Fall Bucket List

Well folks, its officially Fall!! Even in Arizona, the weather has changed to much cooler days. What? For once Arizona has fallen in line with the rest of the country.

Anyway, today I am linking up with Erin over at Harris Heart-to-Hearts. Her and I have become good friends and I am excited to join in on her Link up p-a-r-t-y!

I LOVE Fall, for many reasons like holidays, cooler weather, boots, warm clothes and the fact the its no longer 118 degrees and you can actually be outside without sweating. Here is MY Fall bucket list, but I think this printable I found on Pinterest screams every I wanna do this Fall:

Ok for my list:

1. Drink my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season on the first week of October.

2. Sit by the fire in our backyard sippin' hot chocolate and making smores

3. Make at least 5 Fall crafts

4. Decorate my house in the "Fall" theme.

5. Pass out candy

6. Figure out how to better hang my FALL sign from last year. I will be taking a picture of this little gem I made.

7. Celebrate the hubbster's birthday and mine own.

8. Watch Hocus Pocus and the entire Scream trilogy. 

9. Finish ALL Christmas shopping before December. (This is a dream! but i sure hope it comes true).

10. Bake A LOT of goodies.

11. Enjoy every ounce of Football days.

12. Celebrate Thanksgiving and giving thanks.

13. Go play in the snow at the cabin!

Its seems like a lot but I think I can handle it ;) What about you? What are your plans for Fall?

   

6 Things You Should Know

It looks like this post has been going around in the blog world. I am happy to have been tagged by one of my FAVORITE bloggers and friend Carissa over at T is for Townsend and it is only right to answer them :)

1.) How much do you love Carissa Townsend?

Even though this is a joke question, I love her! Shes super fun, an extremely talent writer, witty, and a pretty awesome Zumba-er.

For reals: 
 1.) What made you want to start blogging?

I originally started my blog because I found Ashley's blog over at Little Miss Momma. And I just really enjoyed reading it. Through her I found other bloggers I still love reading. And I was like I want to be apart of this! And I really enjoy writing too. Once I started I loved every bit of the blog world. I love the friends you make and the stories you read. Love LOVE love.

 

 

2.) If you had to go back and re-name your dog based on their personality, what would it be?
Cray! Because he is wild and crazy. He looks all cute and stuff, but then he wakes and hes CRAZY.

 

3.) Favorite TV show?
I watch A LOT of TV. Not sure I could pick just one. I pretty much love trash TV. Its so sad really. But as for real TV shows I like New Girl. Shes just so funny! 

But all time favorite is still Friends. Nothing beats it. And I still refer real life situations to friends lol.

4.) If you were stuck on a deserted island for a bunch of years, a la Castaway, and you could bring three items, what would you bring? (I know, it's a oldie but a goodie)
 - My Hubby
- The Budster
- Food?? if there was already food I'd bring a bed. :)
Is that weird? What would everyone else bring? 

5.) Most embarrassing moment?
I don't get embarrassed to easily because I think everything is funny, but I really HATE public speaking, so for me that pretty much tops my embarrassing moment. I cant even get through the speech. To graduate college I had to take a communications class and I signed up for an online class thinking oh yea no public speaking. And then BAM, had to do a speech for my final. Boo.

6.) If Expedia offered you a trip, but you had to leave tomorrow (as advertised), would you do it? And where would you pick to go?  
 Oh heck yes! I'd be out the door. I would probably go to New York. I've always wanted to go there!! 

 

Thank you Carissa for tagging me!!
 

Goals for Motherhood

Clearly I'm not a mommy yet, but I am hoping to be one some day ;) and I'm a little late on this post.
Sitting here thinking of being a mommy and my goals and it all seems a little scary to think about. You are in charge of making sure this little tiny human has a great life. Its scary and exciting. 
1. Sharing my faith. We are Christian folks and I think this is a huge important part for me as a mother. I believe in God and I want to share that with my children. To have faith. To love one another, and to be a good person. Inside and out. Not about following rules but just having faith and to trust in God.
2. Being patient. I want to not only show patience, but teach them to be patient. Patient in life, patient with others, and patient with themselves. 
3. To be kind, be respectful, and responsible. I come from a very small town in Louisiana and in the South respect is HUGE. I also think teaching them how to be responsible, by providing them with the tools and ability to make the best judgement.
4. To be a good example as a mother, friend, wife, daughter, etc. I want to show them what a role model is.
5. Showing them love and support, even when I'm angry. 
6. Provide an example of a healthy marriage. This is actually extremely important to me. 
7. Be active and have family time. I want to do things with them. I want to take them on vacations and camping trips.
I think more then anything I just want to be there for them. To be there support, someone they can confide in, and someone they know they can ALWAYS turn too. :)
Linking up with From Mrs. to Mama.

If I could have one superpower...

So a few weeks ago I found another awesome blogger and have really enjoyed her post. Becky from From Mrs to Mama, has been doing a link up for the past 8 weeks.
 
Clearly, I'm a little behind, but thought it would be fun to participate in for the next few weeks. This week's topic was "If I could have one superpower". At first I was thinking something like read minds would be awesome but then I'm not sure if I would really want to know what everyone is thinking. Might be a little scary, you know? lol
I think I would much rather slow down time or have everyone live to be a 100. Life is so short, sometimes it would be nice to just stay in the moment for awhile and hang out.

The ability to have more time would be so nice. Wheres the pause button. That's what I want. Kind of reminds me of the Matrix movies.

