Did I Ever Tell Y'all About Thanksgiving?

No? Well, it was definitely out of the ordinary for this family. We went to Playa. I know, I know... Playa itself is not out of the ordinary. Going during Thanksgiving, bringing Boy Pop, and going with my parents, though? Well *that* is definitely a new experience!

If you guessed that it was a great trip, then you guessed correctly! We all had a ball! Boy Pop declared that he wanted to live there. My parents were impressed by the resort. Everyone was relaxed and it was an all-around relaxing trip. I was surprised considering that I tend to get a tiny little bit stressed out when vacationing with my parents.

My dad told Dr Pop and I that he could not remember a time in his life where he spent more than two consecutive days doing nothing. This man is a hard worker! And even his vacations turn into work because they always have to GO! And DO! And EXPLORE! And OMG, I'm exhausted just thinking about it! I know how they are, though, having grown up and gone on vacations with them. Every single place is treated as though we will never return, so we have to squeeze every single drop of sightseeing, museum hopping, ruins-finding fun out of every single minute of every single day.

That's not how I roll anymore. Dr Pop cured me of that. On our vacations, we sleep. We eat. We lay out on the beach, then move to the pool. We go out to eat and find local bars to hang out at. Sometimes, we will take a day trip somewhere. Explore something new. And this trip? Was no different. And my parents adapted extremely well to the doing of the nothing.

I thought it was all so very amazing until I realized one important detail... Just watching Boy Pop swim and play and run and build sandcastles and perform on stage? Well, that is enough to keep anyone entertained for a week!

A Taste

The Pops spent this Thanksgiving in Playa del Carment this year... We took advantage of the trip to take some Christmas-y pictures.

I'll most likely post some stories and photos next week. I'm one of only a few who will actually be working, so I should have some time on my hands to do a little writing.

At least, that's my hope.

And if not? Well then, Merry Christmas from the Pop family!

Oh Man!

Too many stories to tell... Saturday night, we hopped in a Hummer super stretch limo with 8 friends and went to see Snoop Doggy Dogg...

It was a wild evening fueled by beer, champagne, and Pom Martinis. And cookies and snacks (but no real dinner).

Snoop was bad ass. Bad. Ass.

We were pretty bad ass, too, with our "pimp" cups.

A great time was had by all, up until a little incident at the end of the night. I'm still waiting on the owner of the limo company to contact me with an official apology for the little piece of shit driver they sent us. If he doesn't contact me today, I'll be posting my letter to the company here.

For what it's worth, though, the police sided with us. ;)

I promise I'll share some of the stories. For now, they are just too jumbled...

Almost the Dog Days...

Here it is, July 22nd. The month is winding down, and with it, summer. We have one year left of no school before Boy Pop enters kindergarten officially. We're debating having him complete a year of private kindergarten this year in preparation for him to be full-on immersed in elementary school, but to tell you the truth, I am not so sure I want it to happen. I do not want to have to be responsible for homework yet. I don't want him to have the pressure of school yet, either. And from what I hear about elementary school these days, it is definitely pressure-filled.

The official "dog days of summer" don't start until August, but that is 9 days away. Before I know it, I'll be planning Boy Pop's 5th birthday. I do not know where the time has gone, but I do know that we haven't completed much on my personal summer "to-do" fun list... We definitely need to get on that and fast!

Every year goes by just a little bit faster. I don't know why time seems to do this, but I want it to stop. I want to hit the pause button for a little while and enjoy this time a little bit more. My son is at an awesome age and Dr Pop and I are enjoying him and each other more than ever. I'm not ready to move ahead just yet.

Whiney, whiney, whine, whine, whine.

Yeah, I get it. But! I'm just not ready yet! But I know that I'd better batten down the hatches and get good and damn well ready, though, because time does indeed march on. It is marching ever-forward.

I'm considering yet another career change. Maybe. I'm very happy to be employed in the current market, but there are some goals that I have that cannot be fulfilled in my current position. I'm giving myself a year to figure this out. I want to have the opportunity to work Boy Pop's school hours and also spend some time writing real stuff instead of blog stuff. I know one thing that will make that possible, but I'm not sure I'm ready to 1) take the pay cut or 2) deal with teenagers on a daily basis, so that idea is not at the forefront right yet. I do know that I would like to do something different. But I am in a relatively comfortable zone here, so heck. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm just blathering.

