Bloviation and Bling Bling, Baby!

Hi everyone. Hope that you've had a great last few days. As usual, it's been INSANE and I've not had much time to breathe. Lots to share with you, folks. Hang on for the ride.

As you know, our fourth wedding anniversary was this past Thursday...



These beautiful earrings were my anniversary gift from my amazing husband (after a qute tasty dinner at The Cheesecake Factory!). I am a lucky lady. Blessed. I can't believe it's been four years! (Well, six, technically...that's how long we've been together.) I'm still not certain why it is that God sent him to me, but I am sure glad that He did.

The last few days have been INSANE. Our "big project" at work is s-l-o-w-l-y nearing its end...thank GOD. A mammoth report (18-pager, go me!) that I'd worked on for days was deemed "very, very good" by my goss (go me, part deux!), and I spent the majority of the day Friday in a thinktank meeting trying to brainstorm the next phase of this monster assignment. I need a vacation so, so badly...

...which is a percect segue into my next item of "hot, exciting news!" Curt's office has a Las Vegas component, and he and his colleagues sometimes have to travel out there. He's always wanted me to come with him (and I've always wanted to go), but the timing's never worked out. He's going back out in May, and, ta daaaaaaa, the timing works out! So he and I will be "Tripping The Strip Fantastic" in good old Vegas! I am sososososo excited! Some of Curt's colleagues are bringing their wives and girlfriends, too, so hopefully I'll have some shopping buddies (HELLO - Vuitton, I'm a'comin'!) If any of you, my BlogBuddies(tm), are in Las Vegas and would like to get together for lunch one day, I'd love to see you!

Recently, another colleague of Curt's and his wife (who, coincidentally, are also Erin's godparents), went on a Marriage Encounter weekend. I thought "Wow - we should do that too," and, as if God were right there to hear me, we got this amazing card in the mail yesterday that said a Marriage Encounter weekend had been paid for for us as a gift from Erin's godparents. What a very sweet and meaningful gift. I will make them a "thank-you" card today...

...speaking of cards (I'm ALL about the segue today, can you tell?!), I spent the day yesterday with a girlfriend working on cards for a "swap." Lots of the women in our neighborhood are scrapbookers, and they like to make homemade cards too (i.e., birthday, Christmas, etc.) They have relatively large "swaps" where, for example, one person will volunteer to make X number (1 or 2 per person) of a certain kind of card, and then everyone "swaps." Although our little neighborhood group has a relatively large swap going on right now (I think 25 cards or something HUGE like that), we also have a small one, too (7 cards each!), and I spent the day with T. working on mine:



Here's my card. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do it justice (if I do say so, myself!) The purple frames all say "Celebrate you!" over and over, and the inside of the card reads (in purple ink) "Happy birthday today - happy times all year!" Cute. The items I used were all purchased from Stampin' Up, which is quite the hot in-home party circuit in our neigborhood. As I have with crochet, I fear that I'll spend way too much money on stamps and eyelets and all of the other cool decorative stuff. It's fun, though. And homemade cards always mean more than those you just buy straight from Hallmark. I'll post the photo of our "thank you" card for Erin's godparents when I finish it.

Back to crochet for a second, why can't I seem to accomplish anything with yarn? I have TWICE (note emphasis) now tried to make a gift for my BlogBuddy(tm) Robyn, from what appears to be an exceptionally simple pattern. Well, once I used the wrong stitch altogether (genius, I am) and the second time, well, one part of the finished product (yep, I got all the way done with it) was fatter than the other. (*le sigh*) Not happy. So I figured I'd put that aside and come back to it later, and I had my eye on a second project, the "5 1/2 Hour Throw" from the Lion Brand yarn company. Well, I couldn't find 18 balls of Jiffy in the same damned dye lot, so imagine how happy I was when I read at Juliana Banana's website that she'd made this very afghan, but in a much more accessible yarn (Red Heart). So I excitedly purchased 56 ounces of Pale Plum (pretty color!) and off I went, Q-hook in hand, to crochet this afghan. (Before I continue, whoever invented the pull skein should be fucking SHOT. Shot DEAD. CHRIST, it takes FOR-FUCKING-EVER to ball up a pull skein...and that's assuming you don't get any knots!). OK, where the hell was I? Oh yeah, Q-hook-in-hand. Yeah, so off I went to crochet this afghan, and it did NOT work. Maybe because the Red Heart is thinner than the Jiffy? I really have a hard time eyeballing where chains and spaces are, so I know a lot of this (and a lot of my other crochet difficulties) are due to operator error. But it's SO incredibly frustrating. I love crochet and love what finished products look like, but I can never seem to GET to nice, finished products. Am I just crazy? I think I'll try the gift for Robyn next. Start over, breathe, relax, and try again. We'll see how that comes out. :)

I'm on that "Word Of The Day" EMAIL list from Merriam Webster, and Friday's word fit me oh so perfectly:

Bloviate \BLOH-vee-ayt\ verb
to speak or write verbosely and windily

Yep, describes me to a "t." My poor boss and colleagues. Every single time we pass around work for comment (or our Headquarters office asks for us to submit comments on proposed regulatory changes), I go ON and ON and ON. What most folks can say in a paragraph often takes me two or three. (Well, duh, you guys know that - you read my blog!) My boss just thought it was hilarious and she even wrote down the word "bloviate" so she'd remember it.

