A little tip

I hav a ton of news and weekend events that I took FABULOUS pictures of, unfortunately I can't seem to locate my connector cord for my camera. So, I am going to give you a little tip instead.

My sister-in-law Buffy has twin girls who are on different formulas. When the girls were about a month old, I sent them a gift of personalized rubber bands that can go around their bottles that are in the fridge, or go with them to the nursery at church, babysitters etc.

People have raved about them and I have to admit, I am now wanting some myself. Here is my tip, it is the PERFECT baby present or shower present (if the mom to be has a name picked out!). They are NOT expensive and personalized gifts are always better than something just off of the registry. You get to look like the "thoughtful" friend rather than the paint-by-number friend. And who doesn't want to be that friend?

An even better tip? Order the bands, buy the bottles she has registered for, put the bands on the bottles and include a can of formula. We all know breast milk is best, but it is a great deal to have a can on hand just in case.

So here is the website that you can order from: http://www.inchbug.com/1a1.html

They are called Bumpy Name Orbit Labels because they actually put your child's name in Braille too. Pretty cool.

Tonight

Tonight is by far the best night of television that we have had since May. The series premiers of The Office and Grey's Anatomy are running opposite of each other and I am mightily ticked off at the executives at NBC for making people choose. There are many nights that I am "allowed" to watch Grey's Anatomy just because it does not interfere with watching The Office when it was in the 8:30pm timeslot.

So instead, we are GOING to watch the Grey's premier and Tivo The Office and have to watch The Office while we TiVo ER. Arggh. What would we do if didn't have Tivo???

BTW: The only way that we are going to watch TV in this manner is because I have forced Matt's hands by inviting some friends over to watch Grey's..teehee. Anyone wanna come over? Open INVITE!

Oh and I forgot, USC Women's Soccer is opening SEC play at Tennessee tonight and the game will be televised on Fox Sports South starting at 8pm. Oh the conflict.

I know I know

I haven't been posting much lately. Life seems to be coming at me awfully fast these days. Between work, Young Life, my kids, my husband and friends...I feel really full-perhaps overcommitteed. But everything is working out, I just haven't had much time to catch up!

So this weekend, we had our annual leader retreat on Lake Keowee in South Carolina. It was beautiful! Our dear friends, the Troyers kept Asher for the weekend so we didn't have to take him. He had a great time with them all weekend and we had a GREAT time without him too. Not to say that we didn't want him around, but he is two and quite a handful around a big group. Lucy was much quieter and happier to just crawl around and be cute the whole weekend. She also was very happy to go with me to watch the Gamecock women's soccer team LOSE to Clemson at Clemson, 1-0. It was a bit devastating I have to say. To go from being undefeated to losing on a crap goal late in the 2nd half when we dominated the game was terrible. But it happens. The highlight of the game was seeing Charlotte Moore at the game and getting to catch up on all of our old soccer friends from USC.


It made me realize that I stink at keeping in touch with people. I mean, I just dropped almost all of these girls that I laughed, cried, cursed with and did just about everything with for four years. What the crap is wrong with me? I just moved on. It made me really sad and I have to say, I longed to be back with those friends again. I hope that we will work up a nice reunion sometime soon. I think enough time has passed for most of us to get over whatever crimes/hurts we walked away with so many years ago.


Anyway, Lucy and I went to the game and then we came back and partied with the YL leaders for the rest of the weekend. The weather was gorgeous and it was really fun. As soon as we got back, we had people over to the house for game night because we are gluttons for entertainment punishment and then the week got started back up.


I am worn out just from typing all of this. Tonight we had our 2nd YL club at TC Roberson and it was really fun. I am WAY behind on getting kids names down and it is getting stressful thinking about getting babysitters for the weeks to come. But I had a blast and we are just getting started there. It is an adventure!

Kid Nation

So did anyone out there in BlogLand watch the first episode of Kid Nation last night on CBS? For those of you who don't know what it is, it's 40 kids sent out into a deserted town for 40 days to see if they can "make the town run." Which really means that it is Survivor for kids 8-15. While I don't revel in watching children cry and fight for an hour (oh wait, that is what I do ALL DAY LONG), it was a really interesting show. The most interesting aspect of it is going to come in the next few weeks as we see sociological hypothesis played out.

