Flat Stanley Friday (a re-post) April 18, 2008
As promised, since FSF was on Saturday last weekend, I am re-posting a link to his visit with Natalie. Enjoy! And have yourselves a happy, happy weekend. And pray for me as I search for daycare. 
Baby Friend April 17, 2008
Anja met another little girl (a friend of mine’s new baby) on the trip last weekend who’s just 5 months younger than she is. Here’s a cute snapshot I got of them “meeting” each other.
I have a million posts running through my mind. For one, I advise heading over to Lifenut for some interesting stuff Gretchen posted today. For two, I have a loooooooooong overdue post about pregnancy books, updates to advice y’all have given me over the past months, and Flat Stanley tomorrow. But now, I’m off to study Ephesians with my hubby.
Weekend Update April 15, 2008
On Tuesday evening, no less!
We had a fabulous time visiting family and friends, meeting new babies and babies-to-be, eating yummy (but not so nutritious) food prepared by my mother, and…going through old junk of mine.
See, my mom’s remodeling and she has this crazy idea in her head that she doesn’t want to store my belongings from high school for eternity. What’s her problem, I say. Just kidding. If I were her, all that stuff would have been kicked to the curb with my daughter when she turned eighteen. I’m not really that harsh. Just playin’.
Wow, it’s late. The reason I haven’t posted is I’ve been desperately trying to catch up on emails and YOUR blogs. That’s no small task when you subscribe to six billion blogs, let me tell you.
Oh, and I finally watched a movie. The Bourne Ultimatum. Anyone seen it? I loved the first two, and Husband rented this one a week and a half ago, and we finally made time to watch it tonight. Even though I’m not a conspiracy theorist (another fine movie), I love movies like this that make me think and that make me wary of Big Brother. Because Big Brother doesn’t always have our best interest at heart. And if our government could pull it together as well as they seem to in movies like the Bourne trilogy, I’d probably be kicking back and sending them my hard-earned money. They wouldn’t even have to steal it.
A Two-and-A-Half-Hour Drive to Nowhere April 10, 2008
I rushed home from work today (Well, as much as one can rush in the pouring rain at “rush hour.” Isn’t it funny that it’s called that?), picked up Anja at the sitter’s, and started packing suitcases, food, baby gear, etc. as soon as we got home. I made a quick supper, fed the baby, and cleaned up poop (hers, not mine). When Husband arrived home, we ate, he finished packing some of his stuff and loaded the vehicle, we made a stop for gasoline, and we took off on I-94 (that’s “The 94″ for you south-westerners).
We had planned to leave on a trip to visit friends and family tomorrow morning, but with the forecasts (up to 2 feet of snow in central MN), we figured we’d best head out tonight if we were going to make it. We didn’t make it. After driving 1 1/2 hours, the rain, which had fallen all day over the Twin Cities, progressed to sleety-slush, to snow, and then…to an outright blizzard. Sigh…
Finally giving up, we got off on the nearest exit and turned around. I’m bummed. We haven’t been to my mom’s since Christmas, and we were also planning on meeting a friend’s new baby and visiting two couples who are expecting babies this summer/fall (one couple hasn’t met Anja yet, either). We may give it a go again tomorrow, but today was supposed to be the nicer of the two days.
One of my not-so-favorite things about Minnesota. You can’t plan on snow not intruding on your plans, even in April and May.
This reminds me of a story from high school (a quick one, I promise). I was on the golf team in grades 7-12 (and not half bad, in case you’re wondering). Our practices usually started up in late March to early April. We practiced in a large pole shed. Sometimes we would be chipping, putting and driving into a net for over a month. One year in particular I recall our “practice” for several days involved shoveling glaciers off of the golf course. In mid-May. Yessir, we left our clubs at homes and brought shovels to the golf course. Ah, Minnesota, how I love thee.
p.s. Be sure to tune in for FS Friday tomorrow–it involves VIDEO!!!
The Unimportance of Me April 5, 2008
Antique Mommy tagged me for a Six Unimportant Things About Me meme yesterday.
But there’s a twist (AM did this, so I’m going to do the same)…one of them is not true. If you can guess which one, you win a prize*. If multiple people guess the same one, I’ll do a drawing to determine the winner. You have until midnight on Tuesday, April 8 to leave a guess in the comments.
1. My hair is naturally blonde.
2. I learned to ride bike when I was seven.
3. My favorite drink is an Asian Pear Mojito at P.F. Chang’s.
4. I know how to dance the rhumba and the tango.
5. I sell a whole food supplement in my “spare time.”
6. I type 95 wpm.
Now the hard part. To tag six people. This is always weird because I feel bad for tagging people and bad for not tagging people. I know not everyone has time allotted for memes, so I won’t be offended if you don’t complete it. And if I didn’t list you and you’d like to play, do so by all means!
