Some good quotes for today:

Take chances. Take a lot of them. Because honestly, no matter where you are, where you end up or who you end up with, it always ends up just the way it should be. Your mistakes make you who you are. You learn and grow with each choice you make. Everything is worth it. Say how you feel always. Be you and be ok with it.

I may still not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that someday I want to live in a house filled with my books and travel souvenirs. And the walls that aren't covered in bookshelves will be covered with photos of my family and friends. When I leave that house, I will be going to a job I love and I'll return to a person I love. So that's the dream I'm working on...

"Design is 70% dealing with people, 3% the idea, 2% selling the idea, 2% the brief, 2% being pig headed, 1% printing, 3% eye for detail, .6% invoices, 2% coffee, .7% tracking, .1% warm glow, .6% panic, 1% 4am, .6% staring, .2% checking, 1% letting go, .8% keeping hold, .7% estimates, .3% checking, .4% proofs, .1% colour, .9% understanding, .4% marketing, 1% checking, .8% beach ball, .5% mice, .3% keynotes, .4% persuasion, .2% bragging, .5% smiling, 2% knowing when to stop."

Ross and Isla are coming home tonight. Couldn't be more ecstatic! And a bonus that mom and dad are coming too! It looks like it will be a fabulous weekend just hanging out in the sweltering KC heat. Can't wait for it to begin. [note to self: TAKE PHOTOS! You have two cameras now, USE THEM!!] grrr.

I was skyped

...and I liked it! I invited my mom and Ross to be skypers and then I could see my baby through the long week that we'd be separated. I nearly cried this morning while talking to Paula about my first few days sans Isla. I miss both of them desperately. I love that you can take snapshots on it, here are a few!

It was so Nice to meet my Niece...

Ok, now that the tea set is done, I can't, um, WAAAAIT until these two little ones are at a teaparty with me! [question: who is this party really for, anyway?] Isn't Siena a little sweetheart??!

Speaking of sweethearts, sigh. Ross and Isla have been up to the farm in NW Iowa this week to help haul some grain for my dad, and they were lucky enough to go hang out with Teresa and Siena today. It was a total bummer that on the hottest darn week of the year her air conditioner broke! Just pooped out! With a mom, newborn and two very high-maintenance dogs at home. Whew. And I'm moaning about being home alone for the last two days...

Which I actually haven't been home by myself much at all! I was finally able to get some movies deleted off of the DVR, like Thank You for Smoking. Hilariously hilarious movie, I tell you! It makes me realize how powerful choice is, but my personal favorite has always been willpower. They're both such strong words. I love the way 'choice' rolls off the tongue. And I love the connection will+power has. Literally, if you have the "will", you have the "power" within yourself to make of something what you wish. Hopefully. But this is for certin - without both, you could never live a full life. Make a choice, and follow through to the happy/bitter end. Just do it.

Otherwise, I've had a lot of invitations and plans to visit this week! Last night I went out to happy hour at Harry's with my AM, Hilary, since it was her last full day in the office, then my lovely neighbor cooked me dinner! Then I promptly collapsed to the thunderings of a storm. It was pretty blissful, minus the fact that I had no Ross to cuddle with...Tomorrow they'll be home!!

100 Things I Love...

There are so many things...too many to put just 100! So I've taken my time and really thought about this list. It's not in order of importance, even, so enjoy and make your own. This excercise has really shown me what's important in life (notice there's nothing about work here? Hmm, a bit of balance is in order...)


1. My husband of (nearly) four years! They say 82% of married couples make it to five years and 60% make it to 8 so here's to being almost halfway!



2. Isla - no way is she quite #2!



3. http://www.britsuperstore.com/ - they have EVERYTHING an expat like my hubby could ask for, except for Cuprofen...



