… is the pretty fall colors on the trees. After that, I am all for skipping ahead to spring. Okay, okay, maybe one or two days of snow, but that’s it!
Look at how cute everything is!:
And, of course, because you are all clamoring for another picture of me, I will feed my narcissism grant your request:
Enjoy! 🙂
Yeah, yeah, long title. Deal. 🙂 I just didn’t want to have a billion blog postings, so I am going to squish a bunch in here. 🙂
While I loathe the coming of the coldness, I like watching the leaves turn colors. So, I will get a couple of photos of the leaves every year, but not too many, since my poor Floridian blood just can’t take it to be outside for too long. 🙂 For your viewing pleasure in the warmth and comfort of your ?desk, I bring you:
and 
Last week (see how behind I am?), I took a few photos of our church, as they have recently redone an area in front between the main church entrance and the entrance to the pastoral center. I think technically, they are two “reflection gardens,” one for Mary and the other for the unborn/victims of abortion. Very pretty. I like how this turned out:
And since I have a tendency of airing out my dirty laundry anyway, you might as well take a peek at the task I had before me last weekend. Just don’t get too excited, while I *did* do all 5 loads, I haven’t yet managed to put them away quite yet, but I *did* manage to fold them yesterday, and they are currently sitting in my bedroom in neat little stacks.
Now, I am not a fan of bugs in general. They usually creep me out. But, when I came home late on Friday, I saw this guy at my back door, and decided to leave him there, since — obviously — he was praying for me. And I can use all the prayers that I can get right now. He graced me with his presence until the following day, when I could photograph him. Shortly after I took his picture, I came outside again and he was gone — just like that.
Final topic: here’s a picture of my bed (now, don’t get all excited, I’m not inviting you in):
We got this comforter as a wedding present, so now that it has outlasted the marriage, it is showing signs of wear:
So, I finally broke down and bought myself a new comforter, because I didn’t think that the old one would stand up to another go in the washing machine:
See how amazingly, uncharacteristically girly it is? But, it makes me smile in it’s optimistic, girly way.
This is how I spent my evening yesterday after work. I met up with Sandra and Kylie at Barnes and Noble. After chasing Kylie around the store (with Sandra yelling at her not to run, while I egged her on), spent hours in the Religion section trying, and failing, not to buy another book when I already have too many to read, we sat down in the children’s section, where Ky proceeded to sit in the “teacher’s chair” and read to me.
I’m so glad she’s a book lover! 🙂
What was the book that I couldn’t leave the store without? (Because I know you are dying to know….)
“The Story of a Soul,” by St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Bought by the recommendation of Fr. Mark. (Well, okay, he said something about St. Thérèse, and there were tons of books about her, so I hope I picked the right one.)
Since I am the Master of the Unfinished Book (I have like 15 books that I am “in the middle of”), I proceeded to ignore the 3 books staring at me with their bookmarks, and left them to sulk while I dove into this latest acquisition. I made it to page 56 before going to bed.
This morning, I had to make the difficult decision of what to bring with me to work. After work today, I am going to do a bit of consulting, so I will not be home until fairly late. My tote bag is already nearly busting at the seams with my Bible, catechism, Adventures of Matthew binder, colored pencils, and TOBBOTD (Theology of the Body Book of the Day), and I made the sacrifice of not taking my newest treasure with me, in the interests of (1) keeping it safe, (2) actually working on finishing the TOBBOTD, which happens to be a GROSSLY overdue library book from the parish library, and (3) keeping my bag from bursting.
Oh, St. Thérèse book, I miss you! I will see you when I get home tonight! 🙂
Thank you! to everyone who has been praying for Henry. He is doing well, and we are so excited! Please continue to pray for him. Background information: Henry was born 2 months premature, on August 27, 2008.
We just got an update today that his blood labs have stabilized and they will be removing his nasal cannula tomorrow. It is hopeful that he will be able to go home in a few weeks! Yay! Go Henry! Way to grow!
Here’s a more recent picture of him, so you know who it is that you are praying for:
Thank you, again, so much for your prayers!
God Bless!
…our parish had a Decades Dance on Saturday, celebrating our 40th anniversary. It was totally far out, dude! You totally shoulda been.
First, I achieved high levels of hair awesomeness and had my hair bleached blonde and made “big” earlier in the day:
People really got into character:
And a very special rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Way too cool.
I’m not sure if I can put videos in here. I’ll give it a shot. If not, just click on one of the photos to take you to my Flickr page, and you can see them there. We have more of the Thriller moves, guys doing the ‘Gator, and more! Party on, decade dudes! 🙂 Peace out!
Just ‘cuz we is so cute like that:
Doesn’t it just make you want to squee? Now, go out there and kiss your siblings! You know you love ’em!
Sarah from PoshDeluxe has inspired me to upload some vintage pics to my Flickr. And, since my narcissism runs deep, there’s gotta be tons of me! 🙂
As you can see, from a very young age, I always had the mad skillz. Which may be why I get into trouble like this so often….
On a side note, check out Sarah’s blog. She’s hilarious! I love her! Oh! And she posted a link to this story, which you must, must read — so cute, I nearly died.
