Asheville

I just got back yesterday from spending the weekend/week with my sister in Asheville.  I absolutely love that town.  It is so quaint and peaceful.  The people there seem pretty awesome.  My sister got to see her niece, who absolutely loved spending time with her.  It was so cute to see my daughter laughing with my sister.  She discovered Kaya's tickle spot and got her to laugh a couple times.  We ended up spending the fourth at her friends house grilling out and watching one of her friend swing fire, which was AWESOME!!!  I hope everyone had a safe holiday and got to see a lot of fireworks.  Kaya loved the fireworks so much.  She wasn't scared at all by them, which is pretty surprising.  You would think a 5 month old wouldn't like loud noises, but not my daughter! 

Asheville in the morning

I am heading to Asheville, NC in the morning to visit my sis.  She has seen my daughter since she was a few weeks old.  I am so excited.  I wish my husband could be here for the 4th to watch the fireworks...and help me clean the house :)  That is how I am spending my Saturday night....cleaning.  I can't wait to see my sister and take some pictures of the fireworks in the mountain.  This will be Kaya's first time seeing fireworks.  I am hoping it doesn't scare her too bad.  Ugh, I have to finish cleaning and doing laundry so I can pack in the morning.  I HATE CLEANING!!!  Now if I can only stay off Facebook long enough to get some stuff done!  Here are some pictures of my friend Courtney visiting this past week.  She is seriously an amazing yogi.  I need to take lessons from her!  I wanted some pictures of her doing yoga with my daughter.  Here are the results: 

Pool time

Today, Kaya and I went to our friend's Ashlee's house for some pool time.  It was a fun time.  They have a salt water pool and I am now determined that any pool we might have in the future will be salt water!  Kaya had a ton of fun....after she got over her initial freak out when we first got in.  She is getting better with water other than her bath now.  Yesterday, we went to Tybee Island to meet up with my friend, Courtney.  She was so good in the waves.  I think mostly it was the sound of the waves because it was almost the temperature of bath water.  Other than the random thunderstorms we get almost every day during summer, today was a pretty great day.  Wish I had pictures to post of the pool.  I could have kicked myself for not bringing my camera.  Of course all the cute would have been pictures happen when you do not have your camera.  BOO!

I promise

I promise to blog more.  I am going to shoot for every day, even if it is just a small paragraph tell you about what happened to me today.  I have been missing my husband quite profusely.  If those of you out in blog world don't know, my husband is an Army Ranger.  He is deployed right now.  I can't tell you where or I would hafta kill ya!  But needless to say I have been down for a little bit.  We have been through deployments multiple times.  But that doesn't mean each time gets easier.  Well it does compared to your first deployment, but it still SUCKS!  This is the first deployment since we had our daughter, Kaya, so it is a little rougher than normal.  I was just getting used to being a mommy and boom, I am doing it alone.  Rick has been so helpful as much as he can.  I have also relied on my parents and his mom, who are only a few hours from us.  They have definitely been a life saver.  Okay, enough of the excuses :)  On to my blogging...

So this weekend, my friend Dwight's family came into town.  They had a condo on the beach so we spent almost all weekend down there.  It was a lot of fun.  However, I missed a phone call on Friday from my hubby and almost missed one on Saturday, but Dwight answered the phone and saved me from crying the rest of the night :)  It is so amazing to hear his voice.  You really don't realize how many little things you miss when you are separated from the love of your life.  Even his voice can be the best thing you hear all week.  Today (well technically yesterday since it is 2 o'clock Monday morning), it was a quiet day at home...minus the trip to Home Depot, Walmart, and PetsMart!  I had to go grab cat food and dog food for my lovely babies.  Actually, NO, my dog is not lovely!  He is an @$$!!  He likes to shred boxes or paper if I leave him (even for 20 minutes).  So he has been experiencing kennel time this past week.

While I was at PetsMart, I got the urge to hit up the Home Depot next door.  I had to get a staple gun so I can redo my couch with some vinyl fabric.  My parents are coming down in a couple of weeks to bring me a leather couch so I am redoing our broken-arm couch and putting it outside instead of just trashing it.  Rick's Ranger buddies decided that propping themselves up and jumping on the arms of the couch was a good idea.  So a not too old couch is pretty much done for.  Except when you live with a crafty person like myself.  I will promise to take pictures of when I redo the couch.  I found some cute orange and white vinyl table clothes with fabric on the back at Home Goods.  It is going to go under the gazebo I am getting so that if it rains, the vinyl should protect the fabric underneath.  I don't really like the thought of sitting on a soggy couch....So yeah, I hit up the Home Depot and got a staple gun and some staples.  Then it was off to Walmart (with a brief trip to Sonic for happy hour for a slushie).  I got a couple of bags of dirt to plant my tomato plant I had.  I saw they were having a sale on their tomato plants and herbs so I ended up getting two more tomato plants.  Three plants should definitely take care of Rick, Me, and Kaya for the rest of the summer and hopefully into next year seeing that I planted them in HUGE pots.  I am planning on moving them into the garage when it gets to cold and hopefully I will have tomatoes all year round! 

