Liebster Award

My wonderful friend Danica, who is hilarious and has amazing style and writing skills, over at Black With a Chance of Cheetah nominated me for this award a while back and I finally got around to posting. I love these things because it always gives me something to write about without having to think too hard. You should definitely check out her blog, I read it regularly and love it! 

"Liebster" means dearest in German, and it's awarded, blogger to blogger, to up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers.  The rules for accepting and giving the award are pretty simple.  Once you accept the award, you just have to do the following in a blog entry:

Answer the 11 questions posted by the nominator on her blog

Give 11 facts about yourself

Nominate 5-11 other new, up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers

Make up 11 more questions to pass on to the bloggers you choose to nominate

Thank your nominator by linking back to her blog

Upon your post going live, contact your nominees about your nomination for them

Danica's Questions:

1. Who is your favorite Office character? 

- I think it would have to be Pam because I can relate to her the most. She is a happily married mother of 2 who works a desk job - that will be me in about 3 months exactly. Although, I truly love all of the characters and think the show requires each of their personalities. 

2. What are you the most proud of in your life?

- Definitely my family. I am the first person to brag about how great I think my family is. I'm always talking about how smart and handsome my little brother is, how hardworking and sweet my dad is, how much my mom loves and cares, how dedicated and pretty my sister is, not to mention how insanely incredible my husband is... where do I even start?! 

3. What books should all of us be reading at the pool this summer?

- So I'm a little strange and I'm all about the self-help type books. I love How to Win Friends and Influence People, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. These books always give me something to be working on and some way to strive to be better. Although, I have heard that The Happiness Project is amazing and I really look forward to reading that. 

4. What beauty product can you not live without?

- A hair elastic... As silly as it sounds, I can't go one day without pulling my hair up at some point. I can live without pretty much everything else, but I must have one on my wrist or in my hair. 

5. Where is your favorite secret place to shop (physical or online store)?

- I don't know if it's really a secret or not, but I love to shop at Target. I love the baby department, the clothes, the appliances, the movies... practically every part of that store. However, I refuse to buy groceries there. We once went grocery shopping there because we had some gift cards left over from our wedding - biggest mistake ever - we got the exact same amount of groceries as we always do but spent double the money. 

6. What is your best piece of marriage advice?

- Always keep an open mind. I often find myself getting frustrated because I only see the world through my eyes and don't understand why or how anyone else could live any other way than how I do. When I allow myself to look at life through a different point of view I'm usually a much more pleasant person to be around. Jake is really good at always taking my side into consideration, especially in arguments, which means a lot to me and it's something I would really like to get better at. 

7. When you are stressed and just want to fast forward life to happier times, what do you do?

- I either become insanely busy to distract myself (do loads of laundry, work on projects I've been putting off forever, deep clean the house, run lots of errands, etc.) or the complete opposite and just crash and watch episode after episode of whatever show I'm into at that point. (How I Met Your Mother, White Collar, Happy Endings)

8. What is your favorite blog that you HAVE to read every day?

- Probably Neon Fresh... on a few occasions I'll skip over it but pretty much every day I read it just because she is so hilarious! You should definitely check it out - my favorite are Fridays when she does This Is How I Feel. 

9. I finally have an iPhone. What are your favorite apps that I should go for?

- I don't have an iPhone... but we do have an iPad and I mostly just play games... so the games I would definitely get are Plants v. Zombies, Where's My Water, Land Grabbers and Sudoku. 

10. What is your favorite workout to get in shape?

- I love team sports so anytime I can play soccer, basketball, volleyball or even racquetball with some friends that is my first go-to option. If no one is around I either try out a work out video or go to a cheap class somewhere. As silly as it may look to other people - I love me some Zumba. I am so insanely untalented when it comes to dancing so I usually go by myself to a class where I know there will be people that look just as awful as I do. 

1. Favorite obscure YouTube videos... Go!

- I've got nothing... I wish I could say I watch these more but I don't. :( 

My 11 Facts:

1. I delete all of my emails, texts, Facebook messages, mail, etc. after I have received and responded to it because I hate the clutter of keeping it around. Sometimes I regret this because I delete the item too soon, but I just can't stand the clutter - it seems disorganized for some reason. 

2. I feel overly guilty over the stupidest things. Example: Jake and I went out to eat at Costa Vida a few nights ago and I got a smothered burrito and he got a non-smothered burrito. I felt horrible about spending the extra .79 cents when he was so sweet to not get it smothered so I tried to share my sauce with him. I couldn't get over how bad I felt and kept apologizing over and over until he was finally annoyed with me. I still feel bad about it and it was over a week ago. 

3. I easily get obsessed with TV shows but have to watch them from start to finish. We recently started watching White Collar; Jake started with Season 2 but I wouldn't start watching until we got Season 1 so I could get the whole story line. 

4. I am craving a good hard workout where I sweat like crazy so bad right now but can't do anything too intense for another 3 months and it's starting to wear on me. 

5. My favorite drink of all time is Red Cream Soda from Brick Oven - I know it's just Barq's Red Cream Soda, but for some reason when I get it at Brick Oven it brings back the good ol' days. 

6. One of my favorite memories with Jake is when we got back from telling my parents we were engaged and he crashed on the couch at my apartment. He had been up for 72 hrs straight with work, school and getting everything ready for the proposal. I remember looking at him that night and knowing we had just made the best decision of our lives. I couldn't ask for a better man to walk by my side through this life and the next. 

7. I have had a million crazy dreams about our future babies. Just a few examples: We had an insanely fat Asian baby with tons of black hair, I could only give birth to one of my babies and had to wait several days before giving birth to the other twin, we ended up having quadruplets instead of just twins, I gave birth to my children while asleep and woke up and they were just there, etc.

