Jessica Kelso

These are the pretty little flowers my sweet husband brought home for me a couple of days ago. They have made the kitchen smell and look so nice. I love having a little reminder of how awesome my other is every time I step foot in there. But now they are slowly start to lose their life and wilt away. That is always the saddest part of flowers. It’s pretty much the reason why I hated flowers for so long. But I learned that the first couple of days you get to enjoy the beautiful sight and smell far outweighs the last couple of days the smell starts to disappear and they become lifeless.

This past weekend was relaxing. We ran a couple of errands, picked up lots of fruits and veggies at the Farmer’s Market, hung out with some friends, and got the back porch ready for our new patio furniture! A couple of weeks ago my parents gave us their patio set they had wanted to get rid of. Which meant I could finally get rid of our white plastic set that has been out there ever since we bought the house. I got it all here and realized how much work it was going to be to try and fix it up. All the legs needed to be painted and all of the cushions needed to be replaced. When I priced everything out, it would have been over $300. So I set out to find us an inexpensive, but cute and new patio set. I was starting to think it was never going to happen when I came across a set on sale at Sears. It’s just a basic glass table top with 4 chairs. They also had a 2 person glider that matched it on sale for $150. I absolutely love the cushions but I’m not too sure about the color of all the legs yet. They might end up getting painted white. We go pick it all up tomorrow. I have lots of ideas of things to be done out there. . . so I’ll update with pictures as it comes together. Oh, and we sold my parents old set on Craigslist for $220. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)
Yesterday was such a beautiful day to have all of the windows open. The breeze coming through was amazing and I was really bummed when I had to close them and leave. I spent a couple of hours with my parents and nephews and then headed to the gym for a short run and kickboxing class. Now I’m looking forward to whatever the new week brings my way!

Oh how I love Florida, in March. This scene is just an hour drive from my home and I can’t get enough of it.

Last week Kevin took the day off. We slept in late and then headed to Bradenton Beach. We ate lunch at a place called Rotten Ralph’s on a lovely pier. Afterwards we found a spot on the beach where we ended up getting bit by sand fleas. After a couple minutes of that, we packed up and found a different spot where there was more wind and less fleas. After not being out in the sun since our cruise last year, I ended up getting a little more than I had hoped for. And of course it’s spotty burn. I can never manage to at least burn normal as hard as I attempt to put the lotion on even.

The water was beautiful but still a little too cold. After a couple of hours we headed to the condo that we stayed at last year for our anniversary. We wanted to swim in the pool but that water was still too cold as well. . . so we headed home. For some reason I grew up “hating” Florida, but in the past few years we’ve made amends. In a couple of months during the middle of summer I might be saying something totally different. But for today, I love that I can hop in the car and drive an hour to spend the day at such a beautiful place. It’s the best!

There have been issues on our blog that Kevin is trying to fix. In the process, I’ve had posts get deleted and I haven’t been able to post anything new. So if you’ve come here and things have been all messed up. . . yeah.

Blogger is looking really nice right about now

This week has brought much better health for me. For a while there I thought I was going to have a permanent cough. Last week was mostly spent on the couch watching way too much television. Actually, most of it was spent in bed because I hardly had enough energy to make it to the couch. I am SO glad it’s gone. As much of a homebody I am, I absolutely hate having to stay home. This week I’ve already been able to accomplish most of what was not done last week. The entire house (and some) is clean, I was able to go to a kick boxing class at the gym on Monday, I went running yesterday, and actually have a fridge full of groceries today. It feels good. Today was deemed a “rest” day, at least as far as exercising goes . . . but since Kevin was out working on computers tonight I decided to go for a bike ride by myself. It was just too perfect outside to not enjoy it. I hope tomorrow is the same. Kevin has taken the day off and we are headed to the beach. I love our random mid-week trips.

Soo, yeah that’s that. Life is full and incredibly good right now!

I can’t sleep and I don’t even have enough energy to get out of bed and head to the couch to watch TV, so here I am.

A couple of weeks ago my shoulders started hurting really bad again. I don’t know if you remember, but at the end of December I was having really bad pain in both of my shoulders. I could hardly lift my arms to put on a shirt or do anything. It was really annoying, and really painful. I went to a walk-in clinic while we were in Nashville visiting family, and he gave me steroids to help with the inflammation. Most of the pain went away but all of it never did. I normally wake up in the morning with a good amount of discomfort in one or both of them. The past few weeks the intense pain has started up again. On top of that, I was sick for about 2-3 weeks recently. The same nasty flu that everyone seemed to have. . . cold, cough, chest nastiness. I pretty much thought I was completely over it last week. But two nights ago I couldn’t sleep for anything and woke up the next day feeling terrible. I was stuck to the couch yesterday with a terrible migraine and slight fever. Then last night came the cold sweats. Around 3:30 I took some Tylenol and my temperate was at 102. It was a long night of no sleep.

