Sometimes Plants Need Haircuts Too!

Someone needs a hair cut!

Ahh, much better!

Now what’s a girl to do with all that extra “hair”? Grow some new plants of course!

 

-Lauren-

Fingers Crossed

Jon left for El Paso this evening. We missed each other by 10 min. He left for the airport at 5:20 and I got home at 5:30. I hate when we miss each other and its that close. :( He was supposed to come back tomorrow night, but now it looks like that are sending him to New Mexico tomorrow. Ugh! I feel bad for him…they called while he was at the airport to let him know about the schedule change…which means he only has 1 set of clothes (since he was planning on coming home  tomorrow). Now it looks like he won’t be home until Thursday, which is when we are supposed to leave for Plano. It looks like he will be back in time for us to leave, but it will be a LONG day for him.

I am hoping that give the job to someone else. We will know for sure tomorrow. Fingers crossed. :)

-Lauren-

Weekend Fun: Updated (Test)

*I went back and added the videos in You Tube format to see if they would be better quality. The looked pretty bad in blogger.*

Even though the highs were around 103 all weekend, we managed to spend some of time outside. Friday evening we took Hiro to play at Auditorium Shores and then grabbed dinner from P.Terry’s. We walked over to Butler Park for a picnic with our veggies burgers and lemonade. Jon just built a new computer that we are going to use to play music and videos on our TV in the living room. He wanted to try it out so we watched The Dark Knight on our new DVD player.

Saturday morning Jon had to work so I went to Mozart's for coffee with my good friend Jesse. She just got engaged on Thursday and I am so exited for them! They are planning on getting married next summer. I am sure we will be talking about wedding plans during our 30 minute commute down to class each week in the fall.

Yesterday afternoon when Jon got home we went down to the Greenbelt with our friend Phillip and his dog Woodrow. It was soooo HOT. Even the water was warmer than usual. We got to played around with our new camera. It was fun to have it in the water and not have to worry about it getting splashed.

Here is a couple of videos we took while we were there. They are pretty silly, but I just wanted to test out adding videos to my post.

 

This morning Jon and I slept in…the heat yesterday took it out of us! We made a big Costco and HEB trip, our refrigerator and pantry are stocked! The rest of the day we just spent relaxing in our air conditioned house…on days like today I don’t know what we would do with out it!
I hope everyone had a great weekend! I have a short week of work and then Thursday we are heading to Dallas to celebrate the 4th of July! I can't wait! :)

New Look and Work

I got bored this afternoon and decided to try out a new blog look. What do you think? I’m pretty happy with it…at least for now. :)

This summer we have an intern working with us. She is getting her bachelors in psychology and she had to do a practicum this summer. Things ended up working out and she is shadowing a couple of other lead therapist and myself all summer. It is so wonderful to have a second set of hands during a few of my sessions. It never fails…I will get my kiddo to sit down and be ready to go, only to realize I left their reinforcer, my data sheet or my pen across the room. She has been so helpful and she is getting more comfortable with the kids and their programs. This morning the little guy we were working with mastered a skill that we have been working on for awhile (a very long while). We were so excited!! The intern told me “85% of the time this job is really tough, but then movements like this make all the difficult times worth it”. It’s so true!

Hurray for the weekend…to bad its 106 outside!! I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Show Us Where You Live – Master Bedroom

It’s time for Show Us Where You Live! This week’s feature room is master bedrooms. I didn’t link up last week because I didn’t have a cool bonus room to show. This week, I’m back with pictures from our master bedroom. :)

Welcome to our master bedroom. This is the view from the hallway, going into our room. The door on the right goes to the closet.

Here is the view from the doorway:

From the other side of the room:

And looking towards the door:

So that’s the main stuff, now for some close-ups. Here is a close up of our dresser. The picture frame above it is a Goodwill find for $10! It has some of our favorite engagement pictures. Hopefully one day it will hold pictures of some kiddos. :)

This is a little dish that I picked up at Charming Charlie’s. I have a jewelry box, but I use this dish for items that I wear pretty often. The second picture is a quote frame that I made a few months ago. I wanted something chunky to take up space and I didn’t want to spend any money so I reused an old frame.

