Good morning!!!  

I have been soaking in all the fun we had on my birthday trip to Cabo a few weeks ago.  It was honestly the best trip ever and I’m just so grateful to my friends and family who made it so so so special.  Speaking of special…. when we got to our room… it was alllll decked out.  I asked my husband if he told the resort it was my birthday.  LOL.  I was in for a big surprise.  

Originally my husband had invited our closest friends and family, but only our two besties (my best friend, Rachael from high school and her husband, Eric) were able to come.  We thought it was just going to be a small, couples trip, but we were wrong!!  We got into our room and were admiring all the decorations and when I turned around….

My sister and her boyfriend were standing in our room!  To say I was SHOCKED is an understatement.  My sister told me early on that she didn’t think she could make it due to work and I told her not to worry about it at all.  She then went the extra mile to send me a work email showing a deal she was closing that Monday so she couldn’t even book a last minute flight.  This definitely convinced me she really couldn’t come.  I will have to share the video of them surprising me because I was just so excited and surprised.  I am hard to surprise… they didn’t even tell my husband so he was surprised too!

They decorated my entire room including the bathroom… LOL.  

The banner is me recently and an old and SUPER embarrassing picture of me as an awkward middle school girl with crimped hair. 🙂

The decorations just kept on coming… so so so thoughtful.

We quickly changed and met our friends at the bar for happy hour on the beach!  

More fun surprises!!  My sister had all these cute hats made for us!!

Mine said Established 1989.

Everyone else’s said Vintage 1989. 🙂

A close up of these awesome tumblers my sister had made for us!! SO FUN!

My sister brought a Polaroid camera and lots of film and a little book for me to put all the pictures in.  She is seriously the best.  It is FULL of the best pictures from the trip, which is such a fun thing to look back on all the fun memories. 

A couple days later she pulled out THIS swimsuit she got for me.  🙂  How fun!

Oh and they made me bring the balloons to the beach for pictures. LOL.  I may have popped the 3 accidentally halfway into our photoshoot… 

Granny panties because I’m officially OLD. LOL.  My sister’s boyfriend hand-glued all of these rhinestones on the underwear.  HA!

Just a little poolside birthday celebration. 🙂

I’ll share more pictures of our fun nights, but Friday night they decorated our table at dinner…. meaning my sister and Rachael.  I tried to get them to both get ready with me and they lied and said they didn’t feel good.  Little did I know they were working with the resort to set up our dinner decor!!

These girls know my love for champagne so well. 😉

 

OH! and one more huge surprise… we were walking to my birthday dinner on Friday night and someone tapped me on the shoulder… I turned around and it was my dad and his girlfriend!!!! What the heck!! I was so shocked… they had great excuses for why they couldn’t come too.  So much fun. 

I have so many more photos to share… I had over 500 between everyone to sort through so I am trying to get my act together and get them on the blog. 🙂 

Also, if you would like my sister to plan your next party, just let me know and I’ll share her information with you. 😉  She is seriously the best planner ever and we were so happy she showed up to make plans for us everyday.  I have never felt so loved by all my peeps!!  

Oh and our resort was a DREAM so I can’t wait to share more!!!

Questions:

1. Any fun plans for Thanksgiving next week?
2. If you could take a vacation now, where would you go?  (We always pick Mexico even though my mom and MIL tell us it’s too dangerous and are so worried I will get sick again… I didn’t this time or earlier this year when I went!)
3. What is your favorite food at Thanksgiving?

 

Hey friends!! Happy Wednesday!! It is indeed a very happy Wednesday over here because we are on our way to Cabo to celebrate my 30th birthday (Friday) with our best friends!!! We are SOOO excited!!  I’ll be sure to share some pictures when we get back, but until then I thought I would share a recent home project we just finished.  

This oven hood aka white brick block has bugged me since the moment we moved in the house.  We prioritized updating our master bathroom and laundry room, and adding a carport out back, but this has been next on my list for a while and we finally decided to just get it done and I am so happy we did. 

