vacation pictures

I am aware that it's still my birthday month. I have things to say, but I'm trying to put them into words.

Jesus Christ, Superstar was awesome!! Corey Glover, who used to be the lead singer of Living Colour, a cool band from the late 80s/early 90s, played the character of Judas. He was amazing! I'm so glad we got to see this play!! I love the music, too! I recommend seeing it if you have the chance.

OK, here are some pictures from vacation.
This is Sofiya, the one-month-old leopard we got to see! Can you believe it?!!
This bear loved peeking at us from his pool.
Brad & Kari on the top level of Busch Stadium.
Brian's first Major League game!
Many things were explained.
Mandi & I at the arch.
Brian in the top of the arch. A conversation between Brian and I at the top of the arch:
Brian - I can feel it moving.
Me - Yeah, it has to move a little or it would just fall right over!
Brian - Let's not use the words "fall right over!"

Mandi & Brad in the arch.
In Tennessee, Mama Taylor took us out to see her corn.
Brian at the World of Coca Cola Museum in Atlanta.

2500 miles

We're back from vacation. We're tired and overwhelmed with real life, trying to get back into the swing of things. We got home Thursday night and spent part of yesterday recuperating and the other part cleaning my new temporary Kindermusik classroom. We cleaned more today and moved things in, and we'll clean more tomorrow - we have to shampoo the carpet.

All in all, we drove right around 2500 miles on our vacation. We left here and drove straight through to St. Louis, where we met up with my friend Mandi and her family and spent a day at the zoo - in the rain, no less. Then Brad & Kari came and we all ate at the Spaghetti Factory (yum!) and then Brad, Kari, Brian, and I went to a Cardinals game. It was Brian's first MLB game, and sadly, the Cards got stomped by the Phillies. The score was 20-2, pretty ridiculous. The next day we all went to the arch together, including Mandi and her husband Brad. Yes, we had Mandi and Brad, Kari and Brad, and Kerri and Brian. :) After the arch we went shopping, and then Brad and Kari went home and we went to church with Brad & Mandi the next day, Mandi & I played a piano duet (fun!), and we went out to eat. Then we took off to see my grandmother in Tennessee and finished our trip in Atlanta. Whew. It was a whirlwind.

Did I mention that Mandi and I met on Lifetime Moments? :) I will write more about vacation later and share pictures.

Tonight we're going to see Jesus Christ, Superstar. Brian is taking me for an early birthday present. Life is busy and wonderful.

the lost has been found

That's right, I'm back. It has been so long that I have dreaded the thought of trying to remember everything we've done over the past month or so! I will try to give an adequate update, starting with this past weekend.

On Friday we headed out around lunchtime for Tampa. We visited the Big Cat Rescue and took an awesome tour! It was one of the neatest things we've done in a long time. Below are several pictures that we took of the cats. I was just fascinated, despite the heat. They were so adorable and you could tell many of them were pretty hot, too. One tiger named T.J. even got in his pool to show off for us. It was fabulous!!

After the tour, we went on to St. Petersburg where we spent the rest of the weekend. We stayed in a wonderful bed and breakfast, Inn at the Bay. It was luxurious and relaxing. We spent the weekend doing a whole lot of nothing, and boy did we need that! We've both been working so much and we needed to unwind and recharge. Saturday Brian surprised me with a couples massage that he had arranged earlier. It was heavenly! Sunday afternoon we came home and then met some friends for dinner and a movie, Prince Caspian. It was great! All in all, it was a spectacular weekend.

Some other rather large news is that I resigned from my church. Yes, folks, we are now undergoing the great church search. Although we LOVED Winter Haven and really felt at home there, with gas prices climbing, the hour-one-way drive was getting pretty old. Not to mention that we were gone 7-8 hours every Sunday, meaning that Sunday had turned into another work day. April 27 was my last Sunday and I greatly miss my boys in the band. I'm hoping to still be able to play with them on occasion.

