Random Post: Invincible

Sometimes, I imagine that I'm invincible. That I could jump off any building, punch through any wall and fend off a legion of super villains to save the world from mortal peril.

But, mostly so I won't have to get a shot again. I hate needles.

August 2008 Summary

Well another month has gone by and I'm wondering where it's gone and what we've done! I should be writing this stuff down as I go instead of thinking back on it...In no particular order here's what I can remember.

• Jere went to Boston for five days to learn about Silverlight.
• Dave & Doug turned 30 and we celebrated by having a surprise party that they figured out was going to happen.
• Jodie got engaged to Melodi.
• I met Melodi for the first time.
• I met Melodi for the second time.
• I bought my most favorite piece of furniture for $50 while running into Hobby Lobby to pick up a sketchbook for Jere...Thanks for going to school babe. Basically, you made me buy that hutch. ;)
• Bought running shoes as opposed to tennis shoes. Jere has had a pair before but that was several years ago.
• Jere started school and started staying up later than he would like on a consistent basis.
• I found out that another 10.25 people I know or know of are pregnant...There is seriously a baby boom still happening.
• Hung out with my friend Laura.
• I tried out for a position in the Nutcracker Ballet and probably flubbed it (unfortunately, I'm not joking, I'll find out September 17th)
• Made bread for the first time EVER, and totally messed it up.
• Made pretzels for the first time EVER and did okay.
• Made granola bars for the first EVER and did okay.
• Made Yogurt for the third or fourth time and did WELL.
• Made granola for the third or fourth time and did WELL.
• Started shopping at CVS & Walgreens again.
• I signed up a team to play Volleyball this fall in a Rec league.
• Hung out with Renae several times!
• Jere convinced Chris & Thomas to go to Washburn and although it caused turmoil for a few days, it's working out pretty well. Now he has lunch buddies once a week.
• Bought a "Bullet Blender" since our old one bit it a while ago. I love smoothies!
• My brother Jamie started his high school career as a freshman at Topeka West.
• I ran 26.8 miles. (as of 8/27)
• I walked 17 miles.
• I bought new Teva's.
• Jill, Rachel, Elena, Renae and Melodi came to eat dinner and hang out.
• Jeff & Ashlee's baby Ezra was born on 8/8/08! (I just love that)
• I discovered that running has helped my asthma. I don't think I've used my inhaler all month and I am breathing better than ever. Sweet!
• I went to Hutchinson for the first time that I can remember.
• My step-mom turned 62.
• We moved out of Scott & Lynn's and back into our own house.

This month we haven't seen our friends and family as much as we did last month but hopefully that will change as the fall draws near and welcomes us in it's cool embrace. (not that this summer has been hot by any means!) I am ready for fall and winter because it's my favorite time of year!

Back Home

Here are 10+ reasons to move out of your house for a couple of months and let someone else live in it.

1)You will realize that you have way more clothes and that you should be thankful for what you have. (Of course you can't take all your clothes with you in the first place in order for this to happen!)

2)They will come up with ideas that you never would have thought up. Like buying a homemade ice maker! I seriously just love this so much I can't even describe it.

3) They will leave flavor-ice in your freezer

4) Even better, they will leave whipped topping in your freezer.

5) They will leave an almost new bottle of dish soap in your kitchen. There is something about that, that is so nice.

6) You will remember that you have jewelery. (of course this means that you would have not taken much with you in the first place)

7) You will find a picture in your jewelery box that makes you think back to your senior prom.

8) You will appreciate a fresh lit candle that you forgot you owned.

9) They will leave mini packs of peanut m&m on your bed. Unfortunately, they will count on you eating those m&am when your husband is gone and you're up at 2am eating them!

10) You will come home to fresh sheets and a well made bed (this picture was after we slept in it...Rachelle's bed making skills are superb)

11) They will leave fresh flowers on your dining room table and even try to coordinate them with the colors in that room.

12) Last but definitely not least - They will leave you a little gift for...wait what did we do again?















It just worked out that our friends could live in our house while we were in Europe and after too. We wanted to live with our other friends anyway! I highly suggest this type of house swap and if you don't think it would work for you then maybe you really need to try it to loosen up! Don't call me crazy until you've done it.

Because You Want to Know...

My new favorite veggie is zucchini. It's "meaty" and looks like a cucumber but tastes way better. Except when I have cortizone on my fingers and I lick them after eating with my fingers.

July 2008 Summary

Here's a few things we did in July.

• Bought four new tires for our Jeep right after returning home.


