Overdue!!

Wow, wow, wow.  I have neglected this pretty little blog.  Unintentionally I assure you.

What happened was- I found out I was pregnant in September, and I have a big mouth.  I'm no good at secrets, and so I realized if I even opened up a window to type about what I was feeling I would rant on and on and on about how I'm expecting, and being pregnant has really been pretty awful because I was throwing up everyday, but that we were still excited, etc.

I wanted to wait to share our news with the entire world until things were a little farther along.  And now they are and Christmas is behind us and sheesh!  I feel awful for not posting anything for over three months.

Hopefully this will change now.  And I promise I won't only blog about my pregnancy, which, if you are interested is still making me sick, but is going well otherwise.

I sat down at the computer to work on the Phillips Family New Year's letter, but am glad I stopped here first.  I toyed with the idea of instead of sending a full out letter, I just send a list of things that happened of note in 2011, and things we look forward to in 2012.  I like lists.  Let me think of all the blog worthy things that happened between my last blog in October and today that I was too sick and lazy to write about and list them for you here:

1) Celebrated Christmas with my brother and his wife from Nashville and my parents and my little brother over Thanksgiving this year.  The day after thanksgiving.  It was so nice to see everyone together.  It always is.  Next year we are scheduled to all be together over Christmas, and now with the addition of the next generation, things will be even more wonderful.

2) My little brother gave all of the family gift cards from Tisbest.org for our gifts.  It is the gift of giving where you can go online and choose where you would like the money to be donated.  It was really fun and rewarding and made the rest of us feel like schmucks- sort of.

3) We all saw The Decedents together and I cried uncontrollably in some parts, but loved the movie.

4) I took my students to One Act competition in Norfolk, NE on the only hazardous weather day of the season.  The trip was 2 hours out there on bus, but after we performed in the morning, we left early due to snow.  It took us 4 hours to get home.  That amount of time on a bus with 25 high school students talking about zombies, being a sick pregnant woman was not fun.

5) We started watching Prison Break (seaons 1) through Netflix and it is AMAZING.  Its more violent and gory than I usually prefer but I am so glued to each episode!  I highly recommend it.  We only have 4 episodes left of Season 1, then we are on to season 2!

6) I stopped taking care of our house all together.  I didn't clean it for months, I was always behind on laundry, dishes were never all the way done, and I started throwing clothes all over the floor and letting trash cans overflow, which really isn't like me.  It made being sick even worse.

7) Recently my parents came over and helped me get the house all back under control.  I got Laundry all done, folded and put away. Was able to dust, vacuum, and Windex everything. Mom cleaned the fans and scrubbed the kitchen floor (that was above and beyond if you ask me) and we put up a Christmas tree.  Also Dad helped me by a new furnace filter since the last time we changed it was a year ago.  Yeah- it was totally black and disgusting.  Apparently, one should change those every 1 to 3 months.  Woops!

8)  Started reading The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.  LOVED the first book.  Just finished the second and am starting the third.  I plan to finish them before the New Year begins.  Something else I highly recommend.  (The books... and goal setting).

9) Celebrated Christmas with Ryan's family in Lincoln, though his Mom got the stomach flu and was in isolation in her bedroom all of Christmas day.  We still were able to enjoy time with family.

10) Wrote this blog to recap the past few months.  Don't you love when lists end with an even number?


Now I look forward to a couple days with just my lovely husband.  He hardly gets any vacation and is spending the morning sleeping in.  Since I go to bed now between 8:30 and 10:00 every night... I can't sleep late anymore.  I probably should have been doing laundry or something this morning but this was fun.  It feels nice to be back online.  I hope all (2) of you readers are doing well!

I Love: (A List)

Today I've been cleaning up my desk area and looking through old folders of lessons and paperwork, and I stumbled upon an OLD notebook (with David Hasselhoff in his Baywatch get up on the cover) that contained some of my poetry from college.  The poetry is AWFUL, but got me through my emotional outbursts for four years.  I think I used the notebook to show students that I valued writing a few years ago... anyway- I stumbled upon a delightful nugget that I thought I would share.  I bet that it is from 2005 or so.

It was a List

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I Love:

Flowers
Compliments
Non smoking concert venues
50's dresses that accent my waist
Uniball vision micro point pens
Musicians
Scholars
Abby Sheppard's Writing
Open Minds
Writing Poetry
Everything that Michael Ian Black says
Wet Hot American Summer
Weekends with my significant other
Vacation
Breathtaking views
Motivating Students
Optimism
Lists
and The Girl Song by Tie These Hands when played with Ryan Phillips