Coming to a sofa near you.

Not really.  Unless, you know, you’re at my house.  Which, if you’re my friend, you can totally do.  Any time.  Just call ahead of time so I can make sure everyone is wearing pants when you arrive.  You would not believe the number of times we’ve had someone drop by and someone had to race back to put on pants.  And it’s not always the same someone….sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s Andy.

Wait.  I wasn’t talking about pants.  Was that too much?  Probably.  Sorry, mom.  I bet you thought you taught me better than that, huh?

I was talking about sofas.  And pillows.  I remember now.

Our living room is undergoing a bit of a transformation.  Pretty minor, really.  But a bit of a lightening up.  And adding of some textural interest.  I don’t really know that that means anything, but it sounded good, right? 

For the last several years, the brown and turquoise combination has been what has made my palms sweaty and knees weak (that, and Andy Cook).  And I still love it.  But there’s a new sheriff in this town.

So, the house accessories are undergoing a bit of a transformation.  I’m getting smarter.  I’m making sure all of our big pieces are neutral, and then I can change in bits and pieces as we go. 

So….some of the pieces of this transformation include this entertainment center

These pillows

 

And these placemats/napkins that will go around some pillow inserts that used to be in our bedroom and are currently chilling out in storage.  I got the genius idea for the placemats and napkins as pillows from this blog when I realized I totally had unused pillows lying around, and that the napkins were like 4 dollars and a whole new pillow would be 20.  Hello savings!

We also have this lamp to enter into the mix.

The curtains are just white VIVAN panels from IKEA, and we have some bamboo matchstick blinds (I’m totally obsessed with these….want them in every room) to hang.

And I would love to get two of these shelves one tall, one short ( but maybe white to try to lighten up the room?) to try to slip into corners for extra storage….especially with the KASSETT DVD boxes that are made to fit in these shelves to hold our movie collection out of sight, but not out of mind.  Our movies could go on the bottom shelves and  I could decorate the top.  Sounds perfect, yes?  I just need to run to Cincinnati real quick like………..:)

Here’s everyone all together-like.  I’m thinking white frames on the walls…..with some various art pieces/photos around the room. 

What do you think?

Not a moving or a cruisin….

So there are two things I need to write about.  My haircut and my car accident.  I don’t love my haircut right now…and the color is really bothering me, so I’m going to save that for a day or two.  In  hopes that the magic shower water will magically make it fade to an appropriate color.

So instead, I’ll tell you about my car.

Two weekends ago, after Mandy’s baby shower, I rear ended someone.  Quite seriously after the baby shower…I pulled out of the church parking lot, looked to make sure the piece of cake I was bringing home after much coercion (side note—I hate cake.  I think it’s disgusting and I never like eating it.  I always fake it, but really, I just don’t like it at all) wasn’t getting all over my car, failed to notice the van in front of me was turning left to go to Taco Bell, and bumped right into the back of him.  My front bumper fell off, his van was scratched.  After much cussing and screaming (him) and crying (me), the police came and took the accident report and we went on our merry way.  Another side note, the police officer who did the accident report later in that very day caught a criminal who was on the America’s Most Wanted list.  I like to think that I helped a little, you know, keeping him alert and all. 

Oh, I kid.

We went through the insurance process, he attempted to claim more damage than I had caused, was shot down, and eventually came to the point where my car could go to the beauty parlor and make herself pretty again.  We took her there on Monday.  They thought she’d be ready in a week.

They called today.  Apparently, they can’t get the parts for my car until Friday.  The parts are coming from Louisville.  That’s an hour away.  She ordered them on Monday.  It is taking five full business days to get parts from Louisville.  Ridic.

With that said, my car won’t be ready until next Thursday.  I start meetings and teacher days for school that following Monday.  Which means that I have from Thursday when I get my car back until Sunday night to get my classroom ready for this school year.  And did I mention that they turn the air off Friday-Monday?

That’s just fantastic.

In the meantime, Oliver and I are at home.  Trying to do as much school stuff as I can without being in the school. 

Goody Two Shoes

I have some important clothing needs before the new school year starts.  Pants.  Shoes.  I don’t really have either.  I sort of wore out the old.  So I have been bargain hunting online, and tonight I solved one of my problems.  I bought a new pair of black and a new pair of brown dress shoes for the new school year.  Here they are:

And the best part:

I sure do love a good bargain.  Check out 6pm.com –that’s where I scored my super sweet deals.  You can guarantee I’ll be checking their website!

For our future children

Dear Future Children,

We aren’t currently expecting you, so your grandma can go ahead and get that out of her system.  Or it might be your grandpa.  It’s definitely your aunt Lauren.  It just so happens that approximately 73% of the wombs I know are currently carrying or have recently carried offspring, so that leads me to think about things like this.

Important things.

