wrap it up

I want to apologize to my regular readers, all three of you, for my posting gap. Next week is the last week of school and I have been frantically getting all my crap done.

Yesterday was our 5th wedding anniversary! I was thinking about our kick-ass wedding all day and then I wanted to eat doughnuts. Jeff arranged for us to have a super fancy dinner at the Ritz Carlton, which was superb. It was all swanky and full of rich old people and we had like 4 waiters or something. It was delicioso! I had a bowl of french onion soup that was the best soup I have ever eaten. Ever. I had beef tenderloin with truffle potatoes and crispy onions with Bearnaise sauce. Obviously, it wasn't a light meal. I only ate about half and one of our waiters asked if I wanted it boxed (of course) and then proceeded to pile all the other plates and silverware on said plate. Right on top of my food that was supposed to be put in a fancy little to go box. She walked into the back and came back with a bag and handed it to me. I looked inside and there was a plastic container with my piece of meat in it. That was it. No potatoes or onions, just the hunk of meat. DAMN YOU LADY! Then they brought us some kind of molton lava cake for our anniversary that was a work of art. The chocolate thing had little Santa's printed on it and they wrote "Happy Anniversary"on the plate with chocolate syrup. I'm easily impressed, I know.

Prior to that, I was at school for this sew-a-thon that the PR class I'm in put on for a non-profit organization. I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to go and since it fell on my anniversary, I didn't have to stay the whole time and I was actually kinda proud that it turned out as well as it did. We have some MAJOR tension within our group and I was skeptical the claws would go in long enough to get it done but it all came together in the end and everyone managed to get along. Ahhh....


I'm off to do homework (on Friday afternoon. NERD ALERT) and then I'm putting up my new Christmas tree. I'm sorry, holiday tree. It's white and Jeff refuses to call it a Christmas tree because it isn't green so he has deemed it the holiday tree. Whatever. It's going up today.

Happy Friday.

The spaceships were dropping german shepherds

This is why I don't sleep. I just woke up from a dream that we were being invaded by aliens so we were trapped in some big house and none of the toilets worked and my sister was watching the alien updates on CNN and I was making out with Randy Quaid. Not Dennis, the hot one, but cousin Eddie.

Maybe it was the grilled cheese at 10pm.

ouch

Yeesh. Today is super crappy out, raining and cold but not cold enough to snow, just cold enough to make the rain really miserable and I had a rough morning at school, and blah, blah, blah. I had a project due today that I spent the better part of Sunday working on, got it mounted and ready to go, only to get to school and find out that my instructor has food poisoning and is out. Great. THEN, my illustration teacher, who had been "helping" with said project came in and he wanted to see them. I was THE ONLY person who actually had the project done and ready to go but when he came over to see it, he told me that it was "unpleasant to look at". Now, I'm certainly not the world's greatest artist and it was supposed to be a photo comp for an advertisement so it wasn't supposed to be photo-realistic but it wasn't THAT bad for chrissakes. JEEZ. He acted as though the sight of it would send you into a seizure or make you go hysterically blind or something. I was already having a bad morning because I was either wide-awake or having extreme nightmares involving Madonna (???) so I got no sleep. AND I was cooking dinner last night and had VERY HOT oil splash out of the pan on me, which by this morning looks like I have sprouted a second head on my arm. The oil was so hot it ate through my kitchen rug. I was so mad at the chicken that I didn't even eat it. I had a bowl of cheerios instead because they're safer.

I really just want to crawl back into bed but I have cake class tonight so I must persevere.

