All Manner of Pressing Issues

Yesterday I undertook a little project. I painted our kitchen. Richard did the taping and I painted. I really like the new color. Today Richard asked me if I might spent a little more time in the kitchen now that I have fresh paint on the walls! Ha. He also bought me a TV for the kitchen and Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Do you agree that he’s hinting??

I do plan to cook tonight. I’m not sure what, but I do want to cook. Apparently his “hints” are working. Maybe I’ll even use Mastering the Art of French Cooking tonight for the first time!

P.S. I realize these pictures are blury. Our camera has absolutely had it.

P.S.S. I also realize that I haven’t posted Florida pictures yet. My technology coordinator (aka Richard) is working on it.

Hello! I’m still here. I’ve just not been a very good blogger.

So the last time you heard from me, I was at the beach with my mom in Florida. Our trip was fantastic. I’m having some technical difficulties right now accessing those pictures, but my in-house technology coordinator person is working on it. I’ll post pictures from that beach trip soon!

So, Richard and I were out of town for 10 days. We were on separate trips, but our trip ended together at my parents house. We got to spend a couple of days with my parents, brother and sister-in-law. It was a fun time together and an unexpected treat for us all to be together. Olivia got to be there for the fun, too.

When we left town, we left the house clean (clean sheets and all!), but for some reason I have not felt “caught up” since we’ve been back. The week has been a busy one somehow.

On Thursday a storm hit in our neighborhood and damaged several of our trees. Over the course of the past few days crews have been coming to work on the trees, removing several. It’s unfortunate, but two of the trees were Bradford Pears and were not strong enough to support their quick growth anymore.

Neither Richard or I had ever seen winds as strong as they were when the storm hit (73 mph). I have more pictures on my “regular” camera (these were taken from my phone, but quite honestly I’m too lazy to go get them. In the back yard, there were tons of limbs and branches on the ground, lots of leaves and several of our flower pots were blown over. No real damage though.

On Thursday, I started getting sick and went to the doctor Friday morning. She thought I just had a cold and sent me home with instructions to take Robitussin. I was frustrated and knew that wouldn’t cut it and I was right. I called her back this morning and got a
prescription. Yay. Hopefully I’ll feel better soon. Being sick when I am supposed to be on summer “vacation” is the pits.

I have tons of yard work I want to do and will get on that as soon as I feel better. Hopefully the meds will kick in and do their thing SOON!

I have been taking Olivia for a walk or to the dog park each morning. The last couple of mornings it’s been to the dog park because I’ve been too lazy to walk her!! Here are some recent pictures of our girl:

(Please ignore the state of the flower bed…we had just gotten back into town and I had not yet cleaned up the yard.)

Olivia has a route that she runs every time we let her out. Unfortunately, her route is straight through the back flower bed. The plants that are in her path are not too happy. One side of one of my Boston Ferns is nearly completely gone from her running past it. While we were all away for 10 days, some of the plants took the opportunity to recuperate from the usual beating.

3 hostas I had that were about 2 feet tall when I bought them have been mowed down to nothing thanks to Olivia. At least she’s not intentionally destroying anything. I will give her that much credit!

At least the plants in containers are happy!

Earlier in the week Richard was out of town on a business trip, so I decided to take myself for a walk on the national mall. The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite of all the memorials. I specifically love the view of it from the World War II Memorial. The World War II Memorial is most impressive at night, I think. I sat at the WWII Memorial for awhile and then walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. It was a really nice evening. We got a break in the heat this week. It was a nice walk and I enjoyed having some quiet time to myself (dog free even!). I couldn’t get a picture of it because it was so dark, but the baby ducks were huddled together sleeping on the side of the reflecting pool. Their parents protectively stood beside them.

So, Thursday afternoon when the storm came, our electricity went out. Our power came back on Saturday morning around 10:00. We were very thankful the temperatures were only in the upper 80s/low 90s outside since we had no air conditioning. Luckily this happened in the summer because the cold water isn’t too terribly cold in the summer for showers. We have a gas stove and a grill, so we cooked that way and played Skip-Bo by candlelight. It wasn’t so bad.

