fresh weekend

this was a jam-packed weekend for me and chris. i had to work saturday morning for the 4th annual rubber duck race benefiting boys & girls clubs of the midlands. even though it was work, i had a good time. we released 250,000 rubber ducks into the river to race about 1 mile (i think). i worked a booth giving out sun glasses and potato chips to kids. since i forgot my camera i have no pictures of this.

following the rubber duck race i cashed in on one of my birthday presents and got an awesome hot stone massage at urban nirvana. it was bliss but the massage was over too quickly. luckily i have more on the gift card so i can go back again for more.

then saturday night chris and i went out for our 4th anniversary (by the way, thanks everyone for all the well-wishes). we had dinner and dessert at terra. this restaurant tries to get ingredients from local sources and buys its vegetables daily from a farmers market. despite lack of vegetarian items, the meal was wonderful and our waiter was really good. to start, chris and i both had delicious salads (chris's had a home-made goat cheese ball deep fried!). i had a wonderful veggie plate for an entree and chris had a pear and escarole pizza. then we both had dessert (espresso cheese cake and pistachio creme brulle (sp?)). it was all so good but we definitely overate!

sunday we had our first harvest from the garden.



i wasn't sure how to tell that the broccoli was ready for picking, because it was not very large (this picture is of 3 heads combined). but i read up a few links on the web and discovered that if i didn't pick them now it'd be too late. so i picked this broccoli and an onion (just to see if it was done--it was) and we had them in a salad for dinner on sunday.

sunday afternoon chris and i picked up our little somali friends, kadijah, ikra and mohammud and took them strawberry picking.



there were so many good strawberries, we couldn't get the kids to stop eating and picking them. we filled out 2 buckets in like 15 minutes and then spent the rest of the time catching up with mohammud, who had filled his t-shirt with about 1/2 bucket's worth of strawberries.

since the kids weren't ready to go home, we decided to take them to congaree national park, which was just a few miles down the road.
we took about a 1 mile walk to weston lake where we looked at turtles and fish in the water. then we raced back through the forest as chris and mohammud raced me, ikra, and kadijah. it was such a good time and the kids were so well-behaved!

4 years

happy anniversary, sweety!

a nod to chris

here's a little article from today's metro section of the state newspaper about chris's somali initiative.

week 4

4 weeks in and my garden's not looking too bad.



the colder weather is doing good things for these spring plants. the broccoli is just starting to bud out from the broccoli plants and the spinach is no longer turning yellow. they have a few more weeks to go until they'll be ready for harvest. then i'll plant our summer crops (tomatoes, okra, probably squash)!

also, barbara kinsolver put up a website for the book i was talking about. it's got recipes, info and links to resources about eating and growing locally.

winners and wieners

it's appropriate that at their goodbye party, brian would finally win connect four against chris. (from the picture, you can tell that chris wasn't too happy about it.)

i (along with lots of others) helped brian and nicole pack up (all!) their stuff today into the truck. they're on their way to their new home in charleston right now. best of luck guys! you'll be missed in good ol' cola town.

not-so-bad news

thanks for all the well wishes and prayers over the last few days. to use a word from my brother-in-law (?*), it's been a rollercoaster. but here's the latest on david from chris's mom's blog. it's in no way a cure, but the news was a whole heck of a lot better than we were expecting.

(*i'm not sure if "brother-in-law" is the right word for my husband's sister's husband, but it seems right.)

post easter post

we had a nice trip to mississippi, albeit short and subdued. but all sickness aside, it was a really great trip.



this picture was taken by chris just before tricia and i set out on our easter egg hunt. apparently i was a deprived child because i never did easter egg hunts at my house growing up. i didn't even realize that people did them in their homes (i thought it was only a public event) until my brother and his wife started doing them when they had kids. anyways, the reid clan hides the real eggs (the ones you dye, not the plastic ones). so david and chris hid our 10 eggs (tricia and i both ate one) and we had to find it. even though the weather was chilly (yes, CHILLY! as seen by tricia's hat), we all had a great time and we were successful in finding all the eggs with only a few hints.

other highlights of the weekend included an awesome lunch buffet at horizon. good times at the coffee shop. lots of stevie ray vaughn. and watching some funny videos of chris and erica (and other family members of course) from 1990-1991.

now the down side. read tricia's latest post to hear what's up with david. i won't really say too much but prayers are appreciated for the whole family.

pre-easter post

it's been a crazy, hectic week, which is always how short work-weeks seem. it's like you have to make up for the day off* by working extra hard the other days. yesterday we had a big fun day with the kids, which ended with them being able to throw pies in the faces of the staff members. needless-to-say, it was a crazy day; but the kids had fun so it was worth it. (that will explain why my hair was sticky and i smelled distinctly like whipped cream at mass last night).

as soon as chris gets home from work today we're going to head out to mississippi to spend a few days with his parents. for those of you who have been reading tricia's blog you'll have seen that david's not been doing too well. so we decided to take advantage of having an extra day off by going to visit them. we're both looking forward to it.

so i hope everyone has a very happy and blessed easter.

*i didn't really have a day off today because i spent the morning at the computer doing work.

summer weather

seems like the weather has gone straight from winter and right into summer here. the 60/70 degree spring has disappeared. mokey is enjoying it now that we can open windows and she can purch to look out. but my spring veggies in the garden are slowly wilting (and will probably die when we're in v-burg over easter). and tonight when chris and i took a walk in the cooler evening weather we got ate up by the first misquitoes. darn!

no foolin'

thanks for all the well-wishes and greetings on sunday. my birthday was a good one! here's to a great year!

wedded bliss

this is a little delayed...but better late than never.

congrats to tricia and adam for getting hitched this past saturday in hull, ma. wish we could've been there, but for various reasons the trip was not in the cards. i hope you guys had a blast!

on a related note, chris and i celebrated our 6th year of dating on that very same day, st. patty's day. we had a lovely dinner out to mark the event.

