Girls Weekend!

This weekend, the girls and I went down to Orlando for our annual Time Out for Women Conference/ Girls Weekend Out. We had so much fun! We shopped til we dropped, laughed til we cried and felt so inspired and uplifted from Time Out for Women. I look forward to this every year! The speakers are always so uplifting and inspiring. I always feel refreshed and rejuvenated when we leave. This year I bought this incredible DVD called Reflections of Christ which features the photography of Mark Mabry. In his work, he recreated and photographed the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. If you've ever seen his work, you know IT'S INCREDIBLE. The DVD I bought shows how he created each shot and it features a slide show of all his photography while the song Come thou fount of every blessing is playing in the background. It is so beautiful and is definitely worth two minutes of your time to watch. Click here to see the slide show.

Here are a few pics of our girls weekend out...

The girls at the Mall at Millenia in Orlando


Dinner at Brio, this GREAT Italian restaurant where we ate

L-R: Jessica, Amyee and Daisy


L-R: April, me and Allison


Girl talk and snacks at the hotel




Time Out for Women Conference


Me with Hilary Weeks, one of the speakers/ singers at Time Out. She has the most amazing voice and I love hearing her speak every year! She's an amazing person!



This is the cute free bag that they gave us when we checked in. I got Hilary to sign mine


All the girls


After the conference, we went to IKEA. I had never been there before but have heard so much about it! I loved it. Especially this kitchen...


And this dining room setting...


Another cool room...


While we were walking around IKEA, I couldn't help but notice this really cute, UNBELIEVABLY LARGE baby! We kept running into him and his parents as we shopped and I just had to snap a picture of him! Sorry the quality is so poor. It was taken from pretty far away. What a little chub! He was cute...



We had so much fun on our girls weekend! Little Cameron enjoyed himself too but he and I both were glad to get home to his daddy :)

Baby Mama- 6 months

Well, I'm just beginning my 6th month of pregnancy and felt it was time for another belly shot. Here you have it... Baby Mama (as John now calls me) in all my big belly glory! I think you'll all agree there's NO DENYING that I'm pregnant now! A few of you disputed the size of my previous belly shots and said things like "you can't even tell you're pregnant". I bet NONE OF YOU will be saying that now! My friend at work put it so well today when she said "It looks like you've got a basketball in there!"

It seems like I just got HUGE almost overnight! I still really have NO COMPLAINTS about pregnancy thus far though. Other than the occasional heart burn, things have been GREAT!

A few of you have asked if I've had any weird cravings. The only WEIRD craving I can think of is a constant craving for crab legs! I crave crab legs ALL THE TIME, which we never eat normally, so I thought that was pretty funny. Other than that, it's just the usual stuff that I would crave anyways as a non pregnant person like Mexican food and ANY KIND OF DESSERT. Some of little Cameron's favorite treats include Moe's Joey Jr. burritos, La Nopolera chicken quesadillas, sopa pillas (this AWESOME Mexican tortilla dessert at La Nopolera with Cinnamon and honey drizzled on top) and fudge tracks ice cream from Publix. No ice cream and pickle cravings though!



Okay Emily and Sarah, I showed you mine, now you show me yours! Post your belly shots please :)

2009 New Beginnings

I just put on my first New Beginnings program since being called as Young Women's President 2 months ago. I feel like the night went really well!For those of you who don't know what New Beginnings is, it's a church Young Women's activity held at the beginning of each year that parents are invited to attend and we go over the purpose of the Young Women's Organization, the Personal Progress Program and our goals for the year.
I've been working with the girls for several weeks now getting them prepared to put on a New Beginnings skit called Women of Value, where they dressed up and acted parts of women from the scriptures like Mary, Hannah, Esther, Elisabeth, etc. I was a little nervous about how this would turn out because the program was a little "involved" but the girls did GREAT! Two of our girls played a special guitar number (Teach me to walk in the light) and all the girls sang "As Sisters in Zion" and I was so proud at how smooth the program went!
On my way home, I was so EXHAUSTED from the busy week that I had "eating, sleeping and breathing New Beginnings", while working and "trying" to keep up my house, which I have to say, I did a pretty lousy job of doing! I wasn't looking forward to coming home to a sink full of dishes and a MESSY house, but to my surprise and dismay, I came home to a CLEAN HOUSE and NO DISHES in the sink! John felt sorry for me for being so busy this week and he spent two hours tidying up! I'm such a lucky girl to have him! Now, instead of cleaning my house, I can take time to do a post on my blog! Here are a few pics from New Beginnings...