I was certainly glad the electricity came back on Saturday because I needed to be able to blow my hair out for a wedding we attended Saturday night! We had a great time at the wedding. 8 hours in 3.5 inch heels reminded me of what I have ahead of me with school starting!

So I guess this bring us fairly up-to-date. I’ll post Panama City Beach pictures as soon as I can.

My summer is winding down already somehow (our last day of school was June 25). I have several meetings for school to attend over the next few weeks (a week and a half’s worth actually) and then I’m “officially” back on the 30th. The students return the Tuesday after Labor Day.

Recently I have taken a few day trips. Two day trips to have been to Assateague Island. The first I took with a girlfriend and the second I took all by myself! The third was to Williamsburg.

Assateague is an absolutely beautiful beach. I love going to the beach and not looking at high rise hotels and condos. All I can see for miles and miles are sand dunes, sea grass and pristine beach.

Here are some pictures from the time I went with my girlfriend. I swore I wouldn’t post any swimsuit pictures. I am posting pictures of the amazing wild horses we saw! They are certainly not afraid of people. They rooted around in several beach bags looking for snacks. Unfortunately, they uncovered a bag of goldfish crackers, but after that people started closing their bags, baskets, etc. It’s very unhealthy for the horses to eat people food, but since they are wild animals, once they have the food it is unsafe to take it from them. Anyway–my friend and I had a WONDERFUL time. We read, talked, walked and even played in the water. The waves were big and strong that day, so there was lots of laughter as we got splashed and knocked down in the water. Lots of fun and a day we’ll definitely have to repeat soon! Oh and on the way home we went to a SONIC for drinks. It was heavenly. I hadn’t seen a Sonic since I went home for Christmas. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that my friend and I also saw two horses fighting. They were both reared up on their hind legs going at each other with their mouths and front hooves. Quite interesting. She has the pictures of that on her camera, but maybe I can share those soon.

Richard has been gone all week on a business trip, so Olivia and I have been holding down the fort. I’ve done a little organizing and the normal cleaning, laundry and yard work. I feel like I’ve been relatively busy, but yet it doesn’t seem like a lot has gotten accomplished.

Tuesday I drove to Williamsburg to see my parents. I talk to them frequently, but nothing compares to getting to spend face-to-face time with them and getting to hug their necks! I will definitely have to get Richard to take me back to Williamsburg. It’s obviously historical (which will be the draw for him), but there are also many cute little boutiques there.

Yesterday I got the house in order, laundry done, sheets changed, etc. I decided since all of the necessities were taken care of that I’d head to the beach today! This morning I got up and packed the car with my basket, an umbrella and a beach chair and dropped Olivia off at daycare and off I went! I enjoyed a quiet day all to myself. I walked a lot, read some, didn’t pick up a single seashell (believe it or not), got in the water some and worked a few sodoku puzzles. Otherwise I just sat and watched and listened to the ocean. If you look carefully at the picture of the sand, you can see little birdie footprints. I love to watch children and birds at the beach!

We had a great 4th of July. We had a few friends over for a laid-back cookout. The guys manned the grill while the girls sat nearby and chatted. We had homemade lemonade (thanks, Richard!) and the weather was actually not too terribly hot. Olivia behaved herself even when her daddy did firecrackers in the backyard.

It’s such a good feeling to have friends in our home. I just love it.

One of our friends brought sparklers. They are my favorite firework. I was thrilled they brought them! In the picture of the girls, we all thought our sparklers were sparkling until about halfway through the picture. Then we tried to put our sparklers together to relight them all while taking the picture and clearly it didn’t work. In the picture with Gino, Richard and Olivia I know it looks like the guys were trying to catch her on fire–they weren’t.

After enjoying burgers outside and dessert inside, we sat around around the table and chatted (feeling quite 4th of July-ish with our blue/white tablecloth and red/white centerpiece–not to mention the red/white plaid plates and red/white polka-dotted napkins). Then, we walked over to the metro and went to the National Mall to view the fireworks display. We were on the west side of the capitol looking towards the Washington Monument. So, we were seeing the fireworks directly behind the monument. It was really breathtaking. We had what I think was the perfect view.

We had a great day!