merry christmas everyone!

enjoy :)

merry nate & bri christmas!

so nate and i celebrated our christmas this morning :)  (much like the pennsylvania 'thanksmas,' we move the holiday to where it's convenient!)  we played scrabble on 'christmas eve' lastnight.  i thought our santa table decoration coordinated rather well with the scrabble bag.  doesn't it look like his bag of toys?

 

it was a tough board!  we were mostly confined to the lower corner due to some bad start out words (ahem... nate)  and my letters were atrocious!  at one point, i swear i had all i's.  and this rack, which totally made me want to spell hee-haw (but i doubt that's an acceptable scrabble word!)

then nate spelled 'pinna,' which i challenged, and lost.  apparently pinna is a long forgotten botany word.  i don't think he knew that though, i think he just got lucky!  :)

 

after christmas eve, we were excited for christmas morning to arrive!  we got up early(ish) and started with stockings!  (ours are new this year, i finally found some i really liked :)  cleo's has been around for a few years though)

 

then we had the dogs pose by the tree.  for those of you who don't know, benny is a dog we've been dogsitting for the past month and a half (his owner was injured and can't walk him at the moment).  he went home today, but not before he and cleo got their picture together.  you may remember that cleo doesn't like to sit too near other dogs. 

can you believe that pile of gifts in the back is all for us?  nate went a bit overboard this year :)  he even had a few adressed to himself.... from santa.  including this one, a book on tennis skills:

 

santa was all about tennis this year.  he also got nate and i a costco size supply of tennis balls, and a ball hopper!  i got all kinds of goodies including a new camera bag to hold all my gear, a really cool calendar of paris, cool photography books, a new outift, etc.  :)

after 'christmas morning' we had what nate affectionately calls 'mexican breakfast':  refried beans, fried potatoes, and tortillas.  it was super tasty if i do say so myself :)  

and the best part is?  christmas isn't even over yet!  lots more family time to come :)  hope your holidays are happy!

some new photos

finally posted ;) there are some new in october and november - and more to come!

included in the new are a bunch from our weekend in captiva with glen & family -- i took TONS of the sunset. and i posted less than half of what i took so... you're welcome! it's still a lot to wade through but we happened to catch a really pretty sunset. and i was drinking cocktails which tends to increase my 'number of photos taken' metric ;)

enjoy!

cleo says hi!

holiday blog neglect

haven't been posting much lately but holiday activities have been keeping me busy! :) we celebrated thanksgiving AND christmas in PA over the traditional thanksgiving holiday this year (as has become our tradition when we spend thanksgiving with nate's family). it's fun :) kicking off the christmas season by popping up the tree, drinking hot cocoa and exchanging gifts not only gets you in the spirit, but also crosses a bunch of things off of your list early!

since we've been back, we've been playing some tennis, getting together with friends, and finishing up christmas shopping. we bought our tree, 'santa the christmas tree #3,' and decorated the house. this year i FINALLY found stockings that i liked enough to buy, it would have been our third christmas without stockings (oh the horror!) but we're all set now :)

on the picture front, i'm stuck somewhere back in october but as soon as things calm down a bit, i'll get back on the wagon.

also, i really enjoyed the steeler's game last week (against the cowboys). usually i go with nate, but generally ignore the game by playing the bar video game, or reading a magazine, or whatever. this time it was an exciting game and i watched the entire thing. cassie thinks i'm crazy :) but there is really quite a bit of drama in the nfl (just like the commmercial. i'm such a marketer's dream).

happy holidays!

tennis, tennis, tennis!

we've been playing more tennis lately (and are now fully supplied with all the right gear thanks to some christmas presents from laura and drew!)

last week, nate and i played singles and as nate put it, i was 'dogging it.' i was feeling kind of lazy so i didn't exactly bring my A game. i did have a talk with nate about raising his arms NFL touchdown style every time he won a point though ;)

today we played doubles with some friends of ours and had a good time :) nate and i need to do some work on our doubles strategy though ;)

also this weekend, we saw twilight (nate HATED it, i liked it but then again, i read the entire book series and all the outtakes too), had sushi night (and i drank a bit too much wine), and decorated for christmas! more on that later ;)

back from indiana!

and it's a whirlwind week! we just got back from trivia (and lost) and had the worst service EVER. sample dialogue includes:

me: "will our food be out soon?" (inner monologue... it's been an hour)
waiter: "oh.. um.. i'll check on that. what was it you ordered again?"

ahhhh... we were there much longer than usual but ah well, at least we had some good friends with us to pass the time!

i'll blog more later, have some errands to finish!

my grandaddy.

although i tend to avoid blogging about more serious things, i didn't want to let such an event pass without acknowledging it here. my grandaddy passed away on tuesday. cassie and i were able to fly to arizona last week and see and talk to him. he was the best grandaddy anyone could ever want and i'll miss him very much. below is a slideshow of pictures the family put together for the funeral.

the sun sets on the gulf of mexico (and i forget to watch)

while we were in captiva, we watched a beautiful sunset and it reminded me of a poem i wrote years ago about when i was working on the oil rig in the gulf.  i've posted the poem before, but here it is again (with a picture of the almost gone captiva sunset) :)

The Sun Sets on the Gulf of Mexico (And I Forget to Watch)

He asks how long I think it will take the sun to disappear
after it touches the water. Thinking of a movie I saw once
where the sun seemed to disappear almost instantaneously,
I tell him thirty seconds.

