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!