Not so much an ambulance-chaser, but a fire-truck chaser.

This is the dirty-feet picture I told you about before-- the dust on our feet was a result of the spray-paint we used to paint the lockers. No picture of the finished lockers yet. I'll get that done sometime soon.

We've had quite a weekend! Friday night we had two friends over-- Kubby, who is in the worship band with Brad, and his girlfriend Karina. (Kubby's girlfriend, not Brad's. Sorry about that misplaced modifier.)

Anyway, we had them over for dinner, and inspired by T.G.I.Friday's commercial, we had chicken with sauce. The commercial features Friday's new entrees with which you choose a sauce to go with your meat. We served chicken skewers, grilled, with six sauce choices. I'm so sorry I didn't take a picture of out cute table-- I really wish I had! It was really fun. We had teriyaki, soy, peanut, barbecue, honey mustard, buffalo, and sweet-and-sour sauces. I served them in juice glasses with a spoon and had them all on a big plate. We also had grilled peppers and onions and pineapple on the side. Afterward we played our new favorite game, thanks to Allen and Sandi, called Crested Butte Craps. It's a fun dice game that I always lose. It was a really fun night! I think it was our first time having people over for dinner who aren't related.

Saturday we dropped off the Mercedes at Germain Arena to try to sell it. The Arena was having a huge used car sale, so we thought we'd leave the Mercedes in the parking lot to catch someone's eye. No luck so far. Afterward we went down to Naples for lunch at Shing Long, a pretty good Chinese place, and then went up to Ralph and Chris's for a brief visit. Ralph went over our taxes and found some errors (in our favor! yay!) and Chris had finished a few projects around the house we got to admire (curtain panels in three rooms! busy lady!). We then went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get ourselves a new vacuum. We got a Roomba!!! It's just the neatest thing! We brought it home and charged it up, and late last night we got to try it out. You should have seen us-- you would think we just got a new pet! We watched it "learn" the floorplan, bumping into walls and furniture, getting stuck under chairs, etc. We let it run for about 10 minutes, just for fun. When we went to empty the dirt tray we were astounded! It picked up a ton of dust and dirt in those ten minutes! (Doesn't speak highly of my cleaning skills... but the floor looked pretty clean before!) We're going to run it again today to finish the job-- I'm thrilled with it!

We took naps in the afternoon on Saturday and then went down to the Arena to pick up the car. On the way home we spotted a huge fire across the highway. Being the naturally curious people we are, we decided to hunt for it. We ended up in a little neighborhood in San Carlos Park, where there was a brush fire! We parked our car a block away and then walked over to the street where there were about 25 people gathered, watching the fire. Behind the row of houses was a large forest area, and since it has been terribly dry here, the brush fire risk has been high. They don't know what caused the fire, but it was eating up trees like no tomorrow. These trees must have been 50 feet high old pines and it took no time to consume them. Firefighters were up on houses' roofs with garden hoses, wetting down the yards and roofs, and extinguishing embers as they fell on to houses. The fire kept getting closer to the houses until it was one row of trees away from backyards-- it was really something to behold. After a while the firefighters asked us to move down the street. While we were walking down there we passed by a woman with her large dog--looked like a boxer-doberman mix. Brad walked behind her uneventfully, but as I walked in front of her the dog lunged at me and barked a LOT! And then I reacted. Do you ever have reactions that just make you wonder what's going on with you? I shrieked and burst into tears and ran to bury my head in Brad's chest. It was so weird, and not a little embarrassing. I shook for a while after-- keep in mind the dog never touched me, and I'm not usually freaked like that. So weird. I think that the weight of everything going on in my life came out right then-- the sorrow of Uncle Kenny's illness, the busy-ness of working a lot, relational issues with mean people in our small group (which we're leaving)... afterward I just felt really fragile. Damn dog.

