random is more than a word, it's a lifestyle

and now, a formal introduction...

2012-01-19T15:15:00.000-07:00

ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to formally introduce to you the newest member to join the flagg family festivities

* drum roll please*

welcome to the world baby GIRL

Olive Grace

she's already awesome - so sweet and gentle. it's a nice reminder that it's possible to just sit and stare at something that's doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. and you know it's a little bit silly to be doing that, but you just. can't. pull. your. self. away.

and now, five reasons why having a newborn again rocks

1. we got to ditch our dogs for a little while. i'll tell ya, nothing lessens your loyalty to your furry friends than having kids. they slide down the totem pole of priorities pretty dang fast.

we pawned our pups off when the baby came and i'm sad to say that, other than quincy occasionally asking were milo is...and then immediately getting distracted by something else before we can answer, we haven't thought about the dogs once.

in fact, it turns out that having two kids is easier than having two dogs. so, if anybody's looking to add a dog to your family, we've got some good options for ya...

2. the dinosnore! does ANYBODY remember these things other than me and my siblings???

dinosnores were these awesome neon-colored (rock on to the eighties) plush dinosnores with a ball or something rolling around inside of them. when you move them, the ball rolls and makes this weird "snoring" sound as if your fuzzy friend isn't a man-eating ferocious creature at all, but rather a meek little snoozer with an acute nasal problem.

i first mentioned a dinosnore right after quincy was born because when she breathed, she sounded like a dinosnore. the boy (and everybody else on the planet) had no idea what i was talking about.

fast forward two years, my sis has a baby. of course, she remembers the dinosnores because she had one too. we reminisced about them and how bizarre it is that nobody's ever even heard of them. seriously, there's not even a wikipedia page for them or anything. i can't even add a link to the word "dinosnore" because there's nowhere to link it to. so sad

well, the boy, in hearing all of this talk, somehow miraculous finds me a dinosnore!! i almost started crying when i opened the gift. okay not really, but i could have! i have no idea where he found it - trust me, i've been looking for two years now. they don't even come up in google searches - it's like they never even existed. pure awesome.

anyway, now that we have another newborn, we get to experience the dinosnore sounds again. only this time, we can compare them to the real thing!

3. as adorable and hilarious as quincy is anyway, i think she's really stepped up her game this past week to try to make sure she's got our full attention. from putting hampers on her head and calling herself a robot to just being a ridiculously cute little stinker, she's definitely keeping us entertained and on our toes while the baby's sleeping (and let's be honest, even while the baby's awake, too)

4. for the most part, quincy completely ignores the baby, but for whatever reason, she's really fixated on the fact that she gets to eat big people food and all the baby gets to eat is milk. she mentions it with every meal and every time i talk about baby olive, she says, "no MY like olives. the baby only drinks milk."

...okay, so that's not really a reason why having a newborn rocks, but it's pretty cute nonetheless

5. come on, just look at her and how adorable she is! need i say more??

guessing game

2011-12-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

okay all -

it's already that time again! i'm rounding (har har) into "full term" pregnancy, meaning this little kiddo could be born at any moment without anybody batting an eye. well, that's a lie - i would definitely bat an eye if this baby was born right now.

we're so excited to welcome this little one into our family and can't wait to see what new adventures it'll bring!

now's your chance to cast your vote on a few things. winner gets the privilege of explaining to quincy why she won't get 150% of our attention anymore...

1. when will lil' flagg #2 join us?
to give you some guidance, my due date is january 11. q came a day before her due date

2. what will lil' flagg be? boy or girl
this pregnancy has been almost identical to my pregnancy with q, which would indicate girl, but you know all those old wives-tales...they're right 50% of the time

3. what should we name baby flagg?
because we have no idea...

ready, set, go!

pets for animals and christmas trees

2011-12-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

while i can follow most kids' books, i'm having a really hard time with this series lately... could someone please explain to me how a mouse, who talks and dresses and lives in a house like people, can have a pet cat who's just a normal cat??

it really boggles my mind. and she runs a farm, too with a bunch of farm animals that live in a barn and eat hay and poop wherever they want just like normal farm animals. but she lives in a house and is potty trained and these other animals' lives depend on her?

i similarly always wondered why goofy, who seems to be a dog, can talk and walk upright and hiccup-laugh while pluto - also a dog - actually acts like a dog. poor thing doesn't even get to wear vests. what gives?

and speaking of animals in places where it doesn't really make sense... guess which website is home to these chubalubs:

if you guessed a christmas tree farm website, you're exactly right!

the place proved just as fantastic as the website promised... i mean come now - any christmas tree lot with horses to ride...

random hubcaps all over the place...

and these guys selling you your christmas tree...

count me in! as you can tell from the boy's proud "i just cut down my own christmas tree" stance, he was just as entranced.

(isn't he adorable??)

the fun had only just begun though. we went with our friends, who also cut down a good-size tree and we decided we could haul them both the several blocks home on a little red wagon.

i was very impressed that they only toppled over once and that was before we even started moving!

and since we were down one red wagon, we also decided to haul home three kids on one sled...

(note quincy's cat hat... see how nicely i'm threading the theme through the whole post?)

now that's what christmas is all about, charlie brown!

(isn't she a beaut?)

oh and don't forget...

costuming

2011-11-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

costumes. i fall in love with that word over and over again. i sure hope whoever invented costumes (it was said to be the celtics...i googled it) got a special spot in heaven.

i love coordinating family costumes for halloween so everybody matches somehow. i'm a dork like that. a quick stroll down memory lane will show that quite clearly:

2008: mahna mahna guys

2009: juno

2010: bavarian yodelers - minus the yodeling

so halloween costumes this year took a lot of thought given all the factors at play: a toddler and a pregnant belly... it seems like a lot less factors when i write it down than it did when it was running through my head during the planning process

i landed on what i must admit was true brilliance

a fisherman, who caught an adorable little fish, and has another fish in his wife's fish-bowl belly. feel free to send me doting emails about how clever i am.

and even though the tiny little tail on the backside of q's costume was fantastic, and the fact that the poor boy had to walk around for a couple of days in his fishing waders made for a good story, i'd have to say the best part of the whole costuming was when my sis decided to go into labor during the halloween magic show we were all attending, meaning i got to go to the hospital to check in on them while wearing these pants

i really wish i had a better picture of how fantastic these pants were. full-on sequins from top to bottom made these babies shimmer enough to blind someone in the sun. they were the perfect pants to sport in the maternity ward... *

as if dressing up for halloween wasn't a treat enough, we got a second opportunity to dress up a couple of weeks later at the boy's nephew's bar mitzvah. i forever love this kid - he wanted to have a 50's themed party at the historic car museum in reno. fan. tas. tic.

of course, right when i got the invite, i started looking for the perfect getup.

the boy was a no-brainer. his middle name is "f." that's it. nothing attached to the letter except a period. he used to ask his parents about it as a kid and what it stood for. his dad told him it could stand for anything he wanted it to stand for. so, the boy started claiming that his middle name was...

the fonz

i sported the classic poodle skirt with high ponytail high school cheerleader (the pregnant belly added to the whole ensemble)

and q stole the show with this fantastic outfit

i love my life. the end.

* as an aside, my sis had an adorable baby girl who will for sure one day wonder why she's so infatuated with blue sequin pants, i'm sure. and since i know people can't resist a good birthing story, here's their story

it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown!

2011-10-24T22:45:00.000-06:00

i have to admit, i've been dragging my feet extra slothfully these last few weeks in dreaded anticipation for fall/autumn/whatever you call it in the region you live in. not that i don't love fall - i really really do, but i hate that it means winter is coming next. bleck.

BUT, all that moping about came to a close this past weekend with a little something called, the-greatest-pumpkin-patch-that-isn't-much-of-a-pumpkin-patch-at-all-but-rather-a-carnival-with-rides-and-a-petting-zoo-and-bounce-castles-and-all-sorts-of-wacky-stuff-i've-never-associated-with-pumpkin-patches-before.

i knew what we were getting into to some degree. there was a big part of me that needed that kind of over-stimulation to get me in the autumn spirit. especially after our pumpkin patch upset last year. see, when i hear "pumpkin patch," i can't help but think of hay rides and apple cider. oh yeah, and pumpkins... but not JUST pumpkins - that's way too bonnet and butter churner for my overly-commercialized brain. so you can imagine the sad look on my face when the pumpkin patch we rolled up to last year looked a little something like this

(it didn't really look like this because we don't live in the mojove desert, but in my mind it did)

so, this year i purposefully overcompensated just for kicks and giggles. and, maybe it's just the cotton candy talking (yes, at a pumpkin patch), but it was a lot of fun!

the bug and her hubs joined us for the festivities, and between our two pregger bellies, we must have heard something to the effect of "looks like you're trying to steal a pumpkin under your shirt there" at least 468 times. maybe more.

the highlight of the day was definitely the train ride though. imagine a fantastically old metal train with perfect kid-sized "cars" that look like giant empty soup cans turned on their sides with a hole cut in them for kids to poke their little heads out of. then imagine that soup-can train inching along through the scattered pumpkins so everyone in the whole place can see it.

(this is the size you should be to fit in one of these cars)

and then imagine two grown (and pregnant) women squeezing themselves into those little soup-can cars. i mean, we couldn't not - quincy wanted to go for a ride and it was an otherwise empty train, aka an opportunity! we asked if adults were allowed to ride, to which the kid driving the rig replied that if we could get into the car, we could ride. so ride it we did

it was sheer bliss. feeling the wind in our faces, the sun on our backs. like heaven really. but then it stopped. and we had to get out. and we suddenly realized that the driver never mentioned anything about being able to get out of the soup-can cars. (the boy just informed me that he actually did mention that, but we obviously only hear what we want to hear and were already scrambling into the cars without even hearing that part of things)

here are three things to keep in mind if you're ever considering going for this train ride.

1. soup can cars are a tight fit. and they're made of metal and can't be shifted around in any way

2. it's probably better to be smaller than the sum area of the car in order to ride it. and to not be pregnant

3. if you decide to get in one anyway, remember not to wear slippery maternity jeans

it took me a good several minutes to wiggle my way out of that thing, which involved twisting and turning in ways that i never thought would be associated with a simple train ride. of course, in my own agony, i completely failed to remember how bug's legs are significantly longer than mine and her belly's a couple of months ahead of mine.

i escaped only to find her completely wedged into her soup can, not able to move one way or the other.

to add to the situation, during our ride, we emoted so much joy that several little kids ran up wanting the next ride. so the whole train quickly filled with eager children. except one poor little kid who couldn't find an open seat...because bug was stuck on the train.

before long, an entire crowd had gathered around to see this 9-month pregnant woman jammed into a soup can. she should have gotten paid, she was one of the carnival's main attractions. she kept trying to wiggle out. and kept failing. and then she'd try with the help of the boy and her hubs, each hoisting one side up in vain. still no movement.

like a true soldier, she hollered bravely at the driver, "just start driving these poor kids around. i'll figure something out!" but, the mom of the boy without a seat would have none of that. her son needed that soup can car emptied for him asap.

i was a terrible sister. i stood right next to her car and laughed my head off. i couldn't help it.

i laughed when the guy sitting behind us said, "welp, looks like you bought yourselves a new train!" i laughed when the moms of all the kids waiting for the ride to start started to tap their feet and get upset. i laughed when i pictured bug needing to be sawed out of that thing. i laughed when the driver just grinned - knowing that was bound to be the end result and letting it happen anyway because it would be the highlight of his day. heck, i'm even laughing out loud right now as i'm typing this

by some autumn miracle, the bug finally freed herself from the terrible grasp of the soup can car, only to practically lose her stretchy maternity pants in the process. and her supportive husband's only comment was, "don't worry, sweetie. i think i'm the only one you mooned." it was fantastic.

her only battle wounds (other than a battered ego) were some fantastic bruises on her knees. at her midwife's appointment today, they saw the bruises and got really worried about her iron levels and she only nodded and looked at the floor. she didn't have the guts to tell them that even the most iron-rich person in the world couldn't get out of that predicament without purpling up a little bit.

best. day. ever.

flying in little planes, and other acts of patriotism

2011-09-01T10:47:00.001-06:00

(showing off her best impression of an american actress fending off the paparazzi)

there's something about summer that just seems so....american... which is funny because do they not barbecue in other countries? no hose water fights? no absurdly giant balls of ammunition being shot up in the air and then exploding into a bunch of lights and sprinkling depris back down on all the voluntary spectators? (okay, i already know the answer to that one)

in any case, summer = america. which is why the boy really went all out this year with his fourth of july getup. well, that and he lost a bet to me...

these two looked just fantastic (said with a lisp) at the telluride fourth of july parade. there may or may not have been american flag speedos involved too, but that footage has been burned... just look at 'em waving their flags with pride...

q was proud to be an american but opted for a tutu instead of a speedo. thank our lucky stars

next on our list of patriotic activities...and i'm not even sure why this felt patriotic to me - maybe because of the red and blue stripes on the side... was our near death experience in a 6-seater prop plane.

okay fine, it wasn't a near death experience at all - our pilot definitely knew what he was doing, but if you saw the way we were all gripping to our seats for dear life during the flight, you would think it was. let me rephrase that, the boy and i were gripping the seats for our lives while the pilot was casually flipping through pictures on his ipad!!

at one point during the flight, the boy asked the pilot, "so, what would i do if you suddenly died of a heart attack right now?" i can't say for certain, but i'm guessing the pilot sensed our tenseness...

let's back up. our friends invited us to stay at their family cabin with them in montana (see - doesn't that just sound american somehow?) and we've been wanting to see what flying in a small plane was all about (isn't that a normal curiosity?)

so we connected with a pilot who could take the whole fam out and back to the montana boondocks. because that's just the type of thing we do as a family - load up a carseat with a toddler and a pregnant woman on a teensy little plane for a 3 hour flight. i seriously considered wearing depends. by the way, i'm pregnant again in case i haven't mentioned that yet... yay!

