New Year!

Wow....2013!  It just doesn't seem right, did we even have Christmas yet? 

The holidays FLEW by for me.  My family was given a special Christmas present this year which was a tornado that hit 3 of my family members homes on Christmas night.  It is still heartbreaking to go out to the country and see what the tornado did to our land.  50-100 year old trees were uprooted.  What used to be beautiful is now bare.  Going out to my Grandparents was like going to my own little oasis.  I love the outdoors and absolutely LOVE watching the sun set over the pasture.  My grandparents and Aunt were lucky with the damage to their homes.  Some rebuilding will have to be done but that is nothing when you are so greatful that everyone made it out alive.  My Uncle William and Aunt Nell weren't so lucky, their home was destroyed.  I would show you some pictures but it's not letting me upload any.  I will try again later!

Tanner had to work New Years Eve so we celebrated the new year the following day.  Last year we celebrated in Atlanta and spent a fortune on Chinese food.  So we decided to make that our little tradition and got Chinese food this year too.  I know the little guys that cooked our food thought we were crazy for ordering so much.  But then again they do give you alot of food so maybe eating that much is normal?

I thought long and hard about my New Year's resolutions.  And here they are:

1.  I want to be a better wife.  I mean I'm already a great wife but there is always room for improvement! :) haha  One way that I am doing this is by starting our "love" journal. (get your mind out of the gutter...)  This journal is something that we take turns writing in.  This is a place that we write something appreciative, encouraging, etc about the other person.  It can be thanking your spouse for taking the trash out or that my hubby's tooshy looks sexy in his new pair of jeans.  It literally can be anything positive.  Nothing negative.  It will make us each feel appreciated and help us notice the small things.  Because it really is about the small things in life!!

2.  Finish School.  I would have already been finished but classes are expensive and once Tanner got his new job there was no way we could afford it any longer.  He took a major pay cut when he got hired.  Police should definitely get paid more!

3.  Get back into doing the things that I love.  For example:  Running-  Nothing makes me feel more relaxed than going on a nice run.  I used to run everyday, sometimes multiple times a day.  I stopped when I got a respiratory infection and once I got better I tried to start running again and ended up with another respiratory infection!  I told myself that apparently God didn't want me running anymore! haha  BUT I know that's not true! 

4.  Be better about keeping up with my blog.  Even if it's only for my family.  I know that my mother, sister-in-law and Tanner all read it!  And it's always fun to look back at old posts and see what was going on in the life of the Hensley's.

My Lunch Hour

Ever since moving to town, I have wondered if it were possible to go the store, go home, put away what I bought, handle the animals and make it to work on time all within my lunch hour.  Today,  I proved that I could and added to my list of perks of "city living."

I left as soon as it was my lunch time.  Sped (shh don't tell my husband!... drove quickly) to one of my most disliked places, Wal-Mart.  After scootin through the aisles and getting everything on my list, it was time to check out.  Who knew SO MANY people go to the store during lunch time?!?  So I opted for the self check out line, knowing good and well that it was going to holler at my a few times, because I had items that I did not want to bag!  Really self check out?  You want me to bag my huge thing of dog chow?  I don't think so, not happening! 

I looked at the clock and realized that after all that I only had 30 minutes left to get home, put my stuff away and feed my starving animals!  They only got to eat half of what they usually eat at night and I wasn't able to feed them this morning.  So again, I drove quickly and made it to my house with 25 minutes left. 

Well now I just felt rushed.  I hate the feeling of being rushed, which is 80% of the time for me.  I am one of those that will dislocate my shoulder trying to get all the grocery bags in one trip....  That being said....

As I was walking onto our front porch, I went through a spider web and started doing karate moves to get that nasty sticky stuff off me, while having one arm full of grocery bags and the other with a 20lb bag of dog food and my purse.  Not only was I  fighting the spider web, but my hair decided it wanted to cover my whole face, making it impossible to see.  During this time a car drove by and slowed to watch my disastrous turn of events.  As I was opening the door, I dropped the dog food and stumbled through the front door.  I didn't even bother to turn around to see the laughter escape whoever it was that was driving by.

I let Abby in to feed her. (we have been trying to train her to be an outside dog because her hair was just driving us crazy!)  Then fed the other 2 squirts, quickly put my groceries away, made my lunch and headed out the door to get back work.

