Week 17 - Bring On The Rain

Since last night (4/26), April showers have officially arrived. Woke up this morning to a thunderstorm and it has pretty much continued all day long. I actually enjoy the sounds of thunderstorms and rain, however today we visited 6 stores looking for a patio dining set so the rain wasn't exactly fun. And to make matters worse when we got home we noticed that the skylight in our main bathroom is leaking (so much that the ceiling material is bubbling) and we're just waiting for water all over our floors. Rain is expected throughout the night and tomorrow, so hopefully we can get the roofing guys over and get it fixed soon.

The rest of the week consisted of us both working overtime at our jobs and a little yardwork whenever the rain ceased. On Thursday (30th) the weather was beautiful after work so we got to some more of our gardening projects. I planted some snapdragons, Dean finally got one of our dead shurbs uprooted, and we also planted strawberries and jalepeno peppers in our new Topsy Turvy planter!!




On Friday, May 1st my department at work exchanged May Day Basket favors. For my favor, I gave out lil' bags of (divided) Wildflower seed and printed a poem about April Showers bringing May Flowers. :-) LOL, I thought I had the creative gift but turns out three other ppl had the same idea too!! Regardless, it was a fun thing to do and definitely cheered up this gloomy morning. Now onto the 200+ profile launches I have before I can leave for the day... Ugh.



On Saturday (5/2) we went down to Lincoln and for a dinner 'party' at Keith & Amy's house. Dean's friends Jay & Marci (plus kids) came over as well. The evening was a lot of fun, and at one point all the boys took a ride in Jay & Marci's new convertible, and of course Dean (in the back) put his hood up to not ruin his hair. Keith doesn't need to worry too much about that issue, but did it anyway. ;-)



4.26.09 - 5.2.09

Week 14 - Sweeps Galore

We have been rather blessed with winning prizes in our sweepstakes lately. Although these aren't big prizes, early Sunday (4/5) morning (12:45am) we won two sweeps in a row! Dean won a t-shirt from GTX and minutes later I won a $10 Visa gift card from Century 21. We're very good at winning these smaller prizes, so hopefully soon we'll be even more blessed and win a big sweepstake!

Later Sunday morning we awoke to lots of blowing snow and no power! The snow covered the grass but melted on the sidewalks since it's been so warm. Dean and I hung out for awhile w/o power but decided to get out and run some errands since we couldn't do anything at home. We had lunch at Chipotle, made a quick stop to Verizon to exchange some accessories, and then went to SuperTarget to buy Easter goodies for Dean's nephews. We're hosting Easter this coming Sunday and always plan an egg hunt for his nephews Kobe and Zack. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. The good news is that as of 7:30pm most of the snow has melted, so it's looking like it will hopefully be good a week out.



On Tuesday, April 7th I joined Stacy, Kathleen (+ Cole), and Ember for lunch at Valentino's. Kathleen is on maternity leave and Stacy is on Spring Break so it was a perfect week for us all to get together for lunch and catch up. I didn't want to bug the girls with yet another group picture so I snuck in a picture with lil' Cole!




When I arrived home today (4/7) there was a big box on our front porch and I knew it had to be our most recent 'big' sweep win, the year's supply of baby wipes and diaper rash cream. :) The sent it very nicely boxed up so I only took out a few for a picture. All together we got 24 packages for 70-count wipes and 12 diaper rash creams. Luckily none of this expires until 2011!



4.5.09 - 4.11.09

Week 12 - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

It's only Wednesday and I've already dubbed this the week of 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'. Thus far it's gone in reverse so hopefully the end of the week will follow suite and will all be good stuff. :-)

The Ugly: Week 12 certainly started out with a bang! Quite literally! Three days into "Spring" Omaha had it's first tornado warning of the year (3/23). We had lots of hail, thunderstorms, high winds and tornadic activity around the area. Nothing as damaging as last June, but still eventful. Luckily it started after 5pm so I was home before it hit. I talked to Dean around 2pm and it had just hit GI at that point and he was sitting in his truck while it hailed and then it was over there. Anyway, here are photos from today. Ironically today was the anniversary of a fatal tornado back in 1913 that killed 150 people and injured 400!


View from our front porch


Our front yard.


Hail on our patio couches.

