canada and sushi (among other things)

we had a great time with laura and drew :) we tried to eat lunch at canada in epcot in honor of drew, but it was all booked up. no worries though, we had a great time eating (and drinking!) our way around the world showcase :)

we also fed them plenty of mexican food, and one night we even made our own sushi at home! i think we did a pretty good job for our first attempt! we were sad to see them go, but we'll be up to visit with them in june :)

a little story involving 4 a.m. and 911

so nate is out of town for like... 24 hours. it always freaks me out when he's gone because i'm just nervous about sleeping in the house alone since i never have to do it anymore. i make cleo sleep ON TOP of the covers (or at least with those big ears sticking out!) so she can hear for me.

so lastnight/this morning i woke up, still dark.. didn't realize why i'd woken up at first but then realized i had heard knocking. or at least i thought i did, so as i'm in the process of deciding if i really heard knocking or not and realizing it's 4 a.m., i see a white light kind of flash across the dining room (at the back of the house), then more knocking on the front door (which by now the dog FINALLY HEARS and starts barking), more white light flashing around the house in various places. then the doorbell, and i'm running around like "holy $&@#&%*!!!" dialing 911 on my cell phone so i can press send if immediately necessary because our land line is having some kind of issue and doesn't work right now. there are little windows on either side of our front door so i kind of peeked out to see who the hell was at the door and i see a cop. whew. so i say "oh thank god" and open the door.

turns out our crazy broken phone dialed 911 (apparently portable phones can do this when there are issues?) and they were responding to the call. so the first thing she asked me was if i dialed 911 and i was thinking... not yet, but i was about to!

the white light was her partner checking the house with a flashlight.

so they came in the house and they were really nice and petted cleo for a few minutes (who is WORTHLESS by the way!) i'm just so glad it was the police at the door...

paris, day one

so i finished editing pics from my first day in paris! (can you imagine how long this would take me if i had been on vacation instead of working and took even MORE pictures???) here are a few of them, but you can check out all of day 1 here. we visited les tuileries garden, the banks of the seine, and notre dame.



my favorite part of the day? i think probably this cool little cafe called la palette. it was full of local parisians having cool coffee shop discussions (or at least... they seemed so in french!), reading literary looking books, all those things you'd expect of a cafe :) i had fun just wandering and looking at storefronts (pastries, cheese, and flowers, oh my!) i also loved all the bookstores- they were everywhere AND there were people in them! we even happened upon the bookstore from "before sunset" which is one of my favorite movies :)


oh and the doors! do you all know about my love of doors? :) well, i have one and the doors in paris are so colorful! i loved it.

what's going on here? apparently mickey gets really dressed up in france!

the ivey B&B

guess who's coming to visit this weekend? laura & drew! we're so excited :) we wrote out a list of things we'd like to show them -- they're always such wonderful nashville hosts and we're really looking forward to having them here :)
after that, my mom will be here!! she hasn't been here since we made all the changes to the house so i'm really excited to show her all that and hopefully we'll get to the beach.
then we have a while without visitors, but in the end of may, my dad, anita, ryan and austin will all be here for a week :) they've never been here so i'm really excited about that too! cassie is hoping to make it down for some part of that week too.

we've been enjoying the FL weather and having a good time :) not looking forward to that summer heat though!!!

bookworm!

i can't stop reading the janet evanovich series about stephanie plum (if you haven't heard of them, you've probably seen them -- one for the money, two for the dough, three to get deadly... etc.)

i'm on book 11 - she'll be releasing book 14 in june! i think nate's going to kill me for not paying any attention to him whatsoever when i'm reading ;) although, he's quite persistent. he's found if he repeats something enough times, eventually i hear him. the other day he repeated that fact 7 or 8 times until i eventually looked up:

"if i say something often enough," he said "eventually, you hear me!"

"is that all you had to tell me?"

