Where, O Where I have I gone?

Actually, I moved my blog! I still need to redirect the page on our website, but you can get to it here:

http://kathrynpeebles.wordpress.com/

You've probably missed out on a few new posts, too. Sorry for the delay, but I was trying to get wordpress to do what I wanted.

I'll save details for later, but I now have fairly strong opinions on blogger vs. wordpress, so ask me before you switch your blog between the two!

Thanks for the patience during the switch over. You'll be rewarded with a lot of new posts over the next couple of weeks!

Day Spa!

For my birthday, Joe gave me a gift certificate to a local day spa (Riviera) and I promised to write about it after I went. (I had forgotten about the day spa dream I had until I reread that post - it went much better in real life!) Since the gift certificate expired this week, I finally went! It was very hard deciding which "treatments" to get, but I finally settled on the Escape package.

First, a 30 minute massage. I paid a little extra for a deep-tissue massage, and I'm sure glad I did! I had heard rumors about it hurting, but it was actually more like I expected a regular massage to be. It only hurt a little when she went over a couple of knots on my neck. I had trouble relaxing during the massage because I kept thinking about what I would write about it! I'm crazy! You'll be grateful that my thought of "I'm glad I didn't get a regular massage - if I wanted someone to pat my back for 30 minutes, I could have paid a neighborhood kid half this much" got cut due to its borderline-creepiness factor. Also, there were some bird chirping sounds randomly over the relaxing music that played. This occupied most of my thoughts. I really think it must have been a signal for the employees, but not for my massage therapist (she didn't change what she was doing anytime close to the bird calls). Anyone know what it could be?
I once was in physical therapy for back spasms (from a car accident), and he (PT) put some sonic pulse thing over the knots / spasms and pressed really hard, then rubbed the muscle. It was horribly painful (I often cried), but I felt EXTREME relief when he stopped. I was expecting something more like that for the deep-tissue massage, but it wasn't even close. Overall, I enjoyed the massage, but didn't feel any different afterward. Oh, and she rubbed my lower back / top of my rear. It felt as weird as one would expect (not creepy, just physically odd).

Next, a 30 minute mini-facial. My favorite part was having steam on my face for a long time. I got to just breathe it in! That was very relaxing. She looked at my skin with a Wood's Lamp... I wonder how people would react if she called it what it is (a UV light). She said I should try topical or low-dose antibiotics from a dermatologist. I'm not sure if I will or not, but I feel better knowing that my skin care regimen is appropriate. Like the massage, I was surprised to not feel any different afterward.

Finally, a spa pedicure! For around 45 minutes I sat in a massage chair and had my feet soaked, scrubbed and pampered. It was great! Even now (two days later), my feet feel extra soft.

I probably will not get a facial or massage (unless it is more intense) again, but I definitely enjoyed my relaxing day off - three hours at a spa is very nice! The "relaxation room" that you wait in between treatments is calm and peaceful.

Thank you, Joseph, for the amazing gift!

Coming Soon: A Stay-cation!

I've go so much to blog about! We've done more work on the house and took a few days off work (during which a friend came to visit, and I visited a day spa).

You know it's bad went you are getting the only massage you've ever had and you are thinking about what you're going to write about it.

I have not been keeping up with the home & garden blog like I should, but I did post a couple before / after pictures that you might be interested in - check it out.

Little Black Book

Around Christmas time, Joe bought be one of my new favorite things. It's a little notebook that I write down ideas I have. The categories are things like Things to learn, Home Decor, Funny T-shirts, and Things to Give. Basically whenever I think of something I want to remember, I write it in there. I love using it!

This is the notebook I use - it also has a bookmark and pouch!

Most of what I write is related to things I'd like to make (like a piece of art for our wall or a potential Christmas gift). Some of these ideas just pop into my head, but usually I see something that inspires me - or that I just want to copy outright. :) My inspiration often comes from everyday places (a bamboo project from Panda Express) or design websites (like Dustbowl), tossed in with the occasional visit to galleries.

This week I seem to have an underlying theme in my ideas. You highlight one part by doing something to the less-important part! I'll share.

Though it'll probably be a kid or baby name (or one of the dozens of t-shirt ideas I have written down) instead of hello, I see this in my future...
That is the work of Emma Smart (found via sub-studio design blog).


Then I came across bleach stenciling.
I already know how the conversation at home will go...
Joe: You haven't done that?!?
Me: No. Have you even heard of it before?
Joe: No, but it seems like the sort of thing you would have done.

I think I'll let Mom off the hook for not introducing me... kids and bleach don't mix well.

Now that I've started thinking about it, I've already got several ideas going. I think my first go will be making some contemporary / modern placemats. Placemats are so expensive, but cloth and bleach are so cheap!
I may try dipping the cloth in bleach water, or using rubber bands or strips of paper.

(these pics are some quickly done idea "sketches" I made using PowerPoint)


If you're looking for bleach stencil ideas, you should check out this site - they must have had fun!






I'd love to hear some of your ideas! Have you ever tried bleach stenciling? Is it as easy as it looks?

George Washington never slept at my house.

Sometimes I skip blogging because nothing exciting is happening and sharing my big decision for the day (which toothpaste to use) seems lame.

That's not the case this time! SO MUCH has been happening!

We've had TWO big work-on-the-house weekends lately, and loads has been done! If only I had time at home to upload pictures, you'd be amazed. I finished the second coat of paint in the living area and tons of baseboards and trim has gone in. Unless you've lived in a house without baseboards, you have no idea how annoying it really is. We only lack hardwood floor in two bedrooms now! I'll save more descriptions for the pictures.


Also, I'm in a play for the first time! It's "George Washington Slept Here" put on by the Navasota Theatre Alliance (community theater). It's a light-hearted comedy-ish play, which is fun. I have a tiny part (Katie the cook), but I'm helping with props and backstage stuff, too. I auditioned the first week of January and we've been having rehearsals ever since. Tonight is our "friends and family night" - essentially our final dress rehearsal for a forgiving and non-paying audience. We open Thursday night and have performances Thursday through Sunday for the next three weeks! Let me know if you're coming so I'm sure not to miss you (also, don't come late because you can't sneak in once it has started). You can check out the times / dates here and reserve tickets here.

I've enjoyed my time with the NTA. I think the cast ranges from a 7th grader to retirees. EVERYONE is really encouraging and friendly, which makes long rehearsals much better. I've learned more about what putting on a production is like; it's unique! You have to trust others in a different way - not only onstage (that they'll remember their lines and blocking), but also offstage (that props will be put where they belong or someone won't run into you in the dark backstage area). I'm glad I joined on for this play, and think I would enjoy more acting in the future!

note: Many people have asked me why I auditioned for a play. I had to have a performing arts credit in college (the 8 semesters of band and choir somehow did not count), so I took an acting class. I had done skits when I was in the Aggies for Christ (and always got complements), so I was interested in learning more about acting. The class was challenging, but I definitely grew through it. We did perform scenes for the class (my final project had more lines than I do in this play for sure), but I never got a feel for what all goes into a play. Since then, I've done a tiny bit of acting (Remember my panic attack last year? I actually got paid for that! And there's always that time I had a stalker...) but had been hoping for more. If I could do anything I want, I'd star in a musical. But I don't know how to dance and my singing voice shakes when I'm nervous. And as a newbie, you don't get a big role. So, here I am!

church

I'm overdue to post pictures of the house - we've done a decent amount of work on it. Maybe I'll get to tonight while Joe is camping (yes, the low is 32 degrees and yes, he's a bit crazy).

Joe and I went to Houston last weekend to visit his parents and sister (a belated Christmas visit). It was a quick trip, but we got to see his cousin and 6 of her kids. That makes it sound like she's got two dozen kids - she's only got 7. ONLY. ;) We went to church with Joe's parents so also saw several other people who love Joe and don't get to see him very often.

A friend who used to live in town and be a part of the same local church as I am wrote an article published online. You can read it here - it's not long, check it out! She includes some of her experience with our congregation.

I apparently didn't blog about the ComChurch 10-year birthday celebration! (This is something she refers to in the article.) It happened towards the end of October - the weekend between the two weddings I mentioned. I was also distracted with 30 days of creativity posts and my friends adopting a cute new baby. Between all those things, my blog / explaining-what-was-happening energy was used up. But it was a great day! Lunch and fun outdoor time in a park close to our new house, and dinner / music / sharing that evening. Though I'd never met many of the people who came back to celebrate, I did know some and had heard about most.

Celtic Knots

Me giving Celtic knots a try was a perfect storm with several contributing factors...

• I had art and Scotland on the brain after a trip to Salado.

• I had been thinking I should work on calligraphy, so I flipped through a how-to book and read the last section on illuminating letters. I thought I should really give it a try - how neat! Knots are a major player when it comes to illuminating letters. As an example, this is from the Book of Kells (an illuminated manuscript in Latin - the four Gospels - circa 800):

• I already did one Celtic knot detail on the P of Peebles on my current embroidery project. (Still working on that, if you're wondering. I'm on the final e!)

• I like to doodle in ways very similar to Celtic knots.

• I recently read three books by Stephen Lawhead - the first two in "The Song of Albion" trilogy, and the first book in "The Celtic Crusades" triology. All of them have heavy Celtic influences. I've read Scottish and Irish stories (fable style short stories) that give insight into Celtic mythology, and I find Lawhead's books a much more enjoyable way to learn a little about that culture.

On to my first go at Celtic knotwork... I didn't have any plain white paper, so you'll have to ignore the blue lines.

The one in the bottom right corner is in-progress (so you can see the steps). Here's the finished product (I think it's my favorite):I didn't use a ruler or compass, but I did make dots to keep reasonable spacing. I got the designs from a website. It was fun! Making the knots added necessary mental stimulation to the episode of Quantum Leap we were watching at the time (as well as giving my obsessive-compulsive desires a peaceful outlet). I'm sure this will work its way into a gift or art for my home eventually.

Interesting side note: As I was reading up on the history of Celtic knotwork, I found that the Christians (monks) who came to the region adopted and continued / furthered the use of the native art (knotwork) by illuminating the manuscripts they copied. Joe and I have talked a lot about Christianity interfacing with culture - specifically the artistic part of culture. It seems like this is an example of art being enhanced (instead of ignored or squelched) by Christians, which makes me curious all the more!

Seven Years of Heaven

(Isn't Seven Tiers of Heaven a phrase? If not, then I guess I get an F in word play for yet another blog post.)

Joe and I have been married for a full 7 years! We went to Salado, Texas, to celebrate. It's a small town that gets all done up for Christmas. There are tons of art galleries and antique / home decor shops. It was a very fun trip!

We admired the count down to Christmas...



Shared some secrets....


Enjoyed 70 degree weather (isn't Texas great?)...


Stayed in the Levi Tenney House.... (It was a bed and breakfast, but we were the only ones in the whole place!)Saw many knotted trees...
Explored a beautiful old chapel...
And discovered many cute shops.

My favorite part is how visiting all these places gets my creative juices flowing. I had several art project ideas (as if I'd ever run out) that may make their way into our home someday. There is also a Scottish heritage to the town which got my brain churning. In case you didn't know, Peebles is a town just south of Edinburgh, Scotland, located in Peeblesshire! Isn't Peeblesshire a fun word? I've mentioned my bed-covering (comforter) project briefly... in addition to our name, it will have the crest from this town. The crest doesn't have a lion or a shield or anything you typically think of... it's got three fish. But that's for another post! Speaking of, my next post with contain examples of something that was Scottish-inspired. I know, I've got you waiting on the edge of your computer-desk-chairs!

Christmas 2008

I've been gently reminded that I said I would try to post at least once a week, and it's been a bit more than that. Again.

Some people wish for a white Christmas. We were in Texas - this is what we found in the yard instead. I was taking pictures of him with some of us (we didn't touch him, just got close). When Lauren (my sister) posed, I told her to get closer to it so she patted the piece of wood next to her and made the tongue-click / generic "come here" for animals sound. Suddenly, the armadillo went under that piece of wood. Scary for Lauren, very funny for us. I'd post the picture, but it's on her camera and I don't think she'll give it to me. I did get this one, though...
I just downloaded almost 200 pictures from the new camera we got for Christmas! Thanks, Mom and Dad! (And Lauren & Kevin for the memory card - ours would have only held about 30 pictures on this camera that puts this MEGA in megapixels!)

We were at my grandmother's in Junction (Texas Hill Country) for Christmas.

Here's the roll call: Robbie (Grammy), Great Aunt Ruth, Larry & Kay (Dad & Mom), Lauren & Kevin (sis & her hubby), Joe & I, Aunt Rhonda, Cynthia, Brad, Jennifer, Richard, and Lily (cousins). Lily was the only kid around and she entertained us with her own take on a few Christmas songs. I hadn't seen my Great Aunt Ruth (Grandpa's sister-in-law) in a very long time, but I really enjoy her visits.

I'll post soon about our anniversary trip to Salado! Until then, Merry Christmas from Chili's in Austin!

Girl Scouts!

For the first time in TEN YEARS I met up with my old Girl Scout troop! Our leaders were also there.left to right: Trudi (Rebecca's mom), Jane (Mary's mom), Mary, Rebecca, Theresa, Heather, me!

I have many happy memories with these gals, and will share just a couple.

Rebecca and I went on a Girl Scouts / Girl Guides trip to Mexico with girls from as far away as Greece! We learned Cielito Lindo and Hey Mickey (You're so Fine) in Spanish together. :)

Rebecca and I (with bangs) in Mexico... such cool uniforms! ;)

Theresa was not only an awesome leader, but also my incredible fourth grade math teacher, Ms. O! She's now a college prof. up in Maine! I could share hundreds of happy stories, but most of all it amazes me how absolutely wonderful she was to me, despite my behavior in her class. What love and patience!

Oh, and Merry Christmas! I'll have another holiday post soon. :)

News, C.S. Lewis, and Christmas

It's been a long time since I've posted about an article I've read, and I think I've earned a post. I've shown great restraint on articles about chocolate making and a teacher assigning math homework (if those two had been combined, I couldn't have been so strong). :)

I encourage you to read this very short Opinion article in the NY Times. It's about C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the way we celebrate Christmas. The author is not a Christian, but likes (their opinion of) Lewis' approach to the holiday - a mixture of various pagan celebrations. It's something I hadn't thought about in relation to the Narnia books, and I'd love to hear your opinions!

Winter has come!

First, we put an end to Fall with good food for Thanksgiving Day (most of which was prepared by Joe's wonderful sister Emily)...
Then, lots of dessert! Emily's mouth-watering couer de creme...and my cake (I've recently discovered mint chocolate Irish Cream, my current favorite surprise ingredient).

Just last week we had a rare welcome to winter - no, not the almost 80 degree weather Tuesday - snow on Wednesday!

Joe woke me up with news that it was snowing! Once we determined a suitable punishment if it was not actually snowing and he was just plotting to get me out of the warm bed, I got up and looked outside to see this:

I wrote this on our deck...and received a surprise snowball in the back!

Later, Joe called at work to tell me to look outside. It was snowing like crazy!!! I don't remember the last time I've seen it snow like that during the day, but I bet my age was in the single digits. Joe and NEVER seen snow like that (hey, he's lived in Houston and L.A.)! It was exciting. My German and Kansasian? (from Kansas, not Kans - Asian) neighbors at work didn't show proper enthusiasm, but I went outside with my coat and camera.

from my window... I like the dancing-couple sculpture
and from outsideI wasn't the only one who didn't expect the snow!
We had a safe drive home in the snow...and stopped by the creek a block from our house - it was beautiful!

Who knows if we'll ever see our home with this much snow on it again?!? It was still snowing when we got home from work.

Joe won the snowball fight.Finally, Joe and I put up our Christmas tree last night!

Welcome winter! Feel free to stick with the 70 degree days!

Fun at Work, Part 4

We had snow Wednesday - LOTS of snow! But that's not what this post is about. Sorry.

I work in a small medical research lab. Sometimes we have students rotate through, but generally there were three of us in the lab and my boss who is also a department head (so I usually see him briefly a few times a day). Recently, the other woman in the lab graduated (with her Ph.D.) and is currently moving out of state. For her last day, we had cake and this balloon lab person waiting at her desk when she came in. I made it. Give me some credit - it's a lot harder to draw a face on a balloon than one would think. And I don't draw noses.


So now there are only two of us in the lab! It's quite different, but good. It wasn't that long ago when I was hesitant to talk about my co-workers for fear it sounded like I worked at a strip club (seriously - there was Candi, Angel, Honey, and me - Kat).

work story #2

Thursday morning I woke up not feeling great, especially when I tried to coax my body out of the warm bed. So I sleep in a little, skipped my shower, and threw on a gray sweatshirt (one of Joe's old ones, no less) and jeans for work. I don't typically interact with other people much, so it doesn't matter how I dress. (I know, that's the sort of thing they'd freak out over someone saying on What Not to Wear.) Mid morning, I saw my boss and he reminded me that we had the award service this afternoon - where I'd get my 5 year service pin (I started here as an undergrad - I'm not quite that old yet). I had completely forgotten, and I asked him if I should run home and change, or at least put on one of our scrub shirts so people would assume I was doing some sort of surgery. He said "No, they don't take pictures or anything. It's not that big of a deal."

That afternoon, I went down to the lobby a few minutes early, and a large mass of people are already listening to the Dean of the college - they had started a few minutes early! They began calling up people for the 5-year service awards. A friend who worked with me when she first got here was the first to go up. They handed her the pin and a fleece blanket (embroidered with our logo). Then there was a FLASH. If only it had been our seizure-inducing fire alarm lights. They were taking pictures of each individual with the dean. I'm not sure you understand the magnitude of this. These things have a way of showing up on the website, recruitment material, and those banners they attach to the light posts for everyone to see. My boss looked back at me, and I did my best to give an incredulous glare. He laughed and turned back around.

Well, I didn't fall down as I accepted the pin and blanket, so it could have been worse. I'm hoping I blinked for the picture, though I'm not sure I timed it right.

And that's my work story for today.

P.S. I did take lots of snow pictures. Translation for Mom: I don't want any emails asking about the snow, I'll post them when I can. ;)

P.P.S. Though quite old, there really are three other Fun at Work posts. Everyone knows a convincing made-up number should be odd. Not only is four even, it's a square number. That's making up numbers mistake #19. Catching on yet? Fine, if you don't believe me, here are one, two, and three.

books, Part 2 (how the most recent obsession began)

(continuing the book theme of my previous post)

Friday, November 21st, Joe and I were walking to the register at HEB when I saw him. A kid (how I now refer to high school guys) who looked normal other than white makeup on his face. Let me remind you, I'm in Bryan, Texas. Not much of a goth scene here. So I nudged Joe and shot a questioning look at the guy. Joe whispered, "That movie - Twilight," and I choked out a laugh before I could stop. Immediately Joe said "You're one to laugh!" He's totally right - but it caught me off guard! Vegetarian vampires walking around HEB!

That weekend we had been doing wedding shower and house related stuff. By the time Sunday (the 23rd) mid-morning rolled around, I had a strong urge to get out of the house and do something totally different. Joe puts up with these urges well, so he asked what I wanted to do. A movie sounded like fun, so we looked up what was in theaters (How did we live without the internet? Remember those horrible theater-time recordings - the ones you would listen patiently to, only to get distracted RIGHT when they said the times for the movie you wanted? ). Nothing at all exciting was in the theaters. We tried to think of other things to do, but couldn't. Finally, I convinced Joe to take me to see Twilight. It's been a while since he's sat through a high school drama movie with me, so off we went, more for the thrill of seeing a movie during the middle of the day than anything else.

(Deep Breath) I actually liked it. More than a little. That's all I'm going to say about that.


Tuesday night (the 25th) I got to talk with two of my friends who were reading the books, and I made plans to borrow the first one on Sunday. Both were excited I was giving it a try. Later that night, Joe took me by Hastings, and I bought the first book. Yes, I bought it from the Teen Series section. Can you see the obsession beginning?

Over Thanksgiving I read the entire Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. All 2824 pages (including the draft of Midnight Sun available on the author's website). Here's how it went:
Thursday / Thanksgiving: Much of Joe's family was watching movies (we're talking Nacho Libre), and blocked it out and read. Emily has an awesome jacuzzi tub, so I got to try it out and finish the first book, Twilight, that night.
Friday late morning, I bought the second book, New Moon. In the afternoon, Joe played disc golf in a Houston park while I enjoyed the nice weather and got started reading. I finished it that night at home. Joe took me to pick up the final two books, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.
Saturday & Sunday I hardly did anything other than reading. I was a little sick, so staying still felt even better. Sunday night I finished the fourth book and Midnight Sun (like the first book, except told from Edward's point of view - thanks, Chalyce, for sharing!).

