It’s Friday, Top 5 Day!

I may as well just make this a regular feature on the blog, and I might start doing a “Wordless Wednesday” post too.  Keep an eye out for that.

Top 5

1) My Baby Turned 7

Yesterday was our youngest daughter’s birthday! I can hardly believe she is 7 already, and it makes me a little sad because she doesn’t seem so little anymore.  Growing by leaps and bounds, she weighs 60lbs and is almost 51″ tall.  She reads like a champ, and is one of the best readers in her first grade class.  She loves to tell jokes, has two buck teeth from sucking her thumb when she was younger (so occasionally I call her Buck Tooth Billy lol), but still calls me mama.

I wish they could stay little forever.

2) That’s Not Me Anymore

The other day when I was at Safeway paying for my groceries, the cashier called me “Mrs So&So” as I walked away.  I stopped for a moment, thinking…wait, that’s not me!  But it was actually.

She called me by my previous married name, the one I have now taken as a middle name.  I had forgotten to change my name on my Safeway club card, so on the receipt it automatically has me listed as “Joanna So&So”.

It was the weirdest feeling because it took me a moment to realize that, Yes, I am that person, but NO, I am not that person anymore.  I almost didn’t recognize even being called that, even though it’s been almost 5 months since Andrew and I have been married.  I really don’t identify with that name anymore, and it felt so strange to even be called that.

When she called me that, I realized that I don’t feel like that Joanna anymore.  That chapter in my life has closed, and a new one as Andrew’s wife has been started.

3) I Love Birchbox

Ok, this is not meant to be a total spam post asking for referrals, but if you DO decide you want to sign up for Birchbox, click on this link here.

Birchbox is a $10/month beauty subscription where you get about 5 deluxe size samples every month, and occasionally a FULL size product! The boxes vary each month, and after you receive your box you can review the products for points, and then spend your points in the birch box store to get free products! Every review earns 10 points, and 100 points equals $10 to spend in the store, and every referral you get earns you 50 points.  You can redeem points once you have over $10/100 or in increments of $10/100 points.

I just placed an order last week, and with my $30/300 points, and a 20% off code they had at the time, I got LuLu Organics Lavender & Clary Sage dry shampoo (AMAZING! I had it in a birchbox a few months back and just ran out of my sample, it’s my favorite!), a Classic Bagu Bag that I will use for shopping, and Shea Terra African Black Soap. It cost me less than $7 total after tax/shipping.  In the past I’ve bought a few other products too, including my favorite eyeliner and a BB cream, and beneFit erase paste and stay don’t stray eye primer!

Some samples I have received included a handful of full size mascaras, hand lotion, eye liner, a FULL SIZE stila primer (which is valued at $36 retail), chocolate fortune cookies, lots of shampoo and perfume samples, lipstick, face wash, BB cream/Foundation/eye cream, dry shampoo, exotic tea, nail polish, FULL size blush, cuticle cream, and a beauty blender (and those are $20 too!). One of my favorite samples was a volumizing shampoo sample that  was valued at about $10, and I am going to save up my points to buy a full size. That’s just a handful of what I have received, and my birch box subscription has more than paid for itself, especially with the full size products I have received.

Here’s the link to Birchbox again if you want to sign up (please, I want points!!! 🙂 )

4) Parent’s Who Don’t RSVP

You suck.  Really, You should be tarred and feathered. And put in the stocks, and have rotten fruit thrown at you.

All it takes is 30 seconds, just 30 seconds, to pick up your phone and text me to say “so&so will be at your daughter’s birthday party”.  But you’re too damn lazy to even do that, so shame on you.

I invited her whole class to the party, 23 kids.  We have to do that to be fair.  And do you know how many parent’s RSVPed to me? 3. Only three.  Oh, and one last minute one last night.  Four kids (three are coming) out of 23 kids. I sent out the invitations last week, and asked for an RSVP date of yesterday.

Pathetic.

Parents, don’t you know that we have to plan a party and make sure we have enough cupcakes and party supplies? Don’t you realize we have to pay for birthday parties? Don’t you realize that you disappoint the birthday child if you don’t even bother to let us know if you are bringing your own child?

It’s called manners and common courtesy. LEARN IT. And RSVP for fuck’s sake. Ugh.

5) 19 More Days!

Oooh, we have a countdown on our kitchen chalkboard for our spring break trip to “Ottawa” to see my brother.  My poor kids are so dense sometimes, lol, and haven’t even picked up on the fact that we’re going to Kansas to see my husband.  Never mind that I told them we have a 2 hour layover in Missouri, and at the airport that’s only a few hours from our new home this summer.  They still think we’re going from Seattle to Missouri to Ottawa.

I’m so excited to see my man, I really miss him.  It’s been almost three weeks since he has been gone and it stinks.  Four more months till he’s back home for a month, and then we move three weeks later.

