uncle died in February I’ve realized how important family is and I really appreciate where I come from.

If anyone wants to know how to make a killer fried apple pie just let me know. It’s pretty simple if I can do it!

Arrrrrrg!

Check out my eye!!! I laid down for a quick nap on the couch this afternoon when I got home, I woke up to a slobbery pillow and a puffy eyelid! This has only happened to me a handful of times in my life and I still can’t figure it out. They have all been different material pillows I’ve slept on, different couches or a bed, and nothing has gotten in my eye.

There is something mysterious puffing my eyelid and making me look like a pirate. I can’t really open the left eye without it feeling completely uncomfortable.

So that was really all I wanted to tell you about. Here’s the side view. How funny, right?