(check out how patriotic i am)

the last, and only, time i was ever in montana was with bug on our way to seattle back in the day. we stopped in butte, or as we called it, butt (no offense to any butteons out there. butteites? butteys?) it was pretty sketchy, but that could have just been because we had about $4.23 to both our names and were looking for the cheapest place we could find to spend the night. i guess anyplace would be pretty sketch when that's your criteria.

we were patriotic back then too though and went to see the site of the battle of little big horn and custard's last stand. It was a powerful scene, and as we soberly drove away from it, bug reverently and in all seriousness said, "wow, what a battle that must have been between big horn and colonel mustard." ...in the conservatory...with the candlestick...

anyway, back to montana. q liked the plane. especially singing "la la la" over and over again into the headphones for all traffic control people across the country to hear. so i guess she's more adventurous than her parents in that sense

i'm so glad we lived to tell the tale because when we landed back in colorado, there just so happened to be 70-something parachuters jumping out of planes AT THAT VERY MINUTE trying to beat a world record of some sort (also seems oddly american, huh?). so we got to see them do their thing, which looked something like this:

i know, i know. the jumpers look like little tiny spots in the picture - like when you laugh out loud at something you see while on the computer and eating an oreo and it sprays little crumbs on the screen...

so, i took the liberty to make the jumpers feel more personal to you so you could really get a sense of it all

god bless america and all of its bizarre quirks

canada oh canada, i s'il vous plait

2011-07-13T22:31:00.000-06:00

(aren't we hot?)

i could go on for years, maybe centuries, about reasons why i think colorado's so great, but i'll save you your entire lifetime and hone in on just one reason: red rocks amphitheater.

ah red rocks, you're the home to many a great memories - the most recent being mr. peter gabriel. "peter gabriel?" you say. "isn't he someone your parents listened to when you were just a wee tot?" yup he sure is - and that's why my dad was sad we didn't invite him to the concert.

i actually remember one day after school in probably the 2nd or 3rd grade and my best friend (until she left the friendship bracelet i made her at the park months later ON PURPOSE) was sad for some reason and i went over to her house and sang her "don't give up, you still have friends" that's how much of an influence the ol' cassette player pounding through our house was on me, mom and dad. be proud (p.s. how great is this music video??)

anyway, yes we went to the peter gabriel concert at red rocks. and yes, it was raining like we were standing in our shower. with clothes on. and no rain jacket (in my case). so, i decided to throw on the old ratty bath robe that just so happened to be in our car, because doesn't everyone keep bath robes in their cars in case of emergency?

the second best part of the concert was when the rain clouds broke and opened up to reveal a perfectly amazing full moon right over us. while that was cool in and of itself, the very best part of the concert was the guy sitting in front of us watching when the moon came out and crying, literally crying through great big (likely drugged-up) sobs, "are you kidding me?!?" while hugging (clobbering) his concert-mates and whoever else was in a five mile radius of him. it just further confirms my theory that any event is only as good as the people watching.

the boy immediately called his friend - a true peter gabriel fan - after the concert and told him to run, don't walk, to the next show wherever it might be. little did we know it would be in toronto, canada a few days later...and that said friend would call back five minutes later with four tickets asking us to go with them.

so, we did what any reasonable and sensible people would do and canceled everything we had going on to leave our daughter with our nanny and fly to canada.

i was excited because i had never been to canada, although i for some reason told every person i met the first year in college that i was born there. i'm not quite sure why, but it was fun and only backfired once. you do stuff like that in college. or at least i did...

embarrassingly, the only thing i really knew about canada came from 11th grade geography when we were assigned to write a "travel journal" after "traveling to" (aka, researching) a foreign country. there's no way i should have even passed because i'm pretty sure canada cannot under any circumstance be considered "foreign," but that's beside the point.

the point is, i still shouldn't have passed because the only "research" i did was listening to this song over and over again. i'm once again pointing my fingers at you, mom and dad - thanks for teaching me early that song lyrics are an appropriate way to communicate in the world.

i'm not kidding. my travel journey consisted of me talking about how i drank milk from a bag and watched lemmings falling into the ocean. i got an A

peter gabriel was almost as good in canada, except there were no crazy sobbing men peeing their pants about the full moon. but, our flight attendant's name was cake, so that has to count for something.

ode to boy

2011-05-29T15:39:00.000-06:00

if you'll recall, i'm pretty into the boy. i'm thinking for father's day, me and quincy will write him a card that says something to the affect of,

"dear the boy, we are pretty into you. mushystuffmushystuffmushystuff, etc. love, us"

in the meantime, it feels like time to pay another tribute to this wonderfully random man in my life. here are some recent examples:

1. automatically opening doors.
have i mentioned before how right when we moved into our house, the boy set up half the lights to be sensored? so, when you walk into the room, the light automatically turns on... 50% freaky, 50% cool, 100% the boy.

i should have known it wouldn't stop there. the boy recently received a giant mystery box that turned out to be one of those handicap automatic door openers. you know the ones i'm talking about? like this

we have a balcony off our master bedroom and we love opening the doors on a nice sunny morning and also during nice nights hoping that a mountain lion might sneak in like this. just kidding, mom.

"wouldn't it be awesome if we didn't even have to get out of bed to open our doors by remote or something?" the boy said in quick passing a few days earlier. while most of us say such silliness and then forget about it, the boy actually acts on it.

so, lo and behold, he jerry-rigs this machine to the doors and before i know it, they're opening via remote control. so easy, even a baby can do it

isn't that awesome? needless to say, that first night, the door kept randomly opening and closing during the night. okay, it wasn't that random - i always knew when it was coming because i'd hear the boy click the remote control...

2. the muffin man -
we went out to dinner with the ever great katie and john the other night to what we've decided is now our favorite restaurant, the pinyon (shameless promotion).

imagine you're looking at this restaurant menu. my biggest regret in life right now is that i didn't actually get a picture of the menu and i can't find a picture of it anywhere... so, use that right brain of yours and get to imagining. very foreign looking stuff that's hard to pronounce mixed with small plates of pickled such and such that still cost a pretty penny. and then this:

"english muffin. $1"

(i'm so lame, i don't have any pictures of the night... just this random cartoon of an english muffin...)

while the rest of us skimmed right over that item, the boy couldn't get over it. "this is fantastic! a nice dinner menu with a $1 english muffin on it? i'm for sure getting one! or maybe $5 worth..." the banter grew until he stated,

"i can't believe what a great deal this is....english muffins for everybody! on me!" of course, we egged him on and did the math for him - it'd cost him about $10 to treat every table to an english muffin. so he asked. and our waitress, who at first thought it was a joke, agreed to give every table an english muffin, courtesy of the guy sitting at the table outside. (we were the only people sitting outside because it was kind-of a dreary night. so i'm sure we were already dubbed "the crazies.")

let me interject to ask, how much would you have loved to have been a customer at this restaurant that night and received a complimentary english muffin? you know it would have made your week.

so one by one, as the muffins were delivered around the restaurant, people started giving the boy the thumbs up and even coming outside to thank him. it was hilarious.

when we finally decided it was too cold to sit outside and moved our table inside, we were greeted by a round of applause and people patting the boy on the back saying, "thanks, muffin man!"

let it be recorded that i never want to be any more of a celebrity than "the muffin man's wife." it was the best night ever.

i love the boy

"elementary my dear watson" is really an overstatement

2011-05-02T21:01:00.001-06:00

a couple of mysteries have recently presented themselves, so we've been doing some sleuthing lately.

case #1: the case of the tortured book
one of q's favorite books is "peekaboo kisses." you're hesitant i know, but trust me on this one - give it a chance and you won't be able to put it down. a true page turner.

anyway the gist is, you open little flaps to reveal furry puppies or fluffy kittens all dying to give you a kiss (goodbye epic novels, hello baby books) and the climax comes when you get to the mouse (spoiler alert ahead)

peekaboo i see...

squeaky mouse kisses!! (i can recite this thing in my sleep)

and, get this, when you hit his little belly, he squeaks! until one sad day - it was probably overcast and rainy out - when we got to the mouse and pressed the belly, it was completely silent. no noises to be heard. not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. (sorry, i couldn't resist.)

i flipped the page over and to my utter horror saw THIS!

someone ripped the squeaker right out of the book! now, i know you're thinking "whoa - where do you even start to narrow down the list of suspects in a case like this?" but in truth, possibilities weren't as extensive as you might think. there were two potential culprits:

they both look innocent enough, but i've witnessed first-hand the destruction these guys can do to inanimate objects.

first, we'll look at teddy. sweet innocent teddy. the boy assures me on a regular basis that this pooch can do no wrong. but that's just because teddy conveniently waits for the boy to leave to start his mass destruction of helpless toys. take for example:

a poor little stuffed dog (that started off as quincy's to make the matter worse) ripped away from his own nose. all from the paws of sweet innocent teddy.

and if a toy has a squeaker in it - like this baseball thingy - forget about it. teddy is like a squeaker-seeking missile when it comes to finding squeakers and getting to them in as violent way as possible... i never in a million years thought i'd use the word "squeaker" so much in one sentence.

and then let's not forget about this little episode of toy devastation...

in other words, i wouldn't put it past teddy to rip the squeaker out of a defenseless children's book.

on the other hand, while i've never once seen milo rip a squeaker out of a toy, i have seen him demolish paper bags, take toys away from quincy on a regular basis and just be plain annoying at whatever cost. plus, he always comes in to finish teddy's dirty work (conveniently usually right as the boy gets home so milo looks like the evil one all the time). teddy will take the squeaker out of a toy, but leave the stuffing unharmed. milo sniffs out toy stuffing like...well, a dog... on the hunt.

look at that - he's even got stuffing on his chin as if we weren't completely convinced of his guilt.

so, it's a toss up. it's hard to take this case any further because neither suspects are wiling to stand trial to defend their innocence. which sadly means, justice may never be served for "peekaboo kisses."

case #2: the case of the traveling flamingo
as if losing sleep over that isn't enough, now we've got a mysterious pink plastic flamingo floating around our block!

it showed up one day out of the blue standing proudly in the field across the street from our house. a few days later, it suddenly moved to our next-door neighbor's front yard. so, when it landed itself in our yard a few days after that, i naturally assumed my neighbor had stuck it there.

(the boy pretending to not be worried at all about these shenanigans)

she whole-heartedly denied it though and swore she had nothing to do with it being both in her yard and our yard. so, we have a savvy flamingo transporter on the loose

sigh, how will any of these mysteries every be solved?

i am happy to report however that one case can be closed. i finally found the easter egg that milo hid two weeks ago! ironically, he hid it in my neighbor's yard... which is why i wouldn't put it past her to plant a plastic flamingo in our yard... i bet if we look long enough, we'll find a lonely squeaker without a home buried somewhere over there too

three big cheers for easter

2011-04-26T11:24:00.000-06:00

ah easter. once again, you didn't disappoint.

the unfortunate part was, there were NO good egg dye kits this year. can i get an amen?

BUT, the fortunate part was, i have a one-year-old who's obsessed with stickers and crayons. combine that with a couple bowls full of absurdly sugary candy and the creative juices just started flowing.

my fav: the giant egg face

my second fav: pat's egg face

quincy doesn't quite get the point of dying easter eggs yet, but she did figure out how to break them. it's a humbling moment as a parent when your child destroys the eggs you put a giant heart sticker on just for her. sigh

quincy also figured out that leaving her stickers lying around may equal a new goatee for milo

which, somehow over the course of the evening ended up on his little dog butt.

(i know! you haven't seen a picture of milo for awhile, huh? it's called, "we have a kid now")

he got back at us for laughing at him though. when we were busy doing the bunny hop throughout the house (i'm not kidding), milo stuck up on the table and snatched one of my half-dyed eggs then buried it in the front yard! i still haven't found it... talk about an intense easter egg hunt.

after we got tired of looking for the egg and crowned milo the best egg hider of anyone in the world, meghan and i made up a little play to help showcase our eggs.

it's also a video to debut meghan's hands, since her newest ambition is to become america's next great hand model...

sometimes you just gotta help a cousin out

2011-04-13T22:17:00.000-06:00

my little nephew is becoming a pro at piecing together words to form sentences these days. rock on, kiddo.

quincy - as a one-worder - watched intently and was fascinated by this. she must have noticed how much work it was taking and chimed in at the end - as sort of a "hey buddy, if you're gonna go through all that effort, it better be for something really worth it!"

here's a recap:

"mama..."

"may..."

"have..."

"..."

"CAKE!"

(thinking silently, "i was gonna say cheese but this is waaaaay better!")

oh spring, you tease you

2011-04-09T01:02:00.000-06:00

here's the thing with spring....i wish it lasted four seasons every year. i don't even understand the point of any other season but spring. i'm completely and utterly infatuated.

and, after some intense detective work, i figured out why! are you ready for this? i'm pretty sure spring is a professional pick-up artist.

check it out - it's got peacocking down to an art, luring me in with all the colorful flowers popping up all over the place and promises of yummy treats that seemed so uninviting during those winter months

and there's the constant teasing and playing hard-to-get: i'm here to stay! psych, it's still winter. ooh la la bring out your shorts! na-ne-na-ne-boo-boo, it's snowing again!! ...stuff like that. it's so annoyingly attractive. as much as any girl says she can't stand that push and pull, it's really really hard to resist.

then that teasing leads to a certain twitterpation that's associated with spring. everybody just wants to hug everybody else. any other season of the year, it feels completely inappropriate to go up to a complete stranger and cuddle with them, but somehow, in the springtime, it feels almost acceptable. almost.

and because of that, even walking seems better in the spring. with more hand clapping and everything. it's hard to resist when the giddiness sets in

and, of course, what better time than during the flirty spring to realize the awesome differences between boys and girls. without the warmer weather, parks and slides wouldn't survive and we would have never gotten to witness quincy nurturing her toy doggie by letting him accompany her on the fun slide

while her friend, phoenix, showed the doggie how much fun a slide can be by sending the dog flailing down to more efficiently teach the dog how fun a slide can be

ah spring, how i adore thee and all of thine lessons of love. not to sound like one of those creepy stalker girls, but i can't help it with all of your charms...please never leave me again - life is so empty without you

apocalyptic golfing and other less dramatic things

2011-02-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

(i've been waiting for a reason to post this bizarre picture and, while i'm not entirely sure why, this felt like the right time...)

recipe for a stellar date night:

1. these crazies as your double date buddies. anyone who dresses up in costume whenever the opportunity presents itself (and sometimes even when it doesn't), is a-okay in my book

2. dinner at this fantastic place. i forgot how much i heart the mercury cafe. between the random ceramic tigers jumping out of the wall, the waitress who tried to convince us that grapefruit juice contains grapes, and the fact that more than half the menu is pasta-based yet they were completely out of every type of pasta known to man...it's just a fantastically one-of-a-kind place.

