Reason #14,321 Why I Love Maria

I used to get embarrassed to say this, but I'm getting over it: We have a maid.

I don't know why I feel guilty saying that. Maybe because I work from home and have no children and I should be fully capable of cleaning my own house? 

We started using her over a year ago when we were both working crazy hours. While I'm fine at putting things away, I am NOT great at deep cleaning. Mopping floors, scrubbing bathrooms, eliminating the mounds of dog hair in our home.... I'm not the best at all that. I got her name from my friend Kelli because we were having a big party.... she came once and I knew we had to keep her forever. She comes twice a month and I don't regret one minute of it. I am well aware that this is a TOTAL luxury and I am so blessed to be able to have Maria!

Most of the time when she comes I am not here. A few months ago, I came home to see my ultrasound photo taped to my bathroom mirror. She left me a note saying "so happy for you and baby!" and ever since then she has been going above and beyond. 

Today, I came home from the grocery store to find this:

She made me a diaper cake. IS SHE NOT THE SWEETEST!?

Honestly, I've gotten to know her and I so enjoy visiting with her and hearing her story. I hope we can continue bless her the way she has blessed us! (I love to give her presents too!)

Dean Turns 3 and Other Happenings

In my last post, you read about how Evan and Emmy turned 3 in Disney World. They were born February 27, 2009. 

Not even a month later, on March 18, another little stinker arrived in our lives! Dean Jackson's birthday is today and we are so proud of what a big boy he is! I love my Deanie Monster.

Isn't he just a total pumpkin?! 

Yesterday we went to a birthday party for Dean at Gymboree Play & Music. The kids had a ball. The photo below is cracking me up..... all the other kids had their cupcakes and then ran back out to the play area to get back to running around like crazy kiddos. But Dean? Dean stayed to finish his cupcake. 

Here he is, all by himself at a big table, eating his "pupcake" as he calls it and ignoring all of us.

 He finally finished his pupcake!

This was the best pic I could get with him... he was not in the mood to take pictures with Aunt Jenny!

After his party, he wanted chocolate chip pancakes. And by golly, he got them. Cause it's his birthday :)

Grant and I are really so, so blessed with all of our nieces and nephews. There's 7 of them total, but we love each of them to pieces. We love how unique and different they are and how fun it has been to watch them grow up. They fill my heart with joy!

They are all very excited to meet their little cousin this summer :) 

At my parents' house, they have one of those electronic picture frames in the living room that rotates pictures every few seconds. For the last 5 years, this has had pictures of all the grandbabies. They update it frequently. As I sat in their living room yesterday, there was a new picture in the rotation. It was my ultrasound photo! I got so excited... it's so weird that my little girl will be part of the grandbaby pack! 

I've had a blast picking out all the stuff for her room and registering. So much stuff! But it makes me pretty giddy. 

I'm ready to attack this week head on. I downloaded a new app for my Mac called "iProcrastinate" which is a productivity/time management tool that I have very high hopes for. I'm hoping it will help me knock stuff out if I can visualize it. I do love to cross things off of a list!

Also, I would like to give a high five to whoever invented this awesome thing:

It's so you can open and close doors without making a sound. I found it on Pinterest.! Perfect for nurseries or classrooms! People are so dang smart and inventive! 

I've been on a frozen yogurt kick this week. Specifically vanilla yogurt with nilla wafers, oreos and chocolate chips. DELICIOUS.

Right now, I'm eating a healthy choice soup... Chicken & Dumplins. It's not NEARLY as good as Chicken & Dumplins from the Cracker Barrel... but really, what's better than the Cracker Barrel? Kudos to Healthy Choice for a valiant effort.

Disney 2012

Once again, we were blessed to be able to have a Disney vacation with Grant's family at the end of February. (Sorry I'm just now getting around to blogging about it!!) We had so much fun. The main purpose of the trip (other than quality time together) was to celebrate Evan & Emmy's 3rd birthday. Yep, those kiddos are THREE! What a blessing they are.

I love Evan and his joy. He's ALL boy and such a sweet thing. He's always been my buddy and I love watching him grow into a big boy. I love Emmy and her sweet smile. She seriously has one of the most precious smiles I've ever seen. She is dainty and such a little lady. Grant and I took them into one of the Disney shops and let them pick out a birthday present. Evan picked out a big set of cars from the movie Cars. Emmy picked out a red and white beaded Minnie Mouse purse. She held it on her wrist like such a little woman. Her mommy gave her a few things to carry in her purse and she was so proud walking around that park! It was adorable. I'm so glad for extended time with them to build great memories. 

