Hey look!

A package from our BFFs in NC!



What could it be? A souvenir from the long lost aquarium? Some NC BBQ? A pony? lol



Nope, sadly none of those. It's our camera that SOMEONE (aka Josh) left on top of Kristen's car, which inevitably got run over :( sad day. His only saving grace was that he uploaded all of our pictures from the trip to his laptop the night before. Lucky dude. So now we're in the market to buy a new camera. Any suggestions? Here is our criteria:

-must survive being dropped or run over by a car
-must last a long time so we can take good pictures of our future kiddos
-must take videos and do cool black and white effects

Thanks in advance for your help! In other good news...



my blood, sweat, and tears from August 2009-June of 2010 has finally paid off! I'm now a certified teacher! Yay me :) Hope everyone has a good weekend!

My Parentals

So I thought I'd do a little tribute post to my Mom & Dad since they rock! The picture above is them circa 1983...aren't they cute? They were high school sweethearts that met before my Mom's junior year and my Dad's senior year. There is a questionable possibility that they met at a middle school dance and my Mom turned my Dad down when he asked her to dance...but we won't mention that ;) My Dad "thinks" he was a nerd but as you can see by the picture his nerdiness was the fact that he was smart, not in the way he looked. So they got hitched in 1983 after my Dad's first year of dental school. They then went on to have two beautiful daughters (ahem). Poor Dad, surrounded by all those women. At least he had golf! huh, honey...

Yeah, still can't believe that happened. I was 18 at the time and pretty embarrassed of my Dad's "joke" on national television. But it was a great experience we shared and something I'll always have to talk about. I love them so much and hate that I live so far away from them...boo.

Brody and me

So, as most of you know I have a spunky 4 year old cat named Brody. We found him as a kitten at PetCo and decided we could give him a good home. Let's just say from day 1 we knew he wouldn't be normal. Brody loves any attention, even negative attention! Don't get me wrong, he has his good moments, but most times I find him doing something he shouldn't be. I consider him to be the cat version of Marley and me. (Oh and yes, these pictures are all from my Blackberry. I always have it with me when he does something funny. Plus, we'll not talk about what happened to our real camera.)

Here he is helping me grade papers.


Asking me not to throw away streamers from my birthday party.


He really finds Josh's lap quite comfortable (or maybe he knows that Josh didn't like cats and after dating me was forced to accept them. Oh yeah, and my Mom has 3 cats at home)


If you leave a drawer or cabinet open, he will think it's his new hiding spot.


This one still cracks me up. He was a fan of my Grandpa's diabetic shoes last Thanksgiving. I swear this cat has a shoe fetish. We have to keep our closet door closed or he will find one to chew on...is this normal? Both of our pairs of crocs are ruined. Luckily, neither of us were sad to see them go.


Lastly, if you need a good knitting partner he is available for hire. His strong points include: chewing through your yarn, sitting on your lap to distract you from it, and sneaking up on you. I don't take my knitting out anymore because of him.


On Friday night, I got back to SA from being home all week. It was late, but we decided Brody really needed a bath since he has been going outside all day. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of that but it was hilarious. He was pretty mad/scared. The funny thing is we gave him some treats after drying him off and he had already forgotten about it. I'll leave you now with a video of him fetching, yes he can fetch. Sorry for the clothes in the background...gotta love laundry day!

Swagger Wagon...oh wow...

I've seen a few of these commercials, but HAD to share this. Gotta love viral marketing!

Scentsy

So a good friend named Kristen inspired me to write this post. Not sure if you've heard of Scentsy or know what it is, but it's wonderful. Basically it's a candle warmer that's more safe because it's wickless. We were given one as a wedding gift, and had no clue what we were brought into. There are tons of scents that you can buy! Our current faves are leather, banana nut bread, hemingway, sugar, caramel spice...yeah I like a lot. A parent of one of my students named Cindy sells them. (She also cuts hair at Hairmasters!) I really love working with her, and in the fall I will be hosting a Scentsy party! Hope you all can join ;) more info on that this fall. So the question of the day is, do you have a scentsy yet and what's your favorite scent?

ZUMBA!

OK, so recently I've been going to Spectrum a lot more to work on my fitness. I have resisted going to Zumba because the room has windows and I've watched the class before. I didn't know if I could have as much energy as them! BUT, after getting tired of doing the elliptical and thinking I wasn't getting a great workout, I decided to give it a shot. I must say, it is addicting! I always need water after each song and I'm sore for a few days. My two favorite instructors are Carla and Mara. Here's a video to my favorite song...the choreography is hard and the song stays in my head all day/ week.



You should also know that if I keep taking Zumba I might need to buy some attire. The picture above the video shows what most people in the class dress like. (for now I'll stick to my aggie T's, workout capris and Adidas thank you very much) BUT, I guess I wouldn't mind it if Zumba helped me have a body like her ;)

Hello my name is Ashley Russell and I am a post slacker (sad face) I used to check my blog everyday at work and post updates then and somehow it slips my mind. A lot has happened since May 18. School ended - hallelujah, we moved to a new town home, and I had Lasiks done. Josh has been doing research during the day while I get to go workout or see the twins.

One fun thing we have started is to watch the AFI's top 100 movies. It's been really fun to catch up on some classics! Here's what we've watched so far:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. Gone With the Wind
4. Schindler's List
5. The Graduate
We've also watched some other great movies: The Book of Eli, The Greatest, The Fugitive, Hot Tub Time Machine, Invictus, From Paris With Love...wow now that I list them out I see why we haven't finished unpacking oops.

Hope you're able to enjoy the fourth despite the tropical storm!