Finished Project!!

So I've stated various times on my few blog entries; I am the queen of the project starting. I start many many things and finish very few things. However, I finally finished a big project, the guest/Carolina's bathroom. I went with a very fun, flower theme and it turned out so great! Very bright, and cheerful and best part was the artwork we had Carolina do to post on one of the walls. She did such a great job, she seems to have her dad's artistic ability. He was working on some paintings for the guest bedroom that I'll have to post soon. They always look so cute painting together and they have a great time doing it. I have made myself photographer as my idea of great art is stick figures! Anyway, the bathroom looks great, pictures below!


The before picture

Now for the afters...

Come on in...




Between Carolina and I we have ponytail holders coming out our ears, so I found a place to keep some of them.

Carolina's fabulous artwork finished it off!

The artist with her masterpiece!

Tales of the Easter Bunny

I figured I need to post this soon or it'd be irrelevant! Last Saturday, we finally got around to celebrating Easter. Around here, it all gets celebrated at some point sometimes early sometimes late, but always with a glass of red wine! There had been a brief discussion about whether we should have the egg hunt before or after Easter but honestly once we realized that we could get everything half off by doing it after wards that was the obvious choice!

Along with our friends Kristina and Thomas and their 3 kids we gathered to hunt Easter eggs, eat pasta, drink wine and Kristina's daughter Avery spent the night with Carolina. Whew!!

So first we had to pose for the camera in a new Easter dress.


This is what happens when you ask Carolina to pose, one pretty one and then she goes nuts!!

Then it was time for the Easter Bunnies (Kristina and I) to go out and hide the eggs while the kids destroyed the upstairs and Isaac worked on dinner. We had over 100 eggs!! We had about 50 left from last year and me being me had to go buy extras "just in case" and then Kristina brought about 50. We have a large backyard, but there's not a lot of nooks and crannies so pretty soon we were just rolling them across the lawn! I think we did pretty well though; see how many you can find!



Then we let the kids loose on the backyard. Of the four kids only 3 hunted as the youngest is 9 weeks old! I had found these, what I thought at the time, were these very cute bunny masks. They came in a set of four and I thought the kids would be so cute wearing them, they'd be like their magic masks to help them find the eggs. I was quite proud of myself. The kids agreed to wear them pretty quickly, even though Avery took her off half way, and once again I was so proud of myself. That is until I saw the pictures and realized the kids looked really creepy in the masks. Sigh...another lesson learned, kids look creepy in masks. See what you think...


The kids all did well though and had all the eggs gathered up pretty quickly. At least I hope they got them all, Isaac was finding eggs from last year when he mowed the lawn up until about March of this year.

The rest of the evening was spent having dinner and busting through a couple bottles of wine. The kids are good at keeping themselves entertained and playing amongst themselves. Later Avery spent the night and they did a switch from last sleepover and Avery passed out about 30 minutes in and Caroline, desperate to saver her image hung in there until almost 1am, making it to the end of Spy Kids 2. Spy Kids was the film of choice last time as well so obviously that one is going to "mysteriously disappear" soon.


The adults enjoying the evening and the kids enjoying the evening


All in all the 2010 Easter Egg Hunt was a success, now to begin planning for next year...

PS, I have no idea why the above is underlined, I found bold and italic but no underline!

My Tribute to Friday

There is nothing like the relief I feel when I get in my car Friday afternoons at five, take of my badge and stow it in my purse and drive home. The Friday drive home feels different, I feel like I fly. ( I will add I am lucky enough to have a 10 minute mostly tolled drive home so no heavy traffic.) The closer to home I get the giddy I begin to feel, it's Friday. Not just Friday, but Friday night, all is right with the world.

I've always had a love affair with Friday nights. As a kid my Girl Scout troop met on Fridays, so that meant I was spared the long, usually hot bus ride home. I felt like a royalty waiting on the parent pick up porch for my air conditioned carriage to arrive and whisk me off to my waiting friends. Upon arrival at my final destination of Shepard of the Hill Presbyterian Church I was sent off with a hug and a "have fun" from my mom as opposed to the grunt I would normally receive from the time hardened bus driver who wanted to be home as badly as I did. Scout meetings were sometimes followed by sleepovers either at my house or the house of friends. This was of course the preferred activity of the night, but when that didn't work out and I went home with just my sister for company I still had plenty of things to be excited about. My mom instituted a strict "No cooking on Friday" house rule so Fridays meant frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, maybe a trip to Dairy Queen or if we were good and didn't argue Little Ceasers Pizza. Then the main event: TGI Fridays on ABC, a full two hours of kid friendly TV viewing sure to send parents hiding in their bedrooms but keep kids fully entertained. The shows changed over the years but all were essential to not only my Friday nights, but really my child hood. Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Step By Step, Boy Meets World and later Sabrina the Teenage Witch were by no means Emmy worthy material, but they served their Friday night purpose to make kids forget about the tests, homework and teachers they had endured the preceding week. My mom was pretty strict on bed times until we reached the age of about 12 or so, and as a pseudo step parent I now realize that was more for her well being then for ours, but during my elementary years Friday was my chance to hang until about 10:30 or so. Which when you're 8 is like being up all night! Now if there was a sleep over was going on then at 10:30 the night was still young!

At 13 my parents divorced so some Fridays became a little more cumbersome as they involved the packing of bags and a trek back the way we had just come to my dads house, but it wasn't bad. My dad has a pool in back yard and cable (which at the time my mom didn't have) so warm Friday nights were spent night swimming as late as we wanted and marathons of Singled Out, Nick at Nite and general surfing through the cable channels that were so foreign to us.