My husband was confident that he could do this himself, but we put it off for a bit knowing we would have to fix dry-wall (not our favorite project), but it actually turned out to not be too bad!

We got the subway tiles off in sheets so that part was actually pretty easy!  Then I let my husband do the hard work…

All gone!

This picture cracks me up.  We were trying to hold up the new hood while securing it and it was not as easy as we thought!  We piled up the table, printer and all the books in the house to hold it up, but we ended up having a couple of our guy friends come over to hold it while Jon put the screws in. 🙂 

After the drywall was complete, we (mostly me ;)) got to work on painting the wall (didn’t have to repaint the whole thing thankfully) and the ceiling aka the worst thing to paint. 

“Is this thing done yet? Did I miss any spots? Why is painting the ceiling SO difficult? ”  – me 

The finished product!  We really love it and it opens up the view to our family room so much better.  

The whole project took us about 3 days (part of 2 weekends) so it went pretty fast! Now we are trying to figure out what our next project will be!  I really want pull out drawers in our kitchen pantry like we had in our house in Nashville.  My husband says he can do this himself… he hasn’t let me down yet so I think when we get back from our trip, I will put him to work. 🙂

After working on Saturday we got all cleaned up for a night out with our friends!

We wanted to try a new restaurant, Ida Claire.  

We shared a few appetizers and all really enjoyed our meals.  The hummus plate was so different and yummy!

Me with my main squeeze. 🙂

Cheers for double date night! 

I hope you all have a fabulous rest of your week!! I plan to plop down on the beach with my book for the next 5 days and I can’t wait!!  

Questions:

1. Do you like trying new restaurants or do you always go to the same ones?
2. Any fun trips planned for the holidays?
3. Are you a DIYer or do you hire out projects around the house? (I would hire people if it wasn’t for my handy husband.  He literally can do it ALL.  If he doesn’t know how, he just gets on YouTube and learns. I am lucky, I know! ;))

Hi friends!! It has been a minute! I had all intentions of blogging after my surgery, but life just got in the way.  We have been so busy with work, obligations, and I have been trying (key word.. trying) to rest and take it easy after my surgery.  That is hard for me.  I was ready to go go go the day I got out of the hospital and learned my lesson the hard way when I was so exhausted and in so much pain a couple days later.  I realized quickly that I was going to actually have to rest up and chill out so that my body could heal.  

All in all I am doing well.  This recovery has been hard .  I kept telling my husband and parents that I feel like this recovery was harder than the last one, but really I think it just seemed that way because I was so happy to be out of the hospital last time after surgery (after spending 7 straight weeks in there) that I completely blocked out the pain and recovery time.  It is funny how our minds block out the negative… it is almost hard to remember my whole hospital stay last year and now it just feels like a distance memory (we can thank the morphine for some of this memory loss…).

After my first bowel resection last year, I was out of the hospital a day and a half later.  This time was a little different.  I had my surgery Wednesday evening and didn’t go home until Saturday, which was definitely longer than we anticipated to be there.  My mom flew in Wednesday morning so she could be there to help take care of me (my husband was there too, but ya know… we all just need our mommas sometimes).  My husband had a previous commitment out of town that weekend that I didn’t want him to cancel.

We got to the hospital around noon on the day of my surgery and got all prepped.

Nurses have always had a tough time getting an IV in me (hence why I ended up with a central line last year) and this time was no different.  It took 4 nurses and 4 sticks to get an IV in me.  They always feel so bad and I’m like…. just get it done, I am fine!

