Random Ramblings...Hello again blog-world!

I realized I haven't posted anything since October, and the Oct post wasn't much to talk about. I don't think life has been that busy...I guess facebook has taken precedence the past few months. So here's a last post for 2008.

Over the last couple weeks we have been receiving super fun Christmas pictures and cards from many friends living in other states, and even some friends living 2 doors down from us! Needless to say it has made us feel slightly guilty that in 7 1/2 years of marriage, we have yet to write and send out a "Christmas letter" - ya know the ones that give a summary of your life during the past year to everyone you haven't had a chance to hang out with in person. Maybe that's because we don't have kids yet and usually that's the main focus of the letters. I don't know. But I'm glad that we have so many friends who are nicer than we are and who do send out those letters and cards - it's so fun to see what you've been up to (or at least see a recent picture!)

I noticed that my blog profile pic is from our Big Bend trip in 2007. And now it's almost 2009. Maybe it's time to find a new one?? We'll see.

In November, Paul and I went to a marriage conference put on by Family Life. I highly recommend it. It's a great check up for your marriage - it has great reminders about principles everyone should hear in pre-marital counseling, and the homework that they give is really fun and definitely something Paul and I needed! I feel like we are more proactive in putting our marriage first now (over work, etc). It's easy to fall into a routine and become more like roommates sharing a house, instead of soulmates sharing and living life together with one purpose. So if you want more info about it, go to Family Life website and look for Weekend to Remember.

We've had fun family visits recently. Paul's mom was in TX for almost a month going back and forth between our house and Philip's house in Austin (Paul's brother). It was a good time to catch up, play games and relax all together. Mom treated us to Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy show in Austin which was really fun. Paul's dad got to come out and join us for about a week of that time and we all had an early Christmas together. It was fun to get to give gifts and see everyone's faces as they opened them. Part of my Christmas gift from Felicia was a pedicure which was super fun. All of us girls went together and either got a pedicure or manicure.

The game of choice was Settlers of Catan, or Cities & Knights (a variation of Settlers of Catan). Any outsider looking in would say we were addicts, and the prevailing comment before starting a game was, "Christianity and Marriages go out the door when this game is played" - we were all ruthless and competition was fierce. To prove our addiction, both Paul and I and Philip & Felicia gave each other the Cities & Knights game for Christmas (we had always borrowed their friend's copy before), so now we have a game at each house so it's always ready to be played. It's a sickness! But so much fun!

After Paul's parents left, my sister Daria came into town to visit - her first trip to Texas! We also had fun going to a different kind of acrobatic show - Golden Dragon Acrobats. It is a smaller production than the Cirque Dreams show, but a lot of similar feats and definitely amazing. It's crazy how people can move their bodies like that and combine such strength, balance and grace all at the same time! Daria also did a mini makeover on me and got me out of my "camp" clothes into a dress and heels! We had fun shopping at the new outlets near Houston, and also got to visit our cousin Stephanie in Houston and her 3 kids (including twins!).

(After she arrived, TX decided to change from the 70 degree weather to 30 degree weather for a few days)

Her friend Lindsey lives in Austin, so we got to hang out for an evening and explore Austin cuisine including Hey Cupcake for dessert.

Of course we also had to teach Daria how to play Settlers of Catan (she won the 1st game). Then we taught her how to play Cities & Knights and she won that one, too. She definitely caught on quickly and dominated. Though playing with 3 people is much different than playing with 5-6 people - strategies change depending on the number of players.

We attempted to make cut-out cookies, too. We did eventually succeed, but it was a 2 day process because we didn't finish rolling out/cutting/baking the cookies til 1am, so we waited to frost the cookies the next morning. They were filmed as part of Paul's Board Report soon to be posted on YouTube for our Board of Directors to watch, so I'm guessing it's the first batch of cut-out cookies to become famous...okay maybe not but I bet no one else posts their Christmas cookies on YouTube. :)

After she went back to Florida, Paul and I had a few days off and we pulled everything out of our bedroom and bathroom and sorted/re-organized/cleaned. It felt good! We had about 4 bags of stuff we trashed and 4 bags of stuff we gave away, and now I feel like we can decorate and eventually paint/put new floors in. The big projects will come later - probably after summer, but for now I'm excited about an organized room without junk we don't need!

