ready

I am so ready for...

*Spring and Summer weather

*the pool here to open 

*a GREAT spring/summer where I get to have my hubby home at nights during the week and not out of town all week (YAY job change)

*going house-hunting

*a garden (that comes with the whole house thing)
*breezy, sunny, 73* days

*taking Jax on long walks in the nice weather

*firing up the grill

*eating dinners and drinking wine on our patio

*yummy fruits and veggies
*Harley rides :)

I miss this!

No, I did not drive! This was last year in September.  We rode the bike down to Bloomington and then on to French Lick for our anniversary weekend.  We packed everything we needed on the bike, it was quite an adventure!  The ride down was beautiful, but on the way back I got my first taste of getting rained on while on a motorcycle.

At Indiana Beach campground for "Beach Days".  Matt's whole family (around 50-60 people!) get together every June for a camping weekend.  I love being around the whole family and enjoying the awesome weather.

Ahhh I am ready for Spring to spring.  I think these past few days have just been a tease, but a nice tease nonetheless :)

to pump or not to pump...

BODYPUMP that is :).  I have doing Bodypump for about 6 years now and I absolutely love it.  It is a Les Mills fitness class that uses a barbell as you work through each major muscle group.  It is great!  It burns calories and fat as you strengthen and tone.  It's the one class I think I will always want to be able to do.

I was approached last week by an instructor who told me he thought I really needed to teach.  I wanted to do the training to become an instructor while I was in Lafayette, but I had way too much going on while I was still in school to add something else to my plate.  Now that I am working full-time, I actually have more free time on my hands.  I have always heard that the bodypump training is really intense, so I never really acted on wanting to do it.

The training is in April in the Chicago area and it is 3 days.  The training is 9 hours on Friday and 9.5 hours on both Saturday and Sunday.  WOW! The certification I did for CoreBox was only 1 day of 8 hours and I was so wiped out after that.  I don't know if I can physically make it through those 3 days.

Here are my pros and cons for doing the training:  

Cons (ish):

-$$$- the training weekend is expensive.  You also pay every 3 months or so when a new release comes out to get the new music and choreography.  (I would get a free gym membership which would save like $35 a month AND I'd get paid for teaching the class so in the long run, it totally makes up for itself)

-The training is in the Chicago area-3 1/2 hrs away from home.  I'd have to get a hotel.  I wouldn't know anyone.  I would be away from Matt and Jax for 3 days and the weekends are when I mostly see Matt with his crazy work schedule. Bleh.

-It's my BIRTHDAY weekend! Someone needed a trade at work and it worked out for me to have my birthday off this year.  It's not a big or important birthday, but it's still fun to celebrate in some way other than getting my butt kicked by a barbell.  I'd have to still trade around some days to make it work.

-It'd be nice if once I did that weekend, I'd be ready to teach my own class.  But, no.  After you're done, you do team teaching (co-teach with another instructor) a bunch of times and then you have to teach your own class and have it videotaped.  You then send in the videotape and the company critiques you and let's you know if you pass or not.  I have heard of many people not making it through the first video, so you have to do it again.  Talk about intimidating. 

-You don't know what club you will actually teach at.  What if we live on the west side and the only opening is in Fishers?

Pros:

-I'd LOVE to teach! I was a captain of my dance team in high school and I absolutely loved teaching and being a leader.  That was a few years ago now, but I'd hope I would still feel that way now haha. 

-Free gym membership. Enough said.  

-I would get paid for doing what I love and for what I would be doing anyways.

-It would be a set time for a workout.  I'd HAVE to be there if I was teaching.  I don't really have a problem making it there now, but it would be a built-in time.

-It would be something fun to do when I'm not working.  I'm already at the gym on my days off anyways, so why not teach?

-Matt really wants me to.  He would encourage and support me in anything I wanted to do, but he really thinks I need to do this.  He has always told me I need to teach a class.

-Once I go through the training and eventually get certified, I would be set to teach it forever and wherever.  If we had to move, I could take that with me and teach wherever we go.

Ok thanks for listening to my brain-dump, I have just had this on my mind and had to get it out somehow!

Flip!

My darling hubby got me an awesome Flip camera for V-day!  I have been talking about wanting one for a while and I even had a coupon at Costco for $30 off.  I kept bugging him about getting one and he kept telling me to wait (but my coupon expires the 27th!).  He popped into the room yesterday while I was getting ready and surprised me with a presh homemade card (his specialty) and my Flip!  I was SO surprised and so happy :) Love that guy.  

Here is our first video we took of Jax doing his set of tricks :).

H&R Boring

I have been stressing out about doing our taxes as "married" for the first time.  We had a couple other extra confusing things that I didn't think I could figure out for our taxes like I normally do.  I have never taken my taxes anywhere to be done so I was a little leery about it. A friend at work suggested I try H&R block for doing our taxes.  She had used them last year and said she really liked them.  Plus, my dad said to take it to them too so that is where I went.