3. pulling up to an abandoned building in sketch-ville where all we could see before entering was bright disco lights and all we could hear was what appeared to be gunshots and chainsaws.

allow me to introduce to you, "smash putt." don't quote me on any of these facts because they're 97% made up for dramatic effect...a group of people decided one day that what this planet is missing is an extreme putt putt golf course. so, they created one. but they didn't feel it fair to not share the love across the nation, so they pack up like a traveling circus and find old abandoned buildings around the country to temporarily set up this course for people to try out.

lucky for us, we had the great privilege of verbally signing the 37-page waiver claiming if we lost any limbs, we couldn't sue - and were set loose with clubs and balls in the darkly lit course*

i couldn't tell you which hole was my favorite. it's hard to choose between the foosball guys,

the hole where your ball gets hacked by a buzz saw (i didn't have a good picture of this one, so i made a very accurate artist's rendition to give you an idea),

the man-powered moped that was not only capable of shining really bright lights and honking loudly at the person hitting the ball, but also controlled the twirling of a little plate of french toast...??

another favorite was the "driving range" where you shot balls out of one of those air-powered guns...the 37-page waiver started to feel more and more legit as the night went on. look how serious the boy looks about it all

the boy's favorite was the drill press. by the end of the night, this is what our golf balls looked like:

and how could you not be happy about that??

* i feel it crucial to add that it was darkly lit because then i don't feel so bad that none of my pictures turned out...

life as an inadvertent klepto

2011-01-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

1. we just got back from a trip to mexico where i not only managed to accidentally steal some toys that the house we rented gave us to borrow for the week (i didn't even realize it when i took the toys out for q to play with on the plane! the boy had to point it out to me), but i also stole an entire pack n play. that's right. a freaking crib. i have big issues

2. a dialogue at a recently attended party:
host: let me take your coats. i'll put them upstairs in one of the bedrooms

me and the boy: thanks! great party by the way. (it wasn't really, but we wanted to be nice)

....roughly an hour and 25 minutes pass and a girl walks by us holding a coat over her arm...MY coat!

me: holy cow, that girl's stealing my coat! (i knew this to be true because it's a maternity coat from the gap that i got last year when i was pregnant. it's such a great winter coat, though - i can't stop wearing it even though i don't have the belly to fill it anymore. i can't imagine many other non-pregger women are having that same issue with their identical gap maternity coat. it had to be mine.)

the boy: sure she is. (i wish i could give the boy some more credit than this for being sympathetic, but i can't. he stopped taking me seriously a long time ago. plus, i was claiming that somebody was walking off with my coat...not a very typical crime)

me: i'm serious! she just hung it up right over there! maybe she's the official "move the coats to another location" person? they should at least warn us before relocating our coats!

the boy: maybe you should go check it out (shoos me away as he continues his conversation, although i can't imagine how any conversation in the world could be more important or enthralling than this great coat mystery)

so away i sleuthed, into the room where my coat was now hanging. i examined the tag closer - there was no question, it was my coat. that thief! i took it off the hook and started carrying it proudly back to the boy to show him. just to back up my proof, i stuck my hand in the pocket where i put my gloves. instead of gloves though, i felt a wad of (likely used) kleenex and a set of (not my) keys.

ut oh. someone DID have the same issue as me with wearing their maternity coat around post-pregnancy. and she was standing right in front of me, watching me steal her coat!

me: (after turning right around, hanging the coat up as gingerly and quickly as i could, running back into the room - completely ignoring coat-owner's eye - grabbing the boy's arm) go, go, go, go!

and that's why we left the party early.

in other news, my baby's now 1!!!

she's not walking yet, but she has quite the vocabulary, including words like: duck, bubbles, mail, cracker, banana and pickle... what do you mean it's not normal for a one-year old to say (and love to eat) pickle??

on her first birthday, she proved to the world that she was now one by climbing up the steps and going down the slide all by herself. before we know it, she'll be stealing toys, pack n plays and coats, just like her mama! i'm so proud

confusion sets in

2010-12-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

not to blow my own horn or anything*, but i think i've gotten pretty decent at this whole parenting thing. i mean, keeping a living and breathing baby alive for an entire year?? come on, it's a big deal.

of course, there have been some confusing moments along the way. mostly associated with the stacking rings toy. i picture the stacking rings toy being one of the first toys ever. little cave babies stacking rocks, bones, woolly mammoths, on top of other things. turns out i was wrong in thinking it was a simple concept

take for example:

photo courtesy of katie wise. she doesn't know i'm using it. thanks for being a great finger model, katie.

in case you're thrown off by the fancy colors and round, shiny rings:

granted, these notices don't really apply to us since q clearly has the intelligence of a 5-year old...maybe 6. BUT, for all other parents out there, how are you to know when it's okay to give this toy to your tot? is 18-36 months a grace period where your baby can try it out for a couple of minutes at a time to prepare for when they're three? are you sealing a dreadful fate for your child if you let him play with it between that period??

and if that's not confusing enough for you, try figuring out this stacking ring box:

seven rainbow tower of the colors?!? Companion my baby the intelligence growth?!? YES please!

honestly, i don't even know what to focus on in this description. i just really hope quincy doesn't learn how to read and speak based off this box.

and the other side of the box:

the conversation in my head upon reading this side goes something like this:

"hahahahahahahaha. i can't understand a thing they're trying to say here. it's absolutely absur...wait - what's this wonderful rhythm they speak of that will exercise sense of hearing?"

(eyebrows raise in slight concern)
"it's a ring stacker, not a xylophone..."

(mouth gets dry)
"they repeat the same thing twice, though. that must mean it's an important part of the toy..."

(palms start getting sweaty and eyes start shifting nervously)
"ut-oh, am i missing something in this toy that is developmentally crucial to my baby's growth??"

(hears quincy in the background, playing the piano sonata she just finished composing)**
"...whew, i guess i dodged that bullet."

* i actually am blowing my own horn. on purpose even.
* quincy has never written a piano sonata. she plans to finish her concerto first.

top five list

2010-11-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

here's the thing about being a mom: it rocks. it rocks for all sorts of reasons (reasons that include keywords such as "snuggling" and "loving" and "more snuggling"), but here's my top five list of the less obvious reasons why it's the best (in no particular order because my mom brain can't handle such high levels of organization...):

5. "mom brain"

becoming a mom is kinda like a get-out-of-jail free card. you can now blame any blond moment you have for the rest of your life on being a mom. how fantastic is that?? i've been doing stupid things for, like, ever but now i'm JUSTIFIED in doing them. rock on

for example

over the course of my life, i've lost countless pairs of gloves by forgetting they were sitting in my lap while driving and then letting them carelessly fall to their demise when i got out of the car. pre-baby: stupid blond moment. post-baby: mom brain! score

4. catalogues

what i once used to throw away without a second glance, i now love flipping through with quincy, because the illustrations in catalogues offer WAY more opportunities to teach your kids some good, solid adjectives:

hilarious

freaky

fantasatic. but let's face it, even that adjective can't describe how great this picture is

3. you get to live vicariously through your baby because social-rules don't quite apply to them yet
when a baby crawls on top of a drum to show how much she loves it, it's considered cute. when an adult crawls on top of anything to show how much they love it, it's usually considered illegal

2. costumes are cool again

what better excuse to throw on a costume than to say, "my kid (who can't even talk yet, but please ignore that small detail) was begging me to dress up with her" even though it's a complete lie because really you just secretly love dressing up in costumes

1. we now have a bi (tri?)-lingual household
we can't tell if quincy's talking in russian, chinese, or a nice mix of both, but jabbering is a special talent of hers

did i also mention it's really fun to snuggle with her?

preparing for the een of hallow

2010-10-28T17:19:00.000-06:00

here are the sad things:

- going to a pumpkin patch where there's not even a corn maze, only a bail-of-hay maze. and said bail-of-hay maze leaves a lot to desire...like, for example, height

- making your own apple cider out of your own apples from your own apple tree. only the end result is the consistency of apple sauce and has to be eaten with a spoon and tastes like poop (in the apple cider's defense, i do have a strong food aversion towards apple sauce, so maybe it wasn't that bad...still, there was no sipping of apple cider - just chomping)

here are the happy things:

- dressing your daughter and your dog up in matchy costumes

i'd rather not talk about why
a) there were two identical puppy pumpkin costumes in our holiday box
b) we put a dog costume on our sweet baby girl (you have to admit, it's really cute (but not her REAL halloween costume. stay tuned!)

- bug and her guy came up to carve pumpkins with us. talk about a thick fog of creative juices happening at our house last night. bonus: the boy found a playlist on rhapsody called, "back in black halloween." um....yes please!

the dexterity with which quincy carved her pumpkin was pretty impressive...

literally, right when i inserted this charming picture, i looked outside to admire our work, and a squirrel was eating the boy's pumpkin... that should be in the sad list...

- caramel apples!! i couldn't decide if these should go on the sad or the happy list because, let's be honest, they didn't really turn out (at all). the caramel was waaay runny and didn't even pretend to want to stay on the apples and it was insanely sweet. fail! i put it in the happy list though because it did lead to some pretty serious sugar buzzes, so there was that

and now, for a completely irrelevant and utterly random pop-quiz
q: what word has been stuck in chelsea's head all day long for absolutely no good reason?
a: gefelte fish
ummm.....???

here i am, not hiding my talents under a bushel

2010-10-13T14:16:00.000-06:00

as a peace offering for not blogging for so long, i come to you with a slew full (you'd think that would be one word. it's not) of new talents that the fam's been working on these past few months:

the babe
1. quincy has taken an interest in marine biology. when you hand your infant your phone to entertain her for a few minutes, you expect to get it back full of slobber and maybe some chewed up cheerios. instead, q somehow managed to opened the internet on my phone and pull up this page for me:

of course she wants to learn the ins and outs of bog turtles! what genius baby doesn't??

2. q has also indicated that she wants to be a farmer

here she is giving tips to farmers on what makes an apple great while sampling the local fare at our farmers market

3. we have a first word! it's "banana." of course it sounds more like "anananana" and she kind-of says it with regards to any piece of fruit in our fruit bowl and the boy doesn't think it counts, but i just think he knows that once she starts talking, it's one step closer to having to fend all the boys off with guns

the boy
1. contrary to my last statement, the boy's new talent has nothing to do with guns. it has to do with lederhosen

2. and paintbrushes. we found this studio in denver where you go and they give you a blank canvas and paint. then you just paint whatever your heart desires for two straight hours. or so we thought (and hoped). instead, they had an instructor showing the class how to paint a specific painting. where's the creative liberty in that?? here was the painting she was teaching us how to paint:

i didn't actually take any pictures of what people's paintings looked like, but here are some pretty realistic mock examples...

and here's what me and the boy ended up with:

bella luna...

and the flying mustache

needless to say, we were not the teacher's pets. she stopped coming over to ask us if we needed any help about 5 minutes into the class starting. and i'm pretty sure she snapped a picture of us to hang on the "do not let back into my studio" board.

me
1. i'm knitting now! because i mastered sewing so well (ahem...), i decided to step up my game and start knitting. to date, i've knitted one hat that actually FITS on my head,

one hat that actually DOESN'T fit on quincy's head (aka, one hat that we'll now be giving to our friends who just had a baby...)

she's pretty bummed that it doesn't fit

and one hand... yes, i stabbed myself in the hand with a knitting needle. bet you didn't think that was even possible, did ya? i was going to take a picture of it, but it's kind-of yucky and maybe not so happy-blog appropriate. and little did i know, up until very recently, you weren't allowed to take knitting needles on an airplane, so i guess other people have also experienced the danger that is knitting.

2. i had a dream the other night that we went to our local dinner theatre and they ended up hiring me on the spot to be one of the cast members because i was the only person in the entire place who knew all the lyrics to the "and the world will know" song from newsies. i woke up feeling very proud of myself and realizing that maybe there is a place for me at the dinner theatre since i do know an awful lot of song lyrics after all...

i also woke up with that song playing over and over again in my head. i went to listen to it on rhapsody to get it out of my head, but turns out, rhapsody doesn't have the rights to that album, so i queued whatever newsies songs i COULD get hold of, which turned out to be over a half an hour of the song "santa fe" replaying over and over again, only in different languages every time. which really works to my benefit because now i could get a job at our dinner theatre, OR a dinner theatre in france, germany or spain...

gunny sacks

2010-07-27T20:24:00.000-06:00

remember one time when i got so excited because i sewed my little girl a few dresses? and remember how cute the dresses looked on the hangers and how perfect they were going to look on my baby? and then remember how i actually am a horrible sewer and can't measure anything to save my life and how one time i put a dress on my child that i made and her arm started turning purple because the sleeve was cutting off her circulation?

purple arms or not, you have to admit it's a pretty stinkin' cute dress

flashback: my mom used to tell me and my sister all the time that we were so pretty, we'd be cute even if we were wearing a potato sack. i tend to believe her based on the halloween i went dressed as a dragon. i was filled with newspapers for crepes sake and i still look adorable...

but who are we kidding? this post isn't about me and my costume past. no no. it seems that narcissism kind-of goes out the window with a baby in the house...

now that i'm the mom, i'm taking my own mother's philosophy one step further. instead of just telling quincy she'll look pretty in a gunny sack, i'm showing her that she will. here's what our morning looked like:

really, mom? you're really putting me in this "outfit" you made me? you're kidding, right?

okay fine, you dare me to look adorable while wearing this hideous thing? try this face on for size

ya know, i may look like the love-child of one of those plastic tablecloths from the 70s bred with lady gag's shoulder pads , but this is actually kinda comfy

wait! where are you going? i wasn't being serious. can you please take this ridiculous piece of work off me now, woman!*

*in addition to losing any and all drops of narcissism that i once had, i've also completely lost my marbles and now have more complete and intelligent conversations with my 7-month old than with anybody else. sad.

date night and other perks of having a baby

2010-06-18T14:54:00.000-06:00

for date night a couple of weeks ago, the boy and i went disco bowling at the cu student center. and here's why it rocked:

- we dressed up (of course). i'd rather not even talk about how many random pairs of sunglasses we now have floating around our junk drawer. and yes, my shorts are velour. far out.
- nobody else was even there - i can't believe ANYONE in their right mind would miss disco bowling
- we're not even students...and we dressed up... and we were the only ones there...

but, even with how great we looked, i've come to accept that nobody really cares to see pictures of us anymore. so, i'll end this post with a video of q baby eating sweet potatoes.

say what you need to say

2010-06-04T12:16:00.000-06:00

mother ALWAYS trumps the likes of yelp and...well just about any other review/referral/recommendation possible. besides, who knows plumbing better than an old lady knitting in a rocking chair? nicely played, o'connell plumbing. nicely played.

and speaking of elderly things...

my aunt wendi stumbled upon this gem at her local zoo. i can just picture the conversation that led to this announcement:

zoo worker (picture this guy just for fun): umm... sir? everyone keeps asking why we have a dead goose

boss: come on now kid, we've been through this a million times. herbert's not dead, he just sleeps funny. everyone knows egyptian geese sleep in weird positions*.

zoo worker: oh whew. thanks for telling me that again. everytime someone asks about him, my heart skips a beat and my skin gets all tingly and bumpy.

boss: tell ya what, kid - why don't you make a sign so people don't get concerned anymore and so you'll stop bugging me. can't you see i'm busy here? (taps his golf ball into a paper cup lying on its side)

* don't feel stupid, not everyone knows what an egyptian goose is. i didn't. the boss was just annoyed with the zoo worker so he says senseless things, it's bound to happen. here are some pictures to educate you:

(only i think that one really is dead and not just sleeping funny...i also like to imagine that guy's name is herbert in real life)

on our way to grandma's house, we saw...