I arrived with 7 minutes to spare!  Just enough time to fix a drink and use the restroom before returning to my desk.  Even though I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, it was a success!  I am so thrilled to know that I can run to the store on my lunch hour and not always go after work.  Wal-Mart is extremely more busy at 5:00 then it is at lunch time.

Manic Monday: Weekend Recap

FRIDAY:
- We bought a house!!!
- I signed ALL the papers wrong... so now I have to sign them all over
- We celebrated at Rodeo with the whole family
- We moved furniture until 3:00 in the morning....

 

SATURDAY:
- We slept in!
- We finished moving the furniture
- We bought a new trash can and got the smell good trash bags.  I'm never using regular trash bags again!
- We found out that the light in the master bedroom doesn't work
- We worked on the kitchen
- We set up the washer and dryer

SUNDAY:
- We had a blow out.  Very scary!
- We went shopping!



One of my most favorite items that we purchased was a blue chair.  It is so comfortable!  This picture is not the exact chair but it is very similar.  Isn't it cute?!

Manic Monday

So today was supposed to be the day that we close on our house.... But we aren't getting to do that! I am so very disappointed.  Apparently something was wrong with the appraisal.  I don't exactly know what is going on which is extremely frustrating.  Best case scenario, we will be able to close by the end of the week.

Tanner will be turning 23 next Tuesday.  He has been wanting a Playstation 3 ever since our xBox 360 died.  So after continuously giving me those puppy dog eyes, I gave in and we went and got him one.  We always end up celebrating his birthday early!  I even got a controller so I can play with him.  This weekend he taught me how to play Call of Duty and some boxing game that I can't remember the name of.  I enjoyed playing Call of Duty with him, especially the very few times that I was able to sneak up on him and shoot him instead of him always shooting me!  I have to work on my aim, but I will make a come back :)

Hunger Games and Fishing

I'm sure by now EVERYONE has heard of the Hunger Games, if you haven't then you need to come out from under that rock you have been living under!  Tanner and I read all 3 books a while back and absolutely loved them!  It took us less than a week to read the whole series, yes, they are that good.  We have waited and waited for the movie to be realeased.  It has been one of those, that there had to be complete silence everytime the previews played.  We went and saw it Saturday afternoon and LOVED every minute of the movie.  I thought they did a pretty good job at following the story line.  They did show something that you don't find out about until the second book but it worked out just fine!


We went furniture shopping this weekend, mainly for a recliner and finally found the best one in the whole world.  This chair was like being on a cloud.  It was by far the most comfortable thing I have ever sat in.  If I had closed my eyes when I reclined, for longer than a blink, then I would have gone right to sleep. 

Yesterday, was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day.  One of the prettiest days in a while.  Of course, it has been pretty nasty here lately with all this rainy weather and storms!  Since it was such a nice day, Tanner and I decided to go fishing.  We picked up the bass boat and went to Lake Point A in Andalusia.  There was a small crowd but we were able to get away and go to the little cove that Tanner likes.  Out of the 6 hours that we were on the water, we caught 0 fish!  But that was OK, we still had lots of fun.  We enjoy anytime that we are able to spend together.  We came home with some wonderful tan lines!  My left arm got way more sun that my right arm.

Theme Day

My coworker, Tiffany, informed me last week that it had been over 2 weeks since I had posted anything on my blog.  I had said that I was going to keep up with it, but I quickly began slacking.  So, I have decided that I need a little motivation.  I am going to try and have a theme for everyday of the week.  This is what I have come up with so far:

Sunday- "Sunday Funday" for all my crafty adventures

Monday- I'm still working on something for Monday, so far I have "Meet us Monday" "Monday Memories" "Manic Monday"

Tuesday- "Tasty Tuesday" for yummy recipes

Wednesday- "Wordless Wednesday" for photographs, only pictures, no words

Thursday- "Three things Thursday" for any 3 things that come to mind!

Friday- I'm still deciding on Friday, so far I have "Friday Fab" "Funky Friday" I don't know what this would include! :) I'm trying to think of something that would make you think of the outdoors.  We spend ALOT of time outside and going on adventures.

Saturday- "Sew Saturday" for sewing endeavours

I would love to know what you think and if you have any suggestions for Monday and Saturday!
Maybe I will post a tasty recipe tomorrow.... I'm thinking Taco Soup!