My day started out by making an appointment and they were able to get me in today. Great! Good thing I had the girls at work make out a list of all the extra documents I needed because when I asked the lady on the phone what I needed to bring her response was, "Oh just all your tax stuff!".  Ok thanks.  Then, I rounded up all our documents.  Annoying.  I had our W-2's all ready, but I had to gather up all our other stuff.  I had to make a few phone calls and mess with stuff online, but I finally got it together.

My appointment was at 1 so I left the house at about 12:40.  As I am pulling into the parking lot, I get a funny feeling.  Crap.  I forgot all of my paperwork! Seriously?  Sooooo I turned the car around, called to say I'd be a little late, and went back to the house to grab our papers.  What a mess.  

As I get back to the office around 1:15 I am greeted by my tax lady, let's call her "Gladys".  Gladys welcomes me, shakes my hand, and does the creepy "hold the handshake for a second, pause, and smile-all while maintaining awkward eye contact".  Oh well, at least I made it.  I'm one step closer to having this stuff done!

I go into her cubicle and start talking about what all we need to file.  The appointment starts out fine, but the more we go along I notice how unbelievably SLOW she is at everything.  As she types in my social it is literally one peck at a time, critically thinking every hit of a button.  No problem, at least she is being thorough. Being the type A personality I am, I watched her screen the whole time and made sure she was typing in the right numbers (go ahead, think I'm crazy, but I caught her entering the wrong number twice.  Yes, she may have caught it, and practically caught it at the same time as me, but I was doing us a favor).  

To make my agitation worse, her iPhone keeps vibrating that someone is calling her, and she won't click to end the call-just lets it vibrate. Over and over. Uh.  I start feeling like I will celebrate my 90th birthday inside this H&R block.  When we FINALLY get to the end, a message pops up that she needs a "quality review".  A nice word for "you messed something up and someone should check on it".  Thennnnn it comes out that she's a "level 1" (first year) and she needs a "level 8" (highest) to come and check it out.  Great.  How did I get put with the 1st yearer. Granted, she said she has been doing taxes for a long time, it was just her first year at H&R.  I know I am being mean.  I know the feeling completely.  But I just really didn't have the patience today.  I was starting to get really antsy.  Super nice lady, and I really do trust her with our taxes, I just couldn't sit there any longer.

Great. So we are done now? NOPE.  We still need to file your state return.  

2 1/2 hours later, I leave H&R with a bunch of papers that Matt needs to sign that I will need to take back to the office and then it can finally be filed.

I shouldn't even be complaining because at the end of the appointment, she asks me the prompted question on the screen, "How was your appointment here today?".  I responded and she typed into the box, "Great".  I should have said boring, slow, and now I am really hungry because I missed lunch.

All of this aside, thanks to H&R block because we are getting a refund this year!

7 months

My favorite furry child is 7 months old!  I felt like he deserved a 7 month photo shoot.  

I'm not sure what he will do with his time once it starts to warm up.  He is so in love with the heat blowing out of the registers and I just don't see him doing that with the AC on.  I am SO ready for warm weather though!

Loving on his blow dryer

 Matt and I started letting him do something that we said we wouldn't do.  Jax is allowed in our bed (*GASP*).  Matt claims he meant "wouldn't let him do it if he started to not want to go in his kennel".  Whatever.  Key point though- he is not allowed to sleep in the bed with us at night.  He stills goes into his kennel at night and still doesn't put up any sort of fight.   Good boy. 

I found him one morning all smashed up against the front.  Funny dog.

 It started about a week ago when I would get Jax up and about before I went to work.  He would usually run upstairs to the heating vent right after he ate breakfast.  I never even went to check on him because he was just always there until I put him in his kennel when I left.  One morning, I was getting ready to leave for work and so I went upstairs to pick him up from his heat coma and take him downstairs to go in his kennel.  Well, I went upstairs to the bathroom and he wasn't there.  I freaked.  After a good 5 minutes of searching and calling him, I realized where he was.  Under the covers, in bed with Matt while he slept.  Sneaky guy!

At first he got in trouble, but then we started thinking about actually letting him up there during the day if he still went in his kennel ok at night.  Jax has found his new favorite place.

Here are his latest photos :)

ouch!

This story was meant to be for my husband's humor only, but as I sit here to blog I feel it is only appropriate and my duty to share with you my embarrassing and painful moment of the day...

If you refer back to my last post, you will see that our sidewalk and yard are a complete sheet of ice.  Today it is sunny, so although it is still below freezing outside, the ice is melty enough to make it slightly slicker. 

I left Matt a note this morning to "please pick up Jax's poop outside. it is all over the ice and it looks so disgusting".  Ok, so there's not that much out there, but it really stands out on the white ice. He called me while I was in a class at work to say that he couldn't pick it up because it was frozen.  Makes sense.

Today, as I get home from my class and take Mr. Jax out, I notice once again how disgusting our ice rink of a yard looks.  I go grab some bags inside and start to plot out my plan of attack.

