big blue nation is back!

Did I say we were excited about last year's coach?

cough cough

Well, let's just say we're more-excited-than-you-can-imagine that he's gone and

we

have

John Calipari!!

We were able to get $10 (TEN DOLLARS!!) tickets for the best seats in the house for the Blue White Scrimmage game last week.

We had a great time watching the best recruits in the country on OUR court!

Sophia and her doll even made it to the big screen for 10 seconds when the camera zoomed in on her!!

royalty

The troops have been home for 2 days and we've been busy sharing cuddles and kisses and snuggles and stories. They had a great time and Daddy spoiled them rotten with multiple visits to Chownings, The Cheese Shop, the candy store, and the pool.

And despite Sophia's declaration before they left that she was going to be the Mommy there and help Daddy in the kitchen, Daddy did all the cooking, cleaning, dishes, and laundry (he didn't want to bring home any dirty clothes for me to do!).

He also was nurse and doctor. Sophia hurt her leg and had poison ivy. Isaac was battling asthma and woke Dad up in the middle of the night for help.

All while I was home alone eating my way through a box of dark-chocolate covered cookies.

Really? Really. I've got the best husband ever and don't know what I ever did right to be blessed with him.

And while my Honey makes me feel like royalty, they had a brush with royalty when the royal Governor drove up to dissolve parliament. Sophia captured a picture of it for me (she was staff photographer for the week).


And on their last day Daddy spoiled them more with a ride in the royal carriage! The Governor's carriage! (I would say that's so not fair since I wasn't there, but I can't exactly complain, you know.)








Neat story on the photos:
The driver tried to take a pic of them in the carriage but Sophia's camera often wasn't working when she needed it most, and this was one of those times (the other was at the Fifes and Drums!).

But a sweet lady standing nearby offered to take pictures with her camera and email them to us, so the pics above (minus the horse's rear when Sophia's camera WAS working) are courtesy of a stranger named Donna who works for Hersheys! (I told you she was sweet.)

progress report

I'm at the half way point. I've got 4 more nights, 4 more mornings, 4 more days, however you want to look at it. I prefer to look at every angle because they each have their merit.

When you're used to getting other people ready for bed and getting other people up and fed breakfast and getting other people through their day with meals and school, and now it's just YOU (or me actually)... makes things a little different around here.

So what have I done? Let me see if I can name a few things.

-washed kids' shower curtain
-washed 2 loads of towels
-defrosted ice maker
-watched 2 two hour Photoshop courses
-figured out and ordered school books
-photoshopped and reprinted 2 living room photos
-watched a third photoshop course
-did Pilates
-knocked down cobwebs from basement ceiling
-cleaned off high ceiling fan in MBR
-washed all bathroom rugs
-cleaned kids' bathroom (and I don't mean just the sink, toilet, and tub. I mean I wiped out the sink cabinet, washed out their utility basket, soaked and cleaned garbage can (gross), cleaned out closet and pitched 9 used toothbrushes, 6 half used travel size tubes of toothpaste, 5 retainer cases, 3 bottles of old skin lotion, and a myriad of other old stuff, and wiped down cobwebs that were stuck in the steam buildup over the shower)
-organized basement
-organized garage
-cleaned grease off the garage/kitchen door that sophia's neighbor friend smeared all over this summer (or was it last summer??)
-cut cardboard for shipping prints
-cleaned off my desk (mostly, almost done)
-pitched malfunctioning cds and dvds
-transferred 2 music tapes to digital on the computer and burned CD
-watched 4 Jessica Sprague classes I never finished this summer
-washed our sheets and Isaac's
-washed Sophia's coat
-installed 3 fonts I downloaded this summer
-burned Hannah a CD of her photos I used for the wedding video
-cleaned up computer desktop of wedding video files
-backed up My Documents to external hard drive
-scheduled program to automatically back up Documents at shut down
-put away pile of vacation things from APRIL
-organized ribbon into 2 three drawer containers
-watched Bro. Billy Paul's testimony
-organized recipes (still have to tidy up a few things)
-cleaned off kitchen ceiling fan
-went through filing cabinet folders and pitched some things, pulled other things to read
-put new battery in Timed Timer
-cleaned dust and organized cords behind my computer (only because I couldn't JUST plug in my external hard drive)
-worked on some vacation photos
-took a bath with the sea salts Eileen gave me a year ago from Israel
-read

And just because no post is complete without a picture...