The surgery went really well and the doctor determined that the blockage was at the same spot as my last surgery so they just cut out a bit more of my intestines and sewed me back up.  So it was all good news but, will this problem keep continuing? UGH! b They have no way to know…We were all laughing pretty hard that I had to have a wristband on with the words, “FALL RISK.”  🙂

My mom and husband alternated nights in the hospital with me before my husband had to go out of town.  My puppies were in good hands. 🙂

My mom sent me this picture from our guest bed.  My puppies didn’t miss me too much. 😉

And this little guy…always wants to play. 24/7.  He is too funny.  He  is at least 12 years old and we keep thinking he is going to slow down and every day he wakes up with such spunk and wants to play fetch and begs for treats all day long. 🙂  He is my first baby and I am convinced he is going to live forever… please don’t tell me otherwise. 🙂

Jon and my mom keeping me company after surgery.  These two have the sweetest relationship and it makes my heart so happy.  Jon will come home from work and say, “guess who I talked to today??” “MARY” LOL.  I am so grateful  and thankful for them. 

Leaving the hospital!!! With all my bags in tow…

Sweetest surprise from my bestie, Rachael.  

My surgery really wore him out…

My momma is the best nurse.  We spent my recovery time cooking, watching murder shows and just catching up.  It was so nice.  Really makes me want to move back to Nashville stat so I can hang out with her every week.

Pecan trees are everywhere in our neighborhood here and my mom was adamant about taking a bag to collect them on our walks. 🙂  I sent her home with a TON of pecans in her suitcase. LOL. 

We walked to the local bike shop to check out some bikes!  My mom is in the market for one and so am I.  I made her do all the test riding. 🙂

I really love our neighborhood we live in now.  Jon and I were just talking about how this neighborhood is one of our favorites we have lived in because the walking paths for the pups are so beautiful.  Found this new one last week!

I was back to work on Monday (I work from home) after my surgery and was so Thankful to be back in my normal (ish) routine.  I am eating pretty much back to normal (maybe a little less quantity), which feels good.  I still can’t exercise for at least another month, which if you know me, is definitely a struggle.  I look forward to my workouts every day (honestly, it is more for my mental health than physical) so that has been tough.  This week I surprised Jon with the pups at his tennis match and we had a great time spectating.  He begs me every week to come watch him play (I usually say no because this is my me time to catch up on my shows!!) so he was so excited to see us this week.

I was dying for a haircut this week so I made an appointment at a new salon and was so happy I did.  I cut off about 3-4 inches and did a toner wash (to wash out the brassy blonde) and felt like a whole new person afterwards!! It is amazing how good a haircut can make you feel!!

Well that is all for now! I  have some fun new posts coming soon… favorite fall recipes I have been loving and a home improvement project I can’t wait to show yall!  

I hope yall had the best weekend!!! xoxoxo

Hi friends!! I apologize my posts are getting more and more sporadic, but hey, that’s just this season of life.  And it sure is a good one.  My husband and I often talk about how we are in that sweet spot of life.  Don’t get me wrong, I wanted babies yesterday, but life right now is really good.  We have financial security that we have worked really hard to build and freedom to do what we please and we both have jobs that we like (I mean I love mine somedays…) that are part of our bigger career plans.  So life is good. It really is.  But it sure is busy.  We have multiple commitments each week on top of work and our weekends always feel like we are just trying to catch up!  But honestly… I know that life will just get more crazy and busy as the years go on so I am just soaking up these sweet moments now. 

