Touring Dave’s company

Normally the facility where Dave works is not open to the public but a few weeks ago they had a family weekend where us outsiders were invited to take special tours of the facilities. It was a rare opportunity to get to see some places where Dave works!

We weren’t allowed to bring cameras or cell phones onto the grounds so I only have the two pictures taken by the company (and later emailed to us) to show for our day.

Our first tour stop was the world’s most powerful supercomputer. We saw simulations of how the thing works and then we were able to walk into the giant room where rows and rows and rows of processors live. When I saw the station to have your picture taken with the computer I laughed. I mean, who in the world needs their photo taken with a computer? Well, apparently we do. And so did the other hundreds of people visiting that day. So here it is, our photo with the world’s most powerful supercomputer. It’s Christmas card worthy, don’t you think? Ha!

Then we were able to tour the building where the laser Dave works on is housed. We learned all about the laser, saw bits and pieces of different parts that makes the system run and saw the outside of the target chamber. Then we got our picture taken with a blown up photo of part of the laser system. Super neat, huh? ;-)

Even though I thought the photos of us with pieces of equipment were hokey (but at least now I can prove I was at the facility!) it was a lot of fun to finally be able to see where Dave works. I’m glad we got to go together and I can’t wait until they open the facility again so I can see more!

A new favorite photo

A couple of months ago I posted about a cool aspect of my job where I got to meet some famous artists who were scheduled to perform this summer at the winery where I work.

Well, I wasn’t able to get a photo with all of the artists who visited this summer, but Dave and I were able to have our photo taken with…

… wait for it…

STEVE MARTIN! Check out our fun photo:



I’m glad Steve was such a good sport ;-)

Foreigner

My job is constantly busy, crazy and stressful but there are also some awesome perks. Wine is one of those perks. There is always an open bottle somewhere near by and whenever I am at a work event there is plenty of the stuff to pass around. Another perk is that I work on a property surrounded by rolling hills and vineyards, so you can’t complain about the scenery. Hmmm… pictures of the property would make another great blog post soon…

Anyway, one of the most fun perks is that the winery where I work puts on a summer concert series with some pretty big acts. This year, I have been put in charge of running the meet & greet sessions with the artists before/after the concert. It’s not that big of a deal, I gather contact info for all of the people with meet & greet passes so I can email them their photos after the concert and just direct people as they are in line waiting for their photo to be taken. See, not super exciting.

BUT at the first concert, after all of the meet & greet people went through the line and had their photo taken I was asked if I wanted MY picture with the band. Um, heck yes! So here is my photo with the band Foreigner (and our super cute intern).

Please excuse the fact that I look like a hot mess after running around in 103 degree heat all day and did not expect to have my picture taken.

Foreigner put on a great show and had the whole venue on their feet for practically the entire performance. At one point the lead singer came off the stage, jumped up on someone’s table (people are seated at tables because they get dinner before the concert), grabbed a bottle of open wine off of the table and took a big drink. I was fun to watch!

There are a few more concerts this summer so I hope to have more pictures to share as the concert season goes on. And for next concert I’ll be sure to be better prepared for the camera :-)

First day of work

Dave had his first day of work yesterday! I was compelled to take a picture before he left for the day and I felt like a mom sending her son off to school for the first time. Oh well, its all about the memories, right?

The best part of his new job was that he came home at 5:00 p.m.! That hasn’t happened in, uh, ever I think. I’m used to grad school hours of working from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 or later in the evenings (with no consistent ending time) - six days a week. This new schedule is going to take some getting used to but I’m so excited to be able to spend some more time with Dave in the evenings. If you have a spouse in grad school, hang in there! The end result of your spouse having a great job is worth the horrible schedules now, I promise!

Longest week ever

Um… what day is it? Where am I? That is how I have felt all week long. After loading all of our belongings on a moving truck on September 2, we had a plan to stay with family and friends through last week until Friday (the 8th) when I was going to drive out to California to begin living in our house, waiting for the moving truck to arrive with all of our belongings so I could begin getting our new life organized. Dave was going to hang out with my family this week until his defense when he would then join me in California.

Over Labor Day weekend we visited and stayed with Dave’s parents. While there we continued our Labor Day weekend tradition by going to the Colorado Balloon Classic to take pictures to enter into the photo contest. I haven’t had the opportunity to go through all of my photos yet, but there are a few good ones :-) I promise to post the better pictures once I have time to go through them. We were also able to visit with friends Trisha and Chris, and their daughter Makenzie. It was so nice to be able to visit with them!