Let's see...my cousin Chris got engaged to his fabulous and amazing girlfriend, Gloria. We love her and we cannot wait for her to be part of the family!! We haven't seen them since they've been engaged, but we hope to get together with them soon for dinner. Maybe we'll try out their church. :)

The first weekend of May we went to Ft. Myers to see my grandparents. They have since gone back to KY, so we were at least able to get in a quick visit before they left. I don't know what I can really publicly say about the visit - I guess I'll say that senility is a very sad thing. Nan and Pops aren't who they used to be. :(

My Kindermusik semester has ended and I have a few weeks off. Summer camps start near the end of June and I already miss the kids, so I'm looking forward to that. The church is renovating my room and I'm SUPER excited about it! Stay tuned for pictures of the demolition and remodeling.

I have 2 days left at the Montessori school and I've already informed them that I won't be back next year. I really enjoyed the people there and the kids too, but my life has just gotten too busy. Health and exercise have taken a back burner and I promised myself I wouldn't let that happen again. I don't want to gain my weight back or let my life get out of control again. So now I only have ONE job, Kindermusik, and I'll be able to focus on my own studio and still have the time and energy to eat well and exercise.

Let's see. I think that's just about all. I'm sure there are more things to tell you about, but I can't think of them right now and I just want to get a post done so you'll all know that we're still alive down here! So, more later.

AND - YAY! DAVID COOK WON! :D

OK, here are the cat pictures. Amazing. I'm ready to go back.

mpm and other updates

Well! Another year has come and gone, and here we are in 2008. Amazing! I managed to gain a few pounds over the holidays, so now it's back to being strict with eating healthy.

Speaking of the holidays, ours were great. We spent some fab time with our families and got lots of fun presents, and I worked lots of Sudokus and Brian played lots of Wii. ;-) We got to see our niece and nephews, and that's always a high point. I helped make a gingerbread house with Brian's mom and Emma - I had never done that before, and it was so fun! I will post pictures eventually, when I can get my act together.

Our trip home from KY took 18.5 hours! We both nearly killed each other, the traffic was so horrid!! And it was pouring rain, and we thought we'd NEVER get home. We've never been so happy to be home! And then, I promptly got sick on New Year's Day. :-( It was just a cold or sinus infection, but I could not believe the amount of snot. (Sorry if that grosses anyone out!) It's really weird to be sick when it's 80 degrees outside! So I wasted a whole week laying around on the couch. I'm FINALLY human again, but still blowing my nose quite a bit!

OK, that's enough complaining! This week I have a few makeup classes to teach and I'm desperately trying to get ahead in studying and preparing for classes. Tomorrow I really need to finalize my schedule, which will mean several emails and phone calls. But...it has to be done. I miss the kids and can't wait for classes to start next week!

So. I've decided to start doing Menu Plan Monday. Dream Dinners has closed, much to our dismay, so I have to start being creative again with our meals. And healthy, too. It's Tuesday though, so I'm late with my menu for this week, but I'll go ahead and post it anyway...and then next Monday I'll be on time for my first real posting.

Monday - Boca Burgers (Brian worked late)
Tuesday - pot roast/carrots/red potatoes
Wednesday - veggie-beef soup made from leftover pot roast
Thursday - Aloha Chicken Kebabs (DD cookbook)
Friday - Pita Pizzas (DD cookbook)

I got Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious cookbook for Christmas, so I'm going to try some of the recipes from that this week! OK, I'm headed to bed now. I'll post recipes and pictures later. Happy New Year, everyone!

night sweats

I really don't have any business blogging right now! I'm going to Tampa tomorrow for the weekend and I haven't even started packing. I'm so excited - I'm going to Ruban Rouge - a very popular scrapbook store - to take some classes taught by none other than Tim Holtz!! We are going to be able to use (and buy!) some of his brand new products that will not be released until December. I'm BEYOND excited!

I'm meeting up with my friend Christy, whom I met at Lifetime Moments. Yes, that's a message board! We're going to just enjoy a girls' weekend and crop the days away! I will post pictures when I get back.

