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 ;)