2010-05-30T09:50:00.000-06:00

california was calling our name and we answered with a trip out there. and you gotta know that ANY trip is gonna be good when you start off getting what we dubbed "the green dinosaur" as a rental car!

i can't believe we didn't get our own picture of it! but imagine it more like this:

we started off our weekend with a day in san francisco where we rode trolleys,

took q-baby on her first tuk tuk ride,

and even got foot massages in china town.

turns out the boy has incredibly ticklish feet. i thought he was going to kick the foot massage guy (do they get the title of "masseur"?) right in the face. our guys kept talking in chinese to each other and i'm pretty sure they were saying, "man - this guy's a wimp with baby feet! i bet his own baby's not even so ticklish!" ...and it's true.

quincy's perfected the art of flirting and she pulled out all the stops for the foot massage guys. i think she thought it'd get us a discount or something. it didn't

she's crazy about opening her mouth all wide like that these days and i couldn't figure out what that's all about... then i looked through our pictures and the proof was in the pudding (how great and underused is that phrase??)

like parents like daughter??

our green dinosaur then took us to visit my grandparents (q baby's GREAT grandparents) and the boy's cousins and uncle/aunt. quincy knew she was surrounded by her peeps and hammed it up good for everyone (i think everyone hammed it up good for her too...) ushy gushy love oozed around the entire weekend. it was great.

next, we went to the maker faire, which is a giant geek fest where people make random gizmos and gadgets then show them off... think life-size mouse-trap games, giant cupcake cars, a mechanical tongue that licks a lollipop down to the stick...aka, complete entertainment.

and what's a trip to california without a stop at in & out burger with aunt wendi and uncle karl. mmmmm milkshake

day of the animals

2010-05-07T17:02:00.001-06:00

i thought seeing this poster would hands down be the best part of my day:

on the one hand, i'm really hopeful that simba the pirate cat finds his way home safely because he's a brave warrior. but on the other hand, i'm a little worried about him because he's also a lover boy and could easily fall victim to a good ear scratch he can't walk away from.

but just when i thought the day couldn't get any better, we wound up at a local coffee house listening to a jazz band, which featured a laptop rolling the audio of a talking (cackling? squealing? howling?) monkey throughout the entire set... this is what was going on in my (and i'm sure every other patron's) head:

"wow, lots of good beatnicks here tonight...what is that sound? hmm... maybe i want a steamed milk or somethi...what in the world is that sound? this band is pretty decent, except the drummer plays with his mouth constantly opening and closing like a fish. meh, that's musicians for you... what in the world? where is that monkey sound coming from? wait... are you serious? the monkey is part of the band? wow."

and that's when we left because we don't condone monkeys mixing with jazz.

q baby laughs her guts out

2010-05-04T10:29:00.000-06:00

have you ever realized that mexico is spelled ocixem backwards?

2010-04-22T21:12:00.000-06:00

good: look how much fun we had in sayulita!

great: look how much ammunition we gave people around us to make fun of us

good: the house we rented looked like something straight out of the flinstones and had incredible views overlooking the entire town

great: the incredible views were replaced by the incredible night sounds, including the blind roosters who didn't know the difference between midnight and dawn and what i'm pretty sure was a marching band that started practicing on the town square at 3am...what in the??

good: having the bug with us!!!

great: one word - babysitter!

good: coconut milk straight from the source

great: coconut milk straight from a curly straw

good: all the time in the world to contemplate the meaning of life

great: even more time to play on the beach and in the sunshine!

sing us a song you're the (traveling) piano man (who sits on the back of a truck)

2010-04-17T14:26:00.000-06:00

in accordance with our wonderfully random life, we got an email from some guy asking if he could stay with us for a few days as he passed through town. our answer was an immediate, "no doi, yes!" and that's how we got the pleasure of hosting danny kean:

what's so great and random about this guy, you ask? why, he's spent the last four years of his life driving around the country in a truck with a piano on the back, of course.

(i kind-of feel like i just recreated that part in disneyland's haunted mansion where they show part of the picture first and then it zooms out to the whole picture and the story completely changes...)

anyway, as i was saying before i distracted myself with my disney-like genius, we had a fun few days hanging out with danny and playing the piano on the back of a truck...naturally. we even took the whole fam out to pearl street in a desperate attempt to get people to notice us (please cover that last sentence in a good coat of sarcasm). the boy got to play (multiple versus of chopstix) while danny drived.

danny's first goal is to make people happy. danny's second goal is to get oprah to notice him and pull some strings so he can play his truck piano while someone drives him across the field at next year's superbowl...

...i have to be honest, i'm at a loss of words for what else to even write here. sometimes the pure randomness in my life awes even myself.

good luck, danny!

(another) new blog!

2010-04-12T07:29:00.000-06:00

i've decided that with all of my incredible cooking and gardening skills, i'd better start a new blog dedicated to my attempts with food! if nothing else, it should provide a good laugh...

http://plantstoplates.blogspot.com

you spin me right 'round baby right 'round

2010-04-03T17:26:00.013-06:00

i heart the boy because he sometimes randomly surprises me with spin art makers. we were promised that we could make cool things like mobiles (get ready for some sweet nursery revamping, quincy) and caterpillar room decor!

i guess i never realized how empty my life has been until i saw that a spin art caterpillar could be part of it...so we started our masterpieces. it looked pretty dang cool while it was spinning...

...but then the spinning stopped. turns out i kind-of suck at spin art.

the boy on the other hand appears to be a master spinner. his circle can be the caterpillar's head.

we figured we should let the family be part of the fun and games, so we used milo as a table top.

he was happy

you would think that practice makes perfect, but as it were (isn't that a funny phrase?), mine seemed to get even yuckier.

and then the boy pulled out all the stops

as it were (maybe it gets less funny the more you say it?), even a pro spinner can't salvage artwork made of hot dog condiments.

i don't think that one will go on our caterpillar room decor...

i just felt like running

2010-03-19T09:22:00.002-06:00

turns out quincy is a baby prodigy. she can already dance and run and everything. i dare you to watch this a dozen times and tell me that you aren't laughing just as hard every time. i dare you. i especially like how she's sporting an off-the-shoulder look. so trendy.

she pretty proficient in jibberish too. she's got quite an interesting outlook on issues like the war in iraq and cloth diapers

i kid you not

2010-03-04T10:13:00.003-07:00

i woke up this morning to teddy holding this in his mouth

the creepy turtle's hand!!! this dumb toy is going to haunt me piece by piece for the rest of my life, i know it.

happy birthday milo and teddy!

2010-03-03T12:24:00.010-07:00

remember how teddy and milo coincidentally have the same birthday only 8 years apart? how bizarre is that? we're pretty sure that the movie "twins" was based off of them because, well... just take a gander:

anyway, what that means is, when their birthday rolls around, we pull out all the stops. i baked them some dog cookies that i fully intended to cut into little bone-shapes to complete the look, but it turns out that a lot of "fully intended" things never get accomplished once a baby's in your home. so, i just rolled the dough into little balls and they came out looking more like people cookies.

so i guess it's my fault for leaving them out on a plate on our kitchen counter where the boy thought they were for him... i didn't notice when he started eating them since we had guests over (man, i'm glad he didn't offer any to the guests!), but afterward, he admitted to me that those cookies were an all-time low in my baking history. i assured him that the dogs didn't think so.

on the same list of "fully intended" but yet to be accomplished things to do was "get the dogs a new toy." i have to be honest, this was really more for me than for the dogs. last christmas, i got them a tennis ball turtle. i couldn't find a picture of it (i'm really having bad luck with finding good pictures online these days, huh?) but here's the idea:

really cute, right? i thought so, too until teddy ripped apart the tennis ball leaving only a poor naked turtle. not so cute...

but teddy loves the dumb thing! he carries it around with him EVERYWHERE! he's even gotten it into a family photo! (notice it hanging out of his mouth like a slimy serpent) (p.s. look how cute Q is. ah.) (p.s.s. milo looks like a muppet these days because a third thing on the "fully intended" list is give him a hair cut...)

so, without asking anyone's permission and making sure teddy wasn't looking, i finally threw that creepy thing away... or at least i thought i did. the next morning, lo and behold, guess what was outside of our trashcan

oops, my bad. must have missed the trashcan when i threw it away the first time. so, in it went again, never to be seen again. right? wrong! the next morning:

what in the?? now i'm really creeped out by this dumb toy... so, i threw it away again, tied the trashbag shut, took it outside and burned it. okay, i'm lying about burning it, but i did take it outside to the dumpster. but now that i'm thinking about it, i should have burned it because that little monster will probably find its way out of the dumpster and be staring me right in the face when i wake up tomorrow morning. dang it. guess i won't be sleeping tonight.

everyday is the...

2010-02-15T13:29:00.009-07:00

you know it's a good day when you can go to sleep at night thinking, "wow - what a brilliantly nonsensical day!"

it started with a trip to our local soup paradise - best soup in the galaxy i'd venture to guess.

we geared up our two dogs and baby (all the essentials to feeling like a walking circus) and headed downtown. some guy walked past us, looked me right in the eye and said, "mammels!" and that's why i love people, because what in the??

we ordered our nirvana in a bowl and ate outside, tying the pups up to our table per the usual. problem is, when the table weighs about 2 pounds and one of your dogs weighs 110 pounds and another dog walks by that your dog is really interested in getting to know better, chaos is bound to strike. and strike it did.

i'm really surprised and sad i couldn't find a picture or a video of a dog dragging a table, because i think this would be a great place to put such a thing, but i did find a video of a dog dragging HIMSELF across the ground, which is kind-of funny, albeit irrelevant:

anyway, teddy dragged that table with all his might knocking everything off. our glorious soup flew across the sidewalk in slow motion, followed by shattering dishes. the only things that didn't move were me and the boy. we sat frozen in our little chairs, laps now exposed with no table to hide behind. we were THOSE GUYS!!

we came home covered in dried soup to find the world's biggest box on our front porch. sweet! look how big it is compared to the boy's snow boot:

it was, of course, addressed to quincy. the boy and i don't get any packages these days - they're all for our seven week old daughter. what gives? we opened it with great fervor (she gave us the go-ahead. don't worry, we would never open other people's mail without permission). inside was a baby blanket. yes, a blanket. well, to be more specific, a blanket with a head. but still a blanket. see it compared to the boy's snow boot:

sooo...... that's a lot of box for a blanket with a head on it. but i do kinda wish we had opened the huge box before going out to lunch because then we would've had a blanket to clean up with and i wouldn't have walked around all day with dried soup on my shirt.

my baby is now free to travel around the planet

2010-02-05T15:49:00.003-07:00

in case you're wondering, yes you do need to get a passport for your newborn if you're planning on ditching the country.

and yes, they do lie your baby down on a piece of white butcher paper on the floor in the post office to take her picture. i'm so sad i didn't get a picture of this

and yes, her eyes do need to be open, which can be quite a trick to wake a sleeping infant. and an even bigger trick to keep her from crying because she's ticked off that you woke her up. it included an awfully lot of waking her up, her crying, calming her down enough that she'd fall back asleep, waking her up again...

and yes, it does need to be a straight on shot showing both of her ears which means the mommy can put her hand underneath the butcher paper to hold her baby's head up straight (our pic almost didn't make the cut because both her ears aren't clearly showing...they're very strict about this. as though she'll even be look like her pic within the next week or so).

and yes, i did make the mistake of putting her in an outfit with what the boy calls "jail stripes" on the shirt. it really is a cute outfit in person and was a steal of a deal, but she looks like our little convict.

which is probably why we had to take an oath on our one month old's account swearing that she was not planning any terrorist activities on the united states.

and yes, she does get to keep this passport (with the photo) until she's five years old. how fun will it be to travel when she's five carrying a picture of herself as an infant? at least she'll be recognizable by the one ear that's showing.

a bad case of middle child syndrome

2010-01-30T18:47:00.007-07:00

i've always heard about the baby of the family having a tough time when a new addition comes, but i had no idea it might refer to my dog...

the allusive "they" say that when babies get knocked out of their position as the youngest, they can show signs of regression and anger toward their parents.

since quincy's arrival, milo spends half his day in his crate BY HIS CHOOSING. he saunters into it - making sure we're watching him and then sighs a huge sigh and sticks his head out to remind us that he's in there - denying us all the honor of his presence on our laps or by our feet.

when she cries, he has a tendency to grab onto my leg as if to say, "come on mom - you don't need that. let's run away together, just you and me. leave that little annoying thing behind for good!"

so, in effort to remedy milo's sad (and pathetic - let's be honest) situation, we've pulled out all the stops.

the boy randomly saw this at the store the other day and how could he not buy it (have i mentioned lately how much i love the boy)?

yes, it's really called petchup and yes it really looks like ketchup. neither of us are brave enough to eat it to see if it also tastes like ketchup... i am proud to say this tasty (maybe?) little treat is made in colorado! oh, colorado, you're the best.

we've allowed milo the chore of prewasher

and, while the boy's parents were in town, we were playing imaginiff. the game requires eight players and if you have less than that (we did), then you have to have ghost players that everybody knows. Our ghost players included quincy, teddy and milo (because who doesn't want their newborn and two dogs as part of the game?)

unfortunately, i don't think having milo as a player boosted his ego much. when questions like "who would most likely board, and feel at home on, a ufo" came up, we all picked milo... ah our little alien puppy.

in other news, even with two four-legged animals as options, the boy's dad feels he's the most similar to the mythical flying horse, the pegasus... we didn't inquire further.

the first three weeks

2010-01-21T12:04:00.002-07:00

it's weird how once you have a baby, all of a sudden posters like this make you very much wish this poor person finds his gloves that his mom made him. i'm also a little bit intrigued to know what the reward for found mittens might be...

good luck, kid!

in other news, i scheduled to get our piano tuned the other day and when i opened the door for the tuner, lo and behold, phillip seymore hoffman was standing on my front porch. i tried to take a picture to send to the boy, but it's hard to get a good, discreet shot of someone who's facing a wall to fix a piano.
but come on, who could even deny that that's clearly phillip seymore's bum??

so when he was telling me all of the things he fixed on our piano and was giving me a bill, i wasn't really listening - i mean, who could with such celebrity status in the same room? instead, i was holding my phone by my side and trying to get a better shot of him.

i mean seriously - let's compare:

and in other news, the boy got a new tat

quincy's found a love in music

milo's discovered that boppy's make for the perfect bed

and quincy's perfecting the art of both body and face contorting

ah. i love my family

meet quincy

2010-01-02T14:42:00.010-07:00

introducing the one and only (we know, we googled it)

quincy annabelle

born december 29, 2009 at 9:00am - how's that for coming into the world with a favorite number??

it's amazing how this on christmas eve:

can turn into this before new years eve:

so far, she's very busy with lots of peeing, pooping, eating and sleeping. which is why, of course, it makes sense that we've already taken at least 8 billion pictures of her:

happy new year! love, the flaggs

final preparations

2009-12-23T09:50:00.007-07:00

i'm a loaded gun. a few signs that we're close to having a baby:

1. my belly matches the contour line of my oval mirror

and check out that belly button! part of my daily exercises is to try to push it back in, but sadly to no avail. turkey is done.

