Grace is here!

My little sister, Katie, had her baby this weekend!

Grace Kathleen made her arrival at 6:33 AM on June 28, 2008 at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.

She weighed 6 lbs 3 oz and is 18.5 inches long.

She was born only 40 minutes after Mommy and Daddy arrived at the hospital! She was in a hurry to enter this world. Gracie was a month early, but needed no special treatment. Mommy, Daddy, and baby are all healthy and happy

Typical Hubs fare - Today's IM convo

Me: hey pal
Me: what did you do for lunch?

Hubs: hey there
Hubs: got some pizza hut, beat some guy up
Hubs: the usual
Hubs: you?

Me: you beat some guy up?!? What?!?

Hubs: not really. just ripped his shirt. :-)

Me: what happened?

Hubs: i was walking back from the train station and saw some guy wrestling with a female bike messenger
Hubs: he was yelling that she had hit his car or something
Hubs: and trying to drag her off the bike
Hubs: so i put a stop to it
Hubs: just grabbed him by the collar and pushed him away
Hubs: and his shirt ripped a bunch
Hubs: some other guys jumped in and the girl got away, so i just kept walking
Hubs: didn't even spill my soda
Hubs: :-)

Eat, Pray, Vomit

apologies if you have read this book (I haven't!) and liked it, but this review just cracked me up!!

http://bookishbent.blogspot.com/2008/06/eat-pray-love.html

Random blasts from the past

So my parents have purchased a new (and smaller house) in Evansville, prompting my Mom to start unloading all my childhood crap on me box by box. The last time I was home, she plopped a plastic tote in front of me with a bunch of stuff from college. Most of it was CRAP, so most of it got thrown away. But some I kept. This weekend at the family reunion, she loaded up the plastic tote again, this time with all sorts of crap from childhood and high school.

The tote included about a million notes written to various high school boyfriends. I only read the few that weren't bundled into little squares, reading a few Q&A notes that my friend Robie and I would write back and forth. One of us would write a page of questions and give it to the other, and then the other would answer all the questions and write another page of questions for the first to answer. Robie, for some reason, liked to streak/moon people and used to ask what people would do if he was naked right then. In one of the notes, he had asked what I would do if he was naked right then in class. My one word response was "Laugh". I cracked up over that. Man, I was mean even back in the day.

Lately, with all this going through old stuff, I've been throwing out alot and taking pics of crap that I want to save, but don't want to bother with trying to find a place for in our city condo. I mean, if we had the room I'd probably keep it all somewhere and then hate myself later in life for not throwing it away sooner. But I like the picture-taking idea.... I have the pic to remember the item by, and don't have to store/dust/move all that crap anywhere. Better remember to backup though!

Here are just a few things I took pics of.... starting off with one of the least embarrassing, a caricature made by an artist at a PwC Mardi Gras party they threw on campus as a recruiting event when I was in college.

This is a button I had in elementary school. We lived in Moores Hill until the third grade, so I sported this around ages 5-8 or so. I mean, who didn't love Alf? And love to proclaim their love for their small town/school via Alf?

Yeah, I was in speech contests when I was younger. I was a very outspoken child, a shyer adolescent, and back to a loud and outspoken adult. Hey, at least I was keeping it real, getting my certificate-gettin' on.

Hmmm, now we get even more embarrassing than speech contests. These are all my band awards for the state and local solo and ensemble contests. EVEN BETTER: I had engraved with my friends engraving tool the name of the song I played and the year of each award. Oy. I played the flute and the piccolo. Truth be told, I played the piccolo mostly b.c it annoyed people AND was small enough to fit in my backpack and carry without much effort. And I was AWFUL at it. You wouldn't know by looking at these medals that I was so bad, but my AIM LOW strategy was in effect even back then: the songs I picked to play were all very simple. I had a good sound, but the fingers wouldn't move nearly as fast as they should have for most band stuff. By the end of high school I had mastered moving my fingers and holding my instrument to LOOK like I was playing but not actually emitting any noise. I was that awesome. OK, enough band.

My friend Jill was picked to go to Hoosier Girls State, and I was the alternate. I was bummed I wasn't picked, and then years later Jill told me the whole thing sucked and she was bummed she wasn't the alternate. I had gotten in the paper but hadn't had to endure the actual conference-y thing.

My Dad started me off right: busting on Purdue from childhood. Awesome.

My Mom always wondered how I kept my siblings out of my room when I was a kid. Simple, post the rules. I am still surprised they followed them. Although back then I was bigger than them and could whup their butts.

Just when I thought it couldn't get more embarrassing than band awards.... this is my sophomore year Prom Date Clifton and I. 1) Holy bangs and plastic flowers batman. 2) Dude, at that school it was a REALLY big deal to go to the prom as a freshman or sophomore. It basically it meant you were thebomb.com. So yeah, I used Clifton to go to the prom. I would say I'm sorry to Clifton, whereever he is.... but dude, he had a smokin' date. So yeah, he didn't fare too badly. Except for that I totally didn't hang out with him at the prom and ditched him to dance with the dude I had a crush on who worked at the local IGA. awesome.

One of the better items that I actually did keep... me and Hirsch (Helfrich!) cheesing in a photo booth.

AND FINALLY, the best one... my ONLY sports award ever. I believe this is a t-ball participant award from 1988.... hahahahahah Isn't tball for like toddlers and not 8 year olds???

Stratton Fam Reunion

Just got back from a weekend of Stratton Family reunioning! Here are some pics from the weekend.

Little Jaxon, my cousin Brian's son

Jaxon and Aunt Gayle

Jayden (my cousin Stephanie's son) holds onto Jay's large noggin' for dear life

Little Jayce (Stephanie's younger son) zonks out

Jaxon and Daddy

I love this picture of Brian and Jaxon, but Jaxon is out of focus! He looks like such a Gerber baby though.

Oh, Cousin Zach, you are truly one of a kind ;c)

The whole reunioning group (except for those who left the night before)

And a funny one to end the group of pics... Grandma giving me not one but TWO stinkeyes. Her expression in this one just cracks me up. Grandma is the best, so loving, but a tough cookie!

is she taking a picture? hmmmmmm