Why Brandon wants to be a Professional Fisherman

Yesterday I had dinner with some of my YoungLife girls so Brandon saw an opportunity to go fishing without any complaining from me! He and one of his good friends, Zane went fishing on the lake in his parents' neighborhood.

I got a call about 8:30 from Brandon asking me very nicely if I would get my camera and come take some pictures of these "monsters" they caught. Me being the blogger that I am, I always have my camera with me because you never know when a good story will come up and those stories are always better when they are accompanied by a picture or two. So, I drove on over to the lake and waited on the rocks for them. It sure must have looked odd when I was walking across a field in my long summer dress to the edge of the water where they were meeting me because as I walked closer to the edge, I noticed two guys, close to my age, fishing. So there I was, standing seemingly aimlessly in a dress, staring in the direction of the lake, trying not to make eye contact with the guys fishing about 20 yards away. And did I mention they were on a rock almost facing me? Yes, awkward.

I see Brandon and Zane doing some sort of victory lap around the lake before they came in to see me (now the guys fishing knew why I was there). They came up slowly as I climbed down the large limestone retaining wall to get on the level of the water (yes, in my dress).

The boys pulled out the fish and they were so proud. Zane caught a couple of big bass, but Brandon caught a HUGE one! Brandon dreams all the time about being a professional fisherman and getting to fish all the time and get paid for it. I just say, "that's nice, sweetie!" and go on with life, but Brandon was proud of this fish. I had to talk him out of getting it mounted.. what was I supposed to do with a massive bass on a plaque? put it on the wall? I doubt it! haha..

So with no further ado.. here are the fish (Zane's fish are in our freezer right now, I know you're jealous)

He had to show off how big the fish actually was..
So that was our evening. We're off to the lake this weekend so hopefully I'll get some pretty good stories .

Happy 4th of July! (we've been engaged for a year!)

Things I love About the Rain

It's raining!! Rainy days are my favorite, except when it's been raining for 3 weeks straight, it's 20 degrees out, or I just washed my car--none of which relate to today's rain! Last night when we went to bed there was lightning in the distance, but I didn't really think there was much to be said for it. When I woke up this morning, it was drizzly. You know, the kind of drizzle where you just want to stay in bed and watch movies all day? That kind. It has been switching back and forth between drizzle and rain all day now and I LOVE it! ..I just wish I had a window in my office so I could watch it, but then again, that would probably put me to sleep!

On my way home from lunch, I started to think about what I love about rainy days, besides taking a nap, of course.

Here's something I love about rainy days..

a drop in temperature

getting to use my ridiculously expensive umbrella that I bought to match my rain boots

leaving the door open to listen to rain and feel the cool air

And now for some things Bridger doesn't like about the rain:

Having to sit on the front porch until I can get a towel because she was on top of the dog house again (I'm going to get a picture of this someday)

Having to stay on the towel because she's too muddy. Look how mad she is at me, I just kicked her out of the kitchen!

Have a wonderful rainy day! (well, if it's raining for you, of course!)

Such a Good Weekend!

This weekend I traveled with my mother-in-law, Connie, to Houston for a wedding shower for one of Brandon's cousins. As much as I dread the 6 hour drive for just one weekend, it was worth it.

I got to spend the majority of the weekend with my folks and we had fun. Saturday morning we did the usual and made our trip to Victors and after that, my mom and I went to get our nails done! This is basically a tradition between the two of us!


Afterwards we went to a few stores, but I was proud of myself for not buying anything!

Living in West Texas, I sometimes forget how intense the humidity of Houston actually is. I mean, I know it's bad, but I forget how bad. It was SO humid and SO hot! It was so hot that when my mom and I returned from our little adventure (don't worry, Cinnabon was part of it), we found this little guy..

You may not be able to see it very well, but he is soaking wet. My dad had been watering the front yard and he was playing in the water. He watched us for a little bit shaking every once in a while and just looking around under his shower. Then he ran over to the tree to watch us some more. You might be able to see that his tail is not very fluffy because it's so wet.


After all of that fun, I went inside to get changed for Breanna's wedding shower. The shower was so nice, such a nice home to have it in and she got all kinds of gifts. Here are all the women in the family who could be there.
Even though my weekends are normally used for catching up on my sleep, it was refreshing to visit family and have fun!

I thought I would be completely wiped out by the time we got home, but it seemed that I was full of energy! Brandon's boss, Dean, called him in the evening and asked him if we wanted to come to his son, Wes' baseball game. It got delayed because of the game before it so it wasn't supposed to start until 9:00--and for 9-10 year olds, that's pretty late! So we went and it was a BLAST! He is on the 'allstars' team for one of the little leagues here in town and it was such a good game. The way it works here is at the end of every season each league in the area, including surrounding towns, picks a group of kids in each age group to play on the allstar team for that age group, then all of the allstar teams play each other to find the best league in the area.

The games at this level are not allowed to start a new inning after 11:00, so Wes' team was sweating bullets being the home team at the bottom of the inning around 10:55 and down by 3 runs, and knowing that if they lost they would not advance. They pulled it off though! The final score was 15-14! Well worth staying up past my bedtime to watch!

They play again tomorrow and Wednesday so maybe we'll go watch and I'll take some pictures!

Look what I did!

I know, I know, I change the look of my blog more than what could be considered healthy.. So you may not be as impressed as I am, but I'm pretty darn impressed with myself! I've been wanting my blog to look something more like this (more professionally done) for a while, but I didn't have one clue how nor did I want to pay someone to do it. So I didn't.

I've had a little bit of extra time so I've done a bit of research and I think I have it the way I want it.. for now. I'm sure I'll be adding things here and there, but isn't it cool, that I was able to do it for myself for free? If I would have paid someone to do everything it would have cost me anywhere from $75-$120.. for a website that I don't pay for? Yeah. Right.

Well, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

A Sad Day for the Finch Family

You may remember a while back when I posted about Mr. and Mrs. Finch and their nest in our kitchen window. Well those little guys did as nature instructed them to do and procreated. We had three little bitty eggs that were nurtured and cared for, probably by Mrs. Finch, Mr. Finch was probably out with his buddies. They grew and hatched into 3 lovely little bald baby birds!

For the past week or so, I have been listening to them chirp and I've loved it. Brandon thought it would be annoying to have them 'screaming' for food all the time, but I happen to like it. They are not loud by any means, and they only get excited when they know mom or dad is close by with a delectable worm or bug, and even then it's a sweet little cry, much like a new born baby--how could you get upset about that? From our side of the window it is very hard to see because, well, it's the back of the nest. But Mr. and Mrs. Finch left me a little peep-hole in which I check on the babies everyday.

Yesterday at lunch, I was walking on the sidewalk going back to our stairs and something caught my eye. It was one of the little babies, let's name him Paul, dried to a crisp on the pavement. Poor little Paul must have gotten a little too adventurous and fell out of the nest (either that or I will have to have a talk with the parents). I was sad. Sad because at that time, I actually didn't know how many babies were in the nest because they were so small that I couldn't see them. I rushed upstairs to see if there were any survivors and I got the best glimpse of the remaining two (Charlotte and Ben--although I don't know the gender of any of them) I had ever seen.

After work, I grabbed my camera and tried to get some shots of these little ones, but actually the video is a little bit better because of the focus. I've never put a video on here before, so I hope it works out! Also, sorry there is no sound.. I tried to be quiet so maybe you could hear their chirping, but I don't think that worked (I told you they weren't loud)!

Charlotte and Ben

I wish you could see them, in person because it is so hard to get a good picture of them.. Their heads are about the size of a nickel, maybe, just to give you a perspective!