$5 to go down the road?

To get to the lake? And get ice cream? Sheesh. At least the lake was only ten minutes away so we could drive back to Target's Starbucks and get a mocha iced coffee instead. And for free, thanks to credit card point gift cards. Again, I have to say sheesh. I'll relent from ranting "I pay my taxes, why do I have to pay $5 per vehicle to see a county-run park/lake??!" Instead I'll chalk it up to Missouri's ridiculousness. Although Kentucky had some craziness too, like a law still on the books that bans people from walking around with an ice cream cone in your pocket (apparently that was a trick to steal horses! And in KY, of all places, stealing horses is a NO-NO).

The rest of the weekend's been spent hanging with the neighbors - how fabulous is it to go to a bonfire, get a little tipsy, put the baby to bed in her own crib and then walk home? You can't beat it. And I got a hair/bang cut and had some mysterious moles and skin tags removed. I just imagined the person sitting behind me at Carly and Eric's wedding and the mole on my shoulderblade winking at them, handing out compliments and feeding other guys pick up lines...not ideal. 

Three days of work and then we'll be getting our dixie fix back in Kentucky, going down for the wedding of the year! 

Is it in the stars??

I can't begin to express how insanely busy work is, May is never this crazy, not in my last two years anyway! As I write this, I'm getting a nice neck and shoulder rub, thinking into the future. Or should I say, I've been thinking about going to this astrologist that two of my friends at work have gone to - Quan Tracy Cherry. Funny name, serious intuition, apparently. Is it worth $125 per hour, though? Now that the neck rub has stopped, I can't help thinking about what else that money could buy... a nice new set of bras and undies from VS, a trip to Kentucky there and back, and nearly a month's worth of cable. I think I'm going to go for it. Stay tuned if I really do it or not!

On an already-scheduled front, I'm excited to get back on the bike and go to book club next month. June 24th, I'm not backing out on myself this time! Some other things I have scheduled in the near future is a haircut (desperate for a bang-cut!!), a garage sale this weekend and getting Isla's tea set glazed and fired, along with my homemade pie pan and muffin "tin". Over and out.

At the Races and then some

Happy Birthday, Megan!

Loving on my daddy...

The tuxedo t-shirt man and baby

Chilling watching Mean Girls

Bathtime before travel time

Rocking the walker!

It's been one week, one off for us lately. That's precisely why I love nice weather, everyone likes getting out to do things. Us, we've been out on the road to the Indy 500 in Indianapolis, IN - drove eight hours there on Saturday, and Ross and his buddies (Lee, Steven, Jeremy, Kyle, Mike, and Matt) started off our friend, Eric's, bachelor party then proceeded to stay out until 2:30am...and woke up to drive to the race tailgating at 6:30am, where we met my aunts and uncles - Jerry, Lindy, their friends and Steve and Mary. Ouch, I felt so blessed to have had 7 hours asleep (Mean Girls was on in the hotel and it was like a train wreck, I couldn't stop watching!). I was also glad that I didn't have to endure the treacherous trek to the race, about two miles or so, but at one point there were 15 grown men in the bed of a little Ford Ranger, bottoming out the entire way to the track...yikes. But all of them had chocolate brown/blue tuxedo t-shirts on. Needless to say, the sleeves didn't make the end of the race. Classic.

The race was great, Helio Castroneves won! He won the first year I went and did the "spiderman" on the fence in front of the brickyard fans. It was great, and he's a hilarious guy. But Isla and I didn't go into it because it was a) way hot and b) no place for an infant. So we stayed in my uncle Jerry's big RV, complete with DirecTV and air con! That's how I like to roll, baby! We left 2/3 of the way through the race and eight hours later, picked up the dogs and crashed. Ross said it best, he was 'shattered.' 

Oh but the weekend wasn't over yet. We had a big birthday party to go to for Isla's little friend, Megan, and it was a good, nice, relaxing time. You can't beat a grill out and yummy cupcakes and getting to play with your friends new toys! I must say, though, that it was not an educated decision mommy made when she put white pants on Isla...

A four-day week coming up, then a doctor's appointment to get some ominous moles taken off before Carly and Eric's wedding next weekend. Yes, we are embarking yet again, but it'll be a three day week. And I'm thankful for that. And the rain today. I miss wearing pants and drinking a hot cup of tea...only some days. 

You Can Tell...

Maya Angelou said, "I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. " I'd like to add one more to this list: RFP's.

That's ad lingo for "Request for Proposal", when clients pop up and say, "hmm I'd like to put my feelers out for new ideas and shake things up with my current agency". This, of course, is not a good thing to spring on agencies in our economic times. We are so lucky to still have our jobs! But even though it's work doing these RFP's, it's still not "billable" work. The more billable you are, perceptively, the more valuable you are. And I like to be valuable, doesn't everyone?

