House Building 101

The Birthday Build was a great success! We had beautiful weather, a wonderful 15 volunteers there to help me, and two houses to work on. One house was prepped and painted, and the other was framed for siding . I was in the painting house, which was a far bigger sacrifice on my part than had I been hammering - I hate painting! But between us all we got all the walls ready, marked all the spots that needed to be fixed, primed the whole thing and rinsed out all our brushes and buckets and such - and all of that by 3:00! The other house did some siding, but then found out that they were far too skilled and were going too fast (another group was supposed to finish the siding next weekend, I think they helped pay for that house so they were doing the 'finish' work), so they then moved onto getting all the framing ready so the other group could just throw on the siding and call it a day. Our group was the only one that was staying there all day - apparently the other groups weren't as tough as us...or as dumb, call it what you like :) We had lunch and then headed back in to finish (the body was a little slow, but when you know you have a goal it makes it a little easier). When all was done we headed home and took well deserved showers!

Cynthia and Nikole getting the bathroom ready to prime

Dad and Aunt Barb "F-ing" up the house - that was my aunt's own term for putting the F siding on to get it ready for siding. The construction guys were cracking up at her.

The Dudley man hangin' out

Mom and Jordan painting one of the closets

nice and clean :)

Brandy painting the ceiling - this was not an easy task and she was not doing it in a very efficient manner, although it was hilarious

the clean-up crew

Sandor, John, Aunt Barb, Dad and Sandor's mom were all on siding duty

the 'A-students'. Dad and Sandor stayed after everyone else left to finish up the porch!

the whole happy crew

It's a Beautiful Morning

The Kaylinn pup and I headed to the beach this morning for a little stroll. I always keep her on the leash at first because technically you aren't supposed to have dogs off their leash, but in my opinion that's like taking a kid to a candy store and telling them to close their eyes. There are just so many seagulls to chase, and waves to jump and such a huge stretch of sand to run in, it seems a little like cruel and unusual punishment in the dog world. So, I wait and see how many other dogs are running around and how many people there are without dogs and decide from there. This morning Kaylinn was in luck. Most of the people on the beach had dogs, and all the dogs were off their leash, so I left Kaylinn free, and man did she have a good time!


It was a nice little morning, and we were even home, bathed (the pup dog tends to bring home a pound of sand in her hair) and getting breakfast ready before Sandor ever woke up!

So much food, so little time

We joined the Community Supported Agriculture program at a local farm and started getting our food last week. Every Tuesday we pick up our box of fruits and vegetables and head home to wash, cut and store them in the fridge to eat that week. Then you drop the box off at your pick-up spot and get another box the next week. It's pretty cool because you get food fresh off the farm, you support local farming, and it will likely force us to eat types of vegetables I would likely never buy in a store. The one catch is, since you are getting it fresh off the farm, you get whatever is in season - and it just so happens that just about the only thing in season right now are salad greens...lots and lots of salad greens. About 7 different types in fact. So, we have an enormous salad in the fridge. It's delicious, but even eating salads every night can't get us through that many salad greens, so we've begun handing it out for other people to enjoy. So far Brandy, Maia and Julia have enjoyed the joys of salad via our house via the Ambrose Family Farm! I think I've tasted half the lettuce options on this random poster thing I found while trying to figure out what each of them were.
Our other main in seasonal food item is strawberries. I've made us strawberry shortcake, strawberry smoothies, put strawberries on ice cream, dipped them in fudge, eaten them plain, frozen them for pancake mix, and last night attempted to make strawberry fruit roll-ups. The dehydrator worked quite well, but I couldn't find the little fruit roll-up maker addition to is so I had to just lay wax paper down on the dehydrator layers. It actually worked pretty well, although it's kinda hard to get the roll-ups off the wax paper without ripping the paper and taking it along with the fruit. I was pretty impressed by the taste of my little concoction, though. All it had was water, apples, strawberries and honey and it tastes just like the 5 dollar a box stuff you buy at the health food store. I'd say it was a success. Next up on the strawberry front will be jam - my mom is bringing me jars next weekend, but wish me luck on the actual cooking process. Welcome to strawberry central!
I'll tell you one thing, if nothing else this sure forces me to branch out of the boring cooking comfort zone!

Oh, Microsoft

So, I've been a bit out of touch, but there is a reason for that...Microsoft Office 2007. Me and Microsoft need to sit down and have a chat. For some reason when the did their upgrades they decided to totally change the programs - to the point that the toolbar at the top isn't even the same so you can't find anything! That in itself would be bad enough seeing as how Microsoft themselves says that experienced users will see a 2-3 week decline in productivity following being upgraded (in my opinion if you have to make this statement about your upgrade you shouldn't be giving it out yet). However, add to the mix that instead of waiting until I had asked (which would have been this summer) to 'upgrade' me, the staff person (who shall remain unnamed) decided to put the new software on my computer while they were supposed to be fixing an e-mail issue. As it turned out they didn't fix the e-mail issue until about 6 hours later and then another one came up that was a result of the previous dealings with my computer that didn't get fixed until today. In the meantime, my extremely efficient process for dealing with life at work has been in a tailspin because not only is it difficult for me to get e-mails on a timely and normal basis, but I have also not been able to find how to make a text box and center text in it, or mark an e-mail as important, or change the animation on a powerpoint slide...(the list goes on)...without much searching and usually involving a help menu.

And so in conclusion, I am very certain that if it wasn't for the fact that I need Microsoft to do my job at all, me and Microsoft would be breaking up as a result of it's unnecessary and incomprehensible desire to screw up my beautifully efficient working world.

Chubby Cheeks

And now 30 years ago TODAY...Wow, I was a fatty...

And my Nanny and Pappy - I figured they deserved a blog moment since they were so instrumental in my April Fools Day post...

A new decade

New shoes, shirt and purse, and a birthday crown and flowers! We are off to a great day!

30 years ago today...

I was talking to my parents today and my dad told me a little story that started with '30 years ago today...'

...my 9 months pregnant mom was at my grandparents's house cooking dinner for my Pappy and my Dad because my Nanny was out of town. My grandmother called to see if my mom had had the baby yet and my grandfather responded 'Yes, and it's a boy!'. Nanny breaks down in tears, after which Pappy finally admits 'April Fools Day'. Ironically enough my mom was in labor all that day, but my grandfather didn't know until he asked her why she couldn't sit still. I was born the next day, and when my grandmother got home she didn't believe my grandfather when he said I was born and he was waiting for her to go to the hospital.

So that ladies and gentlemen is what was happening to me 30 years ago this day :) And the story was much cuter coming from my dad!