What would your superpower be?

Unexpected Moments & Growing As A Couple {Link Up}

Today I'm linking up with Kaitlyn over at Wifessionals for her series "From One Year and Beyond". You can see my post from last week here.

Here's this weeks topic: "Unexpected Moments & Growing As A Couple "

We have definitely learned and grown as a couple a lot in our first year, especially from the unexpected life stuff. Here are some of the things we dealt with that year.

Car Issues / Unexpected Money

I know I know, everyone has car issues, but boy did we have some serious ones. We both had some seriously crappy cars. We not only had car issues, but we had no money to fix the car problems. Looking back, I realized we needed to have a better savings plan in place for all those "little" unexpected problems. We should have taken a class on finances or something to better prepare us for the unexpected. Premarital can only cover so much. Actually, I would have loved reading all of these bloggers advice. It would have been really helpful. Another great tool for married couples is Dave Ramsey. He is a financial genius!! Unfortunately, we didn't do the Dave Ramsey study until last year (three years into marriage), but it has definitely changed our way of thinking about money and helped us get ourselves on track for the future. I recommend reading his books or taking one of his classes. 

Holidays 

No matter what this is a difficult task especially because each person comes in with their own family and holiday traditions.  Dan and I both had spent time with each others families when we were dating, but once you are married you want to make your own traditions. We were really lucky because both of our families were willing to compromise. We have even made our own traditions over the 4 years. One of my favorites of our traditions, each year we go see Christmas lights a day or two before Christmas Eve. We make hot chocolate and just drive around looking. Such sweet times. And I'm sure once we have kids we will make more traditions and may need to revisit the holiday schedule again. 

Love & Respect

Have you ever heard of the book called Love & Respect? Its a great book for newly married couples, well darn any type of couple. And you read the book as a couple. Which is a great way to strengthen a marriage. It is something Dan and I do try to do as often as we can.  This particular book really focuses on learning that men need respect to feel loved and women need love to feel respected. Might sound confusing, but its one of those books that made me realize what I needed to do in my marriage to be a better wife. I kept fighting it. Not fully understanding at first that if he showed me love that it was him showing me respect. I kept thinking well I too am a human and I deserve respect! dang it! I was really stubborn... just don't tell Dan I actually admitted that. in public. willingly. Well once I allowed myself to open up and realize the book wasn't saying I'm a woman and don't need respect, it was merely saying we (women) see respect in a different way. I wasn't intentionally trying to go on and on about this, but I feel this was an important thing for me to learn for my marriage. You can see the information here.

Time

Another great thing we've learned is to make time for each other. Go out to dinner, take vacations, go to the movies, etc. Just take extra time to spend with each other outside of the normal day-to day things.

As a couple we've have grown more financially responsible with our money. We are nowhere near perfect, I mean I LOVE stopping at Starbucks and sometimes you just NEED another pair of gorgeous shoes. Right? You can't always be perfect with money. And you CAN'T always be prepared for what life hands you, but we are trying to be more secure in the areas we can control. We have also grown in our marriage. I can't tell 4 years later you won't still be arguing, because that be a lie, but you do build a stronger bond through all those unexpected moments.  :)

Hard Moments From Our First Year Of Marriage {Link Up}

I'm sure you are all aware that I'm definitely not a newlywed. I'm actually considered an "old married couple". That's right 4 whole years of marriage. :) Well even though we've been married for over 4 years, I've decided to link up with Kaitlyn over at Wifessionals for her series "From One Year and Beyond". I'm definitely no Dr. Phil, but I thought it would be a fun link up and I get to reminisce. 

Here's this weeks topic: "Hardest Moments From The First Year"

Well I think we had a pretty good first year and I think what we went through what I would say was the "normal" first year of marriage stuff.

The hubs and I never lived together before we were married, so that transition was a little difficult and our new closet hardly fit all my clothes and shoes. :) Luckily, other then that we made the transition fairly easy because Dan and I were both on the same page about a lot of the house stuff. 

We also decided to get a dog in the second month of being married. And by WE I really mean me forcing Dan so get a pup. Talk about HARD. Potty training a puppy is literally the most stressful thing. I'm sure it has to be worst then potty training a kid. Glad we made it through that one! and 4 years later we STILL don't have a second dog.

For me one of the HARDEST things in that first year was combining finances. I know a lot of people have a difference of opinion on this topic, but for Dan and I we decided to combine all of our finances and that was the best decision for us. But let me tell you, it was anything but easy. We fought a lot about money. Who should be "in charge", who can buy what, limits, debt, bills. You name it and we fought about it. 

I was raised to be in control my own finances, but when you enter a marriage you have to learn to let your guard down. And oh boy did God have some serious work to do on my heart. I was probably more stubborn about being "in charge" of the money then Dan. After a few months I learned to let go of control. Not because Dan wanted to be in control, but because I needed to learn to trust in him and realistically I couldn't do everything. We were partners. Dan took over running the finances and I took over doing other things.  No one person is "in charge", we are both aware of everything that is going on with our money. We even have occasional sit downs about OUR budget. Almost like a family meeting. It keeps us both accountable and aware. 

I believe everyone has their own hard moments in the first year of marriage because every marriage is different. I think the first year is really all about learning. For me, my biggest take away that year was that marriage is about sharing responsibilities and learning to let go and trust each other. 

Its crazy to sit here writing all of this and realize how far we've come. :)