They got the fire mostly contained, so we decided to leave. We went to get a movie and a pizza to veg for the night. At Blockbuster my dearest husband told me to get whatever I wanted to, so I picked up a movie that had won awards and looked calm, soothing, and funny. Knowing he might cringe at the title, I sheepishly asked if it was ok, and he agreed to it. I have to say that I think I have a new favorite movie scene. The movie was "Real Women Have Curves", about a hispanic family whose mother and two daughters work in a dressmaking shop as an underpaid supplier for Bloomingdales. The youngest daughter is repeatedly told she is fat, she won't find a husband, etc. She gets sick and tired of it and during one really hot day when she is steaming dresses, she just strips down to her underwear. Don't get me wrong-- it's not a porno kind of scene-- it's a wonderful, liberating, women-affirming moment. She cranks up the radio and is steaming the dresses and just dancing with her fun self. The other women in the little factory look at her disdainfully, and then begin to envy her freedom. One skinny woman declares herself a fat cow, to which all the fat women roll their eyes and begin comparing stretch marks and taking off their hot clothes. I'm not doing the scene justice, but it is just something to behold. There's something inspiring to me about women being fine with who they are, eclectic, full of personality, and not a cookie-cutter from a magazine. More on that some other day. All in all, the movie was mildly entertaining to Brad (I think) and thoroughly therapeutic for me. A good night. (Except for the Papa Johns-- ugh in the tummy.)

Ok- Brad just got some replies on a car he's pursuing. I need to go check that out.

Love to you all. Thanks for reading.

Good deed for the day.

I've been requested to update my blog more frequently. (What, Mom, like monthly isn't good enough for you? :) ) So my goal is once a week, which is what I promised in the beginning.

I did my good deed for the day. This morning on my commute I came across... a cow on the side of the road. Now this isn't terribly exciting, as there are plots of land everywhere with a few cows on them. Having cows on your land gives you a tax break in Florida, so cows are no big thing. However, usually there is a fence between said cows and the cars. This morning, no fence. So I was one of the helpful people who alerted the authorities before we had ground beef. (Get it? The car would knock the cow to the GROUND, creating GROUND BEEF? Sorry.)

I felt a little funny calling 911 on a steer, but hey, if it was coming at my car, I'd want to know. Plus, I wasn't going anywhere as it takes me at least 25 minutes to go 4 miles every morning. Now if only I could time it right so that I open my car door just as the sneaky motorcyclist who drives down the middle goes by... that would make my morning much more exciting that just cows.

My latest obsession with any free time is reading craft and food blogs. The craft ones inspire me to scratch my creative itch (I promise it's not contagious) and the food blogs inspire me to make beautiful meals. I'm working hard on weight watchers so the food blogs inspire me to make pretty and creative food, even if it has to be lower in fat. Here are two that I like:

Not Martha
Angry Chicken (She has monthly apron-making activities-- she picks a theme for the month and people make aprons and send in pictures. Check out Tie One On in the left margin to see the February man-aprons.)

And I took the suggestion of my former roommate Susan who got me into foreign films. I watched Apres Vous, a French movie about a man who saves a guy from killing himself, and then tries to turn the guy's life around for him. Hilarity ensues, partly because it's all in French. I felt quite cultured.

And Brad and I have taken to playing Rummikub often. We got in a quick game last night between American Idol and bedtime. It's more fun than watching the evening bad news.

Happy Wednesday.

Long time no talk to.

It has been far too long again. If you are a friend of mine, you know that I am a terrible correspondent. I apologize yet again for my bad habit. Some people are good at writing letters, like my grandmother. Grandmother has written me a letter weekly, with comics cut out from the funny papers, for my entire 29 and 5/12 years. I, on the other hand, can't keep current to save my life. So here's the latest from the Bresslers. Read it carefully, as it might be all you get for a few months.

Work. I am still enjoying my job very much. I feel necessary and that I am helping out the company-- it is so nice to feel like my work matters, and it matters now! Teaching junior highers, yeah, it will make a difference, and maybe when they're 25 they'll remember the Pythagorean Theorem and appreciate my work. But what I do propels our company forward quickly-- more houses can be processed because I'm here. That feels great to me. And Glenn tells me he appreciates what I do-- that's really nice. The one down side is the hours. Forty hours of work, not including lunches, plus 45 minutes of commute each way means that I am away from the house for 10.5 hours a day. That's rough on me, and I am feeling the weight of that. That and the taxes junk-- that's been eating my free time, too, but just being at work alllllll day and then driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes... I think I need some books on tape.

I remember a few years ago when I lived in Baltimore. I borrowed my grandparents' condo in Pinehurst, NC, for a few days of my spring break, just to get away from Balty. On the long drive down I listened to the funniest thing I could find at the library to borrow-- something by Paul Reiser about parenthood. I looked like a lunatic driving down the road laughing hysterically, and if you know how I laugh, you know that my eyes become little slits and I have trouble seeing... not such a good thing when driving. So I was driving down the road, laughing heartily, one hand on the wheel, the other hand, thumb and forefinger, pushing my cheeks out of my eyes. Pretty picture. Then, on the way home, I listened to the only other thing I could find at the library-- Tuesdays with Morrie. And I cried my way home. If anyone passed me both times they might think I had emotional issues...