Thank you whoever invented elastic

Aaahhhh.....it's Sunday. I don't normally post on Sunday but it's been a long weekend so consider yourself lucky. Thanksgiving was a success and no one ended up with food poisoning so that's always good. Our holiday group has dwindled down to just 8 of us, which is weird because when I was a kid there would be tons of relatives coming out of the woodwork but now it's just us. My dad went down to Georgia (along with the devil, apparently) to visit my stepmom's family and Jeff went to his brother's house, so they didn't get to bask in the glory of my turkey. Actually it was a turkey breast and it wasn't even my recipe and there was no glory but just go with it. Aside from the small group, it was a pretty normal Thanksgiving. I ate WAYYYY too much and then I ate even more so then I had to put on sweatpants which is never a good sign because after the sweatpants feel tight, where do you go? Nude? I don't think the guests would have liked to have seen that. No one needs to see that, really.

After stuffing myself and passing out cold, I was jarred awake by my sister at 4:20 am who had decided that we would all go shopping on Black Friday. She and Jeff decided that they wanted to buy Nintendo Wii's. They couldn't have done this in say, June or something, when there were plenty to be had. No, they decided they needed one the day after Thanksgiving and you know what? A MILLION OTHER PEOPLE WANTED THEM TOO. AT 4AM. GLORIOUS! We went out in the freezing cold with really bad hair to stand in line at American Electronics or whatever to have them tell us, after standing in yet another line WITHIN THE STORE (WTF?) that they only got like 3 Wii's and clearly we were too late. Fantastic. We left and opted to go to a game store a few strip malls down to see if we would fare better there. There was a small line but nothing crazy so we decided to give it a go. We stood there for an hour or so, only to be told that they had 20 Wii's and we were the 22nd person in line. Are you serious game store worker? Really? Yes, I am totally serious. I felt bad for us but I felt worse for the lady in front of us who was number 21. Suck. The best part was when the line for Target, which is at the complete opposite end of the plaza, surpassed our own line. I think they must have been giving away artificial hearts or something because it's freaking Target and while Target is pretty awesome, it's still just TARGET. I was pretty bored at this point and Jeff was freezing so we left defeated. We got home at 6:30 and I promptly passed out on the couch while my sister got online and overpaid for a Wii on ebay. She just HAD to have it because it was now a MISSION. We all pretty much stayed horizontal for the rest of the day and found some really bad TV to watch and ate leftovers. Isn't it weird how when you lay around all day, you end up being MORE tired than if you had gotten up and done stuff? Bizarre.

Anyway, that was our big excitement for the weekend but I'm most excited that it's officially Christmas time, which is my FAVORITE time of the year and now I can listen to awful cheesy Christmas music until my ears fall off and eat bad things like sausage cheese dip and drink lots of bloody mary's with only a small amount of guilt. It's a good time for me.

Don't roll your eyes

Well, Thanksgiving is upon us yet again, so I want to take this opportunity to thank the people in my life that have helped make me a happier person. The last year brought me extreme heartache with the loss of my granny, who was the constant positive force in my life since my birth, it brought challenges with school and our house project and it brought a lot of happiness with our decision to adopt. I know this is totally CHEESY and not in a good way like how pizza can be overly cheesy, but in a Lifetime movie kind of way but who cares it's my blog so DEAL. Here's my list of what I'm thankful for:

-my husband, first and foremost, for always being there for me even when I'm difficult (I know, it's hard to believe, but I can be) and for being my #1 fan. This is our 5th year of marriage and I still consider myself the luckiest girl in the world for having him in my life. Having Jeff for my husband proves to me that true love DOES exist and I'm grateful everyday that I found it. I love you, baby.

-my family, who at times are challenging themselves, but who are also there for me in the good and the bad. As we've gone through all our trials and tribulations in trying to have a child, the main thing I have learned is how important it is to have a family who loves you for who you are. We aren't perfect but I have no doubt that if I fall, they'll be there to catch me.

-my best girlfriends, who have shown me how you don't have to be related to feel like family. You guys are like my sisters and I thank you for always being my support crew. Life sucks a lot and we've all had obstacles to overcome but it's easier to handle when you have friends like you.