"yes."

maybe i'll kill him first ;)

earth hour

today, from 8-9 pm local time turn off all your lights in honor of earth hour. read more here.

easter dinner for fourteen

we had lots of members of nate's family over for dinner on easter- it was fun :) i wouldn't have thought we could seat 14 in the house, but between the house and the patio, it worked out perfectly! we had all kinds of traditional easter favorites and granny even brought some of her homemade candy! i had lots of help with cooking which was needed and appreciated! but i did dress up for the occasion:


nina said my oufit reminded her of this picture!

my new buddy will be in the mail soon!

you can schedule him. to vacuum. how cool is that? i think he'll need a name... sweepy mcsweeperson? hmmm....

Flash Cards by Rita Dove

In math I was the whiz kid, keeper
of oranges and apples. What you don’t understand,
master, my father said; the faster
I answered, the faster they came.

I could see one bud on the teacher’s geranium,
one clear bee sputtering at the wet pane.
The tulip tree always dragged after heavy rain
so I tucked my head as my boots slapped home.

My father put up his feet after work
and relaxed with a highball and The Life of Lincoln.
After supper we drilled and I climbed the dark

before sleep, before a thin voice hissed
numbers as I spun on a wheel. I had to guess.
Ten, I kept saying, I’m only ten.

wow... these pics take FOREVER to edit

but i promise i'm working through 'em! this one is from our first day 'touristing' around paris. our plane landed around 8 a.m. and we dropped our luggage, showered, and took the train into the city to explore! somewhere during all that, we forgot to eat! we were starving by the time we took the metro and stumbled up to champs elysées and this picture was taken in the first place we saw. i told her we wanted the café, but i think she thought i meant we wanted coffee- we ended up in more of a hotel lobbyish type place instead of the cafe in the next room, but it worked out just fine :)

junk mail! and our lack thereof

so maybe a year ago, we joined green dimes, an organization that contacts marketing companies on your behalf in an effort to reduce junkmail that you receive (think credit card applications, insurance offers, etc.) in fact, i think i even blogged about it. we have definitely seen a difference. they even plant a tree on your behalf ;) i highly recommend it (ps: it's $20 but is a GREAT cause!).

along the same lines, i've recently discovered catalog choice, an organization that (for free!) let's you enter your info, and choose the catalogs you'd no longer like to receive by mail - handity dandity! i've been adding them to my account as they arrive since i mainly utilize online when i'm looking to shop without actually having my hands on it ;)

my husband is my hero

he can change a flat tire in a bad neighborhood in chicago on a rental car he's not familiar with less than 2 hours before we need to catch a flight while a second tire is going flat.... in 10 minutes! i kid you not.

just once, i'd like an uneventful travel story. just once!

congratulations cyndi and matt!

oakland nature preserve

this past weekend, nate and i explored a nature preserve - did i blog about that already? i think i did... either way, here's a few pictures from our adventures:

sinkhole??? seriously???

look! i exist!

so i played with this a bit in photoshop, but check this tree out! it struck my fancy. if a tree can do that...

congrats nately!

nate's starting a new job in a couple of weeks! still at disney, but a different department. for those of you who don't know, nate and i currently work in the same department - in fact, if he laughs or talks loud from his office, i can hear him in mine. we carpool and usually eat lunch together when we can. but soon, he'll be in a different department and building! it's an exciting opportunity for him but i'll miss having him around :) we still hope to be able to carpool although it'll be a bit more cumbersome than before. especially with the price of gas these days! i'm not sure how we compare to the rest of the country but it's been around $3.15 here lately.

we've got a string of exciting weekends coming up, we're either visiting or receiving visitors pretty much through mid-april! spring break is always a busy time in florida :) the weather has been absolutely beautiful lately, we've been spending a lot of time out reading on the porch. i've been really into historical fiction lately (philippa gregory writing about henry viii and the elizabethan time period) which has also spurred some actualy historical reading (biographies on elizabeth) but i've also been mixing some janet evanovich in there (four to score!).