Things like your future wardrobes.  You see, I’m fairly opinionated.  I know this will be a shock to you future children, since you’ll always see me as lovely and perfect and wonderfully sweet.  But there are a lot of things I don’t like.  A lot of things that typically go along with babies.  Things like pastels.  Things like ooogly googly baby cute .  Baby blue.  Little girl pale pink.  That weird poopy shade of green.  Any form of pastel anything.  And, my future babes, some of this will make your loving mommy throw the heck up in her mouth.  If you are a future son, I apologize in advance for not covering every inch of your tiny future hiney in baby blue pastel.  But mama loves you so much, she just doesn’t want to vom all over you.  To our maybe future princess, I promise you’ll get your pink chances, but a girl needs some variety in her wardrobe.  I’d rather mix it up with some brighter pink—and especially with lots of different colors.

To our maybe little prince, I’d really like to dress you like a mini version of your daddy.  Because he’s my special boyfriend, and I think he looks oh-so-fab when he wears the clothes I pick out—so of course you will too.  You can have twin day—it’ll be awesome.  I would love very much for you to be like your dad.  He’s kind of a rockstar.  You’ll think so too.  I just know it. 

For our sweet princess—sweetheart, I’ll be doing you a favor.  Trust me.  Pink ruffles are so 1980.  You’ll love what mommy picks out….or you’ll get really good at faking it. 

So, my future kidlets, here’s a bit of what I have picked out for you based on the current selection from Old Navy and Baby Gap.  And let’s just be completely honest—the little boy’s section of Baby GAP made a little piece of me die inside.  It was too perfect for words.  And your daddy liked it too…..

 

Sweet Dinner Date

Andy and I went on a dinner date tonight—to a nice place in our very own town.   I hardly knew such a thing existed!

We went to the 605 Grille that is located downtown.  It doesn’t actually have a sign, but the building is painted bright pink, so it’s hard to miss.

When we got there, we were the only people there.  (It was early…we eat at old people early times sometimes) and we got to take in the restaurant.  It was fairly small, but sweet.  It was very neutral, but in an interesting way.  I quickly recognized several decoration pieces that came from my favorite Swedish home store (or as I told Andy—my happy place).

The menu itself was fairly small—only one page front and back.  The front had appetizers and the salads.  All of the lettuces were locally grown and organic.  They make all of their salad dressings.  The restaurant is only open for the evening meal on Wednesday-Saturday and our waitress told us that the prep work for all of the salad dressings takes almost a whole day each week.  Andy and I both had the house salad with ranch and I could have cried it tasted so good.  The lettuce was a mesclun mix which we had EVERYWHERE on our honeymoon in Maine, but you rarely find in Indiana.  And the ranch was so perfect.  I wanted to lift up my little container and LICK IT OUT, but I refrained. 

They also have a pretty cool beer menu (the wine list looked nice too).  All but one of the beers was brewed in Indiana (the last was from Kalamazoo, MI).  There are only microbrews on tap.  None of the big names.  Andy had something, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it.  Except that it was good at first, then really bitter.

Our food was really awesome too!  Andy got their 605 burger, which was made with locally grown grass-fed beef and he had his topped the Monterey Jack.  There was a ton of cheese on it….I didn’t get a bite before he plowed through it, but he said it was excellent.  I had the lemon-thyme chicken with coq au vin sauce.  It was SO GOOD.  The flavors were excellent and the chicken was perfect.  I loved the sauce.  My green beans tasted like they had been grilled rather than sauteed and they had a really unique flavor.  And my mashed potatoes were awesome.  Especially mixed with a little of the sauce from the chicken.  I have had a serious craving for mashed potatoes recently (like all this year, really) and these really hit the spot.

All in all, we had a sweet little date in a nice spot that didn’t feel like it was actually in our town.  I think we’ll definitely go back!

Oliver wants everyone to know

That he is in love with “The Office.”

He watched a rerun tonight, and he’s hooked.

His favorite line came after one character had injured his scr*t*m and another asked him this:

“Would you like my sweater?  I thought the wood might be too hard for your damaged p*n*s.”

Oh, we howled over that.

Quite literally for one of us.

What can I say?  Ollie has potty humor.  He gets it honestly.  Have you seen his dad lately?

Mandy’s Baby Shower

This past Sunday, I had the honor of cothrowing a baby shower for my friend Mandy.  She is our youth/music pastor’s wife at church, and Rebekah and I threw a Dr. Seuss shower for her.  I think it turned out fairly sweet, and the whole shower itself was a lot of fun.  Here are a few pictures from the shower (I didn’t get any after we finished games…I was too busy corralling gifts to take pictures of any of them)

The Decorations

The awesome cake made by one of the members of our church

Drawing a picture of Andy, Mandy, and the new baby on the top of your head—From the perspective of one watching the games, they were stinking hilarious :)

 

Checking to see who guessed the correct length for Mandy’s stomach—nearly everyone guessed WAY TOO LARGE…like offensively too large :)

And my personal favorite---the cotton ball game.  Everyone had to close their eyes and only use one hand and try to spoon as many cotton balls from the large bowl to their individual bowl in 30 seconds.  There were cotton balls EVERYWHERE!

