Happy Birthday to You!

A few things to start off with:
1. Will and I went and saw Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers last Thursday and it was AMAZING. 2nd best concert I have ever been to. My dad took me to go see Bond (an electric string quartet) when I was in high school and that was pretty ridiculous. Steve Martin was right on up there. Us and a bunch of blue hairs and frumpy artsy girls with their artsy skinny jean plaid shirt wearing boyfriends.

2. I made a nerdy joke in reference to my Steve Martin experience. And it goes like this.
Will: Are you excited for Steve Martin?
Me: Yeah. What am I going to wear? I'll probably have to shave my legs.
Will: Probably
Me: I really have to shave my PITS. HAH Get it...Pits...like a pit orchestra. We are going to the orchestra hall.
Will: You are a nerd. (Usually when I make a nerdy comment that he declares as something that would have kept him from dating me in high school, he makes this light bulb blinking thing above my head...he did it that time)

But most importantly Copper the dog turned 2. This thing....is now a toddler.  

I think it may have been either August 12 or 18th was when her birthday was. I remember being a Tuesday whatever date it was. ..... Well I just looked at a calendar and neither of those dates are Tuesdays. So, jokes on me I guess. Lets just say it was Thursday the 18 for funzies. Will and I went to PetCo to find a birthday present for the toddler. We scoured the store and found a "Treat Bar." So we got her lots of treats that looked like donuts, chocolate chip cookies, pretzels and such. This is a weird thought that crossed my mind while I was there. Why do dog toys resemble toddler toys? They do! In their color, function and design. Next time you have to go pick up a bag of science diet or Iams, check out the toys. Seriously. Anyway, We got her a cute little bone and threw her an impromptu party.

Here he is singing "Happy Birthday" to the kid.

Thanks mom and dad! I love the new PINK bone!

It's pink cause she is a girl...contrary to PUPular belief. HAHA Get it! PUPlar...like POPular, except its a dog.

Gosh I crack myself up. 

Some Beach Some Where

Holy Mother of Pearl...Two posts in three days! It must be the school year and we are either full of stories or at a computer long enough to document them.

First of all.... I wish I was saying hello from here:

and Will wishes he was doing this: 

Instead, I'm saying hello from my school desk, staring at a blank grey wall watching students highlight their scripts. So I'm going to go back to this lovely place of relaxation in my mind and tell you all about our vacation a couple of weeks ago! 

Where to start? I'll start with New Orleans. NOLA! It was awesome! We arrived in the Big Easy about 5 pm on a beautiful Friday evening...or what WAS a beautiful Friday evening. I bet you can't guess what the weather was like in NOLA? Yep. You know us well. It was raining. We come from a drought in the DFW area and are on vacation and it is raining. I swear we are like the rain makers or the rain man or something. So it was raining but water does not dampen our spirits. We checked into our bed and breakfast in the lower garden district. I will admit when I google mapped it, I was a little apprehensive to where we were staying. It looked like a warehouse district. But it was safe when we arrived and very welcoming. After checking in we made our way down to the reason for visiting NOLA... the french quarter. We ate a delicious cajun meal at The Gumbo Shop. Will got alligator sausage. Hmm. That was not a YUM HMMM that was a WEIRD HMMM. Then we set out to explore. Accidently ended up on Bourbon street, continued on Bourbon street, saw some very interesting things including but not limited to a woman booty dancing in a window next to a guy being shoved in the window by his best buddies and a "worker" flirting it up (fully clothed with her outfit in her backpack) with the regulars lined up outside. Yep, no question about it. We were on Bourbon. We turned around and headed toward the 2nd reason you go to NOLA, Cafe Du Monde. A funny story about this place.

Last time I was in NOLA it was on a family vacation. We were coming back from Destin and were stopping in over night. One of the things that we heard to definitely go do was Cafe Du Monde. So we did. Only my mom was stuck on us dressing up for it. So we go to the cool Alvin's Island in Destin and purchase beautiful summer dresses to wear to this "cafe." We don't even go to it. We stumble upon it while perusing the town. Its like an outside cafe with donuts..... It's a big joke in our family.

