royal makeover

well we have been fully inundated with the royal wedding all day long around here. didn't wake up at 4am, but i did DVR it so we could watch it at 8. then we watched the today show that was all about it. then we watched a royal wedding special. then we watched royal-themed oprah. faj is the one who's the most into it. but wasn't her dress beautiful? such a princess dress. 

..andd can you tell what this is? a carpet sample? a rabbit pelt?

a close-up of ripley's new hair cut!

 no one can look at her without laughing.

she keeps scratching her bows off which is unfortunate since they're the cutest part. i got a hair cut too, but she shows me up. 

she's like a mere shadow of her former self..

summertime

it's funny/kind of sad how i've gotten used to such a relaxed schedule that when i have more than 2 things to do on any given day, it feels like a million. tomorrow i have to run an errand in the morning, go to yoga (yes i have to. haven't been since monday), and go to preschool early. so since tomorrow will be busy, i need to finish grading assignments tonight, which means i don't have time to write a blog.

so i leave you with this email from my aunt pam who lives off the grid in a house she built near a frozen pond somewhere in upstate new york:
I read your blog tonight and it wouldn't let me post, so you have the honor of an email instead.  Aunt Margi has always called it sewing machine leg from the analogy of having you're foot on the treadle of the machine and having it bounce up and down.  We have both experienced it after scary car situations-not always cop related.  Now it has a name for you-sewing machine leg!  Embrace it!  AP

it matters to me

went to stacy's today to play with drew, who can now walk 50 feet without falling down. he is very excited about it, as are we. 

i was pulled over by a cop for the first time ever in my lifeeee on my way to her house. he was following me really closely, and when he turned on his lights i was so upset because i've tried really hard this week not to spend any money, and i was anticipating a ticket. 

so he comes to my passenger window and asks if i know why i was pulled over. i say no. he says my registration is a month expired. now to fully appreciate this.. the state of texas got tricky a few years ago and blacked out the back of your registration sticker so you can't see the date from inside your vehicle. ironically, the sticker says 'check the date, love your state.'

[photo from here.]

i look at that thing probably 50 times a year while sitting in traffic, at a light, at a stop sign, or just driving and think to myself 'that is really not fair, texas.' and then BAM! it gets me!

he ended up letting me go without a ticket, but my leg was so shaky when i got back on the road that it was almost hard to drive. never want that to happen again.

who your friends are

random assortment of easter pictures. MMMEAATTTT!

we smoked 2 chickens, a turkey breast, a pork butt and 2 sets of pork ribs from noon to 7.

matt's roommates come to all of our holiday dinners now. david and johnny. they are so much fun.

ripley wanted to get in on the easter action so we dyed her paws pink, blue, purple and orange. only the pink and blue really showed up well.

 

it was delicious.

easter weekend

what a difference a month makes!

i think i mentioned that we tried to dye easter eggs at preschool last week, but we didn't have any vinegar so the only colors that took were pink and purple. so today we're going to do that again as a fam. i love dying eggs.

and last night i went to fogo de chao for a friend's birthday party. a meat extravaganza. and today our fam is also having a meat extravaganza.

happy easter!

on top of the world

..i usually write the blog at night, but i'm just too excited to wait. look who got a package in the mail today!

a couple of weeks ago, i posted something on facebook asking if anyone knew where i could find a cute fabric yoga bag. after scouring the internet for several days, i could only find one that i was in love with, and it was pretty expensive. but i have several crafty friends, and one of them offered to make me a yoga bag!

caroline was a yearbook editor when i worked on the yearbook and newspaper staffs in high school, and we have lots of mutual friends. it was so gracious of her to offer to spend time making me the bag. i could never have pulled something like that off and have it look so professional. check out her esty shop. really cute dresses for baby girls. 

i turned it inside out so you could see how pretty the lining fabric is, but it could work like that too. 

don't you looove it? i can hardly wait to go to yoga tomorrow.

this is where i found the fabric. it's really soft.

ready to run

this was week 2..

and this is 3 weeks (or so) later! yellow squash is against the back wall, tomatoes in the back corner, cucumbers along the fence, herbs in front of that and a tomato plant right by where i was standing. everything is doing well and i've only seen and destroyed oneee caterpillar!

we've been trying to use more herbs out of the garden, so tonight jeff and i tackled ina garten's pesto (more or less). we did as much as we could fit in the mini chopper since someoneeee (it may or may not have been me) talked maj into getting rid of the food processor. whoops. that was before i knew about ina.

we eat salmon during the week while faj is gone because he isn't a big sammy fan.. and it was deeeelicious. so yummy. usually we just do olive oil, salt and pepper, but we decided this is even better. you really need to cook it a little bit though because the garlic is reaaaally intense. we used 3 cloves and you could barely eat it before we added a whole bunch of romano and then let it mellow out on the fish while it was still grilling.

and p.s. congratulations to the o'sullivans on their pregnancy! they started a baby blog if you'd like to follow along. they're still in taiwan.

never liked the rain

spring is in full swing in the garden with new growth on the tomatoes..

and baby geese at the lake.

aren't they so cuuuute?