So did I enjoy it? Most definitely, yes. Now that the buzz has worn off a little, I can see some of the faults, but I still like the books. Even though the last one (Breaking Dawn) may have more inconsistencies, I think it was my favorite. It was a little more my style - more action-focused than relationship-focused (like the first two were). The second, New Moon, was my least favorite, but any book that can make me feel so strongly ("God help me, if she kisses him, I WILL rent a steamroller to destroy this book") deserves some amount of credit.

Let me know if you read these and what you think! We'll talk about dressing up to see the next movie together. ;)

books, Part 1

I've done a LOT of fun reading over the last few weeks.

I tend to be rather obsessive when it comes to reading. My family would tell you that is an extreme understatement.

Starting in junior high, every Christmas I would get my gift from my parents early - the last day of finals. It would be a new hardcover book (quite a few years the newest Stephen King book), and I would start on it right away. There were easily days when all I would do was read and (if I remembered) eat and sleep a little. During the school year, I had to limit myself to short stories only so that I would have time to do my schoolwork. Ah, what happy memories I have of my own reading days. When I graduated high school, I had read all Michael Crichten's and Stephen King's books. (S.K. quickly fell out of my favor, but I kept up with M.C.)

When we went to Dallas three weeks ago, I got to pick up a couple of books. I read The Last Sin Eater and The Shack. (Thanks Staci and Shelley for recommending and lending them to me!)


The Last Sin Eater was good - I especially liked the concept for the book. I felt like the protagonist's emotions and reactions were realistic. My only criticisms... It's definitely a Christian fiction novel, and gets preachy briefly. I'm not sure it needed to tell as many stories from the Bible as it did, but those were only a small portion of the book. The author seemed to have trouble keeping a consistent point of view.

The Shack was great - I'd highly recommend it. There were sections I don't think I agree with for sure, but overall it was thought-provoking while still and enjoyable read. My biggest criticism... It is presented like a true story someone is recording for a friend. I can only think of two other "Christian Fiction" books I've read who have done this: C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, Rick Joyner's The Final Quest. This has got to be one of the literary tools that frustrates me most!!! Before I rattle on, I'll say I think TFQ could be from visions / dreams of Rick Joyner's. Especially the first part of the book. If anyone had doubts as to whether OotSP was true or not, they'd only have to read the third book in the series to be quite confident that none of it happened. The author of The Shack, William Young, states clearly on the book's site that the story is fiction. He seems to throw off the question of why it's written as a true story by saying he originally did not intend for it to be widely read or published. Why do they do this?!? It drives me mad. If I ever write a book and do this, friends - please stop me!

Day 28: Be Thou My Vision art project, Part 1

Quick catching up... I did this November 18th!

I had an idea for an art project for our piano nook (I know, how cool is it we have a piano nook?!?) a while back, and finally starting putting it together. I feel like it incorporates a lot of me, and I'll be glad to have it in our home.

Song.

Less than a year ago, I was listening to a group Joe likes (I like some of their songs) called Glad. On one of their a cappella albums, they recorded the song "Be Thou My Vision." Here's the first verse (here's the rest with and ugly midi playing the beautiful melody in the background):

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

I had heard it before, but that time it stuck with me. I immediately started to memorize it, and had it down fairly well in a few days (so many rhymes to mix up!). The following Sunday at our church's worship service, we sang it for the first time (that I was there for) - what a happy surprise that was! The song is frequently on my mind and conveys so much of what I feel.

Supplies.

Being the outstanding artist that I am*, I started with a trip to Michael's to see what canvas was cheapest. I ended up with two 9" x 12" canvases that wrap around the sides so that I don't have to frame it and it can blend in with the wall some. I wanted to have some texture to parts of the canvas, so I asked my mom how people add that. She suggested gesso, with the stipulation that the last time she bought it was the year I was born. Near the gesso, I found some lightweight texture stuff that I decided to give a try. For paint and brushes, I'm sticking with what I used on walls in my house. Here were the supplies:


Doodles: the foreground and background.

I have two forms of doodling. Both are relaxing to me, and both will be represented in this art project.

One reveals my obsessive behavior and involves patterns, often of simple geometric shapes. I would guess that this doesn't come as a surprise AT ALL to most of you. I'll explain how this fits in with foreground of the project more later. While it's not one of the shape ones, here's an example from one day at work when I was teaching / helping someone do an experiment (translation: sitting there three hours and answering questions as they came up):


My second form of doodling is the opposite: completely unplanned, unpredictable, and uncontrolled. I start by drawing one random line (swirl / squiggle / swish / whatever). I then look at the page, and feel like a line belongs somewhere else. I look again and see where another one goes. And again, and again. I don't see where more they belong other than just that next line I'm about to draw. If I'm using colors, I usually do one at a time, finishing with one color before moving on to the next. It's really fun, because the end result always surprises me. I've kept some of them, but they're still in boxes - I'll try to post one if I find it. THIS is the form of doodling the background takes one. Here's the first canvas, with my lines molded on (I used the non-scoop end of a plastic spoon) and the background paint (same as the wall it will be on). The picture makes it look a little brighter than it is, but you can mostly make out the textured lines:


I used my second doodling form to decide where the raised lines would go, and where the green paint would go on top of it. I DID have in mind how the song would go on top of it (the obsessive part of the painting), but I think that only effected this part subconsciously. (picture of the green layer of paint soon to come)

Aside.

I read and wrote about a type of dementia a while back, and my doodling styles described above where definitely on my mind, raising my curiousity at the time. The ties between math and pattern-type drawing makes sense to me... what about this other type? How do you all draw or doodle?

to be continued....

*in case you don't actually know me, I'm being very sarcastic - I don't paint. Once my husband (who paints even less than I do - at least my mom and grandma have talent) and I did another painting project for our living room, but that's all!

What we've been doing hints

As a hint of things I've worked on lately (but don't want to take time to write about), here are a couple of pictures...

I might finish this tree one of these days...


With help from Danny, we've started putting tile down in the slab part of our house (no baseboards yet)!

Day 27: Pumpkin Bread

On to some belated creative day activities... this is from October 16th and 22nd!

In past years, I've used various mixes or the BHG pumpkin bread recipe, but given that Joe LOVES anything pumpkin (remember?), I figured I should have a better recipe. If you have any good recipes, do share them with me! I was also helping with a wedding shower today, and they wanted to do pumpkin bread instead of a cake (for a fall theme). So, it was time to try new recipes.

Two blogs I follow recently posted what they said were excellent recipes for pumpkin bread, so the competition began. I baked both recipes and got 6 people to try some of each. One was the clear winner - 5 to 1. Joe took some of the losing bread to work, and people still loved it (even asking for the recipe), so these are both great (but different) breads. I also tried a cream cheese frosting that was EASY and yummy. (A third blogger - the one who got me trying the 30 days of creativity thing - also shared a recipe, but it was very close to one of the others, so I stuck with just the two.)

The losing bread was a lighter color and much more dense. Still tasty, and you may prefer it's recipe if you like your pumpkin bread to have more of a pound cake consistency!

The winning bread actually rose a decent amount, so keep that in mind as you bake. The first batch I did accidentally had too much shortening, but it was good (maybe even better)! I somehow forgot that 1 cup of shortening is NOT the same as 8 oz. Okay, here's the recipe for the winning bread with my notes in italics.

Pumpkin Bread
originally from Michele Smith

3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
1 cup shortening (or 8 oz for a crunchier top)
3 eggs
1 can pumpkin
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon (heaping)
1 tsp. cloves (heaping)
1 tsp. nutmeg (heaping)
1/4 tsp. salt
(note from kathryn: I thought it was a little heavy on the spices the first time, so I recommend what I did the second time - cloves BARELY more than 1 tsp, and cinnamon and nutmeg about halfway between a flat tsp and a full heaping tsp.)

Mix shortening, eggs and pumpkin in large bowl.
(I used a beater for a couple of minutes until it looked like this - no white lumps)In another bowl, mix all dry ingredients. (Really use another bowl - no one wants a clump of nutmeg in a bite!) Then add a little at a time to the liquid ingredients until all is mixed well. Put in loaf pan and bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. (I used cooking spray, but it only semi-worked on the mini-muffins and bundt cake. No problem with the mini-loaves. Makes 2 normal loaves, 6 mini-loaves, 48 mini-muffins, or 1 bundt cake - remember to leave room for it to rise. The top looks done way before the inside is actually cooked, so use a toothpick to be sure.)

it looked better than this in person, and tasted very good
bundt cake is a great option for this recipe - it bakes over an hour

I got the idea for the cream cheese frosting from a few different websites... here's my make-shift recipe.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese frosting
5 Tbsp butter (unsalted)
vanilla
powdered sugar (3ish cups?)

Melt the butter almost completely in the microwave. Thoroughly mix in the cream cheese (I just used a fork). I use Mexican real vanilla that is much stronger, so it was probably less than 1/4 tsp that I added, but it would be more than that with vanilla extract. I go by how it smells - you want to still smell plenty of cream cheese. Add powdered sugar about 1 cup at a time. I didn't dirty up a measuring cup, and I don't have a sifter - the lumps broke up on their own. I added powdered sugar until the frosting stuck to the sides on the bowl and was almost stringy. I also taste a little to see if it is sweet enough. :)


I tried going old-school with the frosting and put an extra large tip in the cut corner of a plastic bag. I'll admit it was HEB-brand, but it failed miserably. I broke two bags before I switched to a disposable decorating bag from Wilton via Wal-Mart. Ah, so much easier and worth the extra cost for sure! The tip costs less than a dollar (or did when I bought it). I didn't even dirty up a coupler. I highly recommend giving this a try - I got lots of compliments and it was faster and less messy (okay, it would have been less messy had I not tried to use plastic baggies) than trying to ice them like cupcakes.

the two broken zip-lock type bags and the successful Wilton bag

Mythbusters: Lauren's b-day edition

Last Sunday was my little sister's 24th birthday! I think I'm in more denial about her age than she is.

In honor of her birthday, Joe and I had our own special edition of Mythbusters.

My sister teaches at a preschool in San Antonio, and she does a great job! It's not a babysitting-type place, they have strict goals for what the kids will learn. Lauren's done neat stuff for the science part of class. One thing involved the kids trying to break an egg. She said that if you squeeze an egg evenly in your hand (not wearing any rings), that there's not enough pressure in any one spot for the egg to break. You won't be able to break it! She did this with her kids, giving them each a chance to break the egg. No one, including her, could break the egg just by squeezing. They tested other methods and eventually cracked the egg.

Joe and I decided to test her "fact" that you couldn't break an egg by squeezing. I was making pumpkin bread and really didn't want to have to pick shell out of the bowl, so I honestly didn't try as hard as I could. I DID try harder than I thought it would take, though. Next, Joe squeezed an egg over the sink. He took off his ring and applied pressure evenly, and here's the result:
That's some serious distance! So, Lauren, I'm afraid to say...

BUSTED!

Happy (now belated) Birthday, Lauren! :)

Mom, you know I'm still alive.

Okay, I'll post an update. My mom seems to think that something's wrong if I don't post, so here goes.

I do have some neat updates for creative days (which I didn't finish within the allotted 30 days, so it's more like "30 out of 45 days of creativity" but it was still fun! I just need to upload pictures to go along with those posts.

Last week (November 9th - 14th), Joe and I were in Dallas. He had a another computer training that was Monday - Friday, and we both decided it'd be better for me to take off work for the week and get away with him instead of staying in town by myself. (I just looked for my post about last time Joe went on a trip, and the surprise I worked on, but I couldn't find it... have I been that bad about blogging?) While in Dallas, I spent time with my parents, some friends from church who are planting a church up there, and a couple of good high school friends I haven't seen since my wedding (almost 7 years ago). I also did some shopping. I spent almost 4 hours at Ikea with my mom and dad (on his day off, sorry Dad!), and I thought I was rushing through. The coolest thing I found (and bought) is this:
It's a magnetic trivet (hot pad)! If I set one of our pots on it and put it on the table, we can pass the gravy (or whatever is in the pot) around the table without passing it all the way back to put it on the hot pad. This is one of those ideas that I wish I had thought of - how smart! We've already used it and I like it a lot.

This week that we've been back has gone by fast!

We got in Friday night, and Saturday our friend Danny came over and got us started tiling some of our floor. He returned Sunday with his new bride, Jordan, who helped me paint one of the last remaining unpainted rooms (just some second coats and a bathroom to go).

Monday, we were with the kiddos and mainly worked on separating clothes (as well as eating a gumbo that turned out spicier than we intended). Tuesday was our small group for church. I don't remember what Wednesday night was. Joe, help? Oh, I think we watched a movie that I wouldn't really recommend unless you're particularly interested in wine. Last night was our appointed date night (we're just starting to do Thursday night as date nights). We stayed in, but it was nice.

I get emails from World Market, and today they sent one saying that Beaujolais nouvaeu was now here, and it goes great with Turkey!!! (their enthusiasm, not mine) I looked it up, and it's a type of wine (from a certain grape in France) that they only allow to ferment a few weeks before selling. Even though it's a red wine, it has very little tannins (from the grape skin - so it's not so bitter... thanks Fall Creek Vinyards for teaching me some about the wine-making process). I was thinking "this might be a fun wine to try," when I read this on Wikipedia: "Wine critic Karen MacNeil has compared drinking Beaujolais Nouveau to eating cookie dough." I'm pretty sure that was a jab at this wine that is not given time to mature, but now I totally want to try it.

I'll try to update with some of the creativity days really soon!

Obama is President Elect

Late last night, they officially announced that Obama was elected president I am amazed by the vastly different reactions of my friends - most obviously my friends on facebook. If you are unfamiliar with Facebook, there is a status update that you can change. For example, mine recently said "Kathryn Anne Vickery Peebles is sick of being sick." You can change the part after your name to say whatever you want and all your friends can read it. (By the way, "Vickery" is not actually part of my legal name, I just left it in there so that friends from before I was married would know who I am.)

I think looking back on this in a few years will help me remember the strange mixture of reactions - I think the status updates reveal more than any article I've read so far.

Here are some of my friends' recent statuses (stati?) starting Tuesday morning until now:
...is voting for Monty Brewster.
...can't wait for the election to be overwith. SO tired of hearing about it.
...VOTED this morning! Yea for democracy!!
...is glad she voted early and won't be standing in long lines today.
...voted for Barack Obama this morning.
...is Palin 2012 baby!
...already voted and is totally taking advantage of free coffee at starbucks and a free cone at Ben and Jerry's!
...is voting...go ______ ! May peace and love prevail!
...is ready for a change.
...is proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.
...is hopeful...
...voted today! And it took way less time than it did for everyone who voted early!
...just made the "vote" ticker go up!...;)
...voted today
...is "Bob Barr for America!"
...thinks that Karl Marx may become our new "friend", or else!
...is the 1,707,453rd person to donate their status to get out the vote for John McCain today. Donate yours: http://causes.com/election/27577504.
... reminds you that polls close soon, so please go vote for John McCain. Remind your friends: http://causes.com/election?m=33479262.
... is remembering that the lORD remains the same as he did yesterday, as he is today and as he will be tomorrow.
...is looking on the bright side … at least we won't have to worry about putting gas in our cars or paying our mortgages now.
...wishes people wouldn't say such ugly things about either future president.
...is excited to watch our country go to crap.
...is so elated Pres. Obama time for a change history has just happend.
...is beyond words...it's an amazing and promising night.
...is speechless (literally and figuatively)...
...is home and watching history unfold.
...is grinnin'. :-].
...is not a socialist. Neither is Barack Obama: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-chicago-socialist,0,4048540.story.
...is.. i don't know.
...is kinda bored.
...is yeah!
...is excited about the prospect of having presidential addresses that are worth listening to for the next four years!
... is excited that I can now tell my 4 year old, "You can be anything you want to be and here's proof."
...is looking for the handbasket to get inside of...
...is stoked his boy won.
...is glad he no longer has to see political advertisements!
...Disappointed but not surprised. Fortunately my hope doesn't lie in any man or man-made institution. Blessings have abounded this week.
...is hopeful that we will all understand that reasonable times are not created by unreasonable people. Rationality and reactivity do not go hand in hand.
...wishes President Obama well, and his hope and faith and trust are for God.
..."Hamas fires 35 rockets into Israel"...great, they must have heard Obama was cutting military budget 25%.
....is thankful that no matter who wins elections, God is ultimately in charge!
...is glad the elections are over and hopes everyone can find peace and unity with the decision.
...is so emotional and proud to be able to raise her daughter who will always believe that her skin color will not dampen her dreams!
...i dare not trust the sweetest frame.
...knows that Harold is smiling where ever he is... Now time for some post-partisan appointees and a combined effort to lessen the impact of the recession.
...loved the patriotic connection with her 976 customers on 11/4. {this person works for Starbucks - they gave out free coffee to voters}
...is wondering if Oprah is going to miss the additional 16 million dollars she is estimated to pay under Barak's proposed tax plan.
...Yes. They did. http://thad.typepad.com/
...thinks Thad is awesome: http://thad.typepad.com/homeanywhere/
...dreams of a day where no one will be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
...will be living in the USSA - The United Socialist States of America - in 2009. :(

(please note: I just went in order of posting until the time I posted THIS and included every political status update, even the many that do not personally hold true. I would recommend reading Thad's blog that was referred to twice.)

Voting!

It's almost time to vote! Sadly, I'm not yet 100% sure who I'll vote for in the presidential election... lots to think about there. I will figure something out and vote tomorrow, though. And I'll get a cavity filled (less exciting, equally painful).

If you're in the Brazos county, here's a link to the sample ballot which includes the propositions we'll be voting on (if you haven't already voted).

Several places seem to offer free stuff to people who vote, so I thought I might share a few. Do leave a comment if you know of other places! And I think if you voted early, it'd still be fair to take advantage of these offers.

Free Election Day Stuff:

Starbucks - free 12 oz cup of coffee (just tell them you voted)
Ben & Jerry's - free scoop of ice cream for anyone from 5-8 pm

update: Joe went to Starbucks and got a free coffee after voting this morning - you don't need an "I voted" sticker like they said on KBTX.

Not in BCS:
Krispy Kreme : free star-shaped doughnut and "I voted" sticker (perhaps with purchase?)
Chick-fil-A: some locations are giving away free chicken strips or chicken sandwiches - look for signs advertising it at the location

My First Louisianan Wedding

Last weekend we got to see our friends Britt and Jen get married! The wedding was in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Krista made the drive with us and we spent the night with Joe's aunt and uncle in Nacogdoches, Texas. The wedding was at a historic home in this very old town. Steel Magnolias was filmed in this town, for all you trivia buffs. Also, it's pronounced "Nack-a-tish" by locals.I didn't take many pictures, but I suprised myself by actually snapping the bouquet catch! My camera has about a 2 second delay, so this was particularly lucky:Oh - and they worked the Cajun thing into their food! There were several shrimp and crawfish dishes. But they still stayed true to Texas - they had the biggest hunk of beef that I've ever eaten off of, and the groom's cake was red velvet and shaped like Texas with a Texas flag on top.

Congrats, Britt and Jen! I look forward to hanging out as married couples now!

(edit: Here's a better picture of them, thanks to facebook and another wedding guest - her dress was beautiful!)

Day 26 - A Safe Place

Tonight was another night with the kids. I can take no credit for the actual creativity - I just helped. The youngest (9) enlisted my help decorating her "safe place." She had a whole vision worked out for what it would look like. She explained that when she got angry (as someone with 3 older brothers is bound to do sometimes), she could go to her room and close the door. She can sit in front of the closed door and use that time to calm down. And she calls it her "safe place." She wants to decorate it with things that will help her calm down. She also had a special notebook she plans to write out why she is angry. She has another notebook that will be for images that help her calm down - like happy pictures of herself. There is an area of the door for games. She explained that the game she wanted was one they did at school to practice their drills for calming down. You turn over a card that says "go forward one space" and one that space would be instructions like "Take a deep, slow breath." She said that by the time you reach the end of the board, you're calm. It seems like a neat tool. Hopefully I can continue to be a part of creating her vision.

Day 23 - Pumpkin Tortellini

(I'm almost caught up with writing about what I've done as a part of the creative challenge.)

Joe LOVES pumpkin. He'll like pumpkin-anything, as long as people didn't overdo the spices (especially cinnamon). When we saw pumpkin tortellini in the frozen section at HEB, we knew we had to try it. But what type of sauce goes on it? On Halloween we tried a yummy sauce that is similar to a few recipes Joe found online. We just boiled some chicken, cut it into small pieces and let the sauce coat it along with the tortellini. Here's what we did, and I highly recommend it - even if it's just on some other pasta!