• Watched "Wall-E" and fell asleep in the theater. Unfortunately, that wasn't the first time I have fallen asleep in a movie at a theater.


• We started back to work July 1st after our Europe trip.


• Celebrated July 4Th with family and church friends without a hitch.


• I bought an Ipod shuffle for myself to listen to at work and while running.


• Went to a reception for my step-sister and her hubby. They got married in San Fransisco and celebrated with all of us back home.
• Hung out several times with my sister Rachel and my friend Renae.
• Hung out with my friend Laura.


• Got to spend a little time with Jere's cousin Adam and his cute wife Allie.
• Visited the local farmers market several times on Saturdays.


• Went to the beautiful wedding of our friends Nick and Brittany.


• Played cards MANY times with friends. (Brian & Rachelle, Joe & Jessie, Dave & Rachel)


• Helped our friends, Josh and Christi move.


• Bought Jere an "Apple" laptop which also came with a free Ipod Touch. (for school)


• Participated in eating dinner at the day camp that our chapel held. Camp Enosh is happening again next year!


• Prayed for Katie Bloom.


• Celebrated my sister's birthday.
• Met Merikate's new puppy Adrianna and gave her our kennel to use since we have no puppies anymore.


• Watched "The Dark Night" in theaters. (Jere really wanted to see it on the big screen)


• Celebrated Jere's 26Th birthday in KC. We rented a hotel room at the Intercontinental, visited the Nelson Atkins Museum, ate dinner out and swam in the hotel pool.


• Went swimming with Scott, Lynn and the kiddies. It was my first ever time visiting Gage pool.


• Got my hair cut. (not short, just to trim stuff up)


• Went to a BBQ held for my friend Amanda. She was in town for a bit and it was awesome to see her and Austin. :)


• Relaxed and mentally prepared ourselves for this fall. Jere will be going back to school and taking 18 hours.

These aren't really in any order!

Being Home

Okay, we've been home for a week and two days and blogging has been the last thing on my mind!

While we were away, I found out that my dog Lady passed away. I was shocked and hurt and cried for several days before letting it go. She was 16 years old and the best dog I've ever had. In less than a year we had two dogs and lost both of them...

Here's what we've up to :)

Sunday (29th): My brother Jodie picked us up from the airport and took us to our house. We crashed and went to bed. It was fairly easy for me to fall asleep and wake up to Kansas time even though our normal time was seven hours ahead of Kansas when we were on our trip. Jere however had some issues. The night we got back, he finally fell asleep at 1am and then woke up at 4am! It's taken him a little longer to get used to our schedule again.

On the way home, my brother informs us that two tires on our Jeep had been slashed. Although this happened about 1-2 weeks before we came home, they wanted to wait to tell us and let us fix it. My brother had put two old tires on it to drive it to our house but it was just something we had to deal with. We weren't the only ones hit with the tire slashing, there were about 3 other cars that Jodie noticed in the neighborhood with slashed tires. It's just strange because my dad lives in a nice neighborhood.

Monday (30): Jere took the Jeep to get new tires. When he got there he found out that the back right wheel was stuck permanently. Another store in the same chain of the tire stores we use had cross threaded the bolts into the wheel with a mechanical screw gun. Thankfully, the store we visited gave us a free wheel and had to use a torch to cut the bolts and wheel off the Jeep. SOO we didn't have a car, but our siblings came and picked us up to hang out. Jere picked the Jeep up around 3pm and after paying $631, drove away.

I saw all my siblings that day and it was so nice. We hung around my sister Rachel's house and played ping pong. Later in the evening Jere and I went to dinner with my two sister's Ruth and Rachel, as well as Rachel's husband Brent and Ruth's boyfriend Caleb. After dinner we went to see "Wall-E" where Jere and I proceeded to fall asleep. The movie was showing at 9:15pm and to us that was 5am. We slept through the WHOLE movie. That was an expensive nap!

Tuesday (1): Back to work for us. We had dinner with some friends who kindly invited us over and moved our stuff over to Scott and Lynn's where we are staying till August or September.

I ran for the first time in years on this night and just about died. After running with my friend, we jumped in her pool and cooled off...it was soo nice!

Wednesday (2): Back to work again. Man, that was really weird just getting back into the swing of things. We went to prayer meeting in the evening and afterwards, Jere went to play tennis with some guys from the chapel. I went grocery shopping and bought an Ipod shuffle. I love using it at work and while running.

Thursday (3): I woke up at 6am and went running. Work. After work we went to dinner FOR THE SECOND TIME that week. Let me tell you that I know from experience how nice it is when you have hospitable friends. We laid around at their house for a few hours and then left to "get stuff done". Instead we went home and laid on the couch. I proceeded to fall asleep. It was 9pm. We woke at 12:37am and got into our bed. We chalk it up to just getting back from another country after a month of being gone.

