meal plan monday: july 9.

i have the best hubs ever. over the weekend, without being asked, he took it upon himself to get the groceries for the week. sure, it could have had something to do with the fact that he was tired of scrounging for food since we did our very best to empty the fridge before we left for vacation last weekend, but i am choosing to believe that he just saw the opportunity to do something helpful that i loathe while i was busy doing something much more fun. he just loves me like that.

unfortunately, he went without a list. and then he put everything away by himself. so i really have no idea what he bought, which should make meal planning this week rather... well... interesting. i'm flying blind here, let's see how i do.

Monday: lazy lasagna (if there's meat in the freezer) and corn on the cob.
Tuesday: grilled cheese sandwiches.
Wednesday: first crabs of the summer. yesss...
Thursday: frozen raviolis.
Friday: chicken quesadillas.
Saturday: pb&j sandwiches.
Sunday: if we don't make a grocery trip, i'm thinking we'll just eat out.

ugh. nature.

all I wanted to do was walk calmly into my door on a Friday after work. instead, i freaked the freak out, danced around on my front porch, and threw all of the things on the ground. I blame nature.

i threw it on the GROUND

first, i ran into the spider who built its web between the two shrubs in front of our front door. then, as i was frantically ninja-ing the spiderweb off of me and making sure the spider wasn't ON ME, along came the bee who buzzed all around my head because I was disturbing it from its task of building a nest in the doorframe, right next to the OTHER spider who is lucky I am short enough to walk under its giant pregnant web otherwise it would have been evicted much sooner.

you know, I probably really wouldn't mind nature if it wasn't for all of its wildlife showing up AT MY FRONT DOOR.

vacations are exhausting.

back at work today after a long holiday weekend. but its ok, because long weekends make for short weeks. i only have to work today and tomorrow before i get another weekend. i like the way this works.

i spent the past 5 days hanging out with my extended family in the woods in Pennsylvania. and it was awesome. i love my family (yes, all of them!) and anytime that we're all together is a good time. so i thought i would share with you a recipe of sorts so that you too can have a great family vacation.

Recipe for a Great Vacation

Ingredients:

- 2 grandparents.

- 14 aunts and uncles.

- 18 cousins.

- 3 in-laws.

- 2 great-grandbabies.

- 2 big houses in the woods.

Directions:
Mix ingredients in random order. Have a plan. Change it at least twice. Sprinkle in a dash of drama and douse with a liberal volume of alcohol for most interesting results.

Optional (but highly recommended) Adventures:
- 1 pretty big jenga game.

- 1 afternoon of mini-golf.

- 3 hula hoops.

- 1 kan jam "tournament."

- 1 birthday boy.

- 1 giant fire pit.

- lots of glowsticks.

- 1000s of feet of ziplining.

- 21 miles of bike riding.

- 3 hours and 470 feet underground in a cave.

it was a wonderful, dirty, tiring, exciting, relaxing, fabulous couple of days full of family, fun, and lots of laughter, and i was so sad to have to pack up and leave tocome back home to my real world of work and laundry and all that other boring stuff that i ramble on and on about here basically every other day of the year.

i have more pictures. they all have stories to go with them. they all make me smile. i'll try and post some more of them tomorrow or next week. and if you're reading this from vacation, i love you and i miss you and i can't wait to see you all again!

our garden.

wait. scratch that. from now on, let's just call it Mark's garden. because as much as i would like to take a little bit of credit for this thing, you know since we both own the house and we'll both be eating whatever we manage to harvest out of there, i really have nothing to do with it. he has done all of the planning, sprouting, planting, watering, and de-bugging, and i have stayed very far away from the whole operation. and there is a very good reason for this: i have a black thumb.

i kill everything i touch, whether it be a strawberry plant, rose bush, or the lovely impatiens that Mark bought me last year. all dead within a few months. you doubt? a demonstration! this is was the oregano plant that Mark's aunt brought to our house as a house-warming present on mothers day:

it only took me 6 weeks to turn it into a pile of dead brown sticks. that might be a new record.

so in contrast, now let's all marvel in amazement at all the things we Mark is growing out in the garden (and keeping alive!)

our Mark's garden. 

 lettuce.

adorable little green tomato! 

crazy giant beans. 

corn! 

watermelon on the left. and i think the tall one is a cucumber? zuchinni? 

eggplant! 

peas! 

and a turnip! (anyone know how to eat these?) 