Butter Sage Sauce
2.5 Tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
18ish oz shredded parmesan reggiano
pasta (pumpkin tortellini!)

Start boiling the pasta. Melt the butter in a pan large enough to hold all of the cooked pasta. Add the rubbed sage and let it soak in the butter. Almost a minute before the pasta is done, remove almost a cup of the water it boiled in (save it) and then drain the pasta. Add the reserved (almost a cup) water to the butter / sage. Add the pasta and mix well. Allow the pasta to soak up some of the water and finish cooking. Add the cheese to the pasta, mix well. The cheese melts and seems to disappear. Enjoy!

Days 16, 17, 18, 22 - Prayer Tree project

A few years ago Joe and I had what we called a prayer tree in our house. It went from floor to ceiling in our bedroom and looked like this:We would write things we were praying for on "leaves" (you can see the yellow paper on leaf-shapes). It helped to write out prayers, and also served as a reminder to be praying for things (especially specific things for each other). The idea was to take the leaves off and put them in a book with the way God answered that prayer. We weren't good about following through with that last part, but it was still neat to look at things we had written and think about it (even if we didn't record it). I've missed us doing that, so we're recreating a prayer tree. This time I'm making a smaller (and more 3D) one, but we still plan to put prayer leaves on it.

Here were the supplies I started with: (the newspaper and packing paper missed the photo op)

It was cool, I said "Joe, I need a piece of wood about this long" and in about two minutes he busted out the saw we're borrowing to install our wood floors (thanks Brock!) and cut one for me!

I used mostly coat hangers to make the frame, the covered that with packing paper and tape...

And then added a few layers of paper mache.
Joe helped on the last day - we had a really good conversation while working on it. I think I need to reinforce the base a bit more, and I'll add more (smaller) branches. It's bonsai-ish since our house has a bit of an Asian theme (at least, it will once we get enough done on it to decorate).

Day 19 - Cupcakes with kiddos

I finally did a project with the kids we're with Monday nights. We decorated cupcakes to share with our small group who meets the next night. Joe and I also did some, and here are how the ones that didn't get eaten right away looked:I had considered using ziplock bags instead of real decorating bags and tips, but they all learned how to use them fairly well - there was only one casualty of frosting coming out the end of the decorating bag, which is better than most beginners! Fun!

Days 15, 20, 24, 25 - Embroidery project

I busted out a project I had the idea for and got started on a long time ago. Basically, I'm working on a quilt for our bed. On the middle of our quilt, I'll have our namesake's crest (Peebles, Scotland) with "Peebles" above it (hand embroidered) and the town / shire motto "Contra Nando Incrementum" below it. The Latin motto means something like "increase by swimming against the flow." Even though it's original reference is to the nearby salmon that go upstream to mate / increase, I think the idea of gaining something by going against the norm fits us pretty well. (At least the last half does!)

So I'm trying to hurry up and finish the name embroidery! It takes a long time, and I've spent quite a while several days working on it. On day 20 I was actually sick and stayed home from work, but this was something I could do while lying in bed. On the 24th and 25th days (yesterday and today), we drove to and from a wedding in Louisana, so this was a car-friendly project.

I'll post more pictures of my plan for the quilt and the embroidery as it gets done. Here's a little sneak peak:

Day 11 - Trampoline!

Day 11 was a Monday again, so we were with our friend's kids all evening. Actually, our friend was in bed the whole time - she's got a kidney stone right now.

Ahead of time, I thought out a fun, creative, and meaningful project we could work on. I actually thought of three, but two ended up not being good for reasons beyond my control. And instead of doing the third idea, we played and put the net on the trampoline we assembled a little while back. I thought it was hard to motivate myself to do something creative instead of things that "need" (need without quotes would be things like eating dinner) to get done, but it turned out to be even harder to want to try to convince the kids of that. You heard right - I didn't even try to convince them, I psyched myself out! Don't worry, I'm already building myself up for next week - we WILL do something fun and creative together!

In my attempt to find something creative in relation to the trampoline (I've already got to make up day 6), I've decided to share this:
It's a thank-you note from the little girl for us helping put together the trampoline. I think she did a good job! I'm not sure how exactly all the words relate to the experience - especially "weird" and "mad" but it's a very cute card! As soon as I find our magnets (presumably still packed from our move), it's going on the fridge.

Day 13 - Music Webpage

I've already spent too much time on the computer tonight, but I just wanted to let you know that for my creative act of the day, I updated our music page on our website! Now you can listen to four songs we've recorded (I'm on two of them). It's all a cappella music. Let me know what you think about the player.
Go check it out and enjoy!

edit: Since I've been ignoring our website, several pages (particularly in the photos section) are not working properly. I'll let you know when I fix them!

Days 9-11 - a video for you!

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Joe and I spent some time working on a short video. Since it's only one project I'm not sure if it really counts, but I did work on it some each day! The original idea was to make a series of videos on how to prepare for Halloween, but if I'm going to spend a decent amount of time on videos I'd rather do a bigger project we could share with more people.

I made this video in response to a few videos that have been emailed to me. I really, really don't like getting videos like this. So I made one that I can send to all those people who sent me one. I'm not being mean - really! They wouldn't have forwarded it to me unless they actually liked getting it themselves, right? So I'm sure they'll enjoy this video.



Just in case you don't know what videos I'm referring to, you can check out this one or this one.

Oh, and the song you hear a clip of is one I wrote a few years ago when playing with Finale - Joe's music composition software. It's just for fun. It's called Cane-Free and it's about an old man who just recently was able to walk without a cane once again.

And if you're my friend, don't trick me with one of these videos! ;)

Morchat Wedding!

Saturday night was the Morchat wedding. It was very beautiful, and best of all, Danny and Jordan are now married! I don't have any great pictures, but here are a few...

Danny and Jordan getting married! The wedding was outdoors, and they seemed to have found the one place in Texas where the colors actually change before the leaves fall off the trees. There's also a river in the background.a few of us ComChurchers who happened to be leaving at the same time
my friend Jenny visiting from Tennessee (Danny was their housemate last year)
Sam - I've never seen a 21 month-old be such a perfect ring bearer!

Day 8 - Dressing for a Wedding

Thursday was Day 8. Because it had been raining for two days, Joe's soccer game was canceled. That meant a welcome extra night for us! Our friends Jordan and Danny are getting married Saturday, so we had to figure out what to wear. I think weddings are one of the hardest events to dress for, and I'm quite sure I'm not good at it.
There are many qualities that wedding guest attire should have, for example:
(1) modest - something of which the grandparents there will approve
(2) stylish / edgy - to look nicer than normal, not to mention the many pictures that will be taken
(3) not all white - duh, it's the bride's color!
(4) (this is my personal one) not all black - too much like mourning

Now, #1 and #2 often are directly conflicting. As Joe and I looked through the closet, I decided this outfit has a delicate balance of modesty and edginess. ;)

Yes, those are fishnet hose in case you didn't notice. So, looking in the closest and making crazy wedding outfits was my creative thing for Thursday!

Day 7 - song

I'll have to make up Tuesday (Day 6) later!

Excuses for the past two days of lesser creativity / what we've been up to: (skip this is you're the hates-excuses type) Monday I went from work to home and started cooking immediately and from before we were done cooking until after 9, Joe and I were playing with / watching / helping (I don't know what to call it), some kids who live 5 houses down the street (and whose mom we're in small group with at church). I know mothers do stuff like this every day and probably work in creative time, but I'm not a mother yet and don't know how to do that. Tuesday we have small group for church, so the day went work, fix dinner, comgroup (community groups is what we call them). Today (Wednesday), I got a call saying I could get my fillings done this afternoon (yes, I've got cavities), so right now my jaw is killing me. I had a cavity under an old filling that was on top of and between two molars. I've learned to close my eyes when they insert those things to wedge your teeth apart. But at least Joe and I didn't have anything going on tonight! We watched some of the last presidential debates, as well as tonight's episode of Pushing Daisies (the show I recently wrote about). I enjoyed Pushing Daisies more.

On to the creative part...

I've been working on a song for a while. Sometimes I can write something very quickly, but each part of this song rolls around in my head for a while before I actually get anything down on paper, then I change that at least a dozen times before I'm semi-happy with it. Keeping that in mind, I started the final verse. For this song I've been writing what I want to say, and worrying about the exact words (to fit meter and rhyme) later, so what I wrote tonight is just me getting started figuring out what I want to say.

The song is mostly based on Psalm 107:4-32. I suggest reading it. To me, this psalm expresses different situations in which people turn to the Lord, and for me is a reminder of how He rescues us (me) and how He loves us (me). I'll write out three verses I'm fairly happy with, then share what I wrote tonight as a start to the last verse.

I wandered, but I found no home,
Nor road to show the way.
Thirst and hunger with me roamed,
And I lost count of days.
Then I cried, "My Lord!" in my desp'rateness
And God delivered me from my distress
He led me home without delay;
He fed my soul a feast each day.

Encompassed by the deepest gloom,
My hands and feet were bound.
I came this way, past signs of doom,
In loneliness I drowned
Then I cried, "My Lord!" in my desp'rateness
And God delivered me from my distress
He cast the shadow from my midst;
He burst the chain that bound my wrists.

I turned a fool who welcomed sin,
And fed only on its lies.
I loathed good food, and so grew thin,
Devoured by my guest.
Then I cried, "My Lord!" in my desp'rateness
And God delivered me from my distress.
He gave healing and direction;
He freed me from self-distruction.

The final part (verses 23-32) tells about sailors who witness the Lord's "wondrous works." What it seems like to me is that the men are doing their job when God (it's VERY specific that God commanded the wind) brought a storm to them that brought them to their "wits' end." Then they cry out, and God stills the storm. And then it says "Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men!" Really? Oh, yeah - thanks God for that storm that cost us days at sea and nearly killed us, thanks! I don't feel THAT strongly, but still it's hard for me to grasp. In recent days, I've been thinking about and pryaing a lot for my friends who just lost their baby girl. You can tell by what they wrote about it, that through this storm, they better know and recognize God's steadfast love. I've been focusing on that more as I try to wrap my heart around these verses.

The third verse was also initially difficult for me to connect with, but it finally clicked and resonated with me deep down, like the first two did without hesistation. I also had to use "us" or "some" instead of "me" when originally writing that verse, so I'm starting out that way here. I also think that it was a bunch of sailors on that boat, not just one, so maybe us would work. But I think you could argue that for the first verse, too. Without further ado, my first crack at trying to grasp this verse:

We were going about our daily work
When God called upon us a storm
So strong his winds and harsh his rains,
forget life as normal - we couldn't even walk straight
Then we cried "My Lord!" in our desp'rateness
And God delivered us from our distress
He stilled the storm and we rejoiced for the quiet / boring
He revealed to us that day his steadfast love

The final version will look little like that - but I've got to start somewhere! I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on what those verses mean to you. Also, feel free to comment on the other three parts - I'm not completely settled on them. Thanks! I plan for more to the song, but these verses will be the main part.

Day 5 - Image in my head

For some reason, I had an image in my head most of the day Monday. My mom's and grammy's abilities to draw were apparently not dominant genetic traits, but I couldn't think of some better creative thing to do with little time, so here's my stick-figure version:
It's a person in a pit whose muscles have been torn from their bones, making them unable to move and just lying in a heap. Someday I'd like to just have an image of happy butterflies stuck in my head, but I get what I get. All day I kept thinking about how God is the only one who can make that lump move again - and He can restore perfect agility! I'm glad about that.

Okay, psycho-analyze away! ;)

Creativity - Day 4 and our piano!

(I haven't had much time at the computer for a few days, so I'm still catching up posting for the weekend... I wrote this on Sunday night.)

I practiced piano for 45 minutes tonight! The piano made it here safely from Dallas on Friday afternoon (thanks mom & dad for arranging AND paying for all of that!!!), and Joe and I are very excited.


I just played scales for the first 15 minutes... there's something peaceful to me about repeating something simple over and over, with it sounding better and better each time. Peaceful to me, but often extremely annoying to anyone who might have no choice but to listen. Joe had to finish some stuff at work tonight, so I didn't have to worry about that, though! I had intended to play for only 30 minutes, but I was having a good time and my fingers never started to hurt, so I just kept it up. I played some songs I used to know, figuring out the parts I'd forgotten. It was fun! Even though the piano does need tuned (we have to wait to do that until it's had plenty of time to acclimate to the new environment), it doesn't sound too bad to bother me. Woo hoo piano!

(It's also neat that our gold walls really bring out the yellow hints in the walnut piano to make it look like it's glowing gold - so pretty! It never looked like that in it's other homes.)

Creativity - Day 3 and the out of doors

Saturday was Day 3! My parents were in town helping work on our house. The big project was replacing the kitchen sink, installing a new faucet, and adding a garbage disposal. Since there was not electricity near the sink, the disposal was actually a big project. So we decided to go this route with an alternative, more green disposal:


Thanks, mom! Okay, so the sink and everything did get finished, and I'll post those on the home and garden blog eventually.

I've had a banana tree for a about a month that needs to be planted, so Joe helped dig a hole in the back yard for it. Since we had good grass where the tree was going and an ugly bald spot elsewhere, we decided to transplant the grass. Joe says that gardening should count as being creative, but in case it doesn't, I'll record a conversation between the front yards.


(warning: this isn't actually funny. In the same way that something doesn't have to be good to be art, this is only me trying to be creative in different ways, not necessarily enjoyable by others. It was actually fun to write something and not really care if it's funny or logical... it felt a little like brainstorming. If it helps, you can pretend a second grader is writing this.)

Across the Street: (whispering) Hey, neighbor. Did you see what the other corner had done?
Neighbor: Haha! I can't believe he did it! And does he really think that we won't notice the bald spot in the back now?!? (shouting) Hey, corner!
Corner (our yard): What's happenin' neighbor?
Neighbor: Oh, just enjoying a nice cool day. Anything new (snicker) with you?
Corner: Not really, just trying to soak up the sun and keep up my youthful appearance.
Across the Street: Youthful appearance, huh? Do you make a lot of efforts towards that cause?
Corner: I just try to stay healthy, and the rest comes naturally.
(Neighbor snort-laughs)
Across the Street: Naturally? So you, um, haven't had any work done then?
Corner: Nope, I just let my keepers trim a little off the top occasionally. Maybe rake a little sometimes - like earlier today.
Neighbor: You want us to believe that dark green is your natural color?
Corner: Mostly, though I am going brown in a few spots. Why?
Across the Street: You've had plugs put in, and we can clearly see them - don't try to pass it off as natural.
Corner: What?!? I would never - ... Wait, what is that spot? And that one? I dosed off earlier while getting a nice raking - what did they do to me?!?
Neighbor: You hadn't noticed?
Corner: (sniffling) I had always hoped to go brown with dignity.

Sorry, yard. You'll look better soon. Hopefully.

Creativity Day 2 - Makeup!

Well, Friday was a bit hard to fit in some creativity. I had to take a little time off work to help the piano mover get the piano inside (you'll see a post about that later!), and then my parents came in town and were here in time to pick me up from work. We did some stuff at our house and then helped a neighbor & her kids put up a trampoline (a big task). After that we saw Get Smart on campus. Joe, my dad and I actually saw it in theaters a while back, but it's fun to watch it with students and we liked it the first time. My mom even admitted to some funny moments. We got out of the movie in time to see the band go by for midnight yell - meaning we got home VERY late.

So I'm making up my Day 2 and I've decided to write! I'll record some random things about myself (I know you're so excited) - things I think I'll forget and find interesting later on. I think a good way of doing this will be by talking about a tv show on ABC that I really like right now and why.

The show is Pushing Daisies. It's real actors, but has some sort of fantasy feel to it (bright colors, some over-the-top characters, a narrator). {You can skip the rest of this paragraph if you want - it's just some background on the show.} One of the actors happens to be Kristen Chenoweth, my favorite Broadway singer. The basic premise is that one man, Ned, has the ability to touch a dead person / animal and bring them back to life. If he ever touches it again, it will go back to death and he can't bring it back. If he keeps something dead alive for more than one minute, something else nearby dies. Ned is a pie maker who has brought back his childhood sweetheart after she was murdered. They both work with a Private Investigator to solve murders - mostly by asking the dead guy who killed him. Olive (Kristen C.) is in love with Ned (and was before the childhood sweetheart became a part of their lives), but she doesn't know his secret ability, and Ned doesn't know she's in love with him. Okay, so now you know what the show is about. Now, how it relates to me!

My favorite part is that in three of the eleven episodes that have been aired, there are songs! Each has struck a chord with me, and I'll tell you why.

I love how Olive randomly sings. I do this, too, when people aren't close enough to hear me. Several times I've been singing in the car when my cell phone rings, and I automatically hit the button to turn off the stereo, only to realize the stereo was off and the backup music was in my head. Really, I can't count how many times I've done that. So, you can tell how I can relate to this scene:

(yikes, one of the videos it gives you as a choice to watch next has a surprising title - it's really not about that - watch it if you don't believe me!)
Another song is Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants (TMBG). In case you didn't know, Joe and I met at a church camp called Pettijohn in Oklahoma. At this camp, I also met Jennifer (my roommate and friend in college) and Wes (already a friend of Joe's - he was in our wedding). We still keep in touch with those two, but I also met Timothy Spain, who I haven't stayed in touch with. (Tim, if you googled your name and found this - tell me!) Timothy introduced me to TMBG and I thought it was great. He was right - it's great music to play while playing spades, something I loved to do. One of their more well-known songs is Birdhouse in Your Soul, and somehow the writers worked it into an episode quite appropriately. No, the situation in the scene below is not as weird as it looks - it's weirder.



Finally, since marrying into a Scottish name, I've become more interested in all things Scottish. To be honest, I can't always tell the different between Scottish and Irish things (I know, that's horrible), but I enjoy them both. Even before Joe, I've loved pretty much any song in 6/8, so Scottish music is mostly beautiful to me. Joe and I bought a tape (those things they used to make before CDs. CDs? You remember - that's what we used before iPods) for $1 at a truck stop, expecting top-notch quality. It was a Scottish Christmas album. Since we like both types of music, it held some promise. After listening to it, we decided that some guy with some recording equipment said "My Scottish uncle is coming in town, and I think I know someone who owns some bagpipes, I should spend the weekend making an album with them!" The one beautiful exception is a song sung by the "uncle" called Morning has Broken / Child in a Manger. I looked it up, and apparently Cat Stevens recorded Morning has Broken and made it famous. Our tape has some of it in Gaelic, and well as this verse "Child in a Manger, Infant of Mary / Outcast and stranger, Lord of All / Child who inherits all our transgressions / All our demerits on his fall." Between the tune, the lyrics, and an old Scottish man's voice, I love that version of the song! So that's what I'm reminded of during this scene:


I think I'd like Pushing Daisies without these songs, but they are what brought back happy memories. Anyone else watch this show? You should! You can even rent the first two DVDs of season one and watch the other 5 episodes so far online (abc.com). They should be paying me for this. ;)

Day One of Creativity

Today went very quickly, with no time until late tonight to do "creative" activities between loads of laundry. Some other days I will have more time, but tonight Joe and I added furniture to our living room and rearranged it all! We also realized that some of the colors in our last place aren't going to work as well as we thought with the new paint and floor, but here's what we settled on:
I didn't think to take a before shot, but all the red / gold pieces are new (to us) and there was a black futon in the room. This may be the first some of you have seen of the floor and paint - I hope you like it!

Tomorrow we're getting my baby-grand piano! My parents bought it for me when I was two, and now that we own a home they're moving it down here! Joe and I are both very excited. My parents are also coming down themselves, which will also be nice (maybe we can get our non-leaking faucet installed.... ;) ).

30 Days of Creativity

In true friend of a friend of a friend fashion, I started reading a professional photographer's blog last fall. Yesterday, she offered this challenge and I accepted.

Basically, I need to do something creative every day for the next thirty days (starting today)! Joe and I have talked about how we both have this need to do creative things, but when we get busy it gets pushed aside. Even though we'll be traveling a lot and I've got a lot of things on my plate for the next month, I think life will often be like this. So fitting in creativity will be good practice.

I'd love to have more friends doing this with me, so let me know if you plan to do it (or a modified version)! It can be simple, too. Some examples Shauna gives range from "try a new recipe" to "re-create an outfit you find in a magazine with your own clothes" to "design a tattoo (you don't ever have to get it)." What neat ideas!

I have tons of ideas for creative projects, and I can rather obsess over them. It's common for Joe and I to be talking and then all of a sudden I say "we could use that green paint from the back room for the painting." And then Joe laughs. It's like there's some small part of my brain that spends all waking and sleeping hours thinking about creative projects. The more I ignore it or push it away, the more it jumps out at random times.