There were also gifts and food….but somehow I missed getting those pictures.

Thedore….in June

So..I definitely just uploaded pictures from my camera for the first time since June. 

Here’s Theodore in early-mid June :)  It was the first time I had seen him since he was just a few days old and he was HUGE!

Shannon—I’ll get you all of them sometime this week :)

Oliver’s Summer

Just chilling with my dad.

Laying on my mom’s head…I do this some nights in bed

Being cute!

Snuggling!

Being sweet and bad and goofy

Relaxing!

Telling my peeps I need to go to the bathroom

Aunt Lauren is my twin!

How DID I get to be so sweet?

Trying to escape at my grandparents house

Crying because I can’t.

Sad face on

Short Summer

I have three weeks of summer left.  I am not supposed to start until August 11, and that’s only supposed to be a half day.  But that’s not going to work out this year.  I have to go to meetings on the 9th and 10th because I am coteaching a class this year.  And I have work a full day on the 11th because of the grant I’m involved in.

So there are only three weeks of summer left.  In those three weeks I need to….

--finish purging the rest of the house

--go to the Goodwill as many times as it takes to get rid of the stuff we’re getting rid of

--replace all of the dress pants that made me look like I had male parts

--replace the dress shoes that were worn through the toes

--finish my project for school….I only have about 35 more hours of work

--get my room together

--get my plans in order for the beginning of the year

--go school shopping

--work on some new organizational systems (for home and school)

Somewhere in there I’d like to do something fun.  That’s the one thing that’s really been missing this summer.  This has been the shortest summer…and I feel like every second of it has been filled with something.  I really just want some time to be home…to do fun stuff…to relax..and to enjoy myself.

I think I’m going to take this morning and go read.  I can’t have the whole day—the house is still in various states of disarray because Andy and I cleaned out the extra bedrooms (we took 4 garbage bags of clothes to the Goodwill…and had 5 HUGE bags of trash between the two of us) and that left some goofy stuff in random places….and I have some last minute things to do for the baby shower I am c0hosting tomorrow (I can’t wait to show those pictures).

Change of Plans

We were supposed to be leaving tonight for vacation.  Andy, Lauren, Ollie the dog and I were going to head to Florida for the week to stay with our Aunt Cris.  The last several weeks had left us all sort of halfheartedly planning our trip because there was a sneaking suspicion we wouldn’t be going.  None of us voiced it, but all of us felt it.

That suspicion came true.  Since Memorial Day weekend, my dad’s older brother, my Uncle Dick, has been in the hospital.  He was extremely ill, and the last six weeks had been difficult for him, for his wife, and for the family in general.  My parents have been at the hospital endlessly, trying to help, to offer support, to just be there.  To be family.  Others have been there, too.  Many others.  Because that’s the kind of family I grew up in.  The type of family that shows up, that offers support, that bears one another’s burdens in a mighty way.

Yesterday, my uncle passed away.  After six difficult weeks, he has gone home to be with the Lord.  So we are going home, to be with our family.  Because that’s where we belong.

Through this difficult summer, I’ve realized something.  My family is unique.  Everyone’s family is unique, but I’ve discovered what makes mine special to me.  For me, it’s all about the relationship.  I knew my grandparents.  I know my cousins.  I know my aunts and uncles.  I had real relationships with them.  We weren’t a see each other once or twice a year family, we were a real, honest to goodness close family.  And I loved it.  I could see cousins from all different sides of the family often.  And I did.  I knew each of my dad’s siblings and all of their kids.  They were my friends.  Or sometimes my enemies.  It depends on what day or year it was.

But our family was close.  I attribute a lot of that to my parents.  Because they are the type of people who show up.  Who do anything for the people they love, and even the people they hardly know.  They were incredible examples to Lauren and I.  I want to support my sister the way my parents have supported their families.  I think back to countless times that I have seen my dad work quietly in the background to take care of things, to help people.  I watch my mom work herself to exhaustion making sure that everyone else is taken care of.  And I love them for it.  I can’t count the number of times that my dad has been there for his nieces and nephews—the phone calls, the conversations, the support.  All of it.  I am always amazed when the whole family is gathered to see how many of them turn to my dad.  My quiet, sweet dad. 

So as we go home to celebrate my uncle’s life, it will be hard.  It will be sad.  I type this with tears in my eyes, knowing the pain that we are all experiencing, the pain that lies ahead.  At the same time, though, I am hopeful.  Hopeful that this will be another time for our special family to bond, to come together, and to carry one another’s burdens.