a couple weeks in iphone photos

why do i keep doing this to myself? i seriously just spent way too long going through all my iphone pictures. i need to do this every week, not every other week. if you follow me on instagram (my username is melissajenkins) you've already seen all these but hey, they are just as good the second time around. highlights include jc coming out of his teething/being sick all day everyday funk, a girl's night out with my mama, valentine's day, and jc's first sleepover with his bff damian. so much fun! and now i'm going to enjoy some more oscar's preshow before jc wakes up from his nap. have a good rest of your weekend!

linking up with a good life and life rearranged.

our love story, part two

photo by Stina Reffit Photography

so here we are for part two! you can catch part one here in case ya missed it. oh and you'll want to see the awesomesauce picture of charles and i before our FRESHMAN homecoming dance. it's all kinds of embarrassing.

again, this is from our wedding website so the tone is a little different than i normally like to keep it over here. hope you enjoy part two!

High school came and went. We moved into together the spring after we graduated, in March 2005. We lived in a tiny one bedroom duplex in a shady neighborhood. But it was amazing, because it was our place. Our first place together. We had always talked about how awesome it would be to be "grown ups" and live together. To go to sleep and wake up in the same place. And we finally had it.

We lived in that house for a couple years until we met one-third of the super friends, Garrett and Jessica. Within a couple months of knowing each other, we promptly decided that we needed to become roommates and move in together. And so it was. We moved into a four bedroom home with our new best friends. There were a lot of good times in that house. We like to refer to it as our "college years" even though only one of us was actively enrolled in school. But you get the idea.

um, yes i am lil jon. best halloween evar btw.

After living there for a couple more years, we decided it was once again time to move on our own. We moved into the house that Charles had lived in since he was three years old. This was the house that we would start to build our family. We just didn't know that part yet.

After a year of just hanging around, without much direction in our lives except working our nine to fives, the biggest change to our lives happened. On November 9th, 2009 we found out we were pregnant.

It wasn't part of our "plan" but sometimes life doesn't follow your plan. We knew this was supposed to happen ths way. This was for a reason. We were beyond excited to welcome a new member to our little family.

A couple months before we were expecting our new addition, we went on a babymoon, or one last trip before the baby comes. We traveled by car (Charles's '91 BMW, of course) north Interstate 5 through Northern California, Oregon, Washington and up to Vancouver, British Columbia and then back down the coast. One of our first stops was to Crater Lake. We had been told by many that it was worth the trip and they were right. It was breathtakingly beautiful. 

It was May 1st, 2010. There was several feet of snow atop this mountain with a lake in the middle of it. We were dressed for summer weather. After getting in a fight because Charles wanted to trek a little further in the snow and Melissa getting mad because "I'm 30 weeks pregnant! I'm not going to hike around in the snow!", Charles managed to talk Melissa into going a little further away from the rest of the tourists. That is where Charles got on one knee and proposed. In the snow with Crater Lake as the backdrop. The words he said are not remembered because of the anxiety going through Charles's brain and Melissa's absolute shock but they were special. And life changing.

On June 1st, 2010 a month to the date of our engagement, we welcomed John Charles the Third. He has made our lives whole. He fits so perfectly in our family and we are so thankful everyday that he is here.

our love story, part one

photo by Stina Reffitt Photography

being on the high of valentine's day over here, i decided now was as good a time as ever to share charles's and mine's love story. is that correct grammar? charles's and mine's? it doesn't sound like it. anyway, i needed to write it for our wedding website so i figured i might as well share it here too since i haven't divulged too much of that information yet. i'm pretty much just copying and pasting it over here so i apologize because the tone is a little different than i normally write. and it has a weird tense, i use "we" but also refer to myself as "Melissa". so yeah. it's kinda long so i'm going to break it up into two parts. check back tomorrow for part two!

Our story begins almost twelve years ago when two kids went to their first day of high school. Melissa had just moved to a new town, to a new school and was incredibly nervous. She didn't know anyone. Charles was going to a school where he would know the vast majority of the students because he had been going to school with them since he was in kindergarten. Our first class on the first day of high school was Computer Technology with Ms. Decoup-Lantay.

Melissa had arrived to class early and had been anxiously awaiting for the bell to ring. Charles wandered in, skateboard in hand, seconds before class had officially begun. Because of his late arrival, there was only a couple seats left. One was next to Melissa. And without hesitation, he swooped right in and sat down.