In last nights episode, they played a game for the opportunity to be upper class, merchants, cooks or laborers. I am going to put my sociological degree to good use and predict that the children will start to act out these roles and revel in the upper class positions and believe themselves to be "better" than all of the rest. The tension is going to ramp up and make this town nearly intolerable if they don't flip the working levels upside down mid-season. They will surely do this as then the drama will get even more intense as the kids learn empathy from the kids who were on top and now are on the bottom. And we will see payback when the kids who were on the bottom find themselves in the position of power and they learn what we all know, "mo money, mo problems."

All in all, this was a fun show to watch. Clean, no skin showing, a lot of poop talk and it was fun watching kids figure out how to do things that "grown-ups" typically do such as cooking, cleaning up and leading each other. For those of you who want to watch, check it out next Wednesday night at 8pm on CBS.

BTW: The pilot episode will be replaying on Saturday night at 8pm if you didn't catch it last night!

A sign that I am slightly behind

I just tried to mop my kitchen floor because I noticed that the tops of Lucy's feet were turning black from crawling on the kitchen floor. Apparently, a Clorox Ready-Mop does not clean nearly as well as a REAL mop. I felt like I needed a gum scraper and to pretreat the entire floor with 409. It is still not really clean and I spent 40 minutes mopping 12 square feet. Gross.

It's Not Often

That watching a video on the internet can give you a sense of awe, extreme laughter and shame all in one video. But this one does.



These two guys at collegehumor.com have an escalating prank war and this is the latest installment. Watch and be amazed.

Fun Friday

I took some pictures of Lucy in a tutu today...click on my Flickr tag to look at em!

Problems

My friend Bradley was in second place for The Smart Show an HBO production, but the guy who was winning withdrew from the contest due to something wack in his video. So they have started the voting over again. I know that it is a lot to ask, but PLEASE go to this website http://iw.rtm.com/thesmartshow/video.asp?videoID=313&category=3&sort=1&guid={D410907C-B0E2-4F14-B039-F25DDE47742B} and vote for him EVERY DAY for the next six days. Seriously, it takes no time and if you are visiting here...well it looks like you have some time on your hands. REALLY. It would be so great to help somebody get their start in Hollywood and you have the opportunity! Go now! Voting started again today! LOVE YOU!

Sorry for the bad follow-up

I guess that the last post took so much work, I haven't had much energy to put towards the blog. Not really. I have had a major project for work that has taken up all my free time...and that pays the bills if you know what I mean. Also, Matt was out of town all last week. Both kids got ear infections while he was gone (of course) and so I was a little busier than usual.

This past weekend was women's weekend at Windy Gap and my favorite YL women were all here: Dana Martin, Brandi Kellett, Shelly Kaiser, Lindsay Hancock and of course, my sister-in-law Buffy. I pretty much want to be around these women at all times. How can I get an invite to be on the planning committee for next year. Anybody???

It was a great weekend and I loved getting to be around these fun ladies. But what I loved even more than a great weekend with girlfriends was that the Gamecocks beat that slovenly team known as Georgia. AT GEORGIA. Between the freakin' hedges. And USC Women's Soccer is off to the best start in school history at 4-0 and are ranked in the top 25. Incredible.

Oh! And I got my haircut! I took six inches off and I am having a few regrets. I really liked my longer hair, but it was looking ratty and I made a spur of the moment decision to chop it off and I think that I have a mom haircut now. Thoughts?

Ahh the hilarity

I found a bunch of pictures today while I was cleaning up around the house and I thought that I would share them with you.

If you want to see the details in these pictures, click on them and they will get bigger.

WARNING: These are going to embarrass my family and myself so I am going to have some comments that are going to be less than savory I am sure!


This is a picture of my sister, Shellie and I. I have no idea how old I am, but I am guessing less than a year old. That would make my sister probably eight years old. We might have still be living in Las Vegas at the time. I actually really like this picture.



Here I am in the sixth grade. This was my cool phase. That's right, I was cool at one point. With my giant bangs, perm and my WAY cool vest, I was a hit in the sixth grade. This is when I might have peaked. Except that I was busy trying to fail out of the sixth grade in my attempt to be so COOL. Awesome.


This is my little brother Drew and me. I might have been in the 2nd grade. I can tell because of the monstrosity that is my bowl cut haircut. My mom tried to cut my hair into a bob and she had to keep cutting to even it up. Awesome.


This is my sixth grade soccer team, the Falcons. I was so good that I didn't even have to wear my hair in a ponytail. There I am, on the bottom left hand row. You can tell it's me by the bangs. Awesome.


This is my sister Shellie and my mom. They were at a cafe outside of Madrid, Spain in this picture. I have no idea what they are doing. But I LOVE the huge glasses, the perm my sister is rocking and the Wham! pose both of them are striking. Awesome.