2. to our utter delight, my parents' antique piano they gave us as a wedding gift came last week, so we're now all ready to lull the baby with our melodic renditions of chopstix (please ignore that giant hole in my sock. putting socks on is such a production these days as it is, let alone CHANGING socks after they're already on because of a measly hole)

(p.s. looks almost identical to my photoshopped version of the room, huh?? it's almost like i took that picture and just photoshopped myself in)

3. milo's claimed his favorite baby toy by dragging it into his bed this morning to cuddle with it. sorry baby, i don't think you're getting that one back. first come, first serve

4. our conversations these days consist of: "why are you limping?" "i'm not. i'm waddling."

and not that it has anything to do with anything (except it might detract the baby from wanting to be born into such a kooky place), but i'm pretty sure this girl i saw the other day on pearl street wasn't wearing any pants

broomball

2009-12-11T15:24:00.004-07:00

i feel really really jipped right now. how come i've never heard of this sport?? broomball: like hockey only you have brooms instead of sticks, you're hitting a small soccer ball type thing and you wear shoes instead of skates.... i'm sure the equipment gets more progressive once you reach the big broomball leagues, but hello - how fabulous is this??

of course, i could never play it because of my deathly allergy to walking on ice (i really do think it's an illness of mine. it used to take me an extra 20 minutes - yes 20 minutes to walk to school on an icy day because my legs stiffen right up. quite a curse), but why oh why don't any of my friends play broomball so i can at least go and watch? i promise i make a good cheerleader!*

i can only imagine the entertainment value of watching this sport in person.

*unless i bring a really good book and am the only person in the stands... sorry about any and all times you've made a really good hockey play while i'm there, the boy, and my nose is stuck in a book...

the real benefits of living in a technologically savvy world

2009-12-06T18:27:00.004-07:00

looking for that perfectly unique christmas gift that'll scream "this came from me?" and don't worry, it's only slightly less creepy than how angelina jolie used to wear a vial of billy bob thornton's blood around her neck to show how much she loved him. (is it funny that i subconsciously used the spelling "vile" initially? i think not)

picture this: a LARGE artistic portrait of your very own dna or fingerprint hanging over the fireplace in your loved one's family room. cozy. what, not sexy enough for you? looking for something a little more santa baby-ish? how about your lip print, yes lip print, as artwork?

it's probably a good idea to ask yourself before giving this gift: "do i ever plan on committing a crime where they might find my dna/fingerprint/lip print? if so, maybe i shouldn't have a giant picture of it hanging up somewhere..."

and if you're really considering this gift, you might also want to ask yourself: "have i lost my marbles?"

cast your vote!

2009-11-22T21:38:00.003-07:00

(a pregnancy montage from month 1 to week 33. turns out those two pregnancy tests we took didn't lie)
welp, we're coming down to the wire here people! it's started to occur to me recently that i'm probably not going to be the first woman in the history of the world to stay pregnant forever... these things really do pop out at some point!

my pregnancy has been AWESOME and with just over one month to go, we're feeling pretty ready (aka, we've thrown our hands up and taken on the mantra "we'll figure it out") to welcome lil' miss flagg into the world.

we know you're all at least as excited as us and chomping at the bit to see what in the world we've been cooking up, so we wanted to see how good your intuition is and have a little contest. the winner will get a really great prize (we haven't decided what it'll be yet, but we're thinking we could mail you her first diaper or something. a true honor) the contest has two parts:

part 1 - what will lil' miss flagg's birthday be? some information that might (but likely not) help:
- her given due date is december 30
- only 1% of babies actually come on their traditional due date. a much better due date indicator that takes into consideration a lot more factors (30% accuracy) actually says her due date will be january 9. quite a difference there
- first time momma's are known to run over their due date. which due date? we're not really sure...
- see, i told you that info likely wouldn't help

part 2 - what should we name the lil' one and why?* if we choose your name, you'll get a REALLY great prize. like the first SEVERAL diapers and maybe the first used burp rag or something fancy like that.

ready, set, go!

* according to our doctor, there is a 4% chance the baby comes out a lil' MR. flagg, so feel free to cast boy names too.. you never know. poor guy better like pink!

i didn't learn photoshop in college for nothing!

2009-11-09T14:02:00.009-07:00

yesterday, we spent our entire evening finally decorating our front room. in real life? nah, in photoshop of course!

it started with our room - nice and bland, but don't worry, room - we've got big plans for you

we found a "seat and a half" (how funny that that's the real name of a piece of furniture?) that we liked, but it's pretty freakin huge (notice the lovely striped fabric down the front of the couch?)

so, to see just how huge it will be (we were taking very special consideration the make sure everything was sized correctly in our room... that might be a lie...), we decided to add the piano stool that we're SO excited to get from my parents this month. okay, so we're getting the piano too, but we figured it'd be the stool that would be running into our huge chair. (plus we threw a rug in for good measure)

here's the thing with the boy, though. he's not content with just a seat and a half. he needs someplace to put his feet up. like a freakin huge ottoman to match the freakin huge chair and run into the piano stool even more!

and then we figured, we may as well throw the piano in there just to see how crammed it's really going to be (i know, i know - it's a little bit 2-d and nothing's blended quite right, but you get the idea...)

and, of course, we couldn't feel good about our music room until it was fully decorated with some musical stuff on the walls

pretty cozy, huh? and to top it all off, the boy woke up this morning to tell me about the books we can put on the coffee table we get for the room... wha? coffee table in the room too? wow...

and then it occurred to us, why does anyone ever decorate their house in real life? it's such a hassle buying and moving furniture. we're just going to decorate everything in photoshop.

so, what do you think? will you come visit us in our virtual music room? is this a total and complete disgrace of any and all design skills i should have learned from you, mom? at least we got an elton john album cover up on the wall...

also, our whole evening reminded us of this video (you will be sad if you don't watch this whole thing):

halloweeng highlights. mwuah hah hah

2009-11-02T11:08:00.018-07:00

throughout meghan's entire childhood, she called halloween "halloweeng." i'm not sure why and i'm not sure what that has to do with anything except that it's funny.

our halloweeng started off with a little banjo billy haunted house tour with red idea. now, if you've been a fence sitter about visiting boulder, banjo billy is definitely a reason to start looking into flights.

yes, it really is an old school bus with the top ripped off and replaced with a pitched roof, then covered in a fence to look like a log cabin.

and yes, the seats were really ripped out and replaced with recliners, love seats and saddles.

and yes, it takes people on daily historical (or sometimes ghost) tours around boulder. i can't believe you're still reading this and not buying an airline ticket already.

we weren't really supposed to dress up for this ghost tour and we might have been the only ones dressed up, but like that's gonna stop us. introducing:

pretty sure we look even better than the original

halloweeng continued with a morning of "family yoga" at yo mama yoga. "family yoga" on halloweeng morning means "dress up in costumes with your babies and sit them in the middle of the room to climb on top of each other while you do as much yoga as you can in your costume and while peeling your kid off the other kids." while we aren't quite in that stage yet, we were invited to come if we brought our popcorn machine. amazing the friends that come from owning that thing. i think the best part was when the baby lobster crawled on top of the baby spider and starting chewing on her head.

they also had belly painting there for those of us with bellies. here's the baby's first halloweeng costume!

and don't worry, we didn't forget our other babies. introducing yoda. do or do not. there is no try

and darth vader. the force is strong with this one.

and finally, introducing our jack-o-laterns, which we liked so much we kept inside so we could enjoy them... is that wrong? le ghost (don't judge. he's a little blurry. you try taking a picture of a ghost!)

and le cat

and instead of facing the thousands of drunkards in costumes wandering around Pearl Street, we journeyed down to hang out with the fam (err.. i mean, the ghostbusters, a posh golf club dude and g.i. jane...) to play some sweet sweet rock band. ahh. the perfect halloweeng.

snow day

2009-10-28T15:28:00.011-06:00

one of my favorite things about having a little dog manifests itself when there's 31 inches billion (and still falling!) of snow on the ground.
it's a cruel world for dogs when their toilets are covered by more snow than they can even stand in.

he'd jump into a pile of snow, disappear for a second, try digging an area where he could at least squat, give up and jump back out. Half a dozen attempts left him doing what every dog despises doing - peeing on the patio

and when he comes back inside, he's got a nice little set of nature-made UGGs on (please ignore my lovely face).

...one of my favorite things about snow days is that it gives you the uninterrupted time to plow through your entire inbox, organize all your files, practice the guitar, read a little bit and still have time to do things like take pictures of your dog peeing outside and then blog about it.

babies r bite size

2009-10-23T09:04:00.007-06:00

everytime i go into a baby store, like babies r us, i'm so overwhelmed by all the "necessary" crap in there, my face probably looks something like this.

luckily, i've discovered a couple of things to help make it all better for me:

1. www.babysteals.com (not to be confused with babyseals.com). i've become obsessed with this site. just ask the boy. here's the skinny - every day at 9am MST, they post a new deal of the day. only one deal every day. that's it. and only a limited number of whatever said deal is. which makes me want to buy everything regardless of what it is just because it means i'm getting one before they're sold out. like, why would i ever want this, but i bet if it showed up on babysteals.com, i'd buy it anyway.

and to top it off, they tell me right there how much of a discount i'm getting on the item. which makes me REALLY want to buy whatever it is just so i can say i got a great deal on it. they've really tapped into the female psyche on this one..

i'd rather not talk about how many times "baby steals" has shown up in our last few credit card bills...

2. milo's so (not) excited to have a baby sister that he's willingly offered to help sample some baby things for us. which is great because he's bite size, just like the baby will be

bassinet: check

baby sling: check

he didn't quite fit into the sleep sack i just made, but it's a little girly for him anyway...

then the boy reminded me that milo walks around where there's lots of poop. and he rolls in dirt on a regular basis. and then i reminded the boy that our baby will most likely try EATING poop and dirt at some point. and that's when i won that discussion.

...and then i secretly went upstairs and started the washing machine.

how big is your purse?

2009-10-07T17:18:00.003-06:00

you know how sometimes stores attach their pens to fake flowers and stick them in a pot on the checkout counter so you can never find them when you're ready to sign the credit card form and you stand there waiting for them to give you a pen and they look at you like you're stupid and say, "uh.. the pens are in the pot, dummy"?

don't be fooled - stores not only do this to make you feel like an idiot, but they also like to make it harder for people to pocket their pens, which i guess i can understand. although, not to sound like i'm a pro at thieving or anything, but stealing a flower pen just seems like a more exhilarating and rewarding challenge to me and not all that much harder than stealing a normal pen sans silk petals. plus, then you have a nice little craft project you can tell your friends you made to impress them.

what's even funnier is when you need a key to get into a public restroom and they tie that key to something like a ping-pong paddle thinking that you can't steal it if there's a paddle involved. i mean, if someone's got it in their head that there's nothing cooler than swiping the only access to a public bathroom, you better believe taking a key AND a bonus prize paddle only adds to the fun and honestly isn't that much harder to walk away with.

at least, those were my thoughts until i asked for the bathroom key at a little grocery store in albuquerque the other day. now these guys have it figured out!

AN ENTIRE COOLING VENT!! talk about a mistrust in your customers.

am i really all nose??

2009-09-28T12:08:00.005-06:00

so, we've had this picture up as our computer desktop for forever and i actually really like it because i think the boy looks dee-lish (sorry...should have warned you that comment was coming BEFORE it came.)

unfortunately, you can see right up my nose. not so dee-lish. so, on our desktop, i kept discreetly covering my nostril with one of the computer icons. and the boy kept moving it back into its proper place without realizing that it was actually serving a new purpose now (dang you organization freaks!)

i finally couldn't take looking up my own nose every time i turned the computer on anymore, so i changed the picture. the boy came home and asked why i changed it.

"weren't you tired of staring at my nostril?" i asked him.

"umm.... have you not seen this picture?" was his response. of course i'd seen the picture! i chose it to replace miss big nose! i walked around behind him to take another look. of all the pictures we have, this is the one i chose.

and then a sad truth hit me - i guess i really do subconsciously like looking up my own nose.

reaping the fruits of my labor

2009-09-21T13:50:00.007-06:00

might i remind you of my mini garden that we started at the beginning of the summer?

i'm very proud to say that we've actually seen some veggies grow in our garden this year! allow me to introduce some of the players:

the lovely mrs. tomato (we've had a lot of mr. tomatoes too, but trust me, they all look the same. no offense tomatoes)

mr bell pepper, the old so-and-so

and, of course, the sultry miss jalepeno

you might notice that our garden had a theme this year. only veggies that are red were allowed to grow. all other colors immediately died.

another theme that might not be so immediately obvious (but makes sense given the mini garden they came out of) is that they all look like this compared to a regular sized apple:

what in the?? i keep telling the boy that we should open a stand at the farmer's market next year called the mini flagg farmlet. we only sell mini veggies. i really think it's what people are looking for.

on the one hand, you can't deny how cute those little guys are! on the other hand, i'm starting to really worry about what in the world kind of baby i'm capable of cooking up...

sew, very old one. sew like the wind!