- my teachers and friends from school, who have welcomed me, challenged me and shown me that I can do way more than I think I can. It took me a long time to finally go to college and it has been terrifying at times but they've made it an easier pill to swallow. I finally feel like I can call myself an artist without looking like an ass and they've been instrumental in that.

ENOUGH! That's my list. I won't be posting tomorrow because I'll be too busy stuffing mah belly with food so I wish you all a super awesome Thanksgiving.

Ch-ch-check it out

Whoa, this is a late post. I had to battle the grocery store after class and it took for-evah, even though I only bought 6 things, because I had a slooow checker. He had very little interest in ringing up my grocery items in a timely fashion. I swear, no matter what store I'm in, I will ALWAYS get in the worst line. I'm serious, it's all the time. I'm trying reverse psychology on myself now and trying to pick lines that look really slow and crowded but it doesn't seem to really work that well. AND the "express" lane now allows 20 items so that's no better. What the hell? 20 items is not express, that's half a cart full and it requires a regular line, people. Then when I was leaving I got behind a woman who had about 15 helium balloons in a big bag and she could barely get them through the doors so I had to wait for her to get them under control. sheesh. I though she was going to be trapped between the automatic doors forever.

Fondant class #1 went pretty well last night. Fondant is pretty much edible clay so it was fun to squish around and play with. This class is more hardcore than the other classes because we have professionals in there with us. There's a whole table of ladies who own/work in a cake supply shop and another woman who owns a cookie company. We still had a few ladies from the last class and unfortunately one of them was the irritating one. Well, one of the irritating ones. She came in about 20 minutes late and instead of quietly taking a seat, she burst in yapping about how she's late and blah, blah, blah and then she proceeded to say hello to anyone she recognized LOUDLY. All of this would have been fine except that our instructor was IN THE MIDDLE of lecturing and she just totally interrupted her. She is grating. She pulled the same crap she did last time and had to interject her stupid comments every 5 minutes. Maybe I'm just crabby but what the hell is with these people? They are so rude and they think they're all funny and sarcastic but they just look like idiots. They also complained abut how much work was involved in decorating a cake. Um, yeah there is, dumbass. You probably should have figured that out by this point. I think they just want an excuse to get out of the house and away from their kids because that's all they talk about. whatever. Fondant is FUN and I'm excited to learn anyway. You can't break me, lady!

It makes nice flooring, though

We made a decent amount of progress on the remaining bits left to do in the kitchen this weekend. I got most of the backsplash tiled and as soon as the bar top goes in, I can finish wrapping the tiles around the whole countertop. I think that once that is done and we tile the bar top, WE ARE DONE! So let's see, I think back in February I had proclaimed that the house would be done by early summer and it's now almost December and we are still short of being done. I think I was a little off. I think I was still naive back then and didn't realize that every project takes about 3 times longer than you think it will. Dumb. Here's the kitchen as of today:

The glass tile turned out really nice. I was resistant at first because I was afraid it would be too much but now that it's in, I'm happy with it. And it's sparkly so that's a bonus.

Jeff spent most of the day Saturday "taking the yard back" as he put it. We have a weirdo neighbor who thought it would be a great idea to plant bamboo all over his yard but he didn't bother to actually research the bamboo he was planting and it is the kind that spreads like a plague. That means that over the last few summers, we have had our yard totally invaded by HIS bamboo and it has made quite a mess. Most of the grass is dead as well as our entire herb garden. The stalks come up wherever they please, like the MIDDLE OF MY YARD, and running them over with the mower doesn't help and when they are still little, you are constantly tripping over them. It had gotten so thick this year that we had lost half the yard and you can't walk through it, so it wins. Damn you BAMBOO! I was always expecting the vietcong to poke through at any moment. Anyway, Jeff popped a cap in it and ripped everything out. It looks so much better despite the fact that we have giant patches of dirt where the grass used to be. We should have thrown all the crap Jeff dug out over the fence so he could have it back but we are nice.

