Awesome!

It's been snowing huge snowflakes for about 3 hours this morning!! Awesome!!

Too bad I'm stuck watching it out my office window...

Jan 29, 2010

What better way of breaking the long dry spell of blogging then fabulous news...

My new baby cousin is here!! Colleen and Jeff had their baby today. Welcome to the world Katherine Teal. I can't wait to meet you!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Just cause:

Today, black cats are as much a symbol of Halloween as are pumpkins, ghosts and witches. But this wasn't always the case.

In fact, unlike most Halloween customs, which date back to the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain, the black cat association is a more recent addition.

In the early Middle Ages, cats began to be associated with witches. While the exact reason for this association is not clear, historians suppose that it has something to do with a cat's nocturnal nature.

Some in the Church believed that witches became cats at night. Others associated cats with witchcraft because their eyes glow at night, a sign of evil.

The powerful association between witches and cats, especially the "sneaky" black cat, persisted throughout the centuries. So when modern celebrations of Halloween evolved to include images of the wicked witch, the black cat was right behind her.

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function." - Unknown

Photo Op

So last weekend we were followed around Gruene by my cousin and her camera. hehe

We've (ok, I've) been wanting to get a causal protrait done and she needed practice for a wedding jig she's got soon. So a deal was struck :) It's a little weird being followed around and some one taking your picture all over the place - I'll never be cut out for fame... darn.

Now I've just got to decide which I want to print - she's really good with that camera. Thanks again, Colleen!!!

29 and never been...

It finally happened. I don't know how I managed to hold out this long really. I mean, I speed all the time. I will shimmy though yellow lights that may have been more on the red side. I roll though stop signs occasionally - ok, really almost every day the one at the end of my street, but No One stops there, I swear. So it was only a matter of time.

And this morning I got pulled over... for the first time ever.

Freaking Kolher's Crossing. Why are is the speed limit 40?!? There's nothing there!! Except cops staking out the area. Yeah, I knew they were there too. They've been casing that spot for a while now, because it's flipping 40 mph and it's really hard to drive that slow on a four lane road that has very little traffic. And Kyle PD got me this morning going 49. Really that's not that bad...

So here I am, 29 and never had a ticket. And it's still true, cause the very nice officer let me off with a warning. Thank you, Jesus!

And did you know they can look your insurance information up on their computer now? Say, if you only have an expired insurance card on you but can't seem to find it in the messy glove compartment :)

It was a real stomach-falling-into-your-feet kind of way to start the weekend...




There is more to life than increasing its speed -Mahatma Gandhi

Let's go Out!

GO TEXAN is an initiative started by the Texas Department of Agriculture. It's all about helping Texas based businesses of all kinds. It started mainly to promote agricultural business, but has expanded to almost anything made in the state of Texas.

Later this month my company is helping to sponsor the Restaurant Roundup. If you eat at participating restaurants during Sept 28 to Oct 2, a portion of your meal will be going to the area's food bank. There seems to be a wide range of restaurants involved, from nice places like Eddie V's to McDonald's. Click here to see a list of your area.

This is a great cause and all you have to do is eat out. Help the food banks and Texas businesses at the same time.

New England

July have been the month of traveling... without the hubs :)

It started with a trip to New England with my sister to visit a friend in Cambridge. We had a fabulous time, traveled quite a bit of the area in a very short period of time. This was my second trip to Boston but it never gets old. And the high was in the 80s :)

Day one: Walked the Freedom Trail, experienced some American history. I LOVE Boston!
Day two: Drove and walked around Cape Cod. Nice parks, cute shops, good eats.
Day three: Hike up a Mountain in New Hampshire (and I mean UP!)
Day four: Drove around New Hampshire some more, what a beautiful place.

So this is where I cheat. My wonderful sister has already done an extensive blog on this trip complete with pictures. Check it out - THANKS EM!

And thank you again Rachel for showing us around! We had such a great time!


I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down. - Mitch Hedberg

I Caved...

Alright already! I did it. I joined FACEBOOK...

I have realized that if you are not part of these social networks you really are out of the loop. Rather than emailing and blogging, people have all their updates, communications, etc on these sites. Join them or you know nothing... So I succumbed to the pressure... and now have wasted an hour of my life worrying if I have found all of my friends or not. If you have an account and i have not added you yet, it's not for lack of trying. Find me, I'm very accessible, reachable, updatable... please be my friend.


