Day 122 ~ Something old something new...

Lyndsay and I went to Chuck E. Cheese again (yep, last I checked I'm still 23, don't judge!)  and this time we actually got pizza!  It smelled so tempting last time but we didn't get it and have been craving it since... so we got it tonight... thats's my something old since I haven't gotten it in years! Definitely ranks in my top 5 pizzas ever!

And for my something new...

Just before going to meet Lyndsay... I stopped in to the new Dick's Sporting Goods store we have right next door to Chuck E. Cheese to see if I could find myself some new shoes since I didn't want to go barefoot on Exceed again!  I was about to walk out empty handed when I caught these out of the corner of my eye :)  I love them mostly because they arent from a lost and found (though my pair from the Chi-Chis lost and found 6 years ago I'm pretty sure I will keep forever) and they arent crappy old from the thrift store! 

Day 121 ~ Oh the joys of winter!

If there is one thing that I love about winter most, it would be this...

The  parts of my car I need to see out of covered completely in frost! :) :) :)

NOT!!! Me and winter are not friends when this happens!

Day 120 (Sunday November 28th) Getting lazy??

Apparently we think so ;)  I'm starting to get lazy with putting my pictures up on their actual days and Ramona isn't being very encouraging about the whole thing!!!  Thanks for the motivation kitty cat!

Day 119 ~ With the Band...

I went with my brother, David, and my sister Suzanne tonight to a dance hosted by their Venture Crew... Suzanne and I love dancing <3  Our other brother, Andrew and his band were also going to be playing there and since I hadn't heard them play live yet, I was really excited to go!  His band was really good!!!  My friend Lyndsay's brother, Carlton is in the band as well and their cousin, Olivia came with him.  We three girls had so much fun dancing like crazy all night!  These are some pictures from the night!

This is the band "Chasing Bliss" and those of us who were "with the band"  Josh is on the left end, he's their third band member... my brother David, Olivia, me, Suzanne, Andrew's girlfriend Stephanie, then Andrew and Carlton!

The Girls... Me, Olivia, and Suzanne <3

And then check this out... a rare photo of the four of us :)  I'm not sure why we don't line up the other way from oldest to youngest, but this seems to be how we do it when it happens... Me, Andrew, Dave, and Suzanne!  I actually kinda like those boys ;)  More so, I like the four of us together and I'm really happy we all went out to support Andrew and that the trhee of us who were not in the band had a good time together tonight!

Day 118 ~ Shoprite has awesome mini bananas :)

Not that other places don't sell these I'm sure... but today was the first time that I've been in our new Shoprite, that half the usual Food Lion employees went to, and this was the first exciting thing I saw there... the store is HUGE!!!!

Day 117 ~ The official Holiday season :)

We watched the parade on the computer this morning and with the arrival of Santa, we may now officially listen to Christmas music, drink Peppermint Mocha coffee, watch Christmas movies etc.  But I still probably won't do much of that except the coffee part until close to when it's actually Christmas :)

Day 116 ~ Store Closing :(

For once, the paper signs on the door brought me sadness.  Usually I go up to the doors hoping the paper I see doesn't say something bad, like that the store is closing or something, well today, the saddest of days.... it did say the store is closing!  Not that there isn't another dollar tree right up the street, but it takes five more minutes and a u-turn to get to and it just isn't the same!  I haven't gone in this one very often lately, but it has always been there for me when I need it or when I have a random need to satisfy a "spend a couple of useless dollars on useless things" fix.  Alas all good things must come to an end, and with my sister's and my random stop in to buy random things today (nail files, Christmas cards, hair clips and pot holders), I bid farewell to my beloved store where everything actually is a dollar!  You have been a good friend all these years!

P.S on a less dramatic note.... the store's not closing until December 24th so I'm sure I will be in there buying it all out before then, but this time felt like the last of our random stop ins, coming out with a bag full of things that we don't even really need just because everything's really a dollar and fail safe statement of "Just because we can"

Day 115 ~ Grey's Anatomy

This disc is in my DVD player, playing the very 1st episode as we speak!  I've seen random episodes over the years, and Ilove Patrick Dempsey, and my roommates liked it in college, but I never really thought I was that interested enough to watch it!  But here we are, years later, and I saw an episode I loved and so I decided to dive in from the beginning!  I love it already!

Day 114 ~ Baby shoes!

And Kateri's favorite word to say..... shoes!!!!  Out of all the baby shoes I have ever come accrosshaving to put on.... these have to be the easiest and most awesome!  She was showing them off to me today outside with all the kids and Suzanne!

Day 113 ~ Launched and Approved!