we watched several movies from the library this week too - nate chose "310 to yuma" (shoot-em-up western) and "ghost-rider" while i went with "hairspray" and "3 men & a baby" -- we weren't exactly on the same movie wave length but we both enjoyed each other's choices :) never did get a chance to watch ghost rider though...

lunar eclipse!

lastnight nate and i headed into the backyard to check out the lunar eclipse -- he set my tripod up for me so we could take some pictures of it -- i don't have much of a zoom lens, but i cropped this one and you can kinda tell what's going on! the white specks are stars --

in other news, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary on monday :) since i was still kinda zombie-ish we had a low-key evening, i made tostadas (mmmmm, mexican food!) and then fell asleep almost immediately around 8:30 pm! but we do plan to celebrate more formally this weekend :) maybe dinner out? or a nice indulgent dinner in - we'll see!

i haven't forgotten about my favorite photo subject

miss cleo :)

happy valentine's day!

hmm.. does valentine(')s have an apostrephe? is that how you spell apostrophe? obviously i am tired. regardless, cleo wishes you a happy one, however you spell it!

it's hard to not cheese like a tourist..

... when you're standing in front of the eiffel tower :)

happy birthday nately!

it's nate's birthday today :) i can't wait to celebrate with him when i get home! we'll probably eat some citrus ;)

hope you have a good day nately! i never thought i'd have so much fun :)

an american blogger in paris!

so i got off to a bit of a rough start (lots of work and food poisoning- blech!) but it's only been better from there :) alicia and i had time to explore paris this weekend and loved it. we're also getting better at swinging around on public transport (metro around paris, larger trains to head back to where we're staying, and catching various buses to and around work on a daily basis). we've also learned how to order coffee, pastries, and water - and we've gotten pretty adept at pointing :) words like bonjour, merci, parlez vous anglais?, sil vous plait are all coming in very handy!

and the food poisoning? that was courtesy of a tasty creamy scallop/shrimp dish i had one of my first evenings here. but i'm back to normal and had some wonderful triage support from nathan and my mom :) when you're up at 4 a.m. it's kind of nice to have people that are 6-8 hours behind you!

i think nate was pretty worried about me the first few days here, he stayed up every night until 1 a.m. so that he could call me in the morning before i left for work :) it was wonderful to hear his voice when starting my workday so far away. i've been enjoying my time here, but i'm really excited to be home again!

guess what else? there are french bulldogs everywhere! i've probably seen close to 10 walking around the streets of paris. makes me miss cleo even more :)

i'll post more later about our weekend travels, but for now, here's my favorite picture so far:

ps: did you know the french use a different keyboard? no QWERTY for them! it's AZERTY and impossible for me to use effectively- luckily i have my own ;)

across the atlantic i go!

i'm paris bound in february :) it's a work trip so unfortunately nate won't be coming with me, but i'll be gone for 2 whole weeks! i'm really excited to go to france (i've only ever been to england) and i'm also really excited to take pictures :)

in other exciting news, nate and i are vacationing in polk county! it's only about 30-40 minutes from here but this weekend is the citrus festival! we're staying a really neat bed and breakfast and have several restaurant recommendations to check out, so we're really looking forward to it :)

upcoming next week, dave, maureen (aka the GHOONS), and big 0 will be coming to visit and we can't wait! should be a trip full of giggling and wit :)

life is good :)

that is all :)

i chased a fed ex truck for this.

in heels! i came home at lunchtime to be home for the delivery and lo and behold the truck was right in front of the house! i couldn't tell if the driver was at our door or in his truck, so i hopped out of my car just as he pulled away from the curb! eek! i ran to the entrance of our neighborhood (just a few houses down) to try and catch him on his way out and luckily, i did :)

as if i don't have enough fantastic gadgets to play with from christmas ;)

happy new year!

hope you all have a fun filled new year's eve :) tomorrow's menu is pork chops and sauerkraut (apparently that's what you eat on new year's day??)

