I got some new glasses and I love the style. And Joel and the lady at the store said they were great, but I just wasn't sure. I'm still not. I think they might be too wide for my face and I am asking you for the TRUTH. I have 90 days to return them, so it's okay if the consensus is that they don't look good. And, if you tell me you don't like them and I decide to keep them, your opinion will NOT have bugged me.

I didn't take fantastic pictures ... one of me smiling and one of me not. I didn't really fix my hair or makeup because, well, this is probably how I look most of the time (although I am in desperate need of a bang trim).

Honest opinions?





Joel just came home and tried to snap a better shot ... which I think shows a little better than my own photos why I think they're big:





p.s. you can click on the pictures a couple times and they'll get bigger.

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.

***

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.

Having Friday afternoons off makes such a difference. Especially when the weather is nice (summer is finally here!!).

Friday we invited our friends Jason and Magdalena (and their daughter, Riona) over for a fairly spur of the moment dinner. They are moving to Sweden (Magdalena and Riona move tomorrow and Jason will follow as soon as their house sells) and I wanted to see Magdalena and Riona once more before they left. We had whole wheat noodles with chicken, apricots, and parmesan. And mixed vegetables. And ice cream cake – did you know DQ does an ice cream blizzard cake?? So much better than their regular ice cream cake.

Saturday morning Joel and I went to the farmers market and bought a ton of plants on sale – you can read about that here. It was a lot of fun. We then spent the afternoon planting them, and that was a lot of fun too. It’s the kind of work that makes you feel good and not like you lost a bunch of your weekend time. After the planting was over, we drove over to my dad’s for dinner (and of course to wish him a happy fathers’ day).

Sunday we went to church and then decided to spend the day doing a whole lot of nothing. Joel grilled a ham steak with homemade nectarine salsa. I’m not a big ham fan, but it was yummy. We all took naps in the afternoon and I took Owen for a walk. Then we headed over to Joel’s parents’ house. It was very nice and relaxing. We didn’t stay too long because we wanted to run to Target to get Rosemary a sheet. She has a toddler bed and they only make fitted sheets for those (that I’m aware of?), but she needs a sheet to go over her because she insists on sleeping with a blanket over her (I’m the same way) and it’s getting too hot for anything other than a sheet. So we bought a twin sheet set and are just using the flat sheet with her toddler bed. So her sheets don’t match, who cares? :P

Oh yeah, on Saturday Rosemary got a mosquito bite near her eye and the swelling is terrible! Here is a picture of it at it’s worse.




You can see another fantastic picture of her (and Joel) here.

I realize this is SUPER late, but here are some birthday pictures (better late than never, right?)

( click here for a lot of pictures )

Hi friends - I would love to show you some pictures of our kitchen. It is not finished yet, but we've made a lot of progress. And you can see the pretty green color of our walls. Click here! Hasn't Joel done a great job with the counters (that aren't finished quite yet)?

I'm really thinking that I'm going to go with orange as an accent color. So if any of you know where I can find some orange fabric with little birdies on it, I would love to know!

Click here to see the picture I really wanted all of you to see of my kitchen. It's a before picture that shows more of our hutch. When you see this picture, you can see it really was a drastic change.

Thanks for looking!

Remember when this journal used to be almost entirely about Owen? People used to tell me that once I had a baby my love for my dog would go away and I just want to say ... those people obviously didn’t have dogs as fantastic as Owen. A log of people even predicted that we would get rid of him despite my adamant objections that Owen has the same last name as me, he is family and is a commitment and I’m not just going to throw him out the door.

I just don’t write about him that much because, well, he’s almost 4. He’s not really doing anything new and exciting. But last Sunday, he made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to cry. Joel and I have been watching Pride & Prejudice on Sunday nights (Masterpiece Theater is doing the complete Jane Austen, if you didn’t know!) and so that meant we stayed up a lot later than we normally would (we had it on tivo and didn’t start watching it until 9 or so). Owen wasn’t doing anything stressful, but around 10 o’clock, he got up from the couch and walked over to the stairway, then looked at us and back to the stairway. He was telling us he wanted to go to bed!

He won’t go upstairs without us, and I wouldn’t let him anyway because I’d be nervous he’d wake up Rosemary. He is such a goofy dog. I really hope he lives to be 29 (human years).

I don't have any current pictures at work, but this is one of my favorites:


Here's one where you can see him a little better:


I need to get an Owen icon ...

I guess coming home was inevitable.

We went to Harriet Island this morning and our camera crapped out. I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with it. It either only takes a certain kind of battery, or it is rejecting all batteries. Joel got a lot of good pictures of St. Paul, ducks, river boats, flowers, and geese (or as Rosemary says, "gooses!"). This is the only picture we got of the most camera-worthy subject there. At least it was a good one.

Suzanne asked for a picture of me with waist-length hair, and I can't find any pictures where my hair is longer than this. It's pretty close, though. This is the night before my older brother got married. It's a picture of me with both of my brothers.



Here's another one of me with puppy Owen.

Jack is kikifitz's little boy, but oddly enough, she wasn't there.









( more random pictures behind the cut )

Go ahead. Just try and tell me you don't think she's the cutest little girl around.

On Friday night, we went to Stillwater to get ice cream and to take the Rosemary to the teddy bear park. It was a lot of fun. That park cost over a million dollars (some very wealthy family built it for the city) and you can certainly tell it cost that much. It's so fun to watch Rosemary play. It always surprises me how much she can do.

I love this picture of Rosemary at the teddy bear park. I'm excited to scrapbook it, because ... look at those teeth!

Isn't she the cutest little camper? Aside from the drunken' neighbors we had a lot of fun. And the ginormous tent is awesome. Hopefully we'll have some quieter camping adventures this summer.