Oooh OOh OOOOOOH! This is a GREAT picture. You might miss it at first glance so I will point out the awesomeness to you. 1. Santa and Mrs. Clause are both Korean. 2. I am in the sixth grade (my hair tips me off) and I am sitting on Santa's lap, which makes me feel VERY awkward. 3. I am wearing acid washed jeans. 4. My hair was looking especially good that day. 5. You could supply a wig to Locks of Love from my eyebrows. AWESOME.


This is a family portrait at my grandparents house in Lakeland, Florida. Everyone in the picture looks really cute and tan. Except for me in my JU bike riding hat that was all the rage that summer. I mean, who thought that was a good idea? Was I cyclist when I was 12 and I didn't know it? I am also as big as my mom, yet I am sitting on my dad's lap. AWESOME.


In this picture, if my memory serves me correctly...I crashed a spend the night party that my sister was having. They were doing some kind of scary makeup party or something and they decided to go to TOWN on me and Shellie. Hey, at least we have a funny picture out of it! Awesome.

So that's that. As I find more pictures from my past, I might put them up later!

This Land is...

I just saw this BEAUTIFUL commercial yesterday. It kinda makes you well up inside. Oh yeah and yes that is CHRISTIAN SLATER. Thank you for that!

Being Proud Doesn't Even Describe

Carolina Women's Soccer Beats North Carolina, 1-0 in Season Opener

This weekend, USC Women's Soccer started off their season right by beating #1 in the country, North Carolina AT North Carolina. This was the first time in North Carolina history (27 years) that they have lost their season opener at home. When Matt and I heard the news on Saturday, I actually teared up in the car. I mean, do you understand what an accomplishment that is? North Carolina has also only lost ten times in their programs history at home. TEN TIMES. And South Carolina did it. That is just awesome.

EDIT: Now I forgot to mention that people are talking about how App. State's win over Michigan in football on Saturday is the biggest upset of all time in collegiate athletics, but I would offer this win by South Carolina up as a possible second. It is really sad that this story got buried due to all of the football covereage over the weekend. But as a proud alumnus of South Carolina AND its women's soccer team, I have to stand by this result being the largest upset. Sorry App fans!


Now the bigger challenge is going to be not sucking at the rest of the season because you accomplished one of your major goals right out of the gates!

But thanfully, USC already had to play another game against ETSU on Monday night and won, 5-2. I am sure I am going to have to head to Columbia a few times this season to watch the Gamecocks as they embark on the first ever SEC Championship. Go Cocks!

Help a Friend

A former YL colleague of mine has moved out to California and is trying to make it into showbiz. He is a finalist for the Smart Show, a reality show sponsored by Holiday Inn and he can get the gig just by being the person with the most online votes. If you will indulge me, please help out this friend by a: registering and voting and b: tell everyone you know to vote-DAILY until Sept. 15. Once you are registered, it isn't that hard to just keep voting once a day. He is in second place right now and since this is just an internet popularity contest...you can help someone get a job-IN HOLLYWOOD. That's pretty cool. OKay so here are the deets:

Steps to help Bradley win:

1) When you go to the site (if you haven't already registered) you will need to register--this takes about a minute and you have to register to vote. Please do so...use your dummy e-mail address if you are freaked out or whatever.

2) Rate my video on a scale of 1-5 in three categories: Originality, Sense of Humor, Smartness. Each vote counts as one point (i.e. if you vote a 5 on all three then I will have 15 points from you on that day.)

3) THEN leave a comment while you are there and hit submit at the bottom of the page (even if only voting, hit submit)

4) I need you to forward the link and whatever instructions you want to your friends and family. That will really be what kicks it up a notch.

5) THEN each day at some point hop back on the site and vote again. You can vote once each day. So this could be some big-time voting.

Get creative with this, if you have friends who blog, ask them to put up the link. If you have a myspace or facebook, but the link in the "i'm feeling" section or whatever. This ball is 100% in y'alls court.

Associate something with me so you will remember to vote everyday. How about this....Hasemeyer....Oscar Meyer...lunch time. So every time you go to lunch you think...vote for Bradley!!

Put it in your palm as a repeating event. Share it with your google contacts in your google calender. Whatever.

I thank you in advance for helping me out.

Again this could be a great thing for my career and am so thankful I can turn to friends in a time like this.

http://iw.rtm.com/thesmartshow/video.asp?videoID=303&category=3&sort=1&guid={1F95C446-D1D0-4291-8BFD-38237A9F3E87