Haircut

So this weekend I got my haircut.  It has been long and all one length for the past year.  I had quite a few cuts picked out, but most of them involved having curly thick hair.  Mine is neither.  It is very thin and straight.  Here is a few that I liked:

I went with the "Jennifer Aniston" haircut. 

I played with face in hole on the internet so I could see what different hair styles would look like! Well, half way through, I got distracted and ended up with a picture of me and Ryan Reynolds! haha!

So you can still see my blonde sticking out and can see my chin and whoever this is chin too! But it's still fun! :) Anyways, for the past 2 years, I have thought about dying my hair brown.  Well after looking at this, I think I just might do it! But a lighter brown, not dark. Well, until next time!

Bridesmaids and Bird Nest

So it's been awhile since I've posted something on my blog!  I have been super busy with school and work and organizing everything in the house for our future move.  Yes, we will be moving in the very near future! Not out of Troy just out of our current house.  We are super excited and are in the process of gathering all of our information needed for purchasing a home.  This past weekend Tanner and I went to the lake with his parents.  The weather was absolutely horrible so we were pretty much stuck inside the majority of the time.  We watched movies basically the whole weekend.  We ran to the Talladega Wal-Mart and bought Bridesmaids.  It was a great movie and funny!

We did manage to go fishing a few times.  I recently bought a new bait caster.  I have always been a spinning reel kind of girl.  I have never liked bait casters.... more like, I don't have the patience for them!  But, Tanner wants me to learn so we went out and bought me a reel with an anti-backlash system.  Well everything was going good with it until.... I decided to catch a tree.  Needless to say, I got a bird nest.  The bird nest of the century as Tanner called it.  There was no coming back from this, we had to cut the line.  And guess what?  About 2 hours later, I was fishing in that same spot from before, caught the same tree from before, and bird nested again!  It was also another one that I was not coming back from.  After that, I gave up that spot and went back to my spinning reel.  All in all it was a relaxing weekend.  Very much needed before I started my 20 PAGE case analysis that took 15 hours total!  Anyways, I hope everyone has had an amazing week! Make sure you come back and see how I transform our boot mat!

Gnomeo and Juliet Afternoon

Tanner and I spent the afternoon babysitting our precious nephew so my sister-in-law and her husband could enjoy some time together.  We started off watching a cute movie, Gnomeo and Juliet.  My sister-in-law, Whitney, has decided on making Landon's 2nd birthday a Gnomeo and Juliet themed party.  So, of course I had to watch it, so I can help come up with some fun ideas!  Landon and I layed on the floor, played with Buzz Lightyear and enjoyed the movie.  After the movie, Tanner and I had to tag team on the whole changing the diaper thing.  As soon as business was taken care of, we played chase, threw the ball, and took a ride on Aunt Jessie's shoulders.  We took quite a few rides and showed Aunt Jessie how out of shape she is!  Tanner and I have been doing Insanity for the past couple of weeks, but nothing beats toting a young-in around!  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Looking Back

     As I look back on this past year, I can't help but feel so incredibly thankful.  I got engaged, married, went to Disney World, and received a promotion!    
     Last January, I got engaged to my high school sweetheart and best friend.  We have now been together for 6 years!  Tanner proposed to me in front of my ENTIRE sorority.  It's a long story on how he proposed but by the time he put the ring on my finger there was not a dry eye in the house!  I was excited, happy and every shade of red.

My BEAUTIFUL ring!

Tanner and I were engaged for 6 months.  Which is MORE than enough time to plan a wedding.  The ceremony was held on July 23, 2011 at 4pm in a little country church.  The day did not go as planned but I didn't let that get to me because I was there to get married! 

     After a little celebration with family and friends we were headed to Disney World!

 

     We came back from Orlando, started back to school, and a job opened up at the bank where I work.  I had always thought that if the position could just be available when I graduate then that would be perfect!  I talked everything over with my now husband and we decided that I should go ahead and take the plunge and if I got the promotion then I could finish classes online.  Well a week after the interview, I received the phone call asking me if I accept the position and of course I said yes!  Online classes are not ideal but I wouldn't change anything. I am very blessed and cannot wait to see what this year has in store for me!