Somewhat random aside: For the past couple of years we've had a garden, but since we just bought a home that needs a lot of work inside, I don't have one right now. One fun thing with a garden was trying to come up with new ways to use some of the food. Who knows how many mint recipes I've looked at! I'm a little sad that I won't get to work in any creativity with our garden food.

I'm going to write down some ideas that I may like to attempt during this next 30 days, mostly as a reference for me. I'll probably add to the list later as I think of things. Also, I'll try to post what my daily projects are / were.

Creative ideas:
1. Put together some of my holiday recipes in some cute way. I've started to really like being a main cook for Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. Last year I feel like I got the timing down pretty well, and was happy with the old and new recipes. I've also been creating some of my own desserts that I should write down recipes for before I forget!
2. Make a surprise gift. (I have a very specific thing in mind, but if I write on here it will no longer be a surprise!)
3. A "Be Thou My Vision" art project that's been floating around in my head a few weeks.
4. Play our piano (if we get it this weekend) for thirty minutes (for the first time in YEARS).
5. Try a new DINNER recipe (baking dessert doesn't count).
6. Decorate our refrigerator (put pictures on it).
7. Record a song with Joe (or at least start).
8. Write a last verse (can just be a draft) for a song I've been working a while.

Wow... 30 days is a long time! Any more suggestions for creative things to do?

my first project after graduation

First, a big congratulations to Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners: Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien ( who contributed to the isolation of Green Fluorescent Protein and found ways to use it as a genetic marker)!

My first project once working full time in a lab was modifying a gene (to put in a mouse) so that all cholinergic cells would glow green. Our lab was interested in cholinergic neurons, specifically in the basal forebrain, because a loss of these neurons is exhibited in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Instead of running experiments on cells and later (using RT-PCR) finding out for sure if it was the right cell (and if that data is useful for this purpose), we could use a fluorescent scope and visually select the glowing cholinergic cells.

Given that, it was a surprise to see this as the second sentence in a New York Times article featuring the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners:

"The fluorescent proteins are now routinely used for observing the growth and fate of specific cells like nerve cells damaged during Alzheimer’s."

further back: before Ike

I just realized that it had been even longer than I thought since I'd shared an update. Here's some more...

August 21st-24th: Church Camp. I wrote some about this, and still do hope to write some more!

August 26th: Out of the Silent Planet. I facilitated a ladies book club meeting on C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. I posted with some thoughts we didn't have time to discuss. I recommend it, even though it moves fairly slow at the beginning. The other two books in the trilogy are even better (the last one's my favorite - a very different page-turner), but you should read this one first.

August 29th-31st: House, Reception, Houston. My parents come down and help work on the house some Friday night and Saturday during the day. This is went the refrigerator / water saga began, for those of you keeping track. Saturday early evening we drove down to my cousin's wedding reception (they got married in Las Vegas) in Industry, TX. After it was over, we drove back to College Station (over an hour), met up with a couple of friends, and drove down to Houston. It was a very late night! A bunch of friends were visiting some friends that moved down there several months ago. Sunday morning we went to a church where some (apparently) famous worship leader was coming. It was sort of a concert, sort of him leading worship (from my perspective) - all songs he had written. The musicians were very talented. He also preached, and I thought all he had to say was good and thought-provoking - even more so than his songs. We returned to College Station barely in time to help "host" our church (we set up, clean up, and run nursery).

September 6th-7th: Houston and Back Again! After a shower for a beautiful bride-to-be, Joe and I went to Houston for his sister's housewarming party. She bought a house at the same time we did, but hers was completely new and finished. We had seen it once before she moved in, but it looked even better all decorated. We got to see some of Joe's extended family, many of whom we haven't seen since the spring. Sunday we headed back to College Station. Joe helped move around the stuff in a guest bedroom so that I could get to the computer and then rushed to pack and leave for Dallas (he was taking the laptop).

September 7th-10th: Joe's gone! He went to a SQL Server training in Dallas. Sunday night he got to meet with ComChurch Irving and stay the night with our friends there. Monday night he met up with two ComChurch Irving guys and ate at a place he says was delicious called "Babe's Chicken." In the evenings (I still had to go to work during the day), I worked on the house. I painted the bathroom and made / put up some curtains and stuff to make that room look nicer. Monday night some friends from a few houses down (9 and 10 years old) wanted to come help. I don't know if you've ever painted with kids that age, but it's definitely an adventure! They had fun, and I'm really glad they came over. Tuesday night some people from our future-small group met in a park for a while. After I got home from that I finished cutting in and did a second coat of paint. You'd think it'd get easier, but Tuesday night was the hardest to go to sleep without Joe. I really missed him! I think I did a bit more organizing and cleaning up Wednesday night, and Joe got home to see his surprise (that bathroom) around 9:00. He liked it!

Thursday during the day is when Joe's family came up because of the mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Ike, and now I'm caught up!

What's been happening: Family, Hurricane, House

Well, I haven't been any better about blogging. I still haven't finished that book I was supposed to weeks ago, despite reading some almost every day. But if I keep waiting it will be forever until I update.

I do have pictures (especially of the work on the house), but those are on another computer.

Here's how September went:
September 11th-15th: Family and Ike. Joe's parents and sister were staying with us, riding out Hurricane Ike. Though they both lost trees and power, no damage was done to their homes. Emily had power back on Monday, so his parents went there every night to sleep (with an A/C) and finally got power back on the 21st. Since it turned out not to hit us as a category one hurricane as predicted, we only lost limbs (tree limbs). This was the first time Joe's family had seen our house!

September 16th: ComGroup. Our new small group for church started! We're excited about this new year and our new small group that meets every week.

September 19th-21st: Family and Schlitterbahn. Joe and I went to San Antonio to visit Lauren and Kevin (my sister & her hubby). My parents gave us two free tickets to Schlitterbahn at Galveston, but it was closed (due to Hurricane Ike damage), so they accepted them at the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. Kevin had to work, so we planned to just buy one ticket and the three of us go. Saturday morning, while standing around in our swimsuits and making sure we had everything we needed, I realized I hadn't brought the tickets. Not only had we left them at home, but NOT ONCE did it cross our minds to bring them with us. So, we got on craigslist and found someone who wanted $15 a piece for their tickets ($37.99 at the gate) that expired that day. Joe called and offered them $20 for all three and they accepted! (They had won the tickets, not paid for them, so I don't feel bad about getting them for less. Plus the teenage girl who we picked them up from looked like she was wearing only a small towel.) So we had fun at the water park for less than the amount had we just bought one ticket at the gate. We arrived around 11:30 and were all worn out by 5:00. Not too worn out to stop by the outlet malls in San Marcos, however! Joe and I both got some shoes that we really like. And as much as I'd love to hate Victoria's Secret, I really like the outlet there - some of the most comfortable bras for $9.99! Plus sports bras for $3.99 - the crappy WalMart ones cost more than that! Poor Lauren put up with me in there for a very long time. That night, Kevin had to close (he's an assistant manager at Toys R Us), and was stuck with only two people to help him. I crashed at Lauren's place, but Lauren and Joe went up and help clean the store. Close was at 10:00pm and they got home at 2:30am. This is a very common thing for Kevin - he's on salary (no overtime) and works all the time and is given almost no one to help. Since my sister works 7-4, they don't get to spend much time together. You can all pray that the situation drastically changes, or he finds a new job (and time to apply for them!). We were glad for the short amount of time we got to spend with L & K, and they have a really cute apartment down there. We hadn't seen them since July 4th and hadn't seen their place since we helped them move in (mid-March). I wish they still lived in College Station!

September 21st-27th: Family and the House. My mom came down all of last week to work on our house! She got almost all of the flooring done in the living and dining rooms! We also got bathroom fixtures (like a toilet paper holder) put up in one bathroom. My aunt and grandmother (mom's mom) also came over from Conroe for Thursday and Friday. They helped put outlet covers on and redo the connection of the water line to the fridge (another long story). Aunt Sarah and Nanny had not yet seen the house, so that was fun. Friday / Saturday my mom also got doors on our closet and the overhead light / fan working in our bedroom. For a while we've only had lamps and a closet light in there! Hopefully we didn't wear my mom out too much - thank you for working so hard and getting so much done! We love the floors!

September 27th: Joe and the Conflab. Joe periodically gets together with some men from the types of churches he grew up in (non-class Church of Christ) to discuss certain pre-determined topics. They call it a Conflab. To my understanding, a confab is like a conference or discussion, and since many of them are older and somewhat overwieght they mix confab with flab to get Conflab. Anyways, the topic this time was mutual edification. In their context, this means there are not hired ministers / pastors, instead "everyone" (for them, the baptised men or boys) take turns leading things on Sundays / Wednesdays (song leading, preaching, leading prayers, serving communion). They met in Nacogdoches, so Joe drove over there and was gone until after 10:00 Saturday night. If you want to know more about it, ask Joe!

There's a couple of other things we've done, but those are the big ones!

Dresses. My mom brought down my wedding dress, along with some of my sister's and my formals. (I talked about this before, in case you're confused.) The wedding dress zipped up almost halfway, but is not very close to fitting. It certainly won't fit tomorrow night, but that's not a surprise. There was one formal that looks like a bridesmaid dress (I think it actually was, that's why I got such a good price on it back then) that I can wear. (whew!) We've been better about jogging, though not as good as we could be. It's really hard with so many things that you feel like you're supposed to be doing! This is definitely a "there needs to be more hours in the day" time of life.

And something to look forward to:
October 3rd-5th: My good friend / roommate in college, Jennifer, and her family are coming to stay with us this weekend! We don't have plans figured out yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully our place will be safe enough for her two kids (4 years and less than 2 years old)!

Being Healthier

Boring, but sharing goals means I have to stay accountable:

Yesterday Joe and I officially decided that we were going to do three things these next couple of weeks: (1) work harder on the house, (2) eat healthier, (3) work out (not just regularly, but a lot). We accomplish goals better if there's some sort of deadline, and we have a few coming up.

(1) house: My mom is coming down Sunday for the week to help us work on the house. We have old friends coming from Houston to stay with us October 3-5. Both are good motivation to get a bunch done on the house!

(2 & 3) getting in better physical condition: Some ladies at church are having a party at which you are supposed to wear your wedding dress or bridesmaid's dress on October 3rd. Since friends will be in town, I'm not sure if I'll go, but I think I'll at least try on my wedding dress for the first time in nearly 7 years. I'm pretty sure it is a size 4, and that is tiny for a wedding dress (a 10 is more like a 6 or 8). So my goal is more being CLOSE to fitting in it instead of actually fitting in it. Joe's starting soccer season again, so that's his motivation.

us and some of my wedding dress long, long ago

Hopefully the "deadlines" will help us get going on somethings we needed to do anyway! On to the funny part...

So, Joe and I had officially decided to do these things on the drive to work yesterday. I got to work to see an email from my boss that says to come downstairs for kolaches, cake, and other desserts for a coworker's birthday. I didn't go (though I did go down later to wish her a happy birthday and had to refuse cake then) and I ate my granola for breakfast. I went to a seminar at 11:00, and pizza and sodas were served afterwards. I decided to eat some pizza instead of the lunch I brought, but I stuck with water to drink. It smelled so good, and I had already turned down kolaches! The office woman who had organized the food is a friend and she insisted that I take a whole pizza back to the lab with me for lunch the next day (to share with one other person in my lab). I took it, but I'm going to eat what I brought for yesterday instead. Moving on, I went to another seminar at 4:00, and there were giant yummy-looking cookies from Jason's Deli. I didn't take one, even though at points I nearly fell asleep in the too-hot conference room hearing a man talk about nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the auditory cortex (do you blame me?). So the day I commit to eating better, I was offered tempting food all day at work. Of course.

primary auditory cortex (in human brain)

We did go running (which also involved some walking for me) yesterday. We have such a beautiful neighborhood! One neighbor has a pet goose!

another birthday note!

How did I leave this part out of my birthday post?

For my birthday, Joe gave me a gift card for a local day spa! I definitely did not see this coming. I had a lot of reactions all at once - I've never been to a spa before. I've only had one manicure in the states, and Joe had set that up as a surprise, too. That was over 6 years ago. I did get a manicure and pedicure in Bangkok after about 5 weeks of grime had built up on my sandal-clad feet, but I don't think it was the same as what you'd get here. I've never had a massage or any other sort of spa-treatment.

As I flipped through the brochure of services available, I kept being amazed that I was actually going to get some of this done for me (Joe had made the amount high enough that I'd have to chose more than one thing)! At first the thought ran though my mind that I didn't deserve any of the pampering - that I shouldn't accept something so extravagant (yes, in my mind even a manicure is extravagant). Then I felt overwhelmed with the fact that Joe had chosen it for me, he had found me worthy, so I AM worthy of it. What a wonderful feeling that is - a totally unexpected part of Joe's gift, and I believe a reflection of the way we have to accept God's gifts of righteousness and worthiness.

This part is just for fun... That night I had a dream that I was using the gift card. In the dream I could choose to have someone come to my home instead of me going there. I chose to do that, only it wasn't my house, it was a huge beautiful mansion a friend let me stay at for the day. It started out great and my spa-treatment person was a woman not much older than me. However, I kept being indecisive on what all I wanted to have done. The woman would leave to let me decide, and I kept noticing that more and more people - both employees and clients - were coming in the house. Because I did not know what to expect, I think the woman took advantage of the situation to visit with some other employees instead of spending the allotted time with me. The house became full of people, and I started to wander around to try to find the woman who had been helping me. I saw lots of people getting treatments, even a woman and her big, white, Fancy-Feast-type cat getting a couples massage! I think the dream ended not long after that, before I ever got anything done. It was confusing and somewhat sad. I guess part of me is still anxious about my time at a day spa! I'll be sure to write about it after I go. :)

camp part 1: cute kiddos

I have lots in my head to write about church camp this year! We went down Thursday night and came back last night (Sunday). It was very good, but I'll have to hit it in parts.

I got to spend time with some of our kids at church, which is (almost) always fun. There are several kids that I met as babies who now can carry on long conversations with me and seem to have opinions about everything (maybe they always did, just now they have words to express them). It seems like they are always amazing me - even with little things like asking where Joe is when I'm around (how do they know we go together when they can barely talk?) or even remembering my name. Ella Grace (one of this guy's little girls) is one I got to spend a good chunk of time at the pool with. She just turned three and is adorable. I love it when other people post cute things their kids say, so I'll share a short part of our pool conversation with you:

(note: Ella is very articulate, but does switch "she" and "her")

Ella: Who is her?
me: She's the lifegaurd.
Ella: What is her doing?
me: She watches us swim and keeps us safe.
Ella: Oh. Safe from the big, bad wolf. (this was not a question)

Birthday... and a small confession

There's so much to catch up on, but I know I would regret it later if I didn't post about my birthday. I'm trying to keep track of what happens that one day every year.

As you hopefully know, we've recently bought a house and are working to fix it up. Last Monday night (my birthday) we tried to have both work and fun. I love pasta and could live eating only pasta for a long time (and have a year of college to prove it). So Italian food is high on the types-of-food-I-like list. Since it's expensive we hardly ever eat out at an Italian restaurant. Since it was my birthday (and I had steak - potentially the best food ever - recently) we went to Carino's. Much to our surprise, they have a Monday night special - a family meal for the price of a single entree! We ordered Bowtie Festival, a dish with bowtie pasta, white sauce, grilled chicken and bacon (not the fatty looking type). The whole thing tastes like bacon and it's fabulous. So we got salads, plenty to eat ourselves, and leftovers for lunch one day for the price of one entree - about $12 instead of the usual $23. It was so yummy!

Next we went home and painted primer on a room. Originally I had planned to take the evening off house work, but we really got a good amount of time off the house the week before. Besides, it feels good to get something accomplished. Part of the time Joe left to drop off a couple of things friends were borrowing. Check out pictures of the room on my home improvement blog.

Once we finished the room, we enjoyed delicious cake from HEB that had layers of chocolate cake, milk chocolate ganache, white chocolate icing, and white cake. I enjoyed every bite!

Now it's time for the confession. Hopefully I rambled enough about Italian food to loose most of you by now. Here goes: we ended the evening by watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica. This isn't the first time I've done that. Not even close.

In the very recent past, Joe and I have started watching BSG (I feel even nerdier using the abbreviation). We've now watched all of season one and two. It's not like Star Wars. I don't think it's like Star Trek, but I only have really seen Star Trek the Next Generation. It's hard to describe what it's like, and it's likely to make you even more sure I'm a weirdo, so I'm not going to try. In case I haven't been clear with this confession: I like Battlestar Galactica.
Any other closet fans out there? I'm going to head some of you off - no comments from Dwight Schrute.

Happy Birthday, Grandmas!

Both of my grandmother's birthdays were on Wednesday, and with everything going on, I didn't call either of them. :( While I won't tell who's older, I'll share a couple of stories on their behalf.
Happy Birthday, Grammy! One of my happiest memories with you is one that was repeated many times. I loved to chop your homegrown pecans in your chopper jar, similar to the one above. Now, I've always hated nuts in brownies and cookies, and never liked pecan pie, but I loved to help you bake. So nut-chopping was a critical job I could contribute from a young age, and I loved it. Now I love to bake, and I'm sure the many delicious things that came from your oven (and from Aunt Rhonda who was often there, too) helped to spur me on to bake more on my own. Grammy, thank you for the time you spent baking with me!


Happy Birthday, Nanny! We all know you're the wild one in the family. Right after my senior year of high school, you took all the cousins and their friends (there was between 12 and 15 of us) to Disney World and some surrounding attractions. It was a fun and very memorable trip. Somehow, you convinced me and two cousins to go on the world's tallest skycoaster (literally). It was very fun, especially the free-fall at the beginning! I usually don't need much encouragement in the rational thinking department, but it's good to have someone like you pushing me to go for something out of the box. Nanny, thank you for some fun and unique memories.

zzzzz... huh?

We've been working on the house a LOT, so almost all of my record-keeping / posting energy is going toward that. I'm very excited for it to be, say, Tuesday. We're doing a ton of painting right now and we'll put the floors in this weekend, so I think the house (at least inside) will be nearly unrecognizable by Tuesday. We'll have the rest of the week to move in, which is longer than we've ever had to move... but we have roughly zero boxes packed as of this morning. I like the idea of moving one room at a time and then unpacking it there, but I'm not sure that will work out - we at least need to move the big stuff all at once.

Joe got be a surprise, and it's sitting in the back seat of our car with a blanket over it. He said he got it on craigslist, so my best guess was these incredibly cute baby geese. But it didn't move or make any noise and Joe didn't crack the windows. (interesting note: the post said "Very pretty geese; great for weed control, looks, meat" meat?!? These guys are too cute to mention that!) So I have no idea what it is. I like surprises! :)

home and garden blog

For a long time I've wanted to have a blog where I post things about my garden, mostly because I don't want people to stop reading this one because all I do is post pictures of plants. Still, I'd love to have a record of the garden I keep. Moving to a new house soon will mean a new garden, so I figured now is a good time to start. Before we do outside work, we need to finish off the inside of the house. Many people from our church family and my biological family have offered to help, so I thought it would be good to share the home improvement journey online. That way you can see your contributions as well as others' and how it's coming together!

So here's the new blog: http://homeandgarden.joeandkathryn.us/

I'm going to try to keep both blogs up and running, but this one may have fewer posts as we're busy with the house.

New House & Advertising to Nerds

We closed on our house this morning! I think in my dreams it involved less signing papers and more us standing in front of a big sign with balloons getting pictures taken as the sellers handed over the keys. If I owned a title company, that's what I'd do. They did have a candy bowl, which was a move in the right direction. I'm only a little sad that we didn't have a "handing over the keys" moment (yes, I actually brought my camera hoping for one, even if there weren't balloons). Oh well... we're now homeowners!

As a little tidbit, I'd like to share what happens when advertisers are asked to market to scientists. I'm actually embarrassed that I'm in the target audience, and can totally relate to times when my hand hurts from too much pipetting.



I'll let you know next time a boy-band bursts into our lab and takes us away to a beach. Maybe next week.

High School Reunion

Saturday the 12th we went to Joe's 10 year high school reunion (Deer Park High School in Houston). While I could strongly recommend NEVER USING CLASS ACT to organize your reunion, it was still good for other reasons. There was one guy that Joe graduated with that later sang in a group with for a few years here in College Station, so we knew we'd see him and his wife. Though there were some old friends that didn't come, there were a few there he had hoped to see. Several people Joe hadn't thought about surprised Joe by coming over and saying they were excited to see him, which is fun. One of Joe's old friends had a wife who was particularly nice in a down-to-earth / I'm-a-policewoman way, so I had someone good to talk to when things got slow.

