Hey Y'all!

Hey y'all.

I'm Elaina, a thirty something wife and furbaby momma.

Welcome to my little blog space.

Andrew and I have been married for twelve years.

Andrew is the IT Director at a wholesale lumber company.  He enjoys golf, playing guitar, and of course hanging out with me.  LOL!

He's pretty much the smartest person I know and my very best friend.

Five years ago this month we made the big decision to have children.  

It has not been an easy road.

Two years ago we had testing done and were informed that we have unexplained infertility.

With that news we began the journey to adoption through foster care.

We brought a sibling group of 8 into our family last summer.  

Unfortunately that did not have the happy ending we hoped for.  

Now we are loving life and enjoying each other.

We love spending time together at home with our two furbabies.

This is Liberty Belle

And this is Lincoln Baxter

We also love spending time with our families and eating Mexican food.

We love to watch college football.

Woo Pig Sooie!

I love sharing our adventures with you.

Leave a comment and say hi.  I'm glad you stopped by the ol' blog.

Our Little Kitchen

Our kitchen remains a mystery to me.  As I stated in my previous post cooking is a rarity in our home.  Our kitchen is probably the least used room in our house so how in the world does it get so dirty?  Seriously.  It amazes me.

It could possibly be because it is my least favorite room to clean.  I'll do just about anything to get out of cleaning the stove, sink, and dishes.  Again, how do those things get dirty when we don't cook?

Thankfully our kitchen is small.  Perfect for people like us.

It comes complete with a crazy brown dog. :)

I HATE our white cabinets.  Andrew and I enjoy going and looking at new houses and getting ideas for our dream home.  When I walk and see white cabinets in the kitchen it completely turns me off to the whole house.

Some things in my kitchen that I do like...

 My owl cookie jar.  He is was a birthday gift from my Mommom.  I'm pretty sure he was the first owl to come into our home. 

 My dry erase board, scentsy warmer, and my favorite picture of my brother and me.  I love my little dry erase board.  I enjoy switching it up every so often.  And if you haven't bought into the Scentsy idea, you need to .  They are marvelous!!!

 My monthly canvas.  My very crafty sister-in-law Sara gave us these for Christmas a couple of years ago.  I LOVE them!!!  

Honeymoon water.  Andrew and I filled this bottle from the springs in Hot Springs while on our honeymoon.

While we're talking about my kitchen, I might as well update on how the cooking is coming.  Andrew ended up having to stay in OKC longer than expected.  He is on his way home right now.  I cooked for myself one night and that was it.  He will be home a couple of days before leaving again so hopefully I'll be able to try out some of my recipes.

Come On In!

Welcome to the Weaver House!  I'm linking up with Kelly today to share our living room with you.

Decorating our home as been a long journey for me.  When we first got married I was 20 years old and had not a clue as to what my personal style was.  At that point Andrew definitely had better decorating skills than I did.  Sometimes I think he still does. :)

It has a taken almost eight and a half years, but we are starting to learn OUR style.  I'm not very good at seeing the big picture.  So many times Andrew will say he likes something and it will look good here or there and I just don't see it.  Of course once we get it home I have that Aha! moment.  There are times when I wish he didn't care, but for most part I'm very thankful to have a husband who wants and input in our home and what it looks like.

We both like color!  When it comes to furniture it is very hard to find something we agree on.  The foot in height difference has something to do with that.  If he sits comfortable on a piece of furniture, chances are my feet don't touch the ground and my arms are level with my head when placed on the arm rest. HA!

Enough talk. Welcome to our living room!

 The view from our dining room.  The doors in the background are our garage door and front door.

 Looking in from the hallway. 

 I LOVE my red TV stand!!  It was something we had been arguing over for quite some time.  I wanted something big... a real piece of furniture.  Andrew wanted something small.  We stumbled across this and both fell in love with it.  We got a discount because a lady returned it because of teeny tiny scratch ON THE BACK!  It was meant to be. :)

 Aww.  My chair!!  There have been many books read in this comfy chair. :)  Notice the owl pillow.  Of course it is my chair.

 Our love seat with my favorite pillow.  Andrew surprised me with it after I fell in love with it.  It was an expensive pillow so he originally told me to keep looking.  I couldn't find anything I liked near as much so he went and bought it for me.

A close up of our paintings that our dear friend Amanda painted for me.  They are huge and bright!  Adds so much color. 

So there you have it!  Small and comfy.  That's how we like it.

The Proposal

It's all about the proposal today over at Kelly's SUYL. Since I'm all propped up in bed and starting to get bored, I thought this would be the perfect entertainment.

I have a bank of romantic and sweet stories about the husband that I could share with you. The proposal isn't one of them. LOL!!

At this point in our dating life the husband and I were living two hours apart. I know that isn't long distance compared to some, but for me it was. We both worked full time jobs during this week leaving only our weekends to be together. We would take turns driving to each other and sleeping on each other's couch.

I made two things very clear to the husband... I didn't want to help pick out the ring or even see it and I didn't want to know it was coming. I wanted to be completely surprised.

One particular weekend I got the strict instructions not to call and bother him. He was spending the weekend with the guys and would be busy. Fine by me. I had some good quality family time. In fact I was on my way to town with my Daddy to pick up dinner for the night, when Drew called. The conversation went something like this...

Him: What size ring did you say you wore?

ME: 4. Why?

Him: Just curious, gotta go.

Me: Wait... where are you?

Him: McCain Mall. Bye.

