Thursday Randoms / Love List

So, I definitely am working on that blog post with pictures of Maple and her dog friends at the river, but I think molasses pours quicker than my computer functions right now. It's ridiculous. I've literally been trying all morning to load pictures onto my computer for that post, but it's just not cooperating with me right now, and I have other things I'd like to get done today. Because I still wanted to have a post for today, here are just some random thoughts for the day!

Our Vacation Bible School at church was last week. Matt and I stepped up and had bigger roles in helping plan this year, which was cool to be on a different side of things this year.  It was also weird not being in charge of Crafts, which we have done for the past several years, but it still stayed in the family, as Mom was one of the Craft teachers this year!

Maple had a not-so-pleasant experience Tuesday night while walking through the backyard. All was fine and dandy...we were walking back towards the house, when she darted towards the garage. I thought she saw a grasshopper-she LOVES to chase grasshoppers (so much, that we'll make it an evening event to ask her, "you wanna go look for grasshoppers?" She can't focus on the smaller ones; only the big ones. It's hilarious!), but when she turned around and looked and me and I saw her mouth dripping with foam, I only knew it couldn't have been a grasshopper.  I looked past her and saw a frog, that somehow survived, flip itself back over and just sit there. I'm in the backyard, yelling for Matt, who's inside cooking dinner, and he finally came out to help me.  Maple hates water, so while she's standing there producing more foam than you would think is possible, Matt's holding her still, and I'm gently spraying her mouth off with a hose. Poor thing. It was funny, but I felt so bad for her while she looked like Fang.

Is it just me, or does anyone else love the soreness you feel after a good workout of lifting weights? haha. Which, by the way, I REALLY think I need this shirt. It's perfect!

Matt and I went out to dinner earlier this week...like...just the two of us. After it had been rescheduled numerous times. I can't even tell you the last time we did that! And it finally got to the point where we decided we wouldn't reschedule it anymore because then we'd really never get to go! We went to Longhorn, and only went there because we had a coupon.....which leads me to my next thing....

I love having coupons....but I've noticed lately that more and more places I guess aren't scanning them properly or something, I don't know, but you better believe I catch it.  Our waitress at Longhorn, who already wasn't that impressive (we're giving her the benefit of the doubt and going with she was new), didn't apply our $4 off coupon to our dinner. Rather than wait for her to come back (because let's face it, it would have been probably another 10-15 minutes...), Matt brought out his inner Elsa and let it go and said, "oh well, that extra money was going to be her tip, but it's her loss now." Also, at Martin's, all of my coupons haven't been ringing up properly, buy 1 get 1 deals don't always ring up, and the prices for using a Martin's card don't come off either. Since we do most of the grocery shopping together, I stand and watch everything ring up, because I know what everything should be ringing up as, and Matt bags up our groceries, because 9 times out of 10, there's no one there to bag up our groceries. This all might sound stupid to some people, but we plan out our shopping trips extremely well, so when we get up to the register, all needs to go as planned!

I really like these Farmers Market Baskets from Anthropologie. I think they would be good to hold all of the vegetables we've gotten out of our garden, as well as the ones Papa and Joyce have given us from their garden, too! But, I'm hoping that maybe I can catch them on sale or something at the end of summer....not sure I love them enough to pay $20 for one. I know, I'm cheap.

Summer break is almost over...that's depressing, so the countdown to Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks will start soon :)

And, although summer is coming to an end, I am, in a way, ready for fall and the holiday season....pumpkins, the 13 Nights of Halloween, the countdown to the 25 Days of Christmas, the 25 Days of Christmas, Christmas.....haha. And that whole season will fly by!! Which reminds me, I saw this picture on Facebook yesterday, so it only seems appropriate to share now:

A Day in the Life of Maple

Mornings are sometimes ruff.

I usually wake up twice: once around 4:00 am with deddy (this is how we say DADDY for all you northerners). Then again about two hours later when I wake up momma. I use to wake up at exactly 6:37 am every day, but I will now wake up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30 now.