While in Pasadena we also got to see Joe's family. Joe's sister is also buying a home, but hers is completely new! We got to go inside (it's only lacking appliances and a different front door), and it's very nice.

We close on our home TOMORROW MORNING!!! I feel a little bad because this seems to be overshadowing everything. Maybe Joe will comment with more on his reunion so we can remember it better, but at least I got something written down!

Family Reunion

Time flies - the birds at work are all flying now and hardly ever in the nest (though I caught them there Tuesday).We had our 57th annual Jasper Family reunion the weekend of July 4th-6th. The first few years the reunion was around Thanksgiving or Christmas, but Great-grandpa Jasper's birthday was July 2nd, so his four daughters (my grandmother is the youngest) started getting together every year around the 4th of July. It's a big deal and very important for everyone to make it. With a few people as exceptions, health reasons are pretty much the only thing that keep some people from coming.

my immediate family

I really, really wish I had time to write about a LOT going on lately, and particularly about the reunion, and it's also important to Joe and I to keep a record of things happening, even in the busy times... but I just don't know how to do that. Maybe if I had a tape recorder and record while traveling on the road lately, then I could do podcasts. Oh well. So I'll pick one thing to say about the reunion.

My favorite part about the reunion is the lack of personal space for an entire 3-day weekend. First, we stayed in a cabin with my parents, sister (L), and brother-in-law (K). We were all sharing one bathroom and Joe and I shared a room with Lauren and Kevin while my parents slept in the living room. We ate most meals with the whole big group (almost 50 this year - actually less than normal). Three of the four original sisters had lot of kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, so those three families take turns hosting (including a LOT of cooking). So we're on a three year rotation. The year you host is a lot of work and you don't have near as much time to visit, but it's worthwhile. Anyway, so you eat with everyone. In line and at the tables, it seems like people are often sitting closer than is normally appropriate. If you ask what someone is drinking, they will hand it to you for you to try it (I would say drinking after someone else is a different level of intimacy that you don't share with the majority of people you interact with). (I'm just reminded of how nice blogs are - I'm just going to leave that "with" dangling at the end of the sentence and no one can make me fix it!) Anyway, I love how my space feels so invaded by people who love me for three days every year!

my cousin Laura (who will always be Laurabeth to me) is pregnant!

We have a church camp every year that is similar in a lot of ways (though never as much work while you're there since others cook - but I have to admit, the food's not as good). But there are a few differences...

(1) At church camp there are unfortunately not as many older people (something we're praying changes soon) but there are more little kids.

(2) I'm still a little more awkward at camp. I shouldn't be, but I often find myself wandering around the grounds trying to figure out where people are or what conversations are less weird to interrupt slightly by joining. We have a lot less space everyone is crammed into for the family reunions, so I bet that accounts for the wandering around. I think at both I'm awkward in trying to spend time talking with people I don't often get a chance to talk to and other people who are more shy (if that's the right word) and don't instigate conversation even though they really want to talk with someone (it seems like I can easily spend the majority of the time with this personality type - maybe because I'm more like them in some ways?)

(3) This one is pretty big in my mind - at church camp it seems like people (naturally, not because we're told to or have separate swim times or something like in junior high) divide along gender lines most of the time. For the most part, I think this is good for protecting marriages, but when I'm at the family reunions I really enjoy being able to sit down and talk with some of the guys... I bet a big part of liking that is because I have a lot more in common with some of them in ways of thinking /education-/ work-wise. I guess at a family reunion you already have a set relationship with a cousin you grew up with and don't actually have to worry about starting an inappropriate relationship. So even though it's not a complaint against church camp (in so many ways a real family to me), I do miss the more relaxed / safe man-woman relationships. Maybe as we get closer friends at our church this will change some... maybe not, it's one of the many life-issues I don't understand! (Hmmm... I promise this point made sense in my head, sorry if it doesn't make sense here!)

(4) I get to play some REAL games at the family reunions! I'm sorry friends, but speed scrabble is for people like Joe who got a letter jacket in high school for UIL spelling. Family reunions are full of spades and 42, both games I enjoy. I beat up on a couple of college guys in a game of spades at church camp last year, so I might have to push for that again. All joking aside, I AM really glad Joe gets to play some games he like (disc golf, too) and is good at - we don't get ton of chances for that sort of thing.

Well, I stayed home from Joe's soccer game to nap, so I better go do that. We just came back from Houston, where we attended Joe's 10 year high school reunion. More on that later, but it did amount to staying up too late last night. Also, if I haven't already posted, I'm pretty sure that our closing date on our new home will be July 22nd - just around the corner!

in two weeks time

A lot can happen in less than two weeks. A new batch of baby birds was born outside of my work. Here was them less than two weeks ago:

Here was them yesterday!They hardly fit! Like the baby birds, a lot has happened these last two weeks....

I actually have a GREAT excuse for not blogging very much lately - Joe and I are buying our first home together! I know that brief bit will leave you wanting more, but if I don't catch up on what we've been up to, I never will. So more about the house later.

Two weekends ago my whole family was in town for my sister's good friend's wedding. I don't want to be long-winded here, but I have a funny story about me being impromptu "wedding coordinator." It was actually pretty stressful leading up to it, but probably just because my mom, sister and I were helping with a lot of last-minute stuff. (Note to future brides: even if it's really, really hard to make decisions, give yourself a cut-off date - you don't need to be buying gifts for the bridal party, changing your veil length, or buying material to make bows the day of your wedding.) It was a beautiful wedding, and thanks to a good DJ (and perhaps an open bar) the reception was a lot of fun. A highlight was dancing with my dad (I know we had a father-daughter dance when I was little, but I can't actually remember it).

my sister looking lovely as a bridesmaid (are they called bridesmatrons if they're married?)

Last Wednesday (just over a week ago) we helped pack up our friends Jenny, Drew and Sam. You may remember me blogging about them before - Jenny was the one who got hit by a car while getting her hair cut at the end of last year. Some friends from church hosted a going away party for them on Friday night. I already miss them, and I know many others do, too. Last night at our small group, Danny (their housemate) kept playing with the two little boys who are close to Sam's age - I can tell he really misses them.

Jenny and Drew

Also last Friday a house went on the market in the neighborhood we like. We looked at it that afternoon, and met with our realtor Saturday morning to put an offer on it! I'd love to share more about how that went, but it's a little weird this being a public blog and all... but feel free to email me and I can send you more details. My parents also came down Saturday late morning to see the place. It's big and in a GREAT neighborhood (North Garden Acres in Bryan behind Frittella and the Metro Center), but needs a lot of finishing - the owners stopped on a remodel and need to move. Several people have asked when the housewarming party will be, and I've been telling them I'm not sure when it'll be done, but we'll have lots of painting parties if you're itching to see the place. ;) We plan to close July 21st, but it could be delayed as late as July 31st. We have to be out of our duplex by August 11th, so we plan to move somewhere in that time. I think I've signed my name more times in the last week than in the previous year - we've had meetings for over an hour everyday (except Sunday) since we saw the place a week ago. I'm not really saying all I want to, but I have no time! Basically, so many things have lined up just right with this place - much better than I could have expected - that it really seems like God is making the way for us to live here. Now, what do we do with a house over twice as big as we live in now? We'll see!

Tonight Joe and I will join family coming from my paternal grandmother and her three sisters -
the annual Jasper Family Reunion (where no one actually has the last name of Jasper). I'm looking forward to seeing all the family - it's usually a good time. Of the three weekends remaining before we probably close on the house, we're at the family reunion this weekend, Joe's high school reunion next weekend, and I'll be here the last one, but Joe will be camping with some guys from church. I usually have trouble getting laundry done when we travel on weekends, we'll see how I manage packing up a house! The good news is that we don't have to move in right after closing.

Okay, gotta run. Have a good holiday weekend!

Let the Weddings Begin (and house hunting)

It seems we're a little too old for the "all my friends are getting married" packed summers of weddings, but we do have one this weekend. It's my sister's best friend getting married, and my parents and the Looneys (Lauren & Kevin) are all coming down/up to attend. The latter couple is actually coming in tonight so my sister can help out all day tomorrow (if any of you are bored and would like to play Wii with Kevin, he shares pretty well).

I finally got a dress for the wedding (and probably the others I'll attend this year) on Tuesday. It's a little bit large (but the price was right and I was going to puke if I had to try one one more unflattering dress), so I probably will need to sew it up a little tonight. Hopefully that will be uneventful. :/ I'm pretty much rambling, but I felt like I needed to post something before family comes in town and I don't have time!

Oooo! Here's something I haven't written much about: house hunting! We've been looking at houses and considering buying one for a while now, but there don't seem to be any that are quite right for us on the market right now. I'm picky about the area, and there is one part of Bryan that we're very interested in. I've made a map (also below) to show the areas we're most interested in (we're not set on that, it's more of a starting place or best-case-scenario). Green zones would be first pick, blue would be second. The suns are places some of our nearby friends live. The house shape the only home we're considering at the moment. The milk and apples is Farm Patch. It also shows our workplaces (the little man and woman in the bottom right corner)... we're interesting in trying to bike to work, so closer to work would be better. If you're local, be sure to tell us about any other houses you see, especially for sale by owners we might otherwise miss!



View Larger Map

Painting Project!

Saturday afternoon Joe and I painted some bamboo for our living room. We've had a big space above our futon for a while, and this project cost us about $5 (we used paint we already had). I don't like the idea of paying for art that looks like something I could have done, I'm too cheap to pay for good art, and my mom refuses to paint something for me. ;) Neither Joe nor I have painting experience and we used foam brushes, but it turned out good enough for me - and feel more meaningful since we did it together. A few of you may remember, I've been wanting to get this done for a while! Woohoo!


Mom, you need to learn how to comment - my best guess is that now you think we need some shiny red circle-shaped pillows for the couch. Everyone who has seen our living room - is the brown too much for the already colorful room? I thought it might help bring in the recliner. Actually, I'll post some pics of the rest of the room so everyone can voice an informed opinion. Oh, and if you don't like the bamboo at all, I don't care and I'll delete you comment. ;)

New Dryers

I left out a neat part from last weekend - we got two new dryers! First, we got a new hair dryer (ours died) at the huge Tuesday Morning in Dallas.

When we got back Sunday morning, Joe dropped me off at the book club and then went to help a friend move. They had an extra dryer and gave it to us! We got ours as a bonus for signing a two-year lease 5 years ago, and it never worked great, but recently has taken about three rounds to dry a medium sized load. I'd taken to hang-drying a bunch of stuff (in the heat towels dry faster outside than in our dryer), but that won't work in the winter. The new dryer works GREAT and even has some features out old one didn't. Thanks Aaron and Kay!

Last Weekend in Dallas

Brad and me!

Last weekend (June 6th - 8th) we headed up to Dallas / Frisco to celebrate my cousin (once removed), Brad, graduating from high school. I actually can remember his first birthday party (I was 8), and I still have a noise maker from it. We got to see a lot of family that we don't see all that often (including our grandmother).

left to right: Cynthia (Brad's mom / my cousin), Lily (my other cousin's daughter), Lera (my "cousin" - our grandmothers are sisters), Calyn (Lera's daughter)

Brad personalized the "congrats GRAD" poster.

Brad is very into music and Joe borrowed his hat and djembe.

We stayed with my parents, though we didn't get down until late Friday night (we first stopped by Art Step where some people we know were singing / playing) and then left very early Sunday morning (so I could make it back for a book club). Even though it was a quick trip, by next weekend I think we've spent more concentrated time with my parents recently than I have in 6 years! They came down for a bridal shower three weeks ago, we went up for graduation last weekend, and next weekend they'll be here for a wedding (and so will Lauren & Kevin).

While we were up there they used my dad's smoker to smoke some of our home-grown peppers. We haven't tried them yet, but my dad took a small bite of one of the jalapenos (turned chipotle) and a glass of milk and cup of yogurt later, still had a burning mouth.

Summer Movies

I've seen waaaay more movies lately than I usually do, so I figured I'd write a little about them. I'll give spoiler alerts if I need to. I'm putting them in the order I saw them.

Made of Honor. This movie with a plot similar to My Best Friend's Wedding wasn't all bad (as I had half expected). It's mostly the predictable stuff that makes up a chick flick, but I was pleasantly surprised with the beautiful shots of Scotland towards the end.

Prince Caspian. I reread this book not long ago, and I'm going to warn any Narnia fans that this movie changes quite a bit. Of course we'd like our beloved books to be portrayed exactly the same in the movies, but that can't happen. Some of the changes were reasonable, and I think actually made it more smooth. Other changes made altered the characters themselves and really made me want to puke. I'm about to do a spoiler thing, but if you've read the book, then it's not like it actually spoils anything. //(SPOILER: Susan has a whole love-interest thing thrown in there that gagged me several times - especially in an overly-predictable way at the end. To me, that whole addition is like putting toilet humor in a Jane Austin-based movie to broaden the impact. Oh, and how Caspian plays into that, excuse me... *barf* Other than that, the biggest change I hated was how Peter stormed the castle... why do we need to invent more character flaws? Now, things I liked: The scene where that dwarf, hag, and werewolf are wanting to bring back the White Witch was mostly well done. In the book it all takes place in the dark, and the impact of Peter and Edward coming plays a huge part. Since the children arrive much earlier (a change of which I approve), they had to compensate for that impact. While I do not like that Peter struggled with considering bringing the witch back (seriously, he remembered her, no way would he want that for his beloved Narnians), I do like the way they visually displayed what was happening.)\\

Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Like most people my age, I grew up admiring Indiana Jones and kept wishing for a fourth movie. The hints at what was coming should have been more subtle. I would also prefer action scenes with SOME semblance of reality. //(SPOILER: The whole kid-swinging through the trees with the monkeys thing was way past my limit. Are you kidding me? And why did they have to use the SAME SCENE as the end of The Last Crusade - with the greedy guy dying and Indy trying to save him? What a waste.)\\

Iron Man. MUCH better than I expected, but for these comic-based movies, it seems like low expectations are in order. I could do without some of the displays of womanizing. I actually laughed a lot, which was a nice surprise. It seemed to go pretty fast, and I was surprised to find out it was actually a long movie. Borderline spoiler... the final fight scene was disappointing. After all that build-up, I'd personally like to see a few more things explode.

May Days

Here's a rundown of some things that happened the last part of May (with pictures!)...

May 16-18th we fed / played with Holly (the Sewell's dog) while they were out of town. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of her, but you can just imagine a cute little dog. We had a pet rabbit a few years ago, but don't really want a pet now. They can be really neat, but it's also a lot of work (and a pain to Joe's allergies). So it was fun to have a pet for the weekend!

These are some cute baby birds outside the front door of where I work. They are less cute when they nearly run into you.Joe had to dress nice for work several days one week. I hardly ever get to see him in a tie, and really enjoy him dressing up (though I could do without the ironing).
May 23rd - 25th my family (mom, dad, sister Lauren and brother-in-law Kevin) came down from Dallas / up from San Antonio and stayed with us. It was fun! Here's the basic summary: (1) they all got in Friday night, (2) Saturday morning my parents went with Joe and I to look at some houses we were interested in while my sister and brother-in-law visited friends, (3)Saturday afternoon the ladies went to a bridal shower in Livingston while Joe helped Krista move and my dad and Kevin chilled, (4) Saturday night we saw the new Indiana Jones movie, (5) Sunday morning Lauren & Kevin left and my parents continued looking at houses with us (6) Sunday afternoon my parents left. Here are us ladies as we left for the shower (making looking-into-the-sun faces).
A neat story - when we just started driving around Sunday morning with my parents, we went by a house that had a disc golf basket beside the road. If you know Joe at all, you know saying he likes disc golf is an understatement. It looked like it was set out on the curb for trash, but it was hard to tell. So Joe went up to the door of the house and asked them if they meant to throw it out. They said yes, so it became ours! It does have some rust on it, but the metal is not at all rusted through, so we'll be able to fix it up really nice. It also has a very heavy base on it so you don't have to put cement in the ground to get it to stay. Here is it's new home in our backyard (you can also see a homemade one from my parents).

an evening in the park

Two Wednesdays ago our ComGroup (Community Group = our church's small groups) met at Wolf Pen Creek Park and cooked out. Across the playground some people inflated a huge hot air balloon! It was cool, but then disappointing because they just deflated it without taking off.

random yummy food post #1

I tend to take pictures of yummy food we make if I get a chance, so I'm going to post about them (I've done this once or twice before).

We like to have a warm breakfast Saturday mornings, and here's something we invented recently. I used a tart pan (thanks, Grammy!) and lined it with croissant dough (refrigerated Pillsbury off-brand). I baked it for a few minutes, mixing some eggs in the mean time with a touch of Mexican vanilla. I put the eggs in the crust, sprinkled cheese and pieces of sausage on top, and popped it in the oven. For Joe, any good breakfast is served with gravy and this was no exception.


We're growing Roma tomatoes in the garden this summer, so I've been trying to find creative ways of using them. One night we had a frozen lasagna and this bread, which Joe has named faux-caccia. I let regular white bread dough rise in the fridge overnight (in little balls so it pulls apart easily), covered it with olive oil, and baked it for a while. Then I added sliced-up Roma tomatoes and rosemary (both from our garden), and popped it in back in the oven for a few minutes. It was yummy!

Joe's Birthday Celebration

On Saturday May 3rd, Joe and I celebrated his birthday with a day full of surprises. He hasn't written about it, so I'm going to go ahead so we'll remember it in a few years. If you don't really care / have time / have already heard the story, you should at least read the last paragraph with the picture - it's fun.

I wrapped many hints for Joe to open throughout the day to guess where the next place we were going was - we got in the car around 8am with a backseat full of boxes for him to open. He guessed every place before he got there by asking a bunch of questions and guessing. The first clue was easy - a picture of a chicken biscuit. We got a quick breakfast at the new Chick-fil-A in town. Next he opened a pinata (it was less than a foot across and said Happy Birthday on it... a dollar store special) full of yummy candy and I started driving. He knew we'd be doing a bunch of driving, but not where we'd go. After an hour or so the next clue was a tortilla warmer (believe it or not, he's wanted one for a while... since our last one melted... another story). Then as we were getting in town, the final clue was a picture of people celebrating Cinco de Mayo. We went to a Cinco de Mayo festival and State Menudo Competition in San Marcos. Though we didn't brave the menudo (I didn't know until we were there what it was made of), we had some yummy fajita tacos. We also enjoyed traditional Mexican dances put on by local elementary through high school students in a folklorica club. The little girls were beautiful with big dresses and ribbons in their hair - and you could tell they knew it and were savoring it.

We got back on the road and Joe opened the next hint - a beer mug and piece of sheet music of German songs. It was only about a 20 minute drive, so he got to open the final hint for that leg pretty soon, which was a picture of German food. We went to the Wein & Saengerfest (German for Wine and Song - fest) in New Braunfels. They had a one of those walls were you put on a Velcro suit and jump up to stick on it. After my pleading, Joe tried it. It was full of air - like the moon bounces you jump on as a kid (or older) - so he didn't get enough bounce to get himself up on the wall. He was trying to stick upside down, but after three tries kept falling off and got a nasty cut on his neck from the suit. After that, he couldn't convince me to try, but I admired his battle wound. We decided against the actual wine tasting (it was $15 a person and neither of us has very discerning taste), but Joe did get a German beer (light in color). He liked it. There was an independent artist singing country music - he wasn't bad, but also not great, though he was really trying to connect with the crowd... too bad most of us had some sort of German meat-bread combination in our mouths. It was also funny because we were expecting German music. After trying some German food for lunch (I had grilled pork chops - how can something grilled be so greasy? German cooks are truly inspirational. Joe had some sort of sausage, both served with bread all on a stick. Can parenthetical statements have multiple sentences in them? They can on my blog!) and some chocolates and ice cream, we headed on to the next stop.

Joe opened the next clue - it was an Innova Star Starfire Disc. Joe had wanted this disc for a while, and had some sneaky collaborators to get it here from Dallas (thanks mom and Christy!). This one was easy to guess - we were going to play disc golf! A second clue was a cartoon of a girl who looks like me playing frisbee. What Joe didn't know is that we were headed toward a huge course in Live Oak (near San Antonio) - 30 holes!!! We ended up needing a break (both of us) about halfway through, so we had a little Sonic drink break and then finished the course. Several of the first holes had both the tee and the basket right along the water - we both lost a disc (though we half-expected it and were throwing bad ones). Overall, we had fun but were sick of disc golf (I know, I didn't know Joe could get to that point).

On the trip home we stopped in New Braunfels at Ryan's Steakhouse to eat dinner. It's like a Golden Coral with plastic surgery and on steroids (and without the old people). It is an all-you-care-to-eat buffet, and they will cook steaks to order right in front of you. I'm starting to drool just thinking of it.

