Sick

For the second time in a month I find myself on the couch with flu like symptoms :( No fun at all. I love my students, but I've been sicker since I moved to Nashville than ever before (and I blame them, ew). I didn't want to take an entire day off today since I'm going to be out most of next week with my parents in town, so I used my morning to sleep in, but immediately regretted my decision to go in at 3 once I was in the presence of 60 screaming kids. We'll see about tomorrow...

In the mean time, Tuesday night we had a volunteer come in who brought a baby duck! The kids were super eager to hold it and pet it (and chase it and squeeze the life out of it haha). Here are some photos: 

Then Mohamed and I played checkers with chess pieces, and he totally whooped me haha

Bird Day Weekend

I know I say some version of this every week, but I'm definitely currently suffering from please-don't-let-the-weekend-end-itis. It's a nasty little disease that hits around 7 pm on Sunday nights and it gives me the grumps. Alas, tomorrow will inevitably still be Monday, and I will still have to make my way to work and I will be very thankful that I planned all my lessons for this week already. Every weekend needs to be a 3 day weekend... or even a 4 day weekend haha.

Yesterdays big event was that I FINALLY got a haircut after successfully avoiding it for about a year now. I get irrationally nervous about the strangest things... and getting my hair cut is one of them. I attribute it to the fact that I've never really had a great haircut before, and usually don't leave the stylist feeling completely satisfied or like I clearly communicated what I wanted. Thankfully, now I have a husband who isn't afraid to be a little pushy so he helped me to ask for exactly what I wanted and I left with a pretty big smile on my face. I just got a couple inches taken off, but someone finally put some layers in my hair instead of leaving it all the same length like I'm 7 haha.

Funny haircut anecdote: When I told Keith how much it costs for a regular ole haircut he was pretty blown away. I explained that it's because they charge around $20 just to wash it and "style" it after your cut. They never really ask you if that's what you want, so I usually just go with my hair already washed as a hint. Last night the stylist took the liberty of re-washing and blowing out my hair, which was fine because we had a coupon and it didn't cost us any extra, but it reminded Keith and I of one time that we took him to get his hair cut in Philly. Keith had a friend who was studying at a haircutting school, so we went in for free haircuts and Keith left with a goatee. The guy cutting his hair never asked what he wanted and when he was done trimming his hair he just kept on shaving down his face until Keith had the most hysterical goatee on his face. I nearly lost it while we were there and I COMPLETELY lost it once we got to the car. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. He ended up being late to work that day because he had to go all the way home to fix it. This came up yesterday because when the stylist was blow drying my hair I could see Keith sitting behind me in the mirror making an "i'm shaving a goatee on you" motion in memory of hair cutting people always doing whatever they want. I definitely started laughing uncontrollably all over again hahaha.

Today we spent our afternoon shopping for Keith's birthday gift! He's wanted a fancy pants Big Green Egg grill ever since Jonathan got one a few years ago, so I could not wait to make this a reality. They're definitely pretty expensive, but anyone that has ever had one has nothing but amazing things to say, so I was sold on obliging in this investment. Thankfully our families like him enough to chip in, so today we were able to go and pick it out.

Yep... we grill in our front yard. Deal with it. 

While Keith grilled our dinner, Theo and I played in the yard. I sprinkled some catnip in the grass and he rolled around in the sun. It was adorable.

Keith's new toy produced a very very tasty dinner, and I look forward to many more. I've already learned to accept that most of our dinners will be grilled for the next couple of months until he gets it out of his system, but at least he bought a new grilling cookbook, so he's got lots of new ideas :)

Have a great week everyone!

Movie Review

Sooooo in my last post I mentioned that Keith and I were going to have a night in, but in a fit of spontaneity we decided to go out on a proper dinner/movie date. We had some burgers and fries at Burger Up and then went to the movies to see Arthur. Let's just say it was an interesting night....

The movie was good! I would recommend it if you're looking for something pretty light/comical. I've liked Russell Brand ever since I saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so I was interested in seeing this and definitely wasn't disappointed (even though I secretly wished we were seeing Scream 4 eeeee!). The interesting part? Well, our movie was interrupted half way though because a man in the row in front of us had a seizure. There was a nurse and a firefighter that were in the theatre who took care of the situation calmly, but they had to stop the movie, turn on the lights and then we all had to wait for the paramedics to arrive and take the man away. We kind of just sat there and weren't sure what to do haha by the time the paramedics got there he was coherent and talking, so hopefully he'll be ok. It was pretty strange. Then, to make it even stranger... once the movie came back on the teenagers sitting next to us started making out and didn't stop until the movie ended about 45 minutes later. Keith pointed it out and then I was extremely distracted by them/hysterically laughing uncontrollably. That's apparently what we get for trying to go on a normal date haha at least we got free movie tickets out of the deal?