The Bad: Dean "accidentally" threw away my wallet with my credit cards and gift cards from by birthday and Christmas. On Monday after the bad weather I was doing some stuff online and needed my credit card for something, and so I went into our kitchen to find the bag I had my wallet in. A little backstory, I carry a large purse and since I had two gifts to distribute at the Legion on Friday I emptied the contents of my purse into a Target bag so I could fit the gifts in my purse. Luckily I took my license and main debit card out of my wallet to put into a wrislet for the night, however I put the rest of my wallet in the Target bag. Sunday evening Dean mistook the Target bag as trash and put in our trash can. Of course our trash day was Monday and I didn't discover this until Monday night. I spent the rest of that night calling my credit card companies. As sucky as this was, the silver lining is that I have been putting off closing my accounts at the bank I used before we got our joint accounts at Dean's bank and my original bank's debit card was still in my wallet so instead of calling to get a new card, I finally went in and closed all those accounts.

The Good: I got a funny text from Dean on Tuesday telling me to check his "sweeps" email address. Since I'm addicted to sweeps I created him a Yahoo address since you tend to get a lot of junk mail from certain sweeps. We, okay correction... HE won another sweepstake! First of all, I'm thrilled but I have to admit I'm getting jealous b/c I can't remember the last time I was the one who won stuff. ;-) The last win was a kick-ass baby monitor and now we have a year's supply of all-natural baby wipes and diaper cream. Dean mentioned in his text that it's "nuthin 2 big", however this is a highly rated brand and not too cheap--the average retail value of the year's supply is $350! So little by little we're getting closer to being prepared for a baby... just have to work on the obvious missing factor. LOL

Another Good: My nieces are in town!! I got an email on Sunday from Allison (almost 10-years old) and she said they're in town for Spring break (they live in Columbia, MO). We have arranged for Allison and Madison to come up to Omaha Thursday night and stay with us until Saturday... I cannot wait! Not sure at this point (Wed) when Dean will come home from Grand Island, so he might miss the girls. He was supposed to be done for the month on Tuesday but his coworker (who lives out there) his wife had their baby so now he's off the rest of the week. Dean ended up coming home on Thursday, the same day I picked up the girls. We had a great time between Thursday night and Sunday afternoon when they stayed with us. We played board games, the wii, went to Amazing Pizza Machine, BounceU, and lots of other things. :-) Here are a couple pictures from the time they were here:


Poor Maddy got cut off. :( We could see her in the refelction inside the booth but not on the print-outs.


The girls at Amazing Pizza Machine


The girls chose some fake moustaches as prizes at the AMP so we could take pictures with Dean since he obviously doesn't need a fake one. LOL

This really doesn't have to do with any of the 'Good, Bad, or Ugly' but I'm proud of my latest diaper cake so I wanted to include it. :-) This is for Dean's coworker in Grand Island who just had their baby.



3.22.09 - 3.29.09

Week 11 - Spring is Officially Here!

[knock on wood] I believe Spring weather is here--and hopefully it's here to stay! This Friday the 20th is the first official day of Spring, so hopefully I'm right! Today (3/16) it's suppose to be in the low-to-mid 70s so I cannot wait to get out and run. I spent a good amount of yesterday compliling my running playlist into one long MP3 with audio intervals telling when to run and walk in accordance to my Couch-2-5K program... I'm excited to get out and try it today! It was a lot of work but it will really help out--and I won't have to run w/ a stop watch! My cousin Megan joined me for my 'run' today and I must say the program really worked well. On the way back Megan and I took a breather and chatted a bit--it's nice to have someone to run with but I'm not sure how well our chattiness does for our exercise. If only we could figure out telepathy. ;)

On Friday the 20th, the legion in Ashland had a special catfish fry that my family attended. It was fun spending some more time together. The pictures of this week (below) are from the fish fry. Dean was hoping to make it but got behind at work and since he's still in Grand Island he wouldn't have gotten there in time.



On Saturday I had to run some errands, and of course while out had to buy Twilight since it came out on DVD. As I was walking away I passed the magazines and noticed that they had a copy of The Knot (the magazine I work on) on newstands so of course I had to take a picture (see below). Later that day Dean and I went to see 'I Love You, Man', which was great--I thought at least. And then we settled into our routine--Dean watched March Madness and I watched Twilight. :-)


Dean heads off to Grand Island again tomorrow but this week should be a short one--fingers crossed! However his co-worker that lives in Grand Island is expecting his first child at the end of this month so it looks like Dean will be going back for a bit after that happens. Oh well, it's good overtime. Gotta love silver linings. ;-)

3.15.09 - 3.21.09

Week 8 - Beautiful Weather

Nothing terribly exciting happened this week, however the weather has been gorgeous! I went jogging on Tuesday the 24th, walked with Ember over our lunch hour on the 25th, and my cousin Megan joined me at Standing Bear Lake for another jaunt around the lake that afternoon.