2009-09-01T09:58:00.012-06:00

there's a little something called "pregnancy brain" where you get forgetful and spacey during your pregnancy for unknown reasons. well, i've gone completely beyond pregnancy brain and have just plain lost my sense of logic.

(interjection: i know you're worried about my blog turning into nothing but posts about my baby, but don't fret. it'll actually be posts about ME dealing with my baby...)

it all happened when i made the mistake of looking at baby shoes on etsy (i seriously almost started crying they were so cute). i knew then i was going to be in trouble. so, my solution to not spending millions of dollars on baby clothes? why, make them myself, of course!

this might seem like a fairly reasonable thing to do for some people, but ask me when was the last time i even picked up (or wanted to pick up) a needle... i do have vague memories (i've repressed most of them) of making a quilt in high school for a church project, and that was not fun... but, what better time than now to stretch my sewing wings?? my grandma would be so proud of me.

so, i bought a lousy used sewing machine online and spent days, literally days - trying to figure the dumb thing out. finally, i decided to visit our old friend will drake to see what he could do for me. our conversation went something like this:

wd: this sewing machine is crap. it's never gonna work right and i ain't gonna even try to fix it
cf: oh
wd: sewing machines just aren't made like they used ta be. they're all crap. now i got this one here that'll last you hundreds of years and you can do anything to it. you can throw it on the ground and jump on it if you want and it'll still sew like new. it's for $589 but i'll give it to you for $210 because of the economy....

he then started going off on how he's been trying to get his competitor's information out of the yellow pages, and then he started vacuuming his counter, and then he talked to his granddaughter on the phone for a little while about how school was... i love that man.

so, $210 later, i have an apparently accident-proof sewing machine. which i think is good for me. plus, it guilts me in to actually learning to sew!!

i started with what anybody would start with for simplicity.. a baby blanket. and look how cute:

just ignore the fact that the seams are ridiculously uneven,

i had no idea how to "finish" the ends,

and i just noticed while i was taking this picture that i got a pin permanently stuck in the side of the blanket... totally baby-proof.

so, since i had clearly mastered the art of blanket-making, i moved on to pants. halfway through my pants project, the boy very gently noted to me, "you better hope she gets your dad's long legs..."

and then, not only did i realize that i didn't want my baby to dress like a skater at quite such a young age, but it also occurred to me that i had sewn the back of the pants to the front of the pants anyway, so that project got scrapped.

by now, my stubbornness had set in and i HAD to conquer this sewing thing! so, i built my confidence up by trying some more little yoga pants (the boy's not convinced that our child will be doing yoga by 3-6 months). and they actually turned out!

so with confidence in check (sort-of), i moved on to an actual pattern to make a dress, that i thought was marked "easy" but i realized after the fact that it never actually says that anywhere... have you ever realized how sewing is a foreign language? seriously. how am i supposed to translate this:

"turn back edge to INSIDE along outer fold line, forming interfacing; press. baste close to inner edge."

uh... what?? who knew you used a turkey baster in sewing... (p.s. turns out you don't).

so, i threw the directions away and decided i'd just make up my own directions knowing the end result in mind. it's called "hacking."

but guess what? it actually turned out really really cute! (i wish i had a baby model to show it off for you) and the seams are straight(ish) and there are no pins hanging out of it. granted, i had a few extra pieces of fabric from the pattern that i still have no idea where they were supposed to go... but the baby's going to love it and she'll probably have a special cry that means "i want to wear that dress you made for me."

it's finally happening!!

2009-08-17T23:10:00.003-06:00

today's tangent has officially launched! (whew)

you know you're really really intrigued to see what it's all about...and i'm really really intrigued to see what you think about it.

please, sign up to get your daily dose of random and let me know what you think! if it makes you want to poke your eyes out, don't worry - it's super easy to unsubscribe.

http://www.todaystangent.com

what's it gonna be?

2009-08-06T18:46:00.004-06:00

we had our 20 week ultrasound on wednesday to find out if we're having a little bitty this

or a little bitty this

the doctor asked us if we wanted to know, which has been a question we've been asking ourselves for awhile now, too. we both got cold feet and couldn't remember at that crucial moment if we had decided yes or no. luckily, we anticipated such a freeze and brought a card that i had made a little while back and was saving for a special occasion (little did i know, it'd be my OWN special occasion) and envelope for the doc to write the gender down and seal for us to open when we were ready.

we drove all the way home without even talking about what was inside the sealed envelope. then, when we got home, the boy immediately went upstairs to take a nap. what?? at a time like this, you need a nap?? then, when he woke up, a bunch of people stopped by unannounced. what?? all you people decide to show up at that crucial moment just because??

when we finally got a minute to ourselves later that night (which seriously felt like years later to a person with my level of patience...), we went and sat on our porch swing, where we got engaged (seemed like an appropriate place) and opened the card excited for whatever it had to say

summer happenings

2009-07-30T15:58:00.010-06:00

i feel like a bajillion beautifully random things always happen during the summers. and i feel like i'm always too distracted by the sunshine to document them each individually as they happen.

and so, i've created a collage (every time i write that word, i wonder why it's spelled the same as the place where you get your higher education. and then every time i end up remembering that i probably didn't deserve that communications degree from collEge) of the fun summer happenings thus far:

1. one of my favorite things about boulder is that buskers are still allowed. there's nothing quite like walking past a xylophone concert, alpine horn players (riccola!), balloon makers and people riding on really tall unicycles trying to convince an audience that they're about to swallow a sword, all on your way to lunch. for the most part, the buskers hibernate during the winter and then emerge with even more daring tricks and commentary. my favorite busker to date:

the hula hooping violinist. come on, does it get much better than that?

2. yes, yes it does. exhibit b- the troll car:

this car is covered from head to toe...err..front to back with trolls! what in the world? can i please just remind everyone how freaky troll dolls are in the first place? they were such a big hit and everybody's parents were buying them and all the kids were having nightmares about them. probably lots of psychiatrist bills these days can be attributed to trolls. here's a reminder in case you've forgotten how creepy these guys are

anyway, who in their right mind would glue these things all over their car?? on the plus side, i guess they'd scare any sort of burglar off. but on the down side, you have trolls glued all over your car

(and yes, i was in babies r us. talk about an overwhelming amount of baby "necessities" guaranteed to give any expectant mother a heart attack! especially after seeing the troll car. it was an emotional day.)

3. i'm clearly not mature enough to be a home owner. somehow (the boy still hasn't confirmed...or denied...anything), our guest bedroom toilet split right down the middle. what in the? so, we got to go toilet shopping! in case you need some pointers when buying a toilet, look for the one that can flush the most golf balls.

4. summer is the time for camping. in cabins. where bats fly around your room while you sleep. i woke up at 4am or so sensing something fluttering around, and sure enough - this little guy was cruising in circles around our room. our nephews got a huge kick out of it.

until it was brought to our attention that the bat could have bitten us in our sleep and that we could die of rabies... moral of the story, don't take bats flying around in your house lightly! my file at the ob/gyn now reports that i've been stung by a bee and potentially bitten by a bat and given 8 (with 3 more to come) rabies shots! so far, i haven't craved any blood, but i'll keep you posted.

5. even though i feel a little bit bad that our poor child will be a christmas baby/bee/bat, i'm actually very grateful that i'm only 4 months preggers instead of 9 in the middle of the summer. my condolences to all summer baby mommas.

talk about a totally radical party dude

2009-07-11T15:15:00.026-06:00

pop quiz, hot shot: what do you get when you combine pop rocks, candy cigarettes, some tubular 80s tunes, blackened chicken (apparently that was big back then??), and 12 totally boss characters?

a bitchin' murder mystery party! introducing,

the lovely - albeit spacey - former miss america hostess, melinda vaness

her billionaire texas boyfriend, jr duwing (yes, he is blending up some frozen dacqueris in case you were wondering)

what a way cool couple

the babelicious pop queen ladonna

and her adopted malawi baby (it's all the rage for good press of course)

the gnarly rockstar willy idol getting crazy with the cheese wiz

and gracing us all with his solid tunes

the anti-social karate and atari expert, chris karate

the valley girl gold-digger molly holiday. like, whatever

and her less-than-interesting husband biff bushneil

little did we know that he was actually a closet break-dancer

the heart-throb actor max gibson. he's so dreamy

yes, ladies...his shirt is see-through. watch out

the beloved (not) rev. jerry flawless. sorry to see you had to be killed, rev. but, like gag me with a spoon, you weren't that hip, dude.

and his, as it turns out, daughter allergra summer - a discovery made seconds before he died!

the rockin' jazzercise goddess jane fondamy

the celeb photographer, vanity shuetz (unfortunately she was taking all the pics so we have zip of her. isn't that the life of a photographer?)

and what 80s murder mystery party is complete without a baby table?

wicked party everyone. you guys are all radical dudes and dudettes fer sure!

lessons i learned in idaho (long but worth it for points # 4 and 13)

2009-06-29T17:39:00.019-06:00

so, imagine your brand new spouse says to you, "there are two back-to-back family reunions going on over the course of a week...wanna go?" while 99.9997% of people would say something to the effect of "umm...no," my brave and adventurous new spouse was actually EXCITED for such a trip.

so off to the eagle ridge dude ranch in yellowstone we flew* to spend a few days with my mom's side of the fam. here are some lessons i learned:

1. whenever possible, fly into an airport that's 50'x50'. you wont' be disappointed. maybe a little bored waiting for your ride, but not disappointed.

2. per aunt wendi's teachings, you should always take yoda along for the ride. because what adventure can't you find with yoda on your back??

3. some hot pots might look pretty and inviting and green...

...but stepping on them could cause lots of pointing and gasping from the people around you. also you might lose your cap

4. pickles with faces are the best

5. bring along a photographer who's not afraid of zooming in on the animals (nice work, the boy!)

6. always be sure to bring along puzzles to entertain the introverts of the family

i'd rather not talk about how long it took us to get that dumb yellowstone-map puzzle done... on the plus side, we sure knew our way around yellowstone after that!

7. only trust personal watermelon. even if you have no idea what that means

8. don't, however, trust any sort of stuffed animal bear that has a see through belly with other animals inside of it

9. don't try to take a picture that looks like old faithful is coming out of your mouth because it will just turn out looking like you're licking the guy's ear next to you

then off to idaho falls we went to spend the rest of the weekend with my dad's side of the family, where we learned

10. make it a point to take a spin in your uncle's "mid-life crisis"

11. take more pictures in idaho falls....

12. you CAN take raspberry and rhubarb plants on an airplane as a carryon. who knew?

13. families are fun, so we've decided to start one!

secret...and belly... is out!! we're due at the end of december and my favorite comment so far has been from my very own husband who said, "i sure hope you bake babies better than you bake other stuff!" thanks, sweetie ;)

* we were planning on driving up until the night before when we realized that it was a 10-hour drive instead of the measly 6 hour drive i made it out to be...i have a feeling that'll be the last time the boy listens to me when it comes to driving distances...

why does europe always have a leg up on us?

2009-06-19T07:51:00.003-06:00

for some reason, meghan's been receiving "vision monday," an apparent optical magazine, in OUR mail for the last month or so. we have no idea how this is happening. meghan doesn't even KNOW our address let alone filling out forms with her name and our address on them. odd.

anyway, in the latest issue of vision monday, here's what the copy says:

and here's what i think, "why in the world are they talking about poland and what makes their lenses so much better than ours?"

...and then i realized that sometimes i'm more blonde than i care to admit...

p.s. meghan, you're magazine's here

read um and weep, martha stewart

2009-05-31T14:29:00.009-06:00

i did it! i made an edible and even (semi) tasty smatterings of baked goods these past couple of weeks!

first up, check out this masterpiece

mmm. what a beaut. and so what that it's supposed to be a tart but looks much more like a pie? come on - who really knows the difference? t his gal does. and in case you're too lazy to click onto that link (although you should, it's pretty funny), the answer is NOBODY KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE! so there.

the key to this piece of art was, i didn't actually have to bake anything other than the crust. i'm always pretty good with crust. then, the strawbs just lie on top and a little jam mix goes over that for shiny value. i personally think that anything with shiny fruit = a tart.

the boy loved it (for real this time. not even for fake)

the second baking gem was this petite patisserie:

so, i'm not quite sure why one day i was sitting around and all of a sudden thought, "i can't bake worth beans (although i hear beans bake pretty well. or so says that talking dog in the commercials). i've got an idea! i'll start a business selling incredibly gorgeous and delicious cakes and all the biggest names in the world will want to buy my cakes."

go big or go home, man. so, i went and bought (this is how serious i was about this idea) a cake decorating book.

granted, i didn't even crack open the book to make this little cake-a-roo. nor did i crack open a recipe. i bought a box mix (you've got to start somewhere, right?) and i nearly screwed that up even... i'd rather not talk about it. let's just say you shouldn't fill the pan to the brim with batter to bake it. doesn't turn out like you think it will.

and granted, i didn't even make the fondant, although i did learn what the word fondant means! (it's the smooth frosting on top). i bought that at hobby lobby because i could. i did, however, paint the flowers on using straight up food coloring. so, i'd also rather not talk about how nasty the flower part of the frosting tasted... and forget to look at the bottom of the cake. i didn't know the best way to fold the frosting under.

