Today we paid off our last credit card!!! We have been hitting the debt hard since last June/July. We have to thank Uncle Sam for holding our money for us over the last year and we decided to do the responsible thing and put our 2008 tax refund towards paying off our debt….Even though we both would soooo much rather go on a nice trip with that money, we would rather get out from under debt. So our credit card debt is ALL GONE!! Now all we have left are Medical bills and parental debt. But now that we don’t have to make a huge credit card payment, we can add that to what we were paying each month on my medical bills and knock them out soon. Other than our house and cars, we should be debt free in the next 10 months or so!
Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything on this here blog! We have been busy the last month or so and I realize I haven’t kept anyone updated on what all we have been up to. I’m not going to lie…when I do have a chance to sit down and update the blog, I just don’t want to! We went on our cruise the first week of February and had a great time!
Our first stop was in Progresso, Mexico and we enjoyed visiting the Mayan Ruins. Jonathan probably enjoyed it more than me, but it was neat to see.
The next day we went to Cozumel and had a chance to ride some segways along beach. we were supposed to go snorkeling but it was way too windy so we were unable to. We were pretty bummed but maybe some other time we will be able to go snorkeling.
After the segway tour we walked around the port a while and had lunch at Three Amigos in Cozumel.
Last weekend we celebrated Jonathan’s 30th birthday at Kobe Steaks, sorry I didn’t get many pics…
Then on Tuesday, which was Jonathan’s actual birthday we went to Red Robin for a delicious burger.
I started going to the Bible study at my old church in Dallas with Jen on Wednesday nights and love it. I have missed having an actual women’s Bible study and simply just needed it. So I called Jen up because I knew she was going to the one at Northwest Bible and luckily a new study was starting this month so I was able to start it. So every Wednesday after work I get to see Jen and then go to a Bible study–it’s great!! We catch up on what’s going on in our lives and helps me get through the week. I’ve missed getting to see her and spend time with her as often as we used to…I guess that’s what happens when you live that far apart and both have busy lives. But, I’m thankful for the times we do get to spend together.
We have started getting ready for spring around our house. Last week we pulled up some bushes and planted two rose bushes in the front and today we added more mulch to the flower beds and I put out the weed killer…and in a few weeks it’ll be time for the fertilizer.
The hubs and I joined the Landry Center at Baylor last week because we both want to get back into shape/lose weight. We get a killer discount to the because I’m an employee of Baylor so we took advantage of it. After not being able to do pretty much of anything for the last 8 months after breaking my back, I was ready to start working out again. Granted, I still can’t lift weights yet, I am able to do cardio and swim!. I have always wanted to do swimming as a means of exercise, just never had a pool to. We swam for the first time on Saturday and boy was I tired. It also showed me how out of shape I am!!! Geeze, one length of the pool (an olympic sized pool) and I was out of breath and my heart was about to pound out of my chest. I swam a total of 4 laps (8 lengths of the pool) which is about 200 meters. Today I swam 13 laps which is about 475 meters, then I soaked in the hot tub for about 3 minutes (it was too hot) and then sat in the sauna for a little while….again, too hot so I had to get out. I’m not relaxed and feel good about working out! We’ll see if we keep this up. It’s only about 2 blocks from my office so I can go workout in the mornings if I want before work, which I plan on doing on Fridays. I’ll let you know in a month if we’re still going!
I can’t believe it’s already 2009 – It seams like 2008 just flew by! A lot happened this past year, some not so good and some really good. If you told me at the beginning of 2008 that I would go through 2 surgeries, have 5 CT scans, take a visit to the Baylor ER and change jobs, I would have laughed in your face. But a new year brings new challenges, whether you want them or not! So lets take a look at 2008 shall we!
The year started out great we had been in our new house for a few months and had fun as we started to paint and do landscaping around the yard. We pretty much finished doing things to the house (for now) but will eventually do more to the yard when spring rolls around. Here is just a little of what we have done so far…
In March Jonathan and I took a trip to Memphis, TN just for fun. We had a great time visiting Graceland, the Gibson factory, walking down Beale St. and eating some delicious Memphis BBQ. Here is a video of the highlights from our trip…
On April 28, Jonathan and I celebrated our one year anniversary! We stayed a night in downtown Dallas and then went to the arboretum for the day.
In May I graduated, again!
I finally finished my bachelor’s degree after finishing my associates degree in 2002. I took a couple of years off inbetween my associates and going back to finish my bachelor’s but with hard work and determination, I finished it and it won’t necessarily get me more money or anything, it will give me more opportunities in my career field and in a way get a better paying job! I will be able to teach if I choose to and also I can continue on to get a master’s degree if I want…which I may eventually. I would love to get a masters in exercise physiology but we’ll see where God takes me on that one!