This is a close up of my nightstand and the quote above our bed. There is always a book on my nightstand, reading before bed is something I have done almost every night since I was pretty little.

This is our little nook, where Hiro sleeps. The door leads out to the patio. We rarely use the door so I am thinking about making a little reading area out of this nook. Maybe a comfy chair, small table and a lamp…perfect!

That’s our master bedroom. I forgot to get a picture of the mistreatments that I made for the room…you can see pictures and how I did it here. Thanks for stopping by!!

-Lauren-

Look What We Got

Remember when I mentioned that I wanted a Flip video recorder? Well my lovely husband did some researching and found this little guy for about the same price.

Not only is it a video recorder, it also takes still photos and has a zoom (something the flip does not have). The one perk that pretty much sold us on this one immediately, was that it is waterproof!!  Since we will probably be filming this little guy quite a bit and he LOVES the water, this is going to be perfect!

 

It just came last night so I haven’t had much time to play with it yet. We are planning on taking out to the Greenbelt this weekend…I am sure I will have some videos to post very soon! :)

-Lauren-

Look Who’s Having a Giveaway!

Leslie over at Lambert’s Lately is giving away a free blog makeover! She is the one that added a third column to my blog. She has great designs and a fun blog. Go check it out here.

-Lauren-

We had two, furry children this weekend

This last weekend we took care of our friend’s dog, Woodrow. Woodrow and Hiro are just about the exact same age and have been best friends since we got them 2 years ago. Whenever we say Woodrow’s name, Hiro perks up and looks at the front door. They absolutely love each other.

Taking care of the two of them together used to be pretty difficult. Neither one seemed to know how to calm down when they were together. We have had many sleepless weekends where they would literally play for 24 hours straight! This weekend we realized how much older and more mature they are. There were still a few gladiator type wars in our living room and a couch blanket may or may not have become the victim of a tug-a-war game, but they both did really well. They were able to calm down in the evenings and sleep all night instead of play all night.

Hiro and Woodrow are a bit demanding when it comes to attention…this is what most of the weekend looked like. Aren’t all three of them cute? I think so!

-Lauren-

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to the Fathers and Grandfathers that make our lives wonderful. You all have taught us valuable life lessons, but we learned the most from watching each of you and the way you all have lived your life. With so much love and respect, we wish you a happy Father’s Day!

With love,

-Lauren and Jon-

An Austin Weekend

Tonight Jon and I ran some errands (we may or may not have made our second trip to Costco this week). We decided to get dinner at Central Market and then walk over to Amy’s Ice Cream for dessert. While we walked around enjoying Mexican Vanilla ice cream we were talking about what a fun weekend in Austin would look like…what would be the must see/must do activities that we would want to hit if we had a guest in town for the weekend. I think we came up with a pretty good plan so I thought I would share.

Friday afternoon/evening:

We would head down to Auditorium shores and enjoy watching all the dogs playing as well as the great view of downtown.

Then we would walk over to P. Terrys to grab dinner (their chicken and veggie burgers are both great).

 

We would take our dinner and make our way over to Butler Park and have a picnic.

Later Friday night, we would head out to the Warehouse District and enjoy some imported beer at the Ginger man.

Saturday:

Wake up and grab a quick breakfast, drive down to Town Lake for a morning walk (either the big 5 mile loop or the small 3 mile loop).

Grab lunch at Torchy’s Tacos

Then of course we would spend some time relaxing at Barton Springs.

After all that time outside we would need to enjoy a snow cone to cool off.

After getting cleaned up, we would have dinner at the Alamo Drafthouse where we can watch a good movie while we eat.

Once the movie let out, we would head over to South Congress for some window shopping and of course a cupcake from Hey Cupcake!

Sunday:

Breakfast out…maybe Kirby Lane for some amazing blueberry pancakes.