i know that the garden also has broccoli, carrots, and garlic in it, and possibly a few other things that i don't remember. all i know is that i'm pretty much in awe over this whole gardening thing, and pretty excited to get to eat things that we Mark grew in our own backyard.

check up.

i can't believe that its the end of June. 2012 is halfway over already! so i guess that means its probably as good a time as any to take a quick look back at how i'm doing with all those non-resolutions that i declared back in January.

this list is in no particular order, since i originally made it stream-of-consciousness style, just typing stuff as i thought of it. i haven't added anything, or taken anything off the list. all i did was copy and paste it from this post, and put it into a bulleted list for easier reading. it probably goes without saying, but anything that has been crossed off is something that i have done. the ones that have a comment but are not yet crossed off are things that i have started but i do not yet feel as though they are complete for one reason or another. and all the rest? well, i've still got plenty of time to get around to those, since there really isnt an expiration date on this list.

so without further ado...

• make a reasonable meal plan. Meal Plan Mondays seem to have stuck pretty well so far...
• paint the front door.
• run a 5K.
• go to Europe. been there, done that.
• enjoy that trip thoroughly. ohmygoodness yes! and i would go back in a heartbeat.
• bring home at least one good souvenir. i never told you about them, but we picked up our Christmas ornaments for this year, and also managed to find something good for a bunch of other people too.
• feel good about myself in a bathing suit.
• sit-ups.
• clean the front porch. its dirty again already, but i did clean it.
• have pretty flower beds.
• shower with the door closed.  we still need to install a fan in the guest bathroom though.
• read the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
• then watch the movies.
• paint and organize my kitchen.
• invite more people to our house. this one's kind of a work in progress.
• smile. pretty much every day!
• make curtains for all my naked windows. we'll call this one 30% complete.
• clean regularly.
• use my crockpot. i still dont think i'm using this to its full potential.
• read through my bible. reading plan has been started, and reasonably kept up with so far.
• run.
• dismantle the mountain-o-junk in the basement. dismantled, but still not completely reorganized.
• decorate for seasons other than Christmas.
• yard sale.
• read a book by Jane Austin Austen.
• hang things on the walls. one thing so far.
• build something.
• laugh. as much as possible.
• organize the office. maybe 50% on this one?
• carve a jack-o-lantern.
• buy pants that fit and make me feel fantastic. i have one amazing pair of jeans. still on the hunt for good work pants.
• clean out my closet.
• put new music on my iPod.
• be a good friend. i dont really know that there's a way to quantify this...
• quilt our old t-shirts. 98% done with Mark's quilt. still not sure if i'm going to do mine or not.
• close my other bank account.
• hit 'play all' on abs and buns of steel and not want to die.
• go to the dentist.
• give more homemade gifts.
• play outside. a few times. not nearly enough though.
• ride my bike. once or twice so far. not as ready for the tour as i'd like to be.
• the big book of everything.
• go to a baseball game. i've got 2 in so far this season, and 2 softball games. any more at this point are purely bonus.
• swim.
• paint something little.
• have fun. yes.oh so much yes.

 so that's where i stand so far. not too shabby if i do say so myself. in fact, (if these were actual resolutions that needed to be completed by the end of the year) i'm pretty much right on track numbers-wise, having either completed or made progress on exactly 50% of all the things on the list. go me!

 

so right now blogger is giving me a STRONG warning about HTML and tags and opening and closing and CANNOT BE ACCEPTED but they also give me an option to "Ignore Warning." so i'm just going to go ahead and do that. walkin on the wild side over here. fingers crossed that this doesnt blow up my computer or anything...

 

softball news.

so remember last year when i went to watch Mark play softball and i missed his TWO spectacular diving catches in the outfield because i have the attention span of a goldfish? well i decided to try that whole 'watching softball' thing again this year. i actually went to two games last week. and guess how many times the ball got hit to Mark in left center field? none. that's how many. and i was even waiting patiently and paying attention and not getting lost in conversation with the other spectators. (mostly because most of the time, i was their ONLY spectator) i guess its not his fault that all of the action just happened to be in left field, diving catches and all.

i was forced to settle for seeing the hubs slide into home as the winning run in a nail-biter of a comeback win. i mean its cool, but i dont know that it quite compares to the spectacularity of a diving catch. BUT! i took pictures this year!

do you like his pants? they're new this season. he decided he needed them to help keep his knees safe and unscraped what with all the sliding into bases he tends to do. they worked pretty well for a while, until he ripped a big hole in them and his knee on a particularly nasty slide. so, being a good wife and all, i sewed them up for him. he hasnt slid again since, so i guess i'll have to wait and see how well my stitchery holds up.



so i guess there's really not much newsworthy here. mark's playing softball again. he's wearing pants instead of shorts. nothing real earth-shattering. but i made it to see him play, i paid attention the whole time, and i had pictures i wanted to share. so i shared them. but now i can't come up with a witty way to end this. or even a non-witty way to end this.

the end.

this weekend in history.