So work has been good. Brad's job is going well. He had one client full time in November through January, and has been taking classes for much of February and March. He met with two more prospective clients last week and they both signed him on, hooray. I've enjoyed having him home because it has lightened my load of housework, and he is available to have lunch with me a tad more often :).

We've been keeping busy with house things-- we just finished the lockers two weeks ago. We bought a set of lockers at a demolition sale in Illinois before we moved. They are three full-sized, old, big, unwieldy, rusty, ding-ed lockers that for some reason looked like a perfectly good storage solution for media. So we bought them at a great price and moved them down here with the intent to refinish them. We spent a few weekends-- felt like forever!-- sanding them and painting them, and they're finally in our living room. I know-- lockers in the living room? But it fits my style perfectly. I like a traditional, cozy look with one curveball thrown in for interest. The curveball in the living room is named, "lockers." The curveball in the kitchen is named, "vintage kitchen table." The curveball in our bedroom is our headboard made from an old 5-panel door (yet to be painted... a project for another day.) I have a picture of our feet after the painting-- we used spray paint (never again) and it put off an amazing amount of black dust. We were sneezing paint dust for quite a while afterward. Can't be good for us...

We've taken a few minutes off of house projects here and there to explore the area. A few weekends ago we ventured north to the Lee County Fair. Oh, the delight! How long has it been since we've been to a fair, we wondered. We went on a Saturday night and got there just as folks were lining up for the Joe Diffie concert. We passed on the concert but walked around the fair for a while. We went in the house-made-from-a-huge-log and admired the handiwork therein, we saw many rides and were tempted by the men yelling, "Hey there! Win a doll for the lady!" (ok, not really tempted) to try our hand at throwing the ball into the rigged basket, we saw numerous fair-food stands... and then we came upon the petting zoo. Spoilsport Kath had seen something on 20/20 or the like which told of children dying from horrible diseases they picked up at petting zoos, so we both kept our hands in our pockets. We did admire many an animal-- lots of baby goats, sheep, pigs, etc, some horses, I think a ram of some kind, a tiny horse that looked thoroughly embarrassed to be stared at, and bunnies and chicks. Just as we were leaving the petting zoo, the pig races began next tent over. We cheered for lucky number 4, but he didn't get the Oreo prize. As we walked away we were drawn by an intriguing sign over a tent-- "Come See Bob, the Giant Pig!" They say fools and their money are soon parted, but boy, Bob was worth the $0.75 we each paid to get a look. He was gigantic. Twelve hundred pounds. He was just big everywhere. Just a very big pig. He was laying on his side, looking forlorn and maybe a bit ill...? It looked to me that he had a tumor on his end... but anatomical genius Brad informed me that he was sure Bob was a boy pig, and that "growth" had a twin. Oops.

We finished walking the loop around the fairground and decided after all we had seen that we were no longer hungry for fair-food. Brad mumbled something about cleanliness and maybe the board of health, so we went out for Gatsby's pizza instead.

Two weeks ago we took a vacation day on a Sunday (heathens) and spent the day on Marco Island. I'd heard of Marco but never been, and Brad had only been on business once. We bought beach chairs and an umbrella and headed down south, about an hour. When we arrived we drove around for a while and noticed quite a few plots of land. Marco is shaped like a whole bunch of capital E's-- every pair of streets has a waterway in between instead of an alley. Virtually every house has it's own dock and waterfront-- very nice if you're into boating. We're not so much the boaters yet, but we appreciate beachfront. So as we drove and noticed all the vacant lots, we mused about buying a quarter-acre and saving up to build on it in ten years. We came upon a beautiful piece of property that backed up to the Gulf of Mexico-- we'd have our own 75 feet of beach!!! We figured that quarter acre lots in Lehigh are about $50 grand, in Bonita are about $100 grand, in Naples are about $150 grand, so on Marco maybe they're $250,000? I called the number on the For Sale sign... we were only off by one power of ten. Seriously-- a vacant quarter acre is going for $2,500,000. After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we found a pizza place, had a quick bite, parked illegally at the Radisson hotel, then sat on the beach for a while. It was a wonderful vacation, much needed and much appreciated. We've decided that March is absolute heaven down here. November through February are nothing to complain about at all, but March is just paradise. We also decided that we need to set aside one weekend per month to vacation and explore-- St. Petersburg, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Orlando, the Keys and the Everglades are all day- or weekend-long trips. We must take advantage of this amazing place! (Before nasty hot summer comes and I get grumpy from the heat and stay inside.)