goodwill goes online!

did you know you could shop goodwill online? i recently found this out:

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/

merry christmas eve!

well after quite the travel adventure, we arrived in PA last friday (or in the wee hours of saturday!) we've been doing a lot of visiting, relaxing, and eating :) cleo and henry are coexisting rather well which is nice :) and it's COLD! we're all sitting by the fire now though, so we're nice and toasty warm :)

mom, marty, and cassie are playing scrabble, hiking, and drinking wine without me! it's my first christmas without cassie :( but at least i've gotten to see her lots this year and we had a good time with the whole family at thanksgiving :)

my gorgeous cousin :)

i did a little photo shoot for my cousin tara over thanksgiving :) just in the backyard, here's a few that i really liked :) we had fun just playing around the yard!

so i'm way behind on posting pics

but i couldn't resist posting this one right away :) how lucky were we??

let your imagination run wild!

so this morning i was almost done with my workout on the elliptical and 'footloose' came on my ipod (part of my new 'gym baby!' playlist which i'll have to post here :)) so anyway, i was pedaling away and you know when you're listening to music and watching the people around you? i had this little image in my head of me hopping off the machine, doing a high kick, and running down the aisle. everyone else, also overcome with kenny loggins excitedly gets in line behind me, kicking and punching the air for emphasis, and we all dance up and down the aisles of the gym. just a little random thought for you this morning ;)


....That time's just holding me down
I'll hit the ceiling
Or else I'll tear up this town!

Tonight I gotta cut
Loose, footloose
Kick off your Sunday shoes
Please, Louise
Pull me offa my knees
Jack, get back
C'mon before we crack
Lose your blues
Everybody cut FOOTLOOSE!

truth.. sometimes it's stranger than fiction!

so not only did i go to the gym on saturday, sunday, twice on tuesday, thursday, and friday (whoa!) but we also starting sifting through all our unpacked boxes in the garage. banner week people!

also, i made shrimp tacos for dinner and they were t-a-s-t-y!

a little self-congraulations never hurt anyone... right? right?

Appeal to the Grammarians

by Paul Violi

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."

stop junk mail!

for $15 :) so i think i may have posted about this before.. but they've lowered the price -- greendimes is an organization that will contact all the marketers that send you all kinds of crap you don't need via snail mail (insurance offers, credit card offers, catalogs, etc.) you can specify the items you still want to receive and then they do the work for you! they also plant a tree. check it out here. you can also give a membership as a gift :)
we joined maybe 6 months ago and have definitely noticed a difference.

hellooooooooooo!

yawn! so did i mention yet that i left the pics from AZ on my mom's computer and she mailed me CDs of them which i received last week? well i still haven't worked through all of them, but i will soon :) since i tend to treat my camera like a shotgun, i end up with tons and tons of pics that just aren't fun for other people to have to sift through, so i try to narrow them down before posting them.

in other news, we joined the GYM! and we've been heading over there rather often so far, although it is just the first week :) i really like it. all kinds of machines to choose from and the geek in me loves all the metrics i get out of it (minutes worked, calories burned, calories/hour, heart rate, etc.) once you get past all the sales pitchiness of it, it's a pretty pleasant place to hang out! it's also right next to our brand spankin' new shopping center, so it'll be hard to ignore.

won't be long before we're headed to PA!

ari, the new terror in the family :)

here's my new niece, ari-- more to come :)

back from arizona!

we had a great time :) i left most of the pic files in az (eek!) but i'll have them soon -- for now, just one from our trip -- cleo was so clingy when we were home! hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving :)

i went to ikea!

on the second day it was open in orlando! for months i've been saying.. no way i'm going near that place until next year... then a few days ago i started thinking... hey wait, i work at disneyworld... how bad could the crowds really be at ikea? so i ventured out after work today and i'm so glad i did :) i parked with no problem, and although it was crowded, i didn't wait in a single line :) i bought all kinds of random house knickity knackities and then, dedicated wife that i am, i purchased some frozen swedish meatballs to serve to my husband for dinner ;) truly a swedish evening!

