back!

I'm bummed.

Andrew cannot get Blogger to do what I had wanted it to do.   We tried everything, included exporting the entire blog to WordPress,  but no dice.   The only way we can figure out how to get my blog to look the way I want it to look would cost me $80 a year.   $80 spread over a year isn't a huge drop in the bucket, but I'm just not willing to spend money on my free blog. 

Ah well. 

But I'm back and regular posting will commence!!

Tomorrow is my Baby Girl's last day of summer vacation.   Most people we know are back in school already so we've had a quiet week.  Tomorrow is one more playdate at our favorite park and a haircut and that will wrap it up!  We had so much fun and per usual I ugly cried when we packed up a summer's worth of clothes/gear/bags/sand/toys and headed over the canal for the last time.

Now we're ready for fall and pumpkin spice coffee!

beach bums

Summer is winding down (it's taken a lot of self medicating for me to be able to say that without hyperventilating) and if there is one word to sum up Summer 2013,  it's BEACH!  We spent so much time there,  some of us actually got sick of it. 

Tonight we traveled over to the other end of town to go to a different beach for a picnic dinner.  The kids had fun.   Andrew and I wondered why we didn't get the memo that people bring fancy appetizers and wine to beach picnic dinners.   Oh, the things to look forward to when our kids are grown!

Pictures from our dinner beach trip. 

I'm feeling hot hot hot!

And I love it! 

The one downside to summer babies (of which I have two) is that I cannot enjoy the heat and all the summer fun the way I want to. A few  I stayed home while the rest of my family went on a boat ride and ended up over to the Vineyard.  Today, instead of being at the beach, I am inside in the AC while I watch the world have fun in the sun.

Next year, child - we will be at the beach every second of every heat wave!   Even though in my experience 1 year olds don't love the beach.  He'll have to adapt quickly.

I made this Pioneer Woman pasta salad recipe this past weekend.    I didn't have any parsely though,  so I skipped that step.  I didn't miss it. I enjoy pasta salad that does NOT have a mayo based dressing,  and this one was ab fab!  One does get a little sick of the Italian dressing after awhile,  but I admit I had my doubts about lemon juice and oil  (oh,  I don't every have EVOO in the house.  waste. of. money.  I used regular and it was fine).   I should learn never to doubt the Pioneer Woman though.   And she didn't even put butter in this recipe!
I forgot to put it in a bowl before transporting it to the party,  so it ended up being served in a meat marinator (this one -you know, the one that everyone and literally their mother has)

Nothing says class like serving pasta salad in a container that's designated for raw meat. 

eek!

Football starts tonight, which means I have my first panic about my fantasy team... who do I start,  Ryan Grant or Felix Jones?  I went back and forth and ultimately went with Ryan Grant which was my plan all along.

I don't know if I am up to this kind of pressure.   What if I lose?  What if starting Felix Jones would have made all the difference?  WHAT IF I DON'T WIN A SINGLE GAME ALL SEASON?

I need some wine.

 In other news, I had a heartbreaking conversation with my daughter tonight:

Baby Girl:  We go down the cape soon?
Mama: No sweetie, we're not going down the cape this weekend
Baby Girl:  We go down the cape later?
Mama:  no, sweetie.  Not later either
Baby Girl:  We go to the Ought Cub?  (yacht club)
Mama:  No baby,  the yacht club is closed
Baby Girl:  WHY MAMA??

Oh, if only I knew why summer had to come to such a quick end.  

happy summer

These pictures are courtesy of my mother-in-law who is not afraid of bringing her camera to the beach.




The kid loves the beach and the pool. We're trying to get her into swimming lessons this fall, but it's really hard to find Saturday morning lessons, and even harder to get a spot in the ones that do exist. I don't understand why working parents aren't allowed to do fun classes with their children... but that is another rant for another time.

here we go

Tomorrow morning I have to get up, catch a bus, and wait for few hours to run a race. I don't know if I am ready or not, but it's tomorrow so there's not a whole lot that I can do about it now.