Mom came to visit for a week and we enjoyed spending time with her. She helped us plan what to put in the part of our yard by the front door that is a marshland. We need a tree, or a bush, or something besides sunken wet moldy grass. We had a ball driving around looking at other people's landscaping, and also going to a really nice nursery to look at trees. Dang things are $100 each and I can't keep anything alive, so we might wait until there are a few empty spaces on our plates before we tackle landscaping. I took off half of Wednesday afternoon to explore Pine Island with Mom-- we found a fantastic seafood place off the beaten path where I had my first experience with coconut cream pie-- amazing-- and we found some fun art galleries to go into. It was really nice to spend face-to-face time with Mom. It's amazing how much I miss her sometimes.

On a sad note, we learned last week that my Uncle Kenny (huge, invincible Uncle Kenny) has advanced cancer. It was found during a routine checkup and it's not looking so good. Please pray for a miracle, and that he will somehow turn to Jesus in this time. It might be only a few more days... pray for him and for our whole family. It has been really hard to handle.

I hope that all is well with you and yours. As we all do when faced with mortality, I have grown keenly aware of the connections my heart has with yours. Let us all take the moment to say the unsaid thing, do the thing we hesitate to do, love instead of judge. Emerson said, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

Love to you, and I mean it.

Kath

I owe you lots of pictures and news.

I only have a minute as I'm due for a phone date with pregnant Megan in Evanston. So nine minutes will have to suffice. I'll short hand the news.

1.) We returned the Jetta to Carmax in Lauderdale. We didn't buy the poopie-smelling Golf. We DID buy a beautiful champagne-colored Honda Accord from a small lot three doors down from my office. It's a 2001, only 38,000 miles, a few scratches where the old man hit things here and there, but otherwise in mint condition. I love it.

2.) On Valentine's Day we made dinner together. Twice. I learned that hoisin sauce in Florida is verrrry different than hoisin sauce in Chicago. Not enough asians down here, I guess. It's tragic. The stir fry was perfect. Except that it tasted tangy and a little sweet, but not in a good way. So Brad made take-2 and forgot to preheat the pan, so we had stir-poached chicken for dinner. It was fun though.

3.) We had the whole family over last friday for dinner-- burgers on the grill and smores for dessert. The logs wouldn't light, though, so Brad rolled up chunks of the yellow pages and we made smores quickly before the yellow-page-logs burned up.

4.) We're trying to sell the Mercedes. The thing seems to run on hundred-dollar-bills instead of gas. After pouring two grand into it SINCE AUGUST, we've decided maybe it's not the best car for us. Please pray that we get a fair price for it and that we can find a good car for Brad.

Here are a bunch of pictures in rapid fashion.

Last week it got realllly cold here-- well, at least abnormal-for-Florida-cold. We woke up Tuesday with frost on the car! Too bad we threw away our window scrapers in Chicago. A bit too hasty we were.

We made our Valentine's dinner twice. If this was Brad's face on the second try, just imagine how thrilled he was with our first try.

Yeah, here's the nasty hoisin. Never buy Dynasty Hoisin Sauce from Supertarget. It is really nasty.

I win the nearly-clean-plate award! (Trust me, the water chestnut ratio was way off, so I didn't eat all of mine.

On Friday after burgers on the lanai, we went into the driveway to make the fire. Here is Jeff starting in on the phone book. Little did we know how important that phonebook would be to our dessert.

So the phonebook logs burned well, but the real logs in top never really became the campfire we were hoping for. But you get an A+ for effort, Love, and lots of gold stars for working so hard to make your wife feel happy and loved.

On Saturday morning I finally picked out some colors for the walls. The straightjacket days of white walls everywhere are gone! Benjamin Moore has little samples you can use to try some of their colors. I chose a gray-blue for the bedroom. The one on the left is way dark, and the one on the right is a little too powder-blue for me.