As prepared as Melissa was, mysteriously, she forgot to pack a pen with her for the first day of school. She asked Charles if he had a pen she could borrow. Lucky for Charles, he found the one pen in his backpack that he had swiped out of the telephone drawer that morning that hadn't been chewed on by his sisters. And the conversation began.

The next couple months were hard, as most young love can be. Of course, Charles had a girlfriend already. With his charismatic ways, who could resist? This kept our relationship platonic but it was only obvious to anyone within a five foot range that we were totally into each other. We talked on the phone everyday, exchanged emails, instant messaged, couldn't get enough of each other. But with respect to his relationship, we kept it at that. Charles even tried to set Melissa up with several of his friends. Later, he admitted to doing so to keep her close. But it was no use, the feelings were still there.

The fall was approaching and so was the fall homecoming dance. And the news came. Charles was now single. How convienient. With that, Charles asked Melissa to be his date to the dance. And before the dance even happened, we officially became a couple on October 19, 2000, the day before Melissa turned 15.

keep it real melissa has to cut in here because O.M.G. you guys. really. we are 14 in this picture. my hair is all sorts of awesome, i weigh like 100 pounds and i'm wearing an illusion necklace. i know you had one too.

We were children. We realize that now. But somehow, with our immature minds and lack of experience, we knew that we had something special. Enough that even through all the drama that can happen in high school, we managed to avoid it. We knew we had to hold onto each other. 

jc at twenty months

check out previous monthly posts here

so cue the mommy guilt but i totally skipped out on jc's nineteen month post. i don't know what happened but before i knew it, it was the end of january and his twenty month birthday was like five days away. so i told myself that i would make it a priority to do his twenty month post right away, on time even, but then that didn't happen either. so here we are, nine days after his twenty month birthday. so jc, if you ever read this, mommy loved you just as much during your nineteenth month of life as ever.

sorry for the lame iphone picture but this has been what is holding up this post. jc is still sick and now i'm sick so an iphone picture is what we are going to have to work with!

speaking of being sick, it has been a pretty rough couple of weeks around these parts. jc had a low fever for a few days with no other symptoms but he was MISERABLE. he finally got over it for a couple days and then BAM he got a cold. so we've been nursing this cold for the past few days and it finally seems like we are on the other side of the hill. but now i'm sick so we're a bunch of mouth breathers over here. you think that having your kid at home and not in daycare will help keep them healthy but i swear someone sneezes across the aisle at target and jc is sick.

minus the sickness, jc has been turning into the most rambunctious little toddler. i really can't believe that he will be two in less than four months. it is boggling my mind. he loves to get into everything and is constantly doing something. he's been doing so much better with the other little boy that i watch twice a week. they are doing a very good job of sharing (germs especially) and respecting each other's space which is so much more than you can ask for with a 20 month old and a 14 month old. there is still the occasional fight over a toy but for the most part, they play very well together.

one big leap we've experienced is jc's use of the word "no". while this can be a very frustrating time with him saying "no" to EVERYTHING but it actually helps when i offer him choices, especially at meal times. lately it's been horrible because apparently sick jc simultaneously wants nothing and everything. but under normal circumstances, this word can be very useful. i'm still waiting for this "burst of language" that's supposed to happen around this time. i know it will help a lot with jc's frustrations if he can actually tell me what he wants. it will help with my frustrations too.

right now jc likes garbage trucks, dogs (cats are still his favorite though), pretending to crash his matchbox cars together and trying to put on mommy and daddy's shoes. his favorite books right now are the very hungry caterpillar and a yo gabba gabba book called "it's nice to be nice". his favorite foods are yogurt, cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, fruit snacks and crackers. sleep schedule is still the same, one nap in the middle of the day that lasts about 2-3 hours. we still only have eight teeth. no canines or molars. i was actually really hoping that these illnesses were signs of teething but no such luck. i've been risking my poor fingers everyday checking to see if there's any new chompers in there with no avail.

i saw this idea over at suzanne's blog so i'm going to copy it because that's how i roll. sometimes i feel stuck trying to write about new things jc is doing every month because i forget about all the little things. i'm going to compare jc to the twenty month milestones even though he was almost two months premature. so here are some twenty month milestones according to babycenter and how jc is stacking up:

mastered skills (most kids can do)

Feeds doll - jc LOVES to feed his teddy bear and other lucky stuffed animals

Takes off own clothes - he can take his zipped up jacket off and his socks off. and his pants have magically been off a couple times after his nap.