I'm not nervous, I'm just kind of dreading it. I wish it was over - or that I was running it with someone else so I don't have 3 hours of alone time tomorrow morning. Well, alone time with 10,000 of my closest friends.

bleh.

In other news, I have been to the beach 5 times in the past 6 days. Fabulous. I love summer! Also, I've just about run out of sunblock - I guess that means it's time to go back to cubeland and waste away in the fluorescent lights. Meh. I really need to work on becoming independently wealthy.

chugga chugga choo choo!

yeah. There's a "choo choo" episode of Dora on right now.

Come on, Vamanos!

I gave in and let Baby Girl watch ONE episode of Dora. (Don't tell my mother that the TV is on during daylight hours. She may disown me). I told myself it was because BG hasn't been feeling great lately and this is a nice thing to do for her. But in reality I'm letting her do it because the opportunity of sitting on the couch directly in front of the AC sounded way too good to pass up.

I'm a good mother though. Really.

It's really hot. as in REALLY HOT. Hotter than the northern most edges of the arctic circle in which I reside normally gets. And tomorrow it's going to be even more hot. Fun. My little AC can barely handle these temperatures.

BUT I LOVE THEM!!! HEAT!!! SUN!!!!!

Yes, I sit in a cube 9 hours a day, but it's an air conditioned cube!

I'm here!

I haven't gone anywhere. My time, however, has disappeared. I can't believe we are in the middle of July already. I had been waiting for so long for my vacation the week of the 4th and now it's July 18th and summer is half over. I don't understand where time goes. Except during the work day - I'm pretty sure time is moving backwards during those hours.

We need a new computer. It's gotten past "want" and "would be nice to have" and "wow, this computer is really slow" and even "huh... I wonder why it takes 20 minutes for Firefox to load". It turns 6 years old this September, which is pretty old for a laptop. When I got it in 2005, it was state of the art. Now in 2011, it barely turns on - though that may be more of an issue with the thousand of pictures stored on the hard drive and less a function of an old computer. I'm thinking about suggesting to Andrew that we get a decent middle of the road computer (though Andrew and I have very different notions of what a middle of the road computer is) for Christmas as a present to ourselves.

I really want a MacBook Pro. I have a feeling we will end up with some sort of HP notebook. But hey, as long as facebook loads.

Speaking of which... facebook doesn't load on my iPhone anymore. Granted I have a 3G that is 3 years old, but shouldn't it still load? It crashes, won't update, and freezes all.the.time. It just doesn't work anymore and I don't know what to do. Well I know what to do, but Andrew wants to wait for the iPhone 4 to come out, so I can't get a new one for a few more months. Any ideas for the meantime?

back

That was a much needed vacation! Now it's back to real life - or it will be tomorrow when I go home, but today is just a regular Saturday on the cape. We did everything this week - tooled around on the Vineyard on our very overpriced Jeep rental, went to the beach, went out to lunch, out to breakfast, played in the yard, took naps in the hammock, and went in the pool a lot.

Now I'm broke and heading back to work. Vacation coming to an end is such a downer!

It's a grand old flag

Per usual (at least for this year) today is cloudy, a smidge bit foggy, and in the low 70's in Olde Cape Cod.

In the past 48 hours I have gone to the beach, gone in the pool twice, gone to Smitty's, read my book the hammock, eaten practically every meal from the grill, and forgot to reapply my sunblock. I've been avoiding the yacht club so I don't spend any more money, but other than that I've pretty much done everything there is to do and I can go home now.

The weather isn't cooperating to give us a super 4th, but in the immortal, but very overused words of Dave Matthew's Band..

celebrate we will because life is short, but sweet for certain

4th of July Family Picture, 2008

Happy June!

New month, new picture. This photo was taken down in the Outer Banks last year. I want to go back, hence the picture. I looked up condo rentals in Carolla - we can't go this year, but possible sometime in the future...

So, it's June. We're almost halfway through 2011. It's been a very long winter and a cold and wet spring, and I am ready for some warm and sunny weather!

June also means I have 2.5 months to get ready for Falmouth Road Race. I can now consistently run 2.4 miles, which I don't think is that bad considering I only started this crazy ride on April 24th. I could barely run for 60 seconds back then.

