26 isn't so bad

Well, I made it. I'm 26 years old. And my chest isn't so tight anymore :)

Mom came down for the day to have lunch and do some shopping. I had an awesome day - even if she did bring cake and make my co-workers sing to me. What are mom's for if not to still embarrass you even when you are 26.

I got emails, texts, facebook comments, phone calls and visits with awesome birthday wishes. It made me happy. I even had student-athletes sing happy birthday on speaker phone to me. They are too funny but worth every gray hair they give me. :)

It was a fun day. I am sunburned (cause we sat outside for lunch at the river pub) and wind blown (top down on the Z). I thoroughly enjoyed my day and am glad I got to spend some time with mom doing what we do best.

I haven't downloaded the few pictures that I took today but I will get them up. Right now, I'm going to sleep because I'm exhausted. And yes, it's only 9 o'clock but I'm old now so I can do that, right? :)

d-day or b-day?

Not that this warrants a post but tomorrow is d-day. You know, my birthday.

Only recently has it been changed to d-day :)

About 3 months ago when I would talk about my birthday, my chest would start to tighten. And I would panic a little.

I know, it's only 26 and trust me, I know that is young. I appreciate every day and I feel very blessed in my life. BUT 26?!?! I'm not ready.

I guess cause it's closer to 30 that 25 is but I'm just having a hard time with this one.

Nevertheless, I will celebrate just a little bit. I'm not huge on birthdays - I like a little lunch or dinner and a drink and of course, some shopping. But that's about it.

I am excited, though, cause my mom is coming down for the day tomorrow. I am taking a half day off and we are going to lunch and doing some shopping. Perfect birthday stuff. I'm excited.

I will try to ward off the chest tightening and just be thankful to celebrate 26! Maybe I'll have pictures for you tomorrow. We'll see if I'm in the mood :)

Much love and gray hairs! :)

Kels

Buying a home

No, we aren't buying a house right now.

But we are in the beginnging stages. You know, the pre-approval thing and the looking at houses and prices to determine what we can afford.

And all I really want to say is: home-buying is a daunting process.

We will wait a little bit to move forward but it's nice to know what we are approved for and what is out there. But it's still a daunting task.

There are no classes on this. You're just kinda out there on your own.

In other news, the Solis' are very glad that it is the weekend :) Brian is getting used to being up early every morning so he's pretty tired and you know me, I'm always ready for a weekend to sleep in.

Brian is still loving his job. We've carpooled a couple of times and had a few lunch dates. We had a softball game this week against Texas and beat them! 9-7 with a walk-off homerun! It was an exciting game. I love softball season.

Other than that, there just isn't too much exciting stuff going on around here. My birthday is next Wednesday and I'm not ready for it. Just talking about turning 26 makes my chest tighten. I know, laugh all you want. I know that 26 isn't old but it is just different. I am certainly having a different reaction to it than other birthdays. AND I'm getting gray hairs! Ali will be down next weekend and I'm excited about that!

Brian and I are going to San Francisco again in October, this time with his parents. We've also started planning a ski trip for next Christmas break. I do know that it's early to be planning that but we've been wanting to go for awhile so it's something fun to start looking at.

This was a bunch of ramblings but that's all I've got for today. Oooo, I almost forgot, I'm having a spa day on Sunday and I'm super excited. Facial, massage, pure relaxation.

Much love!

Jackie's Baby Shower: Picture Edition

Took forever but I finally got the pictures loaded - only some since I couldn't wait on all of them to load.

Here is the diaper cake. Now that I know how to make them, I will get more creative with them.

We had cheese tray, fruit tray and some awesome spinach dip and pitas. The cake was red velvet - yummo!

I made some white wine sangria. It was a recipe from online and turned out great. I also got to use my punch bowl that changes into a cake stand for the first time!

We played the 'what kind of baby food' game. It was hilarious and I picked out some great foods. They were disgusting! There was some mac & cheese, oatmeal and ham mixed in there somewhere.

Laurie made the best favors: little chardonnay bottles with bags of m&ms. They had a little note attached saying thanks for making the day so sweet! :)

My favorite picture: Jackie smelling the baby food. Her reaction: Do babies really eat this? Cause mine's not! :) I think that was the turkey one!

