Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Resoluting

Is resoluting not a word?!   Spell check seems to think it is not a real word.  But I am making it one.  Resoluting - the act of following your resolutions, New Year's or not.

My one true resolution this year was to cook more.  I decided on this goal because currently, I pretty much never cook.  I don't know when or why I gave up on preparing meals of any sort, but it's a slump I've been in for a few months now.  This means all of the following:

a) Dinner around here pretty much is whatever Mark or I find to eat on our own.  He might take the time to prepare a sandwich or nachos, or even cook up some chicken or chili, but me?  I just eat whatever is quick and easy.  I am not a patient in the kitchen.  When I am hungry, I want to eat NOW, so it usually means I'll make a Lean Cuisine in the microwave or eat cereal.

b) I never have anything to eat for lunch, so I end up bringing things to work like granola bars, bags of goldfish and a tortilla.  Some days I come to school with nothing at all to eat, and then I have to scavenge around for snacks. (I have zero time to run out and get lunch).  This makes for a hungry afternoon.

c) The above make it pretty obvious: my eating habits are dreadful and far from healthy.

So I am resoluting to COOK MORE and eat less crap.  Following along this same line, I want to be healthy this year.  I have actually lost weight since August {turns out running around all day and having zero break time means that I eat less during the day, who would have thought} but I have not done any type of excercise since this summer, when my work hours were later and I could go for a run before work.  So I headed over to the YMCA last weekend and signed up for a free week's pass.  If I feel like I can actually work trips to the Y into my routine, thus making the membership dues worthwhile, then I'll officially join when my week is up.  So far, so good.  The Y is literally next door to my school (read: SUPER EASY to go to after work) and less than five minutes from my house (read: SUPER EASY to go to all the time), so I'm hoping I can get back in the groove of working out.  Plus, this Y is way nice with fancy TV's on the cardio machines and an indoor {and outdoor} swimming pool.  Way more perks than the McKinney YMCA.


Besides cooking in the kitchen and kicking booty at the gym, I am also back in school again, taking my last two classes this spring {yay!}.  So far, I like them both, but LOVE one of them - a class on Children and Young Adult Literature.  I get to read lots of books and blog about them, which hello, are two of my favorite things to do!  I'm going to have zero free time until May, but hey, I like it that way.  Or at least I am telling myself that now!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Day Three of My Captivity

That's right.  I've been locked away for the past three days.  Quarantined to the bedroom, hardly getting out of bed, all thanks to the FLU.  Ahh.  I got the flu.  If ever there was an initiation into the first year of teaching, the flu must be it.  I even took all the preventative steps to avoid this mishap.  I got my flu shot months ago.  Wash my hands all the time.  Stay away from the coughing kids.  Clorox wipe everything.  But I could not escape it.  Teachers at school were dropping like flies with the flu this week, so when I started to feel like crap on Thursday, I was fearful.  But I obsessively took my temperature all day and never had so much as a tenth of a degree over a glowing 98.6 degrees.  So I figured it was a cold or allergies, which I pretty much have everyday anyways.  But as more and more people went home sick each day, I scheduled a quick appointment at the doctor Friday morning.  The results: The Flu.  So I was banished away from school and told to rest up and take some Tamiflu over the weekend.  Sounds easy enough, right?

Wrong.  I actually felt 95% fine, even as the doc looked me in the eyes and told me it was the flu.  I had the aches and pains for 24 hours the day before, but by then, I was feeling a-ok.  So I figured it would be a nice long weekend at home.  I filled my prescription and went home to bed, ready to watch the entire contents of my DVR.  Well, turns out, those Tamiflu pills that everyone is scrambling around trying to find, well they actually make me THROW UP LIKE CRAZY.  So all day Saturday, I actually did feel lousy.  I thought maybe it really was the flu, showing it's face a day later, but everything on the news and on the official Department of Health websites swear that you don't throw up with the flu.  So I checked the paperwork in the Tamiflu box and there it was.  The one and only side effect: nauseous and vomiting.  Well, call me crazy, but this stuff is supposed to make me feel better, not worse.  So I quit taking it.  And now I'm back to being 95%.  And if anyone wants to buy some Tamiflu on the black market, I am your girl.