Tonight is my first fondant class and I'm really excited. I've been sketching out a bunch of cake ideas so I hope it doesn't go badly and my dreams are squashed forever. I also hope the class isn't as irritating as last time. That's a lot to hope for.

Goodbye Cracky

Today's post was going to be about my horrible morning at school and how I found out about 30 seconds before class was over that the project I have spent the last 3 weeks working on is WRONG and how I was so mad that I almost went BLIND and how I now have to start over and redesign the whole thing. I was also going to throw in a note to instructors everywhere that when you give students an assignment, it's probably a good idea to actually give them all of the information they need to do it instead of spending all your time and energy making sure you look cool. Of course, I am speaking of NO ONE IN PARTICULAR. I was going to finish by expressing my fears about having spent all this time going back to school and working my ass off only to then go out in to the workplace and deal with people who are all smug and think they're better than all of humanity which is as appealing to me as pulling out my own eyeballs.
With a fork.

Instead, I'm going to focus on my brand spankin' new windshield that I just had installed. It sure is clear. I'll miss you cracky, but I'm sure the highway gods will see to it that an errant rock heads my way soon.

iRule

One of the benefits of being in art school is that when you have downtime, there's lots of crap laying around to play with. Today, my friend and I found ourselves in class with nothing to do so we made ourselves iPhones out of foamcore. She had already made herself a foam iTouch, but I told her she deserved more, thus the iPhone was built. Nice, eh?


I need to practice looking all smug and hip now. I should also buy a Prius.

I've been kicking around the idea of getting myself a Mac laptop, since it's what I'll eventually be working on in a job and it's what I work on every day at school. Our PC is fine for internet crapola and such but my design programs work so much better on a Mac. Unfortunately, they're pretty expensive so I'm not exactly running out today to buy one. Foamcore however, is not, especially when you find it on the floor. Thus, my new Macbook Pro:


Nothing like the internet, a printer, old foamcore and a glue stick. Viola. It's pretty sweet and the first picture totally looks like it's on.

Artsy Fartsy

I fancy myself a bit of a painter from time to time and my work usually revolves around abstract color studies or some kind of weird shape or something. I currently have a small series of art pieces that revolve around slang terms and pop culture references and how the innocent word or phrase can be made offensive. As I have stated before, I am a fan of offensive art (to a point) so it isn't a negative take on it, more of a tongue in cheek type of thing. I also like big art. Like REALLY big art that takes up a whole wall. Which is odd because as I also mentioned before, I have an abnormal obsession with things that are ridiculously small. For instance, we were at Home Depot the other night and when we walked in there were these boxes with a sign that said "miniature tools $1.99". SOLD! I came home with a itty bitty pair of pliers. For what purpose you ask? I have no idea but that isn't the point. I'm also a big fan of airline bottles of liquor and those squatty little bottles of condiments that you get at hotels.

Anyway, back to my story about how I like big art. I am usually broke and don't have a lot of cash to spend on big canvases and such so I have, to this point, created paintings and stuff that are about 24" max. I'm also way too lazy to stretch my own canvas so I'm a slave to the man. I had a job at an art supply store last year and learned that they have a big sale every year and you can buy canvases in quantity for a HUGE discount. Jeff was all "go get gigantic canvases" and I did, but the biggest I got was about 36" X 48". Big, but not super big. Then I hit the motherload. My friend Sam had acquired a HUGE canvas and had no place to put it in his apartment and sold it to me for $50. This canvas would have sold for WAY more in the store but Sam is a peach and didn't even want me to pay for it but I insisted. Well, I was so excited and had the perfect place to put it and was all jacked up to paint on it. The problem is that I haven't been able to. Well that's not true. I have painted on it 4 times now and nothing is working. I think that I'm so obsessed with making it something spectacular because it's so big that I freeze up. It now sits in my basement with my last attempts scrawled on it, taunting me to try again. This freaking thing haunts me! I have since painted several other smaller pieces that I am perfectly happy with but I can't seem to get it right on the monster. It is perplexing to me. I'm giving it another go this week because the plan is for it to hang in my fancy new dining room and at this rate the room will be done before the stupid painting.