“No,” he says. “It takes three minutes.”
Silence lapses between us as fiery light falls
on black water between the breaks of the waves.
He is talking but I am thinking of what to say
next. My gaze is on the water. I hear him
pause, so I smile in what I hope is a valid response,
turn back to the sun on the water.
I forget to pay attention to his watch.

Instead I watch the water until the light fades,
fascinated by the way the sunlight
is carried back to us from the horizon,
dancing along the blackness.
Remembering the sun,
I ask him, “Is it really three minutes?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something like that.”

ooh.... ow... ahhh....arghhh!

i am super sore from playing tennis lastnight (and that's exactly what i sounded like during the game).  nate and i played each other and only got through 1 set (close game, i finally lost 6-8) and then i gave up 2 games into the second set.  i had a headache, and my ankle and my back hurt!  nate said i sounded like an old woman ;)

but we're going to go again today, maybe i'll get him this time ;)

also, cleo has developed some crazy allergies and looks like a 'puffer-fish' between gettng little bumps and hives all over.  i took her to the vet friday and she's now on 3 medications... 2 are pills and 1 is a twice-weekly shampoo.  but hopefully it'll make her all better!  nate has created a spreadsheet of the pills so we can check off each time they are administered (he's a total dork, i know ;) )  but also- he wants me to INITIAL it.  there are two of us that live here so figuring out who checked off the sheet shouldn't be that difficult ;)  he thinks that's a totally normal request, what do you think? :)

epcot mexico

a few shots from epcot mexico recently -- i had them and thought cassie might like them so i put them in a collage ;) (made with mcp actions)

paper and ink studio - giveaway :)

Paper and Ink Studio is having a giveaway on her blog, 50 'call me cards' and 25 matching notecards.  Her work is absolutely beautiful, and all you have to do to enter is comment on the post on her blog before tomorrow (saturday) night!  from her blog, you can also get to her site which has all her products.  i've ordered some of the custom notecards and loved them!

http://www.teamcarstens.com/paper_ink_studio_/2008/11/november-blog-giveaway.html

oregon trail!

did you ever play oregon trail?  i used to play it all the time as a kid and this imagined monologue from mcsweeney's is hilarious :)  you may not appreciated if you didn't play the game, but here's an excerpt from the monologue titled 'No Son of Mine Plays Oregon Trail Like That.':

I once completed the trail having survived three broken wagon wheels. It took me 10 days to find an Indian to trade with for the third wheel, and I still scored 6,000 points. The other day, I saw you quit the trail immediately after your wagon capsized in the Kansas River. You lost only an ox and a hundred pounds of food. I drank myself to sleep that night.
Speaking of food, it almost seems like you don't even like to hunt. When you do, you fire randomly at anything that moves. Let me make it simple for you, son: a bullet costs 10 cents, a pound of food costs 20 cents. If you're not averaging a half pound of food per bullet, you're wasting points. So I hope it was fun firing 10 times at that squirrel, which, I feel obligated to add, you never actually hit.

rock the vote!

okay, so that was a slogan from a few years ago, but i'm so excited to see how the coming years play out and i'm so excited to have been a part of the entire process.  now that all the election hulla-baloo is over, i feel like we should all break into a dance of a high school musical "we're all in this together" moment but maybe that's the disney cast member in me talking ;)  but seriously.. red states.. blue states... no matter, it's the UNITED STATES!

hello from captiva!

we're on the beach just outside of fort meyers enjoying a BEAUTIFUL weekend with glen, suzie & ben (jackson will be here tomorrow).  the weather is perfect and we're walking distance to the beach!  i want to hire suzy as my vacation planner.  they'll be here for just about a week and we're just joining them for the weekend.  we just finished playing tennis and it was so fun!  i haven't played in years and am excited to get back into it :)
hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

the new carpet!

finally wading through some long overdue tasks on the new computer -- here's some pictures of our new carpet. it was freakishly clean because we were having company, fyi ;)

we still need to paint in here!  and get a new window shade.. and put stuff on the walls... this room's on deck.

motown philly back again!

Boyz II Men was at Epcot tonight!  Nate and I headed out after work and they were AWESOME.  Well... I thought they were.  Nate thought the Ventures were better, but I was in junior high heaven!

pictures...

so i finally updated more pics!  i'm only up to august though, lots more to come! :)

and now we relax!

we hosted the 'ivey olympics' lastnight :)  we spent most of the week cleaning the house, the garage, buying food, buying beer, etc.  and now we can relax!  we had a good time, so hopefully everyone else did too.  we ended up with three events (out of a planned 6 events) flip cup, darts, and wii olympics.  nate bought some cool trophies from good will and had little plaques made for Ivey Olympics 2008- ha :)

today we're cleaning the house, eating chinese takeout, and heading to buy a flash for my camera- yay!  oh, and probably some football watching (sigh) because PSU is doing well this season.

have a great weekend!

yummy sherry vinaigrette

i've been all about this dressing lately.  i had to buy a bottle of sherry vinegar for something and used like... a tablespoon, so i searched for a salad dressing recipe that included it and ta-da!  here, for your culinary pleasure :)  i highly recommend it with spinach and goat cheese (although it's good on pretty much anything):

2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 small clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Place the vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, and garlic in a medium size bowl and whisk together until blended.  Slowly add the olive oil, whisking constantly until the dressing is emulsified.