And being un-billable and stressed out can make some people very crabby. I like to tell myself that if I ever get in that position that I won't be so short with people. It's not the words, though, it's the looks. Of death. Like nothing else on this planet could possibly be more important. I ask myself, is this any way to live? If we are this stressed out, what do doctors go through, when lives are literally on the line?? Whew. I needed to let that out, thanks.

Needless to say, my weekends are work-free zones, learned that the hard way! C'mon, Memorial Day!

Valkyrie-ally bad movie

Don't get me wrong, I love my movies. Which is why we cannot get a redbox movie and watch it before Isla goes to bed, hopefully around 8pm. She's been a sickly little thing today - soo cranky. And so was her daddy. I think we are all ready for a day off to relax a bit. 

Back to Valkyrie. It reminded me a bit of the Gladiator storyline, in which a soldier/general dude is doing his duty for the Reich and gets damaged - especially mentally - in the beginning, then goes on a rampage to do "what's right", then dies before anything gets done about the turmoil his crew is in. Could've been a lot better. I'm a huge fan of thespians totally getting into their roles and being nearly unrecognizable. One thing I am NOT a fan of is the mixing of accents in historical true-story based films. There you had Tom Cruise with an American accent, the Adolf Hitler actor in a German-English dialect, then the rest of the actors were sporting British accents. Talk about a cluster. Tom Cruise wasn't "himself" in this film, not that I know him personally, but he is one actor that tends to act one way in films (Risky Business, Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Cocktail, The Firm, etc. although he was excellent in The Last Samurai and Far & Away so I knoow he can pull of accents of some degree). 

I hope I can get a good night's rest and that Friday comes quickly...

Beurre manié

"I think i got the rocking thing down, ma!"

I love bananas but it's freaking cold!

Can you tell how mischievous I'll be someday??

Still draggin those legs and rolling eeeeverywhere...

I'm gonna go for it, momma!

Mmm...A tradition we've started (on weekends we're home!) is a Sunday Roast. Today we kind of went overboard. I've really been wanting leek and potato soup, and we got a beef roast yesterday, we we basically have the whole week cooked up for supper and lunches, yummy!

Complete with desserts. I did an apple crisp yesterday, then Ross taught me how to make raspberry creme brulees, with raspberry coulis (coo-lee :) Very exciting. Ooh, and for the soup, I personally made the beurre manie - which is flour and butter mushed together until it looks like bread crumbs. Always an education 'round ours!

The rest of the day we've spent sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms and doing laundry. Then Isla and momma hung out on the front porch, eating frozen bananas and rocking in the chair. I enjoyed getting to clean a bit today - but it's been sooo nice having my little house husband for the last 5-6 weeks. He's back to work next Monday, quite reluctantly I must say. 

Todd and Jenni got back home today, they went on a train tour to St. Louis, then to the zoo and all over the place. I just showed them the vid of the flood and they were freaked out, it's the highest they've seen in over five years! 

A little video of little Miss Isla, dancing girl...makes me think of the ABBA/Mamma Mia song, Thank You for the Music: "mother says I was a dancer before I could walk..." haha! Sooo cute!!

Naughty mommy!

If you want to hear a naughty mommy story, here's one! Isla just hasn't been eating a full bottle at night before bed like she used to. So, night before last, I haphazardly left a nearly-full bottle out to become a bacterial breeding ground ALL NIGHT. That's not the bad part. Then last night I came upstairs with Isla to attempt to feed her a full bottle. But before feeding her, I read her a story, then reached for the bottle, which I thought had suddenly gone stone cold. So I came down with Isla and heated up the now-cold bottle. I started feeding her, without a single complaint from her, and two minutes later realized I may have heated up the yucky bottle, haha!! Not funny though. Ross wasn't nearly as freaked out as I was and threw out both bottles, and got me a new one. Of course, Isla didn't want to eat at that point, but I hoped that I had filled her full of summer vegetables, applesauce and a bit of apple yogurt to tide her over...and hoped she didn't wake up a few hours later with botulism poisoning or whatever could happen!

Needless to say, I will now always TRY to pick up my dirty dishes, especially from Isla's room!!

Naughty mommy....

Just to prove I'm not, here's a video of Isla swinging on Jenni's swing from the other week. Maybe it's naughty that she totally could've flipped out on her sweet little face, but I'll just chalk it up to her being cute and forget about 'what coulda happenend' :)

Flushed out-up

Whew, dodged a bullet last night! Rob and Ann Marie, our wonderful neighbors, said they've never seen the creek so high...and Todd, Jenni and Tyler just left for St. Louis and missed it! I think they're lucky, because it was right up next to their backyard! 