Friday (4): It's the fourth of July! I ran/walked 2.5 miles with a friend in the morning and started the day off right.

That day was probably one of the best July 4th holidays I've ever had. I made the same cake I made last year (thanks to pdub) and met family and friends at my sister Rachel's house for a lunch get together. It was a great way to see everyone after getting home. My brother Jodie unveiled presents from his tour in Afghanistan and it was pretty hilarious. He brought his sisters and mom burka's. It was fun trying them on and laughing but I was loving the shoes he brought back for my step-mom. They were gold with curled toes. It was pretty funny. He brought my dad a hat that just sits on the top of his head and had rolled sides. It's brown. My brother Jamie got a little hat that sits on his head and it has sequins all over the place. Friday was kind of a last chance to see Jodie for a while party too...He lives in North Carolina right now on the Fort Bragg Army base.

After lunch, we watched my dad whup everyone in ping pong and that was an awesome sight. He is seriously SO good and we had no idea. By the time we left Rach's it was time to go to the next party :)

Our chapel always has fireworks, food and fellowship on the fourth of July. That night was just an amazing time of fellowship. I showed people pictures that are still on our camera and also the journal that I made while on our trip.

To top it off, we had a birthday party. Miles had been born a year before and although he didn't like the idea of eating his cake in front of everyone, he enjoyed a slice when everyone stopped looking at him :)

Saturday (5): I stayed in my pj's all day. We hung out with various people who came by to visit a guy named Jay who was visiting the Degroff's. Since we live with them right now, we get to enjoy all the company they always have around them :)

Jere and I went to my dad's house in the afternoon to say goodbye to my brother who was planning to drive through the night to make it back to the army base on Sunday.

Jere went to play tennis with friends again in the evening and I stayed home and vegged! Lynn and I decided to go pick up Rachelle (who's hubby Brian was playing with my hubby). So we went back to Lynn's and looked through over 1,000 wedding pictures of Brian & Rachelle's wedding. It was so much fun. I like weddings. Once Jere and Brian got back to the house, the four of us went to sonic and got ice cream. I got a caramel Java chiller and if you haven't tried that, you need to. It's amazing. After staying at sonic for an hour, we went home and fell into bed around 12:30am.

Sunday (6): We went to chapel and it was like a breath of fresh air :) After chapel, we went to Brian and Rachelle's for lunch (which is actually our house) and they had lunch ready for us! Our friend Todd came over too and we enjoyed fajitas and chips. It was SO good. I need to make fajitas with fresh peppers, onions and chicken! Apparently the secret to it all is the packet of powder mixed into it all...it was delicious.

We talked about meeting back up around dinner time to play cards and then Jere and I went next door to our neighbors house to have him look at our scooter. The scooter has been on the out for a little bit and we really want to drive it to save gas! Jere ended up dropping it off and we went back into the house with Brian & Rachelle. Around 4pm we decided it wouldn't be wise to leave AND THEN come back, so we stayed and played cards instead. Joe & Jessie came over after a bit and brought Papa Murphy's pizza. Oh it was so good! After dinner we headed back to Joe & Jessie's so their boys could sleep and we played cards. It was a good time.

Jere and I drove our scooter over to their house because earlier in the day, our neighbor came over and had fixed it! It was driving so well.

After playing cards and having a blast, we left around 11pm. We got out to the scooter and it wouldn't start. We're hoping it's just a new spark plug. It seems that we've had a lot of trouble with it lately! Brian & Rachelle gave us a ride back to our Jeep and it was fine, we just want to be driving our scooter.

Monday (7): This week is going to be hard because we have a full week of work! A random thought I had was that a lot of babies had birthday's yesterday since last year was 7/7/07. I wonder how many there were...I stayed home all night last night. It was so nice. We ate dinner and then Jere went to a men's meeting at our chapel. I read and then went running. I ran TWO MILES STRAIGHT. I felt so good and just kept trying to push myself to finish. I did it. We hung out with Scott & Lynn and played cards before heading to bed. I love living with them.

Tuesday (8): It's another work day. Tonight we're heading to Jere's mom's house for dinner. It'll be nice seeing them! Our hope is to also get the scooter running so we can use it this week still.

It's really nice to be back, but we love to travel and would have loved to be gone a longer amount of time too. My new mindset is to take things slowly and one at a time. Our trip was just kind of "fly by the seat of our pants" so to speak and while there are things to get done around the house like laundry and meals, my goal is not to sweat the small stuff anymore. That was what I loved about our trip...not stressing.

