2008.

I've seen this on a few blogs, and it's a great way to sum up a year.

So here we go:

January:

christmas clean-up.
bailey turns 3!
stress at work.

February:
superbowl with friends.

wallpaper fiasco; bathroom redecorated
v-day at home, 3 years since we got engaged!
more work stress.

March:
first beautiful spring day of the year!

and another snow just a couple of days later!
and for good measure, work stress.

April:

I turn officially old.
my amazing husband makes it better with a table runner that is pure happiness and chocolate cake. he's so good. :)
oh yeah, and work stress.

May:

K graduates!

promotion at work. getting paid more makes work a little bit better, but doesn't solve everything. decide to take a chance...

J is done with the semester after lots of hard work done. 1 yr down (or 21 years, depending on how you look at it), 3-4 (or a million, again, depending on how you look at it) to go.

take first vacation day of the year. totally needed. head to NOLA

rock out and celebrate E and J's wedding

on the same day as the wedding, celebrate 5 years together.

June:
married for 2 years. :) still love each other. :)

thank all that is holy, and a very very generous set of parents, that I get to go to PARIS!!
J stays home, but enjoys a baseball game and nachos with the boys.

ups, downs, lots of steps, crepes, art, laughs, shopping, memories in Paris
damn, I miss this.

while in Paris, get offered new job (at home, not in Paris). make decision via lots of emails and motherly advice. excellent choice.
start new job, thank lucky stars for June.

July:
add a new member to our family.
Bailey considers running away from home.

August:
even though she's trouble, she's freakin adorable
we still love you too, bud.
J goes back to school.
thrilled with new job.

September:

generous parents take us to Mizzou for some fun

get soaked, but have a great time. see new J school.
visit the site of our first CoMo "date," first time J has been back since it burned down and was rebuilt. ahhh memories.

October:
lake shopping trip.
travel for work.
J has a birthday.

he reminds us how old he is (and shows of a new gift). not 30!
btw, I'm an awesome wife. just look at that face. :)
go to Chicago for conference, see sibs, spend Halloween in Chi-town.

November:

yes we can!
travel to Chicago again, this time with ines.
mecca.
and they even have breakfast. and we know this b/c we went twice. in less than 24 hours.
turkey day in Cleveland. Grandpa turns 90!
Rosie eats a starfish.

December:

dogs love each other. fight like siblings, but snuggle too. relieved that we didn't ruin Bailey's life.
bake ~11 batches of cookies in the month of December. most on one Saturday alone. forget to take picture of massive baking mess.
get Rosie to wear a bow. lasts less than a minute.

see family and friends, home and across the country. feel lots of love.

market, layoffs, gas prices. it's all scary, even more so at the end of the year.
feel blessed to have each other, and a pretty great life.
here's to a great 2008, and an even better 2009.

for my momma

Hi.

Yep, I'm back. :) It's been a little busy lately. And I love blogging, but the crap-ass laptop I currently have makes it take a good hour and a half to post. And when I get to use J's desktop (technically it's "ours"), I have pressing things to accomplish before he steals it back. Something about "papers" and "grading papers" and "doing well in school," or something like that. The nerve. ;) (really, he offers it up all the time, but I don't want to keep him from that stuff.)

All 2 of you can thank my mother for saying at Thanksgiving: "Why don't you update your blog anymore? I keep going to read it and there's nothing. I really liked reading it!" Leave it to good old mom-guilt. ;)

So, here's the bullet rundown of our life since, oh, like September or so (save the one election post):

• lots of school. J's doing great-- presented at a couple of conferences this fall, and we have REALLY REALLY exciting conferences to go to next year. THRILLED.
  