BUT, i did it! and if you're a big celebrity and would like me to make a cake for your next big event, act now, my calendar's filling up fast.

in other domestic goddess news, i gardened yesterday! i think the last time i gardened was when i was about 6 and my dad was weeding and i was playing with this little toy i had - a little plastic dog with moveable joints that looked just like lassie and i'm pretty sure i thought he could talk (he couldn't). for whatever reason in my playing, the lassie dog was being chased by bad guys and needed to go into hiding. so, i used the garden shovel and buried him in the garden dirt. never to be found again. see - you'd be hesitant to garden with that kind of sad story too.

anyway, totally pulled out the tools and the gloves and planted some flowers (which mr. milo helped with the digging), an herb garden AND a vegetable garden!! how excited am i?!? (if you can't tell the answer based on the number of exclamation points, you're just gonna stay in the dark).

check out how cute! granted, it's a little bit smaller than i wanted it to be because how was i supposed to know that i needed that much dirt?? we're trying a thing called "lasagna gardening" where you start with wet newspapers and stack a bunch of yummy dirt and compost and sod on top of the newspapers in layers and then plant plants in that. thus the newspapers. but not thus the spoons. we just added those for fun. so, since i thought it would be bigger, i figured i'd have tons of room for squash, cucumbers, eggplants and more squash. but instead, those will all have to grow peacefully in their little square. could be amazonicly interesting...

i had a great time gardening! loved it! and then something very tragic happened. probably the most tragic of all gardening tragedies. i got stung by a bee. can you tell which toe (how lucky that i have the opportunity to take a picture of my toes on the very rare occasion that they're so well manicured...pedicured?...groomed)

it was my first bee sting ever. in my entire life. i could have died. we've all seen "my girl." how was i to know if i was allergic or not? luckily, i'm still alive to tell the tale. and the best part is, i'm STILL excited to garden! next time i'll just wear shoes. how boring is that?

we bought a vacuum from nike drake's dad

2009-05-18T19:18:00.011-06:00

the boy in all of his husbandly glory took me to the vacuum store today to pick out a new vacuum!! i think the saddest part about that sentence is that i really did mean to put that double exclamation point at the end.

of course, we called first to see what time they were open until and to make sure they had the sexy little vacuum i've been eyeing. the saddest part about that sentence is that i think vacuums are sexy.

signs that you've found the perfect vacuum shop:
1. there are tupperware jars of junk to throw on the floor and vacuum up. think containers full of crushed up cheerios, dog hair, molecular-sized allergens...

2. there are vacuums in the store handpainted to look like an american flag. those aren't for sale. we asked

3. the countertop is covered in carpet. because why wouldn't it be?

4. the sales person's name is will drake.

will drake bought all four of his kids vacuum stores a few years back. so, there are four vac shops around the greater boulder area that carry the drake name. problem is, his son (nick) who runs the boulder shop has another day job, so will's stuck managing said store. which is probably why he's not overly invested in making tons of money there.

here's an excerpt from our visit with will:

bill: "we're here to buy a vacuum"
will: "we have those."
b: "great"
w: "this one you're looking at is our best seller. it's on sale from $300 to $250."
b: "great, we'll take it."
w: "but then they go up in cost and features. this one has a rubber handle. but it's $500, $400 dollars."
b: "huh?"
w: "$500 normally, but $400 on sale."
b: "so, what exactly is this sale? like 25% off or something?
w: "no. this one's not on sale. but i feel like giving it to you for $400."
b: "okay. but it's not worth an extra $150 for a rubber handle i don't think."
w: "then i'll give it to you for $300 since you called before you came in."
b: "sweet!"
w: "can i help you build it?"
b: "that'd be great."

at this point, he pulls out the box, sticks the handle into the rest of the vacuum and viola, it's built. good thing we had help with that. then, he went into the back room and started talking on the phone, presumably to one of his sons. "wow! you've made way more than i have today!" and stuff like that.

b: "how about vacuum bags? what are the best ones?"
w: "well these ones are the highest rated vacuum bags around."
b: "and what does that mean?"
w: "it means no other bags are rated higher."

thanks for the clarification, will

then we talked a little bit more about the vacuum's features - bringing up some points that we "researched" (aka, found on the homepage of the brand's website), that apparently we weren't supposed to know - only vacuum connoisseurs knew stuff like that.

i asked him why do they always sell vacuums and sewing machines together and he said, "ya know, i've worked in the business for 30 years and i have no idea. we're looking to get some ceiling fans in here to sell too. and some tasers." and he was serious

on our way out the door, will threw in two extra vacuum belts. "one to use and one to lose." thanks, will! that was the most enjoyable vacuum-buying experience i could ever imagine. and the vacuum is just as sexy as i knew it would be.

today's tangent

2009-05-04T12:37:00.004-06:00

http://todaystangent.com

news flash: for those of you who can't get enough bugandpie (isn't that everybody??), i'm starting a daily email called "today's tangent." this little gem will be sent directly to your inbox every m-f morning with a little blurb of funny...a random thought, something silly I saw, a cool website...you know, stuff like that. We're talking one paragraph kind-of stuff, so it won't eat up your morning (unless you'd like it to, in which case you're allowed to read it as many times as you'd like)

please please sign up to receive these emails at http://todaystangent.com and let me know what you think. since i'm new to trying this out, any and all feedback is hugely appreciated... unless it's mean... just kidding. this is a safe space.

also, if you like what you see, please please pass it along to your friends! and if you don't like what you see (heaven forbid), you can unsubscribe asap. i won't know that you unsubscribed (except for in my heart probably)

and for those worry warts out there, i promise promise promise that the only thing your email address ever gets attached to through this is my daily email. and then, make sure chelsea@todaystangent.com is on your email safe list so my messages won't go to spam (another heaven forbid).

i'm hoping to start the emails in the next couple of weeks just to let you know. again, your help in spreading the word is HUGELY appreciated. same with any and all feedback!

lemmee know if you have any questions. thanks!!

bbq the night away

2009-04-25T22:01:00.006-06:00

this is what a rockin' bbq looks like

and this is what someone who's gotten too many bbq fumes looks like

and this is what a 6'6" person looks like in a basement with 6'0" ceilings

and this is the solution

go team awkwardly tall

why i should not be allowed to bake (as if i need more reasons)

2009-04-21T07:11:00.006-06:00

look how appetizingly incredible my egg and ham quiche looks! it's amazing what my domestic goddess hands are capable of...

psyche! it's actually a rhubarb tart. sad, but true. i'm not sure why i keep attempting to bake stuff and assuming it will turn out. take for example this or this. i consider myself pretty good at following directions, but throw an oven in there and my direction-following capabilities go berzerk.

let's take my most recent trainwreck. here's what i was supposed to read:

but somehow i totally skipped over that part and only read this:

which, how confusing is that? cut my rhubarb into lengths? i could only assume they meant LONG and varying lengths because that's what it means when i tell my hairstylist to cut my hair in lengths...

turns out my definition didn't so much work for this recipe. which is sad because i actually did spend a good amount of time creating varying sizes of rhubarb sticks

at least milo liked it. you can always count on your dog to make you feel better about yourself.

salt lake - where they camouflage their port-o-potties

2009-04-14T10:32:00.018-06:00

even though it's a little bit premature, i surprised meghan with a birthday weekend extravaganza! she knew we were going "somewhere" but didn't know the "where" part. and when it comes right down to it, who really ever knows the "some" part?

here's the bug excited to tears (in the form of her tongue) when she found out we were off to slc for the weekend!

i think she was expecting a surprise trip to seattle, but for obvious reasons, that couldn't happen.

my favorite part about the bug is that you can take her anywhere and you know it's destined to be a good time. and to prove that point, we went to the world's freakiest bakery.

who eats daffodils?? i guess the same person who would eat this (cue mysteriously evil "dun dun dun" music)

ummm hello... that's the most frightening thing i've ever seen. ever

so then we moved on to happier things

oh wait...that's creepy too... who in their right mind would use the slogan "we're everywhere" and expect people to be okay with that? especially when it's posted right outside of the freakiest bakery. check out my cute butterfly shirt though.

so, i gave meghan 3 envelopes, each with a birthday surprise in it. the first one was our plane tickets to salt lake. that one was easy because she was able to open it right away. as for the other two....giving them to her right upfront was a mistake. everywhere we went that first night, she'd pull them out and just look at them. we sit down for dinner. she pulls the envelopes out and sets them next to her plate, for example.

the second envelope was her registration to walk in the ms walk, which is something she loves doing (walking AND helping the ms society). so we marched down to the front desk of our hotel and asked for markers. on one hand, i kind of feel bad for the front desk of our hotel, but on the other hand i feel like we truly graced them with our presence. the first night we were there, we marched down in various combinations of swimsuits, hoodies and dress(me)/skater(megs) shoes at 10pm asking where the closest place to get gummies was. so, i feel like they kind-of rolled their eyes when we asked for markers the next morning.

hopefully they didn't mind that we got skin oil all over their markers by tatooing ourselves for the ms walk. they didn't say anything, so maybe they didn't mind.

and then, because we have a strong history of random easter celebrations (2007, 2008), meghan came up with a brilliant idea. why don't we hardboil some eggs in our hotel room coffee pot?!? this is what happens when you reach a quarter of a century. your intelligence sky rockets. i do feel kind of bad for the next people who stay in room 603 and want coffee. and i do feel kind of bad for the front desk when said people call down yelling about how their coffee tastes like eggs...

then we dyed the eggs, of course

and then i put the carton in my purse so we could eat them all around town when we got hungry. kinda like a ziploc full of cheerios only slightly different.

and finally, the third envelope was the greatest of all the birthday gifts:

now i don't mean to sound like a broken record. well, i guess i don't since i've never said it before...but OTHER people have said it and i don't mean to sound like everybody else, but this show is incredible! we may have talked about it the entire rest of the trip. and then i may have listened to the soundtrack 3 (maybe 4, but who's counting?) times yesterday alone. i know tickets are hard to come by for this production, but it's worth it. if you have to sell your firstborn child or a kidney, it's worth it.

love you megs!!

proxy baby

2009-04-04T14:19:00.003-06:00

sometimes i have conversations with milo that go like this:

me: there are way cooler kid toys than dog toys a lot of the time

milo: i hear ya

me: maybe you should act like a human kid sometimes so you can play with those cool things

milo: word

and that's how we got to this point

the rest of new zealand... spewed right atcha

2009-04-01T11:23:00.003-06:00

probably my biggest character flaw is antsiness. i love change and i love variety and i'm using that as an excuse to say that i'm bored of writing about new zealand...

so i'm sorry to all who were dying to hear how our trip ended up, but actually i'm not sorry afterall because the boy and i recorded a slideshow of our trip!! how brilliant are we?

it's in two parts because youtube doesn't like long videos (spoiler alert: it's kind-of a long slideshow) (spoiler alert 2.0: i sound like an 8-year old. this has been another curse in my life (well at least from 9 years old up). true story: i went through a quick phase (refer to antsiness comment above) where I wanted to be a radio personality and the only station that even called me back after first rounds of phone calls with about a dozen different stations was radio disney, where i'm pretty sure most of the djs there ARE 8-years old. what a crush to my dream (no offense radio disney))

on a similar note to both my antsiness AND long videos, reason #4,586 why i love the boy: he'll spend an evening watching movie previews with me. i get fidgity during movies, but i can certainly handle the 3-minute overviews! sometimes they're not even 3 minutes long - those are the REAL good ones!

what people want

2009-03-27T15:56:00.003-06:00

so i think my favorite thing about blogging is using google analytics to see how people find your site.

some of my recent favorite phrases people typed into google and then somehow stumbled across my site as a search result are...

- "what's more bajillion or bamillion?"

(bajillion for sure. who doesn't know that?)

- "naked guys fighting"

(and lots of other alliterations of nakedness... "nude foosball," "caught no clothes..."

i guess that serves me right for mentioning a nudist colony on my site...and just mentioning it again will probably bring a slew of NEW searchers!)

- "carneval nackt"

(huh? i don't even know what this is let alone where i mentioned any such thing in my blog)

- "lovely and amazing"

(my blog must have clearly been the number one hit for this search)

p.s. can you tell i'm a little bit bored of writing about new zealand? i feel like i got pretty far in our story though, right? right? can someone back me up here?...

visit my new blog!

2009-03-23T17:33:00.003-06:00

not to replace this one, but to compliment it!

vegetarianpisces.blogspot.com

a break in new zealand posting

2009-03-23T12:48:00.004-06:00

i felt it important to make a very grand announcement.

i have now experienced (and am still experiencing) my first set of stitches.

remember one time when i was opening a can of dog food (of all the silly things) and sliced my finger open? and remember how it was a really good thing meghan was up at my house to take care of me because otherwise i would probably still be standing at the sink with my finger under the faucet waiting for it to stop bleeding?

and remember how i insisted that we didn't need to go to the hospital and meghan told me that if it was still bleeding in an hour that she was dragging me there? and remember how i hid it really well for three hours but it was still bleeding and then the boy (who was in detroit) started insisting that i go to the hospital. so i let meghan drag me there and this was the conversation with the front desk lady:

her: how's it going?
me: good
her: well, good until you sliced your finger open i assume
me: you assume wrong
her: ....

her: on a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt
me: right now or when it happened?
her: when did it happen?
me: like three or so hours ago
her: (looking down at my blood-stained papertowel cover)... oh...

three stitches (i saved you all from seeing the graphic stitches pics...you're welcome) and a lot of giggling later (maybe i was going delerious from loss of blood? and meghan is just delerious anyway?) i got to leave promosing to keep my finger bandaged and dry for 10 days.

and i have to say, this post took me a really long time to write. you try typing with this thing on your finger!

thanks megs for being the best person in the world! there's nobody else i would have wanted to go through my mini trauma with!

new zealand is for 50 cent horse poo: greymouth - part 4.2

2009-03-21T16:07:00.012-06:00

continuing on with our greymouth experience...

greymouth for some reason made the boy crave fish & chips. so, around our normal dinner time of 9pm the first night we were there, we headed out to conquer the craving. the problem was, everything was closed! this was truly the most foreign concept of all of new zealand to us. how could entire cities close down at 8pm? we were so sad because the only place that was open was a kfc and HOW could you eat at a kfc when you're exploring the world??

and then, we found it...

don't be fooled by the mexican hat dancer on the door. it was an indian restaurant. and for some reason, that sounded way more nz authentic to us than kfc, so we were happy albeit void of fish & chips.

the next day, we set out to continue the hunt by driving to the next town where they had quote - good fish & chips - unquote. problem was, they didn't even HAVE f&c - just fish bites. which made for a sad boy (he hides his sadness well).

one good thing about going into the next town, however, is that we got to meet this one-eyed wool loomer AND buy hats from her!

our second night in greymouth, we made the same mistake and headed out to dinner way too late. fool me once, shame on you greymouth... we saw the lights on at this italian place (another good authentic nz restaurant) and i literally jumped out of the campervan while the boy was still driving to stick my hand in the door before they locked it. we were told we could order a pizza but it had to be to go. so we did. and then we ate it on our table in the campervan right outside the restaurant's front door.

