Wordless Wednesday Photo Overload

Motivational Monday

  Good news, Y'all! I woke up today and though I absolutely resented Bryce for waking me up to work out at 6:45 a.m., I am so glad he did. Talk about motivation to get. shit. done! As I sit here in my tiny cramped "office" (it's really just a glorified linen closet), I didn't want to work today and then I got to staring at my vision board that my amazing Premier up line encouraged all of us to create (no doubt for mornings like these) and I suddenly got inspired to get as much Premier done as I possibly can today. I've been on a bit of a Premier hiatus due to my gnarly broken foot. Let me tell you, carrying my jewelry case and all of my extras to and from is not easy to do with one working foot. My early afternoon will no doubt be filled with facebook party events, hostess coaching and lots of jewelry browsing (I know I'm an addict, the first step is admitting it right?). I also am taking the time to apply to be a part of one of my absolute FAVORITE sites creative teams. The Dating Divas are an amazing team and I cannot wait to hear back about if they like me or not. To say I'm a little anxious about it is putting it lightly. COME ON AUGUST 2nd!!
  I really just wanted to throw some motivation your way too! I know sometimes I need a kick in the butt and to hear that there are people that are just like me. They don't want to be doing what they need to do, but they push through and they do it anyways. Sometimes it takes a little encouraging and that's totally fine. Granted, I'd like the encouragement to start my day to NOT come at 6:45 am, but I guess I had to be up in 2 hours anyways to get Emory ready for summer camp so why not get a little more done a little bit earlier and have a little more time to be with my family tonight.
  So this is ME telling YOU to QUIT SLACKIN' AND MAKE SHIT HAPPEN!!!

I hope your day is inspiring and motivational and I hope that you get everything that needs to be done, done. I also hope that this helped you just a tiny bit.

xoxo,
Amanda.

That's what I love about Sunday...

Welp, it's Sunday and I survived another week. I was just going to make this gem of a blog a photo dump post, but alas, here I am.

Not a whole lot has happened since I last wrote. Fourth of July came and went. We spent it with our friends Sean and Amanda watching fire works, doing sparklers and setting off all of the smoke bombs in the GIANT smoke bomb package that Lily had to have at once. It was a great success for sure. I will say I missed Emory and wish she had been home, but she had a ball at my moms house. They bought their own fireworks to do in the back yard and she loved them. We finally got her back on the 8th from my grandma. Sadly, the same night we got her back she woke up at 3 am screaming and coughing to the point where she couldn't breathe at all. If you know me at all you know my kids ever been to the ER a combined total of 3 times. I knew this time she needed to go as a gut feeling. When we go there they found that her heart rate was sky high and she has Bronchitis. Needless to say, it's been a very long few days sleeping wise. We were in the ER for 3 hours waiting her her little heart rate to slow down. It scared me so much, because of her murmur. We go in on Tuesday for her annual cardiology appointment and to find out if we're going to have to wait another year to find out if she's going to have to have surgery to fix her heart. I don't think I've ever prayed so hard for a miracle in my life.  

  A few weeks ago Bryce's friend sent Lily all of his old Pokemon cards, because Lily has recently developed a pokemon obsession and wanted to learn to play. Bryce took the time to sit her down and explain the game to her. Needless to say both of them were in heaven. Since we don't have boys I know it makes Bryce happy to see his girls turing into their nerdy mom and loving all of the things that both of us do. It was seriously one of the most endearing things to me for some reason to just watch her nerd blooming right in front of us. The next day she looked at me and said, "Mom, I just NEED to find Professor Oak so I can be a Pokemon master and get all of my badges!" Of course you do baby. What she doesn't know is that for her birthday (she's requested a pokemon b-day) I found all of the badges on etsy as a party gift for her friends! I cannot wait to see her face when she sees them!! It's funny the things you get overly excited about when you're a mom, isn't it?