In other news, this whole week I've been experiencing night sweats. WARNING: if you are a guy who thinks girls should just "glisten" or "perspire," stop reading now! (I don't want to ruin the mystique for anyone!) I have woken up in the wee hours every night this week sweating up a storm. Last night I was so hot, I got up and turned the air down, and when I got back in bed, my pillow was soaked and so was the spot where I had been laying before. Gross! With that and the hot flashes I've been having for some time now, I'm wondering what in the world is going on with my body! (Could I be perimenopausal at age 34? Maybe...)

catching up

Well. I've got a few spare minutes to blog while Brian takes a shower and before we watch our nightly episode of King of Queens. So I'll try to quickly catch up!

The rest of the week at my parents' was wonderful and fun. We ate at favorite restaurants, I visited Dad's voice lessons, Mom and I cleaned out closets and dressers and stuff till our little hearts were content. We even got Dad to go through some old stuff and throw things away! AND we found a bunch of slides and had some GREAT laughs - and then we shared them with Nan and Pops in the car on the way to the airport. In Columbus I even got the chance to stop by Archivers, a fabulous scrapbook store. And I only spent $13 in there! Amazing. All in all, it was a great week with Mom and Dad!

I came back home to find that my Kindermusik postcard was in my mailbox! (I mailed out 2500 of them to people in my area, and of course I mailed one to myself.) I literally walked in the door to a ringing phone - everyone else had gotten their postcards that day, too. The phone calls and emails haven't stopped coming since then! Which is great - but boy, am I busy! I've got 8 demo classes set up; my first one is Tuesday. I'm so nervous and excited! I'm going to spend most of the day tomorrow preparing. I'm even going to run through the whole thing with Brian (little does he know that I'm going to give him one of my old Cabbage Patch dolls and say, "Here, this is your kid.") LOL

So, this past Thursday we took off for the condo in Ft. Myers with Tim and Christi in tow. We spent all day Friday there and most of Saturday - we lounged by the pool, went to see "The Bourne Ultimatum," (GREAT movie), ordered pizza, played lots and lots of cards, sat around and talked, ate at the Shrimp Shack, and just relaxed. It was great fun, even if lots of things were not quite right! (I'll save that story for another post - there's just not time!) But, suffice it to say that the "Spider Van" (sung to the tune of the "Spider Man" theme song) is now parked in our driveway! More later. ;-)

Last night we had a long rehearsal at church (we learned some new songs) and then I had to practice quite a bit when I got home. (And then I STILL messed up some this morning during the service, ugh!) So we went to bed really late, got up early, did the church thing, then went to the Sprint store - I needed a new phone and a new phone number. (I had never gotten a local Florida number and hey - I just realized that it was 2 years ago today that we closed on our house in NY!) Anyway, I got the coolest phone, it's RED, (love it), it's called the Upstage. Flip phones and I don't get along, so this phone is perfect for me. :-)

We got home around 3:00 (after fooling around at the Sprint store forever and then going to eat) - and we relaxed for about an hour and then we headed over to the Presbyterian Church to work on my Kindermusik room. We worked there till 8:00, cleaning out things, cleaning up things, vacuuming several times, scrubbing, taking down the bulletin board stuff, covering the bulletin board, and etc. and etc. My wonderful husband vacuumed up all the scary bugs, and then we moved a big shelf and there were some dead lizards under there, and he got rid of those too, while I ran away! LOL They were weird, too - they were like little skeletons. Gross! Then he went all the way around the room and scrubbed the baseboards! We washed windows and I scrubbed the countertop within an inch of its life. When in doubt, use the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. This church is like 100 years old and the room I'm using hasn't really been used for years, and there were all kinds of stains and paint and stuff on it - and I got it completely clean and shining! Brian even washed the mini blinds. That room looks and smells as great as a 100 year old room can.

