My sweet, sweet Husband

I can never express enough how wonderful my husband is. Just when I feel the most overwhelmed and I am obsessing over the disaster area that is the place we live, I come home from work yesterday and Scott has completely cleaned and reorganized the living room. We still hadn't put all of the furniture back from Christmas and he did that, oiled all the wood and the banister, vacuumed and dusted. He also did all the laundry, which he normally does, but usually I fold the last couple of loads and he took care of that. And he loaded and ran the dishwasher. I was so grateful that he made the place feel so much better. Friday night he worked late, so I cleaned our three bathrooms, but that was all I had energy for. It is so nice that he took care of our main living space so I don't have to worry about it. Now if I could just get our kitchen and bedroom clean I would be in seventh heaven. Little bits at a time!
Another reason why he is super amazing is how great he has been to me with this whole pregnancy. Although I know he doesn't understand what it feels like to be pregnant and joyous changes that come along with it. He has been super supportive of all my crazy ideas and things I want to do to make this an easier pregnancy. He thinks I am nuts a lot of the time, but loves me anyway and does what I ask. I really couldn't ask for a better companion. He is fantastic. 

Is pink the ONLY girl color?

Last Wednesday I dragged by mom to Target to help me register for baby gifts. While I should have been super excited and enjoyed the experience, it really stressed me out, and I was annoyed. Stressed because I realized how much we still need/want for baby. Annoyed because I have never been a big fan of pink. Of course we are going to put our little girl in pink, but seriously it seems to be all that is out there for a baby girl. Why? It seems to me we could add some purple or red in there and be fine right? Who made the decision that the only color available should be pink? I am fine with SOME pink, but ALL pink? That will get old quick... The nursery is going to be a deep red and tan. The crib set I got is really pretty and feminine yet not pink. It can be done people!

What's in a Name?

So it is time to renew my tax ID number with the state of UT, and since I currently don't have any websites or blogs active for my business it seems like as good a time as any to change the name. I haven't really like "All Occasion Floral" for a while now, especially since I really focus on weddings and how generic and blah can a name get? I am thinking about changing the name to "Monique's Boutique Wedding Floral". It is a long name, but basically the business would go by the name Monique's Boutique for any web purposes. After I figure out what I am doing with the name, I plan to start a blog and a facebook page for my business and hopefully generate a little more buzz. Not worth it to pay for a website. I did that and it wasn't very good anyway, so it might as well have been a blog. I don't think I have enough of my friends on facebook that even know I have a floral business, so a facebook page would be great. Anywhoo, any thoughts? I really don't know how many people read my blog, but if anyone has any thoughts on the name, let me know. Don't you think Monique's Boutique is a a little more catchy?

Goals

Feel free not to read this, it may be VERY boring. At work we were asked to make goals for 2011 as part of our skill classes. Whatever you want to call them. We actually have a “skill day” every year on goal setting, and I am never the biggest fan. Of course I did set a professional goal as asked, but I don’t like setting goals. In my personal life, I rarely (never) sit down and reflect and write up goals. For some reason I feel like putting a goal down on paper is setting myself up for failure. Sure, I have ambition and things I want to accomplish, but I would rather have a firm resolve in my mind than have a written goal for me to look back on and say, oh yeah, I wanted to do that. I especially hate “New Year’s Resolutions.” Making a goal just because it is the thing to do at the beginning of the year is just a waste of time and energy.

Today I started thinking about my goals. Right now in my personal life, I have one: get this baby here, take care of me and baby until she gets here, pick a name for baby, and get everything she needs, and some things I want her to have J. All other goals I had have been put on the back burner while I go through this amazing and miraculous journey of bearing a child. The baby is what I think about most, and all extra energy I have is put into figuring out what I need to do in the next three months to get ready. Frankly, it is overwhelming and I would rather not think about it all, but the end is drawing near.

I think about all the other goals I have set for myself that I have yet to accomplish:

·         Getting my floral business going so I can be a stay at home mom – still in progress…I need more business. I got in debt for an advertisement in a magazine thinking it would pay for itself and it did not…I want to get in a wedding show, but I learned my lesson, I will pay cash, so it will take some time to save up.

·         Get my bachelor’s degree – I don’t know when/if this one will be completed… it will really depend on finances, once again, don’t want to get in debt for it, and we will soon have something much more important to spend money on.