Sweeeeeeeet

Thar she blows! I finally finished the cake. The cake plate is messy and I should have run it through photoshop and cleaned it up but I'm lazy so just avert your eyes. Here's another one:

I have to say that I'm pretty proud of how it turned out even though it's a bit crooked but what else is new. We really only get one chance in class to practice any one technique and it's up to the student to practice at home, which I didn't really get to do. My mom's cake turned out nice despite my teasing and her cake was the only one in class that actually looked similar to the cake on our workbook. She worked really hard on it and I wish I had a picture to post but trust me that it was really pretty. I think that only a few other people actually finished their cakes out. Class was nice and relaxed because the obnoxious few didn't come and the ladies that were there turned out to be nice, which is good because I think almost the whole class will be in our fondant class next week. There is one woman who makes it VERY CLEAR that she wants to do this for a living and acts all smug about it and she's the only one left that irritates me. I know it shouldn't, but it does because every time our instructor talks about a technique or a product, she ALWAYS has to chime in about how she's already tried it or that she already used it on a cake or blah, blah, blah. Just shut up already. WE KNOW. Her cake was nice but it didn't blow my skirt up SO THERE lady! Oh well, she'll probably become some world famous cake decorator while I'm ringing up copies at Kinko's.

UPDATE: Yes, that is me holding the cake and I am indeed wearing pumpkin pie pants.

Thar she blows! I finally finished the cake. The cake plate is messy and I should have run it through photoshop and cleaned it up but I'm lazy so just avert your eyes. Here's another one:

It leans a little

It's go time for my cake. I went with a 6" round 4-layer cake, yellow with chocolate icing. I baked 8" rounds but wanted to test out my carving skills so I carved it down to a 6". It came out okay but I went in freehand so it's kinda off. Whatever. I also went to town on some new flowers. I'm pretty much sick of this cake now and just want to finish it. I start fondant class next week and I'm pretty convinced that therein lies my future. I already have my fabulous new career in cake decorating all worked out in my head and I am totally disregarding the fact that I have no experience and moderately limited skills but I just have this itch in my head that this could be "it". I've been searching for "it" for a long time now and so far all my ventures have failed but I keep plugging along like an idiot still hoping that something works out. We'll see. I'm sure the other ladies will have very elaborately decorated cakes since they are so highly skilled and then I'll come home all dejected and threaten to quit but then I'll see an awesome cake somewhere and then I get all jazzed again and the cycle continues.

I'll post pics of my cake tomorrow. Good, bad or ugly.

at least I got sweet parking

As I have mentioned in the past, I am a disorganized individual. I actually manage to get quite a bit done in a day, but my attention span is short and I am easily distracted so I go in circles alot AND I have a terrible memory so it's really a wonder of science that I can even operate a pair of pants. Anyway, this leads to my morning. Jeff gets up earlier than I do and I usually just sleep right through it but today I was up with him and I was being slowly pushed out of my side of the bed by two ninja shih-tzu's, so I decided to just get up and get on with it. I had roughly 45 extra minutes on top of the hour I normally have and yet at 8:45, when I needed to be in my car, I was still trying to decide between the black shirt or the green shirt. What the hell is my problem? Needless to say, I pulled in to the parking lot right when my class was supposed to start. I was quickly distracted by the fact that the parking lot was almost empty. I started panicking and was all "is today a holiday and I don't know it?" so I pulled into a spot to gather myself but then I remembered that I am a dumbass and today is Thursday which means that my class starts at 9:30, not 9. I have been in school now for 12 weeks and I still can't keep this straight. I thought about going back home but for what, so I decided to get some administrative crap done for my schedule next semester. For some ungodly reason, I had to go through advising to get my schedule finalized before they will give me my loan money which is RIDICULOUS because advising is a cesspool of mismanagement. They give wrong information and tell you to take classes that you can't use. Anyway, the secretary or whatever she does told me I had to fill out some giant form so I did and then she directed me to room J to talk to the advisor. I went to room J and no one was in it. There was an office across from it and I could hear 2 ladies having a loud conversation about stuffing so I positioned myself so they could see me out the door. After about a second, this lady barges out of that office, past me and into room J. I started to go in after her and this transpired:

room J lady: " Did they send you here? What room did they tell you? Room J? 'Cause THIS is room J and they didn't tell me they were sending you back? WHO TOLD YOU TO COME HERE?"

me: "The lady out there told me to come to room J"

room J lady: "What lady? Out front, that lady? DAMN, I'm gonna go out there and TELL them that they need to NOTIFY me when they send someone back. This is registration time and I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS"

me: (silence because I fear for my life)

room J lady: "How can someone have the SAME job for this long and NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT? I don't understand. I tell her to NOTIFY ME when she sends someone. RETAIN SOMETHING FOR GOD'S SAKE!"

me: " do you want me to leave?"

room J lady (looking puzzled): "What? Why? Oh no, this isn't about you. You know what I mean? YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

No, room J lady, I do not know what you mean. I was frightened of this woman. Then she wanted my class printout and when I asked her where I would get that from, she was like "WHAT?!!!! They give it to you BEFORE they send you here. DAMN." At this point I was going to make a break for it before she morphed into a chupacabra and ate my head but then she just started laughing and saying "you know" over and over so I figured the threat had passed.

shutter bug

Here are my flowers from class the other night. They aren't masterpieces but I'm pretty happy with them. I'm going to make more on Sunday and they'll all be clustered on top of the cake. Jeff was so kind as to set up a tripod to take this so it wouldn't be all blurry. Thanks, babe.

Jeff is quite the amateur photog. I'm not sure if anyone knows that. I'm the worst photographer which is sad because I'm good at picking imagery for projects and stuff and I know very specifically what I like but i can't actually do it to save my life. If it weren't for Jeff we would have to pass on all our riveting life stories verbally because there would be no visual record. I usually take one picture of something and hope it looks alright which it never does. Jeff will take like 10 and they all usually look really good. I rarely even remember to bring the camera for chrissake. Anyway, he takes some really nice pics so today's post is a "Tribute to the Amateur Photography of Jeff."

Let Them Eat Cake

I had cake class last night. The women have calmed down a bit with their banter but now we have a guy that is more annoying than all of the ladies combined. He already works in a bakery and said he took the class just to learn the rose. Trust me, the rose is HARD. I guess he feels such a sense of superiority over us non-bakers that he constantly makes loud comments and sits there with his GIANT tub of icing from work and makes roses over and over. He also has a wonky eye so I don't know where to look when he talks to me. Class went well on the whole and I'm prepared to make our super finale cake next week. It's some kind of flower basket in cake form. As usual, my mom struggled with her flowers. She got out a few good ones but by the time she got it down we had moved on to something else. Bless her heart. At one point she was making some flower and it had gone so awry that I could do nothing but sit there and laugh uncontrollably but I didn't want to make a lot of noise and that made it worse so then I had tears streaming down my face. Like I said before, she's good at the baking and I'm good at the decorating. It's a perfect partnership. The best part was in the parking lot after class because we already look like sherpa's with all the crap we have to lug and we had our flowers in these flower former things and a gust of wind came and blew half of them off. My mom was so distraught to lose her 3 flowers that she was going to pick them up off the asphalt. I had to bat her hand away with my foot because she was going for it even though it landed ICING SIDE DOWN. That almost made me pee my pants.

I'll post a picture of my cake next week. Unless it looks like crap in which case we'll forget this ever happened.