Our onesie clothesline

Linda didn't like the baby food either. That had to be the oatmeal maybe?

Cutest clothes ever - a little bath towel and robe with doggie paws all of it.

Jackie and her cake

Mrs. Hindson cutting the cake - it was so yummy! See that depleted sangria bowl? It was yummy too! :)

Mary Ellen, are you having fun?

Laurie, Jackie and me - it was a successful first shower! :)

Now we sit and wait for baby boy Bonavita. I told Jackie he isn't coming out until they pick a name - he doesn't want to go by 'baby boy' forever! Congratulations to Jackie!! Laurie and I can't wait to be aunties :)

Jackie's Baby Shower

We had a great baby shower for Jackie on Thursday! Laurie and I hosted it and for our first shower, I think we did a great job. I have downloaded pictures but I'm having a hard time getting them to download onto my blog. I will work on that because there were some cute things. Laurie gets major props for the favors: mini chardonnay bottles (they were Barefoot brand so they had a little blue foot on them) with a pack of m&m's tied to it with a little note. They were awesome! And I fixed a white wine sangria that turned out to be a hit. It was the first time I tried it so I was a little worried but everyone loved it. I also have pictures of the diaper cake and great pics from our 'smell the baby food' game - that was hilarious!! Anyway, I will try to get those pictures up tomorrow.

We've had a great weekend. It's been one full week of Brian working at Texas State and he's still in love with his job. He was excited about not having to work this weekend because if he was still at CVS, it would have been his weekend to work. We took total advantage of it and did nothing :) Actually, yesterday we did do some grocery shopping and scoped out some tomato plants for me. Mostly, we stayed inside with the heater on because it was freezing and super windy here on the first day of spring. Today, I went and picked up my tomato plants from HEB (those were the best looking ones and the cheapest) and stopped by Sam's to pick up some chicken breasts for $1.49/lb! I planted my tomato plants and the one banana pepper plant and pulled some weeds out of the yard (a whole other story!). It was a semi-productive day including cleaning and laundry and Brian cooked a yummy dinner. We've discovered the best marinaded chicken at HEB and it's SO easy to make! So all in all, it was a productive yet relaxing weekend. We've also been caught up in the Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family so that and NCAA March Madness have been about the only things on tv.

It's time to get back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow though. Oh, and just to make mention, Brian and I have decided to plan a skiing trip for Christmas break this year since we will both have 2 weeks off. We have talked about this forever so this will be the year. We are already looking at ski gear (since it's on sale!) and places to stay! :) I love planning trips!

Pop back in tomorrow for some cute pics!

Go ahead and slap my hand...

I know - I've been a bad, bad blogger. Brian tells me this every night. "Why haven't you blogged?" "When are you gonna blog again?" "It's been ____ days since you've blogged!"

I know - I've been a very bad blogger. BUT (isn't there always a but) I just haven't felt like it. We were on spring break last week so I was not on my computer much and this week just started off with a bang and hasn't slowed down. AND I don't have many pictures to share since I hardly touched my camera as well. I am regretting that because we had a lot of fun over the break and saw family so there were certainly opportunities for pictures.

Here's a summary of the past 2 weeks:

We left San Marcos on Friday (the 5th) for Waxahachie. That was also Brian's last day of work at CVS. The job change worked out perfect because he gave his two weeks to CVS and didn't start at the University until the 15th. This allowed him to have a whole week off (for the first time since we've had "real" jobs) at the same time that I had spring break. We decided to take advantage of that week and go to Amarillo to visit my grandparents for a little bit and have some family time in Hachie.

We spent the weekend in Hachie and then drove to Amarillo on Sunday afternoon through rain! It was a fun trip - our first in the new car and we enjoyed it. We tried out the XM comedy channels - pretty good for a long trip. It gave us some variety. The dogs also went with us and enjoyed their space in the very back. I wish I would have gotten a picture of Gus - every few hours we would see his little head pop up and he would just lay it on the headrest, begging to come sit with us. Pitiful but they did so good on the 6 hour trip. We spent 3 days in Amarillo and enjoyed every minute. I have a funny muddin' story to tell you but that will be in my next post :) We did a lot of sleeping - I think we napped every day - and a lot of eating. We loved spending time with my grandparents and it's always so relaxing to go up there. I am so looking forward to being there in May for our South Dakota trip. Here are some pictures from our trip. We love doing puzzles at Nonnie's and we finished this one up in two days! And the other picture is our old house in Amarillo. We drove by it so I could show Brian where we lived.