Within a few years my Friday nights revolved around High School football games. I can think of few other memories that make me as gushy inside as the memories of sitting on metal bleachers on a warm fall evening, under those stadium lights, while band played around me cheering on my High School team. I was pretty shy in high school and didn't go out a lot, but every Friday night in fall I was in the stands with at least one of my friends cheering on Bowie High School. Didn't help much, they many games during those years, but it wasn't about that, it was about being a part of it, being outside as the temperatures slowly made their decline from over powering heat to the first cool winds of winter, feeling the cool breezes blowing in and most importantly eating nachos with drippy cheese and drinking a Coke. I can think of one really miserable game to sit through and it poured rain the entire 2 hours (yes two hours, they kept that game moving!)

After that Friday and I lost touch for a while. I worked in the retail world and their biggest day is Saturday, so my Friday nights were spent either at work or preparing to argue with customers over the price of a 50 cent flower stem. (Little note to the kids out there, never work retail if you can help it. It will kill your soul and show you a darkness that lurks in the human spirit that no one should have to see.)

That too passed, however, and soon I had entered the world of M-F 9-5 (though still in retail) and Friday and I reconnected once again. The last 3 years or so I was at Garden Ridge the work portion of my Friday ended between noon and 2pm so I got to not only enjoy Friday night, but Friday afternoon as well. Afternoons were spent lunching, running errands, going shopping or catching a matinee before the the theaters were packed with tweens and evenings were spent with then boyfriend. Out of deference to Isaac we will leave it at that and move ahead a few years.

Now Friday and I have hit our stride. I have two Fridays to look forward to: Kid Friday and Adult Fridays. Kid Fridays involve a family movie, kid friendly food, usually pasta or chicken nuggets, and a bottle of wine for the adults watching Little Mermaid 2 instead of the latest R rated action movie patiently waiting inside it's red envelope for either bed time a nap time. Don't get me wrong,their not bad Fridays, they also involve cookie baking, a little family rough housing or family dance party and lots of hugs and "I love the Amy Am" and "Amy is the best Amy in the world" (btw, that may be going on my business cards!). Sometimes there's a game of Uno or Life or maybe some Go Fish or War and luckily a week of school leaves the kid passed out by 9pm at the latest.

Past Friday nights

Carolina likes Friday nights as well because we've started letting her fall asleep on the couch while we watch tv on Fridays. It started slowly over time and wasn't intentional a mixture of laziness on our part and her passing out pretty early on her own but now it's tradition. I didn't realize how much she looked forward to it until a couple weeks ago as Carolina pulled a red blanket over her legs and settled between us on the couch clad in her pink fleece Disney princess nightgown and let out a contented sigh "Friday...Friday I get to fall asleep with Daddy and Amy on the couch." Oh Friday!!

Adult Fridays are different they are admittedly a bit more relax and used to mean a trip to Alamo Drafthouse to check out the latest release and enjoying a pizza and pitcher of beer while we watched. Finances are a little tighter now, so Friday nights are now usually spent at home with a homemade dinner and whatever new movies have come in the mail or a back log of Chelsea Lately episodes. I have to admit, these are my favorite Friday nights. Being in my soft yoga pants by 7, a relaxing dinner made by the best cook ever (love you babe!) and post dinner couch cuddling and farming on Facebook while letting the TV guide us into the weekend. Earlier this year we were watching Caprica on Syfy (prequel to Battlestar Gallactica, if you don't know what this is ask a nerd.) every Friday night. Actually I should clarify I watched Caprica, Isaac tried to become one with the show. I'm generally a pretty passive TV watcher, usually combining it with internet time, which Isaac hates, so I made a point to try and close the lap top and focus on the show. I'll admit my interest waned early on, but it meant a lot to him so I hung in there, but it wasn't too hard simply because I loved that time spent together the show and discussing it. Well Isaac discussed it and I nodded my head a lot. :) Now that it's done until the fall I'm thinking Caprica hour should be replaced with Introducing Isaac to the Gilmore Girls hour...hmmm...

Of course the most important part of Friday night is The Soup with the uber yummy Joel McHale. How else can I get the best of bad TV without actually having to watch it? Perfect way to end the week!

Joel McHale

Some nights we’re out by 10:30, exhausted from the week, other times, when we’ve started a West Wing marathon or have a particularly high number of Chelsea episodes backed up we’re up until after midnight. Some nights there’s a Sonic run for ice cream, some nights a grocery run, and some nights we rouse our selves off the couch and hit up the dollar movie theater to catch something we missed or put off due to only kind of wanting to see it, and some nights we hit up Serranos where my sister bar backs and makes a mean strawberry Daquiri! It’s fun going out on a Friday night, but my favorite Friday nights are spent at home, just wallowing in Friday, soaking it in, being wrapped in the feeling of leaving it all behind for a couple days.

Don't get me wrong, Saturday and Sunday are great, sleeping in and two full days off of work but I find that Saturday and Sunday have strings attached. To get errands run, household chores completed or the pressure to have fun sometimes add stress to relaxation days. Plus Sunday has the added burden of being the day before Monday. Sorry Sunday, but you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas!

So this Friday as I sit on the couch with my head on Isaac's chest, sipping a coke and making love with my eyes to Joel McHale (kidding Isaac!). I hope you are enjoying your Friday night as well or that you enjoy your equivalent of Friday night.