I had one last surprise (no clues for this one) when we came home - there were lit candles, wine and cream puffs (Joe's favorite that he rarely gets... and only the candles were lit) waiting for us when we walked in. Thanks Lauren, Jennifer and Jonathan for putting them out! We got home earlier than I expected, and they must have been driving away from the house when we were driving up, but it worked out.

I leave you with the only pictorial memory we'll have of the day, actually taken two days later. While Joe burns easily and reapplied sunscreen throughout our day in the outdoors, I didn't put a drop on (okay, the facial moisturizer that I put on every day does have SPF 15, but that's only on my face). What I didn't think about is that I am VERY white where the sun doesn't shine (not meant in a vulgar way), and my shirt, although very cute, had a wider neck than I usually wear. The result was my best Neapolitan ice cream look EVER (see the chocolate, strawberry and vanilla layers... why do they always skimp on the strawberry?):

Edit from almost a month later: yes, I have a horrible semi-circle tan line now.

Update on Things to do

This one is dedicated to those of you who write lists and have trouble not thinking of the success of the day as dependent on how many things you checked off.

For that "5 things" blog, I hardly got anything done on that list. I thought that writing that may make some of you feel a little better. Here's the run down:

What are 5 things on your to-do list today (not in any particular order)?
1. Get pictures to upload to blogger or complain about it enough for someone else to figure out my problem.
I actually did this, but it just magically worked one time when I tried it. So no complaining was needed (not that I didn't try).
2. Write and start filming a new video.
This has been difficult. Joe and I have very different visions for what to do, and it's frustrated me so much that I often lose any will to try making one. We did play a game where we made up a bedtime story. First Joe was alone with the camera and recorded the beginning of a story for 1 minute, and when the timer went off he wrote down the last sentence as well as three clues. I read the 3 clues and sentence, and then continued for another minute. I wrote down the last sentence and three clues and we switched. We ended up with 6 segments making up very possibly the worst bedtime story ever (okay, excluding the ones where someone dies - no one died in ours). When watched the whole thing together and cracked up. I don't know if I'll post it - it's really, really, REALLY dumb, but maybe some of you who know us would like to laugh at us. So I'll count this one as done, too.
3. Paint bamboo for our wall.
Totally didn't happen. We have EVERYTHING we need for this project, but it just sits there. I'm going to have a dream tonight where I read a spell and the paint brushes will spring into action and gracefully create a masterpiece, but then I won't know how to stop them and everything in the house will be painted to look like bamboo. (Actually, as you would know if you've had to listen to any of my dreams, that's way to normal and predictable. Oh well.)
4. Finish the laundry.
Pretty much, as long as you don't count folding it - hey, it's clean.
5. Get at least one more verse mostly written for the song I'm working on for Joe. (My days are not usually quite so creative, but today is a holiday, so I've set it aside for some projects.)
I didn't get any of another verse, but I did work more on the music, and I'm having fun with it. In my inexperienced opinion, I think that's the way it works sometimes. Some days I feel like writing the story, some days rewording lyrics is a fun challenge, some days playing with a melody comes more naturally, and some days reading what I've got and setting it aside is just perfect. But I can't wait to finish it and sing it for Joe! He'll love it. It's so hard to keep it a secret! Joe's knows I'm working on it, and he knows the title is "Didn't He Notice?" That makes him nervous, but it's gonna be perfect for him! And he already knows to fake it at first if he doesn't really like it. :)

catching up (again): part two

Happy "tomorrowish"! I'm continuing on the run-down of what we've been up to... this one has pictures!

May 8th - Joe officially turned 28. We got some errand-type things done (including Joe getting a new driver's license picture for the first time in ten years) and then headed to Houston. We spent the evening with some friends from college - Jennifer and James. Jennifer and I were roomies before we both got married, and she had their oldest, Emma, while I was still in school and got to spend a lot of time with them. I was sad that she wouldn't remember me, but despite that she was super-sweet (wanted to sit by me at dinner, told me she loved me). They've also had another kid, Andrew, who is only 10 months old. He was cute. I had a great time catching up. It's so nice to spend time with people you've lived with - there is just a different level of comfort and "making yourself at home" comes easy. Oh! She also remembered that Joe is allergic to cats and dogs (especially cats). I found out that she had steam-cleaned the carpet and couches the day before and kept the cats in the garage since then until after we left!!! People are almost always considerate of Joe's allergies, but I don't think I've never had someone go to THAT much trouble for him... it really meant a lot and I'm glad I got it out of her. :)

May 8th (night) - That night we stayed at a hotel (2.5 stars on Priceline for $35 - nice!). Look, Joe even got his own bed for his birthday! ;)

May 9th - We went to the new outlet mall in the Houston area - it's on our way to Joe's parent's house from CS, so we've been driving by while it was being built and were curious. It was okay - a lot of clothing stores and several athletic (Nike, New Balance, Adidas, etc.) stores. Not so many kitchen or home stores. It is more like a promenade (a mall that is open to the outdoors - NOT a strip center) than any other outlet I've been to, which made it nicer to walk. We took pictures with Buzz and Spidy.
We joined Joe's parents for dinner that night at Johnny Tamale's. We tried to convince Joe's sister (Emily) to come and took this picture to make her sorry she didn't (it's Joe's mom "having a good time").May 10th - We planned a surprise party for Emily - she's never had one before! While she was out looking at houses we got in and decorated. Here are some pictures....

how we decorated
an example of the posters we hung around the room
how we decorated the floor (confetti had been banned... this was Joe's idea)
Emily had to run through this to get in

the birthday "kids"

what happens when you tell Joe not to close his eyes in the next picture

May 11th - Happy Mom's Day! We went (for the first time) to the church Joe's parents recently started going to. It's the same type of church Joe grew up in (non-class church of Christ) and two of the other families Joe grew up with (but hadn't seen as much since their church disbanded) are going there. Then we came back to College Station!

May 12th week... Recovery and back to a busy work week for me! We've got an MD student who is during summer research in our lab and I'm in charge of her (teach her, give her stuff to do), so that just started on the 14th and will go all summer. She's nice, but that means I'm really busy.

catching up (again): part one

Okay, so I haven't had a "real post" in a while, and this time it's not all because I haven't uploaded pictures.

I was in a bit of a funky mood April 22 - 25 and just didn't feel like writing (or thinking, or talking). That passed, but it really only takes me a week away from thinking about blogging to stop making an effort to post. But I'll try to catch up now. Also, you can look forward to a mini-series called "The Mexican Doves."

(note: this was getting way too long, so I've made it two parts... expect the other tomorrowish)

April 18th-20th - Some ladies up in DFW area hosted a ladies retreat for the married ladies and/or mothers in our church. The women who organized it were mostly our parents' ages and were neat to be around. I had two favorite parts: one, seeing women who have been close friends for so long - we're talking 27ish years (longer than I've been alive)! I have hope that I'll have good friends who've known me that long when I get older. Two, having time to just talk with other women and share meals with them! It is fun to hang out when no one is distracted by thinking of things they need to get done - including me, but especially my busy friends with young kids. Its good to talk and work on things together, but this was nice, too. This was the weekend Joe watched his cousin win a basketball championship.

April 20th - Joe's soccer team started the playoffs! We had beat the team before, but were at a disadvantage because we only had 10 players (instead of 11) show up. Here's how it went: With only minutes left in the game we are down 2-1. The playoffs are single-elimination, so the pressure's on. (This would sound more exciting if I knew more about soccer...) We have a corner kick, it goes to one of our guys who took a shot, the ball bounces off a couple of their players and then to Joe, who is standing with only the keeper* between him and the goal. Joe shoots, GOOOOOOOAL! (Wouldn't have this been a bad story if he missed?) Just like that, Joe tied up the game. We ended up scoring one goal in the 10 minute overtime to clench the game. Since he doesn't play forward, it was Joe's only goal this season, and I was very proud of him. :)
*I like calling goalies keepers... it makes it feel more like Quidditch.

April 25th - We got to hang out with the Sewells! I don't write down every time we hang out with friends, but this may interest you more because we tried out the new miniature golf course in Grand Station Entertainment (the former Wolf Pen Bowling / Skating). It was actually really cool! You should wear something that looks fun with black lights if you go. The pictures on the website are accurate - lots of bright colors. I would have been somewhat scared if I went as a kid, and if they just changed the sounds to spooky music, I would have been jumpy even now (I bet it'd be really fun if they do it up for Halloween). That being said, we have a friend who took their 6 year old, and it didn't bother him. So check it out if you like putt-putting in the air conditioning!

April 27th - May 2nd - I was VERY busy at work this week, and had to pretty late several days... not my cup of tea. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night we had (different) people over, so that was fun. Thursday night I got things ready for Joe's birthday surprise (on Saturday). I've been working on microRNA arrays. One night I left at 7:45 because people were going to be at our place at 8:00; a professor who was also still around told me to tell them I was saving the world one tiny dot at a time. Friday I worked until 6:45, and Joe came up briefly to see what it they looked like. I explained a little bit about what they were and Joe replied with "I don't know why I get paid more than you do" which made me smile. Joe brought us food and we went to VizaGoGo at 7:00 on campus. It's basically a showcase for students who do computer animation / effects, and it was fun. We have a friend in the masters program, so we went last year, too. I think last year actually had some weirder stuff, but also more funny stuff. After than we rushed home and I finished decorating a cake for a baby shower a friend was throwing for her neighbor. I actually didn't take get any pictures of it because I was in such a hurry.

May 3 - Joe's birthday surprise! I hope to do another post about this one (unless he beats me to it).

May 4th - 5th - My sister was in town and spent the night with us! :) Though time was short, it was good to see her and Kevin (her hubby). We saw Made of Honor with them (and her friend Jennifer) on Sunday - it was good (in a predictable way)... not EXACTLY the same as My Best Friend's Wedding.

May 5th - 7th - Joe and I took off of work all week! Woo hoo! We used the time in the first part of the week to relax and catch up on a few projects around the house, as well as watch a couple of the Batman movies.

stay tuned for part two - Joe's birthday and celebration time in Houston!

Happy Birthday, my love!

Sorry for my lack of blogging, I'll make up for it soon.

Today is Joe's birthday! Can you guess how old he is? Here's a hint: this driver's license picture was TEN YEARS AGO!

We've taken off all week from work, and it's been great. Today we're headed to Houston where we'll see some old friends and then stay at a hotel. We'll join up with his parents and sister to celebrate Mother's Day and the two "kids" birthdays (Joe and his sister) this weekend.

Joe's birthday doesn't make me think much about how old he is, but more about how long we've known each other... it's getting closer to 10 years, which seems like a very long time for someone who thinks they are still about 24 (though this year will bring me to 27). Think about it - I met him only about a year after that picture!

We celebrated his birthday last Saturday (which was planned before we knew we could take the week off). One of us will post about it soon.

Joe, I've had a great week vacationing at home with you.... AND I look forward to spending this birthday and many more with you!

Retreat, Band, Sweeney, and more unrelated fun stuff

I'm trying to catch up on what we've been up to before I leave town again this weekend (a church ladies' retreat in DFW - I'm excited!).

I think I summed up all I'm going to about the last weekend in March... on to April!

On the 4th-5th, we had a church ladies retreat in town. I was helping with part of it, and ended up spending most of my extra time during the week preparing things for that. The most amazing thing for me was that I never got stressed out about it - I'm not sure if people who saw me an hour before time would have guessed it, but I felt at peace about it all. My heart never started to race, I never forgot things because I was doing too many things at once, and the phrase "nothing is going to work" never crossed my mind. It may not sound like much to you, but that's a lot to me! It was really a blessing because I wasn't distracted the whole time and I was able to enjoy what was happening. Weird / sad how I pray for things and then act surprised when I get them.

Skip ahead to the next weekend - last weekend! Friday night Joe and I went to the University Bands concert on campus (A&M). I was in the top band for my first two years of college (I did one semester of both choir and band, but then switched to only choir). The wind symphony (what they call the top one now) still has the same director I had. He is one of the most intimidating people I've ever met. Joe said that he could see the tension in the group change after a guest conductor when he returned to the stage. Once, the clarinets (what I played) were not getting a difficult section of music exactly right and he got mad (a common occurrence). He told us that we each had to go into his office and play the part (alone) correctly before the next rehearsal. If we failed to do so, we would start the next rehearsal playing the section (individually) for the entire band. We all played it well for him instead, but that was a lot of pressure! But that group made some beautiful music. So it was good to hear them in concert, also because I miss that type of music. Of the nine pieces we heard, I had played three of them before (which makes it even more enjoyable for me).

Saturday we took our new laptop back to Best Buy because the CD / DVD drive randomly stopped working. We also did a bunch of cleaning and organizing. We ended the day watching Sweeney Todd. I knew that it was supposed to be really gory, but I'm not sure anything could prepare you for listening to a happy song while watching the singer cuts men's throats. At least it wasn't realistic gore. I actually liked this song (A Little Priest)... until I realized that they weren't totally joking.



And just so we don't end on that note, things we've done sporadically:
Joe's had four soccer games in the last two weeks, but he'll miss the game tonight. We're going to hear this guy sing. Sunday the playoffs start!

I've almost finished getting the garden going (several peppers and Roma tomatoes are almost ready to pick), I just have to get some mulch so hopefully the squash won't rot this year.

This will sound silly, but we've been keeping our house clean! That's one of those things we'd liked the idea of, but historically haven't done well on. But for a while now we've kept it pretty clean (if you're imagining spotless, then you obviously just found me on Google and don't actually know me). What's even better is that we've had a few last minute things where people were came over and we didn't have to say no or stress over last minute cleaning. So that's been nice, but taking up a bit more time on a daily basis.

*whew* Now you're all mostly caught up! If I have time, there will be a fun post later tonight. If not, have a great weekend!

Attack of the Ladybugs!

I like ladybugs. But hundreds of ladybugs... it starts to get creepy.

Saturday, March 29th, I bought several plants for our garden at the A&M plant sale. I've got them all planted and set up (with tomato cages and the like) now, so I'll take a few pictures to post soon. When we bought the plants, I noticed that several of them had a bug problem. We asked one of the horticulture students who was helping what they were, and our worst fear (they are just plants, you know) was confirmed: aphids. So after planting the garden Sunday, I went to a nursery in town and bought some ladybugs. The only way to buy them was a refrigerated small container with over 200 of them. I was told to release them after dark so they were less likely to migrate. See the two ladybugs in the upper left-hand corner of the picture below? That's what they said would happen. Then they lay eggs and the larvae also eats the bad garden bugs. (I hope this is very educational for all of you.)

Like I said, Sunday night we went out to eat with the Wakefields and Blands (hehe, if she finds out Chalyce will fake-kill me for linking to that and then drawing even more attention attention to it with this parenthetical statement), so we didn't get home until very late. Joe was a great sport, and soon we had ladybugs EVERYWHERE! Don't believe me? Here goes:

All the tiny dots of the sidewalk were ladybugs - it was hard not to step on any!

Ladybugs on my hand!

Ladybugs on the water hose - why did they like it so much?

Ladybugs in my hair - I felt like things were crawling on me for hours!

Vet School Open House

I'm trying to catch up with the promised pictures, so this was back on March 29th (3 weekends ago - yikes).

Joe and I went to the vet school open house with Stephanie, Jada, Jenny, Sam, and two of Sam's grandparents. Jada and Sam are both between 1 and 2 years old. The open house is pretty cool, especially since it's all free! There were boy and girl scout troops from all over Texas visiting for the day. First we met a lot of different types of dogs, as well as some horses.

Jada and a BIG dog.A horse with it's bones painted on.

We went into a petting zoo that had goats, sheep, ducks, rabbits, a llama, a donkey, and a very soft wallaby. Jada kept trying to feed the animals, but didn't want to get too close to their mouths. We also saw Radar, the world's tallest living horse, but it was a little hard to see how big he was since he was not very close to the fence.

Joe and I with Sam and Jada

The kids were troopers, but Joe and I hung around a while longer after our friends had to leave. In search to find a friend of ours who was helping out, we went to the hands-on exhibits. One of the things to do was to take a carnation and stick it in liquid nitrogen (very, very cold). Then you take the flower out and crush the petals in your hand. All this in an effort to make science look cool. (This is Joe. My arms aren't that hairy, thank you very much.)


We also saw the exotic animal exhibit. I probably wouldn't do it again (mostly because of waiting in line for it for over an hour). The first animals were rabbits, followed by rats, hamsters and guinea pigs. So I was thinking "Exotics? Really? Where's that camel they had on the advertising poster?" They did end up having a bunch of lizards, snakes and turtles, which seem slightly more exotic to me. Joe and I got our picture taken with a giant snake. I think it was some sort of albino boa constrictor. What ever he / she was, he / she was strong and heavy! (Joe is holding the head.) Jada and Sam were much more fun to hold!

I'm trying!

I was trying so hard not to get more than a week behind in updating, but it's happening now! You can expect a post sometime next week about our busy-but-fun weekend with some fun pictures. Here's a quick review:

Saturday 7:30am - 9:00 - plant sale at A&M - buy plants for summer garden
Saturday 9:30am- 1:00 - Open house at Vet school with friends (more exciting than that sounds)
Saturday 4:00 - 6:00 - Mary Kay grand opening for my friend Whitney
Saturday night - what happened to this night? I must have been home with Joe
Sunday morning - do dishes and laundry
Sunday mid-day - plan and plant new garden (but missed Joe's soccer game)
Sunday evening - host church (so we came an hour early and stayed an hour late)
Sunday late night - eat dinner with the Wakefields - our friends visiting from Virginia!
Sunday very late night - release 200+ ladybugs to eat the aphids I found on our plants (yes, I took pictures!)

It's been a fairly busy week, too. Our church has a ladies retreat (that I've been working on stuff for) that starts at 6:00 this evening and will last until mid-morning tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it! I have a few things to do this weekend, but it won't be nearly as busy as last weekend, which will be nice (especially since we're just about out of clean clothes).

I like the freedom you have in blogging - I can change from hours of the day to vague "mid-day" type terms and no one can complain! (Actually, they could, but there seems to be a rampant fear of commenting, so no one WILL complain.)

Collier Family Reunion - March 22nd

Last Saturday we had a rare Collier family reunion. This is Joe's Dad's Mom's side of the family (I'm not snooty enough to say paternal grandmother). She had 12 brothers and sisters and then named her children after them, so it can get very confusing how everyone is connected (Which Uncle Tom?). We met in Nacogdoches, TX, and enjoyed a yummy potluck meal.

Joe and I had the fun part of the Easter Egg hunt - we hid the plastic eggs! Though I've done this many times, it was Joe's first time and he had fun. I only got action pictures of Peyton, the youngest child that can walk, because the other kids sped around like maniacs.

Joe hid three eggs under a pile of pine cones (yes, East Texas), gently placing each one for maximum coverage. A sweet little girl ran straight for the pile and with one swipe knocked the pine cones in all directions.

We met our newest cuz-nephew (what Joe calls his cousin's sons), Ethan. He's 2.5 months old and TINY! (I have small hands, and it looks huge in the picture!)Peyton was making funny faces at Joe.


Here are all the kids! Can you guess which 7 belong to the same mom and dad?


As has happened at every family reunion since December 28, 2001, I was asked when we were going to give the other kids another kid to play with. This time, the mother of 7 - all three boys in the picture, plus Harley, Allysa, and Peyton - asked me and the mother of Arian and Morgan (twins) about 3 minutes after I arrived. Before I even had to respond, the other mother said in a fairly light-hearted way, "Well, not all of us are as fertile as you are!" That certainly stopped that line of questioning! I had already planned to not bother people who I rarely see / hardly know with that question, but I hadn't thought of how hurtful it would be to someone who desperately wanted to be having a child but couldn't. I'm also glad we're in a family who aren't afraid to call each other out on that sort of thing.

March 12 - 16 World Travelers!

Okay, maybe we're just Southwest Texas Travelers.

Joe got back in town Tuesday and we cooked / ate dinner with some friends. I had to work on Wednesday, and Joe spent a lot of the day cleaning and unpacking. I got off work early and we left for Junction, Texas, around 4:00pm. We went to visit my grandmother who lives just outside of town along the South Llano River (her property is across the river from the South Llano River State Park).

Thursday morning we went to go feed the (three) cats, and found that the night before one had given birth to 4 kittens! They were solid black and cute. Momma cat made the other two cats keep their distance, but seemed friendly enough to us (she certainly enjoyed us petting her). In hopes of maintaining some sort of workout schedule, Joe and I went jogging not long before noon. When we got back to the house, only two kittens were left. Apparently the back porch was too busy to keep the kittens there and Momma cat was moving them. I tried to take a few quick pictures of the last two when Momma cat came back. I then switched to using the video feature on my camera, which explains the bad quality.