*** update***

here's a picture i just got of the newlyweds.

eat locally

i have been reading a new (well, actually, yet-to-be-released) book by barbara kingsolver. i would put a link, but i couldn't really find much info on the web other than where to pre-order it. anyways, the book is about how she and her family took on the adventure of eating only locally produced food for a whole year. it's fairly interesting and has gotten me thinking a lot about what we eat and where it comes from. i won't get on that whole tangent here, except to say, next time you go to the grocery store start looking at where your food comes from. it's easy to see how we spend more fossil fuels on transporting food than we do driving our cars.

so anyways, this book along with the really nice weather this weekend got me and chris out to start our very own garden. this is something that we've been wanting to do for years but up to this point we've not had the ability. so in hopes of having just a few little snippets from our own side yard this spring and summer, and just because we find working in the yard fun, we spent our sunday working on this:




i know; it doesn't look like much now. that's because we don't have anything planted in the bed. we'll do some planting next weekend. we're thinking tomatoes (of course), okra, beans, herbs, and summer squash. but we'll see what we can find at the farmer's market next weekend. even though chris thinks the design of the garden is "ugly", i think it's beautiful and can't wait to see things start peaking out of the soil!

we must be on the right track because after creating the garden i went to the grocery store tonight and saw last week's cover story for time magazine.

alpine bliss

it cracks me up when a cat behaves so typically...well...cat-like. mokey has been slowly clawing her way through various pieces of furniture in our house (our bedframe, a comfy chair). so i decided to try this cosmic catnip alpine scratcher. i was hoping it might distract her away from the people furniture. i opted for the $3 more expensive alpine scratcher because it had a little hole in its base with a mouse-like-thingy hanging in there. sure enough, mokey loved it.



so far she's not really spent much time scratching, but she sure loves the mouse.

still going after all these years

yesterday was my 2 year anniversary. i can't believe i've had something to say for 2 years + one day. ask my husband, i usually don't talk this much.

***update. i guess this message was kind of cryptic. that's what i get for trying to type it out before work this morning. but when i got a "happy wedding anniversary" phone call today i realized that perhaps i should've been more clear here. it's my 2 year BLOG anniversary. sorry for the confusion. happy blogging.***

good and bad

for those of you who know us well, you may know that chris and i have not had television since 2002 when we moved to nj. to be clear, we've had a TV, but have not had cable nor any reception. and we do not particularly care to have it so we never bought rabbit ears or anything. we keep the tv unplugged until we want to watch a movie and then roll it over to the couch.

so anyways, last night chris was going to the laundromat and i decided to go too so i could watch the oscars. (i know, i know. it's not really like me to want to watch the oscars. but i found myself wanting to see it this year). we got 1/2 way through the show by the time our landry was done.i wanted to watch the rest so i decided to try and see if we could get some reception at home. for the first time since moving to our apartment this past may, i plugged the cable outlet into the tv. and what do ya know? we've got tv. a lot of tv. apparently we have some sort of free tv cable service (whether intentionally free or not, i do not know) along with our cable internet.

i still really don't want to watch tv. and we still plan to leave the television unplugged. but now i guess we can't say we don't have tv. we'll have to say something along the lines of "we choose not to watch it," which i guess is more accurate anyway.

does this look funny to you?

our home mac computer recently died and for the past few weeks chris and i have been using this pc laptop. i realized that on this laptop my blog's appearance is not quite right. the toolbar and profile and links that are supposed to be immediately to the right of my last post are all the way down to the bottom of the page. is it like that for anyone else? and for those bloggers out there, does anyone know how to fix this?

bleh

this has pretty much been me and chris for the past several weeks. i came down with a bug last sunday night and am still trying to get my voice back. now i've passed it along to the hubs and he's been down for the count for the past few days. hopefully we'll be up and running again soon. i can't believe i'm saying this, but we kind of miss the real world.

mom's birthday surprise

today is my mom's 60th birthday for realz. but we all got together this weekend in cape may for a surprise birthday party. my siblings, ben and rachel, and my step dad, jim, and i have all been planning this for a few months now. and i think it was a pretty good success. here's the blog about the event. (it's been weird having another blog and not being able to mention it here. i felt almost like i was having an affair. so it's good to get it all out in the open now.)

effing pia

i feel like doo and we leave for nj (the coldest state on the planet*) tomorrow and now blogger has made me change my profile over to google. it's supposed to make my life easier, they said. bull doo! it's turned into a royal pia. thanks, blogger.

*it really is the coldest state on the planet. no need for any fancy links. just trust me.

sexy valentine's day plans

i've been sick for the past 4 days so i'll just get it out of the way and say straight out that i have no sexy valentine's plans, not that we usually do anything for valentine's anyway. but i guess this time i have an excuse?

started to feel sick on sunday night with fever, shivers and sweats. took monday off to recuperate. went to work on tuesday and ended up worse for it. tuesday night i slept a total of probably 2 hours. tried to sleep. couldn't. got up and read in the living room. tried to sleep. couldn't. woke chris up with my restlessness and coughing. read until 5:00 AM and then slept until the alarm woke us up. had to get up because we needed to go and get the car from the shop. so i stayed home today and did battle over the phone with doctors to get a few prescriptions.

so now i'm feeling better enough to be bored and want my husband to come home before i start to feel sick again. i guess this means i'll probably be at work tomorrow. that's fine, though, because that would make it a 2 day work-week because i took friday off to go home. yipee!