 

We came up with a few alternate locations that we also love…

Instead of Barton Springs, there is always hiking/swimming at the Greenbelt, or kayaking on Town Lake.

Instead of Hey Cupcake, we love Amy’s Ice Cream.

Other places to eat that we love…El Chilito, Curras, Trudy’s, and Dan’s (the list goes on and on).

If beer wasn’t your thing, I love going to Mozarts for good coffee and a great table by the water.

 

Sounds pretty tempting, doesn’t it? You know you want to come visit. :) Okay, your turn, if someone from out of town came to visit you for the weekend, what would be the must see/must do activities? I would love to check out your list!

-Lauren-

A Summer Afternoon at the Greenbelt

Today I got off work around 12:30…working part time this summer has been amazing! I was planning on spending the afternoon cleaning the house and then heading to Barton Springs to lay out for a couple of hours. Well, when I got home Jon was just finishing up cleaning the whole house! He did everything from the bathtubs to the inside of the oven. I was so excited!

Since I no longer had to clean I suggested we take Hiro down to the Greenbelt. We hadn’t been down there since last summer and it would be a place for Hiro to play and me to lay out (plus its free). So we gathered up towels, books and water and headed over. There are may entrances to the Greenbelt around south Austin, but our favorite is off 360 and Scottishwoods Trail. We call it the Hill of Life (or Death, depending on whether your walking down or climbing up).

This is one of about four, steep legs of the hill. On the way there you get to coast down, but on the way back you are basically climbing the rocks.

When we got to the bottom we headed to our usual place. When we started coming down to this spot three summers ago, there was tons of water. Our usual spot had a pretty good size waterfall and both shallow and deep parts to swim. Last summer, thanks to the drought it almost dried up completely! Now there is no more waterfall and mostly just shallow places to get in the water. We hung out there for awhile, but there were a couple of really loud groups and the water wasn’t great.

Jon spotted a new area last summer, when he was with some friends. We decided to go check it out today and just a short walk down the trail, this is what we found.

It was perfect! I spent a couple of hours sitting near the waterfall reading. Jon and Hiro spent the afternoon swimming in this part.

Hiro found a rock and tried to play keep away with his squeaky ball and Jon.

 

On our way home, we stopped at Smoothie King to get a cold drink. Now we have the evening to relax…I think we may be visiting our new Greenbelt spot a couple of times this weekend. :)

Hiro’s BFF, Woodrow is spending the weekend with us, so I am sure I will have some funny stories/ranting to post over the weekend…stay tuned!

-Lauren-

*sorry about the quality of the pictures…I took them with my iphone and the sun was pretty bright.

A Productive Day Off

Wow, a day of running errands done and I am feeling more worn out than I do after working all day! I think I just about drove all over Austin today and it didn’t help that it felt like 103 outside!

This morning, after breakfast I headed to my doctors appointment. All went well, and I left with a prescription for clomid, pleas keep us in your prayers over the next few weeks! From there I headed to the bank, deposited my checks and got my defensive driving form notarized. Since I was up north I got my rings cleaned…they look so much better now. :)

After my errands up north, I headed back toward the house and stopped by HEB for some groceries and to get the prescription filled…of course just about everyone else in the store was waiting on a prescription as well…I think I was at the grocery store for close to an hour! I ran home unloaded the car and had a quick lunch.

After lunch I headed down south to the Mazda dealership to get my oil changed. They are always really nice, but it took them 2 hours to rotate my tires and change the oil! On the up side they have free internet so I was able to check out places to stay in South Padre. There were a couple of other ladies in the lobby waiting for their cars…one had been there since 9 am!! Yikes! Apparently they were just adding a roof rack to her car, but they didn’t have the tool they needed, so they had to go up to Georgetown to get it…they offered to give her a car for the day, but she decided to just wait. I could not just sit in a lobby for 8 hours!!!