Have I mentioned that I love my husband? He's fab. He helps me so much and supports me in my new little business. He's the best. :-D

So then we went and ate dinner and then went to the dreaded Walmart. I DESPISE Walmart and this trip did NOTHING to change my opinion. We were there for over an hour and I just needed help with one thing (I needed 6 storage bins and they only had 2, and both of those were broken.) Well, in the course of those 60+ minutes, I asked no less than 4 people to help me, and they all gave me some kind of big sob story about why they couldn't help me. Add this to all the random screaming kids, and parents screaming back at their kids, people dropping store merchandise at least 3 times and making large noises, crazy rednecks pushing their 2-year-olds around while cursing up a blue streak (the rednecks, not the kids, although it won't be long for the kids, I'm sure), the filthy store, the unorganized aisles, the mobs and mobs of people, most of them with B.O., the apathetic employees, and I'm sure more stuff I can't think of right now...........and ugh, you'll easily understand why I DESPISE Walmart. >:-( But, Brian got a Rubik's cube and that made it all better.

So now we're headed to bed. We're exhausted, but we've had a successful day! Tomorrow I'll take my instruments over and get the borders up on my bulletin boards, go to NY&Company and buy some shorts to teach in (they're on sale and they're comfy and long, so they're perfect), and study for the demo class. After Tuesday's class I can release this stress, since I'll be doing the same class 7 more times. Whew. OK, good night!

happy birthday brad!!!!

I'm coming to you live from my parents' house in Kentucky! I arrived in Columbus (Ohio) yesterday and Mom and Dad picked me up from the airport. Then we went to Max & Erma's and met Brad, Kari, and the precious and wonderful Braden. He is just the most amazing thing I've ever seen. He repeats everything you say, but he also just notices every single little thing in the world. If you have the tiniest little cut on your hand, he points to it and says, "Aunt Sis has an ouchie." It's the cutest thing! And he just thinks up funny things to say! Like, he just got all worked up and said, "I NEED some GWWWW-APES!" (grapes, but he doesn't always get the 'r' in there!) LOL Anyway, it was a wonderful time and I wish I could put Braden in my pocket and take him with me. :-)

So today was Brad's birthday and he's 29. Yay! We sang to him last night and Braden thought we were singing to him, of course! So cute. Anyway, happy birthday to my fabulous brother! I hope you enjoy the last year of your twenties!

Today I got up and Mom and I walked around the yard (me in my pajamas, of course) and talked about all her flowers. Then Dad and I went for a long walk in the neighborhood. The weather here is PERFECT. It's my dream weather. If I could live in a place where it was like this every day, I totally would. It's like 76 degrees or something, sunny, with a cool breeze. Perfect for shorts but not really hot.

After the walk we fooled around here and then Mom and I went through some of the clothes in their closets. Then I showered and we had lunch, and we got Dad in on the closet cleaning action. We have a nice big bag for Goodwill and hopefully we'll have more tomorrow. Then Nan and Pops came over for dinner. Mom cooked BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, homemade cornbread (she makes the BEST) and...GREEN BEANS! And not from a can either. The fresh green beans are my FAVORITE EVER and she cooks them in the pressure cooker. Yum!

But the highlight of my day was going to Barbershop practice with my dad tonight. My dad directs the Singing Kernels, the barbershop chorus here in Ashland. They sounded great! I saw more old men wearing shorts with white socks and black shoes than ever before!! HAHA! And one guy had on shorts and dress shoes (like wing tips!) with no socks! LOL But they really did sound wonderful. My dad is a fabulous director and I'm always amused when I watch him with any of his groups. They'll be singing, and I'll think, "Wow, the leads really need to watch the pronunciation of the word heaven." And they'll finish the song and Dad will go, "Leads, careful with the pronunciation of heaven!" LOL We think alike in a lot of ways about music. :-)