So I honored my mother and ate a few beignets at Cafe Du Monde. They were delicious!!

Because we are old, we turned in early to bed. Had a nice night and woke up the next morning to eat at only THE BEST RESTAURANT in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!


THE OLD COFFEE POT


Gosh I love that place. My mouth is watering as I type about it. Will got some kind of eggs benedict.

That is his "Oh My GOSH! This is soo good" face. Told ya!

I got the french toast. It is made on a poboy bun with lots of goodness. And two callas (rice balls). Delicious!!!

Then we were off to be educational. Cause I love learning. We visited the Destrehan plantation on the out skirts of New Orleans. It was where Interview With A Vampire was filmed. It was pretty cool. We learned alot. Like that when a boy turned 14 they got their own house and that the reason that rice is so popular in the south is because they have no local grains. Who knew!?

Then we were off. Driving driving driving and driving some more through a whole lot of traffic. But because all of our vacations revolve around food and restaurants we had to stop at The Oyster House in Mobile, Alabama.

This is Will at the Oyster House. We ate there twice. Once on the way there and once on the way back.

We finally arrived in Orange Beach and made our selves at home in our condo with our friends and their children, played on the beach and began to fully enjoy beach life. On Monday we rented a pontoon boat with the whole group and putted around the bay for a few hours. One of the boats had two decks and a slide. Here I am going off like a true mom. Holding her nose and flailing.

Immediately after that I hit the water and came up....with only half a swim suit top on. There is a picture. I will not be posting it.

The day or two after we went for a cruise around the bay the wind and waves were REDICulous. Out of control. So the ladies made me grab a boogie board and hit the waves. I had never boogie boarded correctly before. I still have not ever boogie boarded correctly. But I sure look like I know what I am doing with that cool tye die board and the velco strip wrapped around my wrist.

And that about sums up our vacation. We had to leave early because I started work that week but all in all we had a great week. After coming home we spent two days here and were off again to go hang out with my college room mates in Horseshoe Bay by Austin. If you have every been there...pretty legit...and pretty good and expensive pina coladas at their pool side cabana bar.

This is us lakeside in Horseshoe Bay:

This is Will...working lakeside in Horseshoe Bay: 

Now back to reality. Next up... Copper's Birthday. 

I Miss My Maid

We live the life of nomads. As a result our home is only a transition point during the months of June, July and August to dump our things, repack and leave again. We have been everywhere this summer. New Mexico, Austin, Alabama, etc. Our most recent trip we went to Gulf Shores, Alabama and it was wonderful!!

And yes we took a family beach picture. Expect a Christmas card with this gem of a pic on it. 

What did we do while we were there you ask? Oh so much but certainly not enough. But that is not why I am here today. I will discuss our two weeks of vacation later this week. Why I am at my computer today on a lovely Sunday afternoon after a wonderful fajita meal at a local mexican restaurant, watching the Three Amigos dreading next Sunday when Sunday afternoon football starts and hearing my husband snore in the other room is because I need to make a confession. A confession that should only be made on TLC during an episode of some cleaning/style reality show.

I have the DIRTIEST house in America. I am embarrassed. This is not the way my mother raised me. 

Neicy Nash about arose from my closet to slap me silly on the sheer disgustingness of my house. I have spent most of my weekend playing the role of Cinderella cleaning this dump of a home. 

