pillow pets and black socks

Luckily we were able to spend time with my family on Christmas Eve night before we headed back home.  I love watching my niece and nephew open up their presents.  Their smiles are so worth it.  We did gifts and then chowed down on my favorite meal that my mom makes-Chicken and Noodles.  I conveniently packed myself up a pretty big to-go container of it :)

Jax's new Purdue jersey...more on this in a later post

Tre's Purdue pillow pet! I scored major Aunt bonus points with this one :)

We love black socks!

Dunn Christmas

Although I worked Christmas Day this year, we were still able to spend some time with both sides of our family on Christmas Eve! We went up to Lafayette on Friday night and spent Saturday morning at Matt's mom's.  I love their tradition of doing Christmas on Christmas Eve morning.  It has been like since every Christmas that I have been going for 7 years now (way longer even before I came into the picture!).  We always wake up, eat a yummy breakfast that Janet always makes, and then we do stockings (I LOVE that us big kids still get stockings).  We usually wait a little bit and then Jim and Sue (family friends who babysat Matt and his brother when they were babies) come over.  Then we start making our way through the massive amount of gifts under the tree.  It's always followed up by an amazing meal. It was so nice to spend time with family.

Jax's Christmas present...a bone twice his size!  It actually started out being Charlie's bone, but they switched.

Daniel and Grandma Janet

The Dunn's

Danny, Brenda, and Daniel

Me, Matt, and Jax

Jax's Christmas photo shoot

Now that our Christmas cards have been sent out and received I will show you all of the outtakes it took to get one good picture of Jax.  He used to be great with the camera.  Not so much now.  He sees my camera or my phone (once I turn the camera on) and he shuts down.  He will NOT look at me.  He doesn't run away, but he does his absolute best job of ignoring and not looking.  I think it's my fault.  I can't just take one picture of him so he suffers through the 15 million I take at once instead. I can't help it!

 I tried to get him to sit in front of the Christmas tree, but once I snapped that first picture he would not sit there.  He would go sit other plcaes, just not int he one spot I wanted him.  Every time he got up, I sat him back down, and he got back up.  I tried treats galore, but this stubborn dog wouldn't have any of it.  After much coaxing and way too many weird and obnoxious noises (to get him to look my way) here they are...

Please-no pictures.

Here is the picture we used on the card. Love him :)

This was him avoiding the spot I wanted him to sit in.  I wanted him sitting to face me. Nope.

This is him giving up and just laying down.

Adding props...

Then, I went a little too far...poor guy.

busy holiday week

What is it about this holiday season? Is it the lack of snow? Which I am definitely not wishing for, trust me! Is it the fact that I work Christmas Day? I don't know the reason, but this holiday season seems busier and just not like it is supposed to be the holiday season yet.

I have not wrapped any presents yet.  They are all sitting upstairs in their respective shopping bags just waiting for me to wrap them.  Usually everything is wrapped by now but I just can't get it together.  This week alone is so jam-packed.  

I worked Friday and Saturday and was off on Sunday to go the Colts game which we actually WON for the first time this season. Woo hoo! I love going to Colts games.  It is such a cool atmosphere and a great experience to cheer on our hometown pro football team.  I feel like besides going to the game I got nothing done Sunday.  

Monday was spent at Kiwi Fitness! I got to the studio around 9 am to help new members register,  did the first half of BodyStep with two of the other instructors (one being the owner!), and then taught my very first BodyPump class at the new place! Matt was able to come too! It was so great to have him there.  By the time we left it was noon so we made our way to Puccini's and shared an entire large pizza. I had enough time to come home, shower, watch a little TV, and then head back up to Kiwi at 4:45 pm.  I got there early again to help people register, halfway made my way through another BodyPump class and a CxWorx class before leaving again to come home at 8 pm.  I was so exhausted and sore that I sat on the couch for a little bit before I crawled up to bed.

Random piece of info...we bought an iPod nano tonight.  At the new studio, the stereo is only accessible by using an iPod (which I used my iPhone yesterday and it worked fine, but it made me nervous that although I had it on airplane mode a call would still come through while I am teaching), but Matt just brought up yesterday how he wants something to listen to when he plays basketball. He could use his iPhone but that's kind of big to strap on your arm and run around with.  I brought up an iPod and he went out and bought one today.  Pro-active. It's small and orange and lovely.  It really will serve us both purpose and it's super cute (don't tell Matt I said it was super cute).

I worked overtime today, work again tomorrow, and then one of my very best friends is coming to visit! She came in from California last week and is going to come over when I get home from work tomorrow.  She will be here all day Thursday which I am so excited about!