This was our baby girl's first trip to Disney! I wasn't really able to ride many rides and I had to take frequent potty breaks, but it was fun to walk around with her :) Her "Baba" (Grant's mom) took this picture of us in Epcot. This is about 18 to 19 weeks.  

This is the little birthday celebration for Evan and Emmy. They had a character breakfast at Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood Studios. The characters from Disney Jr. walked around and even brought the kids a little birthday cupcake! Here are Evan & Emmy blowing out the candles.

This is Jake from "Jake and the Neverland Pirates". I had Grant take this picture so I could send it to Jaclyn so she could show it to Grace and Dean. They love Jake :) As soon as I sent the picture, she texted me back with "OMG. Kids attacking my phone" :) 

Evan was very excited to see all the characters. He gave Special Agent Oso a hug. (Emmy was not real comfortable with all the characters, so she isn't in a lot of these pictures. Poor darling!)

This is perhaps one of my favorite photos of all time. Olivia Claire was also not interested in interacting with Special Agent Oso. Rather than cry or sit in her mama's lap, she decided to turn away from him and freeze in place. No movement. No blinking. Just frozen. You can almost hear her internal dialogue "If I don't move, he can't see me... maybe he will go away".

Here's the whole fam! Uncle Grant, Aunt Jenny, Olivia Claire, Evan, Chase, Ronda, Emmy Grace, Baba and Papa!

The men (plus Olivia) meeting Mater and Lightning McQueen! (They are Evan's favorite!)

Sorry, these pics are kinda scrambled and out of order. Blogger is being spazzy.

Here we are at breakfast. 

Again, Olivia will not give Special Agent Oso the time of day. Totally frozen. 

NOT. GOING. TO. LOOK.

Oh man. Laughter is good for the soul. On a boat ride, we drove straight into a storm. It started out as a drizzle, but then it started coming down in sheets. Grant's mom took this picture of us trying to stay dry. It didn't work :) I haven't laughed that hard in awhile!!

At a 3D showing of Fantasmic in Magic Kingdom. Aren't we lovely? 

At Downtown Disney, there was a Lego land place that Grant stayed in for a good hour. I couldn't get him out of there. He played with Legos for an hour. Seriously. 

Grant and his brother Chase went back to the parks late at night to walk around and ride the "real rides". With all the kiddos and with me being pregnant, we don't really get to do the roller coaster kinds of things. So the guys go back to the park during extended hours and ride till their heart is content. And they also take silly pictures. 

This is Grant and his brother with Mickey and Minnie. Seriously. 

One last picture of the birthday boy! He loves Handy Manny!

Again, sorry for the scattered photos. Blogger is not cooperating with me tonight :) 

We had such a great trip, and I slept HARD when we got back. All that walking will take it out of you, plus all the travelling. Special thanks to Baba and Papa for such a wonderful trip! We LOVE family time!

Right Now

Right now.

Right now it is Wednesday morning and I am feeling rested. For the last several weeks, I haven't been sleeping very well and am waking up at least once in the night from back pain. However, last night I slept through the whole night and I am VERY thankful for that!

Right now I am eating scrambled eggs, a handful of grapes, and drinking half a cup of coffee. I just finished my morning Bible study and spent the last few minutes scheduling some pretty awesome meetings for tomorrow. I've got my to-do list written out and feeling pretty confident that I can accomplish it!

Right now I'm pretty stinkin' happy that my husband works from home. Did I tell you about that? Grant got a new job and he is working from home now. He does go into the office and go out to meetings a lot during the week but he is definitely here more and that is fun. Most of the day we are in separate rooms getting our work done but it's fun to meet up in the kitchen. Yesterday he made breakfast and it's just fun. He killed a wasp for me yesterday and I was very glad that he was here to do that :)

Right now, baby girl is 19 weeks and 5 days along. According to my phone app, she is almost the length of a banana! Can you believe I'm almost halfway finished?! On Friday, we had a regular check-up appointment and the doctor suggested that since we are already 19 weeks that we go ahead and do the 20 week anatomy ultrasound! We were SO excited to see her again. She laid so still. She had her feet crossed just like I do when I lay down. Everything looked great, she is growing right on schedule and the doctor was very pleased with her development Here's her most recent picture. Isn't she just perfect?

Right now I'm finally feeling rested. We went to Disney World last week with Grant's family to celebrate the twins' 3rd birthday! Evan and Emmy are THREE! We had such great, quality time with the kiddos and with their little sister Olivia too. I need to upload some pictures from my phone, but we had a great, great trip. It wore me out though! So much walking.... we are so blessed to have such great family that we genuinely enjoy spending time with.

