Are you kidding me?

Remember this shirt from my earlier post?

Well, I found this shirt in JCPenney for $4.99!!!! OK - I had to buy it in black, instead of hot pink, but can you believe it?????

no sleep = great breakfast

I've been up the past few nights working on some projects with dear husband. Again, last night, I rolled into bed at midnight, when I had hoped to hit the sack hours before then as I desperately needed a good night's sleep. It was not destined to be. Bro woke me up a few hours later wanting to nurse.

Before I continue, I feel compelled to share something with you that has been sitting with me for weeks now. You will not find me complaining about waking up in the middle of the night with my new baby boy. As you may remember, from this post, we had an accident at the house involving baby Bro. He is fine! However, a few weeks ago I learned of another family (friends of friends) whose new baby had the same accident and then passed away. I think about this family everyday and my heart aches for them every-singe-day, because our babies are so close in age and the accidents were so similar. I cannot help but think about how close we came to the same tragic outcome. True story - when Bro wakes up in the middle of the night, I pick him up lovingly and say a prayer to God and thank Him for giving Bro to me and for allowing me to share these "middle of the night" moments with Bro, as inconvenient as they may seem.

My plea to any mom who is reading is to take a moment today, when you are feeling the LEAST grateful for the hurried life of being a parent, and thank our Father for the moments that we are given to share with out little ones and, while you are having this conversation, please say a prayer for the family who is missing their baby.

Having said that, which I didn't know that I was going to go THERE today, I was woken up to feed Bro and then... a few hours later... I was woken up again because Lulu is away at a 5th grade overnight and is homesick. Then, I was woken up a few hours after that, by my alarm clock.

The good news is that, I went to Starbucks to get coffee for the first time in months. Truly, I would not make it through the day without it. I am not a $6 cup of coffee kinda gal. I take the house coffee in a cup and then add my own milk and sugar. It was my intent to only get the 1 cup of coffee. Well, Starbucks now offers what they call the "Perfect Oatmeal." It is only $2.35 and comes with dried fruit, a nut medley, and brown sugar "generously portioned to suit your taste." (Yes, I know that $2.35 is a bit much to pay for oatmeal, but it was the cheapest breakfast I could find -having slept in until 20 minutes before I needed to leave the house- plus it came with all of the extras.)

When the girl handed me the oatmeal, she instructed me to let it sit for 3 minutes and then it would be properly brewed. Properly brewed? What is a properly brewed cup of oatmeal? That made me chuckle. In short, the oatmeal was delicious, although I had to add more hot water when I got back to the office. I think that I might bring some packs of oatmeal to the office as well as some nuts and brown sugar. Either way, it was a great little pick-me-up this morning. All in all, I think that my total bill came to $3 and some change. Not bad for a morning breakfast with coffee. shhhhhh - don't tell dear husband.

To summarize, I didn't get to sleep last night, treated my self to Starbucks for the first time in months, and got a healthy and yummy breakfast to boot!

Has anyone else tried the Starbucks oatmeal? Do you have another portable, easy, yummy, quick breakfast idea? What's your morning rush food of choice?

Today

Went to Wordle and created this "gallery." Wordle creates word clouds from the text that you provide. In my case, I pasted in the url of this blog. Wordle uses the number of times a word appears in a text to determine its relative size. Having said that, it looks like cookies and the Aquarium are hot words on my blog right now. I'm also glad to see that "husband," "Bro", and "Lulu" are relatively large as well. Above, is the picture that was produced. Since the words came from my recent posts, I suppose I should title the creation, "Today."

Visit to the Aquarium

Last Saturday, we were expecting part of a hurricane. So, what did we do? We decided to go the Aquarium. Well, that is, Dear Husband said that we should go to the Aquairum and I told him that we couldn't. Then he asked why and I replied that we couldn't go to the Aquarium because we had not PLANNED to go to the Aquarium. He was like, "why can't we just do something just to do something - why does it have to be planned?" So, I decided to be a little WILD and CRAZY and just up and go to the Aquarium... in a hurricane.
















I'm so glad that we went. I had not seen their new Australiam Outback exhibit and it was wonderful.



































Bro really liked to look at all there was to see.

Funny story - so we got into the Aquarium and were looking at exhibits like the one below. Well, I noticed that there were these large lizard thingies in the exhibits and no barrier between us and the lizards. I asked Dear Husband why the lizards don't jump out at the visitors and he said that, "they just don't." Okay! Hmmm...

Next thing I knew... this large lizard jumped out into the crown of visitors right on top of the man RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!!!

Can you imagine?
















































Look at Bro "holding on to" Dear Husband.

















Checking out the sea rays.



















Had a great time. If you live in the area and haven't been to the Aquarium in a few years then head on over - you won't be disappointed!

Cookie Season is Here!

Anyone who knows Lulu knows that she is very serious about Girl Scout cookie season.

Here are her stats to date:

2nd grade - sold about 125 boxes of cookies
3rd grade - sold about 260 boxes of cookies
4th grade - sold exactly 500 boxes of cookies
5th grade goal - 1,000 boxes of cookies.