4. Swimming - preferably in an ocean that's a few degrees below "bathwater" temp.



5. Grocery shopping - punctuated with a starbuck's bought with a gift card acquired though credit card points



6. The feeling of the gravity pushing on you just before take-off on a plane.



7. Finding an old pen that I love, and still works!



8. Packing for a trip.



9. Skipping stones.



10. Getting a rebate in the mail - and it being right!



11. Not having to drive home after a night out.



12. Laughing 'til my face hurts!



13. Trivia!!



14. Learning something new about the past of a family member, esp. when it's good!



15. The new TV seasons - Hell's Kitchen/ Kitchen Nightmares, Creature Comforts, The Tudors...



16. Grandma's rhubarb pie



17. Grandma's cherry pie



18. A favorite song being played by your favorite band...when they were reported to never ever play it again!



19. Singing, esp. to Isla



20. Being grammatically correct, the majority of the time.



21. Telling the truth when other people are too scared to do so.



22. Guernsey - Cobo bay and L'ancresse are gorgeous



23. Flowers! Read earlier post



24. Thunderstorms while falling asleep - not when they wake me up!



25. Getting an outfit juuuust right.



26. Getting to know myself better through the years...



27. Cleaning out my closet and finding "new" things



28. Buying books on Amazon and seeing the completed ones on my shelf.



29. Post-it notes


30. My camelbak water bottle, with bite spout


31. Being surrounded by pictures of Ross and Isla...


32. Gathering quotes


33. Writing in my journal


34. Dark chocolate kit-kats and Curly Wurly's


35. Being able to leverage my experience to help out.


36. Booking a trip


37. A nice cup of tea


38. My rocking chair


39. A balanced checkbook


40. A loving card in the mail


41. A clean, organized...anything


42. Pencils that aren't just-sharpened, I like them a little dull.


43. My iPod


44. Crunchy things! Like BURNT bacon, quesadillas, carrots, thin gingerbread cookies


45. Game night at Emily's


46. My family history
    
47. Being involved.
48. Pedicures
49. Basil pesto
50. Back tickles
51. Pearls
52. Good hair ties
53. Long hair
54. Lifting weights
55. Updating my resume
56. Pink nail polish
57. My iPhone and Ultimate Data Plan (text me!!)
58. Quilts
59. The smell of Isla's hair
60. Ross's eyes
61. Sign Language
62. The Greek Language!
63. The color of chocolate
64. The game of Flux
65. and Flashlight Tag!
66. Books "that bite and sting"
67. Guitar chord C
68. Yoga
69. Being pregnant
70. Jack Vettriano
71. Sauvignon blanc wine
72. Sand castles
73. Cottonwood trees
74. Pretty flowing dresses
75. Stripping furniture and refinishing!
76. Face masks
77. Hydrangeas and bougainvilleas
78. Dr. Morris, our pediatrician
79. Plucking my eyebrows (such a sense of accomplishment!)
80. NO air conditioning
81. Lots of storage space, but planned storage
82. HGTV
83. Making a great meal...
84. Pottery!!
85. Painting - walls, mostly
86. Riding horses
87. Shopping online
88. A good stroller
89. New undies
90. My front and back porches
91. Sand volleyball
92. Butterscotch pudding
93. Paleontology
94. Tubing down the Elkhorn River in July!
95. Balloon animals
96. Kind glances
97. saying, "remember when...!"
98. Being warm
99. Environmentally sound food, water, air...
100. Beautiful swimmers

Pottery fever

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't show some of my favorite pieces on here, if only to prove to my dear husband that the pottery classes have definitely paid off! I'm now the proud owner of three new baking dishes, made completely by my hand!  I bought some throw-away pans you can get in the grocery store, and made my own pans in their likeness - the 9x9" and the muffin tin. Then I did a wavy pie dish, which looks so good with peach crisp, yummy!!

I'm a little teapot

Or rather, I made one! In the basement of a nice lady here in Liberty, are hundreds of ceramic molds and while there picking out some glazes for our handbuilt/wheel pottery class, Jenni and I discovered I could make a sweet little tea set for Isla. Two months later, I'm finally done and my french-blue tea set is all done! Now, I probably won't let Isla play with it until she's, oh, 30, but it's gorgeous! And it only cost $15 to make the whole thing! 

You can learn lots of things from the flowers

I love that song from Alice in Wonderland. I've been obsessed with flowers lately, plucking blooms as soon as they pop open just so I can have them in the house where we all can enjoy them. I wasn't too happy the other night when I was taking in the glorious smell of the "Queen of Sweden" old English rose and looked down at the bloom to see teeny, tiny little red bugs on it. Just a few, but I'm afraid I inhaled that few. I sneezed right away, so all was well. Still yucky though!

Some flowers I'm throwing myself at are:

• All of my different colors/ flavors of the old English rose rainbow I got from www.davidaustenroses.com - Queen of Sweden, A Shropshire Lad, Benjamin Britten, Cinco de Mayo, Alnwick rose...
• Bouganvilleas! How beautiful are they arching over a seaward-facing terrace?? Oh, I can't wait to get myself to Greece!
• Poppies! If Afghanistan wasn't so scary and the flowers weren't grown strictly for dubious opium, I'd gladly run through a field full of them, wicked witch or no!
• Lilacs...glorious lilacs. Someone quickly point me in the direction of a botanist to hybridize these bushes to bloom season-round in the summer!
• Hydrangeas - My old love. I love how you can change the color of these from year to year - blue, pink, purple, I think that's it...The only downside is that they're poisonous to children.