Which brings me to my next point.  Before I recap our wonderful weekend, I know some of yall know that today is surgery day for me.  My mom is flying down to San Antonio this morning to help me through the process (my husband will be here… but he will have to take care of the house, dogs, and still work).  I won’t lie… I am anxious, but honestly.. today I feel less anxiety than I have in the past month.  I have known about this procedure for the last month and it feels like every day has been so long and it has taken forever to just get to this day.  Now it is here.  So if you don’t remember, about a year and a half ago I was in the hospital on and off for about 3 months, which ended up in a bowel resectioning surgery.  I woke up from that surgery so happy, although I knew I had a long road ahead of me (I lost 35 pounds and didn’t eat or drink anything for over 2 months so I was craving all the vitamins and minerals and it sure was a huge shock to my body).  I made a full recovery, but had a few horrible days in the few months after surgery and by January 2019 the real trouble started again.  Every 3 to 4 weeks this year I have had a 5-10 day period of not being able to eat or drink anything (yes…all while still trying to keep up with a very demanding, high stress job).  I saw a couple different doctors, but I must give credit to my husband for finding my doctor who will perform the surgery today.  She is absolutely wonderful, listened to all my concerns, and 100% agreed with me that it was time to re investigate because I can not live like this (one doctor told me I just had to deal with it….).  So here we go.  We go in this afternoon and there are quite a few things that could come of this exploratory surgery.  Best case scenario is that it is just built up scar tissue that can be removed laparoscopically.  Next best case is that is it at the site of my previous resection and the incision just didn’t hold/wasn’t done properly.  They would just redo it.  Worst case is that it is a new blockage in my intestines… yes that can just cut it out and re-sow it up, but the bigger issue is that they don’t know what is causing the blockages.  My new surgeon is very skeptical that I was just born with it (what my previous surgeon told me after they biopsied it).  So honestly… who the heck knows.  I am just ready to get it over with.  I could be in the hospital a day or a few days, but I feel much better going into surgery this time around since I am not 95 pounds and so fragile.  I am ready.  And more than that.. I am just ready to be back to living my life and not thinking about this issue constantly.  It is overwhelming knowing something is wrong, but not knowing what it is or who can fix it. 

So last weekend… it was a good one.  I just relaxed Friday night while my husband went to his softball game (he and his friends joined a league).  All us girls were like please, NO sports aka no co-ed leagues.  You boys can go, just let us go out to dinner and drinks while you do sports.  🙂

UGH.. why you so cute?  I love this guy so much.  When it comes to the topic above, there has been no one more supportive and concerned.  I am so lucky. 

Saturday we took a long walk with the pups and ended up at the paint store to get some paint to finish the trim in our master bedroom. 

I painted the trim and Jonny put it up in our bathroom.  A project we have been putting off wayyyy too long. 

I spent the afternoon powerwashing our drive way and back fence.  It is so therapeutic to me… is this weird?? Probably … so don’t answer that.

Saturday evening we headed to the Riverwalk for a quick drink before dinner.  

It was such a nice evening!

My sweet date!

Then we headed to our favorite sushi restaurant. SushiHana.  We always want to try a new place, but we just keep coming back here.  It is THAT good!

We split a few rolls (I love that they have a cucumber wrapped roll) and they were all just as good and fresh as always.  We cleaned the plates!

Thank you for all the love, messages, prayers and thoughts.  I will post an update soon!!!  Love you all and have a great rest of your week!!!

 

Hey friends! Happy Monday! Another weekend has come and gone and I can’t believe it.  Life is just going by so fast these days, it is hard to keep up!  

We had a nice, relaxing weekend at home, which was so very needed.  Not many plans and we got a bunch of stuff done around the house so that is a win in my book!

Friday night I went over to my girlfriend’s house for a girls night in (our husbands play on a softball league on Friday nights).  We made salmon, roasted broccoli with parmesean and I made a Mexican quinoa dish.  It was all so yummy! 

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early for a 5k event with our pups!  Jonny crossing the finish line with my sweet Riley. All the proceeds from the race go to helping homeless/shelter doggies in SA so this was right up my alley.

We walk/jogged the whole 5k with our pups (can you believe Riley used to run 5 miles with me multiple times a week??), and they were so tired by the end. 🙂 There were adoptable puppies at the event and I came home with zero (my husband was not having it…. send me your tips on how I can convince him to let us get one more pup ;)). 

After a big of lounging around after the race, I powerwashed our front walkway and this old rug.  Is this how you clean rugs?  Please tell me I am not crazy.  We got a new rug delivered last week for our living room so I thought I would try to clean our old one so we could donate it.  Not sure if this was a good idea?

Saturday afternoon our friends came over and we had some snacks while we did a beer/champagne taste testing!

The boys picked out 4 beers and the girls picked out 4 different brands of champagne to do a blind taste test.  