The week after I graduated I had sinus surgery. I had a severe deviated septum that wouldn’t allow me to get rid of a sinus infection I had for almost 6 months. So the fixed it, I got a new nose…well not really, but I can breathe better…
that’s attractive huh?
The following month (June) my best friend, Jen, got married and I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. We had a lot of fun at the wedding and all the events leading up to it…
Two days after Jen and Jed got married I had a little accident…so we’ll call it. To make a long story short and one you can read here, I had a wonderful 14 hour stay in the Baylor ER and ended up with a sprained neck and 4 broken vertebrae in my back….
I have had a long road to recovery and had many visits to the neurosurgeon and a lot of CT’s. I had a final visit to the neurosurgeon last month and he said it was healing, not completely healed yet, but healing for sure. So yeah! I still have pain if I do certain things or move certain ways but for the most part I feel pretty good.
Then September rolled around and time for another surgery…bet you didn’t see that coming-HA. I have had two procedures on my heart in the last 5 years and I started having some problems again so my cardiologist thought it would be best to go back in and check everything, just to make sure everything was good to go. So I have another heart cath and everything checked out ok…we just adjusted my medication and we’re back in business.
In November I decided, for many reasons, it was time for a change so I resigned from my position at Children’s Medical Center and accepted one at Baylor Univ. Medical Center in Dallas. It was tough leaving some of my friends behind, but it was time to move on! For the most part, I liked the time I spent working at CMC and will cherish the friendships I made while I was there.
But since I have made the move to Baylor, I can honestly say it was the best decision I’ve made in a while and a good move for my career. I love the people I work with and love what I do at Baylor. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me in the next year or so with my career.
In November, Jonathan and I also went to a marriage retreat at Sky Ranch with our church. We had a blast doing the ropes course, flying down the zip line and getting to know more couples at our church. Tim and Kara were able to go with us and we hope to do it again next year.
To finish off the year, we celebrated the holidays with family and friends and you can read all about that in another post! We have done so many fun things this year, it’s hard to sit down and write them all out, there were many things we did like go to the rangers game, state fair of Texas, Waxahachie’s hot air balloon festival, and I could go on forever, but I won’t…
…so here’s to a great 2009, filled with many more memories and new opportunities!
ARE OVER!! Not that I’m happy about that but life can finally calm down now and get back to normal. What did we do for the holidays you ask…well, here is a look at what all we did the last few weeks/months. Over the last month I have taken several family photos. There were the Treadaways, our pastor and his family…
…And then Jalyn, our friends Josh and Shalyn’s baby…
…then there were the Nash’s. Gracelyn, who is 2, didn’t really want any part of taking photos so it made for a difficult day, along with my camera that was acting up…that’s a whole other story…
We went with a group of our friends from church to see Bethlehem Revisited in Waxahachie…
Our holiday festivities with family started on Dec 21 when we held our annual Turner-Medlin Family Christmas/Jake’s Birthday party. We all went to the Medlin’s and had some yummy chili and all the “kids” (we’re too old to be called kids) did a white elephant gift exchange and then Jake opened up his birthday presents. Jake turned 8 this year and I can’t believe he’s getting so old. I remember the day he was born…anyway, we had fun time together and couldn’t wait to do it all over again on New Years Day, when we celebrate my dad and Bob’s birthday…more on that later in the post.
On the 23rd we had all of Jonathan’s family over to our house for dinner and games. We all had a great time and always look forward to seeing everyone. (to see any of these collages bigger, simply click on it and viola)
Christmas Eve we went to our parents church for a candlelight service and then back to my parents house for dinner. After dinner we headed over to my aunts house to spend some time with her and my cousins and their kids. Had a good time seeing all of them and about 10:00pm my cousin’s son, Bryce, announced that “there was good news and bad news…the good news is that santa is in Texas, the bad news is that santa is in Texas and I’m not in bed!” So with that we all headed home.
Christmas morning Jonathan and I opened gifts at our house, well some of them…I made Jonathan go on a scavenger hunt for his gift. He started out at our house and then headed to the park which sent him to our pastors house where they slipped the present in their mailbox for me. I think he enjoyed it but maybe not as much as his present which was two tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert.
After that we went to my padres house for Christmas with my familia and ate a great lunch and opened gifts. And as always, we let the kids go first which only takes about 10 minutes total because they rip through them all at warp speed. After lunch and presents we decided to play a game of family feud…that was a lot of fun, except my dad kept forgetting the rules! My niece got a doll house and my nephew got a new Wii so they were both preoccupied with those the majority of the afternoon and that was a gift to all of us!!! That’s the only way we were able to play family feud.