On Monday we headed to my parents’ house to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Can you believe she turned 29, again?!? Neither can I… We spent the night there and then headed back to our now-former home town so I could finish up my last week of work and Dave could continue to work on his dissertation at his lab.

But here is where our plans changed.

On Tuesday we got a phone call from the moving company around noon telling us that our stuff would be arriving in California at 8:00 a.m. THE NEXT DAY. That is hardly the 24-72 hours notice we were told we would get before the delivery. The kicker was that if we were not physically present to accept the delivery, we would be charged $2,500 for storage. So, Tuesday afternoon I booked an evening flight to the Bay Area and a reserved rental car and headed to the airport all by myself while Dave stayed in town to continue to work on his dissertation. Then, my original flight was delayed for three hours which would put me arriving at the airport later than the rental car counter was open so I had to switch flights at the last minute and then change my rental car reservation since I was flying into a different airport. I finally arrived and uneventfully supervised the unloading of the moving truck on Wednesday morning. I spent the afternoon trying to do a little unpacking before I had to head to the airport at 2:00 a.m. to catch my 6:00 a.m. flight back to Colorado. It was a whirlwind 48 hours. Luckily, I was able to take a few pictures of our new house while I was there! Please excuse the boxes - they should be gone; someday.

Then I returned to work on Thursday to train my replacement. It was hardly believable to be training the person who was going to be taking over the job that I love so much. I did my best to explain everything I do and how I do it but I wasn’t able to get through everything by the end of the day, so I agreed to come in on Monday to finish up. By Thursday night I was exhausted and was definitely ready to crash at our friends Brianna & Rob’s house.

On Friday we headed back to my parents’ house to stay for the weekend. We were hoping that Dave’s advisor would have scheduled a date for his defense, but on Friday we still had no date and no real plan of what we were doing or where we were going for the upcoming week. Seriously, this process is so frustrating and we were just taking everything moment by moment (or crisis by crisis so it seemed) since we had totally lost control of everything. I walked into my parents’ house Friday morning and was greeted by my mother who informed me of two smaller family crises that I then had to (emotionally) deal with. Everything is okay, but seriously, those issues were just the flame on the candle on top of the cherry on top of the sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake. I was spent, drained and unable to function anymore. I just shut down and settled in to just hanging out all weekend.

Sunday night we headed back to our now-former home town and checked into a hotel that my aunt gifted us with by booking and paying for our stay. (Thank you, Aunt Pat!) After everything the past week threw at us, this is just what we needed to relax and unwind while I finished work and Dave finished the third revision of his dissertation. We enjoyed staying with friends and family, but we were ready for a more private retreat after being “homeless” for over a week now and to give us a better space to deal with all of our stress - you know, like trying to figure out when we would officially be moving to California since Dave still had no defense date.

Yesterday I finished training my replacement at work and had a nice lunch with co-workers. I will miss those folks so much! They even left me a special surprise in my car to help me feel at home in California. Its a long story, just know that it was really funny!

Some good news is that yesterday Dave was able to set a defense date for his PhD dissertation! Of course, this is pending that all of his committee members get back to him to confirm that they are available. Fingers crossed!

So it looks like Dave will be defending on September 23rd, giving him a week and a half to prepare his presentation. After some discussion and family brainstorming last night it looks like Dave and I will be driving out to California together on Thursday, then he will fly back next week before his defense and stay with my parents, then he will drive our other car out to California after his defense and start work on October 3rd. As long as we don’t have any other crazy surprises this will be our plan. Hooray for finally having a plan!

This whole process has been so draining & frustrating and I can.not.wait for it to be over soon. Here’s to praying that things will play out as they are supposed to!

Monday morning monoxide mystery

It has already been an eventful Monday morning… and I am ready for a nap. At 1:30 this morning I woke up to a strange beeping noise. I woke Dave up and told him to go to the living room and check it out. We couldn’t find the source of the noise in our apartment; it seemed to be coming from the apartment upstairs. The noisy people above us moved out yesterday (hooray!) so it couldn’t be an alarm clock or other electronic device. Because of the shortness of the beeps (four beeps then silent for 30 seconds) we figured that the fire alarm up there was running out of batteries and that there was nothing we could really do about it because nobody was living there. So we went back to bed, trying to ignore the beeping.

At 4:30 there was a loud banging on our front door. It was the fire department and they said that the carbon monoxide detector in the apartment above ours had been going off and they needed to check our apartment for carbon monoxide. It turns out our levels were low, but present. They told us not to worry and to go back to bed. Of course, we opened our window first.