But we weren't that phased inside, as you can see, a toy monster vomited all over our living room floor.......So it begins!

Oh! And we went to Isla's 9-month check up yesterday afternoon, the "no-owwie" check-up, and she's 30.5" long/tall and 21.5 pounds! That's 95th and 90th percentile and I was most glad for her head starting to catch up, it was at 17" around, so almost 75th percentile, haha. So Isla can start having yogurt, string cheese and cottage cheese...although I've been experimenting with all of these in the last month. Naughty mommy?! hee hee hee. 

The Water is Wide...

I wouldn't want to cross over this crazy water! It's the first time our creek in the backyard has gotten thiiis close. I've always had nightmares of storms - tornadoes, specifically - and rising, raging rivers coming to sweep everything away and drowning me. That's never good! I truly believe that in my last life, I drowned in a river, most likely trying to crawl up the side of the muddy bank and never getting anywhere...I digress!

Isla and I went out for a walk in the backyard after the rain stopped, and it was a little disturbing to see raging water that close, hopefully it doesn't rise anymore tonight and we'll wake up to a babbling brook once more...

Swinging!

We went over to our neighbor's house, Todd, Jenni and Tyler's, house to swing on their porch swing and watch "Slumdog Millionaire". It was a great time!! And it was a pretty good movie! 

Poor little miss has a fever tonight, she cut two teeth a couple weeks ago so I'm sure one more is on the way. Which reminds me, I realllllly need to remember to brush her little babby teeth...

It finally hit 80 degrees in KC today, it was great. EXCEPT it's absolutely freezing in my office. Some people just like to be cold, evidently, and I am definitely not one of those people. I felt very silly walking down the street wearing a light sweater, then I got in my car and basked in the humidity. I turned on the iPod and away I went!

It's good to be home. 

Shiny Happy People!

Visiting Great Grandma Hanna on Mother's Day with Calista

Grandma givin' the love right back!

mmm...it's a girl cigar!

Auntie Teresa and Uncle Jeff opening a million presents!

On daddy's shoulders

It's been so beautiful outside...finally! So we've been all happy being outside I nearly broke down crying a week or so ago, I was so mad about being cold.  It's hard to believe that anything would welcome winter if it didn't have to, but I suppose winter and being cold is just a part of life...but not for the next 6 months!! We've been outside constantly, watching daddy mow the lawn, hanging out with the neighbors and visiting family up in Iowa. 

We have a very busy May and early June coming up, so we are really looking forward to having the next weekend "off". These photos are from a week and a half ago, when we went to the park for the first time, and Isla slid down the slide for the first time with momma and daddy! Then there's photos from Auntie Teresa's baby shower last weekend.

Some of you may have noticed we've taken off the "permissions" on our blog, mostly because it's gotten a bit cumbersome for some to sign in every. single. time. I can see how that would be frustrating, so this blog's for you!

Up on the cul de sac

ROFL!

Isla loooves her blankie

...and running into things with her walker

She started off liking getting her haircut, by this pic she wasn't having it!

We heart KY

At the races!!

Watching Benjamin Button

Soon she'll really be sayin, "Gimme the keys, mama!"

...and driving, omigoodness!!

It's summer!! Gardens and trees are in bloom, the david austen roses are safely in the ground, and the spiders are out (can't all come up "roses", can it? haha)... Isla and daddy have been home together for the past month, which has been absolutely wonderful. For three of those weeks, uncle Jimmy came over from England and we were all getting together on the cul de sac and it's been soo missed!!

So the pics here are from all over - Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Iowa. In Kentucky, we got to go to the horse races (sunburns in April, yeah!), in Kansas we got to do some major shopping and Missouri we did a lot of relaxing at home (although I worked the entire time!). Iowa was a bit more somber because my dad had a heart attack while out in the planter, so we went up for five days to help out and make sure everything was ok. It turned out much better than it could have - 100% blockage and a severe case of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) but after a triple bypass and three days in the hospital, pa was back home...and trying to climb back up in the tractor to plant soybeans! Men...

What I am most proud of in the last few months is the effort my momma, daddy and brother-in-law, Jeff, who have all quit smoking together. I know they can do it because they care so much about the people around them!

After a shaky week of allergies and baaaad poopy diapers, Ross and I are off to Iowa for my sissy, Teresa's, baby shower. I can't wait to see how big she is!! June 21st can't come soon enough for Little Miss Schultz to show up!!