call for help: shoe dilemma

We're leaving on vacation in a couple of weeks-- headed for the Sunshine State and Walt Disney World.

Yes, I'm practically giddy with excitement.

For my birthday, my dad got us reservations at the Spirit of Aloha show at the Polynesian Resort, and since we've got the dining plan, we're also going to go to one of the Signature Restaurants during the week.

Background. CHECK.

Dilemma:

Here are the dresses I have bought to take with me:

And here's the detail on the orange dress:

The orange Island Holiday Anthropologie dress is for the Luau.

The barley/multi Juicy Couture dress is for the signature restaurant. {aside: my aforementioned mega deal at Kiss Kiss! I didn't pay even half price for this pretty frock!! SCORE!!}

I only want to take one pair of shoes.

I don't have a pair of shoes to wear with either dress.

I am at a loss. Obviously, the cream color works with both dresses: it's in the Juicy abundantly, and it's in the straps and belt on the Anthro dress. Other than that, I'm pretty well stumped. Cream colored espadrilles?

HELP!!

our fun filled friday.

Okay, it has taken me H-O-U-R-S to get all these pictures loaded. Blogger was running at a snail's pace and we were averaging 3 an HOUR. So I hope we all appreciate the effort. Not to toot my own horn, but I've already invested a lot of time into this post, without hardly writing a word!!

I have always wanted to do one of those "a day in the life" posts, that outlines what you've done with your time on any given day. Since we had interesting things to do, I figured Friday was *the* choice!

7:15 am.
Liam woke up. But I could see on the monitor he was yawning, and rolling around. I opted to stay in bed and let him go back to sleep because I knew it was too early for him to be up (usually he gets up about 9:00). He went back to sleep 30 minutes later. I got up and got ready 15 minutes after that. At 8:45 it was just time to get up.


9:15 am.
Liam putzed around for a little bit and then I went and dressed him. He gets really excited when you put his shoes on, so I always try to put on a pair that he likes. I snapped a pic of him right after a fresh change, and dressing, and it cracked me up. No, I don't often let him stand on the bathroom counter, but he was so proud of himself!!


9:30 am.
We're out the door- pretty good time for us- and headed into Sugar Land, which takes about 30 minutes, if the traffic is good. We headed straight to the credit union in First Colony, and then went over to Target for diapers (mainly).

I was searching for this:
Possibly the smuttiest cover I've seen in a long time, but gosh darn it, I'm firmly Team Eric, so I can appreciate it!

10:45 am.
We were due to meet our friends Meredith, Carson and Slade, and Jacci and Scarlett at Japaneiro's at 11, so we headed over a few minutes early and walked around the Town Center area for a few minutes. We went into Kiss Kiss, which I've never been in before and picked up quite a steal (look for that in a later post). We had a fantastic time at lunch-- I adore all five of these people so much! Liam loves to watch Carson and Scarlett, and as I told Mer, I relish in the during-the-day adult talk. I snapped the most adorable pics of Carson and Scarlett that I would have loved to have shared, but with blogger uploading the way it has been...


NOON
We headed over to First Colony Mall for some errand running. I actually got in, and out, of the mall only visiting the stores I planned. After the summer craziness at FCM, it was pretty desolate. Kinda creepy. We headed over to Yankee Candle to pick up these:

And then headed to Gap to see what we could find to use our Give & Get coupon on. I picked up these for Liam:
... because I'm still 10 years old and I love Scooby Doo. So I had to have both of these for him.

1:00 pm.
We headed h-o-m-e, hoping we could catch Daddy there in his last few minutes of his lunch break! Liam was really tired so I was already planning on an early nap time.


1:45 pm.
Zach had to go back to work, so we decided to go into mommy's room and try on our new clothes and play for a little while-- until nap time.


When it became apparent that we had exhausted all the fun things in the master bedroom, we headed out into the living room to play with the new toy he picked out at Target that morning:

And then we watched some Yogi Bear on Boomerang, in hopes that it would calm him down enough for a nap.


2:35 pm.
Nap time! Or so I thought.

Despite the fact that he wasn't going to sleep, I decided it was time to hop onto the phone with Disney's Dining Help and make some restaurant reservations. I'm pumped about Coral Reef!

And I might, or might not, have gotten into my roasted pecans while I was on the phone. Just saying.



3:45 pm.
Oh he's finally asleep! But in the most awkward position, so I crept in to readjust him so he wouldn't be sore when he woke up... after snapping a pic, of course.


4:06 pm.
Hear a ruckus from the living room: Lily had decided to chew on the tie on my favorite pants, her tooth had gotten stuck and she was tearing around the house, dragging my pants. And it was funny. I wish I had been quick enough with the camera.

4:30 pm.
SHORT nap. Liam's awake. And cranky. So we decided to get in the car and drive down to the mailbox, to see if Daddy's HBO shirts had come in the mail yet. No shirts for Zach, but a shirt for Liam. He tried it on:

And then didn't want to take it off, so he sat in his chair, drank a bottle of orange milk and watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Seriously, I know it sounds gross, but it's really yummy stuff! Liam loves it.


