Three Cheers for Freedom!

This week we had our first little trip away from home.  We loaded up dog and baby and a car full of crap (for serious, why so much crap?) and drove a few hours to see our favorite White Hot friends.  Cassie and I had been planning for this holiday since last summer when we both got knocked up.  While our little fetuses (shouldn't the plural form of fetus be feti?) grew bigger and bigger, so did our dreams of gin cocktails, French 75's and rivers of wine.  When the time actually came, we indulged, certainly, but not nearly as much as we'd planned way back when we were, oh, 25 weeks pregnant and feeling like that was the most tired we'd ever be.* So there were earlier bedtimes and a little more tiptoeing than last year.  Still, how awesome it was to hang out with some of our very favorite people and our spawn.  At times, I'd stop and look around and realize again, "Oh my god--we have babies!"  Bananas, I tell you.**

What was even weirder than the fact that, joining us, were a little half-Hugh/half-Cassie and a little half-Matt/half-Mandy, was that those little babes didn't really change things like I had feared they might.  Sure, we had to focus much of our attention on the kiddos, but we could still hang out, love on our pups, and laugh until it hurt.

 Penelope gave her daddy a hug.

And Charlie gave his daddy an anti-hug. 

Since coming home, I've been trying to get rid of all of the unnecessary crap around our house (seriously, why so much crap?), Charlie's been grabbing things and sucking on them, and Matt and I have been trying to teach/train/beg Charlie to nap.  We're one screaming session away from reading him the book gifted to him by my soulmate.  But we're all figuring it out.

 I think that Panda is possessed.  Earlier today it was just sitting on the mantle and began to play music.  

I'm probably going to wake up and see it sitting on my chest with a knife.

How Charlie feels about naps.  Either that, or he knows that Panda is out to get us.

Oh, and I've been taking Charlie to the Forsyth Park farmer's market on Saturday mornings, which basically means that I get to spend the rest of the week sounding like an obnoxious Portlandia character, bragging about local corn and blueberries.  It also means that I've been eating pounds upon pounds of peaches--so many that I actually burned my face with peach juice.  How does that even happen?

Soooooo, how did you spend America's birthday?  And have you been eating lots of local produce?




*Oh, and nobody likes a drunk baby.


**Babynanas.

Farewell Summer

Well, this is my last post as a woman of leisure.  I go back to school tomorrow, and I'm trying to muster up the motivation to redecorate an entire new classroom, do lesson plans, and face teenagers again.  The two months away have been just lovely (and, obviously, I'm ridiculously fortunate to have a job that provides such nice, long breaks), but right now the thought of being back in a classroom with thirty odd kids makes me want to whine and then sleep.  But by next Monday I'll be good and ready because, if for no other reason, I have no choice.

This summer has been fun and productive.  Matt's birthday celebration this weekend kind of doubled as a farewell to summer, and it couldn't have been nicer.  We went to see Midnight in Paris, which you should go see.  I'm trying to figure out a way to work it into my American Literature curriculum.  

After the movie we stopped by Saigon Bistro for lunch.  (Savannah folk, if you have not been to Saigon Bistro, you are really missing out.  It's cheap and delicious and fresh and awesome.)  Then it was off to the beach for the rest of the afternoon and evening.  The evening beach visit was Matt's birthday request, since we had so much fun doing the same thing last year.  And it was grand.  We really try not to take for granted the fact that we live so close to the beach, and that we can just go out there for a couple of hours when we feel like it.

Matt was happy as a clam all night.

"No, Matt, I'm not going to put these pictures on the internet." 

And then these pretty awesome clouds rolled in, and Matt and Collin were really taken with them. I've never heard people talk about clouds for so long, and with such fervor, as I did last night.  Then I think that Matt got annoyed with me because, while I thought the clouds were pretty great, I did not think they were so great as to merit a full 30-minute discussion of them.  Then I got annoyed that Matt was annoyed.  We finally decided to agree to disagree on the degree of the awesomeness of the clouds.  Oh, marriage.  (Also, maybe I would have found the clouds to be more extraordinary had I not bee the DD for the night?)

Matt stood there, basically having a religious experience staring at the clouds.

And then, when the clouds started to dump rain on us and Matt's hair began to stand up straight (like he'd rubbed it with a balloon), we decided it was high time that we head on up to Fannie's for dinner.  And then it was my turn to have a religious experience--with nachos.

Farewell, Summer!  Until we meet again!

Weekend Fun

We had a great weekend celebrating the births of Tom Cruise, America, and my favorite Jehovah's Witness crush from long ago.  (Oh, Aaron the surfer. . .)  True to form, we ate too much, drank too much, laughed a lot, played with the dogs, and enjoyed the company of friends.  Lovely, lovely, I tell you.

So here's what our weekend looked like.

I don't even know how it's possible to injure yourself on an elliptical, but I managed it.

Chicken chili from Dinner: A Love Story.  Mmmmmmmmm. 

 Holding hands with my dog child. Are you tired of pictures of my feet yet?

 Thank you, thank you very much.

 Car ride to visit Hugh and Cassie for the day!

