The blues

Rachel here. Let me start by saying Winter stresses me out. I love the snow... I love the holidays... I love the warm food and hot cocoa, but Winter stresses me out. It follows Fall, which is a blast and a half around here in HOKIE country, but I always look forward to Winter being a time to relax and catch up on family time. (We tend to have lots of visitors during football season, so it's nice to be able to just have our trio time.) Winter never turns out to be a nice stress free relaxing time however. With Bryan being an auditor, he's busy from the end of Summer up until April 15th. I'm virtually husbandless for 7 months straight. No, it's not like him being deployed, but it does put a huge strain on our lives nonetheless. Then there is traveling. We're either following Bryan to trainings around the East coast, or driving to various family members homes for the holidays... it gets to be a lot, and it seems as if we're never home. When we are home during Winter, you'll find me in many a foul mood... locked in my home with a toddler, a dog, and a lot of alone time.

Now that the weather is getting warmer (on some days), Reese is getting more exciting to interact with and be around, Bryan is SLOWLY spending more time here at home, and we're getting ready for Deuce... I find myself in a more upbeat mood. For my b-day Big Kel (my mama), came to visit with us and left me some moolah to spend on myself. I found a great little dress that I wanted, so Reese and I headed off to the mall this morning to go pick it up. Sadly they were all sold out. We didn't let that get us down. Reese must have ran 20 laps around that mall this morning... laughing and carrying on the entire time... just as happy as could be. She was rather intrigued with all the green sale signs at The Gap and desperately wanted to take all the 'zooms' aka cars that she saw throughout the mall for a spin. We must have made a good 30 friends on our mall adventure... mostly the elderly making their rounds in their walking shoes. We left the mall empty handed and headed on over to Old Navy. Here I managed to find 2 super cute shirts that will hug my baby bump nicely. :) I also found a couple of cute little outfits for Deuce on uuber clearance. The sales clerk also brought to my attention the great sale they were having on newborn apparel. $5 for everything! It didn't matter if the item was $6.99 or $20.99... it was all $5! Can you say BARGAIN?! Bargains always put me in a stellar mood no matter the season. After our shopping adventure, we headed over to Panera for our favorite lunches. Here a nice little man said to me "I have a granddaughter who is about 20 months... I'm guessing yours is about 18 months?" Now this is by far a huge deal, but when you have a child who has been in the 95th percentile in everything since birth (she's slowed down quite a bit since she started running around), it was nice to hear he wasn't guessing she was 5 years old. :)

So while there are still quite a few cool days ahead of me until Spring has truly sprung, things are looking up, and I'm slowly coming out of my funk. :)