·         Get out of debt. I got a second job to help with this one, but quit when I got pregnant and was too sick to work it. I am on the road to getting out of debt, but it is slow going. This one will be accomplished no matter what. I will be completely debt free in 5 years or less other than mortgage. This is extremely important to me.

Here is what I wonder…Do I not succeed because I am not ambitious enough? Do I settle for mediocre when I should be trying to exceed even my own expectations? Do I let other things or laziness get in the way of what I want? Am I not focused enough and willing to take risks to achieve greatness? I don’t know. My goals are not unattainable. I guess I need to figure out what keeps me from going for it and reaching them…

Christmas 2010

 A little late on this post...I am amazed how few pictures I can take. We spent 5 days straight with family and don't have even on picture to show for it. Sorry for the boringness of my posts. They could be so much better with pictures...I even had my camera with me, and didn't take any. Bummer. Our neices and nephews are so cute. Anyway...
This year, as we do every year, we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family and Christmas afternoon with Scott's. This year my sister was able to be here for Christmas itself. Usually she comes before or after. Christmas Eve we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and it was not as busy as a normal Friday night, but still surprisingly busy. We played games at the house and enjoyed spending time with family the rest of the evening. Scott and I then went home and opened our gifts. Scott is an amazing gift giver and always gets me something I didn't know I was getting, and I am always thrilled to receive. This year he got me this:

Perfect timing right? I have never really had anything I wanted to record before, but now that we have a baby on the way, this is something I was really thinking about getting. My husband is so awesome. My main gift pailed in comparison. I got him a new SkyCaddie SG5. He had a SG2, but he had been wanting a new one. I was really excited about giving it to him, but he had actually found it a couple of months ago and knew he was getting it. I was pretty sad. The best part of Christmas is seeing other people's reactions.
I bought gifts for my sister's kids though, and I was able to see them open them on Christmas morning and they were all pretty excited. That was a lot of fun. Malachi really liked his scooter we got him too. He wanted to go ride it the second he opened it. We got our neice Ashley a little dora purse that she barely put down the rest of the day. That is just so fun to see.
The afternoon was spent with the adults on Scott's side and that was fun as well. Scott's mom made us an great little afghan for the baby. Super soft and cuddly. Our teenage neice was there and we played some games with her that evening. It was a lot of fun. I always get a little loopy when it gets past my bed time, and that always equals a good time. Scott's brother and his fam came down the day after Christmas and Scott spent Monday down there with them and I went down Monday night and we played more games. It was a really good Christmas. Exhausting, but it was a lot of quality time spent with family.

Christmas Prep

Even though my dear sweet husband is a bit of a scrooge, he helped me to put up the tree the last weekend in November. *please note I waited until AFTER Thanksgiving. Anyway, this year Scott found golf ball ornaments, which I thought were fantastic because I love decorating anything "our way." I like to be a little unique. Just after we got the tree set up Scott found golf tee ornaments as well. I'm pretty sure they would be easy to make, but they were cheap, so Scott got a bunch of them. We officially have a golf tree. We have looked at a tree skirt as well...it is a little spendy, but I would love to have it. I am also going to make a golf Christmas wreath, hopefully I will have the time this week to get everything I need so I can get it up for at least a couple of weeks. I love having a "thing" that is unique to us. I love being the golfing couple and finding fun and different ways to show that off. Here are some pictures of our lovely tree. I took the close up so you can actually tell what is on it, but I don't you can much better. I am not a fan of the big silver balls anymore, so I think next year they will be replaced with red. The silver and the white don't look the best together.

23 Weeks

This is a pic of me at 23 weeks. Not a big fan of the pictures, I really don't think I look that big when I look in the mirror. Oh well. I am actually 25 weeks now and I am feeling much more normal these days. I am not nearly as tired or sick. I do have some pain in my back, but I think it is from sitting at a desk all day long, and not because of the belly weight. Our little girl moves all the time and specific kicks are starting to become more recognizable. I am actually able to put my hand on my stomach when she is kicking and feel it from the outside, which, of course, I thouroughly enjoy. It almost makes me want to cry. Scott and I can't agree on anything for a name, and I am exhausted by the thought of picking a name. We pretty much only have one that we are both okay with, but I don't want to name our little girl something we just okay with. I know we will come up with something eventually, it is just frustrating right now to not know what to call her. I guess I need to learn some patience.