Right now the television is off and it has been for a few days. We realized that we're watching waaaay too much TV and feeling waaaay behind on everything else in life. While we did turn it on last night to watch a few shows, the television has been off for the most part and it has made such a difference! We're just more intentional about when we turn it on and how long it stays on. During the day it is rarely on at all.

Right now I'm gonna get some work done :)

Red Carpet Recap: Oscars 2012

Hello, and welcome to the 2012 Oscars Red Carpet Recap! Here at Jen the Newlywed, the award shows are a big deal, and none are more of a big deal than the Oscars. It's been written in my calendar for months. Also written in my calendar for months? The Disney World trip for the twins 3rd birthday! Evan and Emmy turn THREE tomorrow and we are in Orlando for the celebration. Thankfully, babies get tired early and we were back in the hotel to catch the majority of the awards. I never fathomed that I wouldn't blog about the Oscars even though I was out of town. SO... here we are! And let's begin. We have a lot to cover :)

Angelina Jolie. I'll start with the positives. The shade of her hair is lovely and really softens her. The dress is also stunning. It seems, however, that SHE IS VERY PROUD OF HER LEG. She stood just like this the whole night. 

 She also did this while she was on stage presenting an award. IT WAS BIZARRE. And I'd also like to point out that her upper arms are the width of Twizzlers. 

Anna Faris. Not a fan of the dress. 

This is a chick from Bridesmaids and I just thought this was a very good Oscar gown.

Cameron Diaz always has a good Oscar dress. This color was unique and matched her hair!

Emma Stone seemed like she was having a ball. She looked so tall! I am not a super huge fan of the giant neck bow but all in all she was precious :)

THIS IS HOW A COUPLE SHOULD LOOK WHEN THEY COME TO THE OSCARS. ENOUGH SAID.

I REALLY like Giuliana Rancic's dress. So elegant and fun. Reminded me of the '20's. 

Glenn Close looked SO PRETTY! This was a great color for her and she looked great in this dress! One of the best I've seen her on the Red Carpet....

Dear Gwyneth, I know you secretly want to be British, but we are not going to believe you as part of the Royal Family. WHY ARE YOU WEARING A CAPE? Are you the Queen? WEIRD. 

Jessica Chastain. A new redhead to watch on the carpet. She looked gorgeous, rockin' the pale (HOLLA!) and this dress was so cool and different. I don't think we've seen anything like before. She looked wonderful!

I don't like when JLo wears her hair in a bun on top of her head like that. The dress was too low-cut but intricate and impressive. 

Kristen Wiig has gotten a B+ to an A- for all the award shows this season. She's always right on the edge of "knocking it out of the park" but slightly misses somehow. And hey, I'm really proud of myself for throwing a sports reference into the Red Carpet Recap. For the one dude that reads this, you're welcome. 

I LOVE THIS COLOR I LOVE THIS COLOR I LOVE THIS COLOR

I'm kinda loving Maya Rudolph who is KILLING IT in plum! Beautiful! And the sleeves were cool too. EXCELLENT choice, my dear!

I want to be friends with Melissa McCarthy. Hilarity.

Meryl looks so pretty in this color. SUCH a good Oscar dress for her! She's aging so gracefully and continues to do great work. However, I'm not thrilled that she won. I think this was Viola's year. Great dress though. :)

Michelle Williams looked beautiful. She was teetering on the edge of looking like a safety cone but I think she stayed on the good side. 

Natalie Portman looked just lovely. The dress didn't WOW me but it was just lovely. Great dress for a presenter. And what a necklace!

Don't know who this is but I'm not sure what's happening.

I also don't know who this is BUT THAT COLOR WAS THE BEST THING ON THE RED CARPET. Oh my goodness. LOVE.

Octavia has consistently made WONDERFUL choices for the award shows all season. All of her dresses were flattering and slimming. This was no exception. I'm so glad she won :)

OSCAR. PERFECTION.

I DO NOT LIKE THIS.

This whole look is a little too futuristic for me. She's such a stunningly beautiful woman and she could've done so much more!

I thought Sandra's dress was cool!

Sarah Hyland is another girl who just "gets it" when it comes to award shows. I always look forward to see what she is going to wear. 

Why did you do this? Did someone tell you to? Please fire them.

Tina Tina Tina.... love love love. She's awesome.

Oh. Oh. I REALLY needed her to win. And she didn't. And I know she is heartbroken. SHE DESERVED IT. Did you SEE the movie? My heavens. That was a Best Actress performance and this was her night. And I LOVE Meryl but that was Viola's award. So sad. As for the dress, that color is awesome, the beading is awesome (would've liked it even better if the neckline was straight across) and she is awesome. 

It's midnight here and the husband is ready for me to stop typing :) Signing off from the hotel by the Magic Kingdom....