Grammy (her real name is Robbie)

Cat drama aside, it was a relaxing visit. We left Saturday afternoon early to meet some family in San Antonio. Lauren (my sister) and Kevin (her husband) moved there from College Station that weekend, and we met them there to help unload the moving truck and cars. They had a ton of help, considering it was an out-of-town move! My parents came down with them from Dallas (Lauren & Kevin had flown in to Dallas Friday from New York... they were closer to being world travelers, I guess) and helped load up and drive the truck to S.A. Two of their friends also helped load and made the C.S. to S.A. drive. Kevin's parents, uncle and cousin came from about an hour away (where the uncle lives) to help unload. I'm sure glad they had so much help - they were moving into the second floor. I was afraid it would be very hot, but the weather was perfect with a light breeze to keep it cool. The apartment complex is very nice and seems to be in an upscale part of town. We got back to College Station very late Saturday night. With the few hours we were actually in S.A., I forgot to take any pictures.

Sunday, Joe's parents came to see his soccer game. They stayed for church and a late dinner, so they spent the night and headed out when we left for work Monday morning. It was a short, but fun visit.

Lonely Toothbrush

I have a very lonely toothbrush! Ever since Sunday afternoon, it's just been sitting there alone, only getting out two or three times a day. Joe went backpacking / camping by himself (special thanks to the Cavins who let him borrow their gear!). He left Sunday night and planned to return during the day Wednesday. And he took his toothbrush.


He (Joe, not my toothbrush) was definitely a loner in high school and even college. He enjoyed spending time by himself in general, but especially to reflect / pray / listen. He now gets away for a couple of hours every week, but it's been over two years since the last time he went away by himself, and he felt like it was time. Sunday night Joe called from a pay phone to let me know that he didn't have cell phone service, but he made it there safely. He called again Monday mid-morning (using a generous someone's working cell phone) to let me know that he'd be coming home a day early! This happened two years ago, too. Though he needs time to himself, he now also needs time with others. :) Even though it's been good to spend some time hanging out with some cool ladies, I'm excited he'll be home today! Little toothbrush, there is an end in sight!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

I just downloaded some pictures from my camera, and found some from Valentine's Day this year! Joe started cooking while I was still at work, and cooked a great meal for us. We had steak, cheesy julienne potatoes (those weren't from scratch, but very tasty), and Joe's Famous Corn. He also had bread and spinach dip I could snack on ahead of time. He also got everything we needed so we could make one of my very favorite desserts together - strawberry shortcake! (Believe it or not, there IS a heart-shaped shortcake under all those strawberries and whipped cream!) It was a great romantic night in.

Mandarin... yo momma or your horse?

I mentioned before that Joe and I are taking Chinese (Mandarin) classes together. Last night ended week 4 - so we've had 8 of the 12 lessons. This post is starting out semi-boring, but I have a funny treat for you at the end (no, stop scrolling! wait for it!). (note: We're learning Mandarin, not Cantonese, but our teacher refers to it as Chinese, so I'll use that interchangeably)

First, a little about Mandarin (from my limited understanding <- that's my disclaimer).

As we're learning, we read and write Chinese in pinyin, basically a phonetic representation of the words (using the Roman alphabet). This is surprisingly not that helpful - for example "zi" is pronounced "dsuh" (you pronounce vowels very differently depending on their location in the word and what other letters are around it).

We also learn to recognize and write the Chinese characters. Each character is a whole word and there are no pronunciation clues within the character. That's different/unique as far as my language learning because sometimes I can look at a character and know exactly what it means but have no idea how to say it in Chinese.

Mandarin has 4 tones. This means you say the same exact sound in different ways to mean completely different words. Listen to this for an example. The word is "ma" and means (in the order he says it) mother, hemp, horse, and scold. I'm not sure about Chinese, but Thai is also tonal, and I've studied it some. With Thai, native speakers do not associate the words with each other since it's an integral part of speech, just as we would not associate words like grant and plant (except for you teachers who use word families). So if someone said "I would like to grant this tree," it would lead to some confusion. A native Thai speaker has the same problem understanding what you say if you use the wrong tone, and I would guess it is the same for Chinese. A quick funny story about how the wrong tone can create problems. In Thailand, our American friend Jeff was introducing an older woman, let's say her name was Pok (I can't remember). He meant to say "This is Aunt Pok" (aunt being a term of endearment/honor), but he accidentally said "This is crazy Pok." Thank goodness she had a sense of humor!

One especially nice thing about Mandarin is that there is no verb conjugation. If you've taken a foreign language, you've probably spend hours memorizing "avoir: j'ai, tu as, il/elle a, vous avais, nous avons, ils/elles ont" or something similar. It's great to only need to learn one word for a verb, and that concept actually makes sense! In French you even have to have different words (articles, adjective ending, adverb endings, etc.) depending on the gender (masculine / feminine) of the noun you are referring to... Chinese is such a relief!

Okay, that's probably more than any of you wanted to know about our language learning, but hopefully you learned something, too!

Now for the fun (if you scrolled down here without reading the rest, know that Santa's watching). Our teacher gave us all Chinese names to use in class. Chinese people say their family name first, followed by their given name (the equivalent of our first name). The names our teacher gave us are supposed to sound somewhat like our real name. My name is Pi Kai-xi ("Pee" (rising tone) "Kie" (rhymes with tie, lowish funky tone) "she" (high tone)). Kai-xi is supposed to be close to Kathy, which is close to Kathryn. The three words mean Skin Generous West. I kinda like my first name, since (relative to China) I'm from the West and I try to be generous. Here's the good part. Joe's name is Pi Jio ("Pee" (rising tone) "Gee-oh"(falling sharp tone)). It means Skin Vulture. Isn't that awesome?!? Joe said it sounds like a rock band. We found out last week that the same pronunciation (Pi Jio) with different tones is the Mandarin word-combination meaning beer! While that might be slightly cool, Skin Vulture definitely has a ring to it.

EDIT - SHORT RANT: Most of you know of my issues with spelling and frustration with the English language (I still strongly believe that if English were to make any sense, the correct spelling of "apparently" would be "appearently"). While writing this I repeatedly spelled "pronounce" and "pronunciation" wrong. Seriously - can we have some consistency? Either take the "o" out or leave it in! No wonder I want to be fluent in another language!

Thank You!

I just realized that I never blogged a thank you to all the family that gave us (or Joe) money instead of gifts for Christmas and our anniversary! Joe has been watching the laptop market for a long time, and he found an excellent deal on a laptop at the beginning of January. Last fall he had also found a deal so that we could open a free Chase banking account (with direct deposit) and get $250 cash (as long as we keep it open for 6 months). Between that money and your gifts, we completely paid for our new Dell (Inspiron 1521) laptop! Here it is:
I've used it to be outside while categorizing what we spent in Quicken, and I can't count how many times Joe's used it when he has time to write and think Sunday mornings. We actually use it more than our desktop, though we don't have wireless internet at home. Thank you so much! It's great!

Fun at Work, Part 3

Many of you (meaning 3 of the 4 of you) may be thinking "Part Three? When were parts One and Two?" And then you notice that there are suddenly links in your question!

The medical students get fed more than the homeless in Palisades Park. (Ask Joe - when his college ministry group would go there, the most common answer to "Would you like a sandwich?" was "What type is it?" and many turned down the PB&J.) While working in a laboratory often means eating when you can smell some very disgusting things, here it also means often eating a cold sandwich when all you can smell is BBQ or some other delicious lunch.

But today was different. A co-worker (June Bug if you read the other posts - he is well known for his scavenging expertise) opened my door and said they had pizza down the hall. He didn't have to say it, the cheesy, buttery smell could only mean one thing: Pizza Hut. I headed down the hall and noticed that the medical students had already been through the line and that everyone getting pizza was from neighboring labs. I also noticed that two nicely-dressed people were standing near the pizza. This usually means office employees are guarding the food for the medical students, but since I knew everyone down there, I kept on my path. [They were both Indian, so imagine the words they spoke with the overly enunciated English that comes with Indian accents.] As I came close, the woman greeted me and said "There is pizza, bottles of water, and these cookies." I thanked her and was taking a slice of pizza when the man said "We have many more! Please eat until your heart is content!" That made me smile. I guess I'd never thought about that phrase, and and it's probably not something that medical professionals should suggest, but it was very kind and made my Friday.

busy bee in my bonnet

I'm sorry it's been so long since I last blogged! We've been very busy, and I haven't had a chance to download pictures from my camera (I know - my excuse dictionary is stuck on that page).

So, here's a summary of what we've been up to the last two weeks...

Soccer: Joe played on a city league outdoor soccer team (the Scrubs) a couple of years ago, and he's back on it! This time he's leaner and has been running at least weekly or biweekly for months. He's doing great - the last game he did not sub out for the whole game, and that's a LOT of running. As a bonus, the team has several of our friends from church, which means good social time (with other wives or friends) for me during the games.
Chinese / Mandarin: We're taking a Chinese language class together at night through some city education program. (I love that you can be vague and just link to whatever you're talking about in case people really care.) Tonight will be our forth lesson. It's really neat, and there are some easy (no verb conjugation) and hard (tones and writing in characters that have nothing to do with the way the word sounds) parts. There are only 6 people in our class and we have a good teacher, but we've been so busy we haven't put enough in to preparation for the class. We're still learning, and hopefully we'll get some more time to study soon! The main reason we're taking it is that both Joe and I would like to be fluent in the same language. Lots of people ask why Chinese, and the real reason is actually kinda long and complicated for me, so I generally stick with just part of the reason that's easier to explain. If I remember (and have time), I'll blog about why sometime.

DFW: We went to DFW to visit my parents and the Parks last weekend. We got to see more work my parents have done on their place - it's looking really nice and their bathroom will look like a spa when they're done. They generously bought us a very nice 14 piece set of pots and pans! They are so shiny, I'm almost afraid to use them. I'm very excited about the 11 quart pot it comes with... our "big" pot before that was less than half that size, and this one comes with an insert so you can cook pasta and just lift it out (instead of nearly burning yourself with a colander).

The Parks just moved from here in November, and we've seen them a couple of times when they've come back to visit, but it was great to spend some extended time with them. We saw (for the second time) the movie Enchanted at a dollar theater, which was a lot of fun, and then had time to just visit and catch up. My prayer for them, especially Shelley, is that they are blessed with good friends who live close to them.

My sister: My younger (and only) sister lives here in College Station, but her husband just got a big promotion - now he's going to be an Assistant Manager at Toys R Us. The only thing is that they have to move to San Antonio for him to do this - and in just two weeks (half of which they'll be on vacation in New York)! I'm really happy that they recognized Kevin's potential, but I'm very sad that they're moving away. It has been great to live in the same town as my sister for the last almost 5 years, and San Antonio is not that far away. But almost 3 hours isn't the same as 5 minutes away. I'll miss her!

First Birthdays

Apparently a side effect of the flu is temporary amnesia. I kept thinking that not much has happened since New Year's, but that's just not true!

The two most prominent babies in my life just had their first birthdays! In both cases, the mom / party planner let me help a little. I've helped for a few baby or wedding showers, but this was my first time to get to be a part of a birthday celebration. It was great - I felt like I got a chance to celebrate even more than the two hours at the party.

The first weekend of the new year, Sam turned one among banana splits, monkey cake, banana cookies and many, many friends. His mommy, Jenny, was the one I wrote about in December who was in a freak accident and had very limited use of her arms. On Friday (2/1) she got the go-ahead from her doctor to hold Sam for the first time since the accident! Despite her handicap, Jenny put together a stellar party and the weather was great for the outdoor venue. I got to help her make some banana-shaped cookies. The only sad part is that they are moving to Tennessee this summer, so I probably won't get a chance to be there for Sam's second birthday. Oh, and it's sad (but not all that surprising) that I forgot my camera and didn't get any pictures.

Two weeks later (on the 20th), Joel turned one! We first knew Joel from his kicks on his mommy's tummy, and have been blessed to see him about twice a week since then. Boy, has he grown! I helped with his baby shower, so it was special to get to help with his first birthday party, too. I helped Ari decorate the cake for the party (which had a kite theme). Some of the action involved croquet, chicken-watching, kite making for the kids, and opening presents. Even Joel tried to help make it memorable by flying out of his high chair (he was just fine). It was a fun party with great people. :)

killer bug

So, here's what I came down with last week:
He may not look so bad, but he had a lot of relatives over and I was out the last half of the week and not doing well the first half. My temperature reached a (personal) record high of 103.7 degrees! I thought my face was going to burn off despite the streams of sweat pouring off of me. The worst of it was Wednesday night through Friday, but I've still got a lot of congestion and have to take cough medicine to sleep (without hacking up a lung) at night.

So that's pretty much all that I've been up to! Joe took really good care of me, including making two big pots of chicken and dumplings that were delicious and soothed my throat.

Monday night we made chocolate pudding WITHOUT a Jello Pudding packet! (who knew?!?) It was actually really yummy and very easy. It just had cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, butter, vanilla and milk. We added mini-chocolate chips at the end to make it even better. Neither of us have had chocolate pudding warm before, but it was actually tastier that way.

getting rid of one, more attacking

I recently paid off a student loan. Since then, I have received even more offers for ways to spend my extra money (presumably the monthly payment I no longer have to make). Even the letter from my loan carrier quickly went through "Congratulations! Keep this document for your records of paying off a loan." to get to "We offer a wide-variety of other loans to meet all your needs!"

All that reminds me too much of this passage - Jesus speaking (Matthew 12:43-45):

"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."

(EDIT: I wrote this and saved it several days ago. I've been very sick with the flu. Please pray I get better and that I haven't made anyone else sick. So far, Joe's healthy and he's been so sweet taking care of everything I need / want.)

Anniversary trip to San Antonio

December 26-28 Joe and I went to San Antonio to celebrate our 6-year anniversary!

On Wednesday (the 26th), we headed out from Joe's parents to drive to San Antonio.

We're almost to downtown!

We stopped to eat a BBQ lunch at Bill Miller's BBQ. I thought it was the worst BBQ I've ever had (Joe thought it wasn't THAT bad), but they had them all over San Antonio. From the parking lot, we took these pictures of the Alamo dome (where the Aggies were playing on Saturday).


Then we checked into our hotel, which turned out to be a lot cuter than we had originally thought! We had a two night free stay, so we expected the worst, but the Downtown Holiday Inn turned out to be nice.It also had a great view at night!


Next, we headed out to Fiesta Texas. They had "Holiday in the Park" which means that about half the park (plus the water park) was closed, but the rest was decorated with lots of Christmas lights and there were holiday-themed shows. The neatest thing about the park is that half of it is surrounded by cliffs (you can see some in the picture below).

I had printed out the rides that were open, so we were ready to hit the best ones first. It turned out to be very empty, and most of the night the only waiting we did was for the ride to stop so we could get on. After an hour and a half we had gone on all the rides we wanted to AND watched a 20 minute show (carolers). We were going to go on one roller coaster again, this time in the front car, and had three pairs in line in front of us. Once we were the next in line to get on, the ride operator (a.k.a. the high school kid wearing shorts when it's 37 degrees out) said the ride was temporary closed due to "technical difficulties." We waited, and they ran it once with no one on it. It came back, but they said they would have to shut down the ride for the night! They said it was something about the ride not being safe below certain temperatures. That's one of those times when you're glad you just avoided an unsafe situation, but sad because you were two people away from having fun! We both agreed that the best thing there was the light show - they had a bunch of lights arranged in an area and different things / colors would light up / turn off / fade along with the Christmas music. It was very well done, and very cool!

That night we shared a yummy burger at Red Robin - a place I had first gone to with Joe in California (in our earlier years). We also picked up some wine from World Market which fortunately turned out to not have a cork (otherwise we would have just had to use The Force to open it).

The next day wasn't quite as pretty, but we wanted to explore more of downtown San Antonio.
Joe had found a location and took me to La Madeleine for breakfast - one of my favorite breakfast places.

After realizing it would be expensive (and possibly impossible) to park near Market Square, we decided to park the car back at our hotel and walk. We looked in many (nearly identical) shops and tried some tasty Mexican cookies. They also had a couple street musicians (on panflute and guitar) who weren't bad. We ended up walking to a cute Mexican food place that had tasty food (even though our waitress mysteriously disappeared, never to return... well, not that day).

We next got to visit the Conception Mission - check out the pictures: (One is of some original painting that was done inside the mission!)



That night we ventured out to the "Nationally Famous" Riverwalk. The Christmas lights were still up!


This one is us outside the Riverwalk Mall (a nice young lady volunteered to take our picture).


We had taken a trolley to get to and from downtown, which was an adventure all in itself! Finally, we went to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. I had grown up going to the one in Dallas for many special occasions, so it's a fun place in my book. It was funny because other than the two of us, the restaurant only had three large groups dining - each with over 20 people! Joe pointed out that we had a "Romantic" day of food - food from French, Spanish, and Italian speaking countries.

Friday morning (our actual anniversary!), we unsuccessfully looked all over for a place to eat breakfast before returning to our hotel to check out. We headed north on I-35, and found brunch at a Shoney's.

Next we went to a disc golf course that Joe had read about. On the 16th hole, Joe threw a disc that went straight into a forest. He called a Mulligan, and threw another disc to the same spot. We went to look for them and found one pretty quickly. The other one was Joe's favorite disc that he recently traded in four older discs to get! We looked for about 15 minutes, and I thought I found his yellow disc, but it turned out to be someone else's nice disc they had lost. There was no name or phone number on the back, so it's now Joe's! We kept looking for the lost disc, and about five minutes later a father / son pair walked by and asked if we lost a disc. Joe said he had, and said he thought it was somewhere in this particular area, and the father saw it right away! It was at the top of a tall tree, so the next few minutes were spent throwing rocks and sticks at it, but it finally fell down. We were both very happy to get the disc back, and to find another one. As we were walking out of the park, we noticed this sign that tells about the park's namesake.

We warmed up in the car and drove to San Marcos. If you're female and know the area, you're probably thinking the right thing: Outlet Malls! Though we were unsuccessful in finding the jeans we needed, we found some great Christmas decorations and a wreath at Kirkland's for really good prices. We went to Taco Beuno to eat dinner, and I'm pretty sure the employees thought we were aliens. We hadn't been to one in so long, we had to ask what several things were, and changed our minds several times. There was clearly one thought going through the cashier's mind: Come on, it's just fast food. But we enjoyed it!

We made it back to College Station at a reasonable hour, so it was good to wrap up our anniversary at home.

Christmas with the Peebles

We went to Pasadena (a Houston suburb) for Christmas this year. We headed down Monday (Christmas Eve) and stayed with Joe's parents. His dad is recovering from knee replacement surgery and still has to be on a lot of medicine for pain (especially after his physical therapy appointments). He surprised us Christmas Day by walking for the whole family with a cane or walker! It was great - he was able to do it without a limp at all. Hopefully soon he'll be in less pain and be better than before the surgery.

Joe's sister Emily cooked a fabulous meal for us all and we got to watch some HD movies on Rabi's huge television. We highly recommend seeing Stardust - it's a Princess Bride-type movie.

One gift we were excited about giving is a calendar for Joe's mom. We snuck away some pictures earlier this year and I made scrapbook-like pages for every month. Joe finished it off by writing in special memories he has of his mom throughout his life that went along with the pictures. Everything he wrote was very sweet and I know she'll enjoy it all year. (Sorry, my flash makes everyone blink!)

Christmas with the Turpins

We got together with my mom's extended family in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday the 15th. We shared food and did a gift exchange (like white elephant, except something nicer you bought for $12). The highlight was getting to meet my cousin's three-week-old son. It's his first child and he's only the second out of my cousins (7 of us) to have kids.

My parents came back that night and stayed with us. They had to go back to Dallas the next day, but it was really good to see them because we didn't get to see them at Christmas time.

They also brought down a matching curtain (so our window in the living room no longer has a comb-over) and switched the way our refrigerator door opens. It's much more convenient now, but I bet if they had known how hard it would be they would have thought twice before doing it!

cookies, cookies, and more cookies!

I'm going to catch up on the last couple of weeks in a few posts, so bare with me. :)

Joe and I decided (okay, I decided and Joe - being the best husband ever - helped out a ton!) to give baked goods to some of our local friends. We have so many people we wanted to share these with that we couldn't give some to everyone, and so we ended up only taking them to people we've been in small groups with at church, our elders at church, and my boss at work. It really stunk limiting it like that because there are some people we really care for (and even spend more time with than the people we took some to) that got left off. So the small group rule was the only way we could keep the numbers down. If you're reading this and didn't get any cookies, please know that we really do care about you, and it was really frustrating for us! Just think that we were trying to help you stay skinny this holiday season.