I've long been thinking about ways to update and snazz up this blog. Here we go. I've added two photos today ("picture pages, picture pages, lots of fun with picture pages, lots of fun with crayons and with pennnn-cils...."), and I've also officially changed the title of this blog. One of my work colleagues is very blog/HTML savvy and she said she'd help me make this place a little more appealing. And I'm also seriously considering making a contribution to the folks at Blogtogs in exchange for their assistance. I have some very definite ideas, so hang tight. Hopefully I get this place a little more snazzy and a lot less Pepto-ish!

I'd better run! I am way behind on my EMAIL and we're taking Maggy today for a play date! You heard me correctly...we're taking our DOG to a play date! We met some new friends at PetSmart one day, and it was because of them that we found the breeder we bought Maggy from. They have a Boston Terrier as well (who, we believe, is one of Maggy's distant relatives somehow), and we thought it would be fun to get the puppies together. :)

Have a great day, everyone.

Jen

Breathe, Jennifer!

Hi everyone. Wow, what a whirlwind the last few days have been! Hope everyone's doing well and that the week is off to a great start for all of you. Gosh - is it really Wednesday tomorrow?!

We have really gotten "in" to entertaining in our home...inviting friends over, cooking (or grilling out), enjoying conversation and laughter, etc. We have a great relationship with our next-door neighbors (well, with all of them, but these folks most especially), and they've helped us with numerous projects. We'd initially invited them to come over "the Saturday after Easter" for a dinner party, only to realize (as "the Saturday after Easter" got closer and closer) that we'd overbooked ourselves. On "the Saturday after Easter," we'd planned to do a little family soirée to celebrate two birthdays (Mom Smith's on the 31st and my brother-in-law's on the 4th) and our fourth wedding anniverary (this Thursday - woo hoo!). So instead, I took the afternoon off on Friday and furiously shopped, prepared, decorated, and cooked for our friends. They were amazing, and we had a GREAT time. So, so funny, they are! Their son is two months older than Erin, and they always have a great time playing and goofing off. After drinking entirely toooo much and laughing hysterically on Friday night, we spent the day in St. Joseph with Curt's side of the family, and I had sorority meetings and business to attend to on Sunday. Monday was a good workday. BUSY. This damned project needs to end. SOON. Last night, poor Erin tripped and lost her balance as she walked down the (carpeted, thank God) stairs and she hurt her little elbow. God, how it ripped my heart out to hear that sweet little tearful voice say, "Mommy, my arm hurts!" She's (like her mom) got the tendency to diva-things-up a bit, and over-exaggerate things, so we kept a careful eye on her arm and watched for mobility and tenderness and swelling. All seemed to be OK, and she actually slept in "capital-Y" format with her arms stretched apart and open, leading me to believe that she was OK. That wasn't the case. This morning, her little elbow was all swollen and, God love her, she didn't want me to change her clothes or bathe her. After a struggle in the tub, we took her in to sick call at her pediatric clinic. Her doctor was able to see her (not that I don't like the other doctors, but we prefer this doctor...she's been with us from the NICU days and we don't ever want to lose her). Anyway, the doctor examined her and wrote us a referral across the state line for an X-ray. The referral sheet read "fractured left elbow." I damned near lost it right there. My poor baby! After four very painful X-rays, we were sent home fracture-free (thank God!) with the directive to use Children's Motrin for the pain and to have Erin take it easy. Bless her little heart. She's just fine now...stretching her arms out open and wide, playing with the puppy, laughing and hamming it up. So I think she'll be OK. Crisis averted, thank God. I was so scared!

Have you heard Rob Thomas' new song "Lonely No More"? I can't stop listening to that! Good, good stuff.

Can I make a suggestion to you, my friends? If you're candle fans, you simply MUST burn Yankee Candle's "Vanilla Cookie" candle alongside the Colonial Candle "vanilla+mintleaf" fragrance. Oh-my-yum! The whole basement smells soooo vanill-y and yummy.

I'm off to check EMAIL and crochet a bit with my family. A big thunderstorm's pushing in to our area and I lovelovelove the way the air feels and smells. Might run out for a second and take it all in before heading for cover in the basement with my family, my candles, and my crochet. :)

Ta!

Drive By Blogging

Hi everybody.

I've just have time for a quick drive-by posting. We had a dinner party last night and are going up to see Curt's parents today to celebrate three special occasions back-to-back (my mother-in-law's birtday, my brother-in-law's birthday, and our wedding anniversary). So I'm off to the liquor store, the florist, and Sunrise Soap in just a second. But I wanted to stop in, check in, and say hi. Hope you're all doing well.

Ciao!

Jen