Monday, September 28, 2009

A new season brings a new look.

I get bored easily. I seem to flitter from one thing to the next nearly all day long. Today I decided my blog was looking like it needed a facelift, so I gave it one. Hope y'all like it!

And speaking of seasons, I hear that a cold front is coming our way this week. OMG. I might just be like a little kid on Christmas morning. I might be able to get back out and run without feeling like the lead blanket is on me. Yay!! I am very excited.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

I promise to show up here more often.

Really, I do. :) I didn't mean to NOT be here for a few weeks. It's one of those "life got in the way" things, I guess. My computer crashed horribly and I was an unhappy camper to put it mildly. Thanks to a friend, it's working again, but it seems to not be happy with me anymore. Hopefully I can suck some more life out of this one for a while since I'm certain the computer gods are not going to plop a MacBook down on my lap anytime soon. Unless I have no other options, I will not, I repeat, will NOT get anything that has the words VISTA attached to it.

Now I'm sure y'all remember my ranting and raving about how much I hate Sprint, right? I still hate them. But I promise I'm not totally full of complaints. No, no no. Let me tell you how much I LOVE Champion sportswear. Yes, I love them. My very favorite running bra had some technical difficulties and I was super sad about it. For the heck of it, I emailed them to let them know what was going on. Next thing I know, I have a check for the total amount that was paid for my beloved running bra. They refunded me, and apologized for the inconvenience. OMG. What was that?!?! Wonderful customer service?!?! Nearly unheard of these days. So I will be going back to the sports store to replace my favorite running bra with the same favorite running bra from Champion. And if you ever need to go get some workout clothes, buy Champion stuff; they rock.

Alex and I celebrated our 9th anniversary on the 16th. Nine years already?! Nothing says anniversary more than having dinner with your husband - and your children. That's right, we all went out to dinner together. See what happens when your fabulous babysitter/oldest child goes off to college?! ;) That's okay, the kids had a great time and it was nice not to have to cook!


Our dates for the evening.


We saw a rainbow on the way to dinner.

After dinner we just made it to the car before the huge storm opened up on us. It poured all the way home and for most of the night.

I finished two more shirts for Kali right before my computer croaked.



Excuse the stabilizer on that one, I had not washed it off before I took the picture.


Just a cute picture of Kali that I took outside. She was using the leaf to clean out the sand from between her toes. :) She's a resourceful kid!


Playing with daddy.

I decided that my pantry was totally out of control, so I had the girls help me take everything out of it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of everything on the floor.

Here it is after we rearranged it and cleaned it all up.










Phew! I was glad to have that done. The only thing not in the pictures are my 4 big buckets that hold all my flour and sugar. Which reminds me, I need to order more sugar soon!

Yesterday we decided to head out to Sea World and Downtown Disney. I do believe it was the hottest dang day of the year. Seriously. The heat and humidity were horrid! Isn't it the END of September? I'm hoping it cools off a bit, soon. I think 88 would be frigid right now!


See how miserable Kali was? We had only been there about 15 minutes at this point. I had to buy her another visor because we could not find the one she usually keeps in the car. So much for not spending any money there! Did I mention the hat closes with velcro? What the heck was I thinking?!?! Yes, the velcro got stuck in her hair and she was oh-so NOT happy about that. Sorry Kali.



This is Manta. Hannah's been on it before, but since her ride-buddy Mary wasn't there, she decided she didn't want to go on it this time.

Manta has a new aquarium attached to it, so we went in there. It was soooo cool!

The Manta Rays swim right over you. It was really neat.




Check out all of those fish!


Look at those crazy fish! What kind of fish are those, anyways?


I think we found Nemo!


We saw some really cool jellyfish, too.


Hannah and Daddy went on Journey to Atlantis. Kali didn't want to go on, so I hung out with her.

By this time it was 10,000 degrees in the shade and we were totally melted. We decided to head back to the car, blast the air, and go eat our lunch. We ended up (where else?!) at Downtown Disney. Yay! It was still 10,000 degrees, but the stores were nice and cold!


I love Buzz.


I told them to pretend that they all like each other.


She's goofy.


They're up to no good!


Yes, I do believe when it's 10,000 degrees outside, you should get in a balloon and go closer to the sun. OMG. They're all crazy people up there.


