man on wire

loved this. beautiful. no wonder it won. great combination of spoken interview with imagery and the careful weaving of an overarching event with subplots. they had the benefit of starting with a great amount of quality footage and photography, but regardless, they did an amazing job with it.

maestro's

randy and i decided to get out of the house and go grab some dessert last night. we loaded madeleine in the car and drove to maestro's for some gelatto. of course, i am my father's daughter, so when i found out that the "maestro," which has four scoops, was only 50 cents more than two scoops, i insisted that we get it. we almost finished it between the three of us.

giants: the parallel lives of frederick douglass & abraham lincoln

i just finished this book and really enjoyed it. i love history and love reading about people/events in history, but not all biographies/books on historical subjects are created equal. i liked stauffer's writing style though, and the depth of treatment that he selected for the book. he covered the politics and history without getting mired in them, which is not always easy to do.

i knew little about douglass and learned a lot about him. i thought that i knew a lot about abraham lincoln, but was surprised at how little i actually knew. it was a revealing book about lincoln without being a smear campaign against one of the most famous presidents. overall, a great book.

playing with lainey

madeleine also got to play with her cousin, lainey, this weekend while we were up in boise. they are just a few months apart and had a great time together.

madeleine looks a little glazed over in this picture.

playing with rachel

beth and my adorable niece, rachel, came over to visit last week. madeleine loved having someone to play with.

she brought rachel toys to play with:





being soft with rachel:

again?

i cannot believe it.

we are in boise for a short visit this weekend and madeleine woke up with a fever this morning. she was also drooling excessively and fussy. my sister-in-law suggested that madeleine might be teething. i laughed and thought, "there's no way, not three times in a row." but yes. she's teething, in boise, again.

don't EVER see this movie

one hour and thirty-five minutes of my life i'll never get back.

you know it's bad when you're fast-forwarding through the last twenty minutes of the movie.

pop!

this is one of madeleine's favorite activities lately - running around the house with the popper (do these toys have an actual name?) that her grammy got her for christmas. sometimes she pushes it, sometimes she drags it, but she loves it. and i actually don't mind it - surprisingly.

love

randy and i ended up celebrating valentine's day yesterday. this makes it sound as if we had plans or something, but really, randy had gone to the store to get me something for valentine's day and after feeling silly in front of conventional valentine's day gifts, got me sushi instead (not from the store, from a sushi restaurant) with a twix for dessert. since sushi doesn't really keep overnight, he gave it to me last night and madeleine and i gave him our gifts too.

here is madeleine's valentine:

for my gift, i made an attempt at creativity. i gave randy this little book:

inside, it said:



with pages of things i love him more than. here are a few examples:

okay, so neither of us are traditional romantics. but he knows how much i love to crash shopping carts together, and obviously, how much i love sushi. a sushi roll and a twix meant way more to me than flowers and chocolate ever could.

thank you for loving me unconventionally randy.

california dreamin'

could it be?

i refuse to believe it until i see it.

i've been hurt too many times.

shoes

madeleine has easy access to the drawer with her shoes in it. yesterday, she brought me one brown shoe and i put it on, then she brought me a croc.

i put it on. i am trying not to stifle my child's creativity. this is not always easy for me.



ten minutes later, the croc was off and she presented me with her white shoe. she is her father's daughter (randy doesn't match his socks).

unattended v.2.0

once again, i was three feet away. in my defense, i was cleaning out the kitchen cupboards.

baby shampoo

i was leaning over madeleine as i washed her hands in the sink this morning.

and she smelled like baby.

and i wanted to take a bite.

what do they put in that shampoo?

can i make her keep washing her hair with it until she moves out?

unattended

this is what happens when you do not pay enough attention to your child:

(should i admit that i was sitting three feet away from her at the time?)



fortunately, she's still cute.

a few pictures from the week

so easy someone who caved can do it?

i caved in.

i created a facebook account.

i don't know why, but i've hated the idea of creating a facebook account. and then, my mom and dad joined facebook and i felt like i really was the last person on earth without a facebook account. plus, i wanted to be able to look for a couple of people that i've lost touch with.

so today, i joined the facebook ranks. and i have to admit... i'm not sure i like it. i'm scared of it.

i thought that i was pretty technologically savvy. i run this blog without any real issues and can navigate my way around a computer just fine, but for some reason, i'm having a hard time with facebook. i think that it's one of three things: 1) i'm stupid; 2) the interface is terrible; 3) the interface is just something that i'm not used to. i'd like to believe it's option 2, it's probably option 1, but hopefully it's option 3 and i'll just get used to it.

i'm overwhelmed by the gigantic number of emails i've received today. that will go down, i know. i can't even find my husband as a friend. that's strange. also, even though i have no problem indiscriminately posting random things on my blog, facebook feels a little too public for me. i realize that these are people that i've selected to interact with, but why do they all have to see how i interact with everyone else?

i'll get used to it, right? or, i'll offend people because i don't know how to use it correctly. or, i'll end up checking it once every couple months. perhaps the latter.

quesadillas

what do you get when you combine:

and sometimes chicken?

delicious quesadillas. we had these quesadillas last night. i call them marte's quesadillas because randy's aunt, marte, was the one who introduced them to us, but they're kind of a fajita quesadilla. i cut up a yellow, red, and orange pepper, a poblano or pasilla pepper (the dark green one), and a red onion and then grill those all together. then, i take those, and put them with pepper jack cheese and sometimes sliced up grilled chicken (great with or without) between two tortillas and grill up the quesadilla. i usually weigh it down with another pan on top when i grill them.

these are delicious. every time i have them i love them even more. i seriously dreamt about them last night. mmm...

randy and madeleine meet rachel

since my niece rachel was born, she's had some complications and finally got to come home yesterday. randy hadn't seen her yet, and even though madeleine had been to the hospital with me a few times, she hadn't seen rachel yet, either. so, we headed over yesterday afternoon so that randy could meet his niece and madeleine could meet her cousin.

madeleine did great when we had her sitting here, watching rachel.



she was not so happy when i moved her to try to get a better picture.

oh well.