picture sneak peek

a few pics from our visit with dad, anita, ryan, austin, and cassie (and ari!) -- i think the picture of the 2 dogs is hilarious - it's obvious that cleo wants nothing to do with ari even though i made them sit next to each other.

drinking coke at club cool!

gorilla sized dad!

the boys as bugs. this was cassie's favorite ride!

dad and anita at city walk

posted some april pics!

greetings from our future!

cassie, nate & i headed to epcot tonight (cassie's favorite!) we had a great time and nate even got cassie to ride spaceship earth (the ride that goes through the epcot ball). here's the postcards we got from the ride:



dad, anita, ryan & austin headed home wednesday -- we had a great time with them and hope they enjoyed florida!

tomorrow, we're beach bound- hopefully the weather will cooperate!

like i could resist...

taking photos of miss ari ;)

hurricane season

well with june 1st came hurricane season and true to this time of year, we've had thunderstorms rolling in each evening since. i love that :)

happy birthday mom!

wadio & co. coming to visit!

my dad, anita, and my brothers arrive tomorrow! we're really excited to show them around FL :) and then cassie arrives on friday! the house is now clean, the kitchen is organized and more stocked than it usually is for the 2 of us, and cleo has had a bath! speaking of, how could i forget the other visitor: ari! cassie's frenchie will be joining us as well. now that she's older, it should be pretty entertaining to watch her and cleo together :)

so if i take a blogging hiatus - you'll know why! although i'll try to keep up :)

The Personal

by C. Dale Young


Wear the wedding ring on a chain around your neck.
The personal, as in personal life? Say nothing.
This is how I spoke to myself then. These are the things


I used to remind myself daily. Gender neutral.
Only use gender neutral when you must talk
about your beloved. And never speak of love.


It will only invite questions. So much to learn.
Memorize all of it. Know it well enough to recite
it backwards if you must. Every last detail.


The expected heart rate of a newborn? The exact
percentage of fats, protein, and carbohydrates
in Total Parenteral Nutrition? The formulae


for calculating blood volume? Everything.
You have no time for the personal.
And that morning, on my last day in the NICU?


Do I remember it? I do. I still remember it.
And this is what I say to myself now: You must
remember it. Along with the calculations, the hours


and hours of sick babies, you must remember it.
That woman, your teacher, grilled you for 35 minutes,
question after question after question. She did it


in plain sight, in front of all the nurses, the residents,
the interns, the clerks, the other students. She wanted
you to answer incorrectly, wanted to shame you.


Question after question after question, you hid
behind correct facts and information. And when
she tired of the game, of trying to trip you up,


she announced for everyone that you were the best
minority student she had ever had. And you took it.
You wanted to be like a duck, to let it all wash off of you.


But even in that praise, there was venom. Even in praise,
she found a way to shame you, single you out. And you hid
behind correct answers. But now, you must make it personal.

the downtown 'wg'!

nate and i headed downtown on sunday to putz around and take a few pictures -- i was missing my mother on mother's day and needed some kind of activity! just a few:

blogroll!

so i've added some friends and family blogs off to the left ---->

my favorite feature is it shows how recently they've been updated! most recently update will show at the top of the list :) happy blogging!

So apparently, I can blog

So apparently, I can blog from my phone!

blueberry french toast (as promised laura!)

so over easter, i called my mom and asked "what's the best dish you serve for breakfast for a bunch of people?" and she passed this recipe along. i think she got it from a B&B, so that's appropriate ;) everyone enjoyed it and nate requested a second showing for when laura and drew were here to visit :) i was inspired by pioneer woman (a blogger and a woman with seemingly endless talent) to post a few recipes now and then on my blog :) so here we are. (and laura, i'm e-mailing this to you as well!)





1 loaf of french bread cut into 1” cubes

8 oz. cream cheese

1 cup fresh blueberries (can substitute mixed berries! or more berries! or frozen berries!)

10 eggs, beaten

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 cups milk

Blueberry Sauce

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

2 tbl cornstarch

2 cups blueberries

Put ½ of the bread cubes in a 9x13 glass dish coated with pam. Cube cream cheese and place on top of bread. Sprinkle with berries. Cover with remaining bread. Beat eggs, syrup, and milk and pour evenly into dish. Spray the underside of a piece of foil with pam and refrigerate overnight.

Bake covered at 350° for 30 minutes, then 30 minutes uncovered.

Pictures from Mom's trip are up

and just for fun (and since i just discovered microsoft photo story), i made a somewhat boring video of all the pictures. lesson learned? i need to take more pictures with people in them!

the chewies have headed home!

we had a great time visiting with them and hearing all about what they've been up to lately :) hopefully they had a great time at disney, malayna seemed to be a pretty big magic kingdom fan so i think it's safe to say they did ;) their last day here, we went to the u-pick citrus grove to get them some tasty florida citrus :)

what we've been up to

i'm behind on pictures. i know. still need to post pics from my mom's visit and i STILL need to finish my paris pics. but in the meantime, the chewies will be visiting this week (yay!), mario kart was just released for wii, and the weather is beautiful! we've been riding bikes and enjoying eating dinner out on the patio :) soon though, the weather will get HOT HOT HOT and all activity will occur in the air conditioned house, car, movie theater, work, gym, or anywhere out of the sun!

in the meantime, i took a self portrait for one of the message boards i post on, posted here for you :) my mom helped me shop for clothes while she was here - who knew i could wear capri pants?? not me!

linkage :)

so a few cool things.

1. nate and i have started taking our own grocery bags to the store. they're hard to remember, but it does make me feel better about all that plastic! but a really cool company has popped up that sells super stylish bags :) they're really cute! take a look - www.gracen.com.

2. if you're into photoshop... and you know what actions are, phaunt is giving away 30 of her fantastic actions this week! for those of you who aren't familiar with actions, they're like macros in excel, but for photoshop! or if that doesn't make any sense, it's a preset bunch of steps you can use to 'post-process' a photo. for example, make it black & white, brighten it up, put a frame on it, etc. they're super handy!

my mom's back home! :(

my mom headed home yesterday morning -- we had a great visit :) we spent time at the beach, rode bikes, at copious amounts of italian food, and relaxed! i should have take more pictures, but here's one of the three of us (i cut off nate's head!) i'll post the rest on smugmug soon!

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!