Aren't they sweet?


I really like this one.

We then hopped on a bus, and went hotel hopping. I'd put up more pictures of that, but my computer is giving me fits at the moment and I don't want to tear the rest of my hair out. I will put a few more up here if I can.

We went to the Grand Floridian, the Contemporary, and the Polynesian. Someday I will stay at the Polynesian.


At the Polynesian.


Getting ready to head back to Downtown Disney and find our car.

Remember my tiki glass issue? Short story was we were at the Polynesian on my birthday and they were totally out of tiki glasses in the gift shop. All I wanted was the darn tiki glass. No one that worked there could hook me up (they have them at the bar) and get me one. I tried the "it's my 40th birthday" thing (hey, it was!) but that didn't work. No tiki glass for this girl.

Until yesterday.

Yay!! My new tiki glass. Which will probably be my new dessert glass (which means I might want a few more of these!) Tonight it was my apple and pineapple glass. When I told Mr. Tiki he was coming home with me...........


he was very happy. :)





Friday, September 11, 2009

Thoughts

I often wonder why I started running.  I'm sure there are many reasons, but I started running because I can.  I can't run very far, I can't run very fast, but I can run.  I run for fun, for stress relief, so I can eat more than I should, and so on, and so on. 

This morning I set out on my run with a few intentions.  My stamina is lagging since I was sick last week; I'm getting that back slowly (just like my running!).  But this morning I ran to remember.  I ran to remember the thousands of people that died 8 years ago.  For those runners who will never run again.  The weekend warriors and the serious athletes.  For the babies that never got to run, and the children that loved to run.  For the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, sons, daughters, and friends who will never run again; run into each others arms to embrace each other.  I ran for them, to remember them, and to honor them.  I didn't run well, I didn't run fast, but I got it done.

Today we will deviate from our normal school day and spend some time talking and remembering.  And hopefully I will continue to run for those who no longer can, and we will always remember.

Monday, September 7, 2009

President's Address to our children.

I'm not getting into the debate on this.  It's stupid, childish, and well, stupid.  ;)  And if you know me at all, you know how much I hate stupid stuff.  Seriously people, get your panties out of a wad and grow up.

'Nuf said.

If you want to watch our President tomorrow, and somehow feel the need to be hanging out on my blog at the same time (y'all need a hobby!) here's how you can do both:



Enjoy.

Go Gators!

Well, after nearly 5 days of being couch bound by an illness that had no name, (though I called it quite a few different things) I finally headed back outside.  I went with Alex and the girls to Gainesville for the yearly first game of the season get together/gathering/excuse to wear cute Gator clothes/hanging out with friends/event.  :)  I nearly didn't make it, but sucked it up and I'm glad I did. 

I ended up taking nearly 325 pictures.  Most of which were just a constant clicking while trying to get pictures of the players.  I promise I will not put all 325 up on here.  In fact, I think I will just tease you guys with one really good picture and put up a link to the photo album with the rest of them (there's about 100 in there). 


There you go.  :)  I cannot believe I was *thisclose* to Tim Tebow.  Damn.

Click on the "View All" button below to see the rest of the pictures.  And enjoy the random weird and silly faces from my kids.  Hannah showed me her eye roll; darn she does that well!



The rest of our weekend has been quiet - so far.  Unfortunately, I seem to have shared my germs with Kali and she is now miserable and sick.  Normally, we really don't interfere with fevers.  It's not that we don't love the girls, (I swear!) but your body kills off all the bad junk in it with a fever.  Fevers are meant to help you, unless they get dangerously high and then you need to do something about it.  But I realized we didn't have anything in the house just in case we needed to bring her fever down, so Alex went over to Walgreens.  It is not easy to find anything without dyes in it, especially at 11pm when the nearest health food store is closed.  Thankfully, Walgreens makes kid's ibuprofen without dyes.  Hopefully we won't need it, but at least we have it. 

I'll just feed her things full of garlic and onion and turn on the Disney channel.  Hmmm.....garlic necklace?!  :) 

(What happened to my format here?  My margins have been chopped in half.  Ack!)

Hope my link for the photo album works!  I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.  It was nice to see everyone in Gainesville again this year; hopefully next year we'll see you all again.  I did hear from Mary later on that night that the Knights won their game, too!