This is a picture during the middle of the process when everything was pulled out. Paul thought it looked like a "Where's Waldo" type picture - can you find Flurry, our dog?

The next project will be sorting our home office in the same way, but I think we're both dragging our feet on that one because there is so much stuff in there!

Today we went Geocaching for the first time together. Paul had gone once before with Philip, his Dad, and Corban, but I had never gone. I didn't really get what the attraction to the hobby was, but now I can see that's fun. Basically it's just an untimed scavenger hunt that uses GPS as clues. We set out to find 4 spots in Giddings, and were successful at finding 3 of them. One was pretty tricky. The 4th one that we didn't find - I'm not sure if it still exists, even though it was posted only 1 month ago. But I think it must have blown away or accidentally picked up and thrown away.

Other than that, we've been working and watching Heroes episodes (we're on Season 2 now), playing with the dogs, and enjoying the "quiet" camp season. Summer is just around the corner for us, which I need to learn to embrace instead of fear. I really love summer camps, it's just the "to-do" list that needs to be done before summer camp always seems so long and time seems so short!

Merry Christmas everyone...and if I don't get another post up before 2009, Happy New Year, too.

My Oven Works!!!

So there has been this white square object with 4 circles on top, and a square window on the bottom in our kitchen. I haven't used it in forever, so I had started to forget what it was for. The other night I figured it out! And it turns out that you can make really yummy things with it!

The dessert is called Cream Cheese Chocolate Cupcakes. I got it from Taste of Home's Contest Winning Desserts book. Very, very good, and very, very rich.

Here's the recipe! (I'm impressed that my cupcakes looked the same as the picture in the book!). When I made it, I doubled the recipe and it gave me 42 cupcakes, and I had extra filling leftover (guess I didn't put enough in some of them). Enjoy!

Filling:

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup peanut butter chips

Cupcakes:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Beat the sugar, egg and salt smooth. Fold in chocolate and peanut butter chips; set aside.

For cupcakes, in a large bowl, beat the sugar, water, oil, vinegar and vanilla until well blended. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into sugar mixture until blended.

Fill paper-lined muffin cups half full with batter. Top each with about 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture. Bake at 3500 for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

Our New Desk!

Okay, I know that "normal" people don't get this excited about desks and organizing. But I'm not normal. My favorite store is Office Max (though I don't buy anything there because it's too expensive). My favorite shopping season is Back to School because all the binders and pencils and pens and notebooks and back packs are in the aisles. But I'm getting sidetracked.

Okay, here are some pics of what we upgraded to. The bookshelf with all the books actually belongs to Dustin and Erin, who are moving to Dallas. So they are going to need their bookshelf back soon, which gave us the perfect excuse to look for a desk with bookshelf space, too.

Here's what we came up with from Ikea.I like that it all closes up so you can't see what's inside because it's pretty cluttered inside. One day that will change, but not today.
Even the bench has storage space for files, and then for whatever else fits to the left of the files.

I'll admit that all the books didn't fit in our new desk, so we had to use the college wire shelves that you stack using connectors, but that's okay. One day when I get up the nerve to throw out/donate all my books that I haven't read in over a year, I'm sure we will only need the desk to house everything.

I just can't get rid of the thought that maybe one day the environmental science textbooks might be used. I know it's ridiculous, and the truth of the matter is that anything in those books can be found on the Internet these days (which definitely uses much less of my house space than the books do). But I just can't do it. Maybe it's because it would be admitting that I won't be using my college degree again. I don't know. Like I said, one day I'll have the courage to toss it all...but not today.

Well, I'm off today since I worked the weekend, so I actually went to the mall in Austin to look around. I've decided that I'm really not missing much by not living close to a mall. I get so frustrated walking around malls - they take up so much of my time just to realize that they don't have anything that I need or want. Another reason that I'm a country girl convert. The reason I happened to be in Austin was because Paul had to catch an early morning flight, so we spent the night at a hotel which was fun.