Friday

I've unfortunately got to work this weekend, but thankfully in return I have today off. It's given me a chance to clean up from our party last night, but I've also been able to enjoy some simple pleasure that I don't get to indulge in daily. Here are some of my favorites today:

1). Sleeping in until 9:30am on this stormy and grey day. It was amazing :) I always dream of staying in bed on days like this and today it actually happened!

2). Umm this adorable bunny I spotted in the back yard today! Theo is cute and all, but really, a BUNNY! I definitely squealed haha Are rabbits a normal animal to see around in Tennessee?

3). Getting a chance to catch up on our extremely backlogged DVR. Aka: I laid in bed and watched Chelsea Lately and Bride Wars. Guilty pleasures? Apparently I'm not feeling too guilty if I'm admitting them haha

4) A Friday night in with my favorite boys. We've got plans for take out, and movies and I've already got my pajamas on so I'm pretty ready to get started! Hurry home Keith!

5) Like I mentioned on facebook, this weeks episode of Modern Family made me laugh so hard I cried. I definitely watched it again this afternoon, and it was still just as funny :) Now I can't wait for our evening so we can watch last nights episode of Parks and Rec... it's my fave.

Here's to a relaxing weekend! Hope you all had a great day too!

Birthday Party!

Last night was a lot of fun, we had a great bunch of friends over, ate LOTS of food, had beers, and cake and laughed SO MUCH! Not only was it Keith's birthday it was our friend Jordy's as well, so we had a little joint party for the two of them.

Here are some shots from the night:

This is the GLORIOUS brownie/toffee bar/espresso whipped cream cake that I have WAY too much of left in my fridge haha 

The birthday kids. Keith was actually the birthday princess :)

We also had lots of cupcakes haha

Friends: Jennifer, Ives, Trent, Sammie

The birthday kids got silly stringed after they blew out their candles haha

Jordy doesn't look quite as excited  haha

Cutting the cake

Love this guy (also note our awesome new Rothko print!!)

Tytus

Ives, while playing loaded questions

Jennifer and Jamie

Keith's birthday cards :)

It was definitely a nice little get together. I can't believe that Keith is 25!

Guess Who!

Guess who turns 25 tomorrow, April 14th? He's cute, often has a beard, and shares a name with an aging rockstar? Oh that's right! It's my husband, Keith Richards! When I told my students that Mr. Keith was going to be 25 they all gasped and shouted HE'S SO OLD!!! (although I'm not sure that I really trust their opinion because these are the same kids that looked at me today and said "is that a baby in your belly??" ugh) Anyway, Keith isn't big on broadcasting his birthday in order to avoid everyone from high school that he hasn't talked to since, well... high school sending him half hearted b-day wishes. SO! You should all call him or text him to remind him that he's a quarter of a century old :)

I just spent my evening baking him an AMAZING looking birthday cake that I found here, and cleaning up the house for a little party we're having tomorrow night. Now I just have to wrap his little gift and we're good to go! Happy Birthday my love!!

In other news, Keith has a new obsession: finding good food trucks. Since we knew we would be having a busy night cleaning the house we stopped by a truck that was in the area called Pizza Buds. It was pretty scrumptious and I look forward to trying some more trucks in the area!

Smiles.

No pictures tonight, and no long story. I just wanted to write a little note about how sweet my husband is: I texted Keith throughout my day about how things weren't going quite as planned (ex: spending an hour in a crowded hallway with 50+ sweaty kids because of tornados in the area) and that I was a little stressed/disheartened/tired/overwhelmed. When he picked me up tonight guess what he had with him? Pretty flowers, an adorable card and CHOCOLATE. He melts my heart each and every day :)

Baby Shower

So the reason we were only in Atlanta for a night? I had to hurry back to throw a baby shower for the beautiful Chelsey Meyer! Duh.

At our Super Bowl party months ago Chelsey mentioned that she was nervous none of her Nashville friends would think to throw her a shower, so Jamie and I decided that we should take on the planning. Along with Chelsey's BFFs Renee and Ashley we gave her a pretty fun and relaxing afternoon. It was simple with just a few close friends, colorful decorations and snacks along with a minimal amount of embarrassing shower games haha. Again... I hardly took any photos (my camera was dead boo) so I stole all of these from Chelsey's facebook.

We all wrote down little wishes for baby Meyer

Mommy to be!