Suggested to me by someone on a forum, I surprisingly had all the ingrediants that she recommended for these deviled eggs, except I swapped out the kind of mustard she used for the exact same flavor mayonaise (and yes I know I probably spelled that word wrong but how often do you really think I put it into text form!) instead since that's all we had, but hey I'm sure it has the same affect!  I was so excited to try them because of the secret ingrediant in them!  I thought that if they went over well at their debut for today's football Sunday (note the Raven's backgroundyet again!) I could make them for Thanksgiving.  It took all morning of experimenting... but I finally got them made and if I do say so myself they are the best deviled eggs I have ever had in my whole life!  I ate the ones I botched in the proccess that's how good they were!  Well, my family loved them and approved them for the Thanksgiving menu at my Aunt's!  I'm excited because I think I now have something worthy of being my specialty to take to parties! 

Day 112 ~ The force that drives you to Exceed....

At Chuck E. Cheese no less :)  When I was in my late teens, before college kicked in and lives got busy, Lyndsay and I used to spend our summer days at Chuck E. Cheese playing Exceed (like DDR for those who haven't heard of it)  We were really good and I'm not kidding that we spent whole days there, often from around open ish to close!  Well today, I found myself back there, and yes, I'm 23 years old!  Our stamina isn't what it used to be, but it felt so good to do this again... and we're still just as good!  We followed a few hours of this up with Zumba and Yoga at her house!!!  I'm so dead tired, but extrememly happy!

These are two different versions of the collages we had made for playing cards a few years ago that flash back over some of our friendship :)

   

Day 111 ~ Left without a back up theme! So I take a pictureof a box!

Yesterday I was left with no picture to take... I was so very busy, and then no one posted a theme where I get my back up ideas from.  My dad had gone in to the hospital for a heart procedure and so Kateri and I played Kitchen Fairy for my parents and went over and straightened up their house for when they got home.  Before that having cleaned Kateri's kitchen, and after that taking Suzanne to a party AND THEN after that, heading straight over to the Pontzer family's house to do overnight babysitting for them. It was a lot of fun.. and this handy contraption is the godsend to my pancake making sanity for a bunch of hungry kids!  Before the electric griddle = horrible pancakes... with the electric griddle = the most excellent pancakes in the entire world :)

Day 110 ~ The picture in the picture frame...

Today I had taken no picture, and nothing appealed to me, not even the theme!  So I asked my friend Erika to tell me something to take a picture of to use.  I took the lamp suggestion lol but looking around there was nothing that caught my attention off the top of my head so I had to dig a little deeper...I was pleased with my finished product!

Here sits this little mostly unused part of our floor lamp, sadly so, with its home in front of the digital picture frame. It has a littleuse now since it was chosen for the subject of a blog post and it feels happier with its little life!

Day 109 ~ See that tree there??

Yesterday it had half it's leaves still on... and oh how brilliant yellow they were... breath taking! Then along comes a storm during the dark hours of the night, that I somehow once in my life, missed, and it takes away all the pretty leaves.  Yet somehow, the sight was still beautiful this morning! 

Normally I am the one to ask "did you hear that storm last night?"  But I must have been way out because Brad (Kateri's dad) was the one to tell me about it when I got to work!  Funny thing is, I dreamed about it without knowing it was actually happening.  I woke up from a long difficult dream that we were being evacuated from a big city as a wicked storm was coming in from the water blowing everything away and watching the power go out street by street as it came towards us.  When Nate woke me up to say goodbye, we noticed that the clock was reset but had no idea until I got up later that it's because the power did actually go out last night!  I told him before he left I didn't want to go back to sleep so that I wouldn't go back into the dream... little did I know it had been based on true events... strange things the mind does!

Day 108 ~ Get Closer...

Keith Urban's new album... it came out today :)  It was a nice realization when I remembered that and I Knew I had to go buy it after work!  I have yet to listen the whole thing through but anything the man does is excellence to my ears ;)  But I guess I'm a little biased too because he waved to me and my sister last August while we were walking back to our car after his concert... we were the only ones on the street and we waved to the tour bus as it was passing by and then realized he was in the front passenger seat and was waving back!!!  I had been so busy lately that I forgot it was coming out today so I was pretty happy all afternoon waiting!

Day 107 ~ A Hermit Crab Miracle!!!

Ok so the story goes like this!

Harrold the hermit crab (see Day 16 for reference) once belonged to the kids that I nanny for two days a week. I named him Harrold and loved him as my own... every morning I would come in and he would be hanging on the cage and I would say "Hi Harrold" and he would say nothing but continue to hang on the cage!  Well... sadly, after they got back from vacation a few months ago, the cage was gone and I found it in a cabinet so I devastatingly thought Harrold had died!  I was sad for a very long time but had gotten my own hermit crabs in the mean time so I was able to move on.