  I've done THREE things that I've never done before this week. I know I know, I'm getting crazy over here! Since my brother passed away I decided that life is too short to continue falling into the same patterns that I always have and I made a promise to myself that AT LEAST once a month I will do something I've never done or try a food that I've never tried before. In an effort to do this, the first thing I did was go to a drag show to see my good friend Joshua do his thing as Miss Pixie. I must say I was jealous of how drop dead gorgeous some of those girls were! I loved walking into the club on a Monday and nobody stared at you or judged you, you were just automatically accepted by everyone in there. Watching Pixie on stage was wonderful as well. Joshua's passion for everything he does is just infectious. You could see him up on stage just glowing with love of what he was doing and how proud he was to be presenting Pixie on stage for the first time.

  SPEAKING OF JOSHUA! He is the proud owner of a salon here in Dayton called Salon J. Ladner. I haven't gone to another salon since I started going to this master piece of a salon. They always refer to their hair cuts/colors/stylings as the #hairjourney and for good reason. I went to see Joshua last Thursday and guess what?! He did the best job of taking me to the next step of blonde and got my hair ALL THE WAY TOGETHER! I love everything about having lighter hair. I've always been nervous to go blonde, because I think most of the time if it's all done at once it can look cheap and like you just bleached your whole head. Not to mention it can be awful for your hair. Josh put all of those fears to rest. I'm in love with my hair and it has totally transformed me. I cannot speak highly enough of Salon J. Ladner and everyone that works there. You WILL leave feeling like a rock star, I had the bouncy and blown out hair to prove it.

  When I was like 16 I LOVE LOVE LOVED the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I never knew they did live productions of it in theaters until I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I guess I lived under a rock? Either way, on Friday I saw my first live production of RHPS and it is honestly an experience that I will never forget. The audience participation was hilarious. The actors were so beyond funny. Seeing it with friends just made it so much better too. I cannot wait to go back and HOPEFULLY I can take Bryce with me next time, because he loves RHPS too and I love that about him.
  Alright y'all, I have some Premier Designs jewelry shopping to get done. Our new fall catalog came out and I am BEYOND excited for it!!! Luckily when you gain levels in Premier they give you jewelry certificates to spend and I have $1200 to use for new jewelry. Shopping spree for working hard anyone? I think so!! Have a good night and an excellent start of the day. Try something new!! I promise it will be worth it. <3

xoxo,
Amanda

 

What time is it?! SUMMER TIME!

  You know what I hate? Catch up blog posts! They feel forced to me, so I'm going to skip all of the things that you've missed and jump right in to it! It's summer and I'm feeling good! Remember last summer when I said, "I'm never letting my girls leave for longer than a week again?" Yeah... well... I didn't listen to me. The weekend of Father's day we left to take Lily to NC so she could attend summer camp with her mom mom and see her dad on Father's day. I have never seen a child more excited to be able to go to baking camp in my life. She completely ignored the two other camps that she got to go to (Gymnastics and Swimming) and just went on and on and on about baking camp and how excited she was to start. Lily was lucky enough to get to spend father's day with BOTH of her daddies and it really was an awesome thing to see. I will never be happier than seeing how easily her dad and Bryce get along with each other and knowing that no matter what our feelings have been in the past towards one another, we will always put her first. It really and truly makes me so happy. Not only that, but Matt's mom and himself both love and care for Emory like she was family too. It's also very amusing to me that Emory doesn't know what Matt's name is because the three of us only refer to each other as mom and dad to the kids, so Emory calls Matt "Daddy", because that's what Lily calls him. Gotta love two year olds. I'm very excited for summers to come, because Kim is already planning on taking BOTH of the girls for two weeks and sending them to camp. We have two very blessed little ladies on our hands there is no denying that. If you think my hands are full, you should see my heart.

  While Lily was only going to be gone for two weeks for camp, Emory will be gone for just a bit longer, because she's with my mom and dad in FL. To say that she's being spoiled rotten and has her grandma and grandpa wrapped around those adorable little fingers is putting it lightly. I called my mom a few days after we got home where she informed us that Emory is now the proud owner of 3 pairs of shoes in one day and 10 different shovels. "Ummm... why does a 2 year old need shovels, mom?" - "Cause she asked for them." Oh, so that's how it works then? While you're at it I need a new car. Thanks push over... I mean grandma. It's funny to me that we facetimed her the entire time she has been there and she would only talk to us for ABOUT five minutes if we were lucky, but the second her big sister is home and they facetimed the two of them talked and played for a solid twenty minutes. Sisters before misters right? Right. Either way she is having an absolute blast and one thing about having well adjusted kids is that while they really do miss you (they will always miss their siblings more), you'd never know it. I really can't wait to kiss her squishy little baby face again though, a month is entirely too long to be away from my pumpkin faced baby.

our gym!