As I was about to start planting my tomato plants, it started storming of course.  Oh well, it will get finished tomorrow.  I ended up putting Kaya to bed and started editing some pictures for my photography business, Irie Images.  Rick finally got online and I was so happy to talk to him on AIM.  It wasn't his voice, but at least I know he is safe when he gets to talk to me.

Tomorrow should be a busy day.  I have to go renew Rick's SUV, because he didn't renew his registration before he left.  But I have to go get his power of attorney on base :(  I try to avoid going on base at all cost usually.  I don't know why, I just don't really like going on base.  And then my friend Courtney is coming to the Island to hang out on the beach.  So hopefully we are going to get up together.  I have very few friends that I would consider a soul-sister, but she is one of them.  My friend Billie is the other one.  So needless to say, I am pretty excited to see her.  Goodnight in blog world!!

The Green Life Pages

So I am a new writer for the website The Green Life Pages.  It is a website dedicated to making your life greener and healthier.  They recommend businesses that follow their eco-friendly lifestyles and have articles about amazing recycling ideas.  I am writing articles that pertain to making your child's life greener and healthier.  So stay on the look out for my articles and of course, the other articles from the amazing writers on there! 

I won a Giveaway!

So recently I entered a giveaway contest at The Little Birdie Blog. It was for a $30 gift certificate for Scentsy, a company that specializes in making your house smell nice and yummy. I had a friend that sold this when we lived in Columbus, GA. Her house always smelled so great! I had even expressed interest in perhaps selling it. The company is kind of structured the way Mary Kay and Avon is with representatives that work from home and schedule appointments or parties at people's houses. Well life got away with me and it never happened. When I saw this giveaway, I couldn't help but enter it. Well guess what?! I WON!!! So Rachael emails me and lets me know that I won and immediately I jump on the Scentsy site and choose my items. Her Scentsy representative lets me know that it could take a couple of weeks for me to get my order....haha, it was less than a week! SCORE!!! I ended up choosing the "Enchanted" burner and the "Satin Sheets" which is a combination of sandalwood and vanilla. IT SMELLS AMAZING!!! Even my husband commented that it made the whole house smell great. Scentsy has a customer for life. Something else that is cool. I put the wax/oil cube down about 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it is now 4 am the next day and it is still burning oil...off one cube!!! Seriously it is better than any candle I have owned (including Yankee Candle) or oil burner! I might end up selling it....even if it is just for the sweet representative discounts ;) Here are some pictures of my burner!

So it is true that you can win something from these giveaways on people's blog. I am now the proud owner of an amazing burner!

TORNADOES!!!!

Oh My Goodness!!!!  It is about to storm here in Savannah.  Tonight has been a bad weather day for all of us in the South.  There have been a bunch of tornadoes popping up all the way from Mississippi to Georgia and it is supposed to go all the way up the East Coast.  I am not a newbie when it comes to bad storms.  My mom, grandmother, sister, and I huddled in my grandma's house when I was a kid during Hurricane Andrew (one of the worst hurricanes in decades to hit the East Coast until Katrina).  I was seriously traumatized from that incident.  I have also been through other hurricanes, as well as tornadoes.  I had to seriously hit the ditch one time when I was on the road to a music festival.  We also have a house right outside of Fort Benning, GA and we would always get bad storms there.  My husband was such a great guy.  If he was working, he would call me and warn me about an approaching storm (cause I don't watch the news).  A few times he has had to calm me down when some of the storms got really bad.  Well he is not here tonight :(  He is training right now.  So it is only me, Kaya (my daughter), and our three animals.  I guess we will be huddling in my shower tonight.....and I will post pictures of my animals to show you why I am not looking forward to sharing that small space with them.  My dog, George, is a Presa Canario and about 140 pounds.  My cats are HUGE too.  And my one cat, Luna, hates anything besides humans.   My other cat, Marley, and George are best friends though and like to sleep together.  It is actually really adorable. Ugh, alright, I am going to get all my "storm supplies" together.  Hopefully I have batteries for my flash light in case we lose power....I know I have like 1,000 matches so if worse comes to worse and we lose power, I can burn some candles! 

George

George

Marley 

Luna in the bucket we were bathing our daughter in.  He likes to claim anything that is hers as his stuff! 

George "protecting" Kaya during the first week she was home.  She had jaundice really bad so she had to be on a light machine.