The lovely Ashley

Rachel, Jamie and I

I don't know why I've been so un-photogenic recently but here's Chelsey and I 

It was a really fun afternoon, and I hope that Chelsey enjoyed it. For never having planned a baby shower before, I think we all did a pretty good job haha. Love you Chelsey and I CAN'T WAIT to meet your little one :)

Opening Day!

This past Friday, Keith and I skipped work to drive to Atlanta and see the Braves opening day game. Keith is from Atlanta and has been a Braves fan since birth so he was EXTREMELY excited when his mom invited us to come to the first home game of the season. Keith has been looking forward to this for months even though it had to be an extremely quick trip. He had to go into the office for an hour in the morning so I picked him up at 9:30 and we headed to Georgia. Our first stop was Ikea because we wanted to grab the furniture they were out of the last time we were in town, and then we made our way to the stadium. We met up with Keith's mom, her friend Julie, Joe-dad, and his brother Christopher to have some beers before we went in to our seats. We stopped at a couple stands to find me an authentic hat and then headed in to watch the Braves take on the Phillies. The game was awesome!! We had great seats and had a really great time just hanging out as a family and enjoying some baseball.

Here are some photos that I stole from Tami because I only got one good shot the whole night haha

Awww... the boys

The Newlyweds!

Go Braves!

After the game we stayed for the fireworks show and then sat in a bunch of traffic trying to get out and up to Ball Ground where Joe and Tami lives. We got in and totally crashed because we were SO tired. In the morning we had to head out pretty early, but Keith's wonderful mother made us a feast of a breakfast complete with homemade waffles mmm. 

It makes me SO happy to feel part of Keith's family, and like I can be included in traditions like Braves Opening Day. Even though we were hardly in town for 24 hours, it was so great to see everyone, and we can't wait to head back!

[belated] Weekend Update 4/4

This weekend was a pretty busy one and I strangely didn't take that many pictures. We bounced back and forth between doing things we were obligated to (like work... ugh) but still had a pretty good mix of things we wanted to.

Friday I was technically off, but I volunteered to help a family move some furniture which turned into a huge afternoon affair that required many beers afterwards. I went on my first trip to the Yazoo Brewery and I pretty much want to go back every weekend now haha. We started our night there and then headed over to Burger Up for dinner. We both annihilated our burgers and fries and will very happily return there soon. After dinner I could only think of one thing that I wanted for dessert and my wonderful husband thankfully obliged. I told him that I just wanted to DRIVE PAST Krispie Kreme, and that if the light was on we could go in :) Obviously the doughnut gods were on my side.

I think we need to take doughnut dates more often. Keith said he didn't really want one, which was totally a lie because he ate 1 and a half of the 3 I ordered for myself haha.

I had to work on Saturday (Keith got to come with me which made it better), BUT I did get to see the lovely Chelsey Meyer walk in a fashion show for Nashville Fashion Week. The lady announcing was terrible and messed up the description of what Chelsey was wearing, but she looked great and the whole thing was pretty entertaining, aka Ryan and I made fun of all the stage moms. Saturday night was the best. I convinced Keith to make some boneless buffalo wings and homemade fries and we killed a 12 pack on the couch haha. We're super classy people, in case you hadn't noticed. We watched Walk the Line which was probably a little too serious for our moods because we just kept making jokes about the parody version, Walk Hard... then we stayed up WAY too late (staying up until the end of SNL is my idea of late, the college version of me would not agree).

After church on Sunday we returned a twin sized bed we had borrowed from our friends Tytus and Jamie and then met them for lunch at Moes (our lives revolve around food). We came home for a quick nap and then went back out again because I needed to meet some girls to go over baby shower plans for Chelsey. After my meeting Keith and I cleaned up the car, I cleaned up the yard a bit (it was really windy so there was trash from the neighbors blowing around), I made the bed in the guest room and somehow convinced Keith to hang some more things up on the walls. We've only got a couple more projects to complete before my parents come to visit. Did I mention that? My parents are going to be in town from April 26th until May 3rd! A whole darn week... I'm SOOO excited! I can't wait to show them around our town, and give them a little taste of our life here in Tennessee.

That was our weekend... nothing exciting. Now I'm home early from work because there are Tornados in the area. It got pretty crazy out this afternoon when I was at the community center walking with some of my coworkers on our lunch break. We had to go down to the first floor and wait in the womens restroom until the sirens stopped going off. There is apparently another warning for around 5:30. I actually just turned the news off because they were just talking and talking about the same things. All I need to know about Tornados I learned from the movie Twister... so obviously I'm a pro. The only funny thing about this bad weather is... I've been sick these past couple days and felt pretty awful when I woke up this morning, and I said to myself "it would be really nice if there was a way I could leave work early today" I didn't know it was going to take a Tornado to do it... but I'm happy to be home with Keith and Theo.