5:10 pm.
Zach calls and tells us he's going into emergency surgery and doesn't know when he'll be home. We call Steph and make arrangements to meet at Lopez Saturday instead of Friday at La Finca. Oh, darn. :)

6:50 pm.
Liam and I make the healthiest dinner imaginable. I ate shrimp and mac, he ate fruit and mac.

And then polished off half of a raspberry Sprinkles cupcake. Very cutely.



8:30 pm.
Zach gets home. Liam begs for french fries.


8:50 pm.
Bath time. He's cranky, he turns on the shower head. It cuts bath time short.

9:45 pm.
Bed time, he's ready, since he didn't nap. Poor angel baby, falls asleep within minutes.

10:00 pm.
It's shower time for mommy!
What a long, enjoyable, interesting, unpredictable day!!

polar opposites

Firstly, thanks to you all for the sweet comments on my last post. Those pictures just make my heart melt. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed them too. :)

Y'all are the best!! xx

Wow, the days of our weekend couldn't have been more opposite to each other if they tried...

... but it's been a wonderful couple of days!!

I guess it's not worth a minute by minute run down since you can pretty much see what we did on Saturday. Except that we didn't leave Wharton until 3:30... but that's okay. And I skipped running my errands at the mall because I forgot that it was Tax Free Weekend until I saw it in my planner (yes, I know... I wrote errands, then saw my note) and I opted to stay FAR away from that mess.

It was wonderful to see a bunch of Zach's family for lunch-- there were 13 total adults, 4 kiddos. I love them all (well...) to death. We had to get together to see Bo and Valerie one last time as they're leaving tomorrow for Camp Pendleton. Bo's going to be deployed somewhere in the next 6 weeks to 2 months, so it was good to see him. We're going to miss him a lot while he's gone. But Valerie is going to be heading back the Texas way when her hubby deploys, so we'll get to see her.

Dinner was lots and lots of fun-- I SO wish I'd gotten some pictures... but maybe next time, when our boys are all napped up and well rested. My bitty boy, for one, was supremely cranky. Ah well, what do you do? We had so much fun, Tichenor Family, thanks so much for meeting us!! Zach particularly enjoyed a little man conversation (as lunch was pretty female dominant), and when they got on Big XII football, I knew all was right in the world.

Obviously, today I spent a good portion of the day surfing the interwebs, searching out parts of our halloween costumes. Zach's is all sourced out, all that's left to do there is place orders!- I just have to find a place for him to try on some Converse. He needs these.

{source: pumpkiny @ MM11DC}

My costume is going to be much more pieced together-- and hard to find. Currently, I'm preoccupied with finding this shirt. It's nearly impossible to locate: I haven't found one for sale yet, but I did find a source that says the shirt will be reissued in October, hooray! However, since it's an English designer, I'm skeptical as to whether or not I'll be able to locate/have it shipped in time. Meanwhile, I shall continue to scour eBay. Trusty (ha!) eBay. I'd just really like to find it for (much) less than 650 GBP. Gah. Double Gah. Also... I found the pants I need, but they're men's skinny jeans. Which I'm afraid to order because of the fact that men don't have hips. You know? I don't know if I should order up a size (because baby bearing hips are a b*tch) or just try to find women's pants. The dilemma there is that men's jeans are so much cheaper than women's that it might be more cost effective to buy up a size in mens and tailor them. Decisions, decisions.

Finally: Look what Mr. Man did to his precious face!!

Yep, our first black eye. He decided it would be a fantastic idea to take a flying leap into our coffee table. Gah. And he won't let me put ice on his boo-boos so... it's actually not looking nearly as bad as it did a couple of days ago when all the yellow bruise was blue and purple. Poor monkey. Zach says it makes him look like he's wearing eyeshadow. Sadly, it's kind of the truth.

All for tonight, friends. I'm going to go re-watch tonight's True Blood, fast forwarding through Tara's crying, Sookie and Bill's 'blah blah blah' at the beginning and Jesus and Lafayette's strange drug-induced family history romp. You know, about half the show.

::Edited to add::

Good luck tomorrow, to all my sweet & wonderful teacher friends-- Christine, Justin, Mandy, Emily, Shari and Amanda!!

just a boy and his dog

Liam loves Jethro.

Jethro is very tolerant of Liam.

Today, after we played outside (hence the naked boy: he was hot!), Liam decided it was time to follow Jethro from place to place.

Cuteness ensued. Wait until you see the last picture. I mean. O.M.G. cute.

Unless your name is Haley or Lola, I doubt you got as much pleasure out of the pictures as I did, but there's something to be said for a little boy and his bubba dog!

fangbanger.

For the life of me, I had no idea it had been almost a week since I posted. Have I been EXTRAORDINARILY busy? No. Not really.