Dumps an object in imitation, such as throwing garbage away - he likes to put garbage in the garbage can, if that's what this means. i even gave him an empty fruit snack box to play with the other day and he took it straight to the recycling can. al gore would be so proud.

emerging skills (half of kids can do)

Learns words at a rate of ten or more a day - when it comes to understanding them, this is probably true but saying them out loud? definitely not.

Can walk up stairs (but probably not down) - he walked (not crawled) up one step at our friend's house the other day all by himself. stairS, i'm not so sure.

advanced skills (a few kids can do)

May start exploring genitals - bahahahahaha i guess you could say jc is baby genius in this area heh

Draws a straight line - not on purpose

Names several body parts - he can say "nose" but cannot say any other words that identify body parts. but if you ask him he can point to his hair, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, arm, elbow, hand, fingers, belly, booty, weiner (we are real scientific over here), thighs, legs, knee, foot and toes.

i got my eyelashes permed!!

dudes. DUDES. i need to tell you about something that has changed my life. and it involves my eyelashes. i got them PERMED.

now i know you're probably like "you got your who what'ed??" because that's what i thought when i googled this randomly one night. first, let me tell you the sad story of a girl with straight as an arrow eyelashes.




these were my eyelashes with no mascara or curling whatsoever.

i know this is going to sound crazy but my eyelashes have been a point of contention every morning when i get ready. i have relatively long eyelashes, i've been told, but they are super duper straight. and they resist any curling whatsoever. i have used the super expensive eyelash curlers that "every makeup artist uses" and the super cheap eyelash curlers you can buy at walgreen's. they would help my eyelashes hold a curl for maybe two minutes. then they would proceed to head south. mascara would help but only very little. it was sad for my little eyelashes.

but then, i got them permed.




these are my eyelashes NOW with no mascara or using an eyelash curler.

i have pretty much thrown my eyelash curler out. i haven't had to use it all since i got this done and it has seriously changed my life. i am SO happy with the results.

so if you are like me and this sounds like the most amazeballs thing ever, let me give you the deets.

first of all, i had a hard time finding someone in my area that does this. i ended up finding a lady who does this and only this out of her mom's permanent makeup salon. i was a little hesitant having someone put chemicals right next to my eyeballs but she explained the process and said she had been doing it for several years. i guess you can buy a kit to do it yourself, but obviously you would need a friend to help because your eyes have to be closed for most of the process.

she had me lay down and applied these little squishy rods that had adhesive to them to my upper eyelashes. this makes your eyelashes automatically stick to this rod and take the shape of the rod. we didn't do anything to my lower lashes so she applied this special tape to cover them up. then she applied the stinky solution (if you've ever had your hair permed or chemically straightened, this smell will be familiar to you) to my eyelashes and i had to sit there with my eyes closed for about fifteen minutes. then she applied a second solution and i had to wait another fifteen minutes. then, bada bing bada boom, you've got curly eyelashes! it's as simple as that. i had to not get my eyelashes wet until the next day but that was the only aftercare i had to adhere to. you can use whatever mascara you want.

the only thing that kinda sucks about it is the cost. i paid about $45 ($55 with tip) to have this done and it is only expected to last about 4-6 weeks. now, for someone who can't justify a weekly or even monthly pedicure/manicure trip, this is hard for me to imagine doing every month. but i honestly can't imagine going back. this is just one of those things that makes me feel instantly prettier. i could have no other makeup on, just woke up and it brings my happiness level up a notch. i think that could be worth about fifty bucks a month.

i'll let you guys know how it holds up. i'm only one week in but they still look as good as day one!

iphone photo dump

i apologize for the photo dump that is about to follow. i really need to start doing this every week becaaaaause, it's a lotta pictures.

i will tell you what, i feel like i gained ten pounds just organizing this pictures because my couch is pictured in about 90% of these photos. i have been LAZY! it didn't help that jc was sick for about a week and i was literally trapped under him on the couch for most of the time on those days. but even right now i'm feeling antsy like i need to get out from under this laptop and go do something. so here's our photos from the last couple weeks via my iphone.























i'll be linking up with a good life and life rearranged.