Wednesday, August 31, 2011

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Thanks, Jamie, for having a day that I just think of everything that I'm loving!  It's great to have a good attitude!  Sorry no pictures in the post this week - I'm a slacker.  :( 

I'm loving that I'm feeling better!  I felt horrible at the end of last week.  It usually happens at the beginning of the school year for me.  Being around 140 kids will do it to you!

I'm loving that we had a FANTASTIC weekend at the Suwanee River last weekend (post to come!).  We desperately needed a weekend away and this one was perfect!

I'm loving my new header up top - are you?

I'm loving that The Hubs will be co-leading worship on Sunday.  I love to see him up there.  :)

I'm loving that we have NO PLANS this labor day weekend!  I'm hoping that we'll go to the Farmer's Market downtown this Saturday (if they're still doing it?!?).  I'm also hoping that we'll grill out a TON!  Obvs I'm looking forward to a Monday at home instead of at work.

I'm loving my new blog address - have you noticed?

I hope you're having a fantastic Wednesday!

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Kid's Sale

It has become a tradition over the past 2 years for me and Emily to go to local kid's sales together.  We always put stuff in them to sell, but more for the fact that it means we get to shop earlier than really making any money.  Sometimes we have more people that come with us, and sometimes it just ends up being the two of us.  Really, it has become something that I look forward to SO MUCH.  We just have such a good time, find some amazing deals, and get to stay out late having girl time. 

There are two huge sales in town each semester - two at the end of summer/start of fall (for buying winter clothes) and two at the end of winter/start of spring (for buying summer clothes).  A few weeks ago we had our first sale this season.  We actually ended up having quite a group this time - it was me, Emily, Ashley, and Emily's sister in law Cortney. 

I had a blast (of course!) and got so many good deals!  Are you ready for this?  I spent $140 total - and this is what I got:
10 pairs of pants
2 dresses
15 shirts
6 jackets
1 pair of shoes (New Balance)
1 costume

Not bad, huh??  Here are some of my favorite pieces:

This is her Halloween costume.  It's Pottery Barn Kids and I got it for $10!

I LOVE cardigans (for myself and for her) and I think this white is going to look so cute with her dark hair.

Ralph Lauren sweater vest.  With a white shirt and jeans this will be super adorable.

I'm in LOVE with this pea coat!

I got so many designer jeans for so cheap!


This was probably my best find - a pea coat with matching pants from BabyGap *WITH THE TAGS ON* for $15.

This came with pants, too.  So cute!

I am such a polka dot person.

This is how much stuff I got at the sale, just waiting for her to wear it!

I think I did great and I can't wait for the next sale this week!
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Monday, August 29, 2011

New Home

Have you noticed my new home? 

Let me explain...

I have a super sweet hubby.  He also is the kind of person who *always* has a hobby.  That's just who he is.  Because of this personality trait, he always wants me to have a hobby, too.  Occasionally I do, but there are periods of time where I really don't.  I mean, can going to get a massage be a hobby?  It probably can, but not one that we can afford! 

Lately (and by lately, I mean the past few months), blogging has really been something that I love.  It has been a great outlet, something I look forward to, and a wonderful log that I've been creating for our family.

Matt has totally noticed how much I've been loving it lately, so he decided to do something sweet for me.  He talked to my computer-savvy brother-in-law and together they figured out how to give me a new home.  Hadn't noticed?  Check the address bar.

Yep - robynmullican.com is my new blog address!  Obviously the old address still works, too, but I'll be using this new one from now on!  The Hubs just said that it seems a little more "grown up" than having a .blogspot address and that if I was serious about this, he wanted it to look serious.  How sweet is that? 

Thanks, hubs!  And welcome to my new home!

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Friday, August 26, 2011

How Pinteresting: Future Home Ideas

One of my boards on pinterest is nothing but ideas for our future forever home that we plan to build some day!  Here are some things I would love to have in our next house:

I really want a drop zone like this in our next house.  I think that they're so practical and they keep down the clutter in the rest of your house!

I think this is such a great idea.  When you have the doors open, you can easily access all of your appliances.  But then you can just shut the door to hide them when you have guests over and to give your kitchen a "cleaner" feel to it!

I *love* this kitchen.  Really - everything about it.  The ceiling, the stove area, the window, the different colored cabinets - everything!

Isn't this gorgeous?

I NEED to remember this for our next laundry room!  Heck, maybe even this one!  We hang SO MANY of our clothes to dry and I never have enough room for them all!

Maybe if my laundry room looked like this I wouldn't mind doing laundry so much?  A girl can hope.  ;)

I love the idea of having a family command center for bills, calendars, etc.  I'm an organizational freak, so I think this would be really helpful!


If you're not on pinterest yet, you're so behind the times.  ;)
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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Ben's Birthday - Part 2!

After our crazy, fussy morning, we were hoping that a nap would put LL in better spirits for Ben's party.  Wrong.  She woke up and immediately started crying.  Like, nonstop.  Like, we couldn't even take her out of the room because she was crying so hard.  Everything we tried to do just made her cry even harder.  Then, suddenly, she stopped.  She's getting in her last two molars, so I'm wondering if those guys (plus traveling) messed her up?  I have no clue. 

Anyway, she woke up and all of the family was there and ready to celebrate.  My goal was to put a cute dress on her for the party, but she wasn't having any of that. 

Balloons are always a good distraction to help a toddler get in a better mood!

She was very happy to see Oma and Opa!

Laura and Gino's best friends bought Ben a sand table just like the one LL got for Christmas.  I'm sure she thought it was hers!

