Girls night out!

This past Friday, Rhyan and I accompanied Angela and Lindsay to the cheesecake factory. Can you say "yummmm"?! I normally prefer to leave Rhyan with someone for girls nights out, but with Mama being in the hospital right now and Mommie recovering from the flu, she had to come along. I was pretty hesitant, but I think that overall she did fine. After 7:30, you could tell it was past bedtime, but other than that, she was okay :-)

I brought my camera along, but only got ONE pic... because my camera battery was dead. UGGG! How frustrating! So, here was the pic i captured... my two beautiful friends!
That same night was also Jeff's first baseball game. He is head coach of the JV team at Archer! I felt incredibly bad to miss the first game he coached this year! He didnt seem to mind a bit, but I do like to support him in anything he does, when possible :-) So, the rundown on the game: Archer lost to Walnut Grove 14-8. According to Jeff, Archer had one bad half inning. His starting pitcher was fatigued and when he put in a relief, walnut grove gained 9 runs. Sad. SO, all in all, if you take away that one half inning (which Jeff didnt even let the poor kid finish!), it would have been a pretty close game! They'll get a chance to play them again, so hopefully it'll be a win next time.

This whole weekend was beautiful! We went to the park on Sunday for a while and I got some cute pics... post to come later this week!

Run the Reagan 2011

Jeff ran the Reagan 1/2 marathon again this year! Rhyan and I went to cheer him on... unfortunately, we got there just about a minute after he crossed the finish line (the walk to the finish line from where we parked was further than we realized!). So when we walked up we found him... like this:
Dude was POOPED! He has trained for time this year and we were so proud to learn that he finished (officially) in 1:57:57sec. His goal was to finish in under 2 hours and so he did really well!

Rhyan and I really enjoyed the weather and so we all walked around and checked out the booths as well as the interesting people. This english bulldog was a BEAST! One of many walking around.
And finally, here is "Daddy" and Rhyan... enjoying the beautiful day. OUR HERO!!! GO JEFF!!!
It's amazing to think that a year ago on this very same weekend, Jeff ran this very same race... IN THE SNOW and ICE! And this year is was 70! Wow!

Valentines Day

Well, i didnt take any pics to memorialize the day... But! It was a great day :-)

Rhyan and I had a fabulous morning together. We enjoyed a healthy breakfast where she (for the first time) worked really hard to load her own spoon for each bite of oatmeal (after i helped her for the 1st few bites...). She had some OJ for the 1st time and apparently thinks its fantastic since she kept asking for "juice" the whole rest of the day and was NOT content with her normal apple juice.

Then, we headed to petsmart for some food for "puh" who was completely out. Poor guy. He's really kind of abused around here lately w/ the lack of attention :-( We enjoyed checking out the "shish" and "buuuuurd-eeee" and chinchilla to which she responded "ewwww". That's my girl!

Then to target and publix and home. She did SO much better on her independent play time/room time today which was really encouraging to me! She only fake cried for a TOTAL of about 3 minutes of the 25. This is a huge improvement :-) So yay for her!

We delivered some tulips to Mommie and Mama for valentines day. Just a little thank you for how often they take care of Rhyan.

Then home for some lunch and naps! After naps, we started dinner and headed to the park for a little outside playing. She is doing SO great with going down slides :-) She had a blast and i had fun chasing her.

Lastly, we enjoyed dinner with Daddy (who finally got home at 6:30). We had steak, sweet potato's, grilled zucchini and portabella's, peas and fresh strawberries. YUM. For dessert? Only Jeff's favorite: banana puddin!

Really, life is too busy right now during baseball season to "celebrate" v-day any other way. I did let Rhyan pick out a little outfit at Target (which is super cute, but i'm a tard and bought the wrong size... really? yep. thats me!) and she got a super cute card from Gran and Grandad that she carried around for a while. I had to take it away b/c she seems to think she's a goat and wants to eat all paper, but it was cute for a while :-)

So, we enjoyed our little family. Hope you did, too!

Mini-Update

Just so you all dont think i've gone and jumped off a ledge or anything, I'm off today (Friday) and Rhyan and I have had a blast so far going shopping, buying her a potty (that she may never use, but hey! everyone should own one! lol), getting groceries and dining for lunch at our fav, CFA. She went down the slide a TON today by herself (She usually sits at the top and whines until someone goes down with her, which i am officially getting too huge to do) which was awesome.

We've had fun and are soaking up every minute together. She didnt even say "Tracy" all morning after we got to Target! Thats progress seeing as how Tracy is her new favorite person and her new favorite word :-) (which i'm TOTALLY grateful for, btw! I'd much rather she cry when i take her from Tracy's house then to cry when i leave her with Tracy!... we are seriously blessed that they have such a sweet relationship!). In other words, she was having so much fun w/ me, she didnt even think about how great tracy is for a couple of hours. HA!

And i'm really looking forward to our little family going to longhorns tonight to eat w/ jeff's brother and Liz, his wife.

My point being, the pity party is over and the BEAUTIFUL weekend is here! I plan to enjoy every second of it with my little family :-) Hope you do, too!

