Cheater Cheater, People Eaters

Clint and I are playing Quiddler right now and he is totally cheating.  He went to some sort of Scrabble website to look up words that begin with "qu," and came up with "query."  Cheater!  Oh, it's my turn now...be right back... 

Haha!  I love karma!  On the last round, I won the game by nine points because I pulled out a word that normally would have never occurred to me.  Which word, you ask?  Query!  Yeah baby, that's what I'm talking about!  Cheaters never prosper.  Well, unless they're poiliticians.  Or just regular Joe-Schmoes that get away with it.  Now that I think about it, that's a stupid expression. 

This week has been a great week, although for the life of me I can't think of what I did.  I know we went to Dan's and Felisa's for small group on Monday, which was fun, as always.  The discussions in our group are getting deeper and deeper every time we meet, and I love that.  I love it that I have a group of grown-ups who I can delve into difficult topics with and bounce ideas from.  But it's not all just "heavy" stuff; we laugh a lot too.  Especially when the women start throwing their men under the bus about their bad driving and such...poor guys.  You know if they tried to turn around and do the same thing to us, we'd have them by their cajones by the time they got home.  Ahhh, love...such a double standard.

Today we went with Mike and Amanda to see Eclipse.  Since social networking sites are bombarded with excited quibbling about the latest Twilight installment, I won't torture anyone with a long-winded review of the movie.  But I will say that it followed the book closely, and I really enjoyed it. 

We have set a camping date with Matt and Alana!  We're going to Lake Gregory the 20th-22nd.  My sister is going to crack up when she reads this, since she lives there.  We were originally planning to camp somewhere further away, but every place we could think of was already booked. Since it is so beautiful up in the mountains, we decided that camping there for a couple of days would still be a great break from the desert.  I am really going to have to resist the temptation of sneaking in my sis's house though to steal a quick shower or an extra pillow.  Who exactly said that roughin' it has to be rough?  ;-) 

One final thing: I did NOT make up today's blog title.  I asked Clint what I should title this entry, and that's what he came up with.  I didn't get the whole "people eaters" part of it, but he said it's because we watched a movie about vampires today.  I think that's a HUGE stretch, but we're in a hurry to start "movie night," so I'll change it later.

Ta-Da!

Finally finished with Trin's room and I am bone-weary!  I feel like my entire life for the past two weeks has been comprised of nothing but taping and edging and painting....Unfortunately I still have two more bathrooms to paint, because Trin's bathroom is currently brown, and ours is an awful shade of grimy lavendar.  I think I am going to take a week off from any activities requiring blue tape or paintbrushes, and then maybe (hopefully) sometime next week I'll feel refreshed and ready to tackle those bathrooms.  Of course during my week "off," Clint needs my help shoveling rocks, so I'm not sure exactly how refreshing this so-called break is going to be.

So here it is...our old master bedroom.  The paint color was supposed to be lavendar, but it sort of came out as a pale pink.  Ironically, Trinity hates pink, but I spent a good deal of time brainwashing her that the color IS actually lavendar, so at this point she loves her room.  She picked out the kelly green color on the top, which is actually brighter in person.  I love it.  Part of the fun was I refused to let her see the room the entire time I worked on it, because I wanted to do a surprise "reveal" like you see on HGTV.  So she was locked out of her room all day yesterday.  Today, while she was at a birthday party down the street, Clint and I moved in all of her furniture and hung up all of her pictures.  When she came home, I made her close her eyes while walking in.  The whole thing was so entertaining!

Summer...Break?

I've been useless as far as writing in my blog! I'm not explicitly trying to avoid it, but summer has a natural tendency to take over my social networking. Yesterday I went to Lake Gregory with Shannon and Sarah, and it was so gorgeous up there. We had a great time, and now it's hard to want to sit down indoors and type...anything.

This week I've been busy painting our master bedroom and getting it put together. We decided to trade rooms with Trinity over summer break, which I know sounds a little strange. Our house technically has two master bedrooms, but one of them is significantly smaller than the other. When we first moved in, we decided to take the smaller of the two master bedrooms because it had a huge walk-in closet, plus it was the only room located on the opposite side of the house apart from the other bedrooms, and I thought it would be nice to have that kind of privacy. Well, time has shown that we are way too cramped in that room, so we decided to trade rooms with Trinity. We are losing the walk-in closet, but we are gaining more space, a large garden tub, and more counterspace in the bathroom.