Whining and blathering.

I need to get off my ass and get some summer family excursions planned STAT! (See what I did there? I circled back to the initial post topic.)

So for now, I'll leave you with some final pictures from the first part of the summer...

Fun dinner with friends in June.

Engagement party.

Birthday card and present opening.

Official birthday dinner...

Stream of Consciousness*

*Narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts.

So, um, yeah, my writing is a "narrative technique." Mmm, hmm...

Sue! I scrubbed my walls yesterday! Went through one bottle of some spray cleanser from Wal-Mart (http://www.holycowproducts.com/). Love it, by the way... Gets stains out of carpet, safe on paint, safe on granite, and smells nice. Oh, and it's cheap! I took a break and went to the grocery store for dinner-type things, and picked up a bottle of Mrs. Meyer's. I chose the basil scent. I love this stuff, too!

Let me back up a bit. We are throwing an engagement party for friends of ours. Lots of people we don't know will be in our home. This has prompted us to get up off our asses and actually complete some projects we've been putting off for quite some time.

I re-hired my old maid.
We are replacing a fake tree that our cats have destroyed with a bookcase in our dining room.
Said bookcase is being delivered unfinished.
We will be staining and finishing the thing ourselves.
I took Boy Pop's old clothes to the consignment store.
They bought half of them!
I still have a lot of clothes in the back of my car destined for Goodwill.
Our maid removed piles of clothes and toys that we had earmarked for donation.
She's giving them to her church.
She also re-arranged our upstairs living room!
We are getting our carpets cleaned.
We are getting our barstools re-covered (damn cats!).
I'm finally framing portraits of Boy Pop, us, wedding portraits, etc.
If I can find our wedding portraits.
I am gathering the best of Boy Pop's artwork from the past year and I'm making a giant collage.
If it works, all the grandparents will get one.

Dr Pop took the seats off the barstools and took a look at the painted wall under our bar area. It has been kicked so much and had tons of black scuff marks. He went yesterday and researched and bought matching paint and some Killz to repair the situation. When I got home, he had a rag in his hand and was cleaning the area (I had completely forgotten that he's done this before, but damn, do I have a great husband or what?). I grabbed a rag and started to help. Well, once you start cleaning one wall, I discovered it was damn near impossible to quit! Once we had a large enough area clean, Dr Pop started taping up the baseboards and he laid down a sheet and started painting. I continued scrubbing the walls and took time out to follow him with a small brush to get the crevices. Our walls look like new!

I was so amped up, I got all the picture frames I'd purchased earlier in the day and started framing pictures. Satisfied with the Boy's pictures, I went to the closet where my good wedding portraits are located to get them out, only they were not there! I tore the house apart looking for them, to no avail.

This depresses me. A lot.

But in my frantic searching, I found my first digital camera. The camera I had when Boy Pop was born. Since we've had three hard drive losses without backing things up, you can imagine how I felt at that discovery. I ran downstairs, and put the CF card into our computer and up popped the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time.

I'm still upset that I cannot find where I put those wedding portraits, but this does indeed warm my heart.

Only A Week Late!

The week before Easter, Boy Pop got sick with a nasty ear infection. In true Boy Pop fashion, though, he bounced back very quickly, so we decided to make one last trek to the local carnival.

We didn't stay as long, but we had just as much fun!

The boy even made an attempt to climb a rock wall.

The next day, we loaded up the car and the dog, left an insane amount of cat food out, and headed to my hometown for the weekend.

It was a very good weekend.

We even went to the zoo on Saturday.

Now let me tell you something about the zoo in my hometown... I don't come from a huge city. The place where I grew up has approximately 100K people, though. And it has what I believe to be one of the best zoos anywhere around, complete with lions, jaguars, a black rhino, a huge snake house, giraffes, and monkeys (just to name a few). I've been going to this zoo for years and I love it. Now my boy loves it, too.

The following morning, Easter Morning, we did all the Easter things. Boy Pop received entirely too much chocolate and candy.

Then we went to my parents' country club for an Easter lunch complete with Easter Bunny!

After lunch, we loaded up the car and headed home. And much to our amazement, the Easter Bunny had been to our house, too! Actually, it was Dr Pop's parents. They brought an Easter Basket, hid eggs, and left a sign up for us.

And we had yet another Easter Egg hunt!