greymouth day 3 - we heard about this place

you strap into a little dune buggy type of contraption and drive around for an hour through puddles upon puddles of mud. it was fabulous!

but, what was even more fabulous about this place was it's association with the miniature land!! made perfect sense because normally when i think of off-roading go-karts, i also think of mini gnomes.

we got to walk through miniature land while we waited for our go-kart to be ready. we even got to talk to the builder of the land. i was a little bit confused why there was a bird skeleton and a dragon soaring above one of the mini lands, but then i met him and it all made sense.

what in the??

oh... got it

here are some highlights from mini land (and i have to say, it was hard to just pick a couple):

now THIS is what i call a farmlet!

always breaking the rules...

we found another place for f&c. much better than fish bites. see how happy the boy is? now that's what i call a fish & chips! (i'm not quite sure what the singular...and fish only part of that meal would be called...)

we finally decided we'd better leave greymouth before the town closes on us again and sharon and harry sent us off in style. they gave us some lovey-dovey champagne glasses as a congrats, and harry even helped us make a sign for our campervan (notice the pounds of masking tape and marker ink that only a three-year old could use for one piece of paper).

bye, greymouth - we heart you!

new zealand: 10 sheep for every person - part 4.1: greymouth

2009-03-16T10:34:00.016-06:00

i'm warning you right now - greymouth (a place we never would have planned on going to) was hilarious. put down your glass of milk right now so it doesn't spray out your nose while you're reading about this leg of our trip. i'm going to break this part up into 2 separate posts because it's just that good.

the best part of our approach to new zealand was this: we hardly planned anything. we knew the first few days and of course had our wedding scheduled, but once we left abel tasman, all we knew was that we were flying out of queenstown 2 weeks later. the south island was our canvas. we had notes of places friends had recommended we see and greymouth was nowhere on any of those notes.

but, we were heading that direction and felt like it'd be a good enough place as any to stop for the night. we called the new river bluegums b&b because we were so intrigued by its description in our book. i mean come on, they lived on a farmlet* with a pet pig and all! the minute we got there, we knew we made a good decision. we were greeted at the door by michael, sharon and harry - the cheeriest kid i think i've ever seen. it's not like you can really understand 3-year olds anywhy, but try throwing a new zealand accent into the mix.

we sat down in the family room to get to know michael and sharon a bit while harry ran around like a maniac. then, we heard something in the back corner. i thought, "is harry watering the plants?" and we turned to find that, nope - harry was not watering the plants. he was watering his training potty which was in the corner of the family room. hilarious.

and then we were introduced to the family dog, coco. coco fell in love with the boy. (i actually couldn't tell if it was love, or if he wanted to rip bill to shreds). he was fine around everybody else, but the second he saw the boy, he'd go beezerk and jump all over the place!

these guys had some rather unique artwork...

and, like i mentioned earlier, a pet pig...

and, of course, a handful of sheep. now, here's the thing about sheep. the second the boy found out that the sheep/human ratio in new zealand is 10/1 he started drooling just thinking about the possibilities - we could get married amidst a herd of sheep! we could shear sheep to our heart's content! so, of course, the boy asks michael - "do any of your sheep need shearing?" unfortunately, all of michael's sheep (all 7 of them - you can't have too many sheep on a farmlet afterall) had already gotten their hair cut. BUT, his friend grubb (yes, that's really his name and he's exactly what you would imagine with a name like that) had some sheep that needed a' shearin' - we could help with that

the boy's eyes lit up as he realized all of his sheep dreams were about to come true (well except for the dream of me getting in my wedding dress and standing in a field of sheep...)

so, the next evening, we loaded up and drove over to grubb's sheep. michael pulled his truck up to the shed, popped the hood, pulled out his spark plugs and USED HIS TRUCK TO POWER THE SHEEP SHEARING MACHINE! he said he'd take the first few so the boy could see how to do it and then he'd give the boy a go.

sheep aren't really that cute up close. and they just kind-of sit there. i would have thought they'd put up a bigger fight, but they just flop around while they're getting sheared. well, that's what every sheep did up until the last sheep (the boy's sheep), which tried running out of the pen and jumping over everybody. of couse that's the sheep the boy gets!! it was kicking and wiggling all over the place. priceless.

turn the volume up for this video. the dialogue is hilarious.

so, there it is, my hubs is now a bonefied sheep shearer. a day or two later, we saw an ad for the national sheep shearing competition, where the returning champ can shear a sheep in 17 seconds - count them s.e.v.e.n.t.e.e.n! gives the boy something to work up to for our next trip to nz.

i think this is my favorite pic from our whole trip. i'm deciding between two titles for it: "the boys chillin' after a hard day's work" or "one of these things is not like the other"

* i don't know this for sure, but i'm pretty sure a farmlet is a miniature-sized farm... like a piglet or a droplet or a moist toillette...

new zealand is for pancakes: part 3 - driving a bit

2009-03-15T21:28:00.012-06:00

are you bored of our new zealand trip yet? me neither. thus the two postings at once.

after we left abel tasman, we journeyed down the west coast, stopping to actually CAMP in our campervan (novel idea, huh?) at lake rotoroa, which was beautiful and beautifully dripping in sand flies. we couldn't even look out our window because all we saw were sand fly bums. so, the boy made us our first cooked meal together as hubs and wif (we're trying to come up with more unique titles for each other than husband and wife...we haven't gotten very far other than deleting a few letters from each).

in the morning, when courage is at its peak, we went outside to face the flies. it was totally worth the new 8 billion bites.

(check out that money shot taken by yours truly!)

then we started driving again and found a sign for a seal colony and, of course, stopped to see. the boy asked "how many seals do you think we'll see?" and i said (and was pretty confident) "probably six," which apparently is a little sparse for a colony...but for the record, i just looked it up and there's no limit to how few units there need to be to make a colony. so there. anyway, i was wrong just the same - there were probably a hundred seals.

which was a theme, because there were also a hundred direction markers on this sign.

next, we were off to the pancake rocks, which was a "must do" from everyone who's seen them (which is pretty much everyone because this was a HUGE tourist attraction, little beknownst to us." there are three cool things about the pancake rocks:

1. they're rocks that look like stacks of pancakes

imagine

mmmm....

i couldn't really come up with a point two or three, so i'll leave that up to your own creativity.

we saw rose and her friend at the pancake rocks, which was a little bit random. especially when rose said "i made a cd of pictures from your wedding from you, but i didn't bring it." how could you, rose? didn't you know you could run into us at any time halfway across your island?

and then i got philisophical and observed, "how wierd to think that if we hadn't gone to rose's for dinner, we wouldn't even know her. she'd still be here with her friend at the same time as us, but she'd be a total stranger right now." i felt a huge thesis coming on...but then the boy started laughing at me and said i was an odd duck. then i told him maybe i am, but i was born that way. HE was the one who had the choice to marry me.

new zealand is for lovers: part 2, abel tasman and wedding.

2009-03-10T22:28:00.001-06:00

okay okay okay, so it was a little ambitious of me to imagine i would write every single day... BUT writing this post already puts me way further along than i ever got in my spain posting, so there is that.

after we got our fill of nelson, we journeyed north a bit to try on abel tasman for size. we found two gems along the way:

i really hope this car worked and gets driven around. we followed the signs into some guy's backyard with a note saying "open by appointment only" but you know how sometimes you don't feel like calling someone when you're right in front of their house to tell them you'll be there in 30 seconds? plus, all the sculptures were just sitting in his unfenced backyard. what were we to do? why, get out and look at them of course! so, we pranced around some guy's backyard for a few minutes (with no sign of the guy anywhere), then left because the sculptures were a little bit scary.

the second stop we made was at a gas station/convenience store. lucky for us, they had chocolate covered pineapple chunks (not what you think...in new zealand talk, pineapple chunks apparently means pineapple-flavored (this is a stretch) marshmallow filling). and even luckier for us, this particular gas station doubled as an art gallery. and why not? we found this little statue

we're not quite sure if maybe it's a person hugging E.T., or maybe it's a person in a yoga move where she's hugging her own legs... but, there was a little 3x5 card taped to it with the artist's phone number on it, so we called him and told him we were on our way to get married and he said, "oh this is piece is perfect for you then! it's called 'embrace'!" (then he probably said something under his breath that sounded like "suckers.") and we thought, hmmm i guess it is perfect for us then! and bought it right there at that gas station.

we were so excited to see abel tasman because we had heard so much about how beautiful it was and what incredible scenery, etc. so, we decided to start it off with a hike. what we didn't plan on was a day of downpouring rain.

but, while we couldn't really see much of the scenery and we had the fact that we were scheduled to get married the next morning...outside...looming in the back of our minds, we had a great hike and saw giant bugs.

we stayed that night at the everton b&b, which we had arranged beforehand. i knew this was the place to stay because when i was looking around for places to surround our wedding day, the hostess here, diane, was by far the most excited person i talked to. she was thrilled to have a bride and groom in her home and was eager to help out wherever she could to make the day great for us.... which included calling her son and his girlfriend, inviting all the neighbors to "come out to watch the bride leave her house," etc. it all of a sudden seemed silly to me that i was ever worried about finding two witnesses to be there!

i had been in touch with another lady in the area - rose, who i contacted through servas. she wanted us to stay with her really badly, but since we already made arrangements to stay with diane and martin, we agreed to meet up with rose for dinner. so, rose came over to the b&b, picked us up, and took her back to her house for dinner. where a handful of her friends were anxiously waiting for us. who knew we were meant to be the dinner subject of the night for these random strangers?

it was even better when pretty much all of them showed up on the beach the next morning to take pictures and watch us get married, along with a slew of other random kiwis. it was great!

anyway, enough about the wedding. you can check out pictures and stories of all that at theflaggfamily.com

after our wedding celebration (and a little nappy nap for the boy), we decided to head back down to the beach where we got married to swim. and that was our first encounter with - duh duh duh - sand flies!! in our newly wedding bliss, we completely forgot about the warning that EVERYBODY gave us that "sandflies are the one thing that keeps new zealand from being translated to heaven with the title of 'paradise on earth'." before i even knew it, i had at least 8 billion bites all over me. and you know how you aren't supposed to scratch bites even though they itch the bejeebers out of you? yeah, multiple that itch by 8 billion and tell me you wouldn't scratch.

so, we ran away from the beach and it all of a sudden occured to me, "sand fly bites make me crave pizza..." and that's why we treated diane and martin to pizza. where the owner of the place serenaded us just like in lady and tramp, except we weren't eating spaghetti and he wasn't Italian and we weren't dogs. and since we aren't dogs, we could get up and dance, which probabaly made the whole restaurant think, "oh great, there they go again - those americans are ALWAYS trying to steal the spotlight."

the next day, we shoved (very delicately, mom) my dress back into the campervan and headed back to the sand flies to try our hand at kayaking. turns out our hands were pretty good at kayaking...for the first 3 hours. and then i (and these are the boy's words) started looking like gumby flopping my paddle all around the place. and remember how we didn't even tip over once...while at sea? i somehow managed to tip the whole thing over while it was ON SHORE. so, i'm still sorry about that bill that we had to paddle back with wet bums. although i think the gumby arms were a direct result of the wet bum, just for the record...

also, i just remembered that we got stuck in a cave that took us awhile to get out of...

new zealand: the love child of colorado and hawaii. part 1: nelson

2009-03-07T19:22:00.004-07:00

so remember one time when i started blogging about our trip to spain and my intent was to break it up into little chunks of the trip so the posts were manageable... and then i only actually wrote one chunk of the trip...

that's why i've decided to post about our trip/wedding/honeymoon (spoiler alert: we got married!) to new zealand in one fowl swoop (foul swoop?...i never knew which way was correct to spell that..) so there it is, i'm commiting myself, in front of the entire internet, to post about a leg of our trip every day until i'm done... makes me a bit nervous

that being said, let's jump right in, shall we?

the airport
we knew the trip was off to an eventful start when the boy lollygagged his way around the house until well past time to get to the airport, resulting in my poor mom getting pulled over for speeding while rushing us to the airport (we still feel REALLY bad about that, mom!) it was amazing we made it on the flight. and lucky for us, because on that very flight, some old guy drooled all over the boy's suitcase (yes, we did have every single article we were taking on a 2.5 week trip on the airplane with us because of the boy's baggage check phobia... and yes, this did include 2 insanely full roller suitcases, two insanely full backpacks, a wedding dress, a ukulele and two pillows. take THAT tsa restrictions!) and some little kid puked all over the seat in front of us. we will hereby forever call that trip "the flight of the body fluids."

nelson
we flew into nelson where we picked up our camper van (soon to be dubbed the "napper van")

and headed over (very timidly given they drive on the left hand side of the road with the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car) to the nelson courthouse to pick up our wedding license and then to wander around downtown nelson, which was very charming.

we found a $2 store (not quite as appealing as a $1 store, but we still went in) where we bought all sorts of good decorations to dress up our camper van.

then, the celebrant for our wedding called us - he lived in nelson and we did, afterall, want to meet each other before he led us into the marriage charge. lucky for us, he was at work in downtown nelson and could take a break to meet with us right then! so, we gathered our $2 goodies and walked in the direction he told us to.... where we ran into this:

remember how we had our marriage interview in the backroom of a sporting goods store? also, remember how our marriage interview consisted of questions like: "what are your full names? what do you think the weather will be like on saturday?" ah, i love the simplicity of new zealand.

after our "interview," we headed to our first bed & breakfast. now the b&b's in new zealand are great because they're actually homestays! meaning, we were literally sleeping in people's old kids' rooms and hanging out with them in their family rooms! it was an amazing way to get to know the culture and really see what the locals are like and what they recommend doing.

anyway, we stayed at A Culinary Experience with kay and joe. it was most excellent. they were actually americans who journeyed over to nz several years ago. she was an awesome chef who cooked ridiculously good breakfasts and a dinner for us and he was a massage therapist. not a bad place to land after 20+ hours in airports!

another couple from london were staying there too (tony and di). they were fabulous! ...the boy kept laughing at me because apparently, when i'm around british people, my word of choice is "fabulous." i can't help it. it's in my blood.

the next day, we strolled around the wine country side of nelson, which was fine, but neither of us are huge wine conisuers, so we got bored before too long..then pulled out our chairs and read by/in the beach (it's really hard to estimate where to sit on the beaches in nz because the water changes by the second and before you know it, you're up to your knees in it!)