While I'm on the subject, I'll just brag on Dad a little more. He also sings lead in the Barons quartet. The Barons won the international championship in their division in 2003. I'm so proud of my dad and proud to be from a family with rich musical heritage. Now I could go into Dad's family and all their musical escapades and adventures, and tell you how his parents met at a singing convention, but I won't. It's late and I'm tired. Anyway, here are the Barons. Dad's on the left in the back, the one with the biggest smile. :-)
After barbershop, we came home and fooled around some more, and then Dad and I played a game of Gin rummy and Mom went to bed. Dad beat me, but I ALMOST made a comeback! But I still didn't win. At one point, he had like 400 points and I had ZERO, and then I scored THREE points, and we had a huge big laugh about that. After the game we talked about how we've always played games (cards, especially) and how it's hard for me to understand when people tell me they didn't grow up playing games! That's just about all we did - we played games and sang a LOT - and I'm so glad. We still spend the holidays playing millions of games (and singing a lot, too!) I love it. I love my family. :-)

adventures in cruising - day six - at sea

This is fun, re-living the cruise! OK, so it's time for day six. This day was not an exciting day. We got up late, had breakfast, then almost immediately had lunch. We sat around the table talking, then we went up to the deck and lounged around in the sun. It was glorious.

Eventually it started getting a bit cloudy, so we went inside to the second floor of the buffet restaurant and played cards until almost 6:00! There was no one else up there and it was so nice to just have the place to ourselves! It was formal night, so we had to go back to our rooms to shower and get all spruced up!We met for dinner in our "formal" attire, and then we walked around the ship for awhile, seeing what all was going on. We ended up, of course, at the disco, and we danced the night away! Here's Alicia and I doing the Electric Slide! Wooo!I'm pretty sure this was the night that there was a deck party, so we went and watched everyone making fools of themselves at midnight on the Lido deck. It was hilarious to watch all those old ladies in the conga line!

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In other news, tonight will begin the birthday weekend. :-) Yes, folks, much as I hate to admit it, tomorrow is my 34th birthday. *sigh* I don't FEEL 34 and I really don't think I LOOK 34, so I'm trying not to let it bother me that I'm headed for 40, full speed ahead.

Anyway, the band is off from church this weekend, so I don't have to go to rehearsal on my birthday, yay! Brian and I are planning a relaxing weekend together - I've been wanting to add shelves to the big bare wall in my scraproom, so Brian is going to put those up for me. I went to Home Depot today and bought them - thanks, Mom and Dad, for the money that contributed to the shelves! And tomorrow night we're going out to eat somewhere - B made reservations, but I don't know where.

And then some sad news: the air conditioner in my car is broken. It's been broken for weeks, but we've been able to share Brian's car. However, every time I have to go anywhere while he's at work, I'm just miserable. It's 500 degrees here, and when I stop at a red light, it's just dead, stale, suffocating, hot air. Ugh! I think we're gonna have to bite the bullet and cough up the big bucks to get it fixed.

That's it for now! I'm going to go clear off the top of my scrap desk and wipe down the new shelves so everything will be all ready when Brian gets home.

Lastly, here's a page I did last night (it's a scraplift, don't go thinking I was all creative and came up with the idea for the cool heart):

adventures in cruising - day five - st. maarten/martin

OK. I'm FINALLY going to post about my most favorite day of our vacation - day five. St. Maarten/Martin was just amazing. The island is the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations. Sint Maarten is Dutch and owned by the Netherlands. St. Martin is French, owned by France, and is part of Europe. It was so cool to be driving along and see the road signs change languages!!

The four of us rented a car so that we could experience the feel of the island on our own. Our boat docked at 8:00 am and we were off the boat as soon as we could get through the line. We headed for the car rental place and were in our car by about 8:30 or so. And we were off.

Here's B by the rental car.













And here's the view from the rental car parking lot! Seriously!

Jason was our driver and Alicia was the navigator, and Brian and I just got to take in the sights. We started out heading northeast and decided to circle around the island and end up back at the cruise ship dock. The Dutch side was fine and all, but we were really excited to get to the French side!

The first place we stopped was Baie Lucas. It was breathtaking, to say the least! I loved that little boat that was tied up here.