Again we were woken up by banging on our front door at 5:45. It was the fire department and the Xcel energy technician. They said they were still trying to locate the source of the carbon monoxide and wanted to shut off our water heater to be safe. We were also told there there would be enough hot water for one shower. Boo. Luckily, Dave and I compromised on who got to use the hot water  ;-)

So, that’s been our morning so far. We’re going to keep some windows open today and have fans on so that Gromit is a little safer while we are at work. I hope they figure out what is going on soon!

Let freedom ring!

Happy 4th of July! (a day late)

We had so much fun yesterday planning and being at a picnic with some of our family and great friends! Independence Day is my favorite holiday because it is a day to relax and just hang out with people.

Dave and I planned a fun picnic at our City Park for friends and family. We spent all morning getting some food ready, and in the process of slicing onions on our mandolin, I somehow sliced right through the tip of my finger along with the onion. Ouch! It seems that I always have some sort of kitchen mishap when trying to do something fun; like the cake that overflowed on Valentine's Day 2010 or last year's 4th of July cake which fell apart for no good reason or when I somehow cut my breast cleaning a microwave prepping for a Pampered Chef fundraiser. Some days I feel like an accident waiting to happen. We tried to stop the bleeding and bandage up my finger but I went through at least five Band-Aids before it stopped. Needless to say, I was not allowed near any other sharp objects for the rest of the day. Thank goodness I have a sweet husband who steps in to help me out when I somehow injure myself for no good reason.

We had a wonderful time at the park with family and friends. We had a yummy spread of food and we had a great time chatting and catching up with everyone. Matt and Janeal were visiting from out of town and stopped by the picnic so we could see their daughter, Lily, and meet their latest additions, twins Alexander and Xavier. Gromit did a great job around the kids! He was patient when Lily was trying to walk pull him on a leash and he was very sweet and patient as the 11-month-old babies tried to pet him (which was more like hitting) and pull his hair. I think he's going to be great when we finally have a baby.

The only big downer of the day was when we found out from some grumpy police officers that the city changed the park rules this year and didn't allow dogs in the park for fireworks. They said that signs were posted "everywhere" letting people know, but we didn't see any signs. Reluctantly we took G home and tried to make him comfortable so he wouldn't be scared of fireworks when we weren't there. He seemed to do OK :-)

The fireworks were great and I was glad to still be borrowing Susan's camera so I could get some great fireworks pictures! Thanks again, Susan!



Don't forget, today is your last day to sign up for this fun swap! Just click the button below for more info. We can't wait to swap with everyone!

<center><a href="http://dandelion-chronicles.blogspot.com/2011/06/midsummer-nights-swap.html " title="A Midsummer Night’s Swap"><img src="http://i909.photobucket.com/albums/ac293/munchkin_land_designs/Buttons/SummerSwap2.png" alt="A Midsummer Night’s Swap"></a>

I hope you had a great 4th of July! And thank you to all of our military members who continue to fight to keep our country free!

Getting comfy

I think we may have spoiled Gromit a little too much. In this cold weather we have been wrapping him up in blankets on the couch, letting him sleep in our bed (for a little bit each night), and turning on space heaters when we are home for him to curl up in front of.

Normally we keep a tan fleece blanket across the seats of the couch to protect the fabric from dog oils when Gromit is up there. Lately we have put a light blue, fluffy down blanket on the couch over the tan blanket for Gromit to snuggle with since it has been so cold. I know, I know… its a little much, but I don’t care. He is the only baby I have, for now, and he seems to like having that extra layer of fluff to sleep on.

Yesterday his blue blanket got dirty so I threw it in the laundry to wash. Apparently Gromit was missing his blue blanket and decided to try and fluff up the tan blanket as a more comfy spot to sleep on. Take a look:

I think we have a spoiled (and smart) dog on our hands!

It started off as a lovely day…

It started off as a perfect Saturday. I got up and went to Bible study with a fantastic group of women who I am certainly enjoying getting to know better. They are so welcoming and seem to actually be interested in what I have to contribute to the group. They don’t even seem to mind hanging out when we’re done and listening to me vent - I swear they must be saints! Seriously, I am so honored to have been welcomed into their circle and I look forward to diving deeper into my own faith with them on these Saturday mornings.

After Bible study I got a text from one of my best and oldest friends, Jessy! We have known each other since kindergarten. She is 8 1/2 months pregnant and she suggested we have a girls day to go get lunch, get pedicures, then hang out at her place to organize baby stuff. Fabulous! We enjoyed lunch at Chick-Fil-A, got wonderful pedicures which included leg massages and then practiced swaddling, looked at all of the baby clothes she has acquired and ooed and awwwwed at all of the other cute baby stuff she has. I even showed her all about Shutterfly so she can easily make and share photo albums with her extended family after the baby is born!

