Noah's Widow

My husband works hard. And often times late. Sometimes he is gone for a few days at a time. 

I have been referred to as a Noah's Widow. 

And that is how I feel some days.

On those days I take pictures with the depressing clock in the background.

This is what time my love finally made it home on Saturday. 

And the saddest part is that it has been much later than that some nights!

Good thing I love him. And that he has a job. And that he is good at his job. 

But I sure do miss him at night.

Brad Paisley | A Belated Anniversary

Way back in April when we celebrated our Anniversary, we decided to treat ourselves with concert tickets. We agreed upon Brad Paisley.

And after many months of anticipation, the day finally arrived!

We found a sitter for the kids, which to be kid free is a treat in and of itself, and we headed off to our concert at the Gexa Energy Pavilion in downtown Dallas. 

After several minutes of driving around trying to figure out a way into the place, we finally wandered our way into the parking lot and found a spot. We then walked into the land of rednecks. 

It was awesome.

My feet felt left out with no cowboy boots 

and my hands had to stay busy doing something since they weren't holding a beer.

But Brad was epic. 

As was this moment when Carrie Underwood made an appearance to sing her portion of their duet. WHAAAAT? Awesome.

{Yes that floating, glowing angel on the right is Carrie, and that's Brad there on the left.}   

He took selfies on people's phones, handed out autographed guitars, told a young concert goer that his concert was only bottom of the barrel and that this kid needed to see AC/DC and many other bands that I can't remember. He rocked hard on his guitar, wandered through the crowd, and sang songs that made me cuddle up with my love. It was perfect.

We stayed up way past our bedtime, left with ears ringing and heads still bopping, and had a great time! As if I didn't love Brad Paisley enough before his concert... He's even more awesome now!

He did make the comment though that we should have this show in the winter next time.

That may not be a bad idea.

Have I mentioned that I love the Texas heat? Well I still do.

{And yes, that's 11PM!}

But you pay the price in the morning when you have left over make up, crazy hair, and kiddos who wake up far too early. 

Oh well.

Still totally worth it.

The Perfect Day

We had the most perfect day today.

Jesse and I finally had a day off together.

The first in I don't remember how long.

It was nearly magical.

I woke up early to wake up the kiddos.

We had plans to attend a pool party that was scheduled during the later half of their nap, so, like the good mom that I am, I woke them up early so they could take an early nap.

We ate breakfast, watched Frozen {yes, we finally joined the rest of the world and have seen Frozen.}, wrestled, danced, and then off to bed for the littles.

Jesse ran to the store to pick up fruit to take, then we woke up the boys, got them in their swimming garb and went to our pool party.

Ian loved "jumping" into the pool while Briggs preferred to go up and down the steps over and over and over  and over and over and over...

We played in the water, did lots of stairs, and had a BBQ with our friends.

The weather was perfect, the company was fabulous, and our boys kept us busy.

Once the boys looked too tired to stay and Briggs was rubbing sunscreen into his eye we decided it would be OK to go home.

We threw the boys in the tub to wash off several layers of sunscreen we had stacked on them and laid them down for a nap.

And then we caught a nap ourselves. 

Heaven.

Once we woke up, we threw together dinner and then went to the mall just to wander around.

We even splurged and bought a smoothie.

I seriously have not had this much fun in quite awhile. 

I couldn't stop smiling.

I'm probably just easy to please, but  there's just something magical about spending a whole day with my sweetheart and our darling children.

My heart and arms are so full tonight.

I just love my little family and I thank my Heavenly Father every night for how good He has been to me.

I am very blessed.

Optimus Prime

I couldn't help but giggle when I saw this box in our move.

And when I asked Hubby why Optimus Prime belonged in our kitchen, he reminded me that he has an Optimus Prime lunchbox. 

Of course.

I hope our boys get their daddy's sense of humor. 

Tubby Hubby THursday

... a day late. My work has been occupying the bulk of my time recently, so other more enjoyable pursuits have fallen by the wayside. BUT, in order to not let a good idea go to waste (as is my wont) I've decided to share a tidbit I've picked up. Those of you with smartphones know the joy of predictive text. My keyboard of choice is Swiftkey. It provides three (usually excellent) guesses at what I'm trying to say. It not only predicts what word I'm currently typing, it will try to guess what word I'm likely to type next. Don't ask me how it does this because I'll probably guess magnets. My scientific ignorance aside, it's a VERY handy tool, but it does sometimes make some odd guesses. I'd never thought much about it until I came across this comic at XKCD.com (used and modified without any permission whatsoever):

If it doesn't seem very funny it's because it's not. I've truncated the final panel in hopes of keeping our blog mostly "G" rated, but it poses an interesting question: When given the opportunity and no real constraints, what does my go-to technological sidekick think I'm most likely to say? While typing the three guesses appear in a row directly above my keyboard. In general the middle guess is the primary; if I hit space my phone will insert whatever word appears there automatically. The one on the right seems to be the next most-accurate, followed by the one on the left.


I've run three tests, one each for the guesses on the left, right, and middle. All I'm doing is mashing the next predicted word that comes up in that slot until I hit a period or it continues into an infinite loop. 


Middle (main): "I am a beautiful person."


Right (secondary): "If you're a star, but the best of all time to meet your family and I have to say."


Left (tertiary): "The following item is in a bit more about it, and I am not a bigger club, or the information you have a look."


Well there you have it. Jesse's three "typical" sentences. I don't know that I've ever uttered or texted the phrase "I am a beautiful person," but my phone seems to think I need some self-affirmation from time to time. As for the others, I didn't say they'd make sense. I only said magnets.


NOW, comes the audience participation: If you have a smartphone with a predictive keyboard like this, please post a comment with what your phone thinks you'd like to tell the world. I'll be interested to see what comes up. Feel free to offer interpretations/explanations/excuses/apologies along with your sentences.


If you don't have a predictive keyboard, Swiftkey is the best one I've found and only costs a couple bucks. That's less than the cost of 30cc's of gasoline, so pony up. Click here to download it for Android. Sorry, no iOS/WP7/BB love, but go see what you can find and POST THOSE COMMENTS! Check back every so often. There could be some good stuff.


PS: If any of our MANY (i.e. 3) readers is wondering what happened to "The Retroactivity" post from last week, I got to doing it and realized I have almost nothing to say (and certainly nothing entertaining to say) about past events. For whatever reason it didn't seem worth pursuing. If you'd like me to do it, post that in the comments as well and I'll be happy to oblige. Otherwise onward and upward.