New Favorite Store

We have a newish store here in town that I absolutely love. And they are doing a contest right now which I have entered so I can win a gift certificate there. Whenever you people start popping out the kids, this is where your presents will come from, o.k.? Great.

I love my husband

This showed up at my office this morning:
And this is what was inside!

Aren't they lovely?!? They smell amazing. And he was a day early too! What a planner!

Little bits of heaven

O.K. so power has been restored...I know everyone was on the edge of their seats so now we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Things that I enjoyed this afternoon:

• taking a nice long nap in a warm house



• homemade chili with a cold glass of Beck's



• a slice of Whole Foods whole wheat bread smeared with Nutella (ahhh a little taste of Norway!)

And last but not least,

• going to sleep in a warm bed.
  

No Power Day 2

Ughhhhh, this is getting old. So I stayed at Panera as long as I could last night and then I ventured home HOPING AND PRAYING that our power was back on. No dice. The good news is that my mom's house had power. So the big human and I packed up and headed out there. The bad news was that the family that my mom nannies for also did not have power so the girls were sleeping in their room at my mom's and their parents were sleeping in the room that my sister and I shared. So the big human and I had to sleep down in the basement in the guest bedroom. So totally not fun. First of all, the pillows that used to be on my bed upstairs that were absolutely horrible have migrated down there. I hate those pillows. I want to burn those pillows. They are very very uncomfortable and I can't sleep with them. I tried but around 3:30 AM, I gave up and got up looking for other pillows. I found a different pillow but it was no use. I didn't sleep last night. So I am taking the day off from work because based on how I feel right now, if I push through and go to work, I will definately be an absolute wreck physically.

So I came home this morning and was overjoyed to see that the stop light near my house was working and it appeared that power had been restored. I walked in to my house and it felt cold. So I attempted to turn on a light. NOPE. No power still. GRRRRRRRRR. So I am at a gas station/coffee house/internet cafe that is around the corner from my house that does have power. I really really need to sleep. But it's flippin' cold in my house! My plan is to wait another 30 mins or so and head back to my house. If the power is still off, then I will head to the gym so I can at least take a hot shower. Thank god for Gold's!

Power

We have none. At my house I mean. This isn't an ongoing problem, just this afternoon/evening. There have been huge wind gusts in our area and it finally knocked out our power. So I am curled up in a cozy chair at Panera munching a cinnamon scone and spending even more time at MDC getting even crunchier. My lastest kick is cloth diapering. I have figured it out finally and I am now on a crusade to convince my sister that she should do that with her kids when they make their apperances. I'm not even trying with Addison's mom because, well, the ick factor would be too much for her to bear.

We went and looked at a house this afternoon and it was great except that it didn't fit all the requirements on our list. I know that our house is out there waiting for us to find so I'm not stressed. But it was cool to see this house. And the people that own it are super cool. They are both jarheads and they are being moved after only being here for a year so that is why they are renting out their brand new house. They were awesome to talk to and it is a shame that they have to move. They would be fun people to hang out with. At any rate, I am hoping that by the time I head home, our power will be back on because I don't really want to pack things up and head out to my mom's house for the night. But if we want heat, then that is where we're headed!

It could be an illusion, but I might as well try...

So I have committed to teaching my big human that stuffing things in boxes does not equal cleaning. A few months back, I asked him to help me clean up our bedroom. I was doing a deep clean/organization project in the small humans' rooms so when I came back later, there were a couple of file boxes neatly piled up in our room and the room was clean. I then reorganized our storage shed and put those boxes neatly in it. This afternoon, I was looking for some papers so I ventured out into our storage shed and started looking through those boxes. Well it seems that my big human was just picking up piles of stuff and not sorting through them or anything, just putting them in the boxes. I located, among other things, a cell phone charger, the base unit for our XM player, a few books that I had been wanting to read and some CDs that had never been opened. One of those CDs was a Grateful Dead that has one of my favorite songs on it, Scarlet Begonias. I love it so much so I looked online for the lyrics and here they are:

As I was walkin round grosvenor square
Not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air,
From the other direction, she was calling my eye,
It could be an illusion, but I might as well try, might as well try.
She had rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes.
And I knew without askin she was into the blues.
She wore scarlet begonias tucked into her curls,
I knew right away she was not like other girls, other girls.
In the thick of the evening when the dealing got rough,
She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff.
As I picked up my matches and was closing the door,
I had one of those flashes Id been there before, been there before.
Well, I aint always right but Ive never been wrong.
Seldom turns out the way it does in a song.
Once in a while you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right.
Well there aint nothing wrong with the way she moves,
Scarlet begonias or a touch of the blues.
And theres nothing wrong with the look thats in her eyes,
Wind in the willows playin tea for two;
The sky was yellow and the sun was blue,
Strangers stoppin strangers just to shake their hand,
Everybodys playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band.

Ahhh perfection.

Fair Weather Fan

Well, I wouldn't exactly call myself that. More of a sporadic fan. Here's the deal. Since I was about 9 or 10, I have been a NY Giants fan. I was a faithful and loyal fan through my middle and high school years and would dutifully watch any game that was aired in Virginia, follow the games, stats, etc. and debate this info with my best guy friend, Bryan. Once I got into college, I didn't have time to watch football on Sunday although I still enjoyed watching when I was able to. Once I was out of college, same thing. If I was home and it was a Sunday during football season, I would turn it on. I would also try to catch the Super Bowl.

This season, I didn't watch much football. I did see the NFC championship game that the NY Giants won against Green Bay and I was eagerly looking forward to the Super Bowl. But I did not get involved in the "who's going to win the Super Bowl" speculation. I think you can never tell. But on Sunday night, I parked myself on the sofa and only got up to go to the bathroom during commerical breaks. I watched every single second of that game. And loved it. It was amazing. I got a little too into it at one point and my big human threatened to leave and go watch it somewhere else because I was yelling at the TV too much. So I chilled out and kept the yelling in my head. And they won and it was fabulous.

After hearing my big human say Eli's name over and over throughout the game, it is now apparent to me that if Luke ever decides to show up in real life, his name will not be Luke but it will be Elijah and he will be called Eli. And that makes me a silly girl but I don't care.

Dear Billy Ray,

I know that you want your daughter to make a lot of money. And who can blame you? You only really had the one hit so it works out for everyone in your whole family if Miley can bring in the cash. But having the theaters charge $18/person for her 3-D movie? Which wasn't in 3-D the whole time? It was a bit painful. My girl small humans enjoyed it for sure but geez, that was a lot of money!

Thanks for listening Billy.

Best,
Lauri