• still loving my new(er) job. (It's been 6 months, so not so new anymore.) a little scared about the economy, but my company has never had layoffs before. let's pray now isn't when they decide to start. for now, all is very very well.
• Rosie gets in trouble every 5 minutes, but we love her and couldn't imagine life without her. She recently got spayed and scared the crap out of all of us when she ate a starfish. She's doing okay now, though, so no harm no foul. That girl sure knows how to get into trouble, but she's equally good at being a sweet little lump of love. It's hard to stay mad at her for long.
• Bailey is great, loving having a sister, still getting lots of love without her jumping in his face. He's such a sweetie.
• I traveled all over in October and November: the lake to shop with mom + sis, Chicago for J's conference and spend time with the sibs, Chicago for an IKEA run! with the ine/ene/eens, to the west coast for work, to OH-IO for turkey day weekend (after actual turkey day with my family). That was a whole lot of running.
• J turned 29. pictures will follow. he hates that I like to remind him he's in his 30th year. :)
• tree is up, lights going up this weekend, planning an all-day shopping blitz to start/finish our shopping tomorrow.
  
• Thrilled about all-day shopping tomorrow b/c after the lake + downtown Chicago shopping + IKEA... well. Any of you that know me can guess that was a bit much. So I've been shopping free for about a month. I'm ready to go all-out tomorrow, all for other people. :) SO FUN!!!

That's all I've got for now... I'll try to do a big picture post soon to catch up...
J

Things I adore...

Okay, Mo, I'm giving you a shout out right back ... :)

I've become an avid blog reader. Something about reading about others lives is really interesting to me. And, after some of the worlds longest days at work talking and answering questions, all I want to do is relax and NOT talk. :) A good sit on the couch, watching the news, and reading my blogs is sometimes exactly what I need.

My addiction began by clicking the little "Next Blog >>" link at the top of the page. (See, it's up there... try it out sometime) What I found is another story for another day, but needless to say, the web of links from one blog to another has left me with a nice little "blogroll" that I check each week. When I would finally find the time to sit down and check them all, I would click on each link, wait for the page to load, and see if there was an update. Sometimes that took forever because people have these massive templates or a million slideshows, etc. and wait for 5 minutes while it loaded, only to find no new post.

I was talking about this with my friend Maureen, who introduced me to this lovely tool:

Google Reader

Anyone with a G*mail account/G*ogle ID/whatever they call it can create one-- if you look at the top of your G*mail page, you'll see a normal blue link to it. All you have to do is go in, load your links, and with one little click each day, it pulls the RSS feeds for you and you can view the updates in the viewing pane on the right. How freakin cool is that? It makes my blog reading much more enjoyable and keeps my old as heck computer from freezing up. LOVE IT.

The only thing I'm still trying to figure out is that for some of the blogs I follow, it only pulls up a piece of the text, and there's no way (that I can figure out) to see it all without having to open the blog in a new window... If anyone has that figured out, let me know. :) Still, very very worthwhile.


Function: A- (when I learn how to see the whole post, it gets an A+)
Form: whatever... it's simple like all Google stuff, and I like that. Too many of these things are way too flashy... A
Price: uh, it's free, which totally gives it an A+

The frog prince and Superbowl!

Last weekend was a busy one for us! I spent Saturday with two of my most favorite people, Colene and Maureen. We had a great time at lunch and then spent a few hours shopping. It was great to see you girls! :) Colene and I picked Maureen up, which gave us the opportunity to see Miss Madeline, and for me to give her a little something I got back in November (yikes! We have to make sure it's not that long before we see each other again!) Click here to see Maddy and the frog that led Mom, M and me on a bit of a chase through Ikea. :) He was well worth the hunt!

Friday night, Saturday morning, and spare moments between these two events were spent working on our little project... (see post below)

On Sunday, we had Paul, Brian, and Tara over for the Superbowl. It was great to see Paul (it's been way too long since he was in town last!) and was the first time we got to meet Tara. We all had a great time, complete with a Giants win! (Not that it really mattered to most of us, but I asked J when the game started who we were rooting for, and he informed me that we were rooting AGAINST the Patriots. Guess he's still holding a grudge from XXXVI. :) And yes, I had to look that up...)

What's a Superbowl party without themed dessert covered in football and helmet shaped sprinkles?
Paul and Bailey hanging out before the game

Unfortunately, when the game began we forgot about the camera, so I don't have any pictures of Brian, Tara, or the rest of the food. :) So much fun guys! Can't wait to have Paul back in town again, and maybe next time McKenna can meet Bailey! :)