Girls Night

(I am trying out the Blogger app on my iPhone so if this post looks funny, that's why!)

Last night, the girls in my ABS (adult bible study) group got together for a game night! The men got together to watch the national championship game and didn't invite us so we were due some husband-free kid-free time!

For the first hour...or maybe two...we all stuffed our faces on all the goodies we all brought. I brought a strawberry cake from Celebrations! So I ate that, a buffalo chicken dip, a pizza-y dip, a brownie, some fruit, and about 57 sausage balls. The diet is back on today. :)

And after eating so much that we were all miserable, we decided to play some games!

And I stayed up until midnight by heavily medicating myself with Diet Mountain Dew! I was so proud of myself.

And now it's 6:51am the next day and I'm awake because a sweet little boy is yelling "Get me out!! I want out!"

I love girl's nights with my buddies!

Ramblings in my head

I hate it when I blog consistently for a few days and then get in a blog funk! So let’s catch up with what’s been going on in my life, shall we? :)

A few months before the gym opened up, I came across this blog: http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/

The girl lost a lot of weight and inspired me to start living a healthier lifestyle. I started eating healthier and counting calories like a mad woman. And as soon as the gym opened up, I gradually started trying to work out. I was nervous at first about how my lupus would affect (or effect?) my ability to do certain things. But luckily, I think my doctors and I have kind of figured out my medication so I don’t hurt as much anymore! So I started getting more aggressive with my workouts and have since lost 11 pounds! Yippee! I still want to lose around 5 more pounds and then I will just work on gaining muscle tone. But I’m really excited about my new healthier lifestyle!

My sweet nephew had his 8th birthday on the 21st and his birthday party was at the movie theater!

He really does love me. I promise. He just didn’t want to take a picture!  

And just for the record, my boobs look gargantuous in that picture. Maybe another baby will shrink them so more! :)

Noah had a SUPER fun time at the party. Suckers, cookie cake, and his favorite people all in one place!

In other news, I am seriously considering drawing myself some eyebrows. They are so blonde that you can’t even see them. I totally tried to draw some on this picture in Paint and my sister laughed so hard at me that I didn’t finish my masterpiece. Sigh.

And one more thing, I am about 99% sure my child will have something to do with music when he gets older. Last night at my praise team rehearsal, he ‘helped’ my friend Mike play his guitar. And this morning it was all he could talk about. He even found a book with a picture of a guitar in it this morning and pointed at it and said, “Mommy! It’s Mike!” So then I had to explain that it was called a guitar and not a Mike…but I digress. And just about EVERY time we go to church, Noah runs into the sanctuary and asks to ‘sing on da meecraphone’.

The picture quality is bad because my husband took the picture but there is Noah standing beside me holding his ‘meecraphone’ and singing! Future praise teamer right there people.

Ok. I think that about catches us up. My best friend is coming to town this weekend to visit AND we are having new flooring installed next week so hopefully I will get some pictures and have some blogging to do next week!

Facelift and faceslap

For some reason, January has me feeling the need to clean up, declutter and refresh! So I decided that the blog needed to be refreshed as well! I want to thank my friend, Leslie Lambert for redesigning my blog! As you can see, she’s pretty awesome!

Noah and I had a traumatizing event happen to us on Saturday. We have a super long carwash in town (on McFarland Blvd) that is pretty cheap and does a good job. Noah has been begging to go through the carwash, so after we dropped Brad off to get a haircut, we headed there. We were about halfway through the carwash when we stopped. The water was still spraying and the wipey things were still wiping, but we weren’t going anywhere. For half a second I thought that this was just part of the cleaning, but soon thereafter I realized there was a problem.

Then the carwash stopped. Then started spraying again but still no movement. Then it stopped again. Meanwhile, this was our view.

Now normally I’m not that claustrophobic, but with the stuff on my windshield, I was starting to mildly freak my freak. The carwash boy came up and tapped on my window. (BTW, I have an irrational fear of being abducted/murdered in the carwash….I always lock my doors while going through and cautiously watch for murderers…) I roll down my window and scream “WHAT??!?!” to the boy (because it’s still super loud in there even when it’s broken) and he says, “Miss, everything is fine. The air compressor has run out of air so we will just need to wait for it to fill back up and then the carwash will start moving again. Don’t be alarmed, it should only take a few minutes.” Ok. I can take a few minutes.

Then Noah starts saying, “Mommy, I wanna go. Let’s go Mommy. GO Mommy! Please? Please go. Please I wanna go Mommy. Want out. Want out please. Wanna go Mommy. Mommy, we go?”

Talk about torture! About five minutes later, the carwash boy comes tap tap tapping again. I roll my window down and he says, “Well miss, it’s a little more serious than I thought. So what I am gonna have you do is, put the car in drive but DON’T touch the steering wheel. We are gonna get your car out and then just come to the office to get a refund, ok?”

At this point I’m thinking that they are going to push my car out. So I leave my window down and shift into drive. Suddenly, my car takes off at like 50 mph out of the carwash and since my windows were down, the red, WET, wipey things slap me in the face as I’m flung out. Once we come to a stop outside the carwash, I turn around and look at Noah and he just stares at me like….what the crap just happened??