The greatest potato skins on earth.

 

 Stand off.

Ribs! (Cassie's "Thanksgiving in July."  Um, okay!)

And ribs again!

 Matt went to the baseball game with friends.  I skipped it, took a nap, and watched fireworks from the couch.

Late night chats.

How did you celebrate the birth of our nation? And how did you celebrate the birth of everyone's favorite former pilot/sports agent/Irish immigrant/underwear dancer?

This and That

1. How long do you think it'll take for Matt and me to eat this much basmati?

Damn you, Sam's Club!

2.  Mitch continues to be the cutest animal on the planet, and I continue to be obsessed with Ann's 50mm lens (which I am never giving back to her, FYI).  

Why so serious all the time, dog?

3.  Wouldn't be a post this week without another picture of the hydrangeas that I didn't kill.

4.  I hate mosquitoes.  

5.  I showed this picture of Grandpa B to one of my students a couple of days ago and she said, "Ooh!  Your grandpa was HOT!"  How do you like that, Grandpa?  (Grandpa is blushing right now, probably about to snap those red suspenders of his.  Careful, Grandpa.  Don't want to get the ladies all riled up.)

6.  You know what's delicious?  Sprees.  And the smaller ones are better because they're just a tiny bit softer.  And they're pretty.  And full of nutrition.  And they make you smarter.  (If by smarter you mean fatter.)

7.  Yesterday, during some really exciting EOCT prep with my ninth graders, we were discussing the difference between persuasive writing and expository writing.  One of the students had a very, very interesting question, which then led us into a discussion about the difference between expository and suppository.

8.  That little episode made me check out the calendar to see how many days of school are remaining this year.  Nineteen.  I can do it, I can do nineteen. . .  The countdown is ON, the internet!

9.  I don't think I ever want to live anywhere that doesn't have little lizards running around.  Not so much because I love the lizards (even though I do when they are: behind a window or screen or in one of my paper lanterns, or more than 3 feet away from me), but because I think I am lizard-like as far as my ideal climate goes.  Yep.  Now, if only I could train lizards to eat all of the mosquitoes, then I wouldn't seem like a dirty meth addict all the time while I scratch my one bajillion mosquito bites.  Hmmmmmm.

10.  Well, I've got to get going, because Shecky just called me to rave about her new pajama jeans.  No joke.

Vacation Part Deux

So, for the second half of spring break, I flew from the ABQ to D.C. where Caitie picked me up from the airport.  It was great being able to hang out with her, even for an hour.*

And after we ate several pounds of pot stickers and Oreo crazy dessert at Friday's, Caitie took me back to Matt's parents' house.  Then I realized, at 1:30 a.m., that I don't know the garage code, and that I didn't have my keys.  So Caitie and I stood outside my in-laws' house like fools for like twenty minutes while I tried every imaginable code I could think of to get into the garage.  Finally, I just called and had to wake Matt's dad up.  And I felt like quite the a-hole.

Shoot.

But all was well only hours later because I arrived along with Matt's mom (after visiting Wegman's, a heaven on earth) at their lake house.

Now, I've already talked about the lake house a number of times.  This particular trip revolved around polishing silver, eating brownies, and flipping the TV channels back and forth between HGTV and news coverage of the upcoming royal nuptials.***

Because the lake house is so chill and so relaxing, there's not usually too much to share about visiting.  It's beautiful and peaceful and you never want to leave.  And you might think that because the air is so warm that the water is also warm.  Nope.  It's not.  You might discover that after foolishly jumping in without even having dipped your feet out to test the waters.  And then you might get hypothermia and die.  Or at minimum scream, swim faster than you ever have in your life (which is a bit of a challenge because of frozen limbs), and then spend the rest of the afternoon trying to trick other people to do the same.  "Oh, it's basically like a bathtub."

One of the best parts of visiting the lake is going on sunset boat rides.  Matt's dad is a longtime lover of sunsets, and seems to be at his happiest when he's on his boat watching the sun go down.  I've got to admit, he's on to something.
 

Oh yeah, and there was lots of grilling, because Matt is the grill master who travels up and down the East Coast demonstrating his mad skillz.

Grilled wings. . .mmmmmmmmmmm. 

Well, I'd share more, but I have to go because Matt is trying to make me watch the William & Kate movie on Lifetime.  That's really a thing.


*Um, you might remember that Caitie was the other participant in the fattest of the fat contests.  Recently, a friend asked me about the "fat offs" that my friend and I used to have, wondering if we still made gluttonous trips to Golden Corral.  "No," I replied, "We're both on Weight Watchers now."  Surprise, surprise.**


**It should also be noted that Caitie is much better at Weight Watchers than I am.


***Matt is so into the royal wedding that it's not even funny.  It's all I can do to keep him from calling out of work on both Thursday and Friday, making tea and crumpets, and speaking in a British accent.  If we were people of greater means, I am confident that he would be in England right now, draped in the British flag whilst stalking Will and Kate.****


****Also, Matt wants me to tell the internet that he is not into the royal wedding but at all.  He just said that in a British accent.