Karma Fairy is finally shining down on us....

I am not even going to try and make excuses as to why I haven't posted, let's just chalk it up to a boring lifestyle. But, our boring life is about to change. First and foremost, we are expecting another little Regenhardt!! I found out the Monday before Valentine's Day that I was expecting. Our expectant due date is October 20. We are thrilled, but also a bit scared. Even though this isn't my first rodeo, I have been feeling completely different. I have had, up until a week or so ago, all day nausea, very little heartburn, extremely tired, the differences are ongoing. With all these differences, I have a feeling this new little addition might be a boy. If not, this will be the spiciest girl yet :-).

Secondly, as you all know, ever since Daniel has been working at Longhorn, he has longed to get back into brewing. Longhorn has been an invaluable learning experience but definitely not his passion. And as you all know, he is not one to just sit around and not look for the next challenge. For the last 18 months, he has continually been looking for the next opportunity to get back into brewing and back to what makes him tick. About two weeks ago, he got an opportunity to interview for an assistant brew master job in Jacksonville, FL. Getting this job would be the cu de gra of his career thus far. He was not very confident after the interview, as he didn't have very many days to prepare and he might have just been a little off his game. But, believe you me, even on an off day, he is still an interview rock star(so I wasn't worried). They told him it would be 10 days to 2 weeks before he heard anything. Those are the longest days you can imagine. But anywho, we had a sniff earlier this week that the job was his, the final paperwork was just awaiting a signature. But you know the old saying, don't count your chickens before they hatch. Well, we were cautiously optimistic that this time, all the stars would align and he would get the opportunity he so deserves. Well, all the waiting paid off, he got offered an assistant brew master job in FL today!! So, looks like we(or more like the movers) will be packing up our home and moving on up to the East side.

This new chapter in our lives will definitely be exciting, if not scary and stressful. But again, we have done it once, we will do it again.

Stay tuned for the upcoming adventures of The Regenhardts....

Happy Birthday Olivia....

Happy Birthday to our Olivia!!! I cannot believe my first baby is 5 years old today(lets just pretend I posted this on her actual birthday ;-). I could spend this whole blog post recounting the last 5 years and how wonderful they have been since having Olivia in our lives. But I will just say that she is hands down, the most amazing 5 year old kid I know. She amazes me everyday with how smart, funny, outgoing, caring and truly kindhearted kid. She had a great birthday. Since she had school on her actual birthday, she got to take treats for all her friends and getting a little extra attention, which everyone knows she loves. Then that night we went to Olive Garden for dinner. I had told Olivia earlier in the week that she got to choose where we went and with a little coaching from daddy, she decided on OG. After dinner, we came home and opened presents and had cake. She got a lot of really nice presents. She sure has a lot of people that love her. Our friends sent her some birthday money and since the day before she found a toy at Target that she wanted and I wouldn't buy her, she was so thrilled to get money so she could go buy it. So Friday we went to the bank and cashed the check and I gave her the money to put in her wallet and then off to Target we went. She was so thrilled to have her own money to spend and she went right to the toy section and picked out the toy from the day before. She paid for it herself and dealt with the money and change by herself. I was so very proud of her for being so responsible with her money and also being so appreciative of having it and being able to be an "adult."

On March 10, she is having a whole class party(although I pray not all the kiddos show up) at a local gymnastics gym. She is super excited about that, we'll see how I feel after the fact.

Here are pics from her actual birthday and then I will post some of her party from next week-

she was soooo happy about the Princess card :-)

Wow, I Suck

I could profusely apologize for my lack of posts, but really there are no excuses other than the fact that I suck at updating. I can say that I will try and do better but again, I can't promise that. So, just bear with me and check back when you want. There hasn't been much going on. The weather here has been gorgegous except we have gotten A LOT of rain lately. We are supposed to get 3+ inches tomorrow and Saturday. All this rain means we have a very clean Cooper. Our backyard is like a mini swamp when we get a lot of rain and Cooper in his infinite wisdom thinks it's fun to go and waller in the mud. Little has he learned that acting like a little piggy taking a mud bath will get him treated like a little piggy in that he has to stay outside until Daniel gets home to give him a bath. Sometimes that means he is outside for hours. Olivia's birthday is next week, where does time go. We are having a whole class party on March 10 at a local gymnastics place. I hope a lot of kids from her class show up but not all as the party is for 15 kids or less. We have some other "news" in the works but I will save that for another post ;-).

I will try, really try to post more.

One Big Year End Post

Yes, I realize that it has been almost a month since my last post. I've been a bit busy, so please forgive me. Instead of trying to recap what we have been up to for the last month in individual posts, I am just going to put it all in one post.

December was a pretty good month. We were busy as usual, Daniel working, Olivia finishing up school for this year and then trying to get our stuff packed to head back to the Lou for the last two weeks of the year. We found out that at the end of the current preschool semester that Olivia's favorite teacher would be resigning from SLC due to family illness. Olivia was crushed when I told her as was I because her lead teacher leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully the teacher hired to fill Mrs. Carr's spot will step up to the plate. Daniel was able to save a week of vacation time to take in December and his plant is on shut down the week between Christmas and New Year's, so his last day of work was December 16 and he goes back January 4. It is weird to have him home so much since usually he works 80+ hours a week and I barely see him except on Saturday and Sundays.