Of course I knew something was up. As if the question about my ring size wasn't a dead give away, he was at McCain. For those of you not familiar with central Arkansas, McCain was on the other side of the river in NLR. He doesn't shop on that side of the river.

I don't remember how long that was before the actual engagement.

Fast forward to my birthday weekend. It was Friday, the day before my birthday. I was supposed to work until 1:30 and then Andrew was coming down and taking me out to dinner. I was so excited. I just knew it was going to happen that night.

I was working at Sonic at the time and that was a day at work I will never forget. Our computer system broke down. We had no way of taking orders except by hand. It was a LONG day. 1:30 came and went. Before I realized it, it was 5:00 and I was still at work. I was beginning to stress. I mean I was supposed to be getting engaged that night. Thankfully Andrew was running a bit behind as well.

I finally got off work and ran home to shower and get that wonderful Sonic smell off me. I wore a blue jean skirt and a green t-shirt. I was going for cute without over doing it.

Again I just knew he would propose at the restaurant. The meal came. We ate. No proposal. Dessert came. No proposal. We arrived back at my house. No proposal.

I was a bit disappointed.

Saturday morning we were just hanging out. After he showered, Andrew told me he had to go get something out of his car. This was it. I knew it. All of a sudden I got very nervous.

I went and took the longest shower of my life. I was a nervous wreck. Once I was showered, dressed, and ready to go, I returned to my bedroom to find Andrew sitting on my bed.

He handed me a birthday card. I read it, but now I don't have any idea what it said. After I read the card, he handed me a little black box and simply said.."Here you go. Happy Birthday."

I opened it to find my ring. I don't remember if he even officially asked me to marry him, but I do remember him telling me he was only asking the one time so I shouldn't blow it.

Ha! Told you... not one of his most romantic moments.

I said yes and the rest is history.

It isn't the most romantic proposal, but it is our proposal and I wouldn't change it for anything.

I love my husband!!!!

Liberty Belle and Liam Bailey

I have never participated in a Show Us Your Life post by Kelly over at Kelly's Korner. But this week, she asked us to show our pets and I just couldn't resist. If you have read this blog at all, you know that Drew and I have two furbabies that we love A LOT.

Liberty Belle and Liam Bailey are most definitely our children during this season of life. And yes, they go by their first and middle name. :)


From the moment Andrew and I got married, I started begging for a dog. To be honest, I 'm not sure why I felt so strongly that I had to have a dog. We had dogs growing up, but I wasn't that close to them. They were just there and I was fine with that. Either way, as a married woman, I felt that I NEEDED a dog. The timing wasn't right at first. We lived in an apartment and were both very busy. Three jobs and full time school with student teaching between the two of us.

When we bought our house, I knew it was time. I began spending a lot of time on petfinder.com. That's how we found Liberty. Our first night with her was very adventurous. You can read about that and how she got her name here.

Before we got Liberty, I worried if I should have spent so many years begging for a dog. I started doubting that I wanted a dog as badly as I let on. Did I really want the responsibility of house training a dog? However, when Andrew brought her home, it was love at first sight. She is definitely my baby girl.


Liberty has been an adventure since day one. She has scratched a hole in our wall in the laundry room when we left her in there all day and night.

She ate carpet when we left her out in the house one day while we at work.

She still lives up to her name very much so. She cannot be trusted out in the open without a leash.

She sleeps in the bed with us. It took her several months to earn this privilege. But now she sleeps with her back against my back with her head on my pillow.

Despite my begging and pleading, she hates wearing clothes. She can jump like there are springs in her legs. She has gone from standing flat footed in our kitchen floor to being on our kitchen counter. She loves cheese and chicken, much like her mama. :) She doesn't like lettuce, tomato, or onion. (Again- just like her momma) She does not like riding in the car. She wants to be sitting in the driver's lap and she pants the entire time like she is going to hyperventilate. Rolling down the window only stresses out even more.

We carry her on our hip like she is a baby. She is my baby girl.

When we decided to get another dog so that Liberty Belle could have a playmate, I went through the same doubts. It may be silly, but I worried that Liberty would feel like we were trying to replace her, like she wasn't good enough.

I went back to petfinder.com and we found Liam Bailey. He already had the name Liam which we liked. We decided he needed a B middle name so that we would have two LB's. Andrew, Liberty, and I went to PetSmart to pick Liam up on my birthday last year. Liberty and Liam did not like each other at first. Don't worry they have grown to love each other.

Unlike Liberty, Liam started sleeping in our bed right away. He is Andrew's cuddle puppy. He sleeps right against Andrew's chest. Liam's favorite place to be is under the covers. He does not like to get up in the mornings. When we turn on the lights, he takes his little paws and covers up his eyes. Whenever we try to put him out in the morning, he runs and gets in the bed, rolls over on his back, and holds his paws in the air.

Liam loves to go bye-bye. He is your typical dog, loving to have the windows down with head out. In fact, if I leave and don't take him with me, he cries the entire time I'm gone. I didn't believe this at first. But I called Drew one night to see what he wanted to eat, and I couldn't hear Drew because of Liam's crying.


Liam is a little suck up. If you get on to him he will run up to you and cover you with kisses and lay on you. He doesn't want you to be mad at him.

Liam Bailey is also our snoring puppy. He has the cutest little puppy snore. :)

Like I said, they are our babies. We love them dearly. I dread the day they go to doggy heaven. I can't imagine our lives without our two furbabies.