Flash forward to today...  I get there, and I walk in to the living room... and there is the cage.  Surprised and thinking perhaps they got a new crab I walk over and look in.  There is Harrold's shell and I was sad again... so I keep looking for a second and as I pull away, I see movement IN his shell!

Harrold is ALIVE!!!! I almost had a heart attack and cried because I was so happy to see him but was so confused as to how he got there... well apparently he had gone missing and they thought that perhaps their two year old had taken him out and lost him.  Come to find out... she put him in a planter flower pot!  And that must have been enough for him!  We petitioned the oldest boy (the technical owner of the crab) to let him come home with me to live with Shelby and Sylvia... he is very happy here and is walking around any everything!  It all just makes me feel better about my crabs, that if this one can survive for three months in a flowerpot, mine must be livin the good life!

Here is my happy crabby family :)  From left to right: Harrold, Sylvia and Shelby (who used to be in the yellow shell, but changed a few days after we got them)

Day 106 ~ Color relapse...

After almost 3 years of being "hair dye sober" as I like to call it.... I relapsed today, just so I could try this stuff:

Consumer review.... not worth the 9 dollars!  Personal review... is happy with never dying her hair again!  At least now I know that I was right to ignore the urge to do it every now and then over the last three years!  The last time I dyed my hair was January 2008, and it was black, not the greatest choice and so I made a pact with myself to not dye my hair again.  I will be going back to that!  This stuff was golden brown and it hardly changed my hair that much... it might be a little more evenly light, but I don't look at it and think difference.  This particular brand claims to be new and better/easier to use than the liquid dyes, but I actually found it to be worse... it got everywhere and the smell is still stuck in my nose! But hey, it was a character building experience!

Day 105 ~ Season 2...

Since we didn't follow Lie to Me while it was on air, we had to wait for it to come out on Netflix... I didn't figure we would get it on instant right away though, but we did and I'm excited and we just now got around to starting it!

Day 104 ~ Epic Fail...

It looks kinda like Suzanne is crying... but she's laughing pathetically because she couldn't get the socket protector out of the outlet so she could vacuum and Kateri was just standing there watching her... it was quite a sight especially when I went over and pulled the thing right out of the wall (I do it a time or two a week so I'm used to it) and put it on her head!  She said to make sure to quote what she was chanting properly as "I can't git it out da wallllll"  It sounded much more hilarious then it looks in script :)

Day 103 ~ They are Everywhere!!!!

STILL!!!  I never remembered these stupid bugs lasting so long into the year but it feels like we've had them for ages and ages now! 

After closing my eyes for just a few minutes earlier because I was tired, I open them staring this one straight in the face!

Day 102 ~ The Great "Phone in Cat Water" Incident of 2010

Yesterday morning Steve, the kitten, decided to be extra bad and bat my phone off the bed stand straight into the cat water right below it!  After worrying about whether or not it would survive all day, since Nate had told me not to turn it back on before he figured out what to do with it to try to saveit, he told me to put it in a container with rice overnight...

Recovery was successful in the defining moment this morning before I had to leave for work and it has survived... was it the rice?  Or would it have made it on it's own?  The technilogical mystery shall remain unanswered!  In the mean time, I will believe in the magic of the rice :)

Day 101 ~ How to stop drinking soda...

Keep a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper in between your two water pitchers in the fridge of course! It's only day two of trying not to drink any to help clense out my system of the junk... it's something my friend Erika and I are doing... well I don't know if she's actually doing it since she's in a different state, but I'm going to try to keep my word!  Knowing these are in the fridge is a motivator and a curse all at once!  But Lyndsay came over tonight and while she was here she wouldn't let me cave in... good friend, that one :)

Day 100 ~ And All Caught Up!!!

All caught up on my pictures, mostly all caught up on my sleep... or at least I feel mostly just as tired as I did before... almost everything is unpacked and I am working on getting out of Florida mode!  I miss it there, especially the palm trees!  I was back to babysitting yesterday and work today... we had half time for Raven's Sunday yesterday at my family's where all souveniers were distributed, and we have pet the kitties to death after they have made it clear they don't need us anymore since we left them all alone (with being fed by my family of course!).  So I got to thinking that after seeing the Bubba Gump Shrimp place twice down there and after being at Kennedy Space Center... that all I wanted to do was watch Forrest Gump and Appolo 13!  My family had both those movies on VHS and only after grabbing them did I realize they both have Tom Hanks in them... I love those coincidences, they make me happy!

