sunday night

thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate on friday! seven bottles of wine and who knows how many beer bottles later... i really am thirty =) for the record, i slept by a plastic bowl all night, but i never had to use it. the surprise of the night: my parents showed up from minot! i didn't expect them to and didn't even entertain the notion that they would. they were in south dakota last week celebrating their anniversary, and we'll see them in a couple of weeks for christmas. so that was pretty cool! got some pretty cool stuff... chiang mai thai gc from jeremy, burt's bees lip assortment from paul and anna, hand-made scarves from lisa and nick, wine from my parents, marshall fields gc from jenny at work, notecards and cool post-its from christie at work, homemade bread from kim and seamus, a very cool card from amanda in minot, dessert snacks from jill, a cool package full of funny things from stephen's parents, assorted cards from relatives... a fleece robe from stephen and abbey. yea! it's different when you get older and don't expect anything. everything including the party is so appreciated.

so my niece, lauren, is just a kick lately! she will be two in mid february and has started talking a lot. of course, that means we all inundate her with requests to say our names and various sentences. at least we have moved on from imploring her to make barn animal sounds, which was our diversion for several months. this phase in her life makes me a little more excited to try to get [you know] next summer. i seem to go back and forth between being really freaked about a little baby and ok about it.

we took abbey to see the sound of music at eastview hs (apple valley) today. they did a great job, and it was fun for me to see lots of past students either acting or on the tech crew or pit orchestra lists. abbey has aspirations of acting, and i'd like to take her to so many more plays than we actually do. can't time slow down somehow?

the new vehicle>>> a 2003 subaru forester, silver. we got a great deal and will have some settlement money to put towards it. still, it sucks to have a car payment after having paid off both of our cars. i must admit that the subaru is a hell of a car! yes, nicer than a saturn wagon.

superhero journal
muse to muse
cool camera
post secret

and last but not least, i found myself writing an apology letter to parents of an off-again friend of abbey's. she got herself in hot water by using things we had said at home about their kid in a different way than we intended them when she spilled the beans in the guise of "my step-mom says that... and that's why i can't be friends with you." obviously none of us (parents) who said anything meant to be malicious when abbey would ask, "who is more __(fill in the blank)__, me or her?" but it still ended up hurting this kid. so that's that. when all was said and done, i felt bad enough to write a page full of apologies.

good enough to start the week...