On another note, I could keep this little tidbit for next week, but it’s too cute not to share. Since we will be in Kansas for Easter, I was unsure about Easter baskets for the kiddos.  I gave up control on this one, which if you know me, is a BIG deal, and handed the responsibility over to Andrew.  And now we all say “awwwwww”, because there is nothing sweeter than a first time dad (even if he is a step dad, which I don’t really think of him as, because he’s their dad!) showing so much excitement over getting Easter baskets ready for his kids!  He has shopped at WalMart, the commissary and the Exchange buying all sorts of goodies for them, and new Easter baskets as well.  He loves it, is giddy when he talks about it, and it really shows his excitement of being a father.  I love seeing that, and it makes me appreciate and love him even more.

 

Getting Pretty is Hard

I’m just about ready to say “screw it” to the hair & beauty page on Pinterest, and all the sephora, birchbox and other random beauty crap.

It’s hard keeping up, yo!

I am coming to the realization that it’s just too much pressure on us women to look like that (perfection), all the freaking time.  I spent an HOUR this morning doing my hair and makeup, and all for what…a quick trip to the grocery store and volunteering at my kids’ school? Ok, well, I do have to go out later today, so it wasn’t all for naught, but I still felt like it was just too much.

I was so frustrated this morning because my hair was all frizzy and not cooperating with me, and my makeup wouldn’t set right. My mascara and eye lashes had a mind of their own this morning, and didn’t want to cooperate with each other, let alone myself.  One eye looked perfect, the other was all spidery leg like.  The perfect eye shadow combo I had envisioned in my mind, two of my favorite colors…MAC’s Girlie and Copperplate, didn’t blend well, and then my black liquid eyeliner crapped out on me. My eyebrows are in desperate need of a trim, and I have a huge zit on my cheek that came out of nowhere yesterday too! And to top it all off, my foundation made me look too pale and I don’t know how to contour well. I just threw on some blush and bronzer after that and hoped they would look ok.

Sometimes I just want to say fuck all this beauty stuff, there is too much pressure (online) to have all this crap, look a certain way and always have perfect makeup.  If I don’t know how to highlight and contour my face like a pro, who cares? If I don’t dye my hair all the time, who cares? For the record, i do dye it a few times a year, but I am lazy right now and have lots of grey growing in. Yep, I have earned many new grey hairs in the last 3.5 years.  I just walked out of the house thinking, oh well, I’ll just deal with it and who cares if it doesn’t work out today because there is always another day.

But then I took a picture for my husband (we send pictures to each other every day 🙂 ), and it turns out, it didn’t look all that bad after all, did it?

 

Wedding Woes

Is it possible I have dress regret?

No, I don’t think so at all, but a week ago when David’s Bridal called me to say my dress was in, I was shocked to say the least.  I purchased it on labor day weekend and it took less than two weeks to come in.  I was told it would come in December.

I tried my dress on in the store, and I fell in love with it all over again.  I look so beautiful! The dress is stunning and I can’t wait to wear it. I just don’t know when that will be.  Ugh.

I will say this…I probably should have waited to buy it.  Or not.  I’m really torn on this one. Because the dress was about to be clearanced, that meant it would not be made anymore, and my chances of finding one would be slim to none.  I’ve lusted after this dress, and other’s like it, for months, and I always came back to this one after looking at similar dresses.  My reasoning behind thinking I should have waited, is that I forgot about a possible deployment and moving when I handed over my debit card to purchase it.

Andrew leaves in two months, and we won’t find out about a deployment for a while yet.  If he gets deployed, that means our wedding will possibly have to be in 2014 rather than 2013.  What in the hell was I thinking buying a dress so soon? Dammit!  I don’t want my dress sitting in my closet for over a year, is that even normal? Do brides do that? I’m mad at myself to be honest.  But then on the other hand, if I hadn’t bought it, it would have been gone.  And this dress suits me so well, and I would have been sad if I had missed out.  It’s my dream dress.

If he’s deployed, he wants the kids and I to move to Kansas before he gets back.  Yep, me move to Kansas all by myself with the kids and the pets. HAH! That would mean giving up on having a wedding and doing a JOP thing, but I don’t want to do that.  I have a wedding dress! That would mean I’ve wasted $652 and I will have a pile of lace and satin sitting in my closet forever and ever.  I’m sure he’s going to read this blog, as he always does, lol, so my plan is this…if we have to get through a deployment, then my girlfriends and I are going to plan the fastest wedding ever and get it done BEFORE a deployment.  We can take our honeymoon when he gets back, but that’s not so important anyway.

If he is deployed, then the kids and I will just stay here in WA till the deployment is over, and move after the wedding. Basically our July plans for next year, will just be postponed till a couple of months after he gets back. That does mean however, that the kids will probably have to transfer schools mid year, but such is life.  That is the Army way, and we will get through it.  It’s bound to happen to us again.

Lesson learned? don’t buy a wedding dress so damn early.  In the long run though, at least it wasn’t thousands of dollars, and I didn’t buy some amazing Pnina Tornai dress, right?