I'll leave you (or me rather) with this one.

I Miss

fix photos. check!

On our first trip to California 3 years ago, I got some fantastic photos. Or so I thought. As they hung on my living room wall for all this time, I've grown to hate them. Be embarrassed by them. Wanted to rip them down.

Slowly improving my photography knowledge and photoshop skills over the past 2 years meant a slow death for those photos, but also a rising eagerness to fix them.

Honey and I sit on the loveseat most every day and inevitably my eyes and mind would wander to the photos on the wall behind him while he's whispering sweet nothings. My eyes have traced and cloned and brushed those photos over and over. It's a wonder my eyes didn't bore holes in them.

Today, while I watched my Sweets blow me kisses from Williamsburg on one of the town's webcams, I hunted down our 2006 vacation photo disc and went to work.

And tonight I will sleep much better and dream of actually listening the sweet nothings on our next loveseat date.

silence is golden

I bid farewell again to my loves today! Has it been a year already? I didn't take pictures this time because I knew I had this one from last October that I love so well from when they went to Gatlinburg for 5 days.

This time they headed to Williamsburg, VA since we still have our annual passes from our trip in April. So I've got 8 days to do 80 million projects. Okay, not really, but exaggerations are always more fun than the truth, aren't they? For the real record (is that redundant, like the end result?), I do have 8 days, just not 80 million projects! :)

My mind is still swirling around the thought... did Honey really just take the kids to Williamsburg for 8 days by himself so I could have time by myself? Isn't that just the most amazing thing? He is so, so, so good to me. How am I going to get through this week without him?

I guess my stash of special dark chocolate coated cookies will have to do.

I spy with my little eye

A game surely played by Al Capone and The Birdman of Alcatraz while doing time, don't you think?

Godbeams

A costly estate sat perched on the edge of the cliff, hanging over the ocean. Except you couldn't see the ocean. At least not as we drove by.

Fog had slipped in the back door an hour earlier.

And my glass-is-half-full husband made some snide sweet comment that if it weren't for the fog, we wouldn't have seen this. And this was indeed lovely.

And then he gave me a kiss and squeezed my hand.

I marvel at God's wisdom. I'm a glass-is-half-empty kind of girl, and God brought Honey and I together to make one delicious duo.

purple proof

We didn't make a point to come to this beautiful beach for its rocks...



or waves crashing in the cave.



Those were surprising bonuses.



We came to this beach for the sand.



The purple sand!



Pfeiffer Beach, with its unmarked, 2 mile road to get there, seems to be a little-known secret. Unless you do your homework ahead of time. And believe me, I did my homework.

And I've got the purple pictures to prove it.

I'm all aglow

fire in the sky

fire on the beach

fire in my heart

Lying on our blanket
on the sand
being warmed by the fire
and our love
listening to the ocean waves
gazing at millions of lights
that were winking at us.

Pinch me.

So this is love, mmmm
so this is love
this is what makes life divine.

I'm all aglow, and now I know, hmmm

My heart has wings
And I can fly
I'll touch ev'ry star in the sky.

(name that Disney song)

(and though I've been known to photoshop things into place, this photo is presented to you as-is. As-was, actually.)

more of the city, the sea (and crazy ol' me)

The City

The Sea

(and crazy ol' me)

(When life gives you lemons, make lemonade in photoshop.)

I'm torn

between posting pictures of

The City

or

The Sea

a royal welcome

I bet the President himself has never had such an impressive banner made with this much love.