playing catch-up

I know I've been noticeably absent lately. This past weekend was crazy busy, and you can always tell when Brad has the weekend off. Those are the weekends that I stay away from the computer.

Friday night, my cousin Nathan and his fiance Brittany had a couples shower at my parents' house. They're getting married in a couple of weeks, which is so weird to me. They're really young, and after Nathan shaved his beard off and cut his hair, he now looks like he did when he was 10. Anyway, they're happy and excited, so we're all happy and excited for them.

For the last week or so, Noah has been waking up at an ungodly hour. If you know me well, then you know I like my sleep (who doesn't?), and waking up before 8am is just wrong. I can stretch it to 7am if I have to, but when Noah decided 6am would be a good time... we had to fix that.

Well, their shower did it. He was tired, but around 8pm, he got his second wind, and was ready to party!

Noah and my uncle Kenny (who is 6'5") and then Noah with my Granddaddy Buddy (who is 6'4") and cousin Natalie (she's expecting in October!)

Told you we had big people in our family (excluding Nat of course haha)...

Saturday was my Mary Kay Grand Opening at my house. It was fun, and (as mentioned before), I have a great director who took care of practically everything. She's been in the business for over 14 years (and has 2 MK cars), so she definitely knows what she's doing.

A couple of the girls I used to work with at the JB came! It was so fun seeing them, and one of them booked a skin care party in June. Can't wait! :)

[Shameless Plug: I now have a Mary Kay website, so if you want to order anything or have any questions, feel free to go there. And remember, if you don't wear make-up, there are so many awesome skin care products... lots of anti-aging stuff... and yes, it actually makes a difference. There are also fragrances, lotions, etc. Ok, I'm done.]

After the party was over, my neighbor Libby came by to get a catalog (she had to watch her nephew), and her hubby Josh mentioned that some of the kids in our neighborhood think it's funny to tease our dogs. Now Flash and Dodger both love kids. Before we moved, Flash was living with at least 5 kids and loved them all. However, it's only natural that if somebody consistently teases a dog, it's eventually going to end badly.

After hearing this, Brad and I have decided to get a fence. It will solve a lot of problems, and it'll be nice to have for Noah when he's older anyway. We're still keeping the invisible fence hooked up, so that the dogs can't dig out.

The downside to this is that we were planning on using our tax return money to pay off some credit card debt. But we figured that in the long run, a fence is much cheaper and easier to pay off than a lawsuit and losing our precious dogs (who to us are family members... annoying, expensive ones... but ones we'd like to keep).

I guess the plus side to this is that we're not getting further in debt to avoid a major incident, and we'll still have a good amount left to put on the credit card.

*sigh*

I think Flash and Noah are neck and neck as to who has cost us the most money.

Anyways, so we spent Saturday at Lowe's looking at fencing options. Turns out my stepdad (it's weird calling him that... he's more like a big brother to me) "knows some people" and might be able to get it for us at a discount.

Brad, of course, is planning on building it himself. He's a why-pay-money-if-you-can-do-it-yourself kind of guy... which is good, because I'm so not. I'm the why-waste-time-doing-it-yourself-if-you-can-pay-someone-to-do-it-for-you person. I can't help it. It's in my blood. I think Brad enjoys these kinds of projects, though. Anything to get his mind off of Target and outside.

(I swear, he's talked about moving the trees and bushes in our yard almost every weekend)

We finally rented Blind Side that night, and I finally got to watch it! And it didn't take us three days!

Sunday was my family's family reunion... the Hailey family reunion. Yeah, try going to a family reunion with your name being everyone's last name. I spend the whole lunch looking up everytime someone says my name... which leaves me one of the last ones eating. Luckily there are some older folks who eat slower than I do.

These are the "Hailey sisters". My grandmother (mom's mom) is the one with dark hair on the left.

In order from L to R, it's Louise (who married Calvin Rea... of which Rea Rd in Charlotte was named after), Delores (my Mamaw who was married to the granddad on Letterman), Sandra (who loudly asked, "We're smoking pot??" after they asked us to put money in the donation pot), Charlotte (farmers and workers at Lazy 5 Ranch), and Pam (whose husband was a Holocaust survivor).

It's a very loud reunion, as you can imagine with all of these characters plus my mother. I love these ladies, and most of them live at the beach now, so it was nice to see them.

And that's why I've been so quiet on here lately. :)

We also got our gardens going. We mostly planted tomatoes and peppers this year, since as it turns out, we don't eat much squash or zucchini. Our flower one at the front has been blooming, and I tried to get some cute pictures of Noah with them. But as you can see from his face, he was not liking the bark, which made it difficult.

Brad wanted me to add on here to our western readers that these are what you call "flowers". From what we understand, all you guys see is snow and dirt. Feel free to smack him next time you see him. :)