From there we drove north and eventually took a side road that gave us some nice views of Orient Bay. We also saw some fabulous colors of what we think was bougainvillea.
Don't you just wanna live in this quaint little house? I do! :-)
Next we headed to Grand Case, which is known as the gastronomic capital of the Caribbean! (That means it has great restaurants!) Sadly, the restaurants were only open at night and it wasn't even lunchtime yet, so we just strolled around and admired the scenery. By this time, we ALL had to go to the bathroom, and this lady who was cleaning one of the restaurants let us use theirs. It had a European toilet, which I had never seen before - two different flushers! Crazy!

Anyway, this little village sits right along a gorgeous beach (imagine that!) and it's pronounced "Grand Koss." Interesting. We were enamored with the pier and this little fisherman who was fishing off the pier using French Bread! LOL! Here are some pictures of Grand Case, all taken by Jason, since the batteries in my camera were dead at the time.



From Grand Case, we started driving toward Marigot, the French capital, where we planned to eat lunch. Along the way, we saw a sign that pointed to Colombier, where there was a watermelon plantation I had read about. We headed down that road. We never did see the watermelon plantation, but we saw some more amazing scenery! We also saw an emu!!

It was SO COOL! It only had 3 toes! It was behind a fence, but we pulled over to the side of the road and we all took way too many pictures of it! When it raised its neck all the way up, it was taller than we were! I think it started getting angry at us, cause it started grunting! Of course, we are all four animal lovers, so we were talking to it and carrying on. It was fun.

We also saw this cool castle or something on top of the hill that was on the other side of the road from the emu. Back in the car, we took off for Marigot. We were STARVED! When we got there, we found a place to park right by the bay. It was gorgeous! So many boats tied up - I didn't get a very good picture of it, but you get the idea. We wandered along the streets of the city, looking for an authentic place to eat. We finally found a cute little corner cafe that we thought looked good! The lady who owned the cafe came over and talked to us and told us about her fresh fruit juices - we each got a fruit juice drink. I got a pineapple, coconut, and mango juice - it was delicious!

For lunch, Brian had what we think was goat! I tried it and it wasn't bad! He LOVED it! I can't remember what J&A ordered, but I got a ham and cheese croissant, of course! What did you expect? I'm still as picky as ever!!
After lunch, we drifted around the narrow streets of Marigot, enjoying the people and the shops. Brian and I got some caramel gelato that was excellent. Have I said yet how hot it was? Good grief, it was nearly unbearable! The city is densely packed with buildings and there was no breeze! But we were okay with it - we knew our next stop was the beach!





By now, we were driving south down the west side of the island. We really wanted to go to Baie Rouge, a little-known, somewhat secluded beach that was said to be wonderful. It was off on a little peninsula. We drove right past the turn off and didn't even know it, but we soon realized we had passed it, so we turned around. This time we saw the sign for the beach and we realized that you could only see the sign if you were coming back that way! Good thing we turned around!

We found a place to park and entered the beach. There were some people there, but they were spread out and it wasn't really crowded at all. We found a nice place in the sand and set our stuff down. I love laying on the beach, especially when I can enjoy the crystal blue water. It didn't take long for us to get in the water, it was so hot. The water was the perfect temperature, not cold at all, but so refreshing! Jason and Brian snorkeled around the beach. We didn't take any pictures at the beach because we didn't want to get sand in the camera.

We stayed at the beach for probably an hour and a half or so, and then we headed back to the cruise dock to complete our circle of the island. We got stuck in traffic near the airport, and when we finally got moving again we realized that they had lifted a drawbridge and let several boats through! We drove past the airport and by that time, we were back on the Dutch side. Brian took this picture through the car window (I love how you can see the shadows of the clouds on the mountains!):We got stuck in traffic again in Philipsburg, the Dutch capital, and for awhile we thought we were going to miss our boat! (Not that I would have minded...) But we made it back and all was well, and we enjoyed some views as we sailed away from the island.


That night, Brian and I skipped dinner. We were exhausted, so we took a nap and then later we all met for a show. I can't remember what else we did that night, but I'm sure it involved a lot of laughing!

*Disclaimer: Many of these pictures were taken by Jason or Alicia.