Monday, February 29, 2016

AFIT Thesis Defense: Complete!

After working for 18 months at AFIT (the Air Force Institute of Technology) at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Lieutenant Lovemuffin successfully defended his thesis a couple weeks ago!

I was so happy that I got to watch him defend. It was really neat seeing all of that stud's hard work pay off. And also, since I had to edit that darn thing, I felt like I deserved to go! Luckily, no one had a problem with it. One of his best friends was in town too, so she came with me.


*Also worthy of pointing out: So she wouldn't disrupt her daddy's presentation, I left Annabelle with someone who isn't my mom for the first time ever... it only took me five months! Haha! Thanks again, Megan! We will miss you when we move.

Dan's thesis is for his Master's in Physics degree... so he researched, wrote, and presented about Millimeter Wave Radar Propagation. Over your head too? Just mine?? Moving on...

I am so incredibly proud of all the hard work my handsome husband has put in over the last year and a half to make this happen! We knew all along that this assignment was just a small piece of our journey, and while Ohio hasn't been the most fun, we are SO glad he has his Master's degree (almost) finished with! He is still in a weather class for a couple more weeks, and graduation is on the 24th! 

We took a family photo once we got home so Annabelle could be in a picture as well!
Do you like physics?
Do you have a Master's degree or want one?


Thursday, February 25, 2016

Seven Years Together

Does anyone else still celebrate their dating anniversary? Is it just us? Please say it isn't because Lieutenant Lovemuffin already hates having more than one anniversary to remember.

Anyway, today is our dating anniversary! Seven years. It's crazy to think it's been seven years, three states (soon to be four) lived in, an engagement, a marriage, a baby, lots of traveling, and life in between!



We are doing anything crazy to celebrate... no gifts or even cards. I do have one surprise up my sleeve, though, and I'll be sure to post about it next week! I don't want to give it away before he gets home to see it. 


    

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Five Months: Annabelle

Five months... seriously? That's almost half of a year (and this post is two weeks late, though the monthly photo was taken on time), so we're even closer to sweet little Annabelle's half birthday now.

Wow. It blows me away thinking back over the past five months. Our tiny girl has grown so much. She had doubled her birth weight by last month, so that was a big victory! Now, we're just putting on the fat. Except not really, because although she is gaining weight, she is growing even more in length. We have a long, skinny stringbean... unlike either of her parents. (Dan and I are both tall... just not skinny!) 




Annabelle is the light of our lives, and we are absolutely enjoying this season of watching her grow and learn new things every single day. It amazes us how smart and how strong she already is, and we could just watch her for hours. 

She's still SUPER hungry all the time (going through another growth spurt right now, actually - she has upped her average daily intake by 4-8 ounces a day, depending on the day, so I'm anxious to weigh her again soon). 

She still is the queen of nicknames, but the most frequent ones these days are: Baldylocks, Crazybelle, Stinkerbelle, and Annie. I'm not super keen on the name Annie... I much prefer Anna. But Annie just seems to fit her sassiness right now, so that's what's coming out of my mouth more often than not. I do still hope she will go by Annabelle, though.

Annabelle is almost entirely out of her 0-3 month clothes because of her length. If she weren't so tall, she'd still be comfortable in most of them. She wears 3 month clothes comfortably now, but some of her pants that came in outfits are starting to become capris on her... so I bought a pair of 3-6 month pants at Target on a whim, and they fit her SO much better... but they don't match any of her outfits. 6 month clothing is still WAY too big on her, so I need to find some more 3-6 month outfits soon. I checked Once Upon a Child and only came home with two outfits, so I'm planning on checking the other local location soon before shelling out more money than I should.

This stage of babyhood is so much fun. She is grabbing things, and her social smiles are THE BEST. She's still napping well, but some days, her naps are shorter than normal. I guess she just wants to be awake more with her awesome mama. 

Since she's five months old, I decided to make a comparison collage - 5 months on the inside, and 5 months on the outside!

Some people get jewelry as a push present. My husband knows me so well that he ordered this shirt for me and surprised me with it during labor! I LOVE it, and I'm so glad Annabelle has so many dinosaur outfits so I can keep wearing it with her! :)




    

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Blogging Break + Catching Up

Oops! I didn't mean to fall off the face of the earth... but life happens, I guess.

I've been super busy the past few weeks being a mom and all... and we also had a few visitors right in a row, which has ever happened since we moved to Dayton... and if I'm being honest, it's because no one wants to visit Dayton. It's crazy what a cute little baby will do.