   As much as I don't like being away from my babes, I will say the quality time that Bryce and I have had together has been much needed. To be able to just be with each other and hang out has been amazing. It's easy to get lost in the day to day of life when you have two tiny humans to care for 24/7. It's east to lose that spark and let it fall away, because some days you're just too tired and exhausted from life in general to think of anything else. Have a full two weeks together where all we have to concern ourselves with is one another is like getting to fall in love all over again. We stayed up as late as we wanted and made as much noise as we wanted when we wanted. Mostly Bryce was reassuring me that the girls will be fine and had to keep me in our little bubble of a moment, but what did he expect? We got to see movies that weren't cartoons, we went to dinner and sat in the bar area (ZOMG! You know this is a huge deal if you're a parent). Hell, we went to a bar in general TWICE and just people watched and laughed together. We also bought a gym for our garage and it's been awesome to be able to just walk ten feet to the garage and work out together. I will say it was reassuring of the love that we have with each other. I really did marry my best friend and times like this just prove it and prove that he really is what I absolutely consider to be THE ONE for me. I am one lucky lady.

   OH! Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to tell you about how incredibly graceful I am! So in May my best friends came to visit. Ashely had a wedding to do make up for and Drew came because he thinks I'm the bomb.com and lets face it, I kind of am. So my friend Amanda so kindly offered to babysit our kiddies while the three of us went and danced up the down. Dancing went well and no limbs were broken, until AFTER we were done dancing. That's right ladies and gents, I managed to WALK off of a curb and sprain my ankle/fracture my foot. Now, let me tell you something about me. I don't admit when I'm hurt. I will laugh and smile and the second you hear the words, "I'm fine." Leave my mouth is when you need to be worried. Immediately after I fell to the ground, my glorious best friend ran over and what are her first words to me? "Amanda are you laughing or crying? THEY BOTH SOUND THE SAME!" In her defense, they absolutely do sound the same and I was crying. I wanted to get up and kept just saying that I was fine over and over. Then I looked at my foot and saw the break. Let's just say there was nothing FINE about that foot. We wound up in the ER until 5 am and the jersey shore EMT didn't find me very amusing. I called Bryce in the morning to let him know what happened and thank goodness his leadership is so awesome, he was able to leave his survival training school to come home and be with me. I'm much better now though. I'm in a walking boot and I couldn't be happier for that. Being in a cast for 4 weeks was AWFUL! I do not miss that thing and I wouldn't wish a broken foot on even my worst enemy.

ALSO! I promoted to Designer at work! EEEKK!! That's right y'all! I'm a leader with Premier now! I was supposed to be going to our national rally next week, but sadly that isn't going to happen now. It's okay though, because I have a lot to look forward to either way. We're gearing up to move to NC and be closer to our friends and family and you cannot beat that.
  So basically, life is good. Life is really good. Aside from my best friend moving to California, I have not a single complaint in the world. The start of this year was terrible. It was the lowest that I have ever been in my life and not because of silly trivial things like I uses to worry about. If I took away anything from the passing of my brother it's that life really IS too short. I have learned to look at things like a broken foot and laugh at it. I've learned to embrace all nighters with my Emory because she doesn't want to sleep and I have learned that not everyone is worth the time you give them. I'm happy. I'm happy with my kids. I'm happy with my man meat. Most importantly, I'm happy with myself and the choices I am making. I started this month saying, "One month, something bad isn't going to happen to me!" In the grand scheme of things, that's life. You have to roll with the punches, you have to take the good with the bad and you have to learn to rise about all of it and say, "TAKE THAT LIFE!" Life is what you make it, but at least you have a life to make the most of. I'm going to love this summer as much as Olaf would if he were here.

I cut all of my hair off too ! 

  Have a great rest of the day y'all and remember to grow where you are planted and to treat every single day as if it were your last day. Tell the ones you love most that you appreciate them and smile at the "bad" things that happen, because they might suck at the time, but they won't always suck and that's what matters.

xoxo,
Amanda