Day 99 ~ Two Times at Once! (Sunday November 7th)

When we got back from our trip, it was right after the time you're technically supposed to push the clocks back!  For a few hours after this, my phone was saying that the messages were being sent at what time it should have been but stored at what time it was with the clock change... I guess it was a little confused, much to my amusement :)

Day 98 ~ Going Home (Saturday November 6th, day 8)

After sleeping a little later than we had the past few days, and stopping in at my Uncle's hotel for breakfast, we headed out for our 15 hour drive back to Maryland!

At a rest stop, Nate found these :)

And at the next rest stop, we found this:

The gas was more expensive then most of the gas stations we had seen around where we were!!!!

Day 97 ~ Failure to Launch (Friday November 5th, Day 7)

After driving the two hours back to Orlando Friday morning, we make it to the tour bus location, and finally to Kennedy Space Center!  We go in the swamped gift store and start buying t-shirts and all sorts of souveniers and stand in line for a looong time.... only to hear....

Knowing we had to go home the next day whether they tried for the launch on Saturday or not, we had a day of trying to hide our depression!  We already feel better about not getting to see it happen now that we're home!  The final delay was because that morning they found a leak in the Hydrogen tank... then after further investigation they found there was a huge crack to go with the leak.  So they will try again the end of this month. It was a risk that came with the trip, but we never imagined that in a whole week it wouldn't go up!  But at least we were there when it tried, a week's worth of times!  This is how we remedied our day before heading back to my Uncle's for our last night in Florida:

I felt almost instantly better after our waitress at Johnny Rockets made our ketchup smiley faces!  And after I took this awesome picture of my best friend Palm Trees :)
 Sideways again, but still awesome!

Day 96 ~ Moving On (Thursday November 4th, Day 6)

We made it to our tour bus at 6:00 A.M after getting up at 4:30, just to hear the launch was postponed again due to the weather!  So with slight disappointment we left Orlando to make the two hour drive to My Uncle Chris (my dad's brother) and Trish's house where we would stay our last two nights.  I was driving this time and found something that made me happy on the drive!

Whatever that contraption is on the back of the truck smiled at me for a good half hour of the drive and it made me feel happy for the rest of the day!

Day 95 ~ Down Day (Wednesday November 3rd, day 5)

By this time, the shuttle launch had been postponed every day.  It was supposed to be on Monday, but first it was a leak in the fuel tank. So we had nothing planned for this day and just did random things!

Day 94 ~ Island of Adventure (Tuesday November 2nd, day 4)

Day 2 at Universal Studios... this time we were not so fortunate as to good weather, and for the record, flip flops + hours of walking + steady rain = pain! Just for future references!  But we still saw some pretty awesome stuff!

We went on the Jurrasic Park ride first and it was one of those rides where you "could get wet"... well they put us in the front, and we DID get wet!

Island of Adventure had the Dr. Suess Landing.... it made me happy and was full of thing 1 and thing 2 stuff, which is the current obsession of me and my sister... I bought us flip flops :)

Because of the rain we only had about a 5 minute wait for The Hulk... everyone was leaving for shelter etc... Nate didn't think I would like it, but it was the most awesome roller caoster ever since we didn't have to wait so I didn't  have time to get nervous and we rode it in the rain!

The Harry Potter place was excellent... made it feel like you were in the movies and all!  By this time we were incredibly soaked and cold and tired, and everyone was hiding out in the gift shop from the rain so it was tense!  But the motion simulator ride here was awesome!

As tired as we were, we decided we needed a picture of us in front of the globe before we left!

Day 93 ~ Universal Studios (Monday November 1st, day 3)

Such a beautiful day!  This was my first time as Universal Studios... Nate had been there before so it was nice for him to be able to show me around somewhere he was familiar with!

My favorite "ride" of the day :) I love this movie, although it probably started my irrational fear of the things... I faced my fear during a reinaction of one of the twister scenes in the movie!!!

Minions!!!





Day 92 ~ Daytona Beach (Sunday October 31st, day 2)

I don't normally put up pictures just of me but I really liked this one :)

I loved Daytona Beach!  Comparison to Maryland beaches:  the water was warm with in a few minutes and did not beat you up, you were walking on sand instead of rocks in the water... and the sand on the beach was sooo soft!

And since it was Halloween...

After we were finished at the beach, the tide was coming in pretty high at that point... we went to see a movie as we usually do on our trips...

Ugh I hate that I cant put an up and down picture on here without Nate's help, and so I'm putting it sideways so I don't need his help :)  we saw Life as we Know It... it was really good, very funny, plus since we were seeing a movie anyways we used it to get six dollars off our parking cost for the day as was advertised!

This came our blurry on our way out but I decided I liked it anyway!