4th of July and maybe some other stuff...

Obviously I titled this post before I actually wrote it so who knows what will come out!

We'll start with the 4th of July. Our fourth of July started way to early in the morning. I got up at 3 AM so that Sara, Shanda, and I could go see our friend Suzanne get married!!! (None of us liked this picture of ourselves, but obviously I am the only one that can truly complain!) The four of us were so close in high school, and we all went to UCA together! Suzanne and I were roomates our freshman and sophomore years! (Then I got married our junior year so Trey was my roomate!) Suzanne married a really nice guy named Tad, and now they're moving to Philadelphia. She just received her PhD in speech pathology! (and here I am reciting the "i before e except after c" so that I could spell received correctly...no I do not feel inferior in the least!) I loved Suzanne's wedding! It was so sweet and so personal. They had a unity candle. Tad's parents lit his side, and Suzanne's brother and sister lit her side. Suzanne's mom passed away our freshman year of college, and her dad was in the hospital and couldn't be there. They had a web cam set up though so he could watch, and they could see him too. *Suzanne's dad passed away this week. Our prayers are with you Suzanne, Eric, and Lauren.* There was a break between her 2:00 wedding and her 5:30 reception. We just went back to the hotel and crashed, because remember we had gotten up at 3 AM!!!! The reception was so much fun! They had a full dinner and dancing. One of the dances they had was the married couples dance. All the married couples got on the dance floor, and the DJ would call off a year and if you had been married longer than that year, you stayed on the floor. The last couple was this little old couple that had been married over 65 years. Shanda, Sara and I have all been married 8 years to our husbands, but we didn't get to show that off. :-( At 9:45 the city fireworks started and there was a perfect view from her venue. We didn't stay for the whole thing because Sara and I were feeling a little doomsdayish and couldn't get the thought of the balcony collapsing out of our heads. The photographer took a picture of the four of us before we left so I'll post that after Suzanne sends it to me. The next morning our flight out wasn't until 10:00 so we were able to sleep in until 6:00. Did I mention that our rental car was a Hundai?? That little go-cart/lawn mower (that's how it felt anyway) got like 40 or 45 miles per gallon!! We went 240 miles in it and only had to put $10.00 gas in!! We have got to get one of those! We made it home around 5:00 in the evening and I was so happy to see my sweet family! They had spent the weekend in Little Rock at Gram and Pawpaw's. I hear they had a wonderful time swimming at Aunt Kathy's and playing outside!

A few weeks ago we got the girls' ears pierced!! Ava had been called a boy one too many times! In WalMart that morning a lady said, "Well hi little man." I couldn't take it anymore! That afternoon I took both of them to Claire's and had it done. We had been going back and forth for a while; Ainslee asked for earrings a few times, and we kind of skirted around the issue. She did really well! She sat so still and didn't act the least bit scared until they put the marks on her ears. She only cried for a second and stopped when they gave her a mirror and sucker! She LOVES showing off her pink daisy earrings! Ava didn't do quite so well! I had to hold her down while she squirmed and tried to throw herself out of my arms. The passers-by gave us some pretty dirty looks, and an old couple sitting in front of the cookie place shook their heads at me! They finally got it done, and she has been so good at home letting me clean them!

Every now and then we'll hear some blasting from Red River Army Depot. Urban Rural legend is that they're detonating unused missiles or bombs or something like that. We've always called it a sonic boom or "blasting at the plant." This morning they've been blasting quite a bit, and Layton got a little scared because it can be pretty loud and usually shakes the house. This was his explanation to Ainslee: "It's just a man that has hiccups and he's jumping up and down to make them stop. It's nothing to be scared of, Ainslee." Now I, for one, find that a little more scary than "blasting at the plant." He also said the booms were yellow...or maybe orange.

The other day I was shopping. I've had my eye on this comforter set for a while. I really want new bedding in our room! It was originally set for like $150, and I noticed not long ago that it had been marked down again to $85. Well, I turned the corner, and there it was on the end of an aisle with a big red sticker on it loudly proclaiming, $50!! $50 for the bedding that I've been wanting that was orginally $150!! Can you believe such luck??? I texted Trey! (He didn't answer me.. for some reason he didn't share my enthusiasm.) Now the problem was that I haven't been putting back for that, and I didn't have any money allocated to new bedding. (i.e. Dave Ramsey budget). So I paced in front of it a few times...and counted how many they had left (5). I knew they wouldn't last for long. I knew I couldn't just cover from other places because we've already had a couple of unexpected expenses that I've had to pull to cover. The thought did cross my mind that we do have that $1000 emergency fund still in the bank. I could pay for the bedding with that and next month replace the money in the emergency fund. Sure, new bedding isn't quite an emergency, but the fact that I know next month when I do have the money, there won't be any bedding sets left does put a little added hurry-up pressure on me. So what did I do??? I held my head up high and kept walking! Next month I will start an envelope for new bedding, and when I have enough saved up, I will find something else that I like just as much. Who knows! Maybe that bedding set will still be online somewhere!