Carrie at Newlywed Nurse-to-Be
Erica at Haphazard Happenstances
Beck at Frog and Toad Are Still Friends
*Prize is $10.00 gift card to Bath & Body Works. I realize that doesn’t even buy one of their delicious lotions these days, but maybe you could get a cool lip gloss or a fuzzy wuzzy pair of socks.
My DNA March 29, 2008
Here is one of the best personality tests I’ve taken in a long time:
Why don’t you take it and let me know your personality profile and if you think it matched you? The thing I liked best about it was that all the choices were a sliding scale rather than a “yes or no” or even “choose 1 through 5.” Matched my test-takingness much better.
And my results, which I would LOVE to have analyzed by those who know me pretty well (who read my blog, that is):
While I didn’t think my overall title, “Generous Leader,” matched who I am, the rest described me pretty well.
Flat Stanley Goes Ice Fishing March 28, 2008
So Flat Stanley spent a weekend with Charlie up in the great Nort’. For those of you who have never seen a frozen lake, yes, you can actually walk on it, drive on it, and fish through it! Here’s his story:
Dan U. and I took Stanley ice-fishing with us out by Union Lake for good luck. We ended up getting 15 fish. 5 apiece! He behaved once we got him to stop playing with the ice auger. All it took was a dip in the ice-hole, hehehe.
Isn’t it nice how Stanley fit into that little pocket for them? He didn’t even need a sleeping bag! Thanks for showing him a good time, Chuck!
Bad Poetry Monday - 12 (a.k.a. The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For…) March 24, 2008
I found it. The creme de la creme of my poetry. As bad as it is, it sparks such fond memories that I can’t help but LOVE it. I will dissect it post-poem. So here it is…
Pop Tarts: The Food of the New Generation*
Pop Tarts.
They live in my tummy.
Why?
Because I ate them.
They tasted good.
Yummy, yummy, yummy.
I have Pop Tarts in my tummy.
Strawberry is the flavor.
The flavor that tops them all! Non-frosted please.
Made of cells.
Cells are good.
Yummy Pop Tart cells.
Eat them!
Love them!
Give some to me cuz…
I love them too!
———–
Tell me, where can you find better poetry than that? So honest. So raw. So cutting edge.
In high school I ran with a very…creative crowd. My friend Jana and I would spend almost every day at each other’s houses. While some of our friends held down summer jobs, we made creativity our job. We would bake cakes and color the batter four different colors, then swirl them together. We built villages out of legos. We golfed almost daily. We made many, many collages. We drew cartoons (man, if I could find those, that would be another awesome post). We made apple pies in creative forms and ate it for breakfast. We watched her sister practice riding her unicycle from our perch on the roof. We went ice-blocking. We played tennis*. And we wrote bad poetry about rubber chickens and beatniks and food we liked (case in point) and obviously, about whatever we were learning in science (hence the mention of cells). Jana probably grew up and continued being artsy and cool. Me, I’m average. But I revel in memories of when I was artsy and cool…
*While the content of this poem reflected my opinion at the time written, keep in mind that this was before I knew a single thing about nutrition. All I knew was activity burns calories. And I was active. The end.
**The fact that we played golf and tennis makes us sound like we were preppies at a country club, which is not true. We played golf for free (well, on our parents’ membership, which cost only like $250 for the whole family for the entire season), and we played tennis at the public courts near my house where you had to insert quarters to buy time on the lights at night.
p.s. I now prefer my Strawberry Pop Tarts frosted on the rare occasion that I eat them.
A Very Bloggy Wedding March 19, 2008
A lovely and classy friend of mine is getting married this Friday to a man she met ON HER BLOG. Isn’t that sweet/rare/cool?
Another friend of mine and I hosted a bridal shower for her last night at my place. It was so fun to see her again (she moved to California last August to be nearer to said man) and hear about all that she’s been up to (besides planning a wedding in two months flat!).
The other friend did a devotional during the shower that was very insightful. I won’t do a recap since she blogged the essence of it all here.
I’m hoping to get up a few photos from the shower later on (pending time to edit them).
————
Edited to add a few photos. Didn’t have time to upload the ones with actual people yet; they were taken on my point-and-shoot. Her wedding is a French toile theme, so I went with that and dug out almost every doily I own…
Bad Poetry Monday - 10 March 10, 2008
Ode to Lidy
prancing
high paws
circling the tail
of the
wonder and curiosity
eyes so believing and unaffected
Oh the rapture
the bliss of
her pet
that I wish
was mine
—-
If you’d like to read a good poem today, go here.