1,000? Don't gasp. Her goal was to sell over 6,000 boxes. THIS is an improvement.
If you want to buy cookies or if you know ANYONE who wants to buy cookies then please contact us.

Check here for a list and descriptions of the cookies that are available this season.

I'm still here!

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I have just been crazy swamped. I need to go to bed, but I have to upload this video of Bro and Lulu. They were laughing so hard that I just had to get a video of the two of them together.

Coming soon - pics of our trip to the Baltimore Aquarium, including our live encounter with one of the inhabitants, and pics of Lulu cheering.

Camera Hospital

Alas, my trusty sidekick camera must take a visit to the camera hospital. Her LCD screen is malfunctioning. A quick trip to the Canon online help desk indicated that the vendor-supplied CCD image sensors may have caused the malfunction. Luckily, Canon will repair it free of charge, "effective immediately and regardless of warranty status." I called the Canon triage unit help desk, as indicated, and the nurse Canon staff person on the end of the line was very comforting. Thus, my camera will make the long journey to Illinois without me. I have been assured that this is a quick, fast procedure and she will be back in my arms in 3 weeks.

Fairy Grandmother? May I borrow your camera?

This is not happening to me!

In all seriousness, Canon support staff were excellent, patient, and very interested in repairing my camera and getting it back to me quickly. They apologized for the inconvenience that this is causing me, and so on and so forth. I like good customer service and this is a thumbs up for Canon!

Dinner with Friends

Oh, so much to say and so little time. OK - we went over to a friend's house the other night for a get together. These aren't just ANY friends. This was a get together of friends from forever ago. We were celebrating a homecoming for Top Chef's daughter, Butterfly, who has been away for far to long. I call her Butterfly because I have known her for as long as I can remember. I've seen her go through so many changes in life and develop into the young lady whom I met last night. Butterfly, if you are reading, it was so good to see you and to hug you. You looked great! Keep up the good work!

Where to begin... first off, we had a marvelous dinner prepared by none other than our favorite Top Chef. She is so aptly named because she is an excellent cook. She makes everything great, from meats to cakes and vegetables and everything inbetween. Last night she did not disappoint. Thanks for a great meal and fun time Top Chef.

See her great Key Lime Chiffon cake here?

And the close-up here?

Yummy. Very mouth watering. Nap mom and Dear husband will try to recreate it sometime. We'll see how that goes.

Another highlight to the evening was visiting with Bro's cousin close friend Jay Bird. Look at these cute boys; no, you are NOT seeing double.

To make a 10 year story short, we have known Jay Bird's family since his sister, Gator, and Lulu were babies. Here's my proof.

Now, here are the girls again, 10 years later! Gator is the same best friend mentioned in this post, but not pictured. Now, I have parental permission to blog her pic.

I can't resist adding this pic of them at a Girl Scout event. Are they cute or what?

It was so great to see the boys together (and for me to get a glimpse of what the next few months will be like for me, since Jay Bird is a few months older than Bro). Don't let the steady boys in this picture fool you. Went went through all of this (and more)...

to get this...
I wish that I had video of Jay Bird and his "so big" routine. I know, all babies do the "so big" thing but Jay Bird was especially cute!!!!!

Water Fun and a Jellyfish - here and there

What a great day to be out on the water. Fairy Grandmother watched Bro and let Dear Husband, Lulu, and I go out on the seadoos.


We met up with some friends and pulled the girls behind us on "the dragon."

Lulu went for a wild ride and fell off several times. She insisted on getting back on and going back out for more. Unfortunately, there were jelly fish and Lulu got stung 3 times (arm, thigh, and ankle). Still, she got back up on the dragon and told me not to worry and that we would take care of it when we got back to the house. What??? Anyways, later, I asked her what it felt like to get stung by a jellyfish. She said that it felt like getting struck by lightning! So, if you ever wondered what it feels like, now you know. She is too much!

Mommy and Daddy got some time to go out for a ride by ourselves while Lulu and Bro spent some quality time together.

Oh, and look at our friend and his dog. The dog has a life jacket on and everything. Is this great or what?

Thanks Fairy Grandmother and Luvs2Boat - we had a really, really, really fun time!

Lemonsticks and Strategy Games

We had a fabulous weekend. First, Lulu and I went school shopping and got loads of great clothes. Most of what she picked out was already on sale AND Fairy Grandmother gave us a 20% off coupon as well! Yeah!

Saturday, we made lemonsticks. These are a Baltimore tradition. Lulu's Girl Scout troop is planning on selling them at the local craft fair next month, so she wanted to try them out. When she was finished she made "lemon lips."

Saturday night we played a new game of Lulu's. The game has real shooting catapults and everything. The goal is to knock over all of your oponent's men before they knock over yours. Here are pics of Dear Husband and Lulu setting up their respective forts. Notice that Dear Husband set up his barriers across the front of his fort, while Lulu clumped her barriers together and stacked them for better defense.

Whew! So much fun!