2009

I honestly can't beleive that 2009 is coming to an end. It amazes me that so much can change in one year! One year ago I was still in Boise, Idaho. Now we have moved cross country to Raleigh, North Carolina.

I am now a make-up artist for the Benefit Cosmetics Counter. It's pretty fun....although it's super hard hours when you have little ones. Aaron and the girls are learning to deal, and we really embrace when we do have time together!!

I haven't missed Idaho winters for a second! I was watering my flowers up until December 15th, but if finally got to a freezing point and they are all dead now. I'm all ready planning for the next ones though!!

2010 is going to be an awesome year! Aaron and I will both graduate! We are planning on ringing in the new year downtown Raleigh! We haven't had the chance to go explore yet. So this is exciting. I made Aaron drive 3 hours for my dress...it's super cute!

We are all having a blast here in North Carolina. I'm excited to see what the new year will bring!

5 North Carolina discoveries....

It's been awhile since I've blogged. It's been pretty busy with school, work, and moving and unpacking! But here are my 5 discoveries I've made of North Carolina since the 5 months we moved here!

1. Five Guys Burgers and Fries and Cookout! Equally amazing and the best burgur place EVER! In N Out ain't got NOTHIN on us!


2. My GPS will get me home from ANYWHERE! (Even if there is road construction). I like the idea that I pretty much can't get lost.

3. If you weigh over 115 pounds maybe you shouldn't wear a bikini -- NOT EVER!!

4. When the speed limit posts 65 go 95. The cops don't care and neither does anyone else. And if you don't, the other cars WILL run you over.

5. This is the one place with enough malls to keep me eternally busy! YAY for shopping!

Hollywood goes Lime Green

So for my 30th birthday, I am going to keep up with my themed atmosphere. I bought a lime green dress, and I think we might rent a limo to ride around in. So my theme is going to be something like Hollywood goes lime green. I am busy finding Aaron a matching shirt and tie to my dress.

In my search I'm theming the 4th of July too. It's going to be Miss Americas and I bought the girls red, white, and blue crowns. I'm so excited to take the girls to Washington DC! I can't wait.

Life is so good. Aaron and I each day are one step closer to where we want to be. I am doing well in school and he is going to be starting school up again in September!

I better be off to work on the house! I'm meeting my snuggle for lunch! How lucky am I to get such an awesome family? I know not ALL girls are this lucky. I want him to be impressed with the house progress when he gets home tonight, and I want it to be done when my little sis gets here in just 2 1/2 weeks.

A million pictures to come.....

Yay for little sisters!

I have to admit, God must have really been looking out for me when he was handing out little sisters! Raychl is coming for my 30th birthday! I'm so excited! We have plans for a BIG girls lunch date with Bailee, a dinner cruise, shopping, running, eating healthy, gossipping....I literally have the best little sister in the world. Be jealous. This is a picture of us when she was in Boise for Christmas. We made amazing tacos, banana/peanut butter smoothies, tanned, and laughed about how rediculous I can be sometimes, and how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband to put up with it! Well the count down is on...she will be here in a month and I'm sooooo excited!

Superdad

I am a VERY themed person. And everything has to match. So on top of moving and school, I'm amidst planning father's day weekend. Which we are both off for! Thank goodness Bailee is on summer vacation and can help me a little bit in the morning with the baby. Aalyah is a very demanding little bear! I know that sometimes I wear myself out and stress a little too much for things to be perfect, but I have found my theme for father's day is going to be SUPERDAD! I would say that fits Aaron perfectly. I found some gift wrap, and instead of making breakfast superdad muffins, I think I might just take him out to eat since time is running out. Tomorow I will barely have time to pick up the rest of his presents. Yay! We are going to stay that night in Myrtle Beach I am really excited! (I promise to post pictures!) Hopefully they turn out because we didn't get ANYTHING worth posting of our Gwen Steffani concert pictures. I guess that's what happens when you have a 9 year old taking them heeeheee! I love Bailee but she needs to take a photography class :)

Another door closes...

Well, you win some you lose some, and when you lose you should learn. Aaron and I overlooked a little provision in our lease that says you CAN'T paint. Well, our kitchen was so dark we were just going to paint our cabinets. They looked so good too. But our landlord caught wind of it, and issued Aaron a 30 day notice to vacate and explained that we can't make any changes to this house since it is not ours. Heeheee. I guess we were used to being homeowners. And Alicia, yes as difficult as I am, customized EVERYTHING to my liking. I know we are forfeiting our deposit, so this was quite an expensive lesson learned. But in our favor, we did find a MUCH nicer house. I would make no changes to it! I was waiting to take pictures of our house until we got our cabinet painting project done, that was going to be the final touch. AND now we have all ready started moving our stuff out. I don't even want to take pictures of this house. I have never really liked it, and although we had some really nice, welcoming neighbors, these are the people that ratted us out to the landlord. Aaron and I just quietly packed our stuff and we have the movers coming next Saturday to transport it to the new house. Well, lucky us, they allow dogs, and we are looking at a dog right now and that would have been breaking the lease as well. So we are lucky that we just get to move out. I am excited to move, but also it seems like we have spent so much time and hard work getting everything to our liking here. I do love North Carolina. I am very excited to get IN and get SETTLED!!!!! Once and for all. And with that, another door will close, but yet another door opens. I am a little tired of packing, but yet I know that something better awaits us!