Don't they look cute!



I gave each girl a little New Beginnings treat bag to take home. It included a church CD (song playing now is from the CD), a picture frame with a picture of all the girls in it (from a YW sleepover we had a few weeks back) and a candle to remind them to let the light within them shine and to "Be thou an example of the believers", our 2009 Youth theme.

Arby's... A Marketing Genius

I had my monthly doctor's appointment this morning and as I was sitting in the chair waiting to get my blood pressure checked, I looked over and saw a stack of coupons for Arby's free roast beef sandwiches and 99 cent milk shakes, so of coarse, I grabbed several! The coupon said "Beaches Women's Health Specialist Customer Appreciation- Thank you for being a valued customer!" with the Arby's logo underneath. I had to laugh at this because I'm sure all us pregnant girls are VERY valued customers of Arby's! I can just imagine the stampede of "big girls" making their way to the Arby's counter for their free roast beef sandwich and milk shakes! And you know we wont be able to pass up those delicious curly fries once we're there! Arby's… A Marketing genius!



Is anyone else thinkin Arby's???

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! We had a great one. The day started with John making me one of my favorite breakfasts- Cinnamon Eggo waffles with WARM syrup and I enjoyed this scrumptious meal from the comfort of my bed. What could be better on a Saturday morning, I ask you! We actually celebrated Valentine's Day last night by going out to dinner and a movie. We saw He's just not that into you (See movie review in post below).

Tonight we went to my parents house to visit my step sister Samantha who is in town with her husband and ADORABLE boys! We had a great time playing with the boys and catching up. As you can probably already tell, we got over the whole "big production" thing on Valentine's Day after our first or second year of marriage! We enjoy a more simple, low key celebration these days. But hey, you won't hear any complaints here! It was a nice, relaxing day. What did you do for V-day?


Here's a picture of us with Quinn and Max. Quinn was happy as a clam playing with my cell phone, his favorite pass time and Max was getting a little tired of me by the time we took this picture! Aren't their matching pj's cute!
Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm so into "He's just not that into you"

I read this book in college and was REALLY interested to see HOW IN THE WORLD they would turn it into a movie. John and I went to see it last night and we BOTH really liked it! Great acting and very entertaining! I thought it was clever how they dramatized the book. Other than the cheering from several CHEESY girls in the movie theater, we thoroughly enjoyed it! Two thumbs up! And John's already put in that he want's to get the soundtrack!

Random thoughts...

A co-worker of mine at work pointed something out to me the other day. A funny little branded soap that we have in our break room at work that I am just baffled by... On the little soap bottle near the sink, is a label that says "Non-Ultra Joy". Why in the world would you name your soap "Non-Ultra Joy"??? It's an oxi-moron right on the label.

We've all heard of escalating hyperbole for products: extra, ultra, super, premium, elite, luxurious. So I found it ODD that The Joy Company chose to brand their product "Non-Ultra Joy"! If you thought you were getting Ultra, you are mistaken my friend. Non-Ultra - It's not Sorta-Ultra, aLittle-Ultra… Non.

So I'm thinking, if it's not Ultra, why bring it up? Why not just call it Joy? Why get people thinking that they might just be getting something several notches down from Ultra? I didn't even want to use it!

This is a slippery slope for brand naming and packaging ;) You don't need a degree in Advertising to figure that one out (Although, I do have a degree in Advertising so I guess it did teach me something!)