Summertime One Liners

Posted in Holidays and Seasons, Miscellaneous by teamtradermom

I have never picked fresh flowers from a garden.

Boy was I missing out.

I think I pulled a muscle swatting at a spider that was hanging down from my belt.

—

I’m so glad kids don’t inherit the fears of their parents.

I do wish she had inherited my ability to lay down and go to sleep right away without getting up 800 times or crying.

—

It’s amazing what a difference 10 degrees can make. 90 feels a lot better than 100.

80 would feel a lot better than 90.

—

Samson broke out of the backyard tonight and then 30 minutes later, after I got him home, he stole one of Munchkins’ toys.

The old boy’s got some spunk in him yet!

—

I still feel like that spider is still on me. Is it on me?

—

Magic beans do not work.

Magic Mike, on the other hand, will work quite nicely for me tomorrow night.

—

I’ve started adding mid-day walks back in to my work schedule.

I like it when I stumble across things like this on my walks.

The nasty blisters I developed on the back of my foot from wearing the wrong shoes I could do without.

—

Now that the 4th of July has come and gone, the end of Summer will be here before we know it.

Better enjoy every minute of it while it lasts.

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8Jul2012

Whistle While you Work

Posted in Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

We went to the Homerun Derby at TD Ameritrade Park last week. While there, we bought Isabella a smoothie that came in a “cup” almost as big as she is!

She figured out how to use that really long straw as a whistle….

Here’s a sneak peak at her playing “Camptown Races” on