Home...

Of course around mother's day and memorial day, after losing my mom, I get a little sad. I never realized to what extent my mom had to go to to make a home. I never realized how hard she worked or what she did. And I don't think anyone fully recognizes what parenthood is until they become a parent. I used to get kind of scared because to me home meant 5411 Tuckerson. I really had to redefine that when my mom passed. Inside my heart ached when I saw a change. That was my home, and someone else was making changes to it. Someone it seemed as though would be unauthorized by Linda Lund to do the things that had been done. The first unthinkable thing would be to let that house look like a tornadoe hit it. And the second unthinkable...I mean the MOST UNTHINKABLE...is painting the famous Alicia Lund pink and purple bedroom. For a short time I had some sadness. I don't have a Dad that will fight and say there should be equal pictures of his kids and grandkids up, so our pictures had been overrun and taken down by a family that surely didn't belong to me. My heart hurt that we were just replaced. In one single day I lost my entire family and what I always thought would be home to me.

But I realized something today. And I think I always knew this. My Mom didn't leave until she knew it would be okay. Until she knew that no matter what I would be strong enough to create that for my children. There didn't have to be a 5411 Tuckerson. That was just in my heart. And I would ALWAYS be able to provide that for my children. And that SHE herself was in our hearts even if on memorial day we weren't close enough to go visit her. I've spent a lot of sleepless nights the last month feeling really guilty that I can't bring her flowers on Monday. But I also realize that I think she knows if I weren't 3000 miles away that I would be bringing her flowers, so on memorial day I'm going to spend some quality time with my kids. Sometimes me and Bailee talk about Nan and how happy she made us. It just makes me sad because if there was one thing my mom taught me...it was Blood is Thicker than water. She told me this several times throughout my life. But I have never found this to be true. I can't think of one nice thing my Dad has to say about me, or one ounce of support he has given me. In fact that is one person I will probably never speak to again in my life. And for the longest time I was really bothered by that. But I've let go of that and replaced it with my ambition to provide a different family lifestyle for my kids. I don't want them to have to think it in their minds that blood is thicker than water, I want them to beleive it by example.

Much to my dismay, I have found one thing that Google does not produce: Red and white polka dotted tiki torches! But...I will have you know, in 2 weeks my red and white polka dotted welcome matt will be here from the UK...I'm very excited about that.

I have a million manicures to do! And I'm not excited about school the next two weeks since it is finals next week. And I'm having a hard time in legal research! Well, I will be excited to post up pictures of the outside now! I feel the welcome matt completed the look! Yay!

Well, I was wanting to post pictures up of our house a lot sooner than this... probably not until the begining of June though is when I will have the house completed. I'm so excited!

Mother's Day didn't exactly go as planned. My swimsuit didn't show up in the mail. So Myrtle Beach was a no go until next weekend. Our outfits for family pictured didn't come either..so that was a no go. So we just pigged out at the Cheesecake factory. It was an amazing weekend. I begged Aaron to nix the hour massage appointment he booked for me and do it himself, so he obliged and put a romantic love story in our DVD and let me relax to the fullest. It was a great weekend. He was super patient through all of the tears of Mother's Day. When you have lost your own mother it is just never the same! I got a beautiful bouquet of roses and a cosmo, my hair done, the most adorable swimsuit ever, i got to finish decorating our bathroom, and pick out coffee tables for our living room, and I got a cute shirt from Poppy Pia. (All you Idahoans would be SOOOOO jealous if you saw the shopping out here in Raleigh!)

Maybe I'll have some pictures to post of our date at the beach this weekend. Our date got postponed too. After crying away all of my makeup I didnt feel like doing anything but a snuggle with him and the kids at home. I'm so very lucky!!

Thank You baby for an amazing Mother's Day!! Mwah!

Swimsuit shopping!!

BCBG Shoes....$65.00

Matching Monokini Swimsuit....$210.00

My new blonde hair and me in the swimsuit this weekend and the look on Aaron's face...priceless. I'm so excited for Mother's Day in Myrtle Beach!!

