Sharing the Love

As always, I feel the need to share the love on some of the literary works of genius I've recently come across. If you're looking for something to break up the boring monotony of life, try a book! Here are a couple good ones I've read recently:

The first is Bloodroot, by Amy Greene

And the second is called The Help, by Kathryn StockettBoth are first time, debut authors, who have defied the odds and gone and gotten themselves on the best seller lists! I feel a weird connection to people like that... When I hear about the success of first time authors I want to point and say: "See! See! Look! People CAN do it!" Or more appropriately: "See, look if they can do it, so can I!" In any event, if you need a good read, I highly recommend both of these works. They are fabulous!

A fantastic, wonderful, crazy, so-good, very-awesome week!

(Not to be confused with a "terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad day"!!)

Okay... time for me to fess up about Rob and I's totally hectic week! I shall preface this post by stating that we live on the 2nd floor of a 3 story apartment building, with neighbors to our right, our left, above us and below us. Our particular apartment, #208, has ONLY 2 bedrooms, and was--for some strange reason unknown to us--built with extremely thin walls and floors.

Getting the picture?

Okay, now put 11 people into it for a week.

There were people on the love sac...

people in front of the TV...people on the couch...playing cards on the porch...and eating on the floor...

(There were also sleeping people stuffed into various closets and storage facilities as well, although I failed to document those adequately.)

Needless to say, our little apartment took some abuse. (Luckily there were two bathrooms... although that factor did not solve the lack of hot water problem...) To be fair, the fam ended up getting a hotel after their short jaunt to MO to see church sites, and that did help with the noise control. But it was still hectic!!However, the abuse our poor apartment took was NOTHING compared to the abuse our poor neigh boors suffered. I had to keep reminding my parents that I had to live in the same building as these people after they went home, and eventually the gravity of this situation set in... however not before the whole building was forced to go buy ear plugs in order to sleep through the Wii tournaments that were taking place 24/7.

It was an adventure, to say the least! My dear family decided to take their spring break in Lincoln Nebraska this year! Why Lincoln Nebraska? I have no idea! See when I think spring break, I think sun tan lotion, sand and margaritas... but spring break has many faces. For some its a dreary cold March day in Nebraska... see how cool I am?! I attract people wherever I go! Heehee. Just kidding... of course. This trip was especially fun for me because my little baby brudder Paul even showed up for the spring break road trip...

This is quite a great accomplishment in and of itself since Paul is usually too busy stuck in a musty weight room with a bunch of butt-slapping boys training for football to come on any family vacations.

We had fun going to the zoo, going out to eat, playing card games and sword fighting with Rob's nerf swords. But the undeniable highlight of the trip were the Wii tournaments! Mom won't let David and Scott get their own Wii (can't imagine why!), so they thoroughly gorged themselves in high tech digital gaming for a good chunk of the time. Rob was delighted to have Wii buddies... apparently I don't show enough interest in it for his taste!

Here are a few more pics from the week:

The fearless leader... and his apprentices...Sylvi's closed captioning: "Like what, seriously?"

We love you family! It was a crazy, hectic outta this world kind of week, but the funny memories will last forever, and we're glad you came! ( :

Happy Days!

Scan the Book Blog for good news! (Link to the right!)

Something I've been getting quite good at...

Banana BreadWhich is basically another way of saying that I'm really bad at eating my bananas before they go rotten. Still, its the one good thing about salvaged, otherwise-unedible fruit! Yum!

Sisters

Despite her prone-to-attract-accidents-practically-out-of-nothing sort of a personality, my sister, Lisa, is probably one of the sweetest people in the whole wide world! The other day we woke up to this on our kitchen table:In case you can't tell... those are sticky notes! I can't even imagine what posessed her to spend all that time lining sticky notes up on a kitchen table in the morning when you're pressed for time to get out the door, but it was so stinkin' cute and made me laugh! Thanks, sissy poo!

Basketball Baby!

Last Friday, Rob conned Lisa and I into attending his highly anticipated big rival CHURCH basketball game. (Oh brother... eye roll to church ball!) Although I wasn't the most thrilled, we did end up going, and actually enjoyed watching Rob and his smooth moves! I was, of course, the nerdy wife with a camera (you Londoners know the drill... I take the pics and everyone begs them off me later), but unfortunately since I have a new camera, I'm still learning the ropes on shutter speed and lighting, and as a result, they are a little blurry. Still, you should get the idea.Sadly, Rob's team actually did NOT end up winning. Both teams were tied, neck to neck for most of the game, however the other team pulled ahead in the last few seconds. This, however, can mostly be attributed to Mike... whom you might as well just refer to as "M.J." the all-star black athlete on the other team. M.J. was a friend of a guy on the other team, and almost all the steals and half the points can be acredited to his athletic prowess! Without their star player, I'm sure the game would have favored Rob's team by about 40 points!

Now if I was REALLY into church ball, I might suggest we start recruiting our own "M.J.'s" for next season... heehee.

Still, you're a winner in my book, babes!

New Job

So about a month ago, Rob lost his job at Bailey Lauerman. This was, of course, no fault of Robs... the advertising firm was just suffering from the effects of a bad economy. They had just recently lost two major clients (Union Pacific Railroad and Allstate Insurance) and he was let go with about 5 or 6 others (including a few who'd been working there over a decade). I was impressed with how very graciously he took things! I would have stomped out of the room in a flury of scattered papers and knocked bookstacks with a carefully (albeit, probably not too original) expression such as... "You can't fire me! I QUIT!!" But not so with Rob. He understood the company's perdicament and despite the obvious stress of being out of work in an unstable economy, we were happy his employment with them had ended. The job was a great experience and a nice resume builder for Rob, but they did not treat us very well financially and he was paid much lower than market value for his work. Still, Rob loved the people he worked with, so he never would have left on his own. So in more ways than one, this job loss was actually a blessing!

Happily, after only a month of job applications, interviews and waiting, Rob now has a new job! Yay!! The job is with the National Research Corporation (NRC) and is basically a corporate sales job (or so I believe... you'll have to check with Rob on the details). He's on a sales team that sells something (sorry, I don't know what!) to big companies. The job not only pays more than his job at Bailey, but gives better benefits and vacation time! Yay, yay, YAY! He also has the opportunity to get a 10% commission on each of his sales to the companies (quite a chunck of change). We're very excited to have work and Rob is thrilled to have founds such a nice replacement job!