must.have.pop.culture.reference!

I wish I wasn't so incredibly reliant on pop culture references, but the truth is while you might have been reading, say, Little Women I was watching Facts of Life. (FYI, I did eventually read Little Women two years ago and it was kinda boring after the first 200 pages.)

One result of this is that while you can relate to some character of Jane Austen's or Fyodor Dostoevsky's, I can relate to...Chris Farley.

I think this scene in Tommy Boy pretty much sums up how I feel about my ability to screw up at least 50% of my first impressions. I reference it often. You see, I love getting to know people. I'm mostly an extrovert. But, I have no go-to way to handle a first meeting. My nerves get the best of me and I say totally awkward things and then I go into disclaimer-overload and then I make a drug reference or something, I start sweating and then it ends somehow. I feel like this:

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com
How much do you rely on pop culture references?

quick confession

The first few times I saw someone do this on Facebook, I thought it was a bikini top and I just couldn't figure out WHY someone would type it.

<3

Am I alone on this one?

yup, it was millenium park

What I really wanted to do, was follow up the last post with a "That's-RIGHT-it's-Chicago!" post, but then I got sick. Whenever I'm sick, I totally forget what it's like to be healthy. I can't possibly fathom being productive or cooking for my family ever again. And then when I start feeling better, I'm AMAZED at my new super powers. After I emerged from the rubble of illness this past week, I completely cleaned my hoarder-looking basement. It was simply amazing. For two days, my life was all about decluttering my basement.

And then I remembered the internet. And my blog and stuff.

I'm back. More on the trip soon.

In the meantime, I'll give you this menu item to noodle on. Seriously? I'm an adventurous eater, but this just does not sound appealing to me. You?

three pictures from day two of the east coast tour

Can you guess where we were for the first two nights? No guesses from the natives! That would be cheating!

Clue #1
This doesn't help you much, unless you can recognize those legs pushing the stroller! There are at least two cool things about this picture. One, we were walking to church. I wish I could walk to church from our home. Two, the pastor of this particular church went to our church here in Minneapolis for a short while! Oh, duh! Three cool things: look at the sweet stroller!


Clue #2
Look familiar? Been here? Or, should I say BEAN here?


Clue #3
Total giveaway for many of you, I'm sure!

three reasons i shouldn't make coffee cake at noon

I had no idea that I doomed myself to many failures when I made this delicious Cranberry Upside Down Coffee Cake.

1. I hadn't eaten lunch, so the coffee cake said, "Hey, why don't you just enjoy me for lunch and forget fruits and veggies." So, I totally obeyed the coffee cake.

2. With no boys or Brent around, it was just sitting there on the counter taunting me with its crooked edges. No matter how much I tried to cut straight lines, it would crumble here (with help) or have a jagged pecan there (darn). It said, "please, could you do me a solid and straighten out my edges? thanks, babe."

3. After consuming a revolting amount of coffee cake (nearly a fourth), I lost any motivation to make dinner. Although the coffee cake serenaded me and whispered sweet nothings in my ear, I refused to serve it for dinner. Also, I wanted to take a nap. At 6pm.

three pictures from day one of the east coast tour

First stop: Ella's Deli in Madison, WI

This is Miles in front of some miniature carnival looking thing. The entire restaurant is packed with antique animated toy decor. It feels like the catch-all for all the retired toys from Santa's workshop.


Jillian had just ridden on the carousel they have out front. Ice cream + carousel = pre-meltdown joy!


See that milkshake? It was good, but it wasn't served with extra milkshake in a stainless steel cup. And it was almost $6, if I remember correctly. So, that was a disappointment, but nothing could really bring us down this early on in the trip.

three (more or less) trips

Okay, so it's quite ridiculous that I haven't written about the summer at all. Well, it would be except for the fact that the summer was so incredibly insane that there was no spare minute to just sit and reflect or share or anything. So, I'll have to backtrack...

1. [attempted] Trip to St. Louis #1. We were all going to drive down together to pillage my parents' home because they were moving (and now have moved) to Romania. But, the day before we were to leave, Jillian started ralphing all over the place. Within the first two hours of spewing, we changed plans and the next day Brent flew there with our brother-in-law, Steve. They had a great albeit short visit with my folks and brought back a big honkin' truckload of furniture. Neely and I were especially interested in furniture that our Dad made so it was pretty sweet that our husbands made the haul!

2. East Coast Whirlwind Tour!! We roadtripped it hard in August. All I'm going to say right now is that we drove over 3500 miles in two weeks. We covered 15 states (I think) in 15 days. And we saw LOTS of friends and family. I told Brent last night that I wish we could do the whole trip again, but with double the time. I simply LOVED it. I'll write more about it soon!

3. We arrived home from the East coast trip late on a Saturday night. The following Friday, my parents had a Bon Voyage party in St. Louis. Having just missed two weeks, Brent could not go. And I did not trust myself to drive all four kids to St. Louis. With Miles and Jillian farmed out to loving friends, Phoebe, Avery and I piled back in the van (which had not been de-vacationed) to bring love and well wishes from the north. We will miss my folks immensely, but we trust the Lord is in charge and knows best.

So, there's a little of what we did. What did YOU do this summer? I want to know three things!

three things i'm doing

When it gets to be a month between blog posts, I forget how to gather my thoughts. I have no idea where to start. I can hardly type. I can't remember where we left off. And, quite honestly, I haven't written a blog post for MONTHS. The last month and a half of posts were all set up one night when I was feeling prolific or something.

So, in an effort to make posting less Mount Everestish to me, I'll limit myself to three things. I'm going to try this little exercise everyday for a week. (And announcing that I'm setting out to do this simple task will sufficiently cause me to fail. Commitment issues and what not.)

Here goes nothin'...

1. I'm getting ready for a garage sale. I could say so many things about how elusive this garage sale fantasy is (I've been talking about it for MONTHS) or how purging your house makes you realize wonder if you're a hoarder (seriously!) or how I have such admiration for people who can whip out a garage sale like it's a boxed cake or something (it's flippin' hard!), but I don't have much time (I have a GARAGE SALE TO PLAN, yo!). So, I'll just say this: throwing a garage sale makes me feel vulnerable because people can come by and look at the stuff that I've lived with for all these years or clothes that I've worn (or maybe I didn't...) and it's like WAY marked down and they can still just totally reject me it. (And already I'm thinking defensively, "But, this is the stuff that I DON'T want! It's like the OPPOSITE of me!!") I'm just saying that this is an exercise in humility. So, basically I'm doing it to humble myself. And get rid of stuff. And get some greenbacks. Or not. Can we call this $anctification?

2. Second thing I'm doing? I'm pretty much soaking in every minute that I can of having an infant. Phoebe turns one in a month and that depresses me. (Being pregnant with another would depress me more, so don't get any ideas!) She's changing FAST. She loves to say "da da" and "sss" and she points and stands and dances (avery taught her!) and spits on cue (avery taught her that too!) and sometimes says "ma ma" and crawls so fast and shakes her head "no" and nods to say "yes" and signs and screams (really, really loud.). Oh, and her hair has gone from black to light.

See?

And look at her dancing!


3. This is cheap, but the third thing I'm doing is getting to bed earlier these days. Like, much earlier. So, with that said...Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.