i love you ten

Every statistic that you throw at me is gonna be about other people. I don't care about other people, okay? I care about you and me. If every marriage failed except for one, I guarantee you that one would be ours" - Corey Matthews

I'm lucky that my husband still remembers our first anniversary. Every year we celebrate this special day in addition to celebrating our wedding anniversary. I honestly, think we still celebrate this day because it's the day that changed our lives. 

*Que all of the embarrassing high school pictures of us dating. *

October 5th, 2005 was the day that I was asked out in front of the vending machines in the common area of our high school at 3:15 pm right before cheer leading practice.  All I could utter was "Aweeee" after he asked me.  We talked about getting married and having a family when we grew up. We never let go of each other... no matter how hard it was to stay together because life was taking us in two different directions.  

  He was the boy that was different from all of the other boys our school.  He had something about him that I chased after for years and still does.  He's pushed me to be a better person. He's made me reach for my dreams even if I'm sure I'll fail. He amazes me every day. He's got the biggest heart in the world. He’s the man I’ve always dreamed of being with. And he's given me the most beautiful little girl, I could have asked for. I'm still not sure that even after all of these years why he puts up with my crazy, OCD ass. I'm still not sure why he loves me as much as he does. And I'm still not sure why he saw me when everyone else thought I was invincible...

My heart still skips a beat when he says my name and I still can’t get over that I am Mrs. Wells. There's no one else I would rather grow old with; I look forward to spending forever with you... Here's to a decade together.

Featured on Blogher | Challenge: Praise Your Sweetie for A Month Via Texts!

As many of you know alongside my personal blog, I also blog with a great community of local moms here in Reno. RENOMOMSBLOG creates a great community of mothers in Northern Nevada that are dedicated to their families. I recently wrote a blog about the little texts that I’ve sent Waymon during our time apart to keep the love alive and spice things up a bit with us. This article has also been featured on Blogher.com in the Love & Sex section on the homepage of the website.  My second feature for Blogher feels just as amazing as the first. You can check out the feature here!

Thank you all for your support on Blogher, Facebook, Instagram and on here! Your shares, likes and comments allow me to love what I do so much more. Please check out the original link here to view the article.

For more of my blog please check out my feed on BLOGLOVIN & BLOGHER!

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday, June 24th was our 2nd wedding anniversary, but because our lives have changed a lot.  We decided to keep things low key this year and fit in our anniversary celebrations throughout the week:) So here is for my wonderful husband. 

 Happy Anniversary to my best friend.

  These two years of being your wife have been the craziest and best years thus far. 

 I don't tell you enough of how much I appreciate everything you do for Haidyn and myself.

There's nothing I love more than being your wife and the mother to our child. 

  It seems like just yesterday we were getting engaged and planning our small wedding.

You will always be the one thing I did right in my life. 

I love you so much. 

"Man-Cakes" Bacon Pancakes

I LOVE LOVE LOVE bacon and so does my husband. So I decided that instead of having a boring breakfast during the week he could have premade bacon pancakes! You heard me right. The definition of a “man-cake”.

Ingredients:

-instant pancake mix

-1/2 package of cooked bacon

Directions:

1.     Place pan on stove and turn your stove on to medium high heat

2.     Mix pancakes ingredients as directed on the box ( you should just add water )

3.     Ladle down your pancake mix onto your pan and place cooked bacon on top

4.     Flip pancake when it starts to bubble on the edges

5.     Take pancakes off of pan when done!

6.     Devour man-cakes with syrupJ

end product!

Waymon's 23rd Birthday Cake- Chocolate Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting & Cookies n Creme Cookies!

             I love making my husband his birthday cakes. He doesn't want much for his birthday, ever. So I figured if I bake him a cake he'd have a little something special for his day. He loves the simple things in food. He loves cookies and cream, but isn't a huge fan over sweets. He's more of a savory type of guy.  I was inspired by pinterest to create a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting surrounded by cookies and cream cookies. The cake I saw on pinterest was a cookie dough cake with chocolate chip cookies surrounding the cake. It was so beautiful, but I didn't want to die of a heart attack making it/eating it.  So I came up with this little beauty right here. It was the first time I've ever made a layered cake and it was so easy that I didn't know why I was scared to make it in the first place. The cake was sweet, but not overly sweet. It was perfect.... especially because he actually enjoyed his cake. 

birthday boy :) 

Chocolate Layer Cake from Hershey's

Ingredients:

·         1 & 3/4 cups flour

·         2 cups sugar

·         3/4 cup cocoa powder

·         1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

·         1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         2 eggs

·         1 cup milk

·         1/2 cup vegetable oil

·         2 teaspoons vanilla

·         1 cup boiling water

Directions:

1. Bake cookies from the box. J Pretty self explanatory there.

 2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Coat three 8-inch cake pans with nonstick spray. Line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper. Spray each pan again and coat with a thin layer of flour.

3. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix until everything is thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the boiling water; the batter will be very thin.

4. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of each layer comes out clean. Cool the layers in the pans for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Wrap each layer in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Make the cream cheese filling and chocolate butter cream (see recipes below). When you're ready to assemble the cake, remove the layers from the refrigerator. If needed, level each layer with a serrated knife or cake leveler.

6.  Place the bottom layer on a cake plate. Evenly spread about ¼ to ½ a cup of the cream cheese filling over the cake, put more filling in the center of the cake. You want to do the latter so that when you put the next layer on the icing will be even. Top with the second layer and repeat. Finally, top with the third layer.