A friend is someone who will help you move, a real friend is someone who will help you move a body. - Unknown

Happy 4th!

Hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th.

It's my understanding that like 90% of the country has the day off today to appreciate and ponder the importance of this wonderful day - FIREWORKS. Beautiful. Colorful. I can't wait for night to fall so ...

Huh? What do you mean no fireworks? 2 Year Drought?? ... yes, my yard is brown too, but...

fine. what.ever... yeah, yeah fire+dead grass=bad...I get it. Is this why I had to work today?

Happy Independence Day.

ack, 3 posts in a row, fingers cramping, head hurts, some one get some oxygen, she's.. going . .down...

Yes, I'm bored, I'm at work on a freaking holiday...

Play Ball

I'm working on updating everyone as to what I've been up to this summer so far. Someone somewhere said something about how I haven't blogged in a while -don't know what they're talking about...




J and I went to a Round Rock Express game a couple of weeks ago with our friends Tammy, Jake, and Lucy. It was a LOT of fun. Reminded me of all the Missions games I went to as a kid. I'm not a big sports fan (though somehow married one), but I like to go to baseball games occasionally. Especially minor league teams. The tickets are cheaper, you can get right up close, and the feel is more laid back.

We somehow picked the best side to sit on by pure luck. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's been a bit warm outside lately. We sat right down in the shade however and the cool-ish breezy kept it nice AND we never had to stare into the sun.

The Express even won - though we weren't there to see it. After 10 innings of 0-0, we decided it was time to go home, and I think Lucy whole heartedly agreed with us. Right as we were walking out the other team - New Orleans - scored 3 runs and we figured it was over. But apparently the Express came back and won it. Way to go guys!

I'm ready to go again - as soon as it's cooler out - you know, this fall... hmmm... after the season is, um, over?

Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music. -Marcus Brigstocke

Something Wicked...

...Wickedly Awesome.

I went with the fam last weekend to see Wicked the Musical at the Majestic Theater in SA. So AMAZING. Probably the best production I've ever seen (though Lion King is definitely up there with it). Everything from the set to the costumes to the actors was great. Even the mildest of OZ fans will like this one. Most of the story takes place before Dorothy arrives. And it gives a whole new light on the Wicked Witch. You know the saying - there are always two sides to every story.

But by far my favorite was Glinda (Ga-linda with a ga). I expected to be annoyed with her at first, but she's hilarious! And man, both of the actresses that played the main parts could seriously SING! ... I wish I could do that.

This is a must see if you like musicals - even the hubs liked it. I hate giving away more of the story, so I'm not going to say anything else other than GO SEE IT!

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it? - Anne of Green Gables

My new toy

I did it-talked myself into it really- and bought a new toy. And I LOVE it.

I read a lot. And I go through a lot of books. I even reread my books over and over again- especially the ones I like. I could spend hours in a book store or library, and want to take most of the shelf contents home with me. But what do you do with those books once their home and your done reading them... and think of all the trees that gave up their lives for my pages... and, come on, can the publishers make these first run, hardbacks any heavier (yes, Harry Potter #4-7, I'm talking to you).

My answer came in the mail last week, the electronic book reader, and I'm having a hard time putting it down.

The e-reader like Amazon's Kindle is the future of all books IMO. It's light weight, easily portable and fairly straight forward to use. And it's WAY too easy to buy books on - some of which are free, like the classics. You can buy them from Amazon's website or on the device's 'store' and the book is downloaded to the machine in less than a minute - it accesses the Sprint network for no extra charge to get it to you. It's battery lasts for days and it holds about 1,500 books at a time. But you can remove a book from the reader and Amazon keeps track of everything you've purchased and lets you re-download back to the device.

I know, I know, I sound like a commercial for the thing, but I've really been enjoying it and just had to share. Click the picture below to go to Amazon's site and find out more.

The only downside I've found is the cost of the thing and the books. While the books are cheaper than if you bought them new from the store (except the free ones), one could argue that the library is even cheaper. Oh well, I think the benies out way that downside by a long shot - no paper killing trees, no more bookshelves to buy, no driving from one store to the other looking for the titles they're out of, no more heavy books falling on my face as I fall asleep in bed reading.

