To Tide You Over...

Here's one picture to tide you over until I get home and can blog more. I'm at work right now and am risking life and limb to do this!! :) I had a great time and saw some neat sights. Not enough time to tour properly, but I got a taste of what's there. I met some great people and look forward to next year when we go to Boston!!

This picture is at Jamestown in front of the replica ships that the colonists spend 4 months on sailing from England to Virginia. I was caught in a sneer, but I was happy that day!!

I'm off to Virginia...

Bon Voyage! I'm leaving at 5am on Saturday morning and will return at midnight on Fri, Oct 26. It's for a work conference and we're staying in Colonial Williamsburg! I will be blogging a boatload of pictures when I return.

Have a good week!

Cheek-Squeezin' Overload

This is a bootlegged picture from Kayla's website, but I have to have something of these guys! Earlier this week I was in Rapid for training and got to spend some time with my folks, grandma, and Tony & Kayla and company. We went over to Tony & Kayla's for pizza on Monday night.

Anyone who knows me and loves me understands that I can be a bit...dramatic? Easily excitable? Intense? Well....Noah certainly thought so. I came barreling into their house barely stopping to take off my shoes. I NEEDED to squeeze somebody and Olivia being older and sturdier was the most natural option. Thankfully she recognized me or at least wasn't scared by me, so we started playing right away. Then I turned my sights on Noah. In hindsight I imagine that all he saw was something not unlike the Tasmanian Devil ripping into his calm, quiet world. It took about half a nanosecond for his face to crumble and the screams to start.

And so it went for about an hour. As soon as I looked at him or near him he started to cry. My mom was holding him and had to keep turning her body the other way so he couldn't see me. I'm sure it must be some sort of animal sense that he had. He didn't exactly smell fear -- I think he was smelling aunty insanity. He must have sensed that if he let me get too close his cheeks would be sore and his little soft body would be crushed by love.

As the night wore on, I calmed down a bit and Noah must have determined that I was no longer a threat. I got to hold him and squeeze his cheeks ever so lightly. He's such a calm and quiet baby. He is very intense when he just stares at people. He seems to really love looking at my dad, in particular.

Olivia is getting curly hair...at least I think so. She chatters all over the place and seems to pick up new words out of nowhere. The words I love hearing her say the most are names. She says her brother's name and grandma and even great-grandma (whom she had really just met that night). And then, the sweetest name...Kathy! Nobody else seemed to impressed when she said my name, but I was just beside myself. She doesn't even say "Kaffe", but she says "Kat-ty." She had me at hello. I went to the bathroom before we left and after a few moments I heard a little voice outside saying, "I'm coming, Kat-ty." And then some little fingers slid under the door. Makes me smile thinking about it.

Ok, well these aren't even my kids and I'm a little crazy about every little thing they do. But hey, it makes me happy!

Michael Bublé - Everything

This guy has a new fan and I have a new crush!!! Just take 3 minutes and 32 seconds from your day to listen to this tune (and then over and over again). You can't exactly tell from this song, but his style channels Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc. This hasn't typically been my go-to kind of music, but I listened to this CD twice on the way home from Rapid to Pierre. Very enjoyable.

Anyway.....listen and love it.

It's been almost a month?!?!?!

Wow, I didn't realize that it's been almost a month since I last wrote anything. Yet I'm checking all of your guys' blogs and thinking, "where's the new stuff?" Ha, ha. What a hypocrite.

So right now I'm in an Aberdeen hotel room and I have training tomorrow and Thursday. I'm actually kind of proud of myself. When I checked in they had me in a smoking room. So I asked if there was a non-smoking available and the girl said she "didn't think so." I thought I'd just go check out the room and see what it was like, just in case it wasn't that bad. But it was an outside facing room and it sucked. I wasn't going to soak up that smell and then have to stand in front of a class and stink!! I wouldn't be able to concentrate. So I went back to the desk and said that I didn't want to be a pain, but I can't stay in that room. What else does she have? Again she said "nothing" (but luckily she was pleasant about it). So then I asked if there were any people who hadn't shown up yet and when the cutoff time was. It was 6:00pm and I arrived at 6:30. So she spent a few minutes checking and VOILA! A room was found! I thanked her profusely and stalked off to my new room. The hallway smells like mold, but the room itself is decent. I think next time I come to Aberdeen I'll stay at the hotel across the parking lot, but for this trip it's good. I was most proud of my stand-up-for-myself skills. I'm getting better at that. Although it's easier to do that with strangers than with people I know well.

So next week I'm going to Virigina for a work conference. We're staying in Colonial Williamsburg. I will so have some pictures to put up here next time.

Kayla -- you asked about my cracking progess...awesome. Absolutely life changing for me. When I get adjusted I can immediately tell how much better I feel. So now I'm moving onto the next phase where she gives me some more exercises to do and such. I did have a second scan done and things have changed for the better. It's been great -- I'd recommend it to anyone!!!