We had stuff piled up everywhere, closet doors were unable to shut, we had friendly unwanted animals living with us in our nook and cranies of our home. It was sad. I am not a clean freak by any means but when my house gets disorderly and nasty, my life gets disorderly and nasty. My sweet husband, on Friday, changed the sheets on the bed, MADE the bed, put his clothes away and cleaned the kitchen. Isn't he just special? Yes, he is. So I came home on Friday I figured I needed to get with it and begin. So I did. I started in the office and worked my way across the house. I have a compulsion where my cleaning must be orderly. ie - from one side of the house to the other, laundry first, pick up all things then clean surfaces. I did not get very far because I spent most of Friday evening in the office. The closet, where I keep my crafts, and my desk, where I pile school stuff were insane. I couldn't even see my desk or shut the doors of the closet. I found lots of things though. Like... the top of my desk, I found that. Then I found Will's camp binocs as the real hunters call them. That is short for binoculars if any of you city folk are not familiar with the lingo. I found some yarn and a knitting book (another one of those crafts I impulsively bought at Hobby Lobby and then never finished) and lots and lots of scrap book paper. It was a good cleaning but it took forever. When I finished I headed out to run a couple of errands and grab some dinner at Rudy's. It has been so long since we have...I have had....barbeque in this house it was seeming a little odd. It's usually a staple...like flour, butter and ozarka water. 

As a side note this thought crossed my mind while in the drive through at Rudy's. Can you order a bottle of beer through the drive through? It would be a closed container. Someone try it and let me know. Just for grins. 

So on Saturday I wake up bright and early at 12. Ok I woke up at like 9 but didn't get moving until 12. Finally I am forced out of bed by the sheer disgustingness of my bedroom and begin cleaning. Here is just a small bit of what greeted me. 

Yes, That is our sink. And no the disgusting part is not the brass faucet and the 1980's shell shape. EMBARASSING!

And this is our tub. You may have confused it for a college boy's tub. It is not.
It is the tub I bathe in almost daily. Check out that ring. It makes me shudder just thinking about it.

The dust rag from JUST my bedroom. 

A bag from under the bed. 

A small story about this little friend I found behind my toiletry box. For weeks we have been standing in our bathroom brushing our teeth wondering how in the world these sneaky cob webs are designing themselves around our light bulbs. I found the culprit. Again...embarassing. I am living with a soap scum bath tub and a spider.

I will not even begin to speak of our toilet. Lets just say our toilet seats were "wooden." So everytime you did your thing there was a serious threat of getting a HUGE splinter or plank in your "area." Friday I got NEW toilet seats! WHOOOOO! I never thought I would be so excited about new toilet seats but I so was! 

But after many many hours of cleaning with my Mr. Clean Magic eraser...my bathroom looked like Mary Poppins had arrived once again to my house. 

The morrises are home....until Friday. This has been one busy summer. I just got back from Royal Family Kids Camp and it was wonderful! My two sweet campers were perfect and made the week enjoyable. We did so many things like arts and crafts, singing, dancing, swimming and even a slip and slide. In which I learned that I am totally inept at doing. I went down it four times...

Time number 1: I stopped about five feet from the top.
Time number 2: I completed it successfully with one of my campers.
Time number 3: I got going so fast that I slid right through the person's legs that was trying to catch me right into the muddy grass.
Time number 4: This time I went with Christin. Right before we went the men managing the start of the slide made this huge deal about not landing on your knees because it tears up the mat. So I was focused on that but them Christin started cheering and talking to me as we were running to dive on to the slipnslide and I lost my concentration and did not even dive. Like seriously like just kept running and then stopped, fell on my rear and slid the rest of the way down.

I am not coordinated.

On the other hand, I'm pretty artistic. Here is what we did in our cabin!

The theme was jungle. I youtubed "pomander balls" and made them for our jungle. They looked awesome!

This was our activity tree. It lasted about 12 hours until the campers figured they could touch it and half the limbs fell off. 

This was our door. We decided that we would paint the tree on the fabric. I began painting and then remembered that fabric has small holes in it that paint will seep through. Disaster averted though, I had only painted the trunk. Christin came to the rescue with some extra poster board and we continued on our way. 

Other things that happened at camp: 

I have changed my addiction from solitaire to a game called "Top Girl." It is a silly game where you work and earn money and buy clothes and date guys you meet in a virtual club. My longest relationship on this game has lasted a week. This is Nicholas and I on a date. 

However he broke up with me. This is an actual conversation held over the dinner table.

Me: Nicholas broke up with me over the week. 

Will: What? 

Me: He felt neglected. I didn't have time to play the game so he felt neglected because I was not spending enough time with him. 

But have no fear. I am now dating a new Nicholas.