Dean left for the beginning of his Grand Island project on Wednesday as well. He should be home this Friday and hopefully the project will stay on track so that he's able to come home on weekends. The project usually goes through the end of March.

2.22.09 - 2.28.09

Week 6 - New Life, New Snow & New Prize!!

This was an eventful week to say the least...

The purpose of this weekly picture project is to capture 2009 since 2008 flew by... This made me realize that we had barely seen our friends since NYE and how it would be nice to get together one last time before Kathleen and Dave have their baby (due Feb 12th) and to get to know our new friend Andy better. So on February 8th, we had brunch at The Farmhouse Cafe with Kathleen & Dave, Ember & Kris (and Parker), and Stacy & Andy. We had a great time and agreed to make it a regular occasion since Sunday mornings are generally open. Stacy and I joked how it takes months to agree on a weekend for our Game Nights, but only took a few days o organize this Sunday brunch. :-) So below the picture we chose to represent Week 6 is of us at brunch with everyone.


Now, introducing Cole Matthew Peterson... Cole was born on February 9th at 7:32pm to Kathleen & Dave. He weighed 8lbs, 7oz and was 22" long. On February 10th we headed to Bergen Mercy to congulate the new parents and meet lil' Cole. We were joined by Ember & Kris and Stacy and her family. Here are a few pictures from the hospital (click to enlarge).



We also had our biggest snowfall of the season on Friday, the 13th (how fitting). Here are some pictures from that. The first shows the depth of the snow, the second is the puppies watching Dean snow blow, and the third is the view from the peep hole on our front door. :)


And I supposed I shouldn't end this week's post without mentioning the most popular day of week... Valentine's Day. We kept it really low-key this year and ordered take-out from one of our favorite restaurants Hiro and watched Burn After Reading on On Demand. The day was actually most exciting in the afternoon though! As I was making us lunch the doorbell rang and Dean went to get it and found a box the mailman left on our doorstep. Dean had just received his diabetes supplies the day before so we knew it wasn't that, which meant it could only be one other thing.... a prize from one of the hundreds of sweepstakes I enter!!! I was right and it is sooooooo cool! Since we are eventually hoping to have a baby I periodically enter sweeptakes for baby products. I saw this particular prize being offered and thought it was perfect for our situation. We won a MobiCam, which is a wireless audio/video monitoring system that has a color camera on the receiver. The part that intrigued me most is that it also hooks up to the internet and feeds live video onto a website so when Dean is gone on his trips he can see our baby sleeping in the crib, or wherever we might have the camera placed. Plus so can all our out-of-town friends and relatives!! I was literally jumping up and down when we opened the box. I love the sweeps that don't tell you that you've won ahead of time and you're suprised with a something on your doorstep!

2.8.09 - 2.14.09

Last Day in Paradise

Today we packed up and said goodbye to Maui. We started the morning off by laying on the beach for a bit, then went back to our condo and started packing up. We have a later flight today so we decided to drive up to Lahaina and have lunch there before heading to the airport. We love the town of Lahaina--very quaint. We stumbled upon Blue Lagoon off Front Street and decided to eat there. Afterwards we did some shopping and enjoyed the scenery.



After walking around Lahaina for a bit, we eventually headed back and checked into the airport to sadly await the arrival of our plane. However we were very blessed with a few more amazing rainbows that will forever be grained in our memories!

Rainbow over our plane after arriving:


Rainbow over our plane at the gate:


Double-rainbows as I looked out from my seat!


And I just HAVE to point out where I'm sitting in comparison to Dean on our flight home. We weren't booked next to each other, however we were only supposed to be one row apart so we could communicate if needed. Well lucky Dean gets offered to trade seats into the exit row b/c a young boy was originally booked there. So while he's stretching out his legs in the exit row, his wife of 5 days is cramped next to a total stranger. Next time, first class all the way... :-)

Relaxation & Libations

Today was spent mainly in the ocean and/or poolside at the Hilton (drinks always in hand!) :) It was a fun day of hanging out with family and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. After Kendra took a swim in the ocean with her nieces, Dean gave Allison diving lessons and Madison warmed up to Kendra's best friend Megan.

Dean's mom Kathy and her fiance George arrived today so we headed to the airport to pick them up and wow, check out the view we had!

Afterwards we all went out to dinner and then some of us decided to go to Dukes Barefoot Bar at the Outrigger Hotel for some drinks.