Later that afternoon we headed over to Jonathan’s parents and hung out there a while. Tim and Kara got rock band for the wii so we played that for a while and then Jonathan’s dad made a great ham for dinner so we ate and opened some gifts. Over all, we had a wonderful Christmas and are blessed by our family and friends that spent it with us!
Then for about a week our lives were back to semi normalcy…I went back to work but Jonathan had the week off. New Years Eve we spent over at Richard and Amber’s house playing games and eating some yummy mexican food. Then for the countdown to bring in the new year we lit some sparklers–that’s always fun!
And finally, Welcome 2009! We have entered into yet another new year. We slept in new years day because lets face it, we were up late partying the night before!! You know us, we’re such the partiers-HA! Then later that afternoon my family and the Medlins came over to our house and we grilled some fajitas and celebrated our dad’s birthdays! Honestly I can’t remember how old they both are–somewhere in the early 60’s! yikes, sorry guys, I love you, but that’s old!
We always have fun getting together but don’t do it as often as I would like. The Medlin’s have always been a second family to us, Bob and Vicki were like our “other parents” and Ty and Tami were like siblings growing up. It’s so much fun now that we are all grown up and adults…We’ve all grown up together and shared special occasions together as we each get married, have kids and watch each of us, or them, become parents for the first time…it’s been fun!! A great way to start a new year. I’ve been told that how you spend your New Year’s Day sets the stage for that year…we’re off to a great start!
Because we had so much fun on New Year’s Day, you get two collages.
Tonight Jonathan and I went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert for his Christmas gift and had a blast. This is my 5 year to go to the concert and I have loved every year. It’s a Christmas tradition that I had and then when Jonathan and I started dating we decided to make it our tradition. We are going on a cruise in February so we decided that we just wouldn’t be able to spring for tickets to TSO this year and the cruise. We were both bummed about not getting to go, Jonathan was pretty bummed so I decided to surprise him with tickets for Christmas. He tried many times to get me to agree to get tickets and it was hard to tell him “No, I just don’t think we can this year” when I had already bought 2 tickets. Anyway, we went to the concert and love it! The camera police are usually out making sure you don’t take any pictures of the concert but I was able to sneak some with my camera phone–gotta love them! So here are some illegal pictures from the TSO concert:
After the concert we met Jen and Jed for dinner at Patrizio’s in Highland Park Village….let me tell you, they have some amazing italian food! I’ve been there before and have always wanted to take Jonathan so I figured why not now! We had a good time with Jen and Jed and then decided to get some Italian Gelato at Paciugo’s to go with our Italian food.
And that concludes our holiday festivities! I hope everyone had a good time with their family and friends over the holidays and here’s to a wonderful new year!
Can you believe it, the year is almost over–2 more months! That’s craziness. This year has flown by and honestly I don’t know where it went. It’s also been a while since I posted anything on here…it’s been neglected. Not a whole lot has been going on the last few weeks. Jonathan and I started our new small group on Saturday nights at our house. We’ve had a good time and are getting to know some new people, which is good for me because it’s difficult to meet new people…simply because I’m not as outgoing as say, my husband. ha. Anyway, we went camping a few weeks ago with Tim and Kara, and Izzy and Presley (that made for an interesting trip). Lets just say, a dog who shall remain nameless didn’t sleep more than about an hour the entire night. Anyway, other than that, we had a great time.
We kept Jake and Brooklyn last Friday night for my brother and sister-in-law. They are definitely growing up. Jake read most of the time (just like his dad) and Brooklyn chased Presley around the house and backyard most of the time. We did carve some pumpkins with them and that was fun.
Other than that we haven’t done a whole lot, a lot of relaxing, which I personally love! We have manged to keep ourselves busy with separate projects though. I manage to keep myself busy everyday coming up with a new photo idea for my 365 days project on Flickr. Go check them out and let me know of some good ideas because I’m starting to run out! Jonathan has joined this writing thing for national novel writing month , basically he writes a novel within the month of november–crazy! It’ll be an interesting month, that’s for sure. Well, I’m off to find an interesting photo idea…happy November peeps!
I just realized I hadn’t posted anything on my blog since like the end of September…so here’s a recap of what’s been going on at casa de Blundell.
The hubs and I got to go to the fair last week and had a great time. Piece of advice–don’t waste your time going to the laser show…it’s horrible. We walked around and looked at the award winning gardens, some sculptures that local artists made and then looked at the car exhibit. And, of course, we ate a Fletcher’s corney dog, nachos, rootbeer and some salt water taffy. Mmmmm, tasty!