7. Take the rest of the frosting and change its color with food coloring. I chose red for Waymon’s favorite color. Frost the rest of the cake with this frosting. Not worrying too much of how perfect the sides of the cake are because you’ll cover it with the cookies afterwards.

8. Take the cookies you previously baked and place them around the cake.

9. Shave some chocolate over the cake for a nice effect. I wanted to put chocolate chips on top, but I didn’t want it too sweet.

Cream Cheese Frosting

·   1 cup cream cheese

·         3/4 cup butter

·         1/2 tablespoon vanilla

·         6 cups powdered sugar

1. Beat the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer at medium speed for about one minute.

2. Add the vanilla and beat one minute more.

3.  Reduce the mixing speed to low, and add the powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time.

4. Once the sugar is completely incorporated, beat at medium speed for about two minutes or until fluffy.

Week in Pictures: Christmas/Moving/23rd Birthday

Ahh!! There is so much I have to write about this week! WARNING LONG POST AHEAD!!  I've been stuck to my camera like white on rice this week. (Haha oh god ) Waymon got me a Canon Rebel for Christmas and I've been attached to it, attempting to take pictures of everything and anything. He wanted me to have something I could use for the blog so that I wouldn't have to use my phone all the time. I freaked out when I opened it. I couldn't believe I was getting a camera so nice!! BEST PRESENT EVER!! 

We opened our presents up early because of our move. I can't complain about that! 

     Waymon and I got news last week that we got the house we wanted and have been packing frantically ever since.. Bahahaha if only that were true. The reality of it is that we intended to pack during the week to avoid the mad rush of things to pack in the end, but we procrastinated and started getting our asses into gear the night before we needed to be all packed and ready to go. Packing was extremely difficult for me this time around since I hit my 6 month mark last week. I felt awful going so slow with everything, but Waymon reminded me that I AM pregnant and that he didn't mind if we needed to take our time on packing and moving.

     I completely disregarded what he told me and I still felt like a piece of S@#% not being able to pack my apartment up in 2 days like I did the last apartment move. It took me a week and a half to pack what I packed in 2 days post pregnancy.  It depressed me a bit, but hey whatever... We hired movers this time around so that we both wouldn't have to struggle up and down 3 flights of stairs during our move out.
       The move was emotional for me since we spent a lot of time trying to tidy the place up before we officially moved in Saturday. We would stay a couple hours at a time getting cozy at the house and then go back to our small apartment to sleep at night D: So sad! I didn't want to leave the house after being in it during the day. I love the energy the new house had. *Que in your rolling eyes here since this pregnant girl had drama queen emotions moving week* All of the emotion except for excitement subsided as we moved in Saturday. It's a mess, but it's our mess. I still can't believe that we fit all of our stuff into a 2 bedroom apartment. All of our things fill up our 3 bedroom, tri-level home just fine. Thank you to everyone that helped us move. It was greatly appreciated and needed!!

24 week bare belly

      Christmas was during our moving week and we spent Christmas Eve with Waymon's side of the family and Christmas night with my mom. Going to Wadsworth for the holidays is always fun. We get to exchange gifts amongst ourselves and get to see all of the kids run around playing with each other. Christmas Eve, I baked sugar and chocolate chip cookies for the kids at the house. ( I would bake fattening goodies as my first thing I make at the new house.)  I gave in to temptation and ate some anyways... SHH! Don't tell. :) We ate Chinese food with my in-laws as we talked about little Miss Wells and watched football. We admired Bonnie as she was roaming the Wells' household. We can't believe how happy and good she looks. She's so spoiled, but she deserves it!  We exchanged gifts and revealed baby Wells' name to her grandparents. The reaction they both had was amazing and I wish I could've recorded it to watch over and over again. That was a priceless Christmas gift.

     After our exchange we went to see the rest of the family. We walked into a joyful house full of kids wanting to give everyone a million hugs. Waymon brought in the cookies and the kid's eyes widened with excitment while the adults asked for Miss Wells' name. The energy of the room could fill your heart with so much joy that you didn't want to leave, but unfortunately shortly after arriving  we had to leave since it was getting late.
     Christmas night with my mom was laid back and much needed. We were over at the house again just organzing some of the stuff we had already moved over. She brought over our gifts and food (YAY! Mommy!). We sat on the staircase and floor while we ate our pancit. After eating we left the house to go to back to the apartment since we had to work the next day :( BOO!
     My birthday rolled around and it didn't feel like my birthday until Waymon picked me up in our kitchen to wish me a happy birthday before work that morning. I'm seriously so blessed to have a good man. I had to work that day, but everything was so laid back that it didn't matter. We went to sushi for dinner and I was hoping that there was an entree that Waymon could eat. He didn't want to eat any of the listed entrees and decided to do an AYCE with me. YAY! We tried weird sushi together for the first time and he actually enjoyed it. Spicy Tuna roll killed us ! *damn you siracha!* But I was overjoyed and surprised that he actually ate sushi with me. I probably won't have him eat sushi every again, but I'm glad he came with.


Sweetest man ever

 After sushi, Stacy delievered my birthday cake. It was the most delicious ice cream cake EVER. Chocolate Caramel Pecan Ice Cream Cake with Vanilla Whipped Frosting!!!! (Are you drooling? You should be)  I've always wanted an ice cream cake for my birthday and I finally got one at 23. :) I can't complain. Thank God my best friend can bake and make my eating wishes come true!