"Aunt" Wendy also brought Ben some m&m's and he was very happy about it!

Birthday boy!


They had a pool set up, but we forgot to bring a bathing suit for LL.  So what did we do?  Swim in our panties, of course!

I love that smile!


Jam was very happy to have so many people around!

Ben is IN LOVE with his Chuggington train set.  It is his absolute most favorite thing.  LL had to sneak some train time in while Ben was outside!

It was a mostly-train birthday for him - he was in Heaven!

LL is in LOVE with watching YouTube videos on Haley Reinhart from American Idol (thanks Opa!).  We put some videos on tv for her and she just danced and danced.  And Ben just looked at her like she was crazy.  :)


This is what she does when you ask her to shake her hiney.  It is so cute!

Shaking her hiney some more!

My sister and I have always looked VERY different from each other.  She's tall with blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin.  I'm short with brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin.  I think it's very funny that we both ended up having kids that look just like us (coloring wise)!  So funny!  It'll be interesting to see if they continue to look very different from each other years from now.

Even though we had a rough go at it with LL on Saturday, we did still have an awesome time and I'm glad we could be there to celebrate Ben's birthday!

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

What I'm Loving Wednesday

After taking last week off of blogging, I'm glad to be back in the swing of things.  Link up with Jaime at This Kind of Love if you want to play along!

I'm loving that we FINALLY got our tax money!  Yep - you read that right.  It is August and we just got our return $$.  And yes, we filed in MARCH.  They put some dumb hold on our money and wouldn't give it to us!  It has been such a battle and even our accountant has been calling them constantly.  In the end, they never even asked us for additional information - just gave us the money.  They held our money for so long that THEY ended up have to pay US interest!  So glad to finally have it!

I'm loving that I finally got to book our vacation for Disney!  We've been waiting on that tax money to do it, so I was super happy that I could quit talking about it and make some reservations!  We're going for 5 days over the week of Thanksgiving and I know that LL is going to LOVE it!

I'm loving that LL is POOPING IN THE POTTY!!!  We're still in the learning stages, but she's doing it!  I wish I could tell you what a huge deal this is for her.  I promise when she's been doing it consistently for awhile I'll do a post telling you what we did.  Because I know you're dying to know.  ;)

I'm loving that we had such an awesome Sunday at church this past weekend.  We missed it the week before because of Ben's birthday and I was so happy to be back.  We absolutely LOVE our church and I think that's such a blessing!  LL has also been loving church, too.  As a parent, I think that is probably one of the best things every - seeing your child enjoy church.  Sunday on the way home, she randomly said "I love church!" and it just melted my heart!  When I picked her up from her class, she had colored a picture of a whale.  On the way home, I said to her, "You did a great job coloring your whale!  Can you tell me about the whale?" and didn't say anything else.  She didn't answer me right away, and I actually thought she wasn't going to at all.  Then after a minute she said, "The whale swallowed Jonah!" and then proceeded to tell me how to open my mouth like the whale and to say "gulp!".  I just LOVE that she's learning in her class and taking so much in!

I'm loving that I survived my first week at school.  I have been absolutely exhausted, but I've made it.  Is it too early to start the countdown for summer?  ;)

I'm loving that I finally got my massage from the gift card Matt got me a few weeks ago.  It was literally the best massage that I've ever gotten and I needed it so badly!  Now if I could just get one every week - haha.

I'm loving that Matt and I are taking a mini-vacay with some friends this weekend.  We didn't really do a vacation at all this summer, so we very much need to get away for a little bit. 

What are you loving this week?

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Ben's Birthday - Part 1!

My sweet nephew Ben just turned 2 last week.  I was furloughed last Friday so Matt took the day off and we drove up pretty early in order to make in there by lunch and nap time.  Friday was pretty uneventful.  We got there at lunch, ate some chik-fil-a, and then LL and I took a nap.  When we got up, I headed out with Gino to pick Ben up from daycare.  We got back, ate dinner, the kids played, etc.  We did get P.F. Changs take-out for dinner and it was AH-MAZING!

Saturday morning we decided to take the kids to Discover Mills so that they could see the fish in the big tank at Bass Pro and also give Gino an empty house to get some stuff ready for Ben's party.  I tried to get a good pic of LL and Ben at the aquarium, but no dice.

                                          Take 1...

Take 2....

Take 3....

I guess with two 2 year olds, the odds were against me!  I did get a really cute one of Ben, though!


I did get some decent ones when neither of them knew I was taking one - haha.



They also have this huge shark hanging from the ceiling.  Shocker - LL wanted nothing to do with it.  But at least Ben would play along!!



This is where the day went downhill fast.  We stopped to let the kids play on the little rides that they put in the middle of malls.  We didn't put money in them or anything, but they had no idea and just enjoyed climbing all over them.  Well, LL was none too happy about leaving them when I told her it was time to keep moving.


  We did just a little bit of shopping (I needed new jeans) and I told her that if she was good we would ride the carousel.  She did great, and was super excited to ride a horse.  Then we decided to go to lunch.  This is when things got bad.  We went to Johnny Rockets, and I don't know if she was really tired, or what - but she was NOT behaving like we expect her to in public (well, in private, too, for that matter).  It was honestly her worst behavior ever in a public place.  She just whined and cried about EVERYTHING.  Matt ended up leaving lunch early with her and just walking with her around the mall to calm her down.  She did calm down to be appropriate in public, but she still was in a horrible mood.  She even cried in the car the entire way back to Laura's house.  Not cool.  But through it all - she never had an accident while we were out!  Glass half full, right??

Next up: Ben's party!

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