The Girls are Coming, the Girls are coming!

Next weekend most of this crew will be here....

To Celebrate this Young Lady's upcoming Wedding!
(You're welcome Jen)
Hopefully, there will be more great pictures like the below, Rachel is bringing her old recital costumes for us.

In other fun news, Annie has officially moved to the city & I got to see her this past week. We had dinner with her and her "friend" this past Tuesday & even stayed out until midnight. The next day was a little rough but totally worth it!

Sean starts classes this week, I'm a little sad because I know this will mean I will see him less but as always I know he will do great. We even did a little back to school shopping the night we went to dinner with Annie, he is a pretty cute student if I do say so myself.

Found this fun pic of me and Sean from our beach trip, apparently we only took this picture of the two of us. Gotta get better about that!

Hope everyone has a great week!

A Very Fun Weekend

I can't believe it is already Sunday night but Sean and I had such a fun and relaxing weekend.

The week was kind of a whirlwind - he got home Tuesday morning at 6:30 after traveling for about 24 hours. I was so happy to have him home - we got to catch up for about 30 min and then I had to head to work. We spent the rest of the week just catching up and listening to each others stories. I'll have to post some pictures later from his adventure in Alaska, it was such a cool trip! Work was good this week, really busy but good. I'm always learning something new and taking on more responsibility. I'm very blessed to have this job and it is great to be able to walk around Chicago in the summer time, it's been in the 70s here and feels amazing outside. And now that Sean is finally home I've been catching up on some much needed sleep. One of the downfalls of him being out of town is that I do not sleep well or at all. I had been getting 3-4 hours of sleep each night and now that he is home I've been sleeping like a baby! (Even sleep in till 11:00 on Saturday and I haven't done that in a long time)

This is the shirt Sean brought me back from Alaska, to say it's tacky is an understatement. I guess this is true love. I can already tell he is going to try to wear this somewhere.

Friday Night -
We went to our favorite Italian restaurant in Naperville, La Sorella. We had an amazing meal and I got to hear more fishing and bear stories from Alaska. After the movie we walked around downtown for a while and then headed to the movie theater to see The Help. I loved the book, honestly couldn't put it down and have been so excited for the movie. I really enjoyed the movie, they definitely changed some things from the book but overall very good. I did think that some of the southern accents could have used a little work. Some characters sounded very authentic where others sounded very forced. I think when you are from the south you know what real accents sound like. Sean even said he enjoyed the movie as well which is big because it didn't have any super hero characters or fast car chases.

Saturday we (really just me) slept in till 11, it was glorious. After that Sean and I headed to downtown Wheaton for a run/walk. He ran, I did a walk/run combo (which is really more walking than anything). The trails have been great to get my ankle use to running again because they are made up of crushed lime stone and it's very soft to run on. We got done with our run just in time because a huge thunderstorm moved thru the area. Below is pic I took when we were done, there is a really cool bride that overlooks the train tracks and you can see part of the clouds moving in.

After our run we went to Target for groceries. I even managed not to get distracted in the clothes section and just stuck to our list. Sean describes me as a bit of a wanderer when we go to Target - I've tried explaining that is part of the Target experience is just to wander around the store until you find something that catches your eye. Luckily for him we stayed on task. We did end up purchasing the new Skinny Girl Sangria which is pretty tasty.

Sunday we went to church and then headed to Trader Joes to buy stuff for Sean's yummy red beans and rice dinner. The kid can cook - this is definitely one of my favorite meals that he makes, especially in the winter when it's freezing out.

Sean is currently getting back into school mode which makes me a little sad that it's already starting up. I'm always so proud of how much he studies and how much dedication he has but I also know that means there will be a lot of time spent writing papers, reading, etc. I can be a little bit of a distraction to his work sometimes but overall I try not to pester him too much when he is studying.

Sean working on one of his professor's syllabus
(Side note - he is not wearing capris just has his sweats pulled up)

A fun find of the weekend was the below picture of me and Miss Lily. I found this picture in an old planner. This was the first time we met. Melts my heart to think of how little she use to be and how big she is getting. My sister says she changes everyday and I hate missing out on all of it but I know we will always be close no matter how far a part we are.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I'm A Bad Blogger

Not really a surprise but I really am a bag blogger. It's been 4 months since my last post and I've thought about posting so many different stories lately but can't decide on one. So I will do what I do best and do a quick recap. Last time I posted I was about to get my cast off - well, I did get it off the very next day and have been getting back to life! It took about two weeks in my walking boot on crutches, then I went down to one crutch (everyone in my office called this the "Tiny Tim" walk from a Christmas Carole - it was pretty funny), then to a just the boot and then to the brace and then finally I'm free of all supportive devices.

Sean called me robo cop while I was in the boot - love him and his jokes

I wake up every day grateful that I can walk by myself, get in the shower or walk across the street. Truly, truly blessed to do these things. I even ran this past week for the first time. It wasn't pretty or fast - it kinda looked like a combination of Kermit the Frog and Phoebe from friends but it was amazing to have the ability back.
I'm still on the blood thinners and will be until Feb. They have been testing me to see if I am predisposed to blood clots. The first time they tested me I had a protein and an antibody come back irregular but if you are on birth control or have a blood clot (which I had both at the time) it can cause the test to have a false positive. So this past week they retested my antibody to see if was back to normal but it still came back irregular or as they call it "positive". So now I'm on the blood thinners until Feb - not really happy about the news, I was really looking forward to stopping the medicine in Sept. The biggest pain is that I have to get my levels tested every 2-3 weeks. They will retest my antibody in Feb, not really sure if anything will come back different but at that stage they will take me off the blood thinners and talk about what I need to do long term. I've really handled the news pretty well, the only scary part of the doctor appt. was when my hematologist told me that women who have multiple miscarriages tend to have irregular antibodies like mine - she said it's not certain that I will just because I have an irregular antibody but still scary to hear. For now, I'm trusting the Lord and just having faith that all things will work out in His timing.