Paul is in Virginia helping his mom get the GMI server back in order (http://globalmosaic.net/). It started a re-booting cycle that it can't get out of, so Paul was sent to the rescue with all his computer know-how. So I'm a bachelorette until Thursday. Thankfully Chloe is here to keep me company (summer staffer from the UK), and so are the dogs.


Until next time!

Rainy Days at Camp

I know that in reality it hasn't rained every single day this summer, but recently, it sure has seemed like we've received more than our fair share! Last summer we were begging for rain because it was so dry. This year we can't get rid of the rain - the ground is so saturated, that even a small shower looks like a flood because the water has no where to go, and it creates pools and streams that sometimes look like they're flowing up hill because there is so much water!!!

We have 2 bridges that you have to cross if you come to the camp the "main way" from town. Late Wednesday night, one of our staffers was coming back from Sonic and didn't realize how deep the water was over the first bridge. To make a long story short, she tried to cross it, got stuck, and the water was reportedly up to the steering wheel at one point. Luckily there were guard rails on that bridge (on the 2nd bridge, there aren't guard rails so she just would have floated over). Thankfully everyone in the car was safe (they got out, the car was towed back to camp, etc) but the car is totalled, and our staffer was pretty shaken up. (Brings to mind the lecture I got from my dad one day about the power of flowing water - even a little bit of water).

(We're definitely glad we have the roof on the back deck - this summer it has definitely paid off since we love to sit out there and listen to the rain and relax outside without getting wet.

...although we did find that we have a couple small leaks where the seams of the roof are. But we'll get those fixed soon...or we won't sit under them and just enjoy the rest of the deck. :)

Here's looking out our front door. The rain just keeps coming! Anyone know how to build an ark?

That's why we spend more time on the back deck. Better view, and we don't think about all the water running under our house, etc.

Our dogs are such chickens when it comes to thunder and lightening. It's the only time we see Flurry show fear. (Chessy always looks worried, but she's slightly neurotic).

(Chessy had to have a turn in Paul's lap, too).

Life Stages...

So I was thinking today...remember when you were seven and the biggest thing you had going during summer was "Ghost in the Graveyard" with all the neighborhood kids until it got dark and everyone's parents called us back inside to go to bed (at 9pm)? I kinda miss those days. And remember when you were in 6th grade at the "top" of the elementary school and all the younger kids thought you were cool, and wise (okay, maybe not, but it felt like they were looking at you with awe). I was thinking today...that was a long time ago! Back then I couldn't even imagine being out of high school, and here I am - now 28 1/2 (because at one time in my life the 1/2 in my age was very important). How did that happen???

On another semi-related note...for Christmas I was given a journal to write in, which was pretty cool. I started out by immediately listing out goals for 2007. And at the end of each month I evaluated how I was doing. I was failing miserably at all of my goals at the end of January, at the end of February, and same with March and April. Then yesterday I realized I didn't even get to the point of evaluating at the end of May, and now June is practically over (I'm still failing). Again, how did that happen??? Not the part about failing to meet my goals - that happens every year, so that's not a surprise. But how is this summer flying by so fast? And I feel like I'm missing it.

But this weekend we don't have any campers here. Which means we get 2 days off in a row. Sailing, here we come! Sleeping in, here we come! As Walter Mathau said in "IQ", "Wahooooo!".

Well, that's all I have to post for now. Basically I'm tired and distracted, so I don't have more energy to write any more. I'm training a new staff member in the office to take over part of my job, so that I can be trained to help with the accounting. I never knew how many things I do during a day that take explaining. It's pretty draining trying to say every detail that you normally just do without really thinking.

On a more positive note, Jason Edgerton (friend from high school) has a 5 1/2 week old daughter named Alexis, and his wife Jess has a blog for her. It's fun to read just because I don't know anything about babies, so it's all so interesting about the feeding schedules and all that kind of stuff. So if you happen to also be interested in baby pictures, etc, check it out at http://alexedgerton.blogspot.com/.