Year: 2006

  • Can I get a dream bar?

    In case you’ve been up nights wondering, I just wanted to let you know the grill at the pool has reopened. The bees are gone and order has been restored to my universe.

  • Who swims at 7 a.m.?

    I just got off the phone with my dad. Caroline went to eat Mexican food with them and spent the night last night. So, really between Sea World and a sleepover at Mimi and Bops’ house, it was the BEST day ever. For both of us.

    Anyway, I called to see how they were doing and to make sure Caroline wasn’t missing me too much. Um, yeah right. They didn’t answer the phone so I knew immediately where they were. IN THE POOL.

    She loves spending the night over there for many reasons, all of which include her being a little catered to (but that’s what grandparents do, so no complaints). But the biggest reason she loves being there is that she can talk my dad into getting in the pool with her as soon as she wakes up, which is usually 6:30-7 p.m. Now, I know we’re in Texas, but the pool is cold that early in the morning! That, my friends, is true love.

  • We’re going to Sea World

    Actually we went to Sea World yesterday. I packed everything I could possibly think of in the world’s largest pool bag, loaded the stroller and off we went. Caroline talked a mile a minute the entire way there. The only time she wasn’t talking she was singing in that sing-song voice inherent to kids “we’re going to Sea World, we’re going to Sea World”. I thought her head might explode from all the joy.

    We went to Sea World earlier this summer and after we got home all she talked about were the monkeys. “My favorite part was the monkeys, Mama”, “where do those monkeys live, Mama?” Now we saw whales, dolphins, alligators, Nemo fish, Dory fish but there was nary a monkey in sight. I couldn’t believe I had spent money to go to Sea World so that she could be excited over monkeys that didn’t exist.

    That night my dad came over and she was regaling him with stories from our day and she said “Bops, those monkeys did flips and jumped so high”. It was at that point I realized the “monkeys” were actually people dressed in full head to toe unitards that did indeed jump from very high diving platforms and swam with the dolphins.

    So first thing yesterday, we went to see the monkeys. She loved it, but her favorite part of the day (and mine) was going to see Shamu. I swear that I teared up watching the excitement on her face as she sat in Bops’ lap and watched Shamu jump and flip and do all that other Shamu stuff. Without even looking away for a minute, she said “Oh Mama, when I get big I’m going to swim with that Shamu”. And you know what, I think she will because no matter what, I want her to know that she can do anything she puts her mind to.

  • Come on in

    Since I’m new to this whole blogging thing, I’ve decided to jump right in with both feet and join Boomama’s tour of homes. Thank you Boomama for getting this all together!


    Come on in! We love to have people over to visit and since P. is in youth ministry we’ve had visitors at all hours of the day and night. We always want people to feel warm and welcome in our home.


    This is the kitchen and it really is the heart of our home. I love to cook and have people over for dinner. We remodeled a few years back and before that our kitchen was less than half this size, but people still congregated in there. It’s much easier to fit twenty people in this kitchen!


    This is, as Boomama says, where the bloggy magic happens. Not sure you can call it magic. P. and I both office out of our house, so it is never this neat!


    We spend most of our evenings in here watching T.V. and hanging out. On cold winter nights (which are few in Texas), we love to have a fire in the fireplace and make smores. There are usually some legos, blocks, and my little ponies scattered around but this was taken right before bedtime so everything was picked up!


    We made our guest room into a playroom for Caroline this past Christmas. She loves it and so do I! We spend a lot of time having tea parties and playing Elefun in here. I’m not sure what we’ll do if we have another baby, but in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll think about that tomorrow!

    I hope y’all have enjoyed my little tour. When P. and I started looking for a home after being married about six months, we told our realtor our price range and he didn’t give us much hope. This house came on the market and was truly so underpriced that it had 4 other contracts offered with ours. The owners chose ours even though we hadn’t made the highest offer. Don’t tell me that wasn’t a miracle!It wasn’t much to look at back then, but it was ours and we’ve made it a wonderful home. Y’all come back now!

  • Fashion has gone to the dogs

    Last night I watched Project Runway. This is the first season that I have watched and I only started watching because there is literally nothing else on other than 600 shows dedicated to undiscovered talent in America. My thought is that the majority are probably best left undiscovered. Anyway I am loving Project Runway.

    The first thing that caused me some distress last night was when Heidi came out wearing the skinny jean. I am in complete denial about the return of the skinny jean because frankly, they didn’t look that great on me before having a child. It kills me how the fashion powers that be can tell us one year that the bootcut, flare leg, etc. is so much more flattering because it balances out your hips and then the next year want to make us all look like pigs in a blanket on toothpicks. I spent a lot of time in my teens pinchrolling my jeans and if you know what I’m talking about you are probably old and wise enough to agree that skinny legs need to stay out.

    The fashion challenge last night involved each contestant having one of those little pocket Britney Spears/Paris Hilton/Jessica Simpson type dogs to use as inspiration to create an outfit for the imaginary owner and for the little dog. The contestants all had their little backstories about the pretend owners but the prize for oddest goes to Angela. She started off designing for a fun-loving British headmistress and ended up designing an outfit for apparently the trashiest camp counselor of all time. Yes she did. Let’s just say that any child attending the pretend camp of this pretend camp counselor probably isn’t going to be learning how to make lanyards.

    I am not really a fan of the little dog (or skinny jeans…have I mentioned that?). I have no desire to have a little dog that I carry in a Louis Vuitton bag. There is no reason for my dog to have nicer luggage than I do. We have two blue heelers named Scout and Bruiser neither of whom would fit in any kind of bag but both of whom would love the opportunity to destroy a Louis Vuitton bag.


    So as I was thinking about dogs last night, because really there isn’t anything on T.V., I started thinking about my friend Jen’s dog. Jen has a lab named Willie. Willie has on at least three occasions gotten so excited by another dog walking by the house that he has jumped through her window to get them. You read that right…JUMPED THROUGH THE WINDOW. The closed, glass window. After the window jumping, Jen then has to walk very fast to catch Willie because in her words “if you run after him he’ll think it’s a game and he’ll never quit running”.

    The best part of this, besides the jumping through the window, is that Jen is the person equivalent of Willie. She gets so excited to see the people she loves and while she has never jumped through a window, she has picked me up off my feet while hugging me on more than several occasions. So I guess you could say that Willie and Jen compliment each other very well, but I’m not sure if their fashion tastes are the same.

  • But we know who Mr. Noodle is…

    The Christmas after we had Caroline, one of P.’s childhood friends dropped by to catch up, well maybe not catch up as much as let us know about him. He lives in New York but was in town visiting his parents and managed to fit us in between his big social events.

    He sat and told us all about life in New York, throwing out names of important people, expensive sheets, and restaurants. We listened, and listened and listened some more and then he said “You know I went to a Christmas party at George Soros’ home.” I played it cool and was saying “really?” as P. asked the question that was really on my mind, “who is George Soros?”.

    The friend looked at us like we were from a different planet as he said “well, he’s only the rock star of the hedge fund world.” I again played it cool and said “oh…” as P. again asked the real question on my mind, “what’s a hedge fund?”

    Pretty shortly thereafter our friend needed to leave. If only George Soros had written a book about how to get your 5 month old to sleep through the night…we would have known exactly who he was.

    Anyway I tell this story because we were watching the O’Reilly Factor tonight and guess who was featured…George Soros, billionaire financier. I felt quite the rush to realize I had served leftover tamales to someone who has attended a Christmas party at the home of a hedge fund rockstar.