puppy

our neighbor got a brand new 6 week old puppy last weekend and she is the cutest thing ever...almost cuter than a new baby. she's a maltese puppy (like skippy, our old dog) and those are tiny anyway, so as a puppy this thing was like a little snowball. it practically hid in the grass it was so small. so cute.

and i'm adding some kid pictures just for fun.

kiss this guy

I just love REO Speedwagon. They actually started here, maybe that's why I strangely love them so. Interestingly though, there is not a single good looking guy in the band. We used to watch those VH1 Behind the Music's and Journey, Chicago, etc., they'd all have at least one pretty-boy (well, for 80's standards). One fairly cute guy in the bunch. But REO, not so much. Not a one.

I even went to the dedication of "REO Speedwagon Way" in front of a downtown bar and a little pre-party for it. Love 'em. Not good looking but man can they sing those power-ballads.

Anyway, I also absolutely love www.kissthisguy.com The sight is all misheard song lyrics (from Henrix's song that goes "kiss the sky".

And one of my favorite lyrics is from the REO song "Take it on the Run":

Actual lyric: "I'm telling you babe, I don't think it's true babe, and even if it is keep this in mind..."

Misheard lyric: "I'm telling you Gabe, I don't think it's the flu Gabe, and even if it is keep kissing my eye."


Another great one is from Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In the Wind":

Actual lyric: "The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind."

Misheard lyric: "The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind, the ants are a-blowin' in the wind."

Too fun. This website can definitely suck up some free time...

name that movie...

Let's play:

(introducing herself):" Marcie Dahlgren-Frost. Dahlgren is my maiden name, Frost is my married name. I'm single again, but I never bothered to remove the frost. And I get compliments on the hyphen."

&

"I don't think I want to know a six-year-old who isn't a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don't want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don't have a college degree. I don't even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they're ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they're no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I'm coming looking for you! Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face. Good day to you madam."

real thanksgiving

well, we had a really great thanksgiving this year. we had everyone over to our house this time and i think we all enjoyed it a lot. typically, our family goes to thanksgiving dinner at both aaron's parents' house and my parents house. needless to say, we are stuffed beyond belief by nightfall. inevitably we would eat a ton of food at one house, wonder how on earth we'd manage to eat again two hours later, but then somehow we still would pike plates high with turkey, potatoes, gravy, beans, cranberry sauce, and rolls at the next one as well (you know, "well, i guess i can eat again, but just a little...") right.

so it was great to eat one giant meal this year.

it was a gorgeous day and after dinner aaron pitched kieran a ball while holding onto his pie in the other hand (especially dangerous after only two weeks ago we're remembering the uncle-jacob-pitching-and-kieran-hitting fiasco. thank god his nose wasn't broken and i guess we need to stop underestimating kieran's swing).

lovely day all in all.

like new but better...

so who doesn't like a makeover, right?

wednesday night before Thanksgiving my mom came over and we recovered our kitchen chairs. My friend Aracelis had given us these chairs when she got new ones and we've loved the rich dupioni silk striped fabric that was on them and that went so well in our house....but, our children (and okay, maybe we've contributed a bit too) have trashed them. They're still solid chairs but the fabric has been spilled on so many times it was hardly appropriate anymore to ask people to park their derrieres on them, they were gross. I had found some great bold fabric and we wrapped the seats in it and covered them with vinyl. voila! new chairs! and i just love them.

it ain't hard

Okay, I like the live version of the Bryan Adams song "Heaven" which is currently playing on this blog, but it's kind of hard to tell what words exactly he's singing.

It sounds all romantical and all and then he sings what sounds like "I'm finding it hard to believe we're in heaven." That's just exactly what it sounds like, right? And it would make no sense with the rest of it. I'm *pretty* sure he must be singing, "I find it ain't hard to believe we're in heaven."

But geez, it's hard to tell and you think maybe he could annunciate a little better or something. Or singing the lyric more like, "I don't find it hard to believe, we're in heaven." Right?

just as fun as talking barbie

we had a really nice day at aaron's parents house over the weekend. his uncle mike and aunt beth were visiting and it was nice to see them. were were discussing andie and her parrot-like chatter lately. it's especially funny that she says "i love you" all the time, prompted or not. we all decided that it would be fun to teach her some new phrases so that she might impress people and hold her own in a conversation. i think it was beth who suggested having her say, "you look great in that" and we also liked "you look really thin". who wouldn't want to hear those things right?

here are some pictures aaron took.

and beth wrote an amazing book that i highly recommend and you can find it on her website: www.bethfinke.com
i once turned on oprah to find a show with various clips and all of a sudden beth was in the audience talking to oprah about her experience as a nude model at the U of I-fabulous! she always has good stories.

so we meet again...

doing battle today with my old nemesis. laundry. as i fold clothes i think to myself, i wonder if i could pay some high school kid to come do laundry for me? more than someone to clean the house i would love paying someone to wash, dry, and fold our clothes. and of course roll our socks into little balls. i've found that it is this task that most bothers me. i can be on a roll, washing, drying, folding, the whole nine yards, but for some reason when i get to the whites and i've dried all our socks and i'm pulling them out by the handful it becomes the most hated, tedious thing in the world to have to pair them up and roll them together (trying to keep in mind not to stretch out the tops as every magazine has pointed out to me you should take care not to do). many times my laundry routine will literally grind to a halt as a load of washed and dried whites sits in the dryer, simply waiting for me to rescue it and create space for the next load. but instead i do everything i can think of to avoid opening the dryer and continuing the laundry routine, all because of those stupid socks. yep, i blame socks. darn them, if i could do it i would wear flip flops year round!

some pictures i've taken

mock Thanksgiving

Some pictures from mock Thanksgiving last weekend with my brother. He can't be here for real Thanksgiving and this one tasted just as good!

mommy's juice

The other day at the grocery store Aaron and I were walking the beverage isle with the kids in the cart and Andie pointed at the bottles of wine and said, "Mommy's juice!" Then immediately pointed to the other side of the isle at the beer and declared, "Daddy's juice!"