Monday, January 7, 2013

GO IRISH

We are officially back in the swing of things here in the BADS home {side note: my blog title acronym spells BADS.  That was poor planning}.  Today I did all kinds of typical everyday things, like wake up when the alarm went off, blow dry my hair, and pack a lunch before going off to work with it still sitting on the kitchen counter.  See? Totally back to normal around here.  My first day back at work after 18 days off went great.  It was nice to wake up with a purpose to the day, have a routine and see all my friends and kiddos at school.  Plus they all warmed my heart with their hugs and insisting that it had been "like twelve-hundred days since I've seen you!!"  And hey, MLK day is only 14 days away... not that I'm counting or anything.

We're watching the Notre Dame game here tonight.  In 2008, we even went to a ND game in South Bend, scratching that right off the bucket list.


That game went into four overtimes before Notre Dame lost to Pitt.  It's not {currently} looking so good for the Irish tonight.  I wonder if Mark would let me switch over the The Bachelor at halftime?

Saturday, January 5, 2013

New Year, New Look

Well, well what do we have here?  A spruced up blog?!  Yes.  It is true.  I gave up on trying to figure out how to make my little corner of the Internet look cute on my own, and instead turned to the shops of Etsy to find someone who could help me out.  Enter Angie.  She rocks my socks off.

I also cleaned the house today too, if that is exciting news to anyone out there.  Christmas is officially boxed up and back on the shelves and I {think} I managed to vacuum up all the glitter that fell of my {two} Christmas trees.  I was really into glitter this year.  I crafted up this topper for our tree, using a cardboard initial letter (less than $10 at Joann's), some gold spray paint, good ol' Elmers glue and GLITTER.


We are already five days into 2013.  What do I want from this year?  Health. Luck. Love. Adventure.


Any maybe some more blog followers?

Friday, January 4, 2013

Christmas at Home

Christmas Day, we drove home from Oklahoma after spending some time with Mark's family.  We had hoped to beat the bad weather, but ended up driving through most of it, making our usual 4 hour drive last nearly 7 hours  But it was worth it to spend part of Christmas at our house, with our little furry family.

I bought this wreath from a boy scout who came knocking at our door in November.

A White Christmas in Dallas... who would have thought?

Warm and Cozy

Our Christmas Card "wreath" by the snowy front door.

New ornaments this year :)

Hubs made a fire for some Christmas movie time.

She was glad to be home too!

PJ's, fireplace, movie and the iPad. Not too shabby way to wrap up the holidays, eh?

My Christmas Goose snuggled up next to me for some Christmas Vacation viewing.

Today I started taking all the Christmas stuff down and it's back to work on Monday.  I'm not as blue as I usually am this time of year, which could be due to the extra week of vacation after all the Christmas hustle.  And just think, in five more months, it's summer vacation :)

Merry, Merry! Part One.

You guys, our Christmas was out of control.  Here's how it went down.

On December 14, my little sister graduated college and our Christmas-ing officially began.  We left work and went straight to Muenster for the graduation and party.


The next day, Christmas with my family began.  Since my brother and his wife and sister and her husband were also all coming in for the graduation, we decided to have Christmas that week too, since it would be hard for us all to get back to my parents' place again in the next two weeks.  To kick off the holiday, we all went to see the Ice Exhibit at the Gaylord Hotel.  This was fun, although definitely geared more towards kids, and also VERY COLD!  It is NINE DEGREES in the exhibit, so it was also a race to see it all and GET OUT OF THE COLD!



While we warmed our toes, we took some photos around the hotel.  Please excuse the dark, grainy cell phone pics...





We got back to my parent's house late that night and had Christmas and presents, during which I took no pictures.  With one Christmas under our belts, we headed back home at the end of the weekend.