Exciting, isn't it! I actually finished my valences, and I love them. You can read more about them here, if you want.

Joel is on his way to Home Depot to pick up our new screen door. It will be a good thing because 1) it won't be old and beat up and 2) it will allow a LOT more room in our kitchen ... something that the kitchen desperately needs.

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I spent the day at a conference (for work) in Bloomington. It was pretty good, I thought. But some of my coworkers weren't too thrilled with it. I feel like I'm learning a lot from it - not all of it is applicable to what I do at work, but i think it's enough to get me started, and now that I know enough to play around, I'll probably learn more. The conference is for the Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Bridge). I know InDesign pretty well, but the other ones not so much.

On the way there I saw a semi-truck rear-end a red mini van. The mini van was pretty much stopped and the semi truck was probably going 50 mph and had to slam on its breaks. Ugh, it was really scary. It ended up being about a 4 vehicle pileup. I am pretty sure every one was okay, but if that mini van had not been a mini van, it would not have been good. Or if anyone had been in the back seat of the mini van. I called 911 on it and just kept driving. I figured I'd cause more problems if I stopped. One of my coworkers arrived to the conference a little late (due to the traffic this caused) and he said it didn't look like there were any major injuries. Praise God.

And I love them. I ended up buying an elephant too. In my imaginary world, elephants sit under trees with giant owls in them. And they absolutely roam where bird houses also hang!

Here's a picture:


Click here for more pictures of our play room.

BRRRRRR! It is so cold outside that my car groaned on the drive to work. And I’m almost out of gas which means I’m actually going to have to stand in the cold to fill up my tank today! BRRRRRR!

We go to Florida in 13 days. I cannot tell you how excited I am. A real family vacation with no commitments. We’re just going there because we want to and we have nothing that we HAVE to do. Heavenly. In 9 days we are going to this place for the night. We’re actually going for Joel’s work and so there will be all sorts of people and I’ll have to socialize – which is something I am NOT good at. However, it’s so cheap that it might as well be free and Rosemary is going to LOVE the water park.

I think Rosemary did really well at "Kikijack’s" house (that’s what she calls it) yesterday. She didn’t even cry when I picked her up. Normally she cries – not because I came to pick her up, it’s more like she’s saying, “Why did you leave me here all day?” But she was happy and more interested in the toys and the fish and Jack than she was in me. There was a point in my life where that would have made me sad, but yesterday it just made me glad that she’s happy there.

Our kitchen is coming along. We have most of the wallpaper torn off and Joel has started sanding down the cupboards. Tonight I think we are going to have to start emptying out all the cupboards and storing stuff away because the sanding is going to make a big mess – and Joel plans to do more sanding tomorrow night. We are hiring a friend to spray enamel the cupboards and we are hoping he can do that while we’re in Florida. We were hoping the hard wood underneath the linoleum would be all pretty, but it’s going to be in bad shape. :-( Joel might have me convinced to just lay a new linoleum down. There is no heat source in the kitchen and I think a tiled floor – although it would look great – would be too cold. Hard wood will probably get too expensive. We’ll see. We briefly talked about laying down heated tile – but I am not sure we were thinking about price. We shall see. Any suggestions?

I pass this sign every day on my drive to work. And it makes me laugh, because what it should really have instead of flowers and stars on it is guns and drug needles.



(kidding, only kidding. :))