(my written records go all the way back to my high-school days. anything farther back than that is too hard to remember.)

2004: this was just before i started blogging. which at that point was just journaling on the internet, and immensely embarrasing.

2005: i started surveying with Pap for the summer.
"Hey all...and so begins the rest of my summer away! yah, i'm at the grandparents right now...and for a good while too. but hey, i'm happy. I got here yesterday, and already today i went out on my first day of "surveying"... i got to play around on the roads with a metal detector like u see stupid ppl have goin down the beach and stuff...and we dug big holes in the road, and tromped around in ppl's yards and all that good stuff... I'm also spending a lot of time with my cousins, Sammy and Colton. They're funny... I love all y'all and i'll keep u updated as much as i can...much love. i'm out."

2006: i took a summer speech class.
"i have decided that i really like 3 week summer classes... my first day of class was last thursday. i gave my second speech today, and my (opennote) midterm is tomorrow. then i have a week in which i have 2 speeches to do, then a long weekend, a review day, and my final. im done by the second weekend in July, just in time for the not-a-fiesta. i am firmly convinced that some classes, like speech, should just work that way all the time."

2007: i endured a really rough day at work
"...ten things i did today: 1. i sat in a lawn chair in the shade. 2. i played with two adorable dogs. 3. i enjoyed the sunshine and a nice breeze. 4. i did a sudoku. 5. i ate lunch. 6. i accepted a bottle of water from a nice lady. 7. i sat under a tree. 8. i ran the power dead on my ipod. 9. i cleaned out my car (a little). 10. i chatted with a friend from Lancaster about his and his girlfriends jobs...have i mentioned that i am a fan of state employment?"

2008: i contemplated how to better manage my time at work.
" people who smoke at work take smoke breaks. people at penndot smoke a LOT. and the only break they count is a half hour for lunch. BUT if they're smoking a pack a day at work (thats 20 cigarettes... i had to ask someone that) and it takes about 5 or 6 minutes to smoke one, thats like 2 hours of time. so why are they allowed to get paid for smoking? why am i missing out on this bonus?"

2009: i celebrated the start of the summer at Gram and Paps.
"First Day of Summer. almost check. when i was looking at the calendar to figure out that fathers day wasnt last sunday, i also found out that june 21 was also the first day of summer! what a surprise. especially cuz its cold and gray and rainy here in the 'burg."

2010: things were a bit crazy what with all the house-hunting and wedding planning going on.
 "...got up and went to early service. chatted with youth pastor about DJing our wedding. drove to BBnB. registered for some wedding presents. drove back to fiances house for fiances dad's birthday party. played with beads for bridesmaids jewelry with fiances aunt. continued to discuss making an offer on the house. got frustrated that we couldnt do anything cuz it was sunday. drove home. febreezed whole apartment cuz it reeked of smoke thanks to my new next door neighbors. went to bed."

2011: i continued to surprise and amaze with my prowess in the kitchen.
 "i was almost certain that i would undercook the fish, burn the topping, and give us both some sort of fish-disease...mark claims it was restaurant quality. i think it was the parsley garnish that put it over the top."

2012: we hung something on the wall!

yes, we've owned our house for just under two years, and we just now finally hung something decorative on the walls. i guess it took us that long to reprogram ourselves out of our command-hook loving ways that we learned thanks to years of college and renting. and then since we spent so much time fixing and painting the walls when we bought this place, it felt almost counter-productive to willingly put holes in them. but we did it. and i like it.

i got this mirror last year for $2 at a yardsale. it floated around the house, moving from the basement to the guest room to the front room while it waited for us to figure out where to hang it. i'm still not quite convinced that its absolutely perfect, (it might need some company up there on the wall to fill out the space?) but its definitely better than nothing... and at the very least, its another thing we can cross off the list!

and since we decided that the majority of our time this weekend was better spent outside of the house, that's really all i've got to share on the home improvement front. painting the office will have to wait for another weekend.