MAY
In May Sean and I got to go home for 11 days, which was such a wonderful gift. My work was doing a test in the Fayetteville Walmart so I got to work from our Bentonville office for an entire week. While we were in town I got to help throw a shower for Jennifer Walker, celebrate my sweet sister's birthday and see Sean's sister and her boys. It was amazing to be home, see our family and friends and feel at peace. The chaos of all my medical drama caused quite a bit of anxiety in me during the spring (and that is putting it nicely) and to feel the peace of home, of my parents house and of my friends hugs made things so much better. I even got to go to Fellowship for church and I can't describe the peace of that place, I just know it's good for my soul. Sean was also extremely happy because we got to eat at his favorite place, Mr. B's in Rogers and he ate an entire plate of their ribs. It's a pretty cute pic of him if I do say so myself.

Handsome Husband


I also got into a painting kick and painted canvasses & stools for our nieces and nephews. They were really fun to work on and turned our really good. Sean even helped me pick out colors and quotes.

Mr. Luke's Painting - "Let the Wild Rumpus Begin" - from the movie Where the Wild Things Are. If you know Luke, then this quote makes perfect sense.

Lane's Painting - I really liked how the colors looked together

Lily's Stool - I've painted each of my nieces stools over the years and I figured Lily needed one too, it turned out super cute.


JULY
In July we went to the beach with my family and it was amazing. Sean and I hadn't been to a beach since our honeymoon and we were beyond excited. We were suppose to go the year before but with the oil spill we ended up cancelling our trip. Luckily, Sean and I were able to fly - we didn't get into FL until midnight on Friday and woke up at 6:30am on Sat because we were so excited to be at the beach. All 9 of us stayed in one house in Rosa beach, a little past Destin which is our normal vacationing spot. It was truly one of the best weeks of my life, we would wake up around 8:30 or 9:00 and head straight to the beach and not leave until 5:00. (Side note - even with my ultra sheet SPF 70 sunscreen my skin still freaked out because of all the sunshine, I developed a lovely sun rash as I like to call it but I never actually burned - my skin was not use to that much sunshine it just didn't know what to do, hahha - Sean on the other hand wore SPF 30 and got so dark it was ridiculous - please see below for a comparison of our skin tones - I pray our children have his skin color). We only went out to dinner a couple times and cooked the rest of the week at our house. It was so nice to spend time with our family and have no work or school worries. We watched movies at night or played games. My nieces are growing up so fast, it's hard thinking that we are missing a lot but it made me very grateful for the week I got with them. So very thankful and blessed that my parents took us all for the week. I had a difficult time coming home to cloudy and noisy Chicago but there will definitely be more beach trips in the future.






Beautiful beach


My Lily Pad


Silly Sisters


Sweet Family


My white skin and my tan husband

AUGUST
August has already been pretty busy for us. We went to the Dupage County fair with our friends Tim and Shawna, it was so much fun. It was like we were back home, pig races, livestock, rides, games, etc. Not as country as the Benton country fair but still pretty fun and we had some good laughs. We are very thankful for our friendship with Tim and Shawna, by far some of the coolest and smartest people we know and they are expecting their first child, they will be amazing parents!

The first weekend in August my sweet friend Chelsea (Who is still listed in my phone as Chel B - her maiden name) and her husband came to visit for the weekend and we had a blast with them. Chris had just finished taking the law bar exam and was in much need of a break from all his hard work. Sean made his famous pasta and sauce Friday night and then Sat we went out shopping and to a comedy show in the city and then to our favorite restaurant in the city, the Athenian Room - the best Greek food you will ever have. It was so much fun to just catch up and enjoy our time together. We had so much fun just walking around the city and enjoying the beautiful evening. Chelsea and Chris are currently living in Tulsa and have been dealing with 100 + temperatures for a long time so a cool Chicago night was heavenly to them. Chelsea is one of those friends that it doesn't matter how long it's been since we've seen each other - our conversations just picks up where it last ended. Just a wonderful and faithful friend. Miss her already.

Sean left that Sunday at 3:45 in the morning for Alaska and I even got up and drove him to the airport. He and his dad went on a fly fishing trip and he is just now getting home tomorrow at 5am. I am so ready to see this kid. We were only able to email this past week and a half. It was pretty weird not seeing my husband or being able to talk to him. Even though I missed him like crazy and had to drive myself to and from the train everyday I was so excited that he got to go on this trip and have this experience with his dad, truly a once in a life time sort of thing. I may even try to get him to blog about it when he is back. He definitely deserved a treat after everything he did while taking care of me back in the Spring. I also have to brag on him a bit because he did really good before he left - he knows that I am not a fan of staying by myself so he left me lots of surprises before he left. Below are some pics of my surprises. Little and big things like this remind me how blessed I am to have him as a husband.

Surprise # 1 Homemade chocolate cake - it will change your life


Surprise # 2 The 2nd book in the hunger games
Not going to lie - I got totally hooked and can't wait to see the movies



Surprise # 3 New Essie nail polish



Surprise # 4 Last but not least... A new longchamp bag, I was completely shocked that he remembered me saying I wanted a black one for the winter..he is a keeper



That is basically everything that has been going on with us. The girls are coming in town for Jen's bach party at the end of August and that will be a blast - I'll be sure to post a recap after that weekend.

We love and miss you all - Love, Mik