The Ick, a Raise and a Vacay

I came down with the ick today, feeling much like Andrea described in her post last week. It meant a day on the couch for me resting with good old Arthur the Faithful Chihuahua and consuming as many Slo-Melt popsicles as humanly possible in an attempt to quelch my burning throat. I'm pretty sure it is just a cold as Jonathan had one this weekend but it is definitely no fun regardless. There is always something about having a cold in the middle of the summer that just seems not right!

But on to happier news. Just recently, my boss came into my office and asked me to tell him my annual salary. I did and and he left my office. About thirty seconds later, he returned and told me that he was really happy with the work I've been doing, taking on extra responsibility and all that jazz, summing up the whole thing with a raise. It is actually a decent raise, too, and I am pretty pumped about it since I always love more money and it was fun since it happened randomly.

Happily, one of the things this raise means is VACATION. That's right, folks, in just over a week, we will be heading to the Outer Banks for a week of fun in the sun. And hopefully no hurricanes or the gazillion frogs that accompanied us on vacation last year. The opportunity just fell into our laps and we were fortunate to be able to take advantage of it. I am SO looking forward to seeing Jonathan on the beach! As I have been lax on my picture taking for the last week due to being in Nashville (which was awesome, by the way) and then being sick, this is the perfect opportunity for me to post a pic or two of our vacation last year, pre-blog:



We have our own pool this year rather than having to drag all of our stuff to the community pool, so I hope for more photo ops like this one...



...and less rain so we will have less of this:



And, since I have not posted for a while, some random thoughts:

Last week while in Nashville, I found the absolute cutest boots for Jonathan. As he will not hold still long enough while wearing them for me to get a picture of them actually on his feet, this is what they look like. I wanted to buy him "real" boots, but I just couldn't see spending $70.00 on them. Besides, Jonathan is a Toddler Size 6 at best and I'm not sure they make the real deal quite that small.

While I was home sick today, I was watching the news and saw a story about a mother in Indiana reunited with her 15 month old daughter. As you would imagine, there was a lot of crying and God-thanking but then the newscaster cut in with the story, explaining that the toddler was locked in a vacant building and this happened because the mother and father do not live together and were confused. Huh? Was that really supposed to make sense? You can read the story here.

Kimberly completely inspired me to get onboard with the Halloween costume decision making and I think Jonathan is going to be Elmo. Jonathan, in addition to his love of Thomas and a renewed adoration of The Wiggles, has developed feelings for the somewhat irritating red furry Sesame Street character. As I feel very strongly that he would LOVE to dress up like Elmo rather than wearing one of the really cute costumes I was eying at Gymboree (he was a skeleton last year, just like they have this year), I think I'm just going to go with it. I really like this costume, but I think I will go with this one since it is not as expensive and, more importantly, because I suspect my child may catch on fire if he were to wear the full body version. I'm hoping to find one on E-bay!