day twenty-six

day twenty-six {who do you admire}

i really admire people who do hard things in life. people who have hard trials, people who go out of their way to do something extraordinary, people who go outside their comfort zone, people who don't always get the easy road, people who are positive no matter what. i feel like many of us, myself totally included, have life way easier than we think we do. i think my life is so so hard or that i can't make it through next week, or i tell myself i'll be happy when..., but there are people out there who choose to be happy and have hard lives, people who choose to see the good in even the worst of situations. people i admire are those who have been examples to me and are people i would like to emulate.

day twenty-five

day twenty-five {a favorite photo}

i'm pretty sure that every picture of my kiddo is my favorite, and i'm also pretty sure i just spent an hour looking through photos and i've determined i need to cut my hair short again, have another baby and go on vacation.

day twenty-four

day twenty-four {about your childhood}

whew, i've kind of fell off the wagon. but i'm determined to finish this thingy so here goes:

my childhood is filled with fun memories. like the winter it finally snowed enough for us to build a snowman. like the times we would jam to my parents top gun and dirty dancing records while jumping from couch to couch in our living room. like the hours my sisters and i spent out in the blue and white playhouse my dad and grandpa built for us. like the summer we filled up our pool for the first time, even though the water was 60 degrees we swam in it anyways. there were fun trips camping in the mountains of colorado, utah, idaho and new mexico. there were vacations to disneyland, lake powell and grandmas house. there were super cool birthday parties (like the time my parents threw me a surprise birthday party and we played bunco all night long) and memorable holidays (like the christmas we got a handmade barbie mansion). my parents wanted us to experience life to the fullest and i'm so grateful for that. they made us do hard things we didn't want to do, like learn to ride a bike or try to get up on waterskis, that we now thoroughly enjoy. all in all, i'm pretty lucky. i had parents who loved me and little sisters who let me beat up on them, it was a grand time, my childhood.

day twenty-three

day twenty-three {something you never tire of doing}

let's be honest here people.... i love to eat. when i'm not eating i'm thinking about it. i love good food. i was visiting my parents a couple months ago and made myself a quesadilla for lunch one day. (my parents can get the best tortillas down there) anyway, i was enjoying my quesadilla with some guacamole, salsa and sour cream, because, hey, i don't mess around with my food. as i'm enjoying my lunch, my dad starts laughing at me. when i asked him what was so funny he said he'd been watching me eat and thought it was so funny to see how i was enjoying my food. wow. fat girl right here! when i was pregnant with stockton my dad got a picture of me practically making out with a bowl of ice cream at a jazz game. yikes! although i do love to eat, it has to be good food. so yes, as long as it's delicious, i am never tired of eating, even if i'm stuffed to the rafters.

day twenty-two

day twenty-one {your current relationship}

though medical school is not over yet, we can see the silver lining and i'm happy to say that my current relationship with the hubs seems to have weathered the worst of it. we've been through a lot in the short and fast almost 5 years we've been married. we've had MCAT drama, infertility, three moves, STEP 1 drama, stressful rotation schedules, deaths, marriages, a new baby, applications.... and the list goes on. i'm grateful that i have had a great guy by my side to support me in all i do, and that i can hopefully be a support for him. our marriage isn't perfect, we obviously have our ups and downs like everyone, but through it all i can honestly say that i'm glad he's the one i landed and that we get to work at our relationship every day to try and make it better.

day twenty-one

day twenty-one {your fears}

spiders

talking on the phone

our house burning down

getting caught in an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, tsunami

losing the ones i love

day twenty

day twenty {a hobby of yours}

i would have to say that i have three hobbies that i could occupy my time:

cooking

exercising

crafting {sewing, making jewelry, paper crafting, etc}

day nineteen

day nineteen {a favorite memory}

for christmas last year i remember wanting so badly to have my baby here and be at home as a new little family of three. as the days to christmas grew less and less, i started to worry and stress that christmas would be terrible and that we would be spending it in the hospital or worse, at home, away from family, and baby-less. at my last appointment the doctor gave us the choice of scheduling an induction date two days before christmas. i went back and forth on the idea. if everything went smoothly, we could be home for christmas. but if something went wrong and i had to have a c-section, we would be spending christmas and then some in the hospital. finally we decided that it would be best to try and get that baby here. i was extremely uncomfortable and from what the doctor could tell, my body and the baby were ready.