I wake momma up by moving around on the bed and pawing at her (gently, most of the times) as if I'm saying, "momma, wake up and play with me!" Sometimes, she convinces me to lay down for a few more minutes, but then she can tell I just really need to go, so I hear my favorite words: "wanna go ou'side?" I LOVE to go outside to I start prancing around the bed room, jumping around waiting for momma to get up.

After that, I then eat breakfast, and then I pretty much have a very relaxed day: I love to lay around and gnaw on my toys. I'm not like my cousin, Annie...I don't destroy toys within 5 minutes of having them :)

Or momma will do something weird like this for me before she leaves.. (she thinks it's funny. I, on the other hand, don't see anything funny at all).

Sometimes, I play weird games with momma.

Like when she was moving my bed from the bedroom back into the den, I kept getting back in it and laying down so she couldn't move it.

Or, I'll try to sneak away, get back in bed, and hide in the covers.

 

One of momma's favorite things about me is my ears...aren't they cute??

I seriously just LOVE to snuggle up with my people!

 I love when deddy gets home and I can play with him!

When we're all home in the evening, I find some way to snuggle up with everyone, no matter how little space there is left on the sofa.

At night, most times I'm very content sleeping on the bed....

...but other times, I'm deliriously tired and keep momma and deddy laughing when I'd rather sleep on a pile of dirty clothes that momma didn't get to...

Oh! And I've been to the river twice and made some new doggy friends!! Do you want to see some of those pictures? Let my momma know and will get started on that blog to show you all the fun I had! :)

Our Disney Trip: What We Carried in the Parks

While we were in Disney, I thought of the idea for this blog post. We only carried one backpack with us in the parks each day, and I'm so thankful Matt was happy to carry it every long day (don't worry, I did always offer). It seemed like we always had exactly what we needed, even though I'd still be paranoid that we were forgetting something, so I thought it would be a good idea to just list out what we carried with us. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone planning a trip in the future!

• Rain coats: we never actually used these for the little bit of rain there was during our trip, but, had we not brought them each day, you know it would have poured! haha. Plus, we used them to wrap around my camera when I wasn't using it.
• Disney books: we had several Disney books that we carried around with us each day to keep us busy during lines, while we were sitting down taking a break, or just for whenever really! We borrowed this Hidden Mickey book from my mom, but there's a much more recent edition now! Then, a few days before our trip, we went to Barnes and Noble and got this Birnbaum Guide book and this Hidden Magic of Disney World book. For the Birnbaum Guide-there's a kids version and an adult version. This may sound stupid, but we got bought the kids version because the adult version had far less pictures. We were thinking, we already have these other two books with a lot of writing in them, let's just have one book we can flip through quickly and have the pictures to look at...I loved it (as much as I did when I was a kid and we had them for our trips!).
• Our camera: well obviously, this was a given. We have this camera, if you're interested.
• Water bottles: this was probably the smartest thing we did on the whole trip. We brought three water bottles with us to fill up while we were in the park. The first day, we learned the water from the water fountains was hot and gross, so we came up with a better idea. Each morning before we left the resort, we filled up all three water bottles with ice from the machine right near our room. In the Camelbak water bottle, since it was on the outside pocket, it melted kind of quickly, but at least we had cold water in the the early hours. The two water bottles inside the bookbag--one was a metal, insulated bottle and the other was basically a thermos--so we had ice and a little bit of water all day. With as hot as it got, we were so thankful we didn't have to constantly buy water while we were there.
• Snacks: you're also allowed to take snacks into the park, so about 1/3 of our suitcase flying down was food! haha. But, by doing that, we also knew we'd have room to bring home souvenirs.  We took several types of crackers, several boxes of fruit snacks, and a box of ziploc bags. Then, each day, we'd just pack up a few bags and throw them in our bag!
• Smaller items: hand sanitizer, napkins, bobby pins (my hair often has a mind of its own...especially in the heat), pennies and quarters--for the pressed penny and quarter machines!, phone charger (just in case), and I'm sure there were some other things, but I just can't seem to think of what they were!

Happy Friday!