It was a wonderful weekend, capped by the mother of all confetti egg fights.

All I can say about that is thank heavens for my Dyson!

Coming up next... Hospitals and half-birthdays!

Breaking In The IPhone

I think one of my favorite features on my new phone is the halfway decent camera it has. I've been used to the 1.2 megapixel camera in my old Razr, so the 2 megapixel camera is like a breath of fresh air!

I've told you all about my anniversary day, but I did not say it with pictures, so I thought I'd recap. We realized early on in the day that we'd forgotten our regular camera, but luckily, I had my phone.

Last Saturday (March 1), Dr Pop and I spent the afternoon out, playing, shopping, and celebrating our 5th year of marriage.

Our first stop was our local high end retail center because they had an Apple store. Dr Pop had waited patiently for two whole days and it was time to get him an iPhone, too. Before we did that, though, we went to lunch at this incredible place called Kona Grill, an Asian/Hawaiian joint. Dr Pop had sushi and I had this macadamia crusted chicken taco thing. Delish!

After we ate, we picked up his phone, did some window shopping, walked the entire length of the shopping center, then left. I had some new shoes to pick up.

Finally, we headed back to the car and were in the same food dilemma we'd been in all day. Where do we eat dinner?

I mean, do we go to the place where we had our first date? Or do we eat Mexican food (you know, in celebration of the actual location of our wedding)? In the end, we decided it was early enough to go to our first date spot and eat crab even though we were decidedly scummy-looking. Hey, it's Austin. No one really cares.

Of course, we didn't have our camera, but we caught a few images. And one of the coolest parts about the day was remembering how much we used to enjoy the restaurant!

And after doing what our mothers always told us not to do (i.e. play with our food), we stuffed ourselves silly with crab and vowed to go back again very soon.

Fortunately for us (unfortunately for Florida's stone crabs), "soon" turned out to be yesterday. Monday nights at Truluck's are "all you can eat stone crab claw night." We decided over the weekend that we definitely needed to take advantage of the deal, so yesterday after work we loaded Boy Pop* and ourselves into the car and headed downtown...

Boy Pop was less than impressed by the crab meat. So he had chicken while Dr P and I pigged out (he ate 17 and I ate 11 claws). And while we were finishing up our food, we found yet another great use for our phone!

Dr Pop had brilliantly thought to load a movie onto his phone. It just so happened that this particular one is one of Boy Pop's faves.

*Some people have a rule about bringing children to restaurants, and to tell the truth, I do, too. My rule is that children must behave. I watch the eyes of restaurant staff widen in horror occasionally when they see my little four-year-old walking in with us. What they don't know is that should my little one act up, I'm committed to leaving. Pretty much solves most problems.

I'd say that the phone is now effectively broken-in.

How I Spent Texas Independence Day*

*On March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence from Mexico through the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence in Washington-on-the-Brazos, thus marking the start of the Texas Revolution, which would go on to prove the viciousness of Santa Anna as he slaughtered hundreds of soldiers at both the Alamo and at Goliad, not to mention the other battles. Texas was victorious in the end.

So, I spent my Sunday going through all of the pictures that have been saved on our main computer's hard drive. While all of our pictures are not located on this one system, most of them are, but I've been horrible in the backing up of them so yesterday, I bit the bullet, sorted through thousands of pictures, made folders, consolidated folders, and made about 12 backup CDs.

I still have to do the same thing on our notebook, but I'm determined to get it done. I cannot bear the thought of possibly losing even more pictures (we've lost countless photos due to three different computer crashes).

After that was said and done, I uploaded some recent pictures to Kodak Gallery. I thought I'd share a few with you here...

This is Genghis, a.k.a. Pookie. He loves skulking around the tub when Boy Pop is in the bath.

He accidentally fell in. Surprisingly, he took it well.

Ahh... My birthday... That is Boy Pop handing me my gift.
Love the iPhone!


This is us on our way to dinner for my birthday.

That finger you see to the right is my mother's.

What you don't see is how frustrated and stressed out I am because we should have been on the road about ten minutes prior to the picture being taken.

This is my boy wearing a candy "neckalace" he got for Valentine's Day. His shirt says he's a "Babe Magnet." His shirt is right.

Dr. Pop and I at our Valentine's Day dinner. Actually, dinner was over. I was very tipsy.