christmas already?

starting on halloween, the christmas decorations popped up in our building! epcot's also recently been sporting a new tree:

it's the weekend!

we've been up to quite a bit lately, although it's all little here and there stuff. we've been: shopping for new carpet, shopping in general because our big new shopping center opened, all day team building (i'm sore!), enjoying the beautiful florida november weather, sleeping with the windows open, trying to eat better, getting excited about home for the holidays (arizona for thanksgiving, pennsylvania for christmas), landscaping another flowerbed, cleaning off the porch so we can enjoy it, excited about cleo meeting her new cousin, ari :)

this weekend we're helping a friend move, relaxing, going to brunch with a bunch tomorrow morning and watching the steelers game :) have a great weekend!

happy halloween!

cleo dressed up as a buzzy bee and we headed downtown to the winter garden halloween fest for a little bit :) cleo got to hang out with her best bud cooper (a chocolate lab) who was dressed as 'Superdog!' i didn't take my camera (gasp!) so no pics, but i can assure you, it was adorable :)

isn't my sister cute?

which do you think looks nicer? the black and white or the color?

monday!

it feels like a tuesday... but alas, it isn't! nate and i had a nice weekend, we didn't get up to too much really- watched football (tell me again how this happened?), visited the oakland festival, had friends over and played a lot of wii :) oh and i did work- bleh! work has picked up considerably recently so i'll be pretty busy i think- but that's good- i like busy :)

nate and i have been in a writing course today and will be again tomorrow. we had homework tonight! in fact, nate just ran in here because he thinks i'm typing up my homework instead of just writing it out on paper with a good ol' pencil ;) but i'm not.. i'm blogging. this much is obvious to you though, as the blog reader... anyway.

my handy dandy tip from writing class today? outline everything! even if it's just an e-mail, make an outline like your 3rd grade teacher used to make you :) obviously, this post was not created from an outline...

just kidding :)

okay that pink was a little too out there- so we'll try this for awhile instead :)

think pink!

welcome to the new very very pink blog! this might be too obnoxious....we'll see how long it lasts!

mickey's not so scary halloween party

boy that's a mouthful, eh? nate treated me to an evening at magic kingdom last week, the halloween celebration titled the above -- here's a few pictures from our evening - we had a great time :)

beware of hitchiking ghosts!!

davy jones

i'm still editing photos

and ugh! there's a lot of them! maybe i'm spending a little too much quality time in photoshop... but for now i'm still learning how so i guess it's time well spent ... maybe!

for now, here's my husband the adorable dork :)

toto, i don't think we're at disney anymore!

so in florida, our parking trams look something like this:

but in virginia, they look more like this ;)

we're home from blacksburg!

had a great weekend in blacksburg with cassie (and others!) ate, drank and hung out to our hearts' content! i have lots of pics to sort through and download - hopefully will post them in the next day or so :)
and the most exciting news: cleo has a cousin! i'm anxiously awaiting pictures of cassie's very own french bulldog :) and jury's out on the name, i'll let you know when she decides!

why nate lost at scrabble lastnight.

that darn Q! i won by 2 points ;)

one of my birthday gifts...

i was instructed prior to receiving it that (a) it's not a gag gift and (b) if you don't like it, nathan can have it :) too bad for nathan because i'm keeping it! i think it's supercool and not only practical, but fun to photograph! orange juice season is just around the corner... ;) (thanks john and nina!)

this my friends, is a dog who loves her daddy

also... i posted a bunch of pics finally :) some from the visit with ashlea and jules (which was WONDERFUL, i missed them so much!) and some from nate mowing the lawn with various lizard and flower pictures. try not to get too excited about that last one ;)

see all the october (so far!) pictures by click here. blacksburg pictures to come- i can't WAIT!!!!