Some days, I feel like no matter how hard I work, my inbox grows faster than I can keep pace with it. I am busy, busy, busy, all day, and it looks as if I didn’t do a thing. I begin to despair over its overflowing and unruly state. It starts to become so bad that I can’t even SEE my inbox:
But then, I happen to catch a glance at my boss’s inbox and realize that it could be much, MUCH worse:
And then, I feel better. 🙂
This year, Lindsay, Terry and I are studying Jeff Cavins‘s Adventures in Matthew, part of the Great Adventure series. I am so excited to be starting Bible study again! I have really missed it since last year. We started off the “school year” right, with Lindsay bringing a delicious dinner of lasagna with home-grown veggies, and grapes to snack on during class. I thought it was hilarious. Less than 2 years ago, I wasn’t even thinking of joining the Church. 1 year ago, I was just starting going to daily Mass and getting more involved. Now, we are taking over the social hall dining room/silverware for our dinner — we are moving in! 🙂
Here is the scene this morning, as I have taken the day off to **finally** have my dryer delivered (Yay! I can actually do my laundry at home! Read more on the laundry saga here):
As you can see, I have my Bible (kind of important, you know, for a Bible study), my Catechism (hiding under the Matthew binder), the binder for Adventures in Matthew containing the Questions and the Answers (promise, I won’t cheat — except if you count it to be cheating to answer your questions in front of the Tabernacle), paper/notes, and the ever-necessary Starbucks!
Yippee! I’m so excited to see what we will learn this year! Last year’s Great Adventure Bible Timeline was a great, great course for me, and really helped me to understand the stories of the Bible and to get some idea of the history (coming from no background at all, it gave me a MUCH needed foundation). I highly recommend this series to anyone wanting to get to know the Bible better.
For those of you who don’t know, I have issues with food. Not only do I have issues with food, but I am not a very domestic female. However, for people whom I love, I will venture into the kitchen occasionally. 🙂
This latest foray is to bake a cake for our pastor at St. Anastasia, Fr. JJ. His birthday was actually last week, but he asked that I delay a week, so that he would have the cake when he was entertaining his parents for the Labor Day holiday.
So, being me, I avoided any planning of the cake until the last minute. I knew he wanted a chocolate cake with white frosting, but I hadn’t looked up any recipes until the 9th hour. Armed with my trusted web browser, I Googled it (as any wise cooking-impaired person would do), and found this recipe at All Recipes. For the frosting, I found this one, at the same site.
I was pretty excited, because although I do not have a very well stocked pantry, I did happen to have all the ingredients for both recipes on hand. That was amazing. The only thing was that I didn’t have the required 3 9″ baking pans. So, (I *did* say this was a last minute thing, right?) I headed to Meijer’s at 11:45 pm Saturday night for the proper dishes. While I was there, I picked up some white fondant (because it looked amusing and I’ve never worked with fondant before), and some cake decorating thingys (what is it? colored frosting?).
The cake portion went very well, and I was pleased with their outcome. While they were cooling, I decided that since it was already 1 am on Sunday, and my race day had begun (more on that later, maybe), that I would start my 10K now (since I only had to log it electronically with my nifty little Nike+ shoes, I could race any time of the day). So, I ran my 10K and got back home at about 3 am (yes, yes, I know…my time sucked).
I decided then to head to bed, since Fr. JJ had the 10:15 am Mass. I got up early (well, okay about 8 am) and started making the frosting. I don’t know if it’s something about the recipe, or something about my execution of it, but I couldn’t seem to get all the little bits from the milk-and-flour mixture to get smooth, so there were little bumpies in the frosting. Maybe next time, I’ll whisk the flour into the milk before I start the burner; or put the mixture into the rest of it before it cools, since the cooling made a kind of hard crust on the top; or maybe I’ll put the whole thing into the blender after I’m done with the mixer. I’m not sure, but there has to be a solution.
So, now I have frosting and 3 cakes. And while I did buy an additional cake-carrier while I was at the store, I realized that it still would only allow me to carry 2 cakes — I couldn’t squeeze a third, not even onto the larger carrier. Hmmm…. What to do?
Well, I took the one cake and frosted it as I was going to, and stuck it on the smaller carrier. Done. Excellent. Then, I had a thought. (Yes, be scared…. It’s okay.) Why not try to make a layered cake? So, I put one cake down, slathered it with the remaining frosting, then put the remaining cake on top. Like this:
Then, a horrible thought occurred to me:
“I’ve just made the world’s largest Oreo!”
And, you should know, I’m scared of Oreos. Especially of marshmallow fluff, but Oreos are terrifying themselves.
And this sucker was huge! See:
So, I decided to hide its Oreoness with the fondant. The fondant was…interesting. Doesn’t taste like anything, really, but it does cover the cake well. Next, I tried to “decorate” the cake. Let’s just say that I’m not going to quit my day job. So, I added a little disclaimer, right on the cake itself. In blue. At the bottom. And the final product turned out like this:
I am so glad that Fr. JJ is such a kind man, since he seemed to be happy for them, even though they were not the most elegant things in existence. 🙂
Ah, well. It was a labor of love, and not a display of skill. 🙂
Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass 