A springy mood.

The weather is gorgeous here today! In fact the forecast shows it will be in the upper 70's and low 80's for the next whole week! I am absolutely loving it and I am definitely in a springy mood today. I'm just so excited about the warm weather and ready to bust out my warm weather clothes that have been put away for way to long :) I can't wait to get out and plant a beautiful flower garden and I'm especially excited to do some springtime shopping on Friday.

Now in no way do I consider myself a "fashionista" but one thing is for sure... I love shopping and I love clothes; so below I pieced together a little mood board of things I am loving for spring (short printed skirts, bright nail polish, spring scarves, jumpers, sandals, and on and on). Anyone else excited for spring??

Who wants a treat?

Everyday when I get home from work, I let the dogs in and give them the ultimate treat... a rawhide! They seriously love these things. I've mentioned before that Badger always plays with his treats before he starts chewing on it... Well today I grabbed my camera to catch it on film! After loading the video on the computer, I added a cheesy dance song to the background and it made Jake and I hysterical with laughter. My sweet little 50 lb. puppy is just the cutest thing ever! See for yourself...

Feels like Tuesday.

First of all, THANK YOU everyone for the encouraging comments and emails regarding my braces situation. I actually feel so much better about it now that it's out there for all to know. Now it's Monday and I'm oddly happy for a Monday. I think it's because I know this week is a four day work week for me (yessss!) and on Friday I am treating myself to a day of spring shopping. I can totally get through four days of work if there's shopping involved at the end of it :) The bummer of it all is that this upcoming weekend was supposed to be Jake's little birthday getaway that was canceled. Oh and remember how we were just going to move it to memorial day weekend? Well thats a no-go... everything was booked solid so unfortunately the trip has been canceled altogether. Looks like we'll be waiting until after graduation for a vacation together... Oh well, August will be here before we know it and in the meantime I am planning on taking a trip back to the west coast to see my family!

This weekend was a lot of fun, after I got over my little food poisoning incident that is. Saturday was a lazy day overall... slept in, caught up on my DVR shows, took the dogs to the park. It was so nice and the weather was absolutely beautiful! We planted a ton of grass seed in our backyard in a hopeful attempt that it might make our yard somewhat decent looking. Fingers crossed! Anyways, that night, Jake and I had our dinner-movie date night and had so much fun. It's not often that we get to go out just the two of us... usually we are with other couples or with his class. We went to Mexican food and then went to see the movie She's Out of My League. It was a pretty funny movie, but definitely brainless and predictable. I enjoyed it though; sometimes I need a little predictability in my life :) After the movies we weren't quite ready to head home so what did we do at 10:30 at night? Headed over to Walmart to walk around and look at stuff. It's okay if you're laughing... we are SO Mississippi now! haha! We really do enjoy walking around and looking at stuff and people watching. But yes, I do realize that its totally lame that most of our date nights end with Walmart browsing. Oh how I miss Target!

Changing the subject, last Thursday night I went to my first book club meeting here on base and had a great time. If you remember, we chose to read My Sister's Keeper during the month of March. The book was really intriguing and I actually ended up reading most of it in one afternoon. Everyone told me that I would cry at the end of the book, but call my cold-hearted, I didn't shed a tear. Don't get me wrong, it was very sad but I guess I have a hard time crying over characters that aren't real... at least in books. Anyways, the book turned out to be great for discussion being that the topic is somewhat controversial. We talked for hours and hours... I actually had to leave early because it was getting so late and I had to get up for work the next day! The book we chose to read next is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm excited to read this book because it's a nonfiction memoir of the author's travels through Italy, India, and Indonesia... sounds interesting right?? The book is actually being made into a movie that is coming out this summer starring Julia Roberts so that will be fun to see. For our next book club meeting at the end of April, we decided to make it a dinner and have everyone bring a different cultural food dish inspired from the book... how fun is that?! I love this whole book club thing. The other women are so much fun and its giving me an extra reason to read some great books, most of which I've wanted to read for some time now.

And the best news for last... T-minus three days until Jake says goodbye to Mr. Mustache! I have been a good wife in putting up with the Mustache March tradition but it's time for that thing to GO! Here's a little reminder of what I've been living with (although this picture was taken weeks ago so now the statche has grown completely over his upper lip)...

Any chance I can get a 3rd opinion?

