Toodles' Silly Photo Shop

I'm sure you're so sad to be missing Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires for some more picture from Autumn's party. Right? Right! Haha, anyway, one of my big ideas that ended up being smaller but still pretty cool was the photo shop. I wanted to do a full-on photo booth with a computer, printer, and camera setup buuuut laziness won out so I just set up a clothing rack with hula skirts and a bucket full of leis and a coconut bra.


I was pretty happy to see that a lot of people took pictures in the costumes! These are just the ones that were on my camera--if anyone has any photo shop pictures, send them to me! I'm just going to start with the best because, well, it's the best:


I mean, we can all call it a night now, right? Haha. We won't, although not much is going to top that one. Thanks for being good sports, Tamara and Landon. :D I was sad that P'd didn't wear a grass skirt, but this will do!


The best part about all of the photos I'm going to post here are the smiles on everyone's faces.


Even Roxie. She's all, "what. the. heck. I am two months old and what kind of mess does my lula have me in??"


I am soooo sad that I missed Cathy and Eric in grass skirts and I am soooo thankful that Tamara took my camera so she could get pictures of things I missed while hostessing.


Here's Stephan with his filipina ladies. Hehe. Small world story that I may have already told here: Elena is the mother of Autumn's best friend at school Angelee. Angelee is Stephan's goddaughter. I didn't even know Angelee went to Mullins until I ran into Elena there a couple months after Autumn started attending so it is completely unorchestrated that Stephan's honorary granddaughter and his goddaughter would become friends.


Mike must have been in a really good mood Saturday. You guys would have been amazed. He did the host rounds, played in the water, shuttled gifts, and even posed in a grass skirt with no protest. O.O


Oh, here's Angelee and Autumn (I'm just posting these in the order I uploaded them, haha). They are so darn cute together. Angelee just moved into the next classroom because Mrs. Lauren's class is packed out right now. Autumn will join her in the fall. I kind of miss hearing "Autumn and Angelee" stories from their teacher. :) The most common one was, "we had to make sure Autumn and Angelee didn't nap together because they just giggle and whisper at each other the whole time."


And, of course, the little girly girls had to have multiple costume changes. If you look in the corner of this picture, you'll see a blue skirt. That's Angelee's third hula skirt change. :D


More to come, probably!

Oh, and I took photos of the new house today. If anyone's interested in the "partway done" shots, here's a slideshow:

Autumn's Birthday!

Over the weekend, we had Autumn's long delayed birthday party: a Mickey Mouse luau!


I have 632 photos to sort through (thank you, Tamara, for taking some awesome ones!), so here are a few highlights. The party was a blast. We had silly costumes,


Fun food,


A stubborn piñata,


Little friends,


The coolest cake ever,


Big crashes,


And, best of all, little giggles.

Confessions of a Book Lover: Good Trash

Life's pretty stressful right now so I have to confess (this is confessions, right?) that my book list (I'm on book 35) is full of books that are sheer escapism. I got turned on to Georgette Heyer by Robin McKinley who is my favorite author (she'll get her own post one of these days) and whose blog I read. Here's what she wrote about the difference between good trash and bad trash:

First I want to differentiate between good trash and bad trash. Good trash is fun enjoyable stuff that doesn’t shake you out of your comfort zone, or maybe only a little, in a tingly, giddy sort of way. Am I being insulting? I hope not. I love good trash. Georgette Heyer wrote the epitome of superb trash. She’s not the only one, but she’s safely dead so I don’t have to worry about insulting her.

Bad trash . . . bad trash is junk food for the mind and the heart. You may think it tastes good on the way down—and if you’re on a steady diet of it you won’t notice the icky chemical aftertaste—but it’ll fur up your arteries and make you stupid.

I never read anything by Georgette Heyer because I had lumped her somehow into the land of Harlequin romance and Danielle Steele. (and please don't think I look down on anyone who likes the Harlequin brand of romance, it just isn't my cup of tea. I love vampire books--yes, there will be a post--and I've gotten some funny looks over that, lol.) Part of me sincerely regrets having missed, like, 10 years of reading her extensive collection but the rest of me is so happy to have found a fun, enjoyable author who obviously put time and research in her settings.

To the books! The first one I read was The Grand Sophy. Dude. I laughed out loud more than a few times. This book was just so totally not what I expected. I'm going on memory for this one because I read it a couple months ago but I do remember that the characters were really the strong point of this Sophy was larger than life as she went about arranging everyone's life (which is pretty much what the book is about). Her cousin's fiancee was the best as a moralist who liked to make veiled snide comments about everyone and everything. Seriously, if you need a fun, relaxing, say, beach read, go get this book right now.



The second one is These Old Shades. I read this one more recently so I have pretty clear memories and even noted some of the opening passage. I mean, how awesome is this description of the lead gentleman:
“He walked mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high. A long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a full-skirted coat of purple satin, heavily laved with gold; a waistcoat of flowered silk; faultless small clothes; and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast”

I was also unreasonably tickled by the bowing:
“He made a magnificent leg”

Anyway, even though I've gone on about the writing, the actual book is about a man who exacts revenge in a very roundabout manner. I don't want to tell any more. :P


One caution: if you hate Jane Austen, you'll probably hate Georgette Heyer. :P

Also, this is getting long BUT here's Autumn's book of the week:


I have read this book to her approximately 80,000,000,000 times. The only relief I have gotten is today because the book is in her hello kitty suitcase in the trunk of my car. She packed it to take to Nanny and Boppa's yesterday where she probably had them read it to her approximately 80,000,000,000 times.

Drama and the things that make it worth it.

You guys will totally laugh at me but last night, I went to bed at 8:45 and woke up this morning at 8:56. Seriously. And the worst of it? I'm still tired. Like, I could totally take a nap right now. I'm not really sure why I'm so tired. I guess it could be just the combination of stresses. I'm about to start week 3 of my kids' aikido class which, with the exception of Thursday when the kids were inexplicably strung out, is going well. I'm going to the new house pretty much every day for at least a couple hours to paint ceilings. I'm preparing for an aikido test. It's first kyu which is one rank before black belt--I think this is my 6th year of training so it's been a long journey. That's been more work than I expected because there are some things on the test that we haven't really worked on until now. Always nice to find out. And then there's the everyday stuff of dinner, cleaning, Autumn-herding, and house showings (lots of showings but no offers yet). I'm trying to hold onto the few threads of sanity I had to begin with, haha.

Anyway, my drama and slow decline into who-knows-what aside, life isn't going too badly considering. The great news is that there's a lot of interest in our Lakeland house. And the end is in sight for the new house in Germantown. One funny thing did happen and some of you may have seen me post this on Facebook. I was supposed to put a little soap in the fountain to break up the surface tension or something. I put way, way too much soap in the fountain and this happened.


A week later, there is still foam in the fountain. :P

Another big event is that Biscuit the Tiger had to have major surgery again. Mike found Biscuit innards in Autumn's bed so I did an exam and got out my surgery kit.


Note the Mickey the Giant book beside me. This time around, Autumn wanted to help and I made Mike take pictures. The reason I'm never in pictures is Mike hates taking them. I told him that someday he'll be sad not to have more photos of me when I was young and cute. :D


It was a little scary letting her do this, but I let Autumn hold the needle with me when it was time to pull the thread through. She did a great job and has pretty steady hands for a toddler. After it was all over, Autumn got a Sesame Street bandaid for Biscuit.


It's really moments like this that make everything, if not okay, then definitely bearable. :)

Confessions of a Book Lover: Nonfiction

So, I'm trying something new. I think on some Tuesdays--ideally every Tuesday but probably more like every two--I might go over what we're reading right now. Some of my books will be the ones I've read over the last 6 months, by theme.

Right now, Autumn's favorite book is Mickey Meets the Giant. It's an older book that actually once belonged to my little brother and sister.


It's not the best book in the world, haha, and it's painfully long but she likes it so whatever.

Mike isn't reading much lately because he's been so busy with work stuff. He's kept up better with the book we're supposed to read for community group, The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. I've only read the first 5 chapters. The weird thing is that I think I've read the book before. Either that or one of my old college professors was so influenced by it that he or she taught it a whole, whole lot.


As far as me, I've been chugging along on my book goal. I'm at approximately book 33. I am pretty sure I've forgotten to write down a couple of books. I'll remember what they are at some point, I'm sure. I thought I'd share a couple of great nonfiction books I've read.

The first two are by Erik Larsen. I can't remember how I found out about Larsen but I've read two of his books. I really enjoy true crime novels but I have a hard time reading things that are too gory or too recent. I guess I spend enough time thinking about attacks (I think most martial artists probably sit around choreographing fights in our heads way more than the average person, ha) that I don't want much to add to the weirdness that is my head. It's a reason I don't read (or watch) a lot of horror or super violence. Anyway, the first was called Thunderstruck and it combined the stories of Guglielmo Marconi, who invented the wireless telegraph, and Hawley Crippen, a murderer. The stories seem pretty random to put together at first but the author does a remarkable job of making the communication race exciting and brings the two tales together in a way that doesn't seem like a major stretch.


I like the second Erik Larsen book better, Devil in the White City. It's funny, I was able to look up the Chicago World's Fair in wikipedia so it's not like it was a big surprise what happens. But in all three of the books I'll mention in this post, the writers managed to create really intense narratives that made me want to keep going. The Chicago fair brought about a lot of changes that we'll recognize today--labor laws, architecture, landscaping styles--and, honestly, that alone would have made a fascinating read. But Larsen weaves in the story of a charming serial killer who basically builds a death chamber in his home...and leaves a trail of dead and missing women on the road to his special building.


The last book is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides. I heard about this book on the Drake and Zeke radio show, of all places. The show is even thanked in the acknowledgments which I thought was pretty funny and random. Anyway, the book was a page turner. Even though Hellhound is primarily about the events immediately preceding assassination of Dr. King and the hunt for James Earl Ray (who is only spoken of as his various aliases until nearly the end), Sides does an excellent job of describing the charged atmosphere of the Memphis area before and after April 4th as well as giving the reader a rundown of the state of the civil right movement at the time. I've been somewhat involved in a few local race relations and community building events around town. One I attended last year was the White Privilege Conference and I really wish I had read this book before attending (I couldn't have, because it just came out) because there were some people there with ties to the SCLC and some of the other organizations mentioned in Hellhound. At the time, I was a little confused about who did what with which organization and when but I feel a little more clear now. I'm planning on getting this for Stephan for Father's Day. I've also added Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Sides to my "to-read" list.


And now! A monkey photo for making it this far. :D

What Did Autumn Do at the Beach?

She played in a lot of sand.


In the adorable hat that Aunt Lindsay got her...


And wearing a different swimsuit every day.


She did some other stuff, like wear her princess crown to dinner...


She relaxed and sunned herself in a beach chair.


Autumn floated on the sea turtle she named Prissy (don't worry, P'd is back there hiding).


She entertained the condo guests by strolling her beach toys down every day...


And discovered that the beach can, indeed, be a very cold place!

We live!

It's been a while since my last post! It's just been craziness around here, like usual. Hopefully things will be calming down in July since it's looking like we might get to move into our house around the end of June. Anyway, what have we been doing over the last week or so? Welll...working on the house of course:


Nursing busted lips. This one was bad. Autumn was running through the new house and tripped on a piece of plastic. There was so. much. blood. I seriously even had to stick my finger in her mouth to wiggle her teeth (they were fine) which, as many of you know, was a huge sacrifice for me because I haaate teeth. :P


For the weekend, Autumn and I went to the beach with Mike's family and had a great time.


Poor Mike had to work (poorly timed work project) so he just stayed home, worked, and sent me photos of his salads.


And today my new kids aikido class started at Mullins! It was a little messy but not too bad at all!


More to come!