Trading bedrooms has been a HUGE ordeal. It's not just a matter of swapping all of our stuff, but I also have to repaint both rooms, because neither one is the appropriate colors for the new occupants. Luckily I just finished up with our bedroom, and I love how it came out. We decided to go with purple and ivory, and Clint found this great bedspread on the internet. I had to scrounge around the house to come up with accessories to decorate the bedroom because it was so empty, and today we went to Kirklands and picked up the clock that is hanging over the bed, along with the two sconces. The clock was on clearance for $13...I couldn't believe it. It also says Oxford St. on it, which I just about died, because let's just say that street has significant meaning for me.

In addition to repainting the rooms, Clint and I are also landscaping our front yard. We just had a delivery of rocks...mountains upon mountains of rocks, and we're using them to do a desert-type-scape around an island of grass.

I have a four-page paper due tonight (that I haven't even started), so I better quit blabbin' about home improvement and get cracking on some school work.

I Offended a Woodchuck

TMI Alert: If stories concerning bladder maladies offend you, then I'd advise you to read no further. That being said...

We were on our way back to our cabin from the Winchester Mystery House, and I had the most terrible urge to pee. I mean, it was really REALLY bad. I asked Clint how much longer until we reach the next rest stop, and he estimated that we had about ten minutes more. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wouldn't be able to make it another ten minutes (darn kids tore up my bladder), so for the sake of maintaining the sanctity of our somewhat grungy but otherwise tinkle-free seats, I told him he needed to pull over NOW.

Clint quickly brought the car to a stop on the side of the highway, and I jumped out of the car and headed quickly down the hill into some wild brush, looking for some privacy. In my panic, I ran right through a huge patch of stinging nettles; a price I would pay for many hours to come. At this point, I could no longer hold it, so I double-checked to make sure the highway traffic couldn't see me, and there I went, on a big pile of sticks that led directly into an even bigger mountain of sticks. But right as I was going, a brown furry critter suddenly startled me, and scurried into a large habitat...the habitat that I was currently--eh-hem--doing my business on. He looked at me from inside his hole in this accusational way, and I told him "I'm so sorry! But I can't stop now!"

I didn't know what the creature was until I did some research later on that day. I really do feel terrible and am sorry I offended the poor critter and defiled his habitat.

So I guess this begs the question of "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Unfortunately I was too busy peeing on his front porch to find out.

Our Vacation: Twitter Edition

We came home from vacation yesterday evening. Overall, the trip was very pleasant and fun.  While on vacation, I tweeted a total of 35 times. I know, that seems like a lot. But Twitter incorporates such short, to the point updates (140 characters to be exact) that it didn't feel like a lot, and it was nearly effortless to throw out an update here and there througout the day. I wanted to keep a log of our trip, but without having to write long blog entries. Granted Twitter forces you to leave out virtually all details, but that's okay, no one wants those anyway. Okay, so since I'm too lazy to do a blog entry rambling about our vacation, here are my twitter updates that spanned through a five-day period, copied and pasted below (in order from oldest to most recent):