Sorry about the blurry picture. I used my phone to take it.

After I got home Dave and I decided to take the night off from healthy cooking (mostly because I forgot to start the all day crock pot meal earlier this morning) and go out for Chinese food at my favorite Chinese food restaurant with the best crab rangoons I’ve ever had. Yuuuummmmmm!

Then my great day was over.

We were on our way home from the restaurant and only a couple blocks from home when we saw a woman hanging from a car on a side street then she went flying off the side and landed in the middle of the street, face down. The car drove off. We pulled over and I jumped out of the car to see if she was all right. A couple of other neighbors came out to help also. We got her out of the street, picked up her smashed glasses and the windshield wiper that she had been hanging from off of the street. She was hysterical and had clearly been drinking. She tried to tell us that her husband pushed her out of the car and drove off with their two-year-old daughter and we can’t call the cops because she had been drinking because her husband’s step-father made her. Apparently she had also had a previous domestic violence case against her and she begged us not to call 911 so her daughter wouldn’t be taken away from her, or something like that. Sounded like a crazy situation. Long story short, we were able to get her cell phone from her and call her grandparents to come and pick her up and take her to a safe place. While we were waiting for her grandparents to show up we encouraged her to take charge of her life and to seek help and counseling to help herself and her family. I don’t know if she’ll do anything about her situation, but I hope this was a wake up call for her to get herself out of whatever situation she is in and to make a better life for her and her daughter. Her grandparents finally came to pick her up and, thank goodness, they seemed to have sound heads on their shoulders. We all gave them our phone numbers in case they decided to involve the police so we could speak as witnesses to what we saw. It was a crazy night. A crazy, scary night.

I am so grateful for my wonderful family and friends. I am grateful that my husband and I have a strong relationship and that he would never try to throw me from a moving vehicle and leave me in the middle of the road. I am grateful that my friends and their spouses would never do that to one another. I am grateful that there are still good people in the world who stopped to help this woman. I will never forget this night and the horrible thing I saw. And I will never forget how a group of strangers worked together to help someone and encourage her to do better for herself.

I hope this woman gets her act together and puts herself in a better situation. Please, pray for her and her family.

Beautifully different

Today’s #reverb10 prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different - you'll find they're what make you beautiful.

This one was hard for me… I’m not so good at this, so I asked my lovely husband what makes me different. He said, “I am considerate of others and am always thinking of others’ needs and trying to make people comfortable.” What a sweet guy! I think I’ll keep him around.

I really hope that others would also describe me as considerate. I do try to think of what others needs are and what others would want, and I really hope others see that too. I know that sometimes I do things with good intent and then it backfires on me and I look like a total goof. Things like this happen to me all of the time; I really do have the best intentions with things and somehow it backfires on me. Everyone else may not see or know what my good intent was, but at least God does - he knows what is in my heart. This is where my blog title comes from, the song “Dandelions” by Five Iron Frenzy. It is my favorite song ever. EVER! Check it out:

OK, so it’s not a real music video but it has the lyrics.

The line “Dandelions, you see flowers in these weeds” is what I interpret as seeing the good (or good intent) when something looks bad. It’s the theme song for my life and, therefore, my blog title.

I don’t know if all of this makes me different or even beautiful, but it is what makes me who and what I am. I will always continue to try and be as considerate as I can and hopefully I can learn from the mistakes I make. I love knowing that no matter how many times I mess up in life, have good intentions backfire or make a goof of myself God knows what is really going on inside of me, sees the good and forgives the not so good. It’s an amazing gift that I am happy to accept.

TGIN (Thank goodness its November!)

First, let me just say how thankful I am that the election is over and all of the political TV ads, mailings, phone calls and e-mails are done. Whew! Now, back to our regularly scheduled post...

October was an incredibly long month for me and I am so thankful it is finally over. In my job at a nonprofit we are involved in Breast Cancer Awareness Month activities and fundraisers and, having planned and executed most of these activities, I am exhausted.

This past month I have delivered flocks of 20 pink flamingos every night all over the region as people made donations for us to “flock” their friends. It was my crazy idea for a fundraiser, and darn it, it worked. But not without a lot of hard work, crazy people and long hours. But it was so much fun! All of the feedback we received was so positive. Who knew that people would be so excited to wake up to flamingos in their front yards! And now that we have done it once we have a whole bunch of ideas on how to make it even better for next year. It feels so go to have your boss find value in a new idea you have and to give you the support you need to execute it. It also feels good to really analyze the event and determine the strengths and weaknesses of it so you can improve it for the future. I love this about my job!

