My Mocha and Me...

Our small group has been taking turns showing our rehearsal dinner slide shows (Cathy, I need to get ours from you). Anyway, when Jason came to bed the other night, I put together a little slide show for him. It consisted of me physically flipping through some pics every five seconds and humming a song. I thought I would share a couple of my favorites.
I am really running out of blog topics.

I love this pic because we were so young and had no idea that we would ever get married. We were both working at Houston's and just having a lot of fun getting to know each other.This was at a Dodger's game.

This was a picture from Mexico, the summer after we got married. We always have such a relaxing, fun time there and the sunsets are really pretty.

This is also in Mexico. Jason had smacked into this kid in the ocean and split his eyebrow (very Dylan McKay of him) and had to get Mexican stitches!

Below is us in California. J loves to drive me crazy by purposely closing his eyes. I seriously get really frustrated when he does that.This is us at our friend's Brad and Stephanie's wedding. It was a really hot day in Oklahoma and we had a really fun time seeing friends and celebrating their marriage.

Good-bye Vince...

Today I sold my sweet Volvo to a really cute couple who I know will take great care of it and even said I can come see him and drive him if I want. The Volvo was Jason's and my first big purchase as a married couple and I'm sad to see him go...but it is just a car.

Here is a pic of J and me the day we bought the car. For some reason, Jason wears that shirt every time we take a picture.

Buyer's Remorse

I consider myself a good shopper, I prefer to shop sales and really don't buy things I don't need (that last statement is really not accurate). My biggest problem is getting up late at night when I can't sleep, watching infomercials and actually calling in or getting online to buy the product.

In the past few years I have purchased Hip Hob Abs, Gunnar Peterson's Core Workout, Windsor Pilates, Youthful Essence (a micro-dermabrasion kit that Susan Lucci swears by) and most expensively NutriSystem. I thought Jason and I could stand to lose a few pounds and the food looked SO good (not the case).

So last year, I signed Jason and myself up to receive delicious canned meat and boxed veggies for a month. Jason lasted about 3 weeks and I made it through up until 5 p.m. on my first day. We probably could have returned everything but I think we thought we would eventually get disciplined and try again.

So fast forward to the happy ending of this story....Last Saturday, I had the brilliant idea to itemize all the food and put it on eBay. I pulled out everything that had expired, took a picture of it and believe it or not, it sold for $222.50 last night. Not exactly the purchase price, but it is something and I cleared out about half our pantry.

Brrrrrrr.........

Ok, I make an attempt to blog everyday for a month and I missed the second day. So I will post twice today.

This is what we woke up to this morning. Jason didn't get home until midnight last night from work and fortunately didn't have to drive through sleet and ice.

I really thought that snow in March in Texas wouldn't be a possibility, I also didn't think Hillary winning the primary Texas would be a possibility either, I don't know which one is colder or flakier. I guess I have been proven wrong twice this week.

Freegans and Starving Children

Much to Jason's chagrin, I Tivo Oprah and sometimes catch up on them at night. Two shows in the last week have really convicted me on some things and I thought I would share.

The first show was a report done by Lisa Ling on Freeganism. Freegans are folks that are pretty much anti-consumerism. They are sick of how wasteful Americans are and as a result, live simply and spend their money on helping others. (Some are pretty extreme, going through grocery store dumpsters to salvage food that was thrown out prematurely..no thanks). And yes, Oprah was showing off her pair of Christian Louboutins the entire time.

The second show was this week and had Drew Barrymore talking about the hunger problem in Africa. I know we see these images quite often but this time it really bothered me. I was amazed to learn that unless these kids have food on their stomachs, the medicines so many of them take for AIDS and HIV are useless and go unabsorbed.

I really feel like so much of my life is wasted on thinking about things that really don't matter. I have had my eye on this watch for about 3 years and hint to Jason how bad I want it every holiday but in the scheme of things, it is just a watch and the cost of it could probably really help some one else more than the joy of me getting to look at it every day.

So please know I am not getting on a soapbox. I realize we all work really hard for what we have and most of my friends and family are very philanthropic and civic minded. I just wanted you to know what is on my mind. Here are some of my short term goals to work at this:

1. Try to utilize all the food in my fridge and get out of the habit of throwing things out before they have really gone bad. I will also try to cook more and eat at home more.
2. I am not going to buy any new clothes for as long as I can. I realized while doing laundry that I wear the same things all the time anyway. This was really hard after seeing the cute new swimsuits in this week's Target ad.
3. We are in the process of selling our beloved Vince (the Volvo). Jason and I were blessed not to ever have car payments until Vince came into our lives. As much as I love him, I am sick of writing a check every month and realize that I can live with something that doesn't require monthly payments.
4. Clean out and give away. I really want to focus some time in the next few weeks to just get rid of stuff that is cluttering our house. My friend Micahl and I are going to have a garage sale too!
5. Jason and I are really wanting to go on some kind of mission/service oriented trip in the next year. No definite plans yet, but I will keep you posted.

That is all for today, something to think about. Hope everyone has a great Wednesday!

March Madness

Folks, the drought is over. After several months of being incommunicado and only blogging when pressured by Jason, I am ready to take it to the next level. A blog a day...can I do it? Does it cheapen the blog? Do I have that much to talk about? These are questions that will be answered over the course of the next month. Stay tuned...

It's Official! There's someone in the world willing to marry my brother!

I'm only kidding about the title of this blog. I love little Jeff and knew that whoever he ended up with would be a lucky gal. We just didn't know how lucky Jeff would get when he met Linde Browning!
So, on Feb. 15th, Jeff popped the question and completely surprised her. Family and friends were waiting back at a friend's house to celebrate. It was a really fun night and weekend. They are getting married in August and Jason and I are really hoping they will ask us to sing/sign at the wedding.