Anyway... we baked a TON! And I really mean WE! I might have done a tiny bit more baking than Joe, but only because he ran to the store (3 times, I think) to get things I forgot. I took a couple of pictures part way through, but we got so busy that I forgot to take a final picture.

This picture was of the ornament sugar cookies - they were dipped in icing. Joe did almost all the decorating on these, and I'm so sad I don't have a picture. There were 62 at the end! With the exception of one that had what looked like an angry face on it, they looked fantastic, and Joe was such a good sport to decorate with what I gave him. (We won't talk about the "red" icing that turned out brown.)

These are in the picture above:
Andes Mint chocolate cookies
snickerdoodles
ornament sugar cookies

Here's the rest of what we made:
blue or green butter cookies
peppermint meringues (with red stripes)
chocolate fudge
peanut butter fudge (which Joe called pb sludge since we didn't let it get hot enough to get hard)

It took a really long time - all our free time on three days! I didn't really take in account how long it would take to wrap the cookies, and the baking got split up some. It was crazy to look at all our piles of sweets afterwards. I think the best part is that Joe helped out so much, even though he doesn't like baking and especially doesn't like cleaning up afterwards. :)

Merry Christmas!

You should be able to click on that to open it in a larger format. We're very busy this holiday season, and will be out celebrating Christmas and then our 6 year anniversary this week! Apparently, the traditional gift for the 6th anniversary is candy! How great is that?!?

I haven't been posting as much recently, and probably won't until after New Year's, but I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a new year full of hope.

Nice 'n' Easy Dinner

Tuesday night we had the EASIEST "nice" dinner (that we've cooked) in a while! First, I should define "nice." In our situation, "nice" means a meat and sides not all combined in one dish. It was easy because it hardly required any work to cook it. We also ate the freshed salad either of us have ever had! We picked some lettuce (about 5 different types!) straight from the garden in our backyard. After my experience with caterpillars, I was very carefully to wash the leaves carefully - we have no need for extra protein!

We ate the hand-picked salad with bread and spinach dip from HEB (they have the yummiest spinach dip, but it's a little pricey so it's only for special treats). We also had Betty Crocker Au Gratin Three Cheese Potatoes and Emeril's Chicken and Apple Sausage (heated on the grill). They had samples of this sausage at Sam's, and it's amazing! Instead of a strong pepper taste, it has a more savory blend of spices. It only has chicken (for meat), so it's fat content is nothing compared to regular or beef sausage. Mmmm, so yummy. I was so excited about our rare "nice" meal on a busy weeknight, I took pictures.

Upside Down

(sorry - I wrote this Monday but am just now publishing it)
This past weekend felt very upside down in many ways.

First, a light-hearted way...
The high temperatures for Saturday and Sunday (December 8 & 9) were both 82 degrees! Saturday we picked up some mini-marshmallows (along with a few other things) at the store, then went to a track and ran for about 25 minutes, then went home and took in the groceries. It being December and 40 minutes until sunset, we didn't think twice about leaving the food in the car. When we got home the marshmallows looked like this:

Melted Goodness.

Second, a heavy-hearted way... (note: the article I referenced seems to not longer be available - you can check this out instead)
You can read this news article that starts out "It was a frightening morning Friday for one Bryan business after a driver of a SUV blacked out, lost control of his vehicle and plowed into Techniques Hair Salon." My friend Jenny was getting her hair cut there for the first time when this happened.

Part of the article sounds contradictory because their facts are a little off: "Three people and a baby were in the salon's back room. 'If they would have been in the first room it would have been over for everybody,' Joham said. 'It was really lucky that they were in the next room.' A hairdresser was cutting a woman's hair, when the wall came down and they were both pushed into another room." Actually, Jenny and the hairdresser (Genie) were in the front room and Jenny's husband and 11 month old son were in the back waiting room (where they were not seriously hurt). The salon chair Jenny was sitting in actually got pushed through the wall into the back room, so she was found there. Everyone should recover fine, but Jenny is not able to use either arm at all for at least 6 weeks. On opposite sides, she has a completely separated shoulder and a broken collarbone. We are very grateful that her baby was not in the chair at the time - he had just finished getting his hair cut about 15 minutes before. Tons of people from church have signed up to help - from bringing meals to volunteering blocks of time to be there and help care for Jenny (and baby Sam). I know Jenny's needs will be met, and that God will heal and protect her, but finding a new "normal" will be very upside-down seeming for a while.

my friend the elf

A friend of ours, Brian Gibbs, took over the voice lessons his wife had been taking when she moved to Scotland this fall. His recital was Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Most of the students were little kids, so the rest of the concert was cute (although somewhat painful :) ). Brian sang "Baby It's Cold Outside" which was recently made more popular by the movie Elf (hence the costume). Watch Brian's performance:

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving break went great! Here's a run down:

Wednesday morning my sister and I went to HEB and bought the rest of what we needed for Thanksgiving dinner, and then got right to cooking and prepping at her place. When Joe got off work at noon, we all grabbed some lunch and then finished up making desserts. Joe and I finished cleaning up and doing laundry at the house and my parents came in from Dallas that night.

Getting food all ready on Thursday went really well, and we actually got ahead of schedule putting things in the oven! Joe was very nice to wake up early and help first thing in the morning. Everyone had some contribution! My mom also put up some curtains she had bought for our living room. Joe's parents and Emily (his sister) and Rabi drove all the way from the other side of Houston (Pasadena / League City) to join us for the meal and then made another trek home. I think they spent more time on the road than in College Station, so that was very nice of them to make that sacrifice to share Thanksgiving with us. Jerrell (did I spell that right?) is a good friend of my sister and her husband who lives in town, and he joined us, too. One person had to sit on an ice chest, but we all sat together and ate. And ate ;). (The six desserts were probably overkill.)

some of us in the living room

PART of the yummy spread

My sister (Lauren) wanted to do Black Friday shopping but her partner in crime the last few years was out of town this year. Mom and I were the new recruits.

Lauren scheming

See that paper and pen? She went through all the ads, wrote down the time each store opened and what she wanted to get from each store (things like a 2 GB SD card (for a camera) for $6.99). From this list, she developed her battle plan. (I guess I can't talk much... I had a list of everything that needed to be cooked including what times each item needed to be prepped, baked and finished.) My mom and I missed her first wave of stores - I think she hit two before we woke up at 4:40, threw on clothes and joined her at #3. By 7:45 we each had $10 mall gift cards, $5 Half Price Books gift cards, and a serious need for sleep (maybe we should have got to bed before 1:30am?).

We went back home and and to sleep for a little while. That afternoon the Aggie game (vs. tu) started at 2:30. So what were we doing? Joe and I watched Enchanted and my mom watched August Rush at the movie theater! Both were very good movies. We got to see the entire last half of the football game, too. Kevin (my sister's husband) works at Toys R Us and had to be there at 4am, so he slept a lot of the afternoon (this is a hard season to work there - especially since he's a supervisor and has to deal with returns and rude customers).

My parents left Saturday before noon, and we spent (almost) the rest of the rainy day watching movies (Ocean's 13 and Hairspray) and episodes from last season of Heroes.

So that was our Thanksgiving! I hope yours went well, too!

Remember Mike?

Yes, he was the headless chicken I once blogged about. I'm not quite that bad yet, but with the Thanksgiving countdown nearing zero, I have my moments. I'm very excited that a lot of family (both sets of parents and sisters, as well as my sister's husband) will be coming. My sister and I will do most of the shopping tomorrow as well as complete some of the prep work and desserts. Last year we did Christmas dinner with my immediate family at our duplex, so I'm not too worried about how it will go this year. My sister's doing a lot more this year (last year she busy with school stuff), which is helpful and more fun!

Speaking of my sister, we celebrated her birthday Friday night and it was a lot of fun! We ate at Roadhouse and then went back to her house for cake (mmm, chocolate). Then we disappeared for a little while, off to the Park's going away party at the bowling alley. A couple of people laughed that Joe brought his bowling ball (with a bag as fancy as the rental shoes), but they weren't laughing long!

Joe got a 226! Not only his best game, but a good 75 points more than the most he usually gets. I'm pretty sure it's been about 3-4 years since we last bowled, but no one could believe that. Joe's the man! Of course, things were also sad because the Parks were moving to Dallas. Honestly, it wasn't that hard for me. At one point we were very close to David and Shelley, but we've naturally drifted apart over the last year (we've had different groups of friends and they have been a lot more busy). Parts of that drifting have been very hard, but I think by Friday night I'd already let go and said goodbye.

Back to Mental Thanksgiving Preparations!

Music & Recent Happenings

I guess I haven't posted what I've been up to recently, so here goes...

November 1st we finished the 12 Week Challenge! Though neither of us saw much of a difference in pounds, we both lost some inches, so that's great.

The weekend of November 3rd we went to Houston to celebrate Joe's Dad's birthday (which was Halloween). It was also exciting because he was starting a new job the Monday after we left! We got to spend some good time with Joe's parents and sister.

The next week we started our new schedule - since the Challenge was over, we needed a workout routine, and decided to add in some time for a few other things (like music and reading) we want to set aside time for. We now are doing our own Book Club. Just the two of us, even though that's a little funny. I got to pick the first book, so we both read a book that was my favorite in high school - Michael Crichton's Sphere. It was a good, quick read. I don't think Joe's picked the next book yet.

Last Friday night we went to a Ross King concert in Bryan. He's a gifted songwriter, and though he leads worship at our church, we rarely get to see him perform. It was great! We had also planned to see Clairmont that night (they were playing later nearby), but Joe started feeling sick to his stomach, so we went home. The next day he still felt nauseous, and had congestion and a fever. I was also all stopped up. We took it pretty easy all weekend, enjoying lots of chicken and dumplings. Joe missed some work the beginning of the week, but I think he's now mostly better.

This Friday is my little sister's 23rd birthday (weird - I feel about 24), so we'll get to celebrate with her. It's also the going away party for some friends of ours, which will be sad.

MOST EXCITING... a week or so ago, Joe finished recording a song he's been working on a while! It's an a cappella version of Ross King's "In Need". Yours truly also makes a cameo in this one. He also started a MySpace page with this song and two others. Check it out: http://myspace.com/joepeebles and add him as a friend if you do MySpace. If you'd like to have an mp3, let us know. And next time you see Joe, be sure to tell him how awesome he is!

Random Pictures

Joe seems to think I take interest in (and therefore, pictures of) some random things. I guess he's right, but they really seem interesting to me at the time! And, with a digital camera, my taking random pictures habit has only grown. Here's a few examples from the last couple of weeks:

I have a basil (which I keep accidentally pronouncing "basal") plant that I bought from A&M. When I planted it in the pot, I found a brown caterpillar on it. After chastising the little bug, I put him outside. Later that week, many more leaves had died on the plant. After some inspection, I found a green caterpillar with a guilty expression on his face (he also got moved to the front yard). A week later, the plant looked horrible and I ended up finding 5 more little green caterpillars! My stern talking-to had apparently not worked. Each time I had pulled off all the partially eaten leaves (because I was afraid it was a disease killing it), so I was surprised with even more leaves looked bad the week before now. I pulled off the bad leaves, and in the pile found a chubby green caterpillar. Here goes:


Next, an injury. For the 12 Week Challenge we had an obstacle course to compete in. It involved running, stooping under something while running, going up and down a LOT of bleachers, mini-hurtles, throwing a weighted ball, doing dips, and more running. We had to do three laps. Now my middle name, Anne, means graceful. People who know me well have pointed out that it must mean full-of-grace (in the forgiving sense) and not mean be actually being graceful (in the ballerina sense). They are right, and it gets much, much worse when I'm tired. To cut the story short, on the second lap I ended up tripping on a hurtle and slamming into the ground. I landed mostly on my right knee and left hip, so that's where the worst of the bruising happened, though scrapes could be found in many more places. Thanks almost entirely to the encouragement of others, I finished all three laps! (Life-lesson: dips on very cold bleachers when your hands have been scraped raw are VERY painful!) I walked funny for a couple of days, but recovered. I thought about taking a picture of the wind pants I had on (with a huge hole in them), but abstained. They were my favorite pair, you'll probably still see me wearing them. Here's part of the bruise on my hip almost a week after the incident (sadly, the biggest part is cut off, but you can see it start on the bottom left):
Finally, another caterpillar-like thing. This is from just tonight (yes, this is how I spend some of my Saturday nights). Joe ran in (after I had spent 15 minutes photographing the creature both inside and outside) and said he got dibs on blogging rights. So I guess I will just show the pictures: (Yes, he had red stripes. No, I did not touch him.)

edit: If you have trouble finding the green caterpillar, he's on the middle leaf on the right half of the picture.

P.P.S. Turns out, Joe was kidding when he said he had dibs on the caterpillar story (because it was obvious that I cared about it and he didn't). Oh well, I'll leave room for a little mystery. kp

Dallas Symphony

Last Saturday we did an obstacle course for the 12 Week Challenge (where I discovered I really suck at jumping hurtles - you should ask to see my bruises). Our team (Joe and I) came in 2nd place! We then headed up to Dallas and spent some good time with my parents.

On Sunday we went to a Halloween-themed performance of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at the Meyerson. Here's a picture from our seats (yes, they were high up):


At the top you can see a person playing the Fisk Organ (has blue lights on it). It was neat, but because the concert was geared toward children and we were in cheaper seats, we had a lot of disruptive children and disrespectful adults around us. That made it hard to enjoy, but there were a lot of beautiful parts.

Harry Potter

So last week, J.K. Rowling said that Dumbledore (one of the main characters in the Harry Potter series) was gay. I think I agree with the disappointment that a writer shares in this article.

edit: Even if you're not a H.P. fan, I think you would find the article interesting. Joe and I talked about it, and he said there's a whole field in philosophy about reality (and perception of reality) called ontology.

Sick, Stores, Music, and Plants

I guess it's been a little while since I've written about stuff going on, so I'll try to catch up.

Joe was sick for about a week (fever, lots of congestion), so not much happened that week. We've been spending time getting to know people in our ComGroup better (small groups a part of Community Church) and got away a Friday night through Saturday afternoon to have some bonding time. That was good.

In a smaller town like College Station, store openings are big. We now have a Kohl's (I had never been to one before) and a Michael's. I was severely disappointed by the latter. We had a Michael's near our house when I was in high school that turned into a MJDesigns. I could spend hours there. It has now become an awesome JoAnn's, but one MUCH bigger (2 stories!) than any other craft store I've seen. I guess Garden Ridge is bigger, but it doesn't focus on the type of stuff I like. Anyway, I had gotten Michael's confused with this MJDesigns / JoAnn's in Dallas and was let down. Their scrapbooking and cake decorating sections are both not as good as the Hobby Lobby in town. Yes, my name is Kathryn, and I do craft-type projects. (Right now the primary ones are: (1) comforter for our bed with lots of embroidery, (2) Christmas gift for Joe's mom, (3) redecorating the living room with no money.)

Joe is almost done with a recording we've been working on of Ross King's "In Need" (Joe made an a cappella arrangement). He's still working a little on the mixing, but it's nice to have all the recording done. When Joe's working on the song, usually I'm doing projects or gardening.

I bought some plants this weekend to plant in our fall garden. I have: broccoli, celery, mixed greens, buttercrisp lettuce, and onions. I also bought some creeping rosemary and basil. I think the basil will stay inside - last time the basil I got died from bug attacks (the technical term). I think I'll try to get spinach seeds somewhere, too. This Spring was my first experiment with gardening, and these are all very different types of plants than I had before. Friday night and Saturday I worked on tilling the garden (and have a nice blister to prove it), but discovered that a lot of ants recently moved in. I can't find any mounds, but there are so many that they must be living underground. I tried pouring boiling water on the places I saw them going underground, but it hasn't seemed to work. Any advice for someone who doesn't want to poison her family and friends with ant killer in the garden? I'm waiting to plant until I get that figured out.

The weather's getting nice in the evenings, which is exciting. I think we are on week 10 of the 12 week challenge, so that's wrapping up. We're trying to figure out how to keep in shape once it's over (we're not signing up for the next one). Anyone who lives in town and wants to join us in exercising, let us know!

Bouncing Family!

The place we stayed at on Lake Conroe (for the family reunion I mentioned before) had two bouncy things (yes, the technical name) that adults could use! My sister, Joe and I all got to play in them. My sister's husband had a hurt foot, so he took pictures instead. My dad didn't have a hurt foot, but for some reason chose to just wait on us instead of jumping.

My sister and I

Joe flipping out

In Our Free Time

I haven't written in a week and a half! Sorry - I've been really busy. At the end of the blog, I'll make up for it, I promise.

Here's what we've been up to...

The weekend of the 14-16 we went to a family reunion (my maternal grandmother's side) at Lake Conroe. It turned out that everyone (other than my grandmother, parents, and my sister and her husband) was just coming for Saturday afternoon, but we were there the whole weekend. We ate barbeque, played putt-putt, swam, and even tried archery. I met a lot of extended family for the first time, which was neat.

Last week marked the half-way point for our 12 week challenge. We took measurements and weight. Neither Joe nor I were very happy with the results, which is disappointing. We didn't gain weight (even though we can tell we've added muscle), so we must have lost some fat... but it'd be nice to be able to tell it more.

We had the first meeting with our new small group from church (called ComGroup for Community Group) on Wednesday, minus three people. I'm excited about the group this year.

Joe spend this past Saturday in Nacogdoches at a Conflab (I'll let you ask him what that means) with some men from the type of church he grew up in. So I had a project day! I pretty much cleaned all day, but I did get started on the embroidery for a bedcover (half quilt half comforter) I'm making for us. I also experimented with drying our clothes outside. It was a hot, sunny day and our dryer doesn't work well, so they actually dried faster than if I had used the machine. I still fluffed the clothes with a dryer sheet (but no heat) for a little bit after they were dry. Wow, that sentence makes my life sound really boring. On Sunday we were given the first fruits of a friend's chicken (the first eggs they have laid since my friends got the hens), which was very neat. (See, that's not so boring!)

Okay, now for the reward I promised...

Sunday night Joe and I set aside some time to record music together. After a while, we decided we needed to take a break from the song we were working on and get back to our roots. Please enjoy this work of art.

Kolache Festival and Joe Gets Another Weird Fortune

I'm sorry for three things: (1) I'm a week behind in my blog (2) I didn't take any pictures of the fun we had last weekend (3) Joe got dibs on a blog topic.

Last Friday night we stopped by First Fridays at the Frame Gallery in downtown Bryan. There is new art, live jazz, and a hands-on art project. It was fun (as always), and we ran into several people we knew.

We then drove to Caldwell for the street dance that was kicking off the Kolache Festival. A man with cowboy boots, tight jeans, a plaid shirt, a cowboy hat, and a boom mic was the entertainment. Oh, and he had an accordion. He was only one of many who looked like a cowboy but spoke Czech. He played and sang many Czech polkas and waltzes. Though we did not brave the dance floor (or street, as the case may be), we enjoyed the music and dancing.

Saturday morning we drove back out to Caldwell and made our way to the kolache stands (we had heard that they were known to sell out early). In line, we saw Julia (our friend Wes' sister) who was helping out some of her in-laws at an award-winning kolache stand. We tried some of their kolaches, and they were VERY good. I also found a chocolate kolache... so dangerous. It was very good, and it is very good I only bought one. They remind me of the chocolate croissants at La Madeline, only with a little sweeter chocolate. Joe tried a pumpkin pie kolache that was good, too.

We ran into Wes' mom, too! And Wes' friend's wife Christie with her tiny little baby boy. He was very cute. And we got to beat Wes and Heather to meeting him. We saw a few more people we knew, which was somewhat surprising given that there was an afternoon Aggie football game that day. We left the Kolache Festival about 11:30 or noon.

We next went to visit our friends April and Michael (and baby Joel) and their 3 baby chickens! Very cute. I got to hold one, and she was soft.

We went back to our place to shower (it was a very HOT Kolache Festival) and relax in the air conditioning a few minutes. Then we headed over to some new friend's place. Not only did they feed us a fabulous dinner, but they also let me ride their horse! Though Joe knew the husband, I didn't know anyone in the family ahead of time , but we had a great time and I think got to know them a lot better!

Changing the topic entirely....

Joe said he had dibs on this topic, but I kept the fortune, so of course I have to scan it and put that in my blog! I'll link to his as soon as he blogs about it. Today we had Chinese food at Joe's favorite local place - China King Buffet. Remember Joe's bad fortune he got there last time? Well the one he got today was just confusing! Any ideas on what this means?


(In case you can't read it, it says "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Wonton or Dumpling?)