 
I’ve also been involved in planning smaller awareness events this month which were also successful - but the biggest event I was involved with this month was a huge Halloween gala to benefit my organization complete with silent auction, fundraising games, a wine wall, live band, costume contests and a lot of fun. Actually I’ve been working on this event with a committee since I started this job back in May. It has taken months of organization, planning, procurement and execution to pull it off and these last few weeks of 45+ hour work weeks getting everything finalized and put into place has worn me out. As soon as the event was over late Saturday night, I crashed. All of the emotions of stress, excitement, long hours, etc. were finally past and I could relax. I slept until 10:00 on Sunday and I haven’t done that in years! It felt so good.

I spent the day Sunday getting ready for Halloween and I decorated our door for trick-or-treaters and put out two of the pumpkins that were painted for the Halloween event the night before. I can’t take credit for the cool painted witch in moon - that takes much more talent than I have - the best I could do was that owl on the left.

 

To my dismay we didn’t even have one trick-or-treater and that puts my total at 0 trick-or-treaters in the five Halloweens I have had my own place. Its almost like validation that you’re a real adult when you have trick-or-treaters.

Anyway, as much as I LOVE my job and the organization I work for I am looking forward to the next couple of months with no work events on the weekends and no really big events to stress out over. I am looking forward to the coming holidays and starting some new family traditions with Dave. I’m looking forward to the birth of friends’ and family members’ babies in the coming months. I’m looking forward to watching Dave get closer to graduating. And I’m looking forward to relaxing evenings and weekends with fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate and good company. And when I’m finally rested up I’ll be ready to gear up for next October which will undoubtedly be just as crazy and busy as this one. Bring it on!

The Haunted Cemetery

Last night I was invited to visit a local “haunted” cemetery with a co-worker, her daughter and her daughter’s friends. Since Dave has been busy finishing up an application for a post-doctoral position (no, he’s not done with his degree yet, but this is just a proactive approach to having something lined up whenever he does finish) so I figured it would be something fun to do while Dave was still working.

I was picked up by my co-worker and a car full of giggling 14-year-olds and we were off. The kids were setting the scene with all of the stories they had heard about people seeing ghosts there. I hadn’t even heard of this place before this weekend so I wasn’t thinking anything would happen to us. We arrived, parked, grabbed our flashlights and headed to the cemetery entrance.

There was a path which was not very wide leading to the actual cemetery entrance gate. The kids led the group and I was last in the bunch. We traveled down the path, crossed a wooden bridge and finally came to the entrance gate. The cemetery was very old with many graves dating back to the 1800s. The place is very disorganized and gravestones were just sort of randomly placed around us, some right next to the narrow path. Some graves had tiny headstones, others had larger headstones, some which had fallen over and were cracked, and other graves were surrounded by either a white or iron fence. Although I wasn’t scared, it was still a little creepy to be in a cemetery so late at night on Halloween.

We followed the path for a while longer and came to a stop near the end of the trail. The kids were a little freaked out because they thought they had heard rustling in some bushes up ahead and were deciding whether or not to continue and try to find some sort of marker which supposedly listed the names of all of the people buried there. I was looking past our group and thought I saw the figure of a person in the distance. I turned to my co-worker to ask if she saw what I was seeing and then we heard a woman’s blood curdling scream maybe 20 feet in front of us. Everyone jumped, turned around and began to run at full speed out of the cemetery. Fight or Flight mode kicked in and the only thing I was concerned about was getting the heck out of there, and fast. One of the girls in the group had tripped and fallen on the ground and quickly jumped back up to get moving again. I had such a strong instinct to get out of there that I passed a couple of the kids and was jumping over headstones in my attempt to get out of there. We got to the entrance gate and heard the scream again, but in the distance. Since we figured nothing was actually chasing us we slowed our sprint down to a fast jog down the path, over the wooden bridge and out the first gate we had gone through and jumped in the car at lightning speed. The car engine started and we drove away from that place as fast as we could.

I don’t know if that scream came from a real person stationed there with some friends waiting to scare people or if it was a paranormal thing, but either way it sure scared the crap out of all of us and we all had the same instinct to run as fast as we could out of there. The cemetery trip was definitely a fun break from the normal Halloween routine, even if the whole adventure lasted only 10 minutes from when we got out of the car to when we ran back in it. I’ll never forget this night! Happy Halloween!