Sorry I have been MIA for the past few days. Thursday morning I found out some not-so-fun news, nothing life-threatening or anything but just not fun (more on that in a minute) and then early Friday morning I woke up in a cold-sweat, shaking and throwing up, feeling so sick. I thought for sure I had gotten the flu but now it looks like I may have gotten food poisoning. Friday I went to work, feeling okay but very tired and weak. Thankfully, my boss told me that I could take my work home for the day and just take it easy, so that's exactly what I did. I really think I must have just ate something bad because by late afternoon yesterday I was feeling almost back to normal. And good thing too because hubby promised me a dinner-movie date night tonight and I've been looking forward to it all week!

So now for the bad news. It really is only bad news for me. Seriously, I'm sure no one else cares... but I guarantee if it were you, you would care. Well, I'll just say it. I have to get braces. Again. Ugh! Yes that is why I gave Ugly Betty as my hint, because when I think of an adult with braces, Ugly Betty's metal mouth smile flashes into my mind. You're probably thinking "But Lindsay your teeth are straight!" Well yes, yes they are. Unfortunately that's not the problem. It's a long story... if you care to read it, here it goes...

Way back in October I went to the dentist for just a normal teeth cleaning and checkup. Like a good military spouse (always overly prepared) I brought along my dental history and past x-rays from my dentist in California. After looking at my teeth and comparing x-rays, the dentist started asking me questions like "Do you get bad migranes? Do you wake up with a locked jaw? Do you have any neck or back pain?" All my answers were no, which seemed surprising to him. He told me that he was referring me to an orthodontist in town for a check-up because he was concerned about my "deep bite". Hesitantly, I went and saw the ortho guy and after lots of poking and proding around in my mouth and many more questions he finally told me what all this was about. He said that I have a type of deep overbite that is most likely genetic and gets increasingly worse and more severe with age, hence why the problem was not fixed when I was 12 and had braces... the problem had not shown up yet. He then said that most likely this problem will lead to severe head, neck and back pain in the future, not to mention that cosmetically my smile will continue to become more and more narrow, forcing all my teeth to crowd and begin to stick out. WHHAATT? I've always thought I had a fine smile. I've noticed lately that I had a little overbite but nothing worse than most people! He said I needed braces and a series of special retainers to correct the problem. I told him NO, not gonna happen. He said I had some time to think about it because I needed to get my wisdom teeth out before he could do anything anyways.

I did not tell anyone about this because I was convinced that this was not going to happen. But Jake was nervous about what the dentist had told me and thought we should get a second opinion. Jake thought that if it was, in fact, that bad then I really had no choice but to get the braces. He said I might as well get it over with now and save myself a lot of pain and frustration years down the road. Thursday morning was my second opinion appointment with a different orthodontist here in town. I was hoping he would tell me it was not that bad... turns out, he thought it was even worse and probably had gotten worse just since October! He told me a bunch of doctor terms and mumbo-jumbo but one specific part I do remember is him saying that most people's bite should be about 20-30%... mine was at 90%! Again, WHHAATT? Oh goodness. Apparently I really do need to fix this.

I started asking what seemed like a million questions... Do I have to get the metal braces? How long will all this take to fix? What happens if we move in 5 months? So. Many. Questions. As far as the type of braces, I will be getting ceramic braces on my top teeth (thank goodness!) These braces have brackets that are tooth colored, and while the wire is still metal, the braces are much less noticeable... especially in pictures. He says that most adult patients opt for this type. Unfortunately I will still have to get metal brackets on my bottom teeth... something about my overbite putting too much pressure on the ceramic brackets causing them to damage my teeth. After hearing all this I was practically crying by the time I asked him "How long?" To my surprise he said there should be no reason that this cannot be fixed in just a year. I guess I was a bit relieved... one year is not so bad. In reality, that means the braces would be gone by next summer... that's not so bad right? Anyway I look at it now, this IS going to happen and I am going to have to just get used the idea. I go in for impressions on April 19th and on May 10th... it's go time. Braces on. Me looking like I'm in Junior High again.

See why I had a bad day? It's kind of ridiculous actually because I mean who really cares?! Do you care if I have braces? No. It's just me and self-image issues. The only person that might care would be Jake and he's the one telling me to get them! He genuinely does not care if I have braces which just blows my mind. I guess I just need to embrace the fact that this has to be done, try to be confident about it, and remind myself that a year from now it will all be worth it and just about done. Things could be so much worse and I just need to be thankful. Encouragement please!!

Sorry.

No fun blog post today. Not such a fun day for me at all actually. I'll fill you in on the awful details tomorrow or this weekend. Oh you say you want a hint now? Ugly Betty. That's all I'm saying. Anyways, tonight it's book club time with Ann & the girls so hopefully that will make my day a little bit better. Dessert + wine + hours of good conversation... can't go wrong there right? Well, here's hoping you're Thursday has been much better than mine so far...