I got home about the same time as Jon got in from Houston. We were both pretty tired so we decided to skip biking and yoga tonight. We are going to make dinner together (I know some of you are shocked). I rarely help with dinner, but I am learning. :)

*update: I wrote this post about 5 pm, now we have had dinner…I made the 2 sides and Jon grilled the chicken. It was delicious! Now we are going to take Hiro on an evening walk.*

-Lauren-

Flip Video and South Padre

This weekend was pretty uneventful around our house. Jon and I ran errands on Saturday…are we they only ones that can not seem to stick to a list when we go to Costco?!? I mean there is so much we always want to buy!

I realllly want a flip video camcorder! They are at Costco right now, and I just need want one!! We have two at work, and we use them all the time to video tape therapy sessions. They are so easy to use and so small. I could be adding videos to my blog posts, how fun would that be?!?! Now I just have to talk Jon into letting me buy one. :)

Saturday night Jon headed down to New Braunfels for a job that was supposed to be from 9 pm to 1 pm. They ran into problems and he didn’t get to come home until 9 am! To make matters worse he had to go back Sunday night to finish up the job. Needless to say he slept pretty much all day on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon I went to one of my favorite client’s birthday party. It was at Pump It Up, which is a party place filled with inflatable playscapes. It was a blast…luckily I wasn’t the only adult who wanted to play so we all had a blast going down the slides and racing through the obstacle courses.

This morning I got to go to Vacation Bible School with one of my clients. So fun! Then this afternoon I had a great session with another client of mine. Usually Monday’s with him are pretty rough since he has had all weekend to do as he pleases (most Monday sessions involve lots of screaming and tantrums throughout the 3 hours I am there). It was nice to have a good Monday session to start off the week.

When I got home, Jon and I jumped on our bikes and went to check out a public pool about a mile away. Um..basically we concluded that we need to find a pool a little farther away from where we live. We live about 5 miles from downtown, and our neighborhood is pretty nice, but the area around our neighborhood is definitely up and coming. There is a lot of new construction, but there are still some sketchy parts. I talked with the lifeguard and found out there is a pretty new pool about 5 miles away. I looked it up and it looks pretty nice, I think I may go check it out tomorrow.

I have Tuesday’s off ,so here is my optimistic to-do-list for tomorrow:

• go to the bank to deposits checks and get a form notarized…did I mention I am taking defensive driving…ugh! I got a ticket a couple of weeks ago…50 in a 40…in my defense the speed limit went from 55 to 40 in a matter of feet. I happened to get the ticket literally 5 feet after the 40 mile and hour speed limit sign.
• go to my doctors appointment…looks like clomid is in our near future.
• get my rings cleaned…our jeweler (when I say “our jeweler”, keep in mind that we have only purchased our rings from here…not like I have tons of jewelry). Jon picked a great place to buy my rings, its a local jeweler and they recognize us every time we go in. The only downside is it’s in north Austin, so I don’t get my rings cleaned very often.
• get my car’s oil changed…ugh.
• maybe go to Old Navy to check out what’s new…is it sad that this is on my to-do-list?
• laundry and cleaning up the house…why does it seem like every time I do laundry, the baskets seem to be just as full in a matter of days?!

On a random whim, Jon and I are thinking about taking a quick vacation to South Padre! I was looking through some friends pictures on facebook this afternoon while drinking coffee during my break. She just got back from Playa de Carmen…I immediately got on Google Talk and told Jon I wanted to take a beach vacation. We are thinking South Padre, because we can enjoy the beach and save some money by driving there (Jon has enough points to rent a car). Anyone have any recommendations on places to stay?

-Lauren-

Thankful!

This afternoon as Jon and I left to run errands, we stopped to check the mail. The only thing in the mailbox was 2 bill looking envelopes (ugh). One from the surgery center where I had my recent surgery (I had a small cyst removed from my uterus about a month ago) and one from the anesthesiologist. Wonderful. We paid a pretty hefty amount upfront to the surgery center as well as to my doctor (we had to pay our $500 deducible as well as some other fees). We were expecting a bill from the anesthesiologist but we didn’t know how much it would be. Needless to say we were both a bit nervous about opening the two envelopes.