God is great, beer is good and people are crazy

God is great, beer is good and people are crazy. Thank you Billy Currington; no truer words have ever been sung.

These last few days have been full of crazy people. I don’t know if I missed the memo about it being act like a fool week or if people in general are just out of control. Either way, I’m over it. Let me explain…

Crazy people incident #1
On Saturday we went to the Homecoming football game of our Alma Mater. We had a great time tailgating and cooking brats and sauerkraut and eating chips, veggies and home made brownies with my parents and youngest sister, Erin. During the game some student fans came in after we were seated and watching the game and they pushed their way through other people into the stands right behind us. When one of the guys in the group asked his girlfriend if they should apologize for pushing people out of their seats so they could squeeze in the girl said something like, “No way! You don’t need to apologize to those f*ing losers. We’re students and we can sit where ever the f* we want…” and then she continued to use the f word as almost every other word in each sentence she spoke. Now, I may have dropped a few f-bombs in my lifetime but only around close peers and only when no other expression expressed my feelings quite as well. Never have I used such language in a crowd and never around a mixed group of older adults and younger children. Out of respect for my parents and sister who were standing next to me at the game I turned around and asked this girl to please watch her language. My request was met with more cursing and personal attacks. And it didn’t stop there. For the entire game this girl made mean comments to me, continued to curse purposefully and was just overall obnoxious. I ignored her but she just wouldn’t stop. Then at the beginning of the 4th quarter one of the guys in this group of people started patting Dave’s rear end. I saw it happening and told them to stop. Dave turned around and and gave the guy a questioning look. The guy then tried to high-five my mom and then pointed out some gray lighter colored hair on her head and then proceeded to run his fingers through her hair! Are you kidding me? Who does that? I pushed his arm down and told him to back off. The group decided to leave and announced they were going to go drink more. The girl directed a few more comments at me before they were gone and I just told her goodbye and to have a great evening. They left behind their empty bottle of vodka. Good grief.

Crazy people incident #2
At 3:15 Sunday morning and Dave and I were woken up by incredibly loud banging, thuds, laughing and loud talking from the apartment above ours. These people have been consistently loud since they moved in and we’ve just learned to deal with the noise, but this night was way worse than the usual noises and it was at a time of day that they usually aren’t loud. They were making so much noise that even Gromit was awake and whining and looking at the ceiling wondering what the noise was. These people were being so loud that I couldn’t fall back asleep, and I usually sleep like a rock. After half an hour of banging and chatter we took a stool and hit the ceiling three times to let them know that they were being overly loud and we could hear them in hopes that they would take the hint and quiet down. The response was more noise and banging. Since there had been no change in the noise level a few minutes later we hit the ceiling again and the response was now multiple people jumping up and down over the bedroom, down the hall, into the living room and back to the bedroom. I grabbed my sweater and went upstairs and knocked on their door. I wanted to let them know that we were trying to sleep and we would appreciate it if they could be a little quieter. I saw a girl close the vertical blinds next to the door and heard her run away giggling. I heard the group of girls inside laughing that I was out there and heard them going over all the things they would do if they opened the door. I saw one of them peek through the vertical blinds right in front of me and I said “Can you guys be a little quieter please? It's almost 4:00 a.m. and we’re trying to sleep”. The girl left the window and the girls continued on talking and laughing so I went back downstairs and tried to sleep. They were loud until about 4:30. Needless to say, Dave and I were incredibly tired and cranky the next day.

Crazy people incident #3
My parents were visiting this weekend and stayed at a nearby hotel overnight. In the morning they heard stories of a drunk man who had misplaced his key and had broken the glass of the outside door to get into the building and then proceeded to knock on every door on one floor until he found the room he was staying in. Thankfully my parents didn’t hear any of this and were able to get a good night’s sleep.

Crazy people incident #4
I came home from work yesterday evening and about an hour later the smoke alarm was going off in the apartment below us. I went down to see what was going on (to see if I could help and to make sure I didn’t need to grab our valuables and evacuate) and it turns out the older man who lives there had tried to light a fire in the fireplace and forgot to open the flue. The alarm went off for a while but it eventually stopped. I think we’ll make sure our renter’s insurance is up-to-date in case of anymore incidents. This may not be as crazy of an incident as the other ones, but it is certainly another thing going on that had us a little worried.