Note: Brian and Rachelle are living in our house. They lived there while Jere and I were on our trip to Europe. They lived there for a month and were going to live with the people we are currently living with but it worked out that Jere and I were invited and wanted to stay with them instead. Jere and I like doing this kind of thing and since we can do it easily. (because we have no kids) We are taking advantage of being flexible. We were blessed by Scott & Lynn's hospitality last summer while we gutted our house and were hoping to help Brian and Rachelle this summer. We enjoy living with our friends and we feel like we're still on vacation. Most people don't understand why this is the situation and I hope this gives a good explanation. It's not stupid, it might be a little strange but we have a chance to help friends and we're taking it.

WOW

Jere and I layed down for a "nap" at 6:30pm LAST NIGHT. We woke up at 6:45am THIS MORNING. We slept for 12 hours and 15 minutes. WOW...

Jere: "is it morning?"

Reagan: "i don't know, check your phone."

Jere: "yep it's 6:45am. I woke up and saw that it was light outside and wondered to myself if it was only half an hour later..."

So Jere came back and laid in bed for a few more minutes.

Note: We shut and locked the front door which was good (sometimes we leave it open). We locked Lady in our room so she couldn't roam around our house finding places to pee and poo (but she didn't do either for 12 whole hours!)

We're leaving tonight to stay at a friend's house about an hour away. Tomorrow we'll drive to our another friend's wedding. We're not packed and the house isn't clean, but man we got some good sleep!

7 Random Things About Me...

Here's the rules:Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving comments on their blogs.

I was tagged by Rachel. So here they are!

1. I am A LITTLE obsessive. I mean to say that I don't consider myself OCD or anything, but there are a few things that drive me crazy. When I go to bed, the covers on the bed HAVE to be straight and organized. The tops of the blankets and sheets have to line up. The sides of the covers HAVE to be matched up. The corners of the bottom sheet cannot be coming up. I prefer the sheets not to be wrinkled. The covers have to be smoothed out over both me and Jere, not wrinkled in a heap. This does not apply to quick naps. Only to bed time.

2. When I was little, I would stick both my pointer finger and middle finger in my left and right nostril and then thrust outward. I did this to itch my nose. My mom used to tell me to stop all the time but I just couldn't help it! Okay, so I just sort of tried to do this and I don't even know how it's supposed to work! I didn't really put my fingers in my nose just now, but it's so awkward. This was the only way my nose would feel better at that time...

3. I like to make up nicknames for Jere. It depends on how he is acting at the time and it can be VERY random but it doesn't matter because they all represent a time when we were acting silly. I also like to code the nicknames so that I can call him the nickname in public and no one will know what I am really talking about...The other day he was acting like a nazi (I stole "Nazi" from my dad. He used to call us kids that when we were being bad) so instead of just calling him that, his nickname was NZ. As in the way the letter's sound in the alphabet. I like to call him secret nicknames so only he knows what I'm talking about and he'll just look at me and smile. So if you ever hear me calling him chewpig, cp, luga, belly etc. just ignore it :)

4. I can type on a number keypad without looking. (On a computer or accounting calculator) I got good at typing in the numbers really fast when I would do the books for Kwik Shop a couple years ago.

5. When I was little there were times where I couldn't bend my knees or elbows because of eczema. The insides of those areas would get bright red and dry like you wouldn't believe. I got it from playing in the moldy leaves in the woods when I lived in West Virginia. I never seemed to learn my lesson either. I remember thinking "maybe this time it won't happen..." but since I lived in the woods and it was so fun to play outside, it was so hard to resist walking through leaves piled up to my knees.

6. I have a two inch long birthmark 3/4 up on my right shin. It looks like the state of Virginia and it fits me since I was born in Washington D.C.

7. I was named after Ronald Reagan. I feel like most people know this already, but I'll just put it out there again. My dad was a huge supporter of Reagan. Him and my mom even attended his presidential inaugural ball. I like my name especially because I have never met any other Reagan named after Ronald Reagan. That makes me one of a kind! :-)

I'm tagging

Amanda

Austin

Rachel

Hope

Charissa

Kristi

I like and maybe you too???

Fun food scenes

Curly girl page (thanks Eryn & Shawna)

World cultures in a minute

Connect the dot game - online! I used to play this game with my siblings when we were bored!

Ever need an extra scrap of paper for your to-do list?? Just write it on your fake to-do list tatoo!!

Maybe I'm a nerd...I like this game.