She's a fast learner.

a little too quiet...

I had thought the scraping the powered sugar from this morning donuts out of the carpet was going to be the highlight of the day, as I ate my bagel sandwich for lunch, thinking about how the kids need baths. Kieran and I were in the kitchen having lunch and Andie was watching "cow"-AKA a Baby Einstein movie called Baby McDonald, she calls it cow. I went to the stairs to ask her if she wanted some cheese, just as she walked to the top of the stairs. She appeared to be holding a marker in her hand. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Oh no, oh no, oh no. What are you doing???
Andie: I lub you.
Me: Is that a marker???
Andie: I lub you.

Somehow her "i love you's" were just not comforting.

She had colored in red marker all over Aaron's desk. DRY ERASE marker, thanks goodness! But still. Every parent knows what it's like to feel their stomach turn over when they realize that their child is being a little too quiet in another room, mostly likely on the brink of touching the ceiling after climbing a tall bookcase, or peeling the wrapper off the 400th sanitary napkin and tacking them all row upon row up the wall (happened to a friend of mine), or sitting on their riding toy covered head to toe in anti itch creme (happened to me with Kieran).

Thankfully the marker came off the desk quite well, this all happened about half an hour ago. Andie still has marker all over her face but it least she did this all right before bath time.

...But all of a sudden it's awfully quiet downstairs where the kids are. I'll let you know if my day gets even more exciting!

one fine day

today was a good day, my brother Jacob is in town (yay!) and came over for a while. the kids tried to wear him out by running loops around the house, playing basketball, jumping in the bed. you know, typical stuff. then aaron's parents came over and they continued their performance for a while, we had some more fun. and then in the evening we went to ants in their pants and the kids played in the ball pits and threw token upon token into the various machines in effort to "purchase" a rubber ball (twin to many of the rubber balls already in our posession at home, most likely bribes from other stores) for kieran and an interesting miniature dog with a giant head for andie (somehow we also owned one of these at home, likely from our last ants excursion, and the girl behind the counter offered it out of pity seeing as andie wanted it but was only really eligible for a friendship bracelet or policeman's badge with our remaining tickets. and by giant head i mean like half an inch, the whole dog is pretty tiny) ... is it bad that every time i see the chinese fingercuffs behind the glass i think about their possible use as a disciplinary measure for the kids?

yep, a good day filled with family, craziness, and treats, what more could you want?

cutie

just to get that image of andie being sick out of your head, i thought i'd post a cute picture of her! eating, no less!

Eeewwww....

We went out to dinner last night and our daughter threw up on me. Lovely.

Luckily it was at the end of the meal. Aaron's been working so much, I'm trying to keep up with everything at home so we went out to El Torerro. Aaron and I were finishing fajitas when Andie, seated next to me, started to gag on some giant mouthful of something. I grabbed her and held her to me, knowing what was coming. Sure enough, she vomitted all over me. I was wearing a sweat shirt so I was able to remove it, but there was still some on my T-shirt underneath. I don't think other patrons noticed, which was why I grabbed her and tried to shield her from everyone-'cause you know there's nothing like someone puking in a restaurant to make you lose your appetite (I had this sudden image from the pie eating contest in the movie "Stand By Me"). And I wonder why going out to eat has lost its luster. Between the throwing up or the kids trying to play underneath the table to dirty looks from other diners, it's just not worth it anymore.

I surrender.

okay laundry you win.

if anyone needs my i'll be at home wearing my pajamas and doing laundry all day.

HA!

i ran last night!

in your face laundry!!!

there's nothing like publicizing your to-do list to motivate you to succeed. but whatever it takes right? finished my book, ran, and did some photo stuff (not all). now i just have to ignore the call of the laundry monster. i think i'll leave the house, that'll do the trick!

Cripes.

I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

After finally getting the kids to sleep (Aaron's working tonight and of course they kept asking for him instead) I caught the last 45 minutes of "When Harry Met Sally"-definitely one of the best movies. Ever.

***
Darn it, it's Sunday night and let's just say I haven't accomplished what I had wanted to this weekend. And I forgot to add in my last post that I seriously have a mountain of laundry so big that it could swallow me up and you'd never see me again. It's precariously piled high on the shelf just under the laundry chute and I know that the minute I try to remove even one thing the whole mountain will fall on my head. Maybe that's why I've been avoiding it for days...or maybe I just don't mind spending the day dressed in odd combinations of clothing pretending that I don't see the giant clothes monster in the laundry room. At this point it's almost like a stand off and I'm stubbornly trying to stand my ground. Or just go buy some new clothes.

everybody's working for the weekend

yay, it's friday!

it's a nice day day, the sun is shining, the kids are in fairly good moods, my new lens just arrived, and it's friday! our week has been okay, but aaron has been working almost round the clock, the other night not getting home until after 1am, i think he's most ready for a break. well, a short one, he said that he'll be working a little over the weekend too.

in any case, i'm setting the following goals for myself for this weekend: 1) go running (haven't done that in too long and there's another 5k I'd like to try in a couple weeks), 2) finishing proofing pictures, 3) finish "The Other Boleyn Girl"-awesome so far, almost done, can't wait til book group to talk about it!

i'll attach a couple pictures of the kids, one of andie playing at the table and one of kieran at his school's Fall Festival stringing a necklace. too cute :)