We came back to Hachie on Wednesday and got to have family time the rest of the week. Mom and I got pedicures on Thursday, went to the Big Green relays on Friday. Mom taught me how to drive a stick since she just got her new car - a Nissan Z. Here's a picture of it:

She got that same color - black cherry - and it is a nice car. It has navigation and XM. So I learned how to drive a stick shift in this nice little booger. I was so nervous! And every time the car lurched (because I wasn't that great at first), my stomach lurched. Once I got the hang of it though, it was fun. We drove with the top down to the school but it was so windy that we couldn't do it all the time.

On Friday, my cousin and her family came down to Dallas for some wedding shopping - she's getting married in June! So on Saturday, the five of us packed up and went to Grapevine for some shopping, movie watching and eating. We so enjoyed seeing them and had a great time visiting. My mom always enjoys getting to see her brother.

We came back to San Marcos on Sunday, early enough to get things sorted out at the house and get laundry done. It was a great and relaxing spring break. Exactly what we both needed!

On Monday, Brian started his new job:

This was one happy Texas State employee! :) He was so excited - he had orientation for the first part of the morning and then we had lunch together. He text me later in the day saying that he had his own big desk and the phone had only rang once! He is so used to the phone ringing off the hook at the pharmacy so it was nice to have peace and quiet. While he knows it will get busy, it's nice to start out when it's slow and quiet. He is the only male in the office but he likes it and today they are having some kind of party so they are bringing in food and having some fun. It is just so nice that he has a place now that he truly enjoys. He really liked working at CVS but this job provides more opportunity AND weekends off! We know that we are truly blessed and very thankful!

Today, Laurie and I are hosting a baby shower for our good friend Jackie. I'm excited since this is my first shower to host. It's at a local restaurant and we are having some good food and drinks - nonalcoholic for the mommy! I will definitely have pictures up of that this week. I made a diaper cake and LOVE the way it looks so I'll get some of that too.

Well, that was enough for one day. Hopefully got you caught up on our (not-so) exciting and blessed life! I promise to post about the baby shower and my funny muddin' with the g-parents story :)

Much Love

~*~Kels~*~

Good Tuesday Morning!

Good Tuesday Morning! We'll start out with a little weekend update which will be short and sweet since there wasn't much going on. Brian had to work all weekend - his last weekend to work at CVS - woohoo! And me, I didn't get out of bed til oh, about 11am :) I did wake up before that but spent some time cuddling with the dogs and catching up on tivo-ed shows. On Sunday though, I cleaned house big time, did dishes, laundry - all the fun stuff. It was nice to have a weekend just to catch up. We've either had guests or been out of town for the past month and then this coming weekend we will be headed to Amarillo via Waxahachie for spring break! :) Super excited about our mini-Camp Nonnie!

So I love Tuesday's List with Love from Texas because it always gives me a post topic! I try to participate each week and it's fun to see parts of other people's lives. So today is "What's in your purse".

Here is my awesome purse. It was a Christmas present from Brian. It's a little country but so much TEXAN! And it's so big inside!

I always, always, always carry Burt's Bees. I have one in my purse, one in my office, one in my bathroom and one in my nightstand. I love that stuff - it's pretty addicting. I also have some lip gloss for when I wanna get fancy, a compact nail file and my little coin purse. I use that for all my extra cards - credit cards that I don't use often, business cards, insurance, all the awards cards from various retailers, etc. My actual wallet is too skinny to hold all that stuff!


Then I have my regular wallet. I've had that thing for a couple of years now and I love it. And of course, my coupon holder. In my zipper is my checkbook and register even though I hardly ever use checks.

On one side pocket is my hand sanitizer - extremely important.

On the other, my palm pre cell phone.

That's about it. I try to keep my purse pretty cleaned out because I HATE clutter. I usually keep my camera in there too but had it out to snap the pics. Hope that was interesting information about me for the day :)

I will try to blog some more this week. We will have busy nights as softball season is upon us and Brian and I love to go watch the Bobcats play! We have a doubleheader tonight and baseball and softball tomorrow night. Go BOBCATS!