Crazy people incident #5
The people above us were at it again last night. They decided to vacuum their living room at midnight. Ten minutes later they stopped. Then a few minutes after that they started again in another area. Ten minutes later they stopped. A few minutes later they started again in another room. This went on and on and Dave and I kept waking up with each turn on and off of the vacuum. Finally at 1:15 we had enough and Dave grabbed our trusty stool and hit the ceiling three times. The vacuuming stopped. Hooray! It was quiet for the rest of the night.

I don’t know what is going on around here but I’m over dealing with nutty people. I can not wait for the day that we own a home and can live peacefully in our self-created madness. Until then, we’ll do the best we can to cope with the people and situations we’re presented with. Wish us luck and pray for Dave to graduate soon!

Ice blocking!

This weekend was a special weekend - Curtis (my brother) came to visit from Texas and he brought his girlfriend, Dache to visit with him! This is the first time that she has been able to meet the entire family and I certainly hope we haven’t scared her off!

On Saturday night we had a big family BBQ and afterwards the whole group of kids and significant others (Me, Dave, Curtis, Dache, Kelly, Erin and Zach) went Ice blocking. For those of you not familiar with this activity, you get some big blocks of ice, put a folded towel on top and then find a steep hill and slide down - like sledding without the snow! This is something that my siblings and I have done a few times before with youth group but this was the first time that Dave and Dache have attempted this, and they did really well!

I’m going to apologize ahead of time for the quality of these pictures - it was obviously dark outside and people were moving down the hill pretty fast!

Everyone went down on their own

Then we went down in pairs

We even tried going down in funny poses!

Despite some bumps and bruises from falling off the ice blocks or hitting divots in the ground and flying off the ice we all had a great time hanging out and sliding down the hill. Leave it to us to go ice blocking at 10:30 at night in a park in the middle of suburbia. With this family, there is never a dull moment!

I'm still here, barely

I'm sorry I've been so absent lately. Work life has gotten really busy lately preparing for, what feels like, a bazillion activities and events happening in October. I hope to get some time this weekend to get my personal stuff back in order; my home, the dishes piled in the sink, my blog, the huge mountain of laundry in the hamper... you get the idea.

So hang in there, folks! I'll be back online giving you things to waste your time reading soon. Until then, Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Yesterday was my dad's birthday and I am so lucky that I was able to share the evening with him! We started the evening off with appetizers, went and had a nice dinner at a local restaurant and then headed back to our place for cake, ice cream and presents.

The big cupcake cake I made for Dad

This year I had to get creative with his present. Usually I can either think of something great to get him or he provides a list of things he wants and are easy to choose from. This year, that was not the case. His wish list went something like this:

• Digital Camera
• Round of Golf
• Tan Pants – Dockers Like w/pleats – Cash or Gift Card Only
• New Casual Shoes Size 10 ½ or 11 (UGG) Cash or Gift Cards Only
• Sandals/not flip-flops – Casual Leather- size 11 – (Cash Only) Brown/Tan
• Gift Cards (visa or master card) are always great

Thanks, Dad; that gives us a lot of options - digital camera, golf or basically money. Lame! So I came up with a plan to give him what he wanted but in my own special way.

A little over a month ago my parents went camping in their pop-up tent trailer. One evening my mom went to go use the shower (she will only go to campsites with flush toilets and showers) and my dad went to bed. He heard a rustling under the pop-up that sounded like my mom going through the cooler, which they leave outside under the bed pop out. After calling out to her with no answer he assumed a neighbor was trying to steal food. He went outside to investigate and found the cooler knocked over. Not thinking much of it he set it upright and went back to bed. When my mom returned form the shower he asked if she had come back to get something from the cooler. She said no but someone told me they saw a bear in the area. So long story short, my dad thought a food stealing camper was getting into the cooler but it was a bear. In the morning they found bear paw marks and a hole, presumably from a bear claw, on the top of the cooler.

Because this has been the big story among my family I decided to play it up. Dave and I decided to give my dad money for shoes for his birthday (per his oh-so-insightful list) so we made the picture below, printed it out, cut along the doorway of the tent and made the cash look like it was coming out of the tent and the bear was going to get it and then we put it in a small picture frame and wrapped it up.

He had a good laugh when he opened the gift and was very impressed with our creativity. He is also looking forward to buying some new shoes this weekend.

More Geocaching adventures

Over the last couple of weeks Dave and I have tried to fit in a few Geocaching hikes. This has turned out to be really fun to do! We are more motivated to get outdoors when there is a purpose and destination and we are discovering some new and beautiful trails right in our own town.