My mom flew out to visit Annabelle, and she was able to be here for her five month birthday (five month post coming tomorrow - over two weeks late!) We had a great time going to lunch and hanging out for a few days, and she even babysat for us so Lieutenant Lovemuffin and I could have a date night! We went to Texas Roadhouse and then FINALLY saw The Martian at our local dollar theater. It was sold out FOREVER here, and since I read the book, I needed to see it. It was pretty good.



Shortly after my mom left, our friend Lydia (one of Dan's best friends) came into town, and we were able to go watch Lieutenant Lovemuffin defend his thesis for his Master's degree, which was awesome. Shout-out to my friend Megan for watching Annabelle so she didn't cry during her daddy's presentation.

After Lydia left, our friend Michelle came out for a few days! We were best friends in college, and she is definitely one of my closest friends for life. She is pregnant with her first right now, so we took it easy and just did a lot of talking.

It was amazing having so many visitors, but I am flat out exhausted now. We're back to our day-to-day lives, which is welcome at this point. We only have about a month left here in Ohio, so we're trying to soak up all of the good things about it that we know we'll miss.

I'll update on our upcoming move soon!

  • Have you ever had back-to-back visitors?



    

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Goals: February 2016

A new month means it's time for new goals... but let's check back in with January first to see how I did. Or maybe we shouldn't... it was THAT kind of month. I thought sharing my goals publicly would help me accomplish them, but you can all see that is NOT the case. Oops. At least I tried, right? 

My January goals were:

1. Get the house back in order. Check... and then uncheck. You see, I did get things back to how they needed to be (with the help of my husband - thanks!)... but then I got mastitis (again) and became utterly (udderly? haha) useless, and now the house is chaos again. But hey, at least the Christmas decorations are put away - AND we boxed them up REALLY well, so we can say we have our first few boxes packed for our big PCS next month! Woo!


2. Run one mile without walking. Nope. Fail. I came so incredibly close to this one. I even logged 19.5 running miles for January... but none of them were one straight mile. I had increased from a quarter mile at a time to three quarters of a mile at a time without walking, and I know I CAN run one consecutive mile... I just didn't want to overdo it since I'm just picking back up postpartum AND had a leg injury before pregnancy. That said, I was going to increase to one straight mile on the same day I got mastitis. I've been out since then. Once I'm better, I'll try again. 


3. Read one book. Fail. But really... I have no excuse for this one. I can't even blame the mastitis this time. I just simply didn't get it done. I did read about 250 pages of All the Light We Cannot See, but I certainly didn't finish; I'm only about half way through. Oh, and I missed Book Club anyway... because of the mastitis (bet you didn't see that one coming). 


4. Type 30 recipes for my cookbook. Fail. I didn't even come close here. I guess it just wasn't a priority for me this month like I thought it would be. Maybe soon?


5. Complete one of my 30 Before 30 tasks. CHECK! I did this one. I made it to two new states, which is how many I needed to check off the "visit ten new states" by the time I'm 30. I have just 16 states to go to "collect them all"! We drove seven hours to Niagara Falls for our first vacation as a family of three (more about that later), and I was able to add New York (on the way there) and Michigan (on the way home) during that trip! Yay!

Now that I'm through embarrassing myself for my lack of self-discipline, let's take a look at my goals for February!



1. Finish one book, and read one more. I need to finish All The Light We Cannot See (really, I'm enjoying it immensely... but I just haven't made the time for it), and I'll start and finish another book.


2. Run one consecutive mile. Since I know I'm close but will need to log a few more make-up treadmill sessions from being sick, I decided to go with this same goal. 

3. Go to the gym 15+ times. It's tough with Dan's schedule, but we try to make it work by him going before work and me going when he gets home... or we both go in the afternoon, while Annabelle goes to the daycare area at the Y. I'm not a huge fan of that (germs... ugh), but I need to put my own health first sometimes too.

4. Start packing for our PCS. We move at the tail end of next month, and Dan has to defend his thesis still... we're busy over here. That's why we need to get a jump start on packing some of the things we won't need... like our summer clothes and some of my crafting supplies. Those can be boxed up ahead of time.

5. Celebrate seven years with Lieutenant Lovemuffin. Okay, so this one is easy because it's going to happen on the 25th anyway. But this will force me into celebrating it with him despite having Annabelle around. It's easy to forego date nights because of a baby, but I have something simple up my sleeve for this special day... it's not our wedding anniversary, so it's nothing big, but I still want to make it special.