So since he had almost 3 weeks off, we headed back to the Lou on December 17. Our first stop was at The Lake of the Ozarks to spend a couple days with his mom and sister. Then on the 19th we headed to Centralia to spend the remainder of our holiday with my mom. She had to work most days, so we were able to carve out time to spend with our friends and family and not take away from our time with her. We utilized our time well and were able to see everyone that we had hoped. We have a wonderful Christmas with family. We decided to head back to Houston on December 29. Even though I loved spending time with our family and friends, I was so glad to be back home. We drove 3000 miles in two weeks so we were and still are pretty exhausted. On New Year's Eve, the weather was perfect, about 80 degrees so there was lots of activity going on. Apparently, fireworks are a HUGE deal down here. It is Monday, January 1 as I write this and people are still shooting off fireworks. On NYE night, we went down to our friends' Joe and Misty's house, they were having a block party. It was a fun time but it was cut short for me because Olivia was scared of all the loud fireworks going off all around so she begged me to bring her home. Daniel and Cameron stayed for a while and Daniel said it was a fun time. The kiddos were both in bed by 9:45ish and since it was such a nice night, Daniel and I decided to sit outside and watch all the fireworks shows. I have to say, our neighbors a couple doors down put on a television special worthy fireworks show and the best part was we didn't even have to leave our backyard. About 10:30, I was out in our driveway looking at some other fireworks and I saw our neighbor from across the street out. We started talking and ended up standing outside for a while talking. I haven't really gotten to talk to her much since we lived here as she has been receiving chemo for breast cancer but I really enjoyed our time in the driveway. After a while in the driveway, we all came to our backyard and were just sitting around drinking. We ended up doing that till 1:00 am. It was such a nice night. I hope that Lana and I can start hanging out more, she is a very nice person.

*On a side note, someone had the nerve to come in our garage and help themselves to our weed eater, edger and blower. The edger and blower were practically brand new. Since we don't know when this exactly happened, it was most likely sometime between Thanksgiving and when we left to go to St. Louis, we can't really file a police report. Since it more than likely going to cost about $600ish to replace all of the these things, we (I) hope Daniel can borrow our neighbors for a while as we won't be able to get new ones for a some time. Our best guess as to what happened to them is one of the many yard crews that cuts various lawns around ours, saw Daniel using it and decided it would be a nice addition to their arsenal of yard equipment. It really frosts our biscuits that someone would do that as we try to be good, honest people and teach our kids the same values and then something like this happens.

As a new year is upon us, I have quite a few "resolutions" swirling around in my head but am not ready to reveal them yet as I have some logistics to work through first. I know resolutions are supposed to be made before the New Year comes but I say better late than never.

I hope everyone had a joyous holiday season and a safe and happy New Year.

Cameron's 2nd Birthday

Even though I am a few days late, Happy Birthday to Cameron. I cannot believe that she is two years old already. It seems like just yesterday she was born. The last 2 years have flown by. She is such a special girl. She is very independent, funny, caring, and super duper lovable. We didn't really do much to celebrate but I think she had a good birthday anyway.

Happy Birthday Cameron, we love more than you will ever know.

Follow Up to Thanksgiving....

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know a lot of the time I seem to be negative Nancy and for the most part I am. I am still adjusting to being in Texas all alone and have it hard to really made any genuine friends down here, so I am so incredibly lonely.

So instead of my tale of woe, I want to take a few minutes and say what I am thankful for and I have many, many things to be truly thankful for.

1. I am thankful for the best husband, who is incredibly loving and hardworking.
2. I am thankful that my girls have such an amazing daddy.
3. I am thankful that God found me worthy of such truly incredible kiddos.
4. I am thankful for my awesome family.
5. I am thankful for better friends than I deserve.
6. I am thankful for a warm(or cool) house to live in.
7. I am thankful that we have enough.
8. I am thankful that I have transportation to get where I need to go.
9. I am thankful for Olivia's preschool and fostering her love of learning.
10. I am thankful for Texas.

I could go on and on, but I just wanted everyone to know that I am not as bitter of a person as I might seem to be. I know that this time of year is hard because as many people are giving thanks, a lot more people are struggling. Struggling to be able to provide necessities for their families, much less indulge them in frivolous gifts. I find it hard for me to draw the line as far as presents are concerned. I want my kids to have everything they want(doesn't every parent) but I also don't want them to feel entitled. They have way more than a lot of kids and I want them to know that. I started this year making Olivia donate toys before her birthday and Christmas in order to make room for new toys and hopefully to teach her that donating to the less fortunate is a good thing.

Ok, enough of my rambling. Our Thanksgiving dinner turned out really good. The food was very delicious. The only thing that went wrong was I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce and no one even missed it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Wow, I have been slacking...

Wow, it has been a while since I updated. I guess that is because not much has been going on around here. I cannot believe that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Where does time go? Next week is Cameron's birthday, again where does time go? Let's see, what has been going on? Not much, Daniel working too much, Olivia is still loving school, Cameron is learning new things everyday and I am trying my best to keep everything running smoothly.

Tomorrow is a going to be a hard day for me I think. Even though we have been never been much of a big family gathering for Thanksgiving type of family, it is still going to be very hard for me to be so far away from family and friends. And to put the icing on the cake, Daniel has to work. Daniel's aunt and uncle recently moved to Cypress, TX(which is about 30 minutes from us) and we are having them over for dinner. That's right, I said we are having them over. I have never attempted to cook anything that resembles a Thanksgiving dinner, so this should be interesting, to say the least. And like I mentioned before, Daniel has to work so it's all on me. I will let you know how it all turns out....

I had some pictures I was going to upload but it Blogger doesn't seem to want to cooperate. I will try and get some uploaded later.