We had Andre, La Marca, Kirkland/Costco brand, and some fancy brand.  

And the winner was the Kirkland/Costco brand!  Our husbands were so happy. 😉

Then we made a big dinner with a salad, quinoa salad with guacamole, grilled veggies and salmon.  It was all so yummy!

We ended the night with an ice cream run. yum!  Sunday was spent working around the house, relaxing and watching football.  Then me and my girlfriend went and got mani/pedis.  Such a nice treat!

We both chose black for fall/Halloween.  I like it! 

Spent a little time hanging outside with my girl.

She is so snuggly these days and I love it.

Ended the night with dinner at home with Jonny when he got back from golfing. 🙂

And we are all exhausted thinking about tomorrow being Monday…. 🙂

I am off to Oregon for the week for a business trip so I will check back in soon!! Hope you all had a great weekend!!!

Questions:

1. What was the highlight of your weekend?
2. Do you watch football every Sunday? What team do you like?
3. Any fall traditions in your house? (It is still in the 90s here sooo it still feels like summer over here…)

Hi Friends!! Happy Friday! wooo!! I am ready for the weekend!  I had a pretty good, but packed week!  Between my husband getting his identity stolen (!!!) and a delivery truck hitting one of our trees out front.. it has been a pretty interesting week over here. 

The guy literally took a huge branch off our tree and headed down the road.  All is good, but it was a pretty eventful day talking to the police, firemen, and the driver. 🙂

But let’s back up to last weekend, which was such a good one!! Friday night me and some of my girlfriends watched the boys play in their softball league, which was also quite entertaining… LOL.

On Saturday afternoon we went to visit the San Jose mission in San Antonio (there are 5 missions here including the Alamo.

Made him do this… why does he listen to me?? LOL

This one was really pretty!

We walked around for about an hour before watching a short film on the history. 

After exploring for a bit, we headed to Cappys.

We had a beautiful dinner outside with some crispy brussels and I got the fish special.  It was divine!!

Sunday we took a walk with the pups before my mother-in-law and I headed to Home Goods for a little fall shopping.  I just needed ALL the pumpkins.. and we got them!!

New fall décor!

Sunday afternoon after we shopped, I made up a little snack plate while we watched some football before heading out for dinner. Sharing some favorite Trader Joes and Costco finds next week!

It was a beautiful night so we decided to take the convertible out to dinner.  Riding in the back seat was fun… should have braided my hair!

We went to Ocho.

I love this sweet man so much.

Me, Jon, and his momma.  

We had some cocktails and I got the salmon with quinoa, which was SOO good!

Me and Cathy! I got soooo lucky in the mother-in-law department. 🙂

Why you so cute, boy??

After dinner, we headed home to relax!  

Ahh … my favorite human in the world.  

Monday night we made some homemade pizzas… and even though they may look a little toasty.. they were sooo good!! Sharing the crusts we used next week from Trader Joes! 

My mother-in-law left Tuesday and we are still sad over here.  Such a great visit with her!!

Questions:

1. How was your week?
2. What are you looking forward to this weekend?
3. Do you ever do charity fun runs? (We have one this weekend… the charity is for the humane society… I am hoping to convince Jon to let me get one more doggie..)

Hey Friends!! I hope your week is going better than mine.  In the field I work in in healthcare, the fall is our busy season.  When I say busy I mean BUSY.  Can’t.Keep.My.Eyes.Open.Busy.  I have been working a lot, but I am lucky to work from home so I will survive.  

The last few months have been hard… to say the least.  Ever since February, I have been having nausea and pain in my stomach about every 3-6 weeks.  I have seen a couple new doctors down here in San Antonio and finally found one (thanks to my husband) that I feel like really gets my situation and understands I can live this way.  Each month I get sick, it lasts about 5-10 days.  5-10 days of no eating, minimal Popsicles and sips of water. It is awful.  After a day or 2 I get used to it, and my stomach doesn’t hurt as badly, but the bigger issue is what a week or two of not eating/hydrating enough does to my body.  I am mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted all of the time.  This was definitely a huge stressor in my last office job as it was hard to even get into the office when I had these flare ups.  I am fortunate enough to work from home now, but work has not slowed done or become easier.  And typically, this is how I like my work life to be.  I like to be busy and productive every single day.  Which is hard when I just feel like crap all the time.  Thankfully on these really bad days, Jon will set up an office in my bed for me with multiple computer screens (how do people work with just one??).  