The entry/great room/kitchen/hall will be creamy-gold. Neither of these really send me-- the top one is too 70s harvest gold, the bottom one is too perky. I want something calming and comfortable, with a hint of warm hug in it.

On Saturday night we went to the Edison Festival of Light Grand Parade in downtown Fort Myers. Edison had a winter house here and that's pretty much the claim to fame of Fort Myers. Oh, Ford had one, too, next door to Edison.

Here we are at the parade on the WAY-FM risers. They built a set of risers on a flatbed and parked on the sidewalk-- prime seats for the parade! WAY-FM is one of the Christian radio stations in Fort Myers.

We met up with Robin, my new buddy from work, and her daughter and daughter's friend. She had saved seats for us on the risers.

When it got dark the fireworks started behind us in the high school parking lot.

If you look carefully you can see the beginning of the parade... John Deere tractors. They came down the street, turned around, and went back the other way. I knew from that moment that this wasn't no Chicago-style parade. I now live in a small town, with lots of country folks. I'm still getting over all the confederate flags on cars, t-shirts, and massive belt buckles. But I usually only see that at Walmart. I'm just a city girl through and through. John Deere tractors to start the parade. Why didn't I think of that.

The first thing in the parade after the tractors was a guy wrapped in twinkle lights riding a segway down the street. (No idea how to comment on that. What the heck?) The rest of the parade was your typical small-town parade-- flatbeds covered in astroturf with the staff of the Dodge-Chrysler dealership waving, high school marching bands with pom girls, old folks sitting on the back of convertibles, etc. We did get to see Vonzell from American Idol. She's a Fort Myers native, too.

Eventually we got cold and went home a bit early.

Oh- one other thing that blew my mind, er, I mean, we saw. The motorcycle police gang did a little "act"-- two lines of four bikes each going south, three lines of four bikes each going north, towards each other. Can you picture? The groups drove toward each other but slipped between the other lines so as to avoid collisions. Pretty neat, yeah, whatever. But THEN-- one of the genius cops stood up-- STOOD UP-- on his seat with his arms outstretched and drove south through the north-headed lines, threading the needle so to speak. Sorry for the awkward description-- but seriously...? Cops? Standing on their bike seats? Ok, so does that mean that if I become a parent I should run with scissors, but only the kids should not? Does anyone else see anything funny about that? Things just don't make sense down here!

Oh, dear.

Has it really been a month since I last updated? If you've decided to stop checking in on me, I understand. It's been nutso since I started my new job. No excuse, though. I'm sorry.

Yes, I started my new job on January 17th after a weekend in Chicago visiting with family and friends. We had a ball even though it was bleeping cold there. I feel truly Floridian now. I hate the cold. I realized while we were there that we talked about the weather A LOT. (I'm sorry.) And now I think I know why. See, in Chicago, people live there expressly for the city, the activities, etc. And so they talk about the city, activities, etc. But in Florida, people live here for the weather, so we talk about the weather. Not like, huh, I guess it's nice today. No, more like, Man! I LOVE this weather! It makes me so happy! We should be outside today! And on and on. I'm not ashamed anymore. I love this weather and it DOES make me happy.

Speaking of the weather, it rained last weekend. That was weird. We haven't seen rain for months, and then Saturday was a veritable monsoon. I really hated it. And we were driving over to the other coast (Fort Lauderdale) to check out a car for Brad. It turned out to be a dud but we bought one at Carmax that afternoon! It was a beautiful thing. Canyon Red Volkswagen Jetta, tan leather interior, just a beaut. But when we got it home we found it had a coolant leak and some other issues, so thanks to Carmax's nice 5-day return policy, back it went on Wednesday night. Hey, Brad, do I get extra Good Wife points for giving up date night to deal with cars?

While we were at Carmax the second time we looked at a gorgeous silver VW Golf. It was just really pretty (man, did I marry a car guy or what? Three years ago I would never have called a car gorgeous or really pretty. Pretty soon we'll start dressing alike.) Anyway, it was pretty on the outside, ran like a dream, and smelled like poop. Really. Have you seen the Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets his car back from the shop and it smells like the shop guy's body odor? Well, this would have been the opposite. We would have gotten b.o. from the car. No, thank you.

So we decided to continue our hunt on this coast. The next day Brad found a nice champagne-colored Honda Accord just up the street from my office. He drove it and it's great. I'm going to drive it tomorrow morning, and we might buy it. Beautiful inside and out, and runs nicely. A 2001 I think, with 34,000 miles (!); it was owned by an elderly couple and the guy died. But not before taking excellent care of the car.