40

today was the last day of the 40 day yoga challenge! i honestly don't think i'm any more flexible, but i'm definitely stronger. and i remembered that i have a lot of willpower. it's been interesting.

tonight i went to the party to celebrate and learned about a woman, yolanda, who i always see in class but have never spoken to. she's in her 60s and she moved to the US from switzerland in her 20s, took a road trip to CA, met her husband in san francisco and has lived here ever since. she told me about kundalini, which i was a little afraid of.. you have to wear white. that isn't the problem, but it just seems weird. the classes are taught by people who have changed their names to sanskrit names and they have super long hair or super long beards. it seems like you have to have some serious yoga guts to go to those classes. so, we'll see.

and i went bowling in a dress with a serious case of static cling. bowling is the best.

week 3

it is so much fun to walk out on the patio every morning to see how much the plants have grown. it's been about three weeks, and everything is really taking off right now. 

cucumbers

 yellow crook-neck squash

 tomatoes

i wrestled cages over the tomatoes today. they were starting to get too heavy to hold themselves up. but man that is a difficult thing to do by yourself. the four-pronged kind are a million times easier than the three-pronged. 

these are my new shoes from marais USA. they were on super sale. i know what you're thinking. easter yellow patent leather? but! yellow is one of my favorite spring/summer colors so i have a bunch of it. and it really works as a neutral. 

today is day 38 of the yoga challenge! 2 to go!

just to see you smile

do you carry cash? i never, ever do because i don't like how you have cash, then you suddenly have none, but you don't have any idea what you spent it on. at least with a debit card, you can go see what you bought and realize how it all adds up.

so today when guillermo and i were driving home from the airport and i thought a shaved ice sounded good.. we had to scrounge up the $4 for two smalls. i had $3 and some change. thankfully majjy had some quarters in her change thing in her car. thennn when we got up to the window, we saw that they're actually $2.25 each. he had a random nickel, and i had exactly three dimes, two nickels and five pennies in my change purse. you would have thought we won the lottery, we were so excited.

it was a flashback to elementary school though when you got really excited to find a quarter in the couch cushions.

highway out of town

yippee! new key.

majjy admiring her car while sorting the mail on the day it arrived.

and the first (three.. see the teeny ones under the big one?) tomatoes!

we went to the lake today in the new car. perfect day to be on a jet ski. the water is still pretty chilly though in the 60s. 

jetta club

you know you have the best mom in the world when your car dies and her solution is to get a new car so she can give you her current car. i was driving a 95 altima with AC that didn't work when the outside temp went over 90 degrees, no radio and smelled a little bit funny. nowww i have real AC, heated seats, a sunroof and a radio! and turbo diesel engine that gets 40mpg! i win!

the only thing better about my old car is the story of how we bought it. for starters.. my mom, who is sometimes a little like something out of harry potter, had been told by her psychic (are you still with me?) that the color of my future car would be purple. then she said blue. then she said gray. so when we saw a purpley-bluish-gray colored car, we just knew. my dad mentioned to the used car salesman, louie, that we had also been thinking about hondas. louie freaked. he went on a tirade about how nissans are better than hondas in every way, and just uttering the 'H' word was sacrilege as far as he was concerned.

after a spin around the block, we decide on my car. i was sold at the get go because it had this fake wood panel inside that was just like my friend amber's maxima had. ... so faj and i go inside louie's questionable 1 bedroom apartment to sign the contract. on the arms of his sofa, where your grandma might have a lace doily, louie had rabbit pelts. if that wasn't enough, his living room wall featured his large collection of machetes. we made it out alive, but i've never seen faj with wider eyes.

but i could not be more thrilled to say goodbye to that car and not have to sing to myself anymore for lack of radio, as much fun as it sometimes was. thank you, majjy.

dizzy bat

...continuing with yesterday's theme of [not] living with less.

overheard in yoga: "seems unamerican to me. if you've got space, use it."

(our yoga instructor has been booking the smallest room for the last couple of weeks because the class size at noon is usually between 7 and 10, and he wants to foster a sense of intimacy and community. the room comfortably fits 12 or so. today we had 17, but we were all still at least a foot away from each other, which is totally fine. but some people were complaining because the big room was empty while we were all getting to know our neighbors. the woman behind me was not having it, and all i could think was 'namaste to you too, lady!')

i went to the season opener round rock express baseball game with andy & his fam tonight. i will happily sit for 3 hours watching anything as long as there's funnel cake and a soft pretzel involved. it was a beautiful night in the 70s and i learned a lot from andy, who is a baseball pro from pitching in college. fun night.

do you wrong

i made the mistake of watching part of the crazy coupon show on TLC tonight. it really struck a nerve with me. on the surface, it is kind of cool. spending $6 on a $600 shopping spree takes obvious skill and is somewhat amazing. but what isn't amazing is when you get to see into these women's basements and there are 200 bags of assorted flavors of lays chips, 40 containers of deodorant, 50 packages of candy, etc.

the smiles and laughs and comments about how proud they were of their 'stockpiles' was disgusting. they aren't donating it to shelters, they aren't feeding hungry people. they're just showing that they can be super-consumers. it embarrasses me to think about how off track we are in this country sometimes.

i should note that i'm not claiming to be the model of anti-consumerism. i spent more than my fair share of hours this week shopping online for fabric for a new yoga mat bag. yoga mat bags are not high on the list of necessary objects.. but the point is that i don't have 40 yoga mat bags. teaching in taiwan and seeing kids come to school wearing the same outfit every single week because they had one set of play clothes really changed my mentality on buying millions of things i don't need. we can all do a lot more with less if we think about it.

garden week 2

 the garden is growing! the squash and cucumbers have grown the most. their big leaves came out.

 i'm just proud that i can tell the difference between a squash plant and a cucumber plant now!

 the soaker hose has had positive and negative consequences. it's nice not to have to stand out there with the hose.. but i wasn't feeling as emotionally attached as i was when i individually watered them. majjy suggested inspecting all of the plants while they're being watered, so i did that today.

 the basil is the only plant so far with any issues. see how the leaves are kind of browning?

 and the squash was getting a little bit wilty.. but it's back to normal after i cut a few more holes in the hose. so far, so good!