1. On the road for the next 8 hours! Let's see how much my family and I like each other by the end of today. ;-)
2. Lady Gaga may be off her rocker a little, but the woman is a musical genius.
3. Our GPS keeps griping at Clint cuz he's speeding.
4. Rough start! GPS took us an hour out of our way. Dang technology. Sometimes nothing beats a good ole' fashion map.
5. We're in CA for crying out loud, how'd we wind up on Bob's Road to Nowhere?
6. It's exactly 100 degrees out here in Bodunkville right now (made up name cuz who the hell knows where we really are).
7. Trinity just said "Mom, I thought people dissolve at a 100 degrees." LOL. Give it time, kiddo, give it time...
8. Well I have to hand it to the kids...they lasted for nearly seven hours before starting the "are we there yet" tyrade.
9. Just had a great dinner...getting ready to walk back to the hotel. Beautiful evening!
10. Our hotel sink is broken & some drunk guy puked right by our car. I know it doesn't sound like it, but we're having a great time so far!
11. On our way to the aquarium...very sleep deprived. *two thumbs up*
12. The penguins are so cute!!
13. Watching penguins being fed; my fingers just got ran over by a wheelchair. Ouch.
14. Getting ready to eat lunch at Bubba Gumps. There's a lady outside the restaurant holding alligators. I want to hold an alligator!
15. Just tricked the kids into eating squid. Fun stuff. ;-)
16. Just arrived to our cabin. It's beautiful here!
17. OMGsh this cabin is so cute. I'm so happy we don't have to share walls w/ other people. Last night we had partiers next door...it was rough.
18. We just finished an evening swim and topped it off with a dip in the spa, Now it feels like a vacation!
19. Today was an amazing day! I hope the rest of our vacation is this fun! Time to snuggle in w/ a book. *stretch...yawn*
20. Heading to the Winchester Mystery House. Touring 110 rooms w/ strange anomalies (stairs that lead to nowhere, windows on the floors, etc).
21. The mystery house is insane. We weaved through that house for over a mile & 2000 stairs! My favorite part was the door that led to nowhere.
22. We just rendezvoused w/ Clint's parents for lunch...pretty crazy considering we're on completely seperate vacations in different locations.
23. We ran out of houses in Monopoly, so now we're developing our property with chunks of oreo cookies.
24. Getting ready to board Roaring Camp Railroad for a ride through the Redwoods. So excited!
25. Our train just came screeching to a halt because some crazy lady just jumped on our train!
26. Conductors tried to figure out who jumped aboard but no one was willing to rat her out, so now we're moving again & she gets a free ride.
27. My service is pretty crummy out here in the redwoods and getting worse...guess it's time to turn off the technology. ;-)
28. Our train is too heavy so they just announced that they are cutting off the last two cars. WE are on the last two cars! Here we go...
29. Rode bikes to the beach and now we're lounging in the sun while the kids dig for sand crabs. Ahhh...paradise.
30. Discovered a charming little deli w/ an outdoor courtyard eating area. Delicious food & great atmosphere! I love trying out the local spots.
31. We were roasting marshmellows when Elijah said, "look, doggy." Well the "doggy" was a big fat skunk, w/ big bushy tail & ready for action!
32. Packing up and getting ready for the long drive home. :-(
33. Eating good ole' burgers at a place called "Good Ole' Burgers."
34. Last stop before home: Charlie Brown's for date shakes. So yummy.
35. Home!

That pretty much sums up our trip!  There are a few small things left out (like how I accidentally peed on a Woodchuck's house), but right now, we'll just leave this at this nice, cliff-notes version, which is the one I want to remember anyway.

Vacation Countdown

I just got back from the beginning kickboxing class, and I think I pulled a hamstring, but other than that, I feel great! The workout was exactly the same as it was for the regular kickboxing class, the only difference was when we got to the training portion, it was more basic punches/kicks, with no combos. I loved the class so much...it was right at my level.

We spent our day today getting ready for our vacation. It's pretty much been a whirlwind of laundry, cleaning, and packing. This is going to be my last post for the week...we have internet in our cabin, but I have sort of vowed to myself to take a break from technology while I'm spending time with my family. Although I still might sneak a peak at a blog or two from my cell phone once in awhile, or throw out the occassional tweet. ;-)

Have a great week everyone!

Droid

My and Clint's cellphone contracts expired recently, and since Verizon was offering a "two for one" deal on their Droid phones, Clint went ahead and ordered them. I don't really know much about the Droids, but I know we've got the whole media package on them. This means that, from now on, I will be able to access the Internet from my phone. I don't know if this is going to prove to be a blessing or a curse, but I am like a little kid right now waiting for Christmas--I'm so excited to play with my new phone. Fed Ex tried to deliver them today, but we weren't home, so now Clint's on his way to go fetch them right now. I have a feeling the rest of our evening has officially gone down the drain.

I went to kickboxing this morning, despite how sore my muscles were from the last class. If I push myself to work through the sore muscles, the pain goes away. I don't know if it's the endorphins or what, but it works every time. Then about an hour after working out, as soon as my muscles are cooled down, I'm back to feeling crippled again. It was a great workout though and I felt exhilarated for the rest of the morning.

Later after our workout, Clint and I went out to lunch, and then to Costco to buy beach towels, road snacks, and a few other things we need for our upcoming vacation. I am really excited for our trip! Last night Clint showed me pictures of the inside of our cabin, and it is very cute. It is actually larger on the inside then it looks from the front, because they're designed to be narrow, but long. It has an eat-in kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The kids get to have their own room with bunk beds, which is a huge benefit.

The only thing is I might just have to confiscate Clint's new phone, or else he'll be playing with it while we're on vacation--I know that man too well.