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 10 - Happy Hours = Happy Week

I'm a little late in adding last week's details and it went by so fast that I'm having difficulty remembering what happened! We had chillier weather so I didn't get out to run at all last week, but I was in a major spring cleaning mode, which I'm sure Dean appreciated! The time changed on Sunday the 8th so I was a bit groggy all week but I feel adjusted now.

On Thursday (3/12) I met Ember, Kathleen & Stacy for happy hour at Kona--oh how I've missed their calamari and sushi!!! And the best part is that overall I'd say we ordered about 8 drinks, 4 sushi rolls, a pizza, Maui tacos, and calamari--for a grand total of $12 a person! You can't beat all that for only $12! It was great catching up with Kathleen about Cole and Stacy about Andy. Sounds like some great things are in everyone's future!! ;-)

And since apparently I go out when I can't go running, it seems fitting that on Friday the 13th I went out for happy hour at Genji w/ coworkers for Adrian's birthday and Toni's last day at work. The pictures for this week are from this day. On Saturday Dean and I went out to do some shopping and I ended up with some new running shoes (from him for my bday) so of course I hit the trails on a beautiful 60-degree day!


Adrian, Jennie, Autumn, Toni, Janel, Alexis, Me, Emily & Sheryl


The March Bday Girls: Me (3/1), Adrian (3/13) & Jennie (3/24)


Adrian in Mai Tai Heaven

3.8.09 - 3.14.09

Week 9 - Happy Birthday to Kendra

Week nine consisted of my birthday on March 1st, beautiful (running) weather all week, and a busy busy schedule. On March 2nd, my grandfather went to St. Ez's in Lincoln because he was having trouble breathing and stayed there all week to figure out what was going on. On Saturday the 7th Dean, Megan, Hannah, and I went down to see him since they were still keeping him there for awhile. He was very happy to see us and seems to be doing much better, but will still be there for a lil' bit longer. After seeing him we went to Yia Yia's Pizza for lunch and afterwards stopped by my favorite used bookstore in Lincoln, A Novel Idea. So anyway, the pictures for this week are from Yia Yia's (man I need a tan again!) :-)



3.1.09 - 3.07.09

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 7 - Happy Birthday to Dean!

I'm amazed how we are already in Week 7! I thought this project would help us hold onto time better, yet it's making me realize even more how fast it's going!



This week's picture commerate's Dean's 36th birthday (2/18). We enjoyed a nice dinner at home and Dean even had a cute birthday cake. :-) The rest of our week was fairly uneventful. On Saturday we did some shopping for his birthday, ate lunch at one of our favorite places, Feta's, and went to see Slumdog Millionaire... definitely worth all the Oscar nom's (and wins)!

2.15.09 - 2.21.09

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