I go back to work on Friday, off on Christmas Eve, and then BACK to work on Christmas Day.  In this entire story have I included when I am wrapping presents? Nope. Dang.  We are heading up to Matt's mom's house on Christmas Eve to spend it with his family and then we going to stop by my mom's before we head home.

I am so excited to spend time with family :)

kiwi

I am SO EXCITED and I just can't hide it!

So ya know my sob story about my gym here being bought out and then never being able to teach my BodyPump class ever again? (see here) Well, I am no longer crying because the Les Mills fanatics did not wait long to get things moving again.

Introducing...

Kiwi Fitness

We are opening on Monday December 19th and will be offering 8 of the Les Mills group fitness classes!!!

A really awesome instructor who taught at LFF is actually starting this business with her family.  It's so cool.  I helped them move equipment last week to the new place and it's absolutely amazing.  We will have our own group fitness studio inside of the a Sports Complex and we will offer all of the best group fitness classes out there! The classes are all Les Mills classes (BodyPump is one of them).

The coolest thing? She asked me to be a part of the team and to teach BodyPump there! I am just so over the moon excited about this!  I still get to teach Monday mornings at 1030 am.  

I am hoping I can get Matt back into going to the classes now. He was doing so well and then all that stuff happened with LFF being bought out and it's been harder for him to get to classes now that they changed the schedule a little.  Speaking of Matt, I love him.  He has been so supportive of my craziness this past month.  I have been so anxious and stressed about this entire thing and he is always here to listen and to give advice.  When he found out about Kiwi Fitness opening and about me being asked to teach there, he was ecstatic.  Like a little kid on Christmas morning. He made me feel like I was the coolest person ever and that this new place was the best thing since sliced bread (which of course it is) and I love him for that. The high fives and the "you are so awesome" talk was very welcomed :).

Check us out!
http://www.kiwifitnessindy.com

One tribe :)

Madi's photo update!

I love watching this little girl grow up.  I feel like she is just as much my niece as my real niece. And of course I really love her mama too :)

Here's my latest pictures of sweet Madilyn!

She knows how to Boiler Up!

Smiling for Matt...he seems to have that effect on babies 

Now staring at Matt...she was mesmerized!

love love love her!

Pretty Hill girls

gallery wall

I stressed over this gallery wall for weeks.  After I gathered all the pieces for it, I finally had it all laying out on the floor in the pattern I wanted it on the wall.  Matt walked by and said, "Hm...maybe you should take on longer and not go down as far on the wall." Fail. Long story short, I redid and rearranged this wall about a million times.  My indecisiveness is sickening.

Not only was I deathly afraid of putting a bunch of nail holes in our beautiful freshly fixed and painted walls (we patched up every single nail hole and blemish on the walls and painted before we moved in), but I am married to a wall-hanging perfectionist.  Who knew? I grew up in a house where we just picked where we wanted something and then nailed it on the wall.  My husband has a different story.  Any time we hang anything on our walls, the measuring tape, pencil, and levels come out (yes I said levelssss...one size just won't do).  Imagine my nerves when I looked at my abundant gallery wall draft on the floor and all of his tools I was going to have to use.  I will also add that while I got all the pieces on the wall, he laid on the couch and fell in and out of peaceful slumber while watching TV.  This was MY project and I made the mistake of saying I could do it all by myself.  Whoops.

First, Matt had to give me a tutorial on how to space every single piece.  I had to measure how far apart they were, then measure on the back how far down and far in the hanging hardware was on each frame before I could even get it on the wall. We had to mark on the walls how far up and how far across the whole thing would be.  I had to do this with every single piece.  Just thinking about me doing all that makes me cringe.  I am so glad it's done :).  You may not believe me, but it took me all of 2 hours to get this whole thing done (and leveled one last time).

Here is the only picture with the flash on...it shows off the glitter on the "D" quite nicely :)

Of course I used a lot of pictures from our wedding and engagement photos...I am so in love with all of those pictures.

The leaves are from our neighborhood when I took Jax on a walk one day when the leaves first started turning.  I ironed them into wax paper so they'd keep and then framed them.  I love Fall leaves.

An up-close shot of my prized "D".  I got the letter at Michael's and it was just plain white.  I bought a couple different glitter craft paints and some cheap brushes.  I thought it would go on and look like this in one coat...WRONG! I applied about 21 different coats (no joke) for a couple days until it got to this point.  Guess I learned my lesson on that one. 

Another leaf from our walk, family pictures (the one with the glare is of Matt and I, his mom, and his brother's family at our wedding and the one on the top is of Matt and I and my parents at our wedding), a box with the numbers "18" which I also painted, and the frame with side-by-side pictures is a picture of Matt's mom and dad at their wedding and a picture of us at our wedding.  We are doing a similar pose.  It's super cute and I love it.