However my accomplishments don't seem like much when I still need to be able to run 7.2 miles by August 14th. I have 2.5 months to train to run another 4.8 miles. eeek! What was I thinking?

Of course Andrew (who started c25k about 2 weeks after I did) can already run further than I can. He also runs faster, but at this point I'm not worried about speed, I need to focus on distance first. If I can't do it in the time allotted, that will be next year's goal. I just want to be able to run the 7.2 miles this year.

God help me!

flashback

I cleared off the memory card of my little point and shoot camera, so my parents can take it with them on vacation. I found a bunch of pictures from right before BG's birth and when she was a teeny baby!

Here's my baby girl!

me and my baby. She has dark hair and I have blond hair. Somehow that got reversed in the past 21 months....

Baby Girl, about 2 days after we came home from the hospital!

hello! I'm a funny looking infant!

someone tell my mama that I'm not ready for pigtails! (also, give her the FYI on focusing the camera....)

These aren't right after she was born, I believe they are right before she turned 1. This was her first trip to the beach. She didn't really like it, but by the end of the summer she was a beach fanatatic! Also, I got a horrible burn on my back that day. It still hurts when I think about it.

hot hot hot!

Ahhh, heat and humidity. How I miss you during those long cold winter months. How I loathe and despise you when you are here. I'm learning that I'm actually much more of a spring and fall girl than a summer girl.

Heat never bothered me when I was younger. I suppose that's due in large part to the fact that I sailed all summer long and there was usually a breeze out on the water on those hazy humid days. And if there wasn't... well cooling off was as far away as jumping off the boat. But now that I'm an adult and don't even live in a town near the water (don't worry South Shore - I'm coming back as soon as this housing market turns around. I fully expect to be there by the time my baby is in high school), the heat and humidity is tough.

Yesterday my baby girl turned one. Can someone please explain to me where that year went? Where did my little 6 pound, 13 ounce baby go? She's now 22.9 pounds. And she was 19 inches long when she was born. She's 29 inches now!!! How is it humanly possible to grow 10 inches in a single year?

Random aside - I got a pedicure today and every single woman there had a DD iced coffee except me. I had planned on getting mine after I was finished. As soon as I walked in, I clearly knew how wrong that decision was, but it was too late. I don't think I've ever wanted a DD iced coffee as much as I did during my pedicure. They should deliver!

love that dirty water...

But it's clean now! WHOO HOO! I was even able to give my girl a bath tonight, rinse the dirty dishes, wash my hands after I touched raw chicken, and Andrew was able to clean the stove. Things I never thought I'd ever be able to go again! (until the water was fixed)

This past weekend I took el bebe outside to play on the grass a few times. Playing outside is something she just doesn't get to do very often. Sure she goes outside almost every day - but she's always in a stroller. I wanted her to get some sitting in the grass playing time.
She wasn't a huge fan. To be fair, the surfaces she normally crawls on are hard, and not soft and squishy like a back lawn. Introducing her to the beach may be an adventure!

aaahhh.... what is going on?

hmmm.... maybe this grass is nummy! num num num

Maybe if I hug Mama's flip flop she will take me inside!!

bittersweet

8 months and 21 until Memorial Day weekend. But who's counting?

After we packed up a summer's worth of stuff into our cars, I drove away from the cape with an extremely heavy heart. I hate when summer ends, and I was glad we had two cars last night because I was crying for most of the trip home. So was Baby Girl, though she could have cared less that we were leaving the cape for the summer. She was more interested in when I was going to get her out of the damn car! She hates the car at night.

Unfortunately, we are back to reality. I go back to work a week from today. We're going to Keene next weekend. No more beach trips, no more boat trips, no more Betsy's trips, no more pool days...

