baylor homecoming 2009

last weekend, hugh and i went out west and spent a lovely long weekend in in the happenin' metropolis of waco. more importantly the home of the fabulous baylor university :) an overnight stop in dallas with the caudle family :) and we made our way to homecoming!! i LOVE homecoming... and baylor really does it well.

the weekend in pictures:

(hugh thought he was getting sunburnt)

thank you!

:) this weekend was wonderful... temps in the 70s (and low in the 50s this morning!!)

and with the setting sun just right, it almost looks like the leaves are changing!

dear autumn,

please come to florida. please. please.


hopefully,
me

p.s. it's october, not july

ha!

i came home to find this guy confidently sitting directly on top of the feeder, happily eating all the peanuts.

unfortunately i wasn't quick enough with the camera :(

(sorry for the poor quality of the pics - i was inside the house, shooting across the living room, through the back window and the porch and the screen)

and H thought that moving the feeder out into the open wouldn't bring any fellows out (he has 'scared' 2 of the dumb little guys off so far, though)!

squirrels

so hugh's been busy lately working to slowly eliminate the squirrel population in our backyard.

at first we thought that they were cute.

they'd run and play with each other all over the place, in and out of trees, you name it.

well then we started getting water in our bathroom wall and had to bring in a contractor to fix the roof and water-logged walls (thankfully not too badly, though, dont worry). turns out that the lead pipes that stick up out of the roof and act as air release for the plumbing had been completely eaten by the dumb squirrels. did i mention that they're made out of lead!? ugh. so we had them fixed and went on our merry way... only to have it start leaking again 2 weeks later! the contractors came back thinking that they'd missed something. oh no, it was the squirrels again. they actually pulled me up on the roof to check it all out (and then held a pow-wow trying to figure out what to do...)

a thousand dollars later (ugh!) and some nice little aluminum houses built around the pipes and we're still fighting the annoying creatures.

we've had offers to borrow dogs (thanks malia! wish you werent so far away), an electrical shock apparatus, and a pellet gun... guess which one he chose?? haha.

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the carefully placed 'feeder' that H and F made

sleep

you'd think they'd grow out of this 'fall asleep while playing' bit...

notes

a dear friend of mine just started a new business, personalized paper products. please check it out if you're in the market!

Nuts About Notes

(click for link)

O

... to be a fly on the wall today
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note: this post is mostly for me. it may be interesting to you, but is mostly therapeutic on my part.

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the very short version...

as i was making our delicious afternoon tea, a champagne bottle that apparently was on the top shelf of a nearby cupboard rolled out of the cupboard and make contact with my favorite lovely teapot and granite countertop ... and then exploded all over me and the kitchen.

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as we were cleaning up the first round, and i was sorrowfully holding my badly beaten teapot, it suddenly broke apart and itself shattered on the tile floor, leaving me holding a sad little handle.

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for the second time, hugh had to pick me up and take me to a chair in the breakfast nook to have a little cry ...and pick glass out of my feet and arms.

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it's amazing how much debris a glass bottle and favorite ceramic teapot can make. my sweet husband helped me clean for an hour.

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the kitchen still smells like a strange mixture of champagne and swiffer wetjet juice...

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:(

i am sadly mourning my lovely teapot

-

monterosso al mare,
cinque terre


the best concert ever. in a cave right on the mediterranean. think dave matthews band + pearl jam with waves crashing behind you. amazing.

flying proudly

i've been itching to spread some baylor pride ... since these things aren't easy to come by around here, and online cost a fortune, i decided to make my first flag. the ladies at joann's thought i was crazy.

Sic 'Em Bears!!

pisa

old wall of pisa

launch

space shuttle discovery in the clouds
(and lightning)







i absolutely love shuttle launches. there is something about watching a group of people being shot into space that strikes such awe

roma.2

a shout out to my asian friends

gelato at the pantheon :)

santi ambrogio e carlo al corso
100% painted (not even the marble is real)
spanish steps
swiss guards at the vatican
a great way to relax after a day of walking! (apparently, though, in fancy hotel pools in italy they make you wear swim caps... isn't that attractive!)

roma

holiday, part one

we spent a few lovely days in what i (and, of course, the italians) like to call roma.

a city full of history and story, we had a nice long list of things we wanted to see... over the next few days, we visited just about every cool thing in the city- and must have walked a hundred miles. maybe not, but definitely a lot.

some of our nice memories of roma...
...the wonderful hotel we stayed at (rome cavalieri);
.....GELATO! we love love love gelato and ate it at least once a day the entire holiday
........walking where so many throughout history have walked (bizarre!)
...........the view from our hotel room (the entire city!)
..............watching fireworks go off over the city from our balcony, with monuments lit up and live jazz being sung by the beautiful lit pool below our room
..................breakfast
.....................st peters. we were in awe

'mission planning'
breakfast
vatican

headline

our local news always has an interesting take on the ocean and storms, but this was too much...

background: hurricane bill is 900 miles off the coast and supposed to produce big swells (waves) this weekend. this is the time of year when local surfers (hugh included) look forward to, because you can actually pull out the shortboard and have some fun. storm=surf.

well according to our local news station,
surfers should not go into the water this weekend and surf because (seriously, i'm quoting this) "the waves are going to be big" and it's not safe to surf in big waves.

imagine that- waiting until the waves actually get big enough to surf!
(and we're still in florida, folks, so "too big" actually only means 6-8 feet)

one quick photo in the meantime...

holiday

yikes, it's been a while.

we took a little hiatus (lovely holiday!) and went to italy for a couple of weeks... wonderful.

we saw all the cool, historical things in all the big cities, but by far our favorite thing about the trip is that we rented a car and were able to see SO MUCH else! all of the small towns dotted throughout the countryside, on hilltops, surrounded by centuries-old walls, full of gelatto (!) ... i feel like we got a great taste of the country.

of course, tons of photos were taken (i blame the digital camera: "oh, just take as many as you can, you can always delete later"), but i'll spare you from having to go through all of them :)

instead, i'll just give you a taste of our trip, day by day. we hope you enjoy it (if not, you just don't have to read it!)

:)