I also spend a lot of time (and money) at hydration spas getting pumped full of saline and vitamins.  These seem to help on the days I really can’t eat or drink anything without feeling horrible.  

But I usually spend at least $150 per treatment… out of pocket.  Eek!  My new doctor hooked me up with an at-home health program and they will come to me during my next issue with my stomach and come every day I request to give me some hydration, which is really really nice.  (Haven’t used it yet since my stomach has been ok since I got connected with this company.  But the way this week is going, I might be getting one tomorrow.   

I don’t know if I have shared this with you all or not, but one of the medications I take for my back makes me have night sweats like crazy.  I will wake up 3 to 4 times a night drenched.  I told my husband I want to wean off this medicine, but until then I told my husband we had to find a solution because it is gross and highly affects my sleep.  So a couple weeks ago I came home to find this on my side of the bed.  It is a mat that goes under the sheet that is hooked up to a water system tank that pumps cold water in throughout the night.  It is amazing… well it was until it got a leak.  But my husband said he is going to return it and get me a new one. Yay!!

After the last time I was super sick, my husband had to leave on a business trip so my momma booked a flight that day and came to take care of me for the week.  I literally am the luckiest.

Finally started to feel a little better so we got to have dinner and lunch at two of my favorite spots (Bird Bakery and Down on Grayson).

I haven’t been able to exercise much with all my stomach stuff so i have been taking plenty of walks with the pups (no, Jon did not let me get a third yet.. we were just watching our friends’ pup).

So my new surgeon had me to an MRI Enterography (had to drink 3 bottles of contrast and get an IV contrast) to see if she could tell if it was the old surgery spot that was causing the issue.  And ofcourse, she said they still couldn’t really tell…. and yall I almost projectile vomited the contrast in the MRI machine… it was bad. 

But anyway, we met with her to discuss our options and she didn’t think any more testing was necessary (thank the lord because my doctors from last year wanted to do 500 of every test available… and they all showed nothing) because there just isn’t a test that can accurately see where they need to.

All of this said, my doctor thinks an exploratory laparoscopy is the best course of action (basically what they finally ended up doing to me for my last surgery). It is scheduled in early October.  But if I am having pain before then, the doctor said she could try to move me up.  Best case scenario is that the issue is scar tissue and she will be able to remove it without an incision.  More than likely the last surgery where they sewed up my intestines did not heal properly and she will have to redo it (cut me open, cut out more intestine, and sew me back up again.  The worst case scenario is that there is a new stricture or blockage that will have to be removed.  It would be removed the same way as the 2nd option, but the issue here is that they still would not have answers to why strictures are forming.  My last surgeon did take a biopsy to be tested, but they basically said it was genetics and just got worse over time, which my new doctor 100% fully does not believe this is the case.  She said if I were born with a stricture I would have noticed by age 5 so to be almost 30 and this just happened last year, there usually is some medical cause.  They will biopsy again in October procedure.  

So for now, I am hanging in there. 🙂  It has been hard and I am tired.  My family and my dogs and my husband are tired.  Tired of hearing about it, tired of not getting the full me, tired of seeing my suffer.  

In most things in life, I am a glass half full kind of girl so I am just moving along with my daily life as best as I can.  We have done a lot of fun things lately and I want to keep living that way.  

I promise to update you all more soon.  Thanks for sticking by me during this difficult time.  Your support, messages, thoughts, and love do not go unnoticed. 

Have a very wonderful Wednesday, friends!!!

XOXOXO