Mommy Guilt

For anyone who doesnt know, Jeff is a high school math teacher in Gwinnett County. He is also head J.V. baseball coach at his school. I am extremely proud of how well he does both of these jobs.

I am also, at times, jealous of how much time he gets to spend with Rhyan. When he is not in baseball conditioning mode (which he IS in right now... boo!), he picks her up each day that i work and gets to spend from 4 until I get home with her all by himself. I love, and i do mean love that Rhyan has such a good daddy who takes such good care of her. And i know that I get to be with her all day Monday and Friday by myself. But on the days I work, its hard.

I dont get home on work days until almost 6:30. She has usually already eaten dinner and often, Jeff has given her a bath already. This is really nice, because it allows me to just spend time with her and not having to do dinner duties, etc. At the same time, it really bothers me that we dont get to do "family dinner" together those nights. I think that dinner together as a family is very important. It was huge for my family growing up and I want it to be a big part of OUR family as our children grow.

It's only 3 days a week. I know. "be grateful its not 5 days a week!". I know.

Most days i AM grateful. Even on days that i'm all "woest me", i'm still grateful. Deep down. But tonight, I dont want to dig deep to find that gratefulness.

Tonight, I just want to be sad that for the 3rd week in a row, we've been making arrangements for someone different to either pick Rhyan up from Tracy's or for Tracy to keep her late. For these last few weeks of baseball conditioning, Rhyan has spent 11 hours a day with someone other than her Mommy and Daddy. Yes, she's still with family. But i still have guilt. Because it should be us. It should be me.

So, for tonight, i'm going to wallow in my sorrow. Cause sometimes you just have to do that.

Plus, i'm going off of very little sleep and am having that same pain in my ribs that i had when I was preggo w/ Rhyan (a burning, deep pain under my right breast that straight up hurts).

So, theres my pity party. Dont feel the need to feel badly for me... i know this, too, shall pass. And its quite likely that with these out of control hormones, tomorrow will be a good day when I dont mind the pain in my ribs b/c i know its because of my healthy, growing son. That i'll go to work and remember that there are thousands who would love to make a living working only 3 days a week. That i'll remember that my husband, who i've been missing, is still my super handsome hubby who is working hard to provide for our family while he works all these late hours.

But for tonight, I sulk. Because i've been missing my baby girl and best friend. I miss them:

Daddy/Daughter Date Night

What a precious idea by Chick-fil-A! No wonder they are one of the most profitable fast food chains in the S.E.... it seems they are always doing sweet things to encourage family time together! I love them for that!!!

So, Saturday (Feb 5th) was the official daddy/daughter date night sponsored by CFA. I had asked Jeff if I made "reservations" for him and Rhyan, would he want to go? He said sure, so it was set. He had a date! It turned out to be an especially great week for a date for the two of them b/c this past week was the 1st of conditioning for baseball season and so between that and the last week of doing the announcing for the varsity basketball games overlapping baseball, Jeff was barely home ALL WEEK! :-( Both his girls were missing him (and i'm sure spud was, too...). So it was nice for them to get some time alone!

On to the cute pics which will tell the story!

Rhyan, all primped and ready for her date! (her shirt says "my daddy loves ME!")

Sweet :-) Jeff even dressed up for her!

Escorting her in

CFA had an area set up for pictures!

Waiting to be served

I did NOT go on their date with them, i promise. But Jeff said he "wasnt taking the camera" so what choice did i have but to drive them, take pics and then go run errands?! We didnt get there right at the 4:30 seating time (which was fine, but next year we'd make sure to be there on time!) b/c i didnt realize it was so "formal". Usually CFA's "reservations" are suggested times! Anyhoo, when they went in they were greeted and taken to an arch of baloons for a picture. Then they were helped to a table where a waiter brought over an appetizer of a chicken mini for each of them. Then, Jeff ordered for them and they enjoyed their meal. Jeff said their waiter was awesome to start w/ but must have forgotten about them b/c the next time he came back it was to see if jeff was ready for the check... everyone else got a dessert menu! But jeff didnt correct him and just skipped dessert (which makes me sad! but luckily Rhyan is too young to know!).

Then, he let her have a while to play on the playground.

All in all, it was fantastic! Such a sweet idea and I'm really glad they could start this little tradition!

The Name.... it's Official!

After much pondering, Jeff and I have decided on a name for our baby boy:

Mckinnon Andrew Ford

How did we come up with that? Well, we are both really fans of our family and so we love family names. Rhyan's name is comprised of mine and Jeff's middle names, so we wanted to go up a generation this go round...

Mckinnon: My Mommie and Daddy's last name. It is really important to me to pass something on from them to my children. They will never know how much it means to me that they raised me... gave up their "golden years" to raise yet another child. I'm so grateful for their sacrifice, and their love! This is a way to honor them both. :-) And of course i love that my Daddy was called "Mack" as a kid by some.

Andrew: Jeff's dad's name! His name is Andrew Cantrelle and while both names are great, it clearly sounds better to put the simpler name with Mckinnon so that they are not both "different" names.

We love that our baby can be named after both of his grandfathers! We love that by being able to pass on a name from both sides of our family, we stress the importance of both sides.

If you havent guessed yet, we love the name. And hope you do, too :-)