flash through the delivery.... it's christmas eve morning and the doctor and nurses are telling me that stockton and i are doing well and that we can plan to be headed home in the afternoon. i was beyond elated. at 4pm on christmas eve we loaded the baby into the car to head back home and enjoy christmas together. we didn't have a fancy homecooked dinner (but our friends the stringhams were so wonderful and brought us cafe rio on their way to their family christmas eve dinner). we snuggled with our brand new baby and watched the christmas story on TV while our christmas tree lights twinkled in the corner of the room. the baby slept so well that first night, i think he only woke up once. christmas morning was perfect. it was just the three of us and it took us almost all day to open our presents because we were so enamored with our new little guy. it was the best. when i opened my present from chris i just broke down in tears. he was worried something was wrong. but i was just completely overwhelmed with happiness. it was the first time i can ever remember feeling so happy.

when we first found out we were getting a baby in december i was a little bit bummed. but it turned out to be the best christmas ever.

day eighteen

day eighteen {what you like best about each person in your family}

i'm assuming these family posts apply to my little family, the one where i'm the mom, and not my family as in the one where i'm the daughter.

CHRIS: the hubs is great at so many things, so it's hard for me to nail down just one, but since i'm supposed to in this post, i would have to say that i love watching him be a dad the most. he is naturally such a kind and caring person and he's genuinely concerned about people in general(that's one of the things that drew me to him when we first met), but watching him with stockton is so sweet. i have never doubted that chris cares for me and i surely see it in every move he makes around our son.

STOCKTON: the little man is such a good baby. he hardly ever cries or whines and when he does it's usually warranted, like he's starving or needs to be laid down in his bed. he is very easily entertained and usually does a great job at keeping himself happy. i love his infectious laugh and his adorable smile and i also think his 'do is pretty sweet.

day seventeen

day seventeen {a picture of your family}

swimming at my parents pool in albuquerque

newborn shoot with a photographer

day sixteen

day sixteen {your favorite food}

chicken tikka masala... w/naan

green chile cheese enchiladas...w/a fried egg on top (don't knock it til you try it. best. thing. ever.)

warm fresh baked bread...w/butter and honey and a glass of milk

day fifteen

day fifteen {your celebrity crush}

i would have to say that mark wahlberg is my celebrity crush. i generally like the characters he plays in movies, and he's not too bad to look at either.

day fourteen

a sad attempt at a family photo in the mountains

my boys @ doughnut falls

stockton and me feeding the super aggressive geese @ sugarhouse park

day fourteen {things you love and can't live without}

::agua, water, the wet stuff. i can't get enough. i have always been a water hog, but add nursing to the mix? forget about it. i drink tons and tons

::sleep. obviously we all need sleep, but i literally cannot function without it. there were a few weeks/months where stockton was waking up every 1-2 hours during the night. i was a zombie! before the baby i totally slept for 8-10 hrs every night. is it terrible that i want to go to bed at 7 when we put stockton down so i can have more than 6 hrs of uninterrupted sleep? yes i know. yikes.

::fresh fruits and vegetables. there is nothing like fresh strawberries in the spring, peaches in the fall, tomatoes right off the vine, corn on the cob, zucchini and fresh peas...yummy.

::washer/dryer, wait let me clarify, my washer and dryer (as in one no one else uses). in college while living at liberty square, which is coincidentally where chris and i met, i always washed my clothes in the laundry facility. i didn't have a car to drive up to my grandma's house on a regular basis and it's just what everyone did. well lets just say that someone else's unmentionables ended up with my clean clothes and i literally felt gross for weeks. it's stupid i know, but from then on, anywhere i lived it was essential to have one in the apartment. i'm spoiled i guess.

::tivo/dvr. i really don't know how we ever watched TV without this little contraption. what a novel concept, record a bunch of shows to watch later! it's completely awesome, mostly because the only shows chris and i can agree on (seinfeld and now modern family, which, on a side note is COMPLETELY HILARIOUS!) i really enjoy watching project runway, survivor and biggest loser (yes, i'm a complete reality TV junkie) and since those come one when chris is home at night, i just record them to watch when he's not around. perfect marriage saver, we never have to fight about TV!

::time together as a family. we went hiking thursday night after chris got off "work" and it was so nice. we have really played a lot this summer and it has been so fun to be able to go and do things together as a family and expose stockton to what we enjoy.