Although I was a little nervous the first few swimsuits I shopped for that I liked I saw the price of $810.00 and almost peed! Thank god they had some way less expensive! I'm so excited!

Red and white pollka dotted tiki torches!

My new quest, now that our kitchen floor is being redone today, are tiki torches. I've found through google you can find just about ANYTHING. I mean shopping-wise. Google has allowed my shopaholicness to be a little more out of control than before, but it's making our new house come together amazingly! So the other night we were shopping at Carolina pottery and I saw this mailbox decoration that was red and white polka dotted with a D for Dyer on it. I was so excited when I found matching cushion covers for our new patio furniture! To finish off our outside decorating I'm thinking that tiki torches would be SO awesome. But being as matchy-matchy as I am, I'm on my google quest to find red and white polka dotted tiki torches. And I need 3 hanging baskets of red cascading flowers! Wish me luck!! I'm off to google around so that I can get the pictures of our house posted up soon!

We had such an amazing time for our couple day getaway to Disneyworld. What an amazing place! I had only ever been to Disneyland and Aaron was in Disneyworld when he was just as little as Aalyah. Aalyah was actually really good, and Bailee too. This was in celebration of Bailee and Aaron's birthdays and Easter. I think everyone's favorite is Splash Mountain...and of course the girls LOVED getting to see all the princesses and fairies, which we stood in line for about 3 hours to see. Let me just say.... portable DVD players are amazing! I don't know how we took road trips as kids without them, because I certainly wouldn't do it now.

Aalyah has started saying a new word...I'm ashamed to admit that her way of letting us know she is thirsty is "Dew" meaning Mountain Dew. Does this mean we drink entirely too much soda? I went on a soda ban for sooooo long!

Our unpacking is coming along in our new house. I'm excited to put on the final touches this next week and then take pictures of our new house to post up for everyone to see. We got our bed done last night but I'm going to wait until all my makeup boxes are off the floor to start taking pictures. Aaron has officially given me both closets in our bedroom. I think having two closets in the master bedroom mean his and hers closets and the dual sinks, but my stuff has quickly bumped him into the guest closet and bathroom. :)

Bailee is almost done with 3rd grade! What a smart little angel! We are going to find some time this week to go see the new Hannah Montana movie. She also wants to see the Fast and the Furious (she wouldn't like movies like that due to the way her mom drives would she?!)

After getting back from a long drive to Orlando, I want to load the pictures soon but I had a lot of school work! I thought I would mention the two riddles that we came up with from this trip....

Q. How do you know you are married to the best family man ever?

A. He can sing the ENTIRE Hannah Montana introduction song! (I don't even know all the words!)

He kindly asked Bailee if she had anything different after reciting the whole song.... :)


Aaron asking Alicia during our discussion of the fact that I don't know the location of any of the 50 states except the two that I have lived in...

Aaron: So honey...what's south of North Carolina?
Alicia : Florida??!?!
Aaron: (laughing)
Alicia: What?! I know we have to go south to get to Florida today!
Aaron: Well, the state that we have to go through to get to Florida that is SOUTH of NORTH Carolina is South Carolina. (more laughing!)

I admit...I can only locate a few states if they are not labeled on a picture of the U.S.

Having just moved to North Carolina, I figured this would be a perfect time to start blogging. I need to get into picture taking mode a little more often, but I do have some cute ones of the girls at the beach, and we are getting ready for a little weekend getaway to Orlando so the girls can see Disneyworld. It's in honor of celebrating Aaron and Bailee's birthdays. I sometimes love looking at my familys blog posts on those nights that I just can't sleep but I know the rest of the world is.

It's been fun settling into our new house. It's a cute house. It was hard to pick a house out over the internet, but we did get a very cute little neighborhood with much friendlier people than what lived in Caldwell or Nampa Idaho. The doorbell constantly rings for Bailee because all of her little friends want her to go out and play.

I'm posting the first picture of the girls at the beach. Aaron and I are making plans to at least go to the beach once a month while it's warm (I think it's everybodys favorite!) But it is a little busy with jobs and school full time for both of us. My legal research class is kicking my butt! I've spent at least 15 hours on that class so far this week and I am nowhere near done.

I am absolutely in love with North Carolina though. I always wanted to move to California but Aaron assured me over and over again we could not afford our lifestyle out there and that North Carolina would have just as much if not more with a little southern hospitality too! I'm still a little confused by all of the roads out here (he's always telling people I really didn't make it off the potatoe farm too often :) ) But I have managed to get the address of both the Bebe's out here into my GPS (I won't mention my nickname for that thing on here though) because it has been known to tell me to go the wrong way on a one way! And that's when Aaron let's me know it's just electronics and it's not perfect. I guess that's my electrical engineer baby for me! I will never understand what he does!