This week our middle daughter, Abby, turned five.

Even though she is our middle child, since her older brother is adopted, she had the honor of being my first pregnancy. 

She was, by far, our most difficult baby. She could stay awake for 20 hours at a time and would only stop crying if you were holding her vertically, standing up, and swaying back and forth a certain way. We got through her entire first year without more than two hours of sleep at a time. She could (and still can) hit octaves only matched by Mariah Carey. When I delivered her, they had to keep her separated from all of the other babies in the hospital nursery because her ear-piercing screams woke up all of the other babies at the same time and caused quite a commotion. That’s Abby, rallying the troops for her cause since Day 1.

There was no denying that she was beautiful, though. Actually, it drives me kind of nuts because often the first and only thing people comment on when speaking to her is the way that she looks. There is so much more to her than that. But even as a baby, strangers would come up to us and say that she should be a model. Once I even had an artist I had never met before approach me and ask me for a picture of her to use as a basis for an oil painting.

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Over the weekend I had the incredible opportunity to speak at the Women’s Leadership Summit, which was hosted by the Junior League of Greensboro in North Carolina.

Eddie and I have never been to Greensboro, so we were super excited to check it out and enjoy a kid-free weekend.

The Junior League graciously hosted us at the O’Henry hotel, which was a beautiful hotel that is also a member of the Southern Living Hotel Collection.

We hit more traffic than we expected, so all day Thursday (10 hours) was spent driving. We got to the hotel around 9pm. Luckily, the hotel restaurant, Green Valley Grill, was still open and we were able to have a late dinner. Eddie and I split an order of their truffle fries. Seriously awesome. The restaurant was a really fun mix of elegant and casual. The food was affordable, but they had swanky options (like tapas and lamb) too. [Read more…]

Eddie and I have the fabulous opportunity to travel to Greensboro, North Carolina this week so that I can speak at the Women’s Leadership Summit.

My dad and step-mom are taking over our house and kid duties so that Eddie and I can get away for the weekend.

I’m super excited about the conference! I’m speaking on the theme of seeing other women as colleagues instead of competition (which, not coincidentally, is the also keynote theme of BlogU this year). It’s a topic I am very passionate about and I am thrilled to share my story and my voice with other women at the summit, hear the other speakers, and meet a lot of new faces.

I’ll tell you all about it when I get back later this weekend.

But I just wanted to let you know where I was because Get Skinny Saturday will be a little late this week. 🙂

I have to admit, I have been way less than frugal lately, especially on our food. We can spend a CRAZY amount of money on food. Eddie and I like to have date nights after the kids are asleep, so we often order take out and pick up a movie from Redbox. It’s still cheaper than going out to dinner and a movie and hiring a baby sitter, but $30-$40 dinners a few nights each week add up! (This week we did steaks from Texas Roadhouse.)  And one night I fully intended to make dinner after getting home from an appointment, but when we got home the spaghetti sauce I had taken out to defrost was still frozen solid, so we ordered pizza instead. That was just me being lazy because I could have given everyone peanut butter sandwiches or something, but I didn’t want to.

We’ve been very fortunate lately with our finances and it is easy to get lazy and not worry about it, but I know that’s just irresponsible, plus I like saving money, so I’m making an effort to get back to a more frugal way of living, regardless of whether or not we *have* to.

 Food splurging aside, we actually did do a few things to save money recently. (And, P.S. when I went to the grocery store today, the total was finally back under $100. I need to take my own advice and get back into the meal planning). 

For Nick’s birthday, he said he wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese. Instead of having a huge party with his entire class, we just drove our little family of 5 there last Friday and got a family meal deal. The kids had a blast and Nicholas got exactly what he wanted. When I asked him what his favorite part of the day was he spread out his hands and said, “The whole thing!”

Also in the name of frugality, Eddie cut Nick’s hair and I learned that if you send two boys into the bathroom with the clippers, one of them is going to come out with a mohawk. [Read more…]