Work has been good, thanks for asking. I absolutely love this job. I sit in a tiny closet with no windows and horrid circulation, alternately baking and shivering, going batty from the overhead fluorescent lights, but I love it. Robin, Glenn, and John are all really great people to be around. Robin is the bookkeeper and office manager and is teaching me the ropes of how the filing system works, etc. Glenn is the paperwork-man and is teaching me all there is to know about getting a house permitted for building. He is terribly patient and very pleasant to be around. I couldn't ask for a better boss. John is the superintendent, or field-man, so he's rarely around. When he is, he's great. I'm doing a lot of getting-systems-in-place. Like I've said, they usually build around 8 houses a year, and right now we have NINE being processed for permitting. I feel like I'm learning a ton, I like what I'm learning, and my work is appreciated. Meanwhile, my teaching replacement is struggling with kids and one nearly stabbed her with a pencil the second day she was there. I do NOT miss that job one bit.

I was on a blog today and came across this fun list to fill out. Write a comment and tell me your Fours, ok?

Four jobs I've had:
Counting checks at a bank
Inspecting road construction work
Being a houseparent to forty international high school girls
Teaching junior high

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Chocolat
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (seriously)
Father of the Bride
Mostly Martha

Four places I have lived:
Libertyville, Illinois
Baltimore, Maryland
Evanston, Illinois
Lehigh Acres, Florida

Four tv shows I love to watch:
That 70s Show
The Planet's Funniest Animals
Crossing Jordan
Anything HGTV

Four places I have been on holiday:
New York City
Boston
Chicago
Playa Del Carmen

Four of my favorite dishes:
Chicken Parmesan
Filet Mignon with Twice Baked Potatoes
Cashew Chicken
My Mom's Creole Pot Roast

Four websites I visit daily:
ask.metafilter.com
msnbc.com
notmartha.org
roominroppongi.blogspot.com

Four places I'd rather be:
In bed-- stayed up too late last night
At a show on Broadway
Exploring Charleston, SC
At Mimi's Cafe eating chicken pot pie

A few more home improvements

Last week we had our Bressler Family Christmas at Ralph and Chris's house. We had Chris's famous lasagna for dinner and then opened presents. At the end of the evening Brad and I took the kids outside to throw "snaps", those little fireworks that you throw on the ground to make a flash and snap. We had a great time with them and they enjoyed it, too. Here you can see the The Blue-Eyes (Chase and Brad) after the presents were opened.

We've been working in the garage getting it organized. We found plans online (at Better Living Through Handymanlyness- ha!) for a workbench and made two small ones for the garage. We also rigged up some pegboard and one wall is looking go-od. Brad nearly cried when we finished as he finally has a suitable workplace. We still need to put things away and finish organizing the shelves along the side walls of the garage, but the building part is done. Yay! We're quite proud, and had so much fun working together.


Oh, and we went dumpster diving to get some of the 2x4s and plywood since there are so many half-finished houses around with dumpsters and piles of trash.

And today I learned another good thing about winter in Florida-- January is strawberry season! There were huge, beautiful strawberries at the market today.

For the past week or so we've had cooler weather and we refuse to turn the heat on in the house. It's gotten down to 64 inside in the morning and we finally put on the flannel sheets on the bed. I've also been wearing a sweatshirt and fuzzy socks in addition to long pants and a t-shirt. I'm pretty sure our blood is thinning and we're becoming official Floridians. I'm getting cold pretty easily.

Today I'll head to Chicago for a visit and to celebrate Steph and Mom's birthdays. Brad will come up on Friday night. We're not looking forward to the cold, but we are desperate to see our friends and family. It has been truly painful to be away from them, especially given what whom we have met down here. To be fair, many people have been pretty nice, but we'll just say it's been really difficult to be away from our friends. We're in the Bible belt and we can tell-- lots of shallow, fakey Christianity and ultra-traditional husband/wife role expectations. We're not enjoying being put in a box and we really miss real-ness. Can't WAIT to get home.