The only other e-ready I know of at the moment is Sony's. I looked into that one too, it's pretty slick, but costs more and there aren't as many books available. And Amazon just makes it so easy to manage the Kindle, so I went with it and highly recommend.

Couldn't decide on just one, so you get three today:

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. - Sir Winston Churchill

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. - Mark Twain

Happy Eath Day

Anniversary

Perfecting Foolishness is one year old... um, last week, oops...

Looking over the year of blogging I see a sad trend developing... an escalating lack of posts. I'm not as good at this as when I started, but I think a lot has happened over the last year. More so at the beginning of the blogging, which is why I had more to say then probably, um, definitely, um, hm.

So on a milestone like this it seems fitting to do a year in review - bullet point style:

- Bought a house.
- Sold a house.
- Excessive painting of both houses.
- Paid off both of our vehicles.
- Welcomed friends' new babies.
- Devastating lost a family member.
- Went on vacations/small Texas excursions/camping trips.
- Started hosting small group at our house.
- Got sick more often in one year than my entire life... ever.
- Read (and reread) some good books and watched too much TV.
- Found out why we're not getting pregnant.
- Started with Texas Fertility Center to help rectify the above.

Hmm... well, lets see what we get in another year. If I manage to keep this up. I really do hope to do better, but I'm not going to set any expectations right now.



More things you may or may not know about me:

I prefer photography over paintings, but can do neither.
I am loving the Kings of Leon album.
I'm sorry, I don't get the excitement over Twitter.
Nothings better than an apple with peanut butter - why is that?
I fall in love with my husband a little more each day.



Had Dragongate for lunch...yummy. My fortune cookie was: Someone is looking up to you, Don't let them down. What kind of fortune is this? Are they trying to scare me? They've succeeded.

HAPPY V-DAY

What, I'm just not meant to have vacations anymore...

I'm sick of this - literally. Seems like every time we have somewhere to go or something exciting I get sick. This weekend Jason and I are supposed to be in Big Bend National Park for 3 nights with some friends. We were SUPPOSED to leave early yesterday morning for the 9 hour drive and come back on Monday. We're SUPPOSED to be waking up right now in our new (new to us anyways) pop up camper and getting breakfast ready before heading out to hike in the mountains. But no, we're at home, with a stomach bug that hit Thursday night.

At about 10:30, just after we had everything packed in the truck ready to leave the next morning, Jason and I get hit, with in 15 minutes of each other. He was first, he'd been feeling bad all afternoon and kinda knew it was coming. But other than being a little dizzy, I really just thought I was tired and worried about remembering everything for the trip. Well, when I laid down in bed and the room kept spinning I knew that it was more than that. It was like I had been boozing all night but without the fun part. So I didn't get any sleep that night. Just as soon as we could doze off again we were back in the bathroom. Poor Jason got it much worse than I have. I'm actually feeling better today, but he's still got a ways to go.

This is getting ridiculous though. Last Feb, we went skiing to Red River and had what I refer to as the Worse Vacation Ever. I came down with an upper respiratory infection that hit as we were traveling there and lasted the whole time. I never saw much of the mountain, in fact I didn't see much of anything but the condo we stayed in.

Last month I had a 3 day weekend that I had planned on relaxing after all the craziness of year end was finally over at work and on getting some things around the house done. I came down with a soar throat - some sort of virus. And of course, it lasted the whole weekend. I completely lost my voice for 2 days.

I'm just not meant to have vacations anymore. Is God trying to tell me something? I'm just glad it hit us at home and not on the way there.

T is for Turkey

I'm still catching up on my blogs, so I guess better do this one before Christmas is here :)

We did Thanksgiving at our house again... I think it's like the 5th year or so. We started having T-day at our home when we bought the last house (hm, that means this is probably the 6th). And it went fabulously at the new place.

I make the turkey and the stuffing usually, and others bring the rest. This year I kinda made everything but dessert. I tried out a new dressing recipe this year... in the Crock Pot! It was delicious if I do say so myself :) And it saved a ton of room in the oven. Room needed for potatoes (sweet and regular), green bean casserole, rolls and the bird. We also had a salad with dried cranberries, walnuts and mandarin oranges. It was WAY too much food, but we managed it ok :)

My parents, my sister, Jason's mom and aunt, and his grandparents all came. We watched our traditional TV shows, the dog show and football. Then that afternoon Emily and Mom helped me decorate the Christmas tree. I didn't get to go to any Black Friday sales this year due to having to work, but Jason made it.

