Roommates

Grace officially has a roommate now. We moved Ruby into Grace's room tonight for the first time. So far, so good :) But we're still keeping our fingers crossed that we can get some more sleep. I think Grace is excited to not be the only one without someone to share a room with.

They sure do love each other!

Published

As of today I am a published newspaper articler (one who writes newspaper articles, for those of you who don't speak Amanda). Well, I am one if it still counts even if you don't have a by-line :) I had forgotten that I had submitted an annoyance to my favorite section of our local newspaper, so I was happily surprised when I opened it up and saw my Ticked Off rant.

It's there, just to the right of the center fold.

Do you not love the outlaw with the symbols as the Ticked Off mascot?

My little "article"
I had forgotten how ticked off I was about this since we hadn't been to the mall in a while, but a recent trip re-kindled my ticked-off-ed-ness and I had to submit it.

SwagBucks Help

Sorry, last post on this :) I just read these posts recently on how to earn SwagBucks that I thought were a helpful rundown of how to earn SwagBucks: here, here and here (it's a three-part series by MoneySavingMom.com). It took me a while to figure all this out, so I thought I'd share these great concise posts on how to earn SwagBucks quickly. If you haven't signed up yet and still want to here's the link: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/AJC3. It really is a cool site to earn free stuff!

Have a Happy Monday!

St Patty's Day

Tonight for a festive Irish dinner, we had green breakfast for dinner. Since I know you all (maybe not, but at least my mom) wanted to see our festive green fun here are the pictures. I wish I could take amazing food pictures, oh well.

Green crepes with mom's special crepe sauce (made green), strawberries, bananas, powdered sugar and green whipped cream.

With green eggs and orange cheese (who knew that normal colored eggs hid the orange cheese so well?).
There you go. Since I'm sure you all were wondering what the Carters ate for dinner tonight :)

And a special shout out to my little St Patty's Day baby brother, O'Brian!

SwagBucks

If you haven't heard of SwagBucks yet, pull up a chair and let me tell you about the awesomeness of it. It's a search engine like Google that you use to search the web and every so often you're rewarded for your searches with SwagBucks. You can then use those SwagBucks to buy stuff at their SwagStore, like Amazon.com gift cards. It was hard to get used to not using Google as my search engine, but now that I'm used to it (it's not difficult, it was just different), I use it exclusively. So far in the past 6 months or so I've been using it I've gotten $70 in Amazon.com gift cards for doing nothing but searching the web like I normally do. Cool, eh? I've gotten kitchen gadgets, diapers, wipes, baby travel stuff, books, and other stuff all for free with my Amazon gift cards I got for free. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you in case you're interested in getting free stuff too. If you want to sign up click here (it's my individual referral link that helps me earn bucks too): http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/AJC3. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them - email me :)

Happy searching and earning!

Headstand!

In my yoga class on Friday night the teacher had us do headstand. I was really nervous, but it ended up being the most exciting day of my post-partum body. I could actually do it! Against the wall, yes, but still I could do it and hold it. I was so excited that I came home and showed Rob and of course Gracers had to do it too.

Grace is a pretty good little yogi!

We like to walk in a local park/nature preserve on Saturday mornings. Yesterday, Grace didn't want to ride in the stroller so she ran about half of the 2.5 mile loop. Here she is resting on a bench partway through the walk. I think we're going to try going on some hikes with her soon.

This week has been a good one! First, Rob was elected as President of the Human Organizational Performance Association (HOPA), which is the club for his MBA concentration (HOP). Congrats to him! He also finished all his finals on Tuesday! Spring break...whoo hoo! He had most of this week and all of next week off for relaxing and catching up. On Thursday we were able to go up to Louisville to look at apartments for the summer. Too bad 3 month leases are ex.pen.sive. Especially when we will be paying rent here in Nashville for those months too so we won't lose our house here.

I cut my hair short. It feels so good to have it in a style again! Cheesy picture though!

Grace is funny. I always used to wonder how my parents knew when I was doing something I shouldn't. Turns out kids are really transparent and not quite as tricky as they think they are. Case in point: as I walked by the bathroom today as I was cleaning Grace said "Oh Mom, don't see it, okay?" Translation=I am doing something that I shouldn't that's really fun and I don't want you to stop me. Bless her sweet little honest heart.
Grace's imagination is also starting to grow. The photo above is the train that she built in the garage while I did laundry (the washer and dryer are in the garage, I wasn't just letting her play there unsupervised). I love that all this stuff just lined up can make a train!

Ruby is growing like crazy. She has the most kissable cheeks and the sweetest laugh. I love that she'll smile and laugh at anyone! She is also starting to "talk" a lot. I love having little conversations of babble with her. We are so blessed to have such a content happy baby.

Race for the Cure Quilt

You may remember that last May my family "ran" (ha!) the Race for the Cure in honor of my mom. Since the shirts were hot pink, I thought that most of the guys wouldn't want to keep them. So instead of them heading to the DI, I collected the ones that weren't wanted and made them into a quilt.I used the shirts to make a pink ribbon through the middle of the quilt. Here's what the logo on the shirts looked like: