charlotte's web

I think spider webs are cool. They are impressive little architectural wonders.

I wonder how long it took Charlotte to make this one.

They look especially neat when they have a little bit of morning dew on them (or when they are misted by a Mickey Mouse spray bottle) to magnify their works of art.

Although I can appreciate their home building skills, I don't like spiders.

Charlotte here? She gives me the creepy shivers....and is very lucky she's outside. If I found her in my house, she would be given a grizzly death. The end.

feeling so sad and blue

Because of the power of the internet, I have been able to reconnect with some of my long lost high school pals (thank you Facebook). Many, if not most, I haven't seen or talked to since high school some 20-something years ago. One of my friends, Sarah, has a blog that I read to see what she's been up to...nothing unusual there, as I have this little ole blog for friends to do the same thing. Anyway, Sarah and her husband Matt have a little boy named Ben who was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma at age 2-1/2...and just 6 weeks before she gave before she gave birth to her 2nd child, daughter Madeline. Neuroblastoma is a very aggressive form of childhood cancer. Ben fought this cancer for a little more than 1-1/2 years with every drug, chemo cocktail, radiation treatment available before being declared "NED" - No Evidence of Disease.

Fast forward to July 8th and it's been 4 years that Ben has been "NED". However, during his 6-month routine scan they found a mass in Ben’s chest behind his heart and he needed a biopsy, which the doctor did the next evening. Three agonizing days later, the pathology results confirmed a recurrence of this awful disease.

I made a donation to the "Ben Brewer Fight Neuroblastoma Fund" page, which sends the funds directly to their family. The website includes photos, their story, and information about Neuroblastoma. I hope that many will donate... you can use PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, AmEx & Discover. Please open your hearts to this wonderful family! You can read more about Ben and his family (Sarah, Matt, and Madeline) here and here. Happy, hopeful thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated too.

fiesta black bean salad

Last month, my mom hosted a cookout to gather all of our family together to visit with Keni, Josh, and Gabby when they came in from Seattle. I wanted to make a unique, light and flavorful side dish and thought of this yummy treat I had last summer. Turns out, two of our aunts were thinking the same thing and we ended up with THREE side dishes containing beans. Great minds and all. :)

This recipe makes a TON and even though I halved it for our family cookout, it still made a lot.


FIESTA BLACK BEAN SALAD

INGREDIENTS:

4 - 15 oz cans of black beans
30 oz edamame
2 - 16 oz bages frozen corn
1 each red and green peppers
½ white onion
6 large fresh tomatoes
2 TBSP olive oil
garlic salt
cayenne pepper
½ bunch fresh cilantro



DIRECTIONS:
Chop red and green peppers, onion and cilantro. Combine all ingredients and flavor with garlic salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Refrigerate 2 or more hours for best flavor (overnight is even better).


Serve as a salad or as a homemade salsa (like we did) with tortillas chips and Fritos (mmmm). Good stuff…and good FOR you! :)



Recipe from the awesome ladies at St. John’s GRACE event.

we are fam-i-ly...

...I got all my sisters and me. Or at least my one and only sister. She was here. My sister. All the way from Seattle, WA (Gig Harbor, actually). And she came with her husband, Josh, and daughter, Gabriella (aka: Gabby, Gabs, little princess).

Their visit was different this time in a few ways: Josh had an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament while he was here; their visit was almost 2 weeks, a rarity; they mostly stayed at our mom's house (Kita's was an easier home base, but the best part for them is that Gabby had her OWN room to sleep in!!); and the biggest difference about this trip was that they did not have to "schedulize" every minute of every day of their visit...you know how that is... that need to see everyone and do everything in a week or less (fun, but very stressful at times). I'm not sure if this visit was more relaxing or not...I don't think I asked, but I think more play time was involved this time around.


We still did our normal things: getting Capuano's pizza (YUM!), as well as the customary shopping trip to Eddie Bauer's Warehouse store...where they get to Eddie's so early, they have to wait in line...and she picks things out for me and I show up later just in time to try things on, pay and leave (I know I'm weird, but I don't really like shopping). I really, really value her input when picking out and trying on clothes with her...we only want the most flattering and fabulous finds for each other!! I wish we could do all of our clothes shopping together!


My mom, aka: Kita, hosted a fabulous BBQ so that all of our extended family can gather and visit with Keni, Josh and Gabby. It was a great Sunday afternoon!

Keni, Momma Kita, and myself.



Fab cousin Mallory and Keni with me.

Cousin Tyler (the new grad), Aunt Suzi Z., Blare and Mallory.


That's my brother-in-law Josh strikin' a pose for me. Funny guy!

Mallory and her fiance Blare - they are too cute...aaahh young love!



Gabby twirling and chasing some bubbles. The rest of the pics I have are of her chasing and trying to EAT the bubbles. Silly girl!

We (K, J, G as well as Gary, Michael and I) had another cookout with our Uncle Rick, Aunt Suzi R. and cousin Brannon at their house...where Gabby saw her first firefly/lightning bug.

I thought it was strange, but they don't have fireflies in Seattle. Michael enjoyed playing with the rocks in their driveway and watching golf on tv...surprise, surprise - NOT!

We also did an exciting visiting to Suzi's office at the Columbus Zoo where we got to pet baby zoo animals. Although, Michael was much more excited to see Grandma Kita than the animals. Hee, hee! Us adults got to go inside a caged area to play with 7 month old cheetahs and 7 month old dogs that were raised with the cheetahs (I forget what kind of dog, I wanna say it starts with an A??). Anyway, it was very, very cool. Remember the baby cheetahs that Carole, Michael and I held back in November?? These are the same cheetahs and my, have they grown!

We took turns going in the cage because the kids weren't allowed in...they said that the kids are starting to look like SNACKS to the cheetahs!

Keni, Josh and Kita are petting one of the cheetahs, while two of Suzi's staff educate us and keep an eye out for the other cheetah because they like to pounce (the guy walked in front of Kita as I was taking the pic - boo).

The dogs wanted in on the attention I had been giving to the cheetah. Then the cheetahs really started to get playful....

After the tour (and the love bite Keni got on her bum from one of the cheetahs), we met Suzi on zoo grounds where she was doing a live news feed for 10tv. Suzi made sure Gabby and Michael were in the background (next to Patrick Starfish, from Sponge Bob) while the tv crew was filming and Gabby had on her sparkly pink Dora sunglasses (so cute!).

After the news was over, Suzi gave us all passes to Zoombezi Bay, the cool new water park at the zoo. Brannon went with us too...which Gabby really liked. We loved having Brannon show us around and hanging with us too. :) Michael liked floating around the creek until we went under a waterfall of ice cold water and then he was all done. We also did the wave pool which he enjoyed as well. I think we could've stayed longer (in fact, Gabby "pretty pleased" Kita into just the two of them staying longer!), but that had been a long day for Michael and we were all getting tired.

On K, J and G's last day, Michael and I drove to Kita's for a quickie lunch of White Castle's (mmmm, Whitey's...they don't have those in Seattle either) and to visit with them one last time while they packed for the trip home.

G-ma Kita with her favorite grandchildren....Michael and Gabby.

Michael and HIS G-ma Kita...I think he might have been getting a little jealous...maybe???

Sigh. Good times. We miss them already.

PS: Hey Gabby, I'm going on a picnic and I'm going to bring some bananas....what are you going to bring?!?! Are you still bringing the FROGS?!?!

overwhelmed with projects

Lately I've been feeling overwhelmed with the amount of projects going on here. Most, if not all, of the projects were self-created because of this need I have to be "working" while I am not working. But I'm not good with having this disheveled look all around me. I'm kind of anal about being organized and things having a proper home, although you wouldn't be able tell this by taking a peek into our house right now. This chaos makes me want to purge...The. Entire. House. To make it feel light and airy and clean and relaxing. Which in turn makes ME feel lighter and less stressed (I'm already "airy"- hahaha!!). Having less stuff and being organized allows me to accomplish so much more.


But purging itself is a project that I'll have to add to the bottom of our list of things that we are working on: the 2nd bathroom remodel (which is like 3 projects in one), landscaping (another 2 or 3 parter), jobhunting, Michael's summer therapies, and then the normal day-to-day stuff like housecleaning (bleck!). Shoot, I find myself busier now than when I was working...I think it's because I want to have all of these projects done before going back to work.


So in order to make a dent in these projects, I better get crack-a-lackin' and get back to it!!


And since a post isn't a post without a picture:



That's Michael "petting" Cally. She's such a great cat...she seems to understand Michael and tolerates a lot. He used to chase her around the house to try to sit on her.

teacher thank you gifts

Michael's last day of school was 2 weeks ago. Wow, summer break is really flying by!! Anyway, I wanted to do something special to thank his teacher and other important people in his school life. But because there are so many people that need to be thanked (it DOES take a village!!) I needed to be conscious of not breaking the bank at the same time. After talking with neighbors and friends to brainstorm ideas, I decided to give them a variety of homemade greeting cards. I put together 8 sets of 9 or so cards each and Michael gave them out on the last day of school. I think they turned out cute, and they were really fun to put together.We also snuck in a gc to Starbuck's for Michael's primary teacher (love her!). I would love to hear about your gift ideas...tell me all about it in the comments! :)

playing catch up

I have so, so much to blog about: our trip to Florida; Michael's bday; baseball; a trip to Cleveland (without the boy!!); more do-it-yourself home projects; Arty's surgery; my sister, brother-in-law and niece's visit; and a bunch of other stuff. We've just been so busy living and enjoying life, that there has been no time to write it all down. Sometimes I'm exhausted by it all, in a good way...because... "it's all good".

Hopefully, things will slow down a bit for me to catch up on all the projects and give me time to share it all with you. I know you can't live without these updates...have no fear, I had my camera with me for most of the events. Or maybe you should have fear because the camera's memory card is FULL - that's over 800 pictures (obviously, I don't shoot RAW)!! There will be lots of editing/deleting going on to whittle those down.

In the meantime, I'll be working on this:
Have I mentioned that I really don't enjoy folding and putting away laundry? Seriously embarrassing, but I'm just keepin' it real!