On Friday evening, Emily, Eileen, Jason and I went out to Austin's Long Center to see Cirque Dreams: A Jungle Fantasy. If you've ever seen a Cirque de Soile show this is Broadway's version. It was awesome and we had great seats in the 4th row, actually almost too close. These people are amazing what they can do. My favorite parts were the contortionists and the aerialists. Also these guys who balanced together on a board atop a cylinder... atop 4 other cylinders going opposite ways. One girl swung around by her hair... don't know about that one, ouch.

I'm still catching up... so expect to see some more back dated blogs :)

"It has been my observation that people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abraham Lincoln

Home Improvements Fall Edition

So far this fall we didn't do much as far as home improvements on our new house, but we hadn't really planned on it, and really haven't had time.


The focus has been the dinnnig room. There is a large wall in there that we are going to have black and white photos on, so for paint color, I wanted to have a grey or silvery. As we all know, the piant never quite looks the same on the wall as it does on the chip. Once it got up there and dried it turned out to be more blue then silver.


I really like the color, but I had bought burnt orange curtains, and there's no way orange and grey-blue go together. So I had to completely scrap that idea. Instead I'm going to stick with the black and white accents. I've got new curtains, but we'll have to wait until the Christmas tree is moved to put them up.



We also finished out the attic floor and now we have tons more storage! I love having an attic handy in the house. Our last home had a 2 foot square in the garage for attic access and once you were up there were too many beams to move around. I have too much stuff, I'm aware of this, but I'm not getting rid of the holiday decorations any time soon, so they have to go somewhere...



I'm hoping the spring provides us with more time to work on the house some more, because the winter is already busy. Check back then :)






I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the loactions that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down. -Mitch Hedberg

Touring Houston

I know, I know, it's been awhile... again. I'm not so good at this lately, I don't know why. We've been busy though, so it may take a few entries to let everyone know what we've been up to.

The weekend before last, Jason and I went to visit my aunt and uncle in the big metropolis of Magnolia, TX. They are big enough now to have two 5A schools, big times :) We visit almost every fall, usually to go to the Renfest. This year we wanted to try something different and ventured into downtown Houston to do the tourist thing and visited the Natural Science Museum and the Houston Zoo. Lesson learned: don't try and do both in the same day, you miss things.


The Science Museum is pretty cool. They have a great butterfly garden, a bunch of dinosaur skeletons and lots of other great things. My favorite part was the rock/mineral and gem exhibit. The large samples of rocks and minerals are set up beautifully in glass cases around the room. As you meander through the cases you come to the best part, the vault. In here are some gorgeous gems, singular and set in jewelry. That exhibit really made the trip. Don't worry, I was sure to point out to Jason which ones he's getting me for Christmas.


BUT if you ever go to the museum, I have to warn you against using the elevators. On our way from the first to the third floor, I got stuck in an elevator for the first time in my life. Not fun. Luckily it only last about a minute or two and we had good cell reception, so if it had lasted longer, I would have been calling.


The zoo is fabulous. I haven't been to the Houston Zoo since I was a kid, and they have done a great job reinventing the place. At that time the zoo was free to get into, so they didn't have a lot to make the place habitable for the animals. I remember it being one cage after another along the sidewalk. So much better now, and they are still working on it. The monkeys have quite the set up in the trees. You enter onto a bridge that takes you from one type of monkey to the next. My favorite was the giraffe, who was reaching over the fence and snacking on the landscaping in front of the cage.


We were there as they were closing and on our way out we past them setting up a dance floor and tables near a beautiful reflecting pond. Apparently you can get married at the zoo! How cool is that. I can just imagine saying 'I do' and then a lion roars in the distance. haha


I was so tired, I slept most of the way back to the house. The next day we did a little shopping in The Woodlands before driving home to Kyle. It gets dark so early now, it was night before we even started back. Luckily for me I had the next two days off :) well, one day off and then Veterans Day...I love bank holidays.


And thanks to our wonderful friends for taking care of our kids while we were gone!

Butterfly landed on Jason's head!!

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." - Henry David Thoreau

HAPPY HALLOWEEN