I was too traumatized to even go get my $6 back. Luckily Daddy treated us to lunch and a cupcake afterwards though. :)

PET and BCS

Before I really knew I had Lupus (still undiagnosed by the way, but I’m convinced that’s what it is) I visited my ENT because for most of my adult life, I have had problems with my ears feeling like they were clogged up. It really only bothered me when I sang because I couldn’t hear myself well. And as the Lupus progressed, the ear clogging got worse. To the point where they were clogged about 75% of the time and finally getting to where they were clogged about 99% of the time.

Imagine being under water. That’s what everything sounded like to me. I could hear my own voice amplified in my head. I could hear my heart beat and every breath I took, louder than any other sound. SUPER annoying, especially for a singer!

So my ENT first diagnosed me with ETD (eustachian tube dysfunction) and suggested that I try Afrin nasal spray to help open up my tubes because they were staying closed and they aren’t supposed to do that. After trying the Afrin, I realized that it only made my ear clogging WORSE!

This was in the beginning of December and I wasn’t going back to the ENT until January. So I did some research online to try and find some alternate ways to unclog ears. The thing that everyone said seemed to work for them was mixing water and 4 Way nasal spray in a neti pot. I tried that. It hurt, but it worked so I was happy. After my third try at the neti pot, the solution sent a sharp pain into my worse ear and didn’t work at all so I immediately stopped using that.

Next, I tried some herbal ear oil and ear candling. It worked at first, but eventually stopped working too. Frustrating!

Are you still reading this? Props to you if you are!

Anyway, I finally got to go back to the ENT to tell him about everything that I’ve been trying plus the lupus mess that I now think is involved with my ear drama. He shoved this thing up my nose and to my ear…

That was SUPER fun! And after a hearing test, he determined that I have PET. Patulous Eustachian Tube. So my tubes are staying OPEN all the time! He prescribed me some estrogen nasal spray to induce swelling in my tubes and so far, it has worked! It tastes awful in the back of my throat and I have to do it three times a day, but I won’t complain as long as it works!

So now, I go back and see him in a few more weeks to report my good news to him. I’m not sure if he will just have me continue the nasal spray for a while or if there is something else we can do now that we know what the real problem is.

Now onto the BCS! I am pretty sure that I am the ONLY person in Tuscaloosa that watched the Bachelor last night. I try to watch football, really I do. It just isn’t interesting to me at ALL. But I am proud that we won the National Championship last night! And I’m glad that everyone around town is in a good mood!

So Roll Tide! :)

Happy birthday to ME!

Yesterday I turned 25! I feel super old. We had fun celebrating my birthday all weekend long! Friday night, we had dinner with some friends and then ran all over town trying to find my birthday present, the Kindle Fire! Unfortunately, the whole town is sold out of them from Christmas so I ended up ordering it offline. Hopefully it will come in within a few days.

Saturday, we were baby free after lunch so we decided to do some caching.

To get this one, I had to sit on top of Brad’s shoulders to be able to reach it!

After that, I made Brad take me to see the newest Twilight movie!

He said he actually liked it! The action parts at least. And after the movie, we made the drive up to Birmingham to eat dinner at the same place we do every year. My all time most favorite restaurant, The Bright Star. And when we walked in the door, I looked up and saw my best friend in the whole world (who lives 3+ hours away now!)!!!

They drove all the way to Alabama to surprise me for my birthday! By far, my favorite birthday present!

I love them!

Sunday, I concluded my birthday by worshipping Jesus and taking a long afternoon nap!

Happy birthday to me! :)     

GFG Fitness!

Our gym opened January 1st and I am super excited to show yall some pictures! Prepare to be overloaded! :)

GFG stands for God, Family, Gym. Priorities!

I love the bigger tv’s on the cardio equipment.

I know I’m a little partial, but I think the coffee station is freaking awesome!

Here is the front part of the women’s bathroom with a peek at the women’s lockers. The back part includes the potties and the showers.

And part of the men’s bathroom.

The massage chair that will set. you. FREE!

We also made the massage chair room a safe room in case of a tornado or bad weather.

There is also a room for classes (Zumba, yoga, etc.) that our rock climbing wall will be in . Hopefully that will be finished within the next few weeks and I’ll show yall that as well!

We are super excited about the gym and if you are local and want more info on becoming a member, email me at akmcmichael(at)comcast(dot)net!            

Our weekend fun

So it wasn’t all cleaning all weekend at our house! We also had lots of fun!

I ate my last glorious, heavenly Christmas tree cake of the season.

Sunday after church, Noah told Brad and I that he was NOT going home with us. He grabbed his cup and his bag and said, “I go Gammy.” (Brad’s mom) And he did. So Brad and I were left with a childless afternoon to ourselves. I’m sure you can guess what we did with alllll that free time……

GEOCACHING! Duh!

We spent 4 hours hiking, getting stuck in briars, and having a blast!

My favorite find to date:

A magnet under a fire hydrant. When you unscrew the little cap, there is a paper in there to sign to prove you found it! (Please don’t think I’m psycho. :))

And then on Monday, while Daddy was working all day, Noah and I watched his new favorite show. All. Day. Long. “Mitchy Mows”.

And he figured out that he can maneuver his little chair to get whatever he wants… What was Santa thinking?

:)