We do have to laugh at ourselves though because we have both downloaded Geocaching apps on our phones and now everywhere we go we are looking to see if there are any caches in the area, just for fun. Also, when we're looking for the physical caches and other people see us they look at us like we're crazy - I guess when we're lifting rocks and moving branches around it could look a little suspicious to people who have no idea what's going on. But, it is also kind of funny to watch their reactions.

Anyway, we've found two caches in the last couple of weeks! The first one took us two tries to find. We set out one morning before work to get a little exercise in and we must have looked for this cache for a good 20 minutes but never found it. We finally gave up and headed home. It bugged me all day that I couldn't find it and I kept thinking of all of the places it could have been hiding. When Dave got home that night I insisted that we go back and look again because I had a couple of new ideas about where to look this time. So off we went back to that area and we searched high and low with no luck; but I had one last idea. With true acrobatic skill I climbed the railing on a bridge, anchored my feet in the rail and looked under the bridge to find the cache! Ha! I did it! Had the canal not been full of water I'm sure this hunt would have been a lot easier. There was nothing in this cache except for the log so we signed it and left a golf tee for the next seekers to find.

On another day we headed further up the same trail as the previous cache to find another one. Many people hiking and running on the trail had stopped and warned us about rattlesnakes they had seen on the trail that day - surely they were concerned for us and our cute little dog who always goes hiking with us. Snakes are my least favorite thing in the world and I don't know what I would do if I actually encountered one. Actually, I'd probably freeze which would make me an easy target for striking. Needless to say I was a little leery of continuing but we went for it. After a very nice and snake-free hike we found the cache which was a film canister, signed the log and headed back down to the car.

A tired Gromit after a long and hot Geocaching trip

That updates you on our Geocaching adventures. Who knows what we'll find next!

4th of July weekend

It has been an absolutely fantastic 4th of July weekend. I always have high expectations for this weekend each year as it is my absolute favorite holiday of the year - and this year those expectations were met - with a few hiccups along the way.

Saturday morning we decided to take a bike ride to the dog park so we could get some exercise riding and Gromit could get some exercise running around the dog park. Here's a picture of Dave with Gromit in the dog trailer. So funny, but it works!

Gromit isn't thrilled about riding in it yet, but I think as he rides it in more he'll get used to it and stop resisting to get in and enjoy the ride.

At the dog park there is a pond for the dogs to jump in and swim in and Gromit has been resistant to actually swimming and prefers to lay down in the shallow part of the water to cool off. But on Saturday he surprised us and followed some much bigger dogs into the water chasing after a ball. After he got into the deeper part of the water he turned around and swam back. Too cute! We've never seen him do that before but we hope he'll do it again sometime.

On Sunday we got ready to go to the park and host a BBQ for some of our friends and then hang out until the city fireworks started. I was making deviled eggs and a patriotic cake for the BBQ. The deviled eggs turned out so well until the car ride to the park knocked them on top of each other. Good thing I have photographic evidence of how they looked before the accident.

I had my usual failure with baking while trying to make a patriotic cake. My idea was to make a round cake with red and blue cake layers and white icing. Very festive, right? The first cake I baked tasted great but the blue layer fell apart when I took it out of the pan. I swear, it was baked through and I let it cool for a long time before I took it out of the pan, but because I' have a baking handicap, it just fell apart.

So back to the store I went for another box of cake mix. At least with making another cake I had the opportunity to add a white cake layer (because the red layer from the first attempt turned out fine). So after my second try I prevailed and conquered the cake! The only other disappointment was that the icing looked pretty bad, but I was willing to let that slide since I had such difficulty with the actual cake. Oh well!

Our BBQ at the park was cut short when high winds and heavy rain almost took out our canopy - we were having to physically hold it down to keep the wind from blowing it away! Luckily only a few things ripped on our canopy walls and can be easily fixed with some simple sewing. We packed everything up and headed back to our apartment to finish out the BBQ. Dinner was much better when we didn't have to worry about blowing away or getting wet! We thought the city might cancel or postpone the fireworks because the weather was so bad but they said it was still going to happen.So after dinner and dessert we piled back into the car, drove to the park and watched fireworks from the car where we were nice and dry. All in all, it was a great 4th of July!

Today we have spent the day cleaning up, doing laundry, repairing our canopy and getting ready for the upcoming week. I even made a summer time wreath to replace my patriotic welcome sign on the front door. I'm prety proud of the wreath and Dave doesn't think it is half bad either.

I hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July weekend! We are so lucky to live in a free country and to have brave men and women willing to put their lives on the line to protect that freedom for us. Thank you all!