I opened the bill from the surgery center first, and peaked inside. All I saw was the number $450…yikes I thought! We have already paid about $700, we don’t want to pay another $450! Then I opened it all the way and found out it wasn’t a bill at all! It was a check made out to us, from the surgery center, for $450!!! I have no idea why, but we aren’t going to complain!

Next I opened the bill from the anesthesiologist. It read something like this…procedure: $615.30 – um just for the anesthesia…sheesh, insurance: –378.81, insurance credit (who knows what this is): –197.40, amount still owed: $42.09. Now that's a number I can handle!

Needless to say I am glad the procedure is over and done. We are both glad that this last payment is not going to be huge and the additional $450 is an unexpected blessing. :)

-Lauren-

Margaritas and Lightning

Yesterday afternoon I had a team meeting for a client I have worked with for over 3 years. We have a great team of 3 lead therapists and a consultant. We just finished up 1st grade with her in a typical classroom at a private school. Even through there were some tough patches this year, she really did a great job. Her parents wanted to celebrate the end of the year/beginning of summer by having margaritas and queso at the meeting…I know my life is rough, getting paid to enjoy margaritas! :)

We all ended up staying an hour and a half after the meeting was supposed to be over, just enjoying drinks and funny stories. I am so lucky to work with great people and wonderful families!

When I got home Jon and I decided to go out on the motorcycle and get some dinner. This weekend is the Texas Republic Bike Rally, so there are about a million bikers in town. We hadn’t ridden the bike in awhile so we thought this would be a good opportunity. Unfortunately, we had been riding for about 5 minutes when we saw this HUGE bolt of lightning and heard some thunder! Me being the oh-so-brave, one decided that I wanted to go home. So we drove home and got the car…unfortunately since we were in the car we were unable to find any parking near the downtown eatery we wanted, so we ended up at Magnolia Cafe. We enjoyed a late dinner (literally it was 10pm by the time we got there) and then came home and went to bed…we are that boring most Friday nights.

Today I am planning on doing a little cleaning and running some errands (like shopping for Father’s Day) and then a lot of just relaxing. Jon had to work tonight so I may rent a chic flick or something. :)

Happy Saturday!

-Lauren-

Show Us Where You Live - bathrooms

It’s that time again…this week’s feature room is bathrooms!

Our house is only 1200 sq ft and not much of that space is given to our 2 bathrooms, but we make it work. We haven’t done much in either bathroom besides paint, but we have some big plans.

First, here is what they look like right now.

This is our master bathroom…yup, it’s that small.

Here’s the bathroom from another angle, I picked up the bamboo soap and toothbrush holder from Home Goods on our quick trip to San Antonio.

I used to just have our extra towels folded on top of the cabinet, but then I decided to use an old basket (it’s actually for DVDs) to hold a few of them. I think it really cleans up the area.

Even though our bathroom is small, we have a pretty good sized window. I carried the same mistreatments in here as I used in the bedroom.

Here’s the guest bathroom.

Um, yes…it’s bigger than the master bath, but we have an oversize tub in the master so that takes up the extra space.

Here it is from another angle. I use this bathroom to dry my hair and put on make-up, since I am usually getting ready while Jon is still sleeping. We hung up mirror near the door that is great when I straighten the back of my hair. :)

I snagged this soap and lotion pair at Home Goods. I picked a set with clear soap and white lotion so I can refill them easily without replacing them…sneaky, sneaky.

A little artwork.

So that’s the bathrooms as they are now, but here is what we want to do…

Replace the cabinets/sinks with something like this

Replace the mirrors with something like this or a mirror with a cool frame.

Then in the master bathroom, I want to take out the over-the-toilet cabinet and use something like this above a towel bar. We would have to get creative with storage, but I would love to use glass jars and baskets to fill these shelves.

Thanks for checking out our space! I love to make new blog friends, so let me know you dropped by!

Go check out more bathrooms over at Kelly’s Korner!

-Lauren-