Ok, picture this with me...

I am in my scrubs, wearing my Dansko clogs (NOT the greatest on ice), with his leash in one hand and the bags in the other.

The UPS man just happens to be in his truck next door delivering a package to my neighbor.  The dog is so infatuated with the men in brown uniforms for some reason so he's obsessively staring and wanting to go say "hi" to him.

I realize that the yard is ice and it goes down into a slope to the road, but I put enough faith in myself to slowly and carefully maneuver my way down to the piles of feces. (I know this might be a little gross for some, so sorry!)

As I start my descent down the yard, I feel my feet starting to give. Of course.  I know I am going down.  I fall straight onto my rear, catching my weight with my left wrist.  And slide.  All the way down the yard. Into the road.  In front of the UPS truck.  Dodging poop by an inch.

The dog thinks it's great so he comes and plays with me and knocks me the rest of the way over.

So then I try to get up before UPS man sees me.  Whoops, can't get my footing on straight ice.    Down again.  

I finally make my way back up the hill and realize how bad my wrist hurts.

We go inside and as my loyal dog sits while I take his collar off, I look at him and say, "Wow, that was bad.  Really bad."

The ice yard has defeated me.

a slippery slope...a.k.a our yard

February came in with a bang. We were hit with an ice and snow storm and people in complete panic mode.  

It started Monday night with freezing rain and ice hitting our windows.  I kept thinking someone was knocking at our window, but it was just ice pelting the glass.  Of course, Mr. Jax was confused and wasn't a huge fan of getting soaked outside by freezing cold rain.  When I would open the front door to go outside, he'd run the other way. Once we made it inside, he ran straight for the heat register. He eventually warms up to the inclement weather. In just a short amount of time , there was already a sheet of ice on our sidewalk and grass.  They came by once to salt/sand our sidewalk, but I think after that they gave up because we haven't see them since.  Our neighborhood is a thick sheet of ice...covered by snow...mashed down into tread marks by cars.

Kind of a crappy picture, but this is the doorstep to outside. 

Footprints that aren't even touching the sidewalk...pure ice! 

Icy grill...I can't wait for summer to use this again! 

Our sidewalk and yard are a complete sheet of ice. No cement. No grass. Just ice.  I need some ice skates. I'm also really starting to perfect my penguin shuffle.  Outside our front door is a good couple inches higher than normal.  I have to actually step up a little instead of just walking straight out. The poor dog just slowly slides down the slope of our yard when he is trying to do his business.  He just looks back at me all confused like,"Why am I sliding all over the place mom?"

The only thing that really had me worried was everyone talking about needing an emergency kit in case our power went out.  I thought I'd be more prepared, but it was really pathetic how "prepared" I got us.  Answer me this-if power goes out, does the water still work?  Either way, I started filling pitchers with water, Matt stocked us up with some hard boiled eggs, and I knew where the flashlights were.  40% prepared.

Tuesday rolled around and I made the trek to work. All day there was talk about the possibility of staying after our shift to work and even spending the night.  They were using vacant rooms in postpartum and other units and taking out rooms at nearby hotels to have places for the nurses to sleep.  I had my overnight bag packed and waiting. (Speaking of packing a bag, after asking Matt if I should pack a bag and freaking out about what to pack a million times, his response was, "I don't know! Pack your prom dress, and some pearl earrings, anything you'll ever need.")  Gotta love him :).

So not only do nurses not get snow days, we also may have to stay past our 12 hour shift?  I'm not complaining though. What would those babies do without us? It was actually pretty cool to see all of us just stepping up to the plate and making the most of it. A couple of us girls were a little paranoid all day whenever we saw the AR (scheduling person) or our supervisors walking around, we were for sure they were about to ask us to stay.  The night nurses started to arrive, and we were thinking we were in the clear.  Marion county moved us to a travel warning only allowing necessary travel to get home from work and emergency personnel. At 6:43 pm (17 minutes away from giving report to nights),  the hospital declared a "snow emergency".  Basically this means that no hospital personnel leaves the hospital until all units are adequately staffed (Women's AND 86th).  We all started preparing to stay all night.  I was expecting the worst- after already working a tiring 12 hour shift, having to travel over to a medsurg unit at the main house. Once again, I'm so thankful to work in the NICU. At 7:15, they called the "all clear". Yay!  I get to go home to my own bed and my poor lonely pup.

Brrrrr! 

Seriously, stop with the pictures already. 

Slipping all over Ice Wonderland

Today the roads were better and we had a break in the snow.  Lauren and I made the trip to the gym.  Yes, I am a psycho that went to the gym...hey the roads weren't THAT bad!  There were about 10 die-hards in our bodypump class.  In the middle of our class, the lights flickered and we were for sure we were done for and the power was out for good.  Well, it only went out for about 3 seconds and was back on.

I'm so glad that storm has passed and I could not be more thankful to have a garage.