So what HAVE I been doing?

-reading-

Since Christmas Day, I have had Dead Until Dark on my Kindle.

Aside: Chide me not, oh lovers of paper page books. My Kindle keeps me reading- I love a bound spine and feathery paper as much as any avid reader, but it's so much easier to tote my Kindle places, and their Whispernet connectivity ensures that where ever I am, whenever I need it, I can get a new book like *that.* It's the best thing E-V-E-R. Besides, I quite literally gave myself a vision impairment because I read so much, so the Kindle's ability to make the printed words larger is excellent for me.

It was my first download, as I was enthusiastic about picking up the novels that my 2nd favorite TV show is based on, but I never started reading it. Well, I lie. I read the first chapter or two and turned my attention to other things-- I was a little wary of Harris' writing style. Very abrupt, very concise, not a lot of descriptive paragraphs, maybe too much internal mulling over. Get me?

Anyway, not this Sunday just passed, but the one before, I was all atwitter after the airing of the new True Blood episode, so I decided I'd go ahead and try picking the books back up so I could get ahead of the show and figure out what was going on...

and I've been reading every chance I get since then. I'm currently on the 9th book- with only the 10th and Short Story compilation yet to read. Yes, 9 books in as many days and I'm just angry at myself right now because I could be reading instead of blogging. Sad-- but true. The quicker I read these last few books, the sooner I can move on and accomplish something.

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

{source}

I gotta say, though... the books have cemented me as a thorough fan-- and I'm rapidly becoming disappointed in the show. Not that I don't still love it-- but COME ON, HBO!! I was SO HAPPY when Sookie (seriously, what a name!) broke it off with Bill in this most recent episode because he's an effing putz. Yes, I am firmly anti-Bill. And then? By the end of the episode I have to hear "God Dammit, Bill Compton, I love you," AGAIN. I'm so mad at the two main characters on the show, I could just about scream. I might have screamed curse words Sunday night- it's very likely. I have a hard time liking characters who are continually, blindly, irrationally stupid. Which Sookie is. HOWEVER, I am such a fan of Eric, Pam, Lafayette, Jason, Sam and Alcide (who's going to be a series regular, Woot WHOO!)-- and Franklin, Russell and Talbot-- that I can continue to watch the show. I just go back and watch it later, fast forwarding through Bill the buffoon, Sookie the doormat and Tara the perpetually screwed.

Anyway, I swear to you all, in a couple of days, I'll be done with my reading and I'll be back to running to Target, taking a gratuitous number of pictures nobody cares to see and generally being normal. You know.

But then, my order of Tru Blood will come in the mail and I'll have to post photos if it in the fridge. Because the pleasure I'll get out of it will be immense.

waste not, want not

This is my desk:

And I hate it. It's small, crowded and doesn't really function for me anymore. I am constantly appalled at my complete lack of workspace, and pretty darn sick of it. I tried to make it more "me" by painting the white parts aqua, but that only was able to help so much.

This is Shiner's Nook:

It's what would have been the entrance to the room, had we opted to make the office a 4th bedroom instead. It's a complete and total waste of space.

You see?

Here is what I want:

I may be ignorant (and apparently, stupid, since I misspelled accessories. I only write it all the time... dumb) but I really think that it'd be a selling feature in the future. Zach pointed out that not everyone will want a small desk in the corner, but I argue that even if you want a large desk in the middle of the room- which we hope to do one day- you can still use shelving in the nook for a fax machine, a place to keep a phone, some books, a printing station... you get my drift. It'd be multi-purpose.

And I want this desk chair:

{source}

... in pink, of course.

And I want to display these things:

... with the exception of all the green stuff- that's all left over from Valerie's shower.

I don't think it'd take a lot of work-- I figure I could honestly get it all done in a weekend- if I had my dad's help. I need a place that's my own, that's functional and workable and makes me feel inspired. I have GOT to get myself some work space before I settle down to DO work because it's impossible as we have our office now. If my desk top is bad, Zach's is a billion times worse- The only free space on it is about 3/4 of a foot, square.

Zach's biggest argument? Not the cost, or the work (because let's face it, it wouldn't cost a whole lot to build at all) or the fact that I'd be disturbing things in the "man cave" for X amount of time... it's that "then where would Shiner's cage go? She's so accustomed to her corner."

Gah. She can have my desk space, I can have her cage space- we can play swappy swappy and everyone will be happy. Well, I would be.

:::BY THE WAY:::

THANK YOU to all you sweet ladies-- Lauren, Kate, Kristen, Ashley, Mandy-- for your support after my last post: It's certainly no fun to get hateful things said to you, but you all made me feel so much better! I'm truly awed and humbled by how supportive you all were-- a million, million thanks!!

All for now: Ashley- - updated just for you!

Zach's going to be home in a minute and I have to go get Mr. Man out of his crib-- we're going to spend the evening GROCERY SHOPPING. You all envy me, I know....