The Week Between

The days after Christmas always feel a bit like a let-down. The presents have been opened, people who gathered are dispersing, and what lies ahead is just clean-up and normalcy, with a quick New Year's Day celebration. It also usually means that vacation is quickly scurrying to an end. However, this year vacation is just beginning for me! I have been enjoying my time off so far, getting my grading done and doing some relaxing and shopping with Steph. She left yesterday, though, so I'm a little sad and lonely, but I'm doing some projects around the house and cleaning. I also discovered Ceragem, which is a massage bed store. I met the owner at our church's Christmas party and her name is Kathleen. She owns the place and said that people come in daily for free treatments on the beds. I asked if she felt used that people come in every day but don't pay her anything. She said that they eventually buy the bed or tell other people about, and it all works out in the end. So I finally found the place in Fort Myers (when you come visit I'll take you there!) and went for a treatment yesterday. It's not like a traditional kneading massage, but instead there are rollers that roll up and down the spine s-l-o-w-l-y, realigning everything and giving a wonderful stretch. There's also infrared heat involved which is supposed to help detoxify the body. I haven't done enough research to figure out if I buy that yet, but it felt fantastic. I'm going back tomorrow. Find a place near you-- www.ceragem.com .

Today I hung out with a teacher friend of mine who is getting married in February. Six of us had lunch together and then worked on wedding favors, hot-gluing feathers to Mardi Gras masks. Tomorrow will be a Ceragem treatment and then learning how to use my new sewing machine. My old Singer died just before Christmas and I bought a new White one which I can't wait to learn how to use.

Well, I owe you some pictures. Here are our adventures this past week. I hope your Christmas was warm and wonderful. Each year I yearn for a newness of the Christmas message to come, something besides the straight facts of Luke 2. Our sermon on Christmas Eve was about how Jesus came not just to save us for eternity's sake, but to make us *whole*. That word "whole" hit me and stuck, as I have been feeling anything but whole lately with this job taking everything out of me. I intend to spend my vacation time pondering that thought and figuring out what wholeness means. If you have thoughts, I'm all ears.

Anyway, here are pictures.

This is how Steph spent her first few days in Florida. Fun fun fun on the eportfolio. She had to post a bunch of student teaching artifacts to her Iowa ePortfolio and tried to do so unsuccessfully until finding out she had used up all of her storage. After that got figured out things went more smoothly.

On Monday night Steph and I heard on the news that there was a place that was giving away free Christmas trees. We got the address and after a little driving around on Tuesday morning, we found the lot! (Our first attempt got us to the office of the sponsoring company, which is in the same strip mall as a large store called Joe's Gun Shop. Not what we had in mind.) We figured the trees would be dead and scraggly, but hey, free trees. We were wrong and we got a beautiful 7 and a half foot Douglas Fir! The guys at the place even cut off the end, bundled it up, and tied it to the roof of the car!


So on Tuesday night we put up the tree. Here is the view from the living room toward the kitchen of just the trunk. (The highest point in the house is about 15 high and we wanted the tree to fill up the space so we put it on the trunk.)


Here is the tree all bundled up in netting.


And here it is all decorated on the ground. Lifting it up onto the trunk took all three of us, and we had only one small casualty.



And here it is on the trunk!


After we put it up I thought it looked a little bare, so I made a bunch of ornaments out of the shells we collected in October after the hurricane. I hot-glued ribbon onto the shells and got a few dozen free ornaments!

Steph brought these foam antlers from Chicago so we put them on Kena. First she gave us a super-cute dimpled smile and then she started with her signature funny faces.





"Hmmm. I wonder if I wear these antlers if Santa will come sooner..."
And of course, the wrinkled nose look. She gives us this look often.

We gathered on Christmas Eve for "dinner" at 11:30 a.m. Brad had to leave in the early afternoon to go to band practice for the three evening services, so lunch came early.


We ate on the lanai and then rested for a little bit before Steph and I went to church as well. The table which took up nearly our whole dining room in Evanston is dwarfed by the big porch space, but it works nicely as an alterative dining area.

Steph and I worked in the nursery during the 5 p.m. and 6:30 services before attending the 8 p.m. service. By the time we all got home we were exhausted. We climbed into bed and woke up late to open presents on Christmas. Here we are in front of our tree.

First Alligator Sighting

We saw our first alligator in the wild on Saturday after picking up Steph from the airport. As we waited to turn right at a light, maybe a mile from the airport, we looked over and saw this cute baby about three feet long sunning himself on a concrete slab. (If you click on the picture you can see it better.)