But, life goes on. The Patriots start in a week, apple scented candles will make their appearance soon in my house, skiing season is around the corner (I can't imagine I'll get out on the slopes too much, but I'm hoping for at least a day or two!), and how long a wait is 8 months and 21 days? It can't be that bad, can it?

mea culpa

I hope you'll forgive me for rushing through August and putting up September's photo a few days early. But seeing as most of you didn't like the big pink flower anyway, I think I will be forgiven. We are packing up and heading home tomorrow and my regular posting will resume after that. I got to the beach 3 times, Andrew golfed twice, I made it to the Vineyard to the Black Dog and Andrew and Baby Girl went to Betsy's for breakfast once. I'd say it was a pretty good week off. And if tropical storm Danny hadn't shown up today, I'm guessing there would have been one more beach trip and one more round of golf. But we may have to wait until Labor Day weekend for that!

Summer Daze

beach!

I heart my flip flops.

mmm.... more beach!

hubs in the pool

Molly's car for the pool. I wouldn't say she loves it, per se

Essential pool accessories

Pete, flapping in the wind

another last

I've finished my last summer semester of my grad school career. And I'm so very happy about that! Not so happy that summer is almost over, but I have to take the bad with the good.


I'm also very excited to be on vacation as of 4:51 tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait! 10 whole days off! And we're actually going somewhere! When we sadly had to put the brakes on SoCal, I figured we'd spend the week in Falmouth. That would have been a fun week, but I had been looking forward to GOING somewhere! But thanks to the magic of Marriott reward points and free attractions in D.C., we can actually afford to go! Now our Marriott points are used up, so no more free vacations - but this one will be worth it. I should be at home packing and getting ready (must remember social security card.... must remember social security card..... MUST REMEMBER SOCIAL SECURITY CARD!!!) but I'm in Quincy trying to finish up laundry. Then I have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off to get all our travel sized items. I hate this stupid 3oz rule. I know we could avoid it by checking our luggage, but somewhere along the way we decided it would be easier to not check luggage. I'm not sure I realized that would mean me running around on my Last Flex of the Summer trying to get all this stuff done. Vacations are a lot easier when someone else does all this work!

It's the end of the world as we know it

Okay, maybe not. But it is almost the end of summer, and to me there's not much of a difference. I have another week of work, and then next week is my annual Week Off From Work. I'm very excited. I'm more excited that as time of publication, in 9 months, 1 week, and 5 days I won't be forced to take the last week of summer as my vacation. In fact, I could take 2 weeks off from work if I want! The possibilities are endless, really.

Anywho, back to present day. I'm very excited to be on vacation, but I am NOT excited that it is the last week of summer. That just sucks. I do enjoy fall weather, but I like summer weather better, and the fall weather means winter is just around the corner. I only tolerate winter for skiing, but those endlessly long months are painful. It's just a long dark cold monotonous mess. And it's only 4 months away!

But I still have 2 weeks of summer and I need to keep reminding myself about things I like about fall/ winter

* the smell of the air in fall
* sweater season! (chubby girls love sweater season!)
* TV shows come back on
* apple scented candles
* back to school ads STOP playing
* the 1st snow of the season (as long as I don't have to drive in it)
* PATRIOTS!!!! (and my favorite facebook group - The Patriots Beat You Because You Suck, so Get Over It!)
* the first skiing run of the day when I've managed to get up early enough to ski the corduroy.

But today? Today I'm going to the beach.

the taste of her cherry chapstick

I've been watching West Wing season 4 every spare second I have since last Saturday. It's bittersweet for me. Season 4 is The Great Sam Seaborn Departure. And when he leaves, he isn't to been seen again until Josh goes to collect him again in the last episode. That's just a tragedy. At least this isn't The Unbelievable Toby Ziegler Falling From Grace Season. We still have a solid two seasons until Toby goes criz-nazy.

Alright, well seeing as most people don't have the love of West Wing that I do, you're probably pretty bored by now. We'll switch topics - but I reserve the right to wax poetical about Josh Lyman at any time I see fit.

But now I will pose the question - where did July go? I know summers fly by, but for some reason I feel like this is the fastest summer I have ever had. Tomorrow is August 1st. I can't quite comprehend that. The only good part of summer moving quickly is that every day that passes is one day closer my graduation. (9 months and 4 weeks!) But we still have a month before it's all over, so I guess I will just enjoy it as long as I can!