So thankfully I was able to get in with my doctor this morning and he got me started on some antibiotics and gave me steroid injections in both shoulders. Ouch! I’m hoping it all starts kicking in soon. After the shots, I started to feel really nauseous and thought I was going to spill my guts right there in the office. Luckily, I made it home without any problems.

It’s funny, I’ve been married almost 2 years and yet when I’m sick I still want my mom. Is that crazy? When I was younger, either my mom or dad would stay home from work and make me grilled cheese and soup, put a cool wash cloth on my head, and just sit with me and sing or play with my hair. It was so comforting. Don’t get me wrong, Kevin does a good job of taking care of me while I’m sick. He is great! He gets me everything I need. But let’s face it, when you become an adult you just can’t justify asking your husband to stay home from work to take care of you.

Thursday night a couple of us kidnapped my friend Amber, blindfolded her, and took her bowling for a mommy’s last night out kinda thing. She’s due to have a sweet baby boy in just a couple of weeks. It was a lot of fun, minus the fact that my bowling score was like a 56. I did the worst out of about 10 girls. It was pretty embarrassing especially since I thought I would at least suck it up at an average rate. That didn’t happen. We all had names and I was Kaboom Kelso. It’s my new favorite nickname. Isn’t Amber such a cute pregnant lady?! I love it. There was about 4 pregnant girls that night. Maybe some of their baby magic will start rubbing off on me soon!

Tomorrow I’m going to start training to run the Mayfaire 5K in May. I know a 5K is only 3 miles but I’ve yet to be able to run 3 miles straight without having to stop. I’m going to try and stay consistent so in 2 months I will be able to run in with no problems. That’s the plan! I hope I stick with it. I’m good about making big plans and not following through with them. I truly dislike that about myself. My friend Anna is going to run it with me, so that should get my butt into gear. Knowing I’ll be running with someone who ran the Chicago Marathon is a little intimidating!

Saturday we rode our bikes to Barnett Park for Layla’s 2nd birthday party. She was an absolute doll! She was such a girly girl with her pink tutu and pink converse. It was the best! Ian and Heather have done a wonderful job raising such a sweet little thing. It was a beautiful day and we were glad to be outside. I love living so centrally located to things that we are able to ride our bikes. I wish we did more often.

Today was church and lunch with friends followed by a long nap and grilling some tuna steaks. Although I don’t actually “work” anymore, Sunday evenings are still a little sad. I love all the time I get to spend with Kevin on the weekends, then Monday comes and steals him away. Pity me, I know!

I haven’t felt like writing anything lately. Call it lack of time or lack of creative juices but whatever you call it. . . it just hasn’t happened. It seems like I had more time to sit down and write when I was working. I worked on a computer most of the day so that made it a whole lot easier. Now I feel like I always need to be doing something. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’ve been picking my nephew up from school and we’ve been hanging out. Monday I had both nephews, Aidan and Will, and I’m pretty sure they were each in their own ways trying to talk me out of ever having kids. Within 20 minutes of being at my house, Will had already put his juice cup in the toilet and pulled everything out of the wall outlets. Then adding Aidan (who wants to do EVERYTHING himself) to the mix of things. . . well, it just made for an exhausting day. I don’t know if I’ll be doing that again any time soon!

Last weekend we went to the shooting range with Kevin’s friend Jon and Jon’s dad. We had a total of 5 guns that we were able to “try out”. It was loud. I got burned by a shell on my chest and still have the marks to prove it. I really hope the marks go away soon, because it’s not exactly a place I’d like them to be. It doesn’t help in making me feel very attractive, if you know what I mean. Those little things are hot. We plan to buy a gun soon, so it was nice to be able to test a couple and see what we liked best. To me, they were all just loud and heavy though. Apparently I’ve never really been taught the right way to wear ear plugs either, so according to Jon it was probably much louder for me than it was for them. Maybe next time will be better! I was happy to actually get a couple shots on target though.

Lots of other stuff going on but I’m headed to the gym. So that will have to come later!