8. As terrified as I am about going away to medical school - I really look forward to what an adventure it's going to be and I can't wait to see how our little family is going to grow.

9. I recently learned that I am an insanely blue personality. Check out the color code - it's a great book and I promise you will learn a ton about yourself!

10. One of my favorite qualities about Jake is his huge knowledge base of random facts. He can start a conversation or have a quick fact about practically any topic - it amazes me and I love it!

11. I cry all of the time now!!! Listening to songs on the radio or watching TV shows that are too sentimental are an absolute No-No until my emotions are more stable. 

My Nominees:

My Bestie Hailey 

Three of the most wonderful mothers I know - Dani, Nettina and Janae

My Wonderful Sister-in-Law Taylor

My sweet neighbor Whitney

My 11 Questions:

1. How do you deal with nerves/anxiety? 
2. When something totally awesome happens, who are the top 5 people you want to tell? 
3. When you are having a rough day, what is the one thing you can always do that will cheer you up?
4. What is your favorite memory from Elementary School Years?
5. If you could get paid to do absolutely anything, what would you want to get paid for doing?
6a. If you're a mom - what is one mommy necessity that you can't live without? 
6b. If you're not a mom - what is one item that is always found in your purse that you always need?
7. What do you do when you have absolutely nothing to do and are bored out of your mind?
8. What is your favorite month of the year?
9. What are 3 words that describe you perfectly and why?
10. If you had to decorate one room and live it in for the rest of your life, what colors and theme would you give the room?
11. If you were to go on a road trip where would you go and what would you do? 

The Name Game

Coming up with baby names has been so much more stressful than I ever expected it to be.

Growing up I loved thinking about what I would name my kids in the future. It was a fun game that never really seemed like it would be that difficult to do when the time came. I was always set on names like Courtnie, Ashlie, Brittanie, etc. (always ending in i-e of course) but once I got older I grew out of those names. (Not that they are bad names by any means, I have just grown more accustomed to other names.)

When Jake and I first got married we would talk about names here and there just for fun. The majority of the names I was in love with for girls were old granny type names, names of colors/gems, or both. (ie: Pearl, Hazel, Ruby) As for boys names, I had a thing for last names as first names. (ie: Lincoln, Harrison, Graham)

Jake would always tease me and come up with legitimate reasons that we definitely should not name our kids the names I was thinking. He would tell me that Harrison would be called Harry, and if he was actually hairy it would be traumatizing for him. He also pointed out that Graham Mitchell mingles together (ends in M, starts in M) and sometimes it just sounds weird. As for the girl names, a teenage girl would probably not want to have the same name as several peoples great great grandparents.

Then we went through a phase of relating every name that we heard to someone else we knew with that name and it generally ruined the name for us. Either I had a student, Jake had a cousin, or one of us had worked with or gone to school with someone with that name. Not that we didn't like those people, but just that we wanted to think of our child as the first person we think of with that name.

I was never really on board with the whole make up a name game because most of our names just sounded really weird, neither of us are that creative I guess. We also tried mixing different names together because we had heard some cute names that way. Jake + Karlie = Cake or Jarlie... Not Cute!!

One of our favorite shows is How I Met Your Mother and I had always loved the name Lily and Jake loved the name Marshall (two of the main characters). They sounded like great names, however, I didn't want to tell our children that they were named after our favorite TV show, that just seemed weird to me.

We also went through the phase of trying to name them "twin" type names even though it's so cliche. For a boy and girl we loved Penny (Penelope) and Lincoln. (I also really liked Jack and Jill but Jake said no way.) We also got several suggestions from family and friends on these including: Yin & Yang, Hansel & Gretel, Tia & Tamera, etc.

Once we found out we were having girls, things got real serious! We were giving our girls names they would be called for the rest of their lives! We had to consider if the name would age well, if it would be fitting, what nicknames they would have, if they would be teased, if it would sound good with our last name, what their middle name would be, and on and on and on. So much pressure!

The first names we really liked and I thought for sure we would name our girls were either Charlotte or Scarlet and Eleanor. I made the mistake of sharing these names with a few people and was soon told that Scarlet is definitely a whore name and I should never name my child that. I quickly learned that sharing my names with people may not be the best idea out there unless I'm willing to take criticism. So I decided Charlotte was good, she could go by Charlie and that was just the cutest thing ever and her sister could go by Ellie. They aged well, they were cute, they had good nicknames and they went well with middle names. As for middle names, I really wanted to use Kay because there is a long history with that name in Jake's family and I thought it worked well. I also kind of wanted their middle names to rhyme (once again, I know it's cliche) and I loved the name May so I thought it would work perfect. Eleanor Kay and Charlotte May! Cute, right? (I'm still kind of hooked on these names)

Then Jake's twin brother Matt suggested we give one an M name and one a J name just like their dad and uncle who are twins too. This also took care of the problem of which twin gets which name - the first one out gets the J name since Jake was born first and the second gets the M. This narrowed down our focus. The J name that I fell in love with is June Kay, I don't know if Jake is quite on board with it yet but hopefully soon... I also still love the name May, but I feel like it would be silly to name our girls May and June. Hopefully we can still use May as a middle name. Some other M names we have considered are Macie, Maylie (back to the i-e), Marley, Matilda, and maybe Maggie. I don't know which name would sound good with May and if we want their initials to be MMM though so who knows what will happen in the future...

I just wanted to document all of the possible names our girls could have so that hopefully when we finally decide on something they can see just how crazy some of the other names were. I'm sure whatever we choose will be very fitting and we will love our girls all the same no matter what we call them. We are open for suggestions if anyone has an input as well... Thanks!