Giant Hamster Ball

Good Monday to you. This was the first weekend in ages that I actually felt like I had a weekend. Thank you sweet gods of time for giving us an extra hour. Ahhhhhh...so relaxing.



Not really. We did a lot of house stuff this weekend. Jeff went all Mrs. Doubtfire and went on a cleaning spree through the whole house. I'm certainly not complaining because he cleans better than I do and he got rid of all the crap that had accumulated from the renovation. I spent the better part of the weekend making curtains for the living room windows. I still have a frustrated interior designer living inside me. They look pretty rad but I have to make some adjustments because I just eyeball stuff and they're about 8" too long. I wish I were more organized and precise but I'm just not and I've come to accept that everything I make has a certain percentage of wonk in it and I'm totally fine with that. I love those groovy looking George Nelson ball clocks from the 60's but they're like $500 so I decided to make my own. I knew going in that there was just no way that I could get all the spindles evenly spaced so I decided to alternate them. It still didn't matter because some of my holes were off and the dowels all sat in the holes differently and then the hols I drilled in the balls weren't straight either. I decided to keep going and make the best of it so I now have the wonkiest Nelson tribute clock on my wall in the history of tribute clocks.

I took the picture from a more flattering angle but trust, it's totally off. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with this conversation........oh yeah, I'm disorganized.

Tonight is cake class again. Next week is our final class where we make our big fancy cake. I'm excited because I've done pretty well on my flowers. Nevertheless, my mom and I are cheating at this point. Her skills on the pastry bag aren't really, um, that great, so I'm "helping" her with her flowers. I figured I'll make her bake my cakes for next week so it all evens out. The more frustrated I get in school the more I want to open a cake shop and make awesome cakes all day. I could be a graphic designer/cake lady/kids book author. Hey, I could illustrate a children's book through the magic of CAKE DECORATION! That would rule.

Trick or Treat

Jeff and I went to my sister's house last night to hand out Halloween candy. We handed out candy in our neighborhood once, but we only got one trick-or-treater and he was about 19 and should have had a job to buy his own candy. The thing is that I love to give out candy. I love the little costumes and the power that a big bowl of fun-size Snickers has over the children. Thus we travel 30 minutes away to the middle of suburbia to spread the Halloween cheer. Most of the kids were really cute and I saw an impressively large number of pirates. Three boys came dressed as "party boys" and they kinda looked like K-Fed crossed with Zac Ephron. How is that a costume? Anyway, two little boys, Batman and his sidekick "wrestler/ninja-guy (I'm still not sure)", thought it would be okay to repeat our house as if we wouldn't remember. Um, it's one per customer AND if you're going to be a sneaky repeat, maybe carry a larger bucket as I had to place the new candy on top of the PREVIOUS one. I let it go in the spirit of giving, but I didn't wish them a happy Halloween and I hope their teefs rot.


When we got home, there was a package on the front steps. It was kinda big and I thought maybe someone had sent me a gift. Wouldn't that be nice to come home and have a random gift waiting for you? Anyway, it wasn't a gift per se, but it was our Adoption Process Guidebook. Bask in its glory and its size:



That's one big book. Sorry for the blur in the first one but the flash kept reflecting off the cover so I turned it off and it all went awry after that. There is an overwhelming amount of information in there and much of it is legal jargon that I don't understand. yikes. It's pretty cool though because it's REALLY HAPPENING NOW!


On another note......

I meant to post this on Monday but I forgot. My mom has a new dog and she brought her by on Saturday to visit her cousins. Her name is Gracie and she's super cute and has enough energy to run a medium-sized city. Here she is:

My dogs, however, prefer to spend as much time barely conscious as possible. They don't quite know what to do with this bundle of energy when she comes over and quite frankly, they don't care to deal with her. Since they can't talk, I'll let their expressions speak for them:

Clearly they're thrilled.