May you travel safely through the fields of flowers unscathed from the stings of bees, wasps and without little red bugs...We're off to meet my beautiful new niece, Siena (previously misspelled!).

The Wedding of the Year!

And we were there, man, we were there! Carly and Eric got hitched just less than two weeks ago and through me losing our beloved camera, we were able to get a few snapped on Annie's camera. We've since lost the search for it, along with my wonderful blue Camelbak BPA-free water bottle (with bite spout!) and my imported-with-love face cream from Helen. Why have I been losing so many things lately? I blame mom-nesia... At least I've been blogging fairly regularly! 

All tuckered out at the reception...

Sneaking peeks at our friend, Karen, the harpist...

Can I have lessons, momma?? 

Love was in the air...

And mischief!

She was so spry after spending a night in the clink...

The clink that was the scary crib the hotel let us use!

Not bailing you out, baby, it's time for bed :)

Baby Siena is here!!

My little sister, Teresa, just had a baby! Siena Lee Schultz was born at 5:36pm on June 17th, and we are going up to Iowa this weekend to meet her! Isla doesn't know it yet, but she couldn't be more excited!!

Wish list

Every few weeks, an unavoidable ratio crops up in my mind: it seems the "things we need/want" list just keeps growing, as the little one keeps growing. So, for posterity, I'm posting it as a reminder to myself!

1. Suction bowls - It would be remarkable to have borne a world-class frisbee champ, but I won't see the fruits of that for years...Plenty of time to work on this skill.

2. Bookends - there are too many books in Isla's room to speak of, or read. This definitely isn't a problem but it's becoming a little cumbersome to lean books against the wall with only a fragile lamp to hold them from a tumble onto my foot (or Isla's!).

3. Ballerina Jewelry box - you know, like the one we alllll had when we were little? Although Pottery Barn Kids now sells much-higher-class ones that I would love to have for Isla. Too bad if she gets one, she can't play with it until she's 20. Kind of like her new tea set :)

4. Zip 'n Go Blanket - Never stopped to realize that even though it's mid-June, it's still rainy season and even though the grass looks dry, it's never a good plan to go to the park in white clamdigger pants...

5. Baby gates - MUST HAVE. Will need to go to store soon. Risk of impending falls from fun stair-climbing imminent.

6. Jogging Stroller (Instep Swivel Wheel) - Now that I have some routes planned out on www.walkjogrun.com, I'd love to have one of these. www.Craigslist.com is a-calling.

The list is sure to grow longer, for now I just need to get my mom-nesia in check and my purchasing priorities!! Secret-admirer cash gifts or Amazon credit always welcome :)

A nickname

Our daughter's name, we've found, has a definite propensity to gather the odd nickname now and then. The ones we love have been Izzy, Islie, Isles, and the quintessential literal phonetic - Iz-la. I was in the bathroom yesterday after work, washing my hands, when Isla army crawls in to see what's going on. Without a second thought, I say, "Well Hi, Lolly!"

I have always, ALWAYS loved history, especially family history and hearing about long-gone relatives and their friends and good times. And I've always wondered how one would acquire a nickname like Minnie, Millie, Kittie or Dolly. Most likely it's just a shortening of a name (i.e. millie short for camilla). I haven't ever heard of a Lolly though, aside from the candy lolly-pops. Maybe that's why I thought it - Isla is sweet and little, and can make my head ache from time to time (not from her sweetness, more volume-based!). I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for that name, too. Little Isla, a.k.a. Lolly, Wallis :)

Bye bye!

Daddy and baby playing with his early father's day "pressie", his first American soccer ball!

A new set of words to add to Isla's vocabulary - she says, "bye bye!" and waves when you say it to her. And she's developed a fixation on playing with the dog bowls - I don't understand why. There is no dog food inside, or water, it can't possibly be attractive. Now that she's mobile, both on hand/foot and via the walker, she'll get to those bowls however she can. But during the day, Ross has rigged an ingenious way to keep her in the living room - putting down a dog blanket that is virtually impassable through use of a walker. Even if you take the bowls away or block her off, though, she isn't bothered much by it. Necessity is the mother of invention. And I'm a mother of a very active, and thankfully, content baby.

Woka woka

No, Isla isn't saying "walker" in babytalk yet, but she totally surprised us with "mama" yesterday! That's been a long time comin, kind of like when we waited and waited and watched and watched for Isla to roll over...the sit up...then crawl. And now she's got the army crawl down and she surprised me again for being so fast, so pardon the heightened mommy-talk!

Yesterday, Isla and I had a great time sitting out in the neighbor's driveway with little Megan, having a little play time. It's so interesting to see how babies this age interact, like they have their own little language and mannerisms, it's pretty neat to just be a part of.