Thanksgiving and Beyond-- A Big Catch-up

I owe you updates and I'm sorry it's been so long! I tried to post an update last week and the window closed and shut down, so I just gave up out of frustration. We'll see if technology cooperates today.

It's Monday morning and I'm not at school!!! (I will be going in today to get some grading done, but that's different.) Friday was my last day with kids. Coincidentally the schedules were mixed around due to awards ceremonies in the morning so my very last class on Friday was my worst. Never have I been SOOOO sure that leaving is a good idea. Ugh. Friday night Brad and I test drove cars (both cars are in need of replacing-- mine doesn't have airbags and with the increased driving I'll be doing I'd like safety features, Brad's service light has gone on and the shop says it needs some significant attention. We've poured a lot of money into it and just need to get rid of it. God knows our needs, thank goodness!) We also went out to dinner to celebrate my last day of teaching. I feel my stress level decreasing already.

Saturday my sister Steph arrived in town and will be with us for 10 days!!! It's so fun to see her as I haven't seen her since we left in June. We both have some work to do today and tomorrow, but then the rest of the week we'll get to play.

So here are some pictures-- call it a month in review.


Dad came for Thanksgiving and on Black Friday, the day after, we decided to go to Sears to take advantage of their great prices on Craftsman tool cabinets. Here are Brad and I showing you proof that we were up at 5:21 a.m. We got a great deal on...


... a tool cabinet! Brad got his birthday present a little early.



Later that weekend Dad, Brad, and I went to Sanibel and ate at the marina at Gramma Dot's. The food is amazingly fresh and delicious and we got there just as the sun was setting!

On Sunday we met at Longhorn Steakhouse to celebrate Brad and Shelley's birthday! They hadn't celebrated their birthday together in over 10 years I think, so it was a special time. Afterward everyone came back to our house for cake and ice cream. In this picture Shelley is asking why she gets three candles and Brad gets four... it was because they turned thirty four.

Sorry to be graphic, but my sister wanted to know what hives look like. This was my foot on a good day. Happy me, they have since left. Now I just itch a bit at night and that's even diminishing as well. After bloodwork and doctor appointments, they said that yes, we're sure you're allergic to something, and we think it's the Nexium I was taking for acid reflux. So I'm off the Nexium but am now popping Pepcid and staying away from soda and spicy foods.



One day two weeks ago I stayed home from school when the hives returned. I had the front door open for a breeze and heard clanking outside. I looked out and saw these vulture-like birds on the garbage cans! All the more reason to wash our hands early and often. I've never seen birds like these-- kind of like a cross between ducks, turkeys, and what I think vultures look like. Ugly.


Two Saturdays ago Brad and I got to use our tools and make a furniture dolly. We brought out the sawhorses, miter saw, drill and supplies into the driveway and had a great time constructing the dolly. Before we left Chicago we bought a set of lockers from a demolition sale and we've been wanting to sand them down and paint them. However, they're so heavy we can't just pick them up and move them around so the dolly helped us swing them into the front yard. I got two sides of them sanded and repainted-- I'll take pictures of those sometime for you.

Last Saturday, brother- and sister-in-law Beth and Rico were packing in preparation for their move. We took baby Makena out of their hair for the day and did some Christmas shopping. She's such a delightful baby with a bubbly personality and huge charming smiles. When we got home we did the best we could to entertain her, and we thought what better way than in a big box with Uncle Brad? Well, Kena didn't agree. She thought we were trapping her and put up a fuss.



She's a tall, skinny baby who is a picky eater. We tried to stuff whatever we could into her to fill her belly. Applesauce, yes. Chicken, heck no. That was spit out immediately with a sour face. But wonder of wonders, we hit the jackpot with an Eggo waffle. She ate the whole thing!

School let out early on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday due to busing issues-- the high schools let out early because of finals, so the middle schools let out early, too! I don't really get it, but we got out at 2 p.m. so I don't really care why. Anyway, I came home one day and put up icicle lights on the house to surprise Brad. It has been difficult to get into the holiday spirit when it's still so warm outside. The lights helped.



I also hung a wreath from a bow on the guest room window. So festive!

No Christmas decoration would be complete without a visit from a resident frog. He was on the gutter and Brad tried to knock him off, but instead he jumped onto the icicle light and hung on for dear life. The funny part was-- you know when you put a flashlight in your mouth and your cheeks glow red?-- the light was right on the frog's belly, which was glowing red!