Jonathan has started a challenge with his friend Thomas over in Scotland to see who can lose 30 pounds first….hmmmm, who will win? So Friday after dinner we decided to go for a bike ride at the hike and bike trail in Waxahachie. I just found this panoramic mode on my little point and shoot camera and decided to try it out while on the trail.
Yesterday (Sunday) Jonathan and Josh gave the message yesterday at church…he did a great job and as always, I love hearing him speak! After church we went to the Chisolm Grill in downtown Waxahachie with his parents and then came back to our house to eat some apple pie and look at pictures from their trip to New England.
Side note–it was very bright, hence the squinting
Then last night we watched the Cowboys play (and I use that term loosely) and lose.
Now it’s Monday morning and time to start another week!
Saturday we decided– and when I say we, I really mean I–to take Presley to the dog park at White Rock Lake because she had a vet appointment around the corner from there. She pretty much just sniffed the entire perimeter of the gate instead of playing with the other dogs or even chasing a ball. Maybe she’s an S personality..hmmm…anyway, I think she had fun but then ready to leave when we left. She didn’t have as much fun at the vet but she did good. I chose the vet I take her to because one, I adopted her from there so they know her, but also because all the vets there are females and Presley doesn’t necessarily like males. But since she has been there they hired a male vet–what were they thinking…and of course the only vet there on Saturday was the male vet…so she started barking at him when he walked in the door. The barking didn’t last long though and she was fine. After the vet she got a bath! Presley doesn’t like baths and I hate giving her a bath, mainly because I don’t like having to clean the tub afterwards. After all that we came home because Presley was pretty pooped, and we were too..then had Tim and Kara and Josh and Shalyn over for dinner. It was a fun, long day!
I meant to post this earlier this week but I honestly just forgot. This past weekend was one of the few weekends we actually had nothing “planned” or anywhere we had to be, so we just did what we wanted. Friday night we had some friends over for dinner and played some games. Jonathan and I used the recipe from www.thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ to make some yummy chicken legs and Keri brought a scrumptious chocolate cake from the same site. This woman is unbelievable–she has the best recipes on her site, you should check it out. Now I’m not gonna lie, these are NOT non-caloric recipes, but soo tasty. Anyway, Saturday we slept in, well I slept in, Jonathan did a little bit but then got up to meet a friend that morning. About noon we headed for Dallas to do our thrift store scavenger hunt. What you do is have a list of things you have to find (weird items or hard to find items) and you split up and see who finds the most. We took a picture of each item we found with our phone to prove that we actually did find the item. I won–yeah! by one point but I still won, so I got to pick where to eat lunch. We were in Dallas and there are soooooo many places I love to eat in Dallas so it was a tough pick. But before we ate lunch we headed over to the new firewheel shopping center in the Garland/Rowlett area. There is a winery there that we really like, it’s Texas wine and they make it right there. Jonathan got a black cherry wine and I got a strawberry white wine. We got home and tried both of them and ended up switching wines, the lady at the winery said the strawberry wine I got was not dry and sweet…she lied! It was very much dry and not that sweet. Jonathan’s black cherry wine was really good…anyway, if you like wine you should make a trip to D’Vine Wine. After our wine extravaganza we headed to old navy, no luck there, and then to James
Avery to look at rings. I am wanting to get the ladies version of Jonathan’s wedding band. I have started wearing a band to work and not my wedding ring because it’s getting really scratched up and dinged at work when we have to use the big wrenches and change out oxygen tanks and such. Anyway we tried those on and found the size/ring I need and headed off, whithout the ring…maybe sometime soon I’ll get it. Next was lunchtme and I chose Freebirds!! Have you ever been to freebirds? you should go, it’s good. Kind of like chipotle but different, they have monsterous burritos with all the fixin’s–soo good. I hadn’t been there in atleast 2 years. After lunch we headed home. Not much happened the rest of the weekend, just relaxing. As of now, we have NOTHING planned so just another relaxing weekend before my surgery on Monday.
I absolutely, 100% hate clutter! Our house tends to collect clutter in certain areas…the bar which is one of the first things you run into when you actually come into the house and the kitchen table. I was walking through the living room today and all I could see was clutter–mail, magazines, papers and pretty much anything else you can think of. This is what our bar looked like this morning:
Then I looked over and saw our kitchen table that looked like this:
That actually looks better than it has most of the week. Jonathan decided to use the kitchen as an office this week while getting ready for sunday. We have a nice office he can use that has a door and ceiling fan and everything– and he uses the kitchen table. So why did we spend money on furniture and shelves and such to make an office? Hmmm-O’well. Needless to say I had to clean the clutter up, I hate it with a passion-did I mention that already! Oh the things you’ll learn and learn to live with when you live with a boy!! But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