::sweets. this my friends is why i have to run and exercise. to feed my crazy sweet tooth. i usually always end up feeling crummy after eating too much good sweet food, but i. just. can't. stop! i love cupcakes, ice cream, brownies, cookies, pie, you name it i will eat it, by the bowlful.

day thirteen

day thirteen {something you want to buy}

i have been really wanting to re-do my bedroom decor, but i go back and forth between wanting lots of color and wanting no color (i.e. whites and grays with a little aqua).... so here are two lovely bedroom set

s, completely opposite of each other, that embody what i want. both from here

the price point on these is a teensy bit out of my budget. so i'm hoping to save up the money to maybe be able to get one of these pretties when we move next summer.

day twelve

day twelve {something you purchased recently}

i bought some eyeliner at sephora today, one in plum and the other in copper. i thought it was a great deal ($5 for each). i've been wanting to try the colored eyeliner trend but have been too much of a chicken. i randomly saw a gal at the grocery store with blue liner the other day and i thought it looked really cool. so here goes, i guess. i also purchased a birthday present for chris, but since he looks at this blog every day, i can't really show and tell what i bought him.

day eleven

day eleven {nicknames you have & why}

stace

staci lacy

stacer lacer

jonesy

fred

stabi

i go by stace most of the time, family, friends and people i've been around a lot call me stace

my mom always called me staci lacy, she's really the only one who calls me this and i don't really know where it originated. occasionally my dad will call me stacer lacer

in high school i went by jonesy (jones was my maiden name) in sports and most of my guy friends called me jonesy.

growing up my dad always had a hard time with four girl names in sequence, so he just called us all fred. he still calls us fred, though he has lately come up with clever adjectives describing us... for example i'm "mama fred" because i'm the only one of his daughters who's a mama. but any of us girls will respond to fred. he's the only one who can get away with calling me fred.

maren, you may have to correct me on this one--back in the days of predictive text on phones my name always came up as "stabi" instead of staci. one night we were over at the sundahl's house (our good friends from orem) and mike kept calling me stabi because he'd received a text from maren asking if chris and stabi could come over for dinner. it totally stuck. chris calls me this all the time and most of my sister-in-laws call me stabi too. so thanks mike, for that one!

day ten

day ten {a photo of yourself taken over 10 years ago}

i did a 50th anniversary photo book for my grandparents last year, so luckily i had tons of oldies to sift through. i like this one because it shows one of the things i loved doing as a little kid. my dad's parents have a farm, they don't run it anymore, but growing up they always had horses or someone else had horses on their property. we always got to ride them around the yard and up and down the fields and it was something i really enjoyed. this is such a funny picture because you can totally tell i'm freaked out of my mind that this animal with giant teeth is eating from my hand, but i love it at the same time. i'm that way about a lot of things. i hate the idea of it, but once i'm doing it, actually like it.

day nine

day nine {pet peeves}

i wish i could say i have no pet peeves, but that would be a lie. i would consider myself a fairly easy going person. i'm easy to please and there aren't too many things that bother or annoy me. that being said, my top pet peeve would have to be a lack of sincerity among people. i absolutely HATE when people are not sincere and genuine in their interactions with each other. why even bother being nice? or acting interested? or interacting with other people at all? there is nothing worse than walking away from a conversation and thinking to yourself that you might as well have been talking to a brick wall. don't ask me questions and pretend to be interested when you could care less. this probably sounds super harsh and rude, but the fact of the matter is is that we are busy people, all of us in this world. if i am going to invest time in a relationship with someone, i mean like a real honest to goodness relationship, i have got to be willing to be invested in them, and genuinely interested in their life. and you hope, that by the same token, they are invested and genuinely interested in your life as well.

ok, whew, enough soap box.

other minute pet peeves:

>open mouth chewers

>nose pickers

>interrupters

>one-uppers

>inconsiderate smokers

day eight

day eight {things you'd like to do before you die}

well there's probably about a thousand things i'd like to do before i die, but that is not what i'm about to do. here are some things i know i'd be amiss if i didn't mention:

1--grow old with the hubs by my side

2--watch my kid (hopefully kids) grow up

3--buy a home

4--see the world

5--learn another language

6--create lots of fun memories

7--make others happy

day seven

day seven {things that make you happy}

the two things that make me the most happy are the boys. the hubs and mr stockton man. they make my life meaningful and fun. i am lucky to have them both. i love when stockton looks right in my face and then grabs me to pull himself closer, and i love holding hands with chris when we walk places.

other things that make me happy are, in no particular order: a good run, water skiing on glassy smooth water, ice cream in any form but especially milkshakes (i just finished a pineapple malt that was to-die-for), the smell of a clean house, jumping into a cold bed with fresh sheets, being surrounded by friends, browsing anthropologie, good hair days (few and far between), and sleeping in (this never happens anymore, boo).