Tagged

Okay, so I thought this was a fun tag. You are to take photos of the following places right now WITHOUT CLEANING UP first. It has been a really busy day, so my house is not tip-top right now. I don't generally keep a pristine house, but this is a bit worse than usual.

1. Dream vacation- Costa Rica. I just want to go there. From what I here it has a great pristine beauty. The motto of the country, I think, is something like la Vida Pura (the pure life), hopefully I'm remembering that right.

2. Self portrait- here's me in all my crooked smile glory.

3. What are your kids doing right now? It is way too late at night, so my kids are asleep. Luckily the flash did not wake them up. Yes, Cole is sleeping with a Xylophone and Juliet is sleeping in her diaper and a winter hat. They are kooky kids.


3. Your closet- nothing too exciting here folks. I do like to store my off-season clothes in those bags that let you suck out all the air.

4. Your favorite room- I think mine is probably my living room. It's looking pretty messy in this picture.

My favorite shoes- A beat up pair of Easy Spirit sandals. They are comfy without being too clunky.

My laundry room- It is in the unfinished portion of the basement, so it is surrounded by storage.

My second bathroom- Yep, pretty boring. I think I definitely need to put some more stuff up on the walls.

My kitchen sink- I have actually done the dishes. I usually wash the big pans by hand and put them in the left-hand side to dry.


My fridge- Outside, full of magnets and important papers that I usually realize are still up there 3 months after I needed them. Inside, I think there is only one fudge bar left in that whole gigantic box.

Okay, I tag anyone that will do this. Please do it, because it satisfies my voyeuristic need to know what is REALLY going on in other people's homes.

Fun in the water!

The kids love to play in Grandpa and Grandma's back yard.

Awesome cooking internet site!

Okay, this is an AWESOME internet site. You enter in all of the ingredients that you have in your pantry, freezer, fridge, spice cabinet, etc... and it tells you all of the recipes that you can make.
The site is supercook.com and I am totally in love with it. It has a huge database of recipes that it has pretty much slurped from various online recipe sites. Another cool thing is that it automatically factors in some possible substitutions, so if you enter in ground turkey it will also give you ground beef recipes, etc... I just started entering in the things I could think of and I had something like 2000 possible recipes, and that was mostly just the staples that I have around the house. What a great resource for meal planning and saving money. If you register for an account (free) it will save your list of ingredients and you can quickly add and take away items as needed. Just thought I'd pass it on.

Franklin Park Conservatory and Juliet's Date with Mommy and Daddy....

We took Juliet on a special date yesterday. Michael's was having a couple of free crafts for kids to do, so we took Juliet. Here we are wandering around the store afterwards. We also had to make a trip to Whole Foods afterwards, which has to be one of the coolest places ever to wander around in. It was fun to have a date with both of us and just Juliet.




Later we went to Franklin Park Conservatory. What a gorgeous place. Charles had some free tickets as part of his prize package from Pepsi's Give Me the Mike. Our family friend Loretta also had some plants on a special exhibit so we checked that out. All of these pictures were take on Charles cell phone. They are mostly of Juliet who happened to be hanging out with use when we remembered to take some pictures. Charles got a lot of good poses and smiles from Juliet, he is a lot more demanding photographer than I am.

What Happens When...

This is what happens at dinner time when Juliet hasn't taken her nap....


Note the piece of Spaghetti hanging out of the side of her mouth.

This is what happens when Cole just doesn't feel like eating more either....


This is what happens when Juliet gets into Mom's make-up....

Note the scary exaggerated eyebrows.

On to Highbanks...

We love Highbanks Park. The feeling you have of suddenly stepping away from the developed suburbs and finding yourself not just among trees but in the woods. The trees are beautiful, and the name of the park delivers with inarguably high banks. Here are some pictures of our Memorial Day frolic in the woods. I was pretty sick that day, and Charles was at home in bed, feeling very sick indeed. The favorite activities at Highbanks are running down the trail as fast as possible and then being carried back, walking down to the water and throwing rocks in, and throwing little dried leaves through the wooden slats of the bridge to watch them float down to the water.

Burger King

What can you say about Burger King, it's right by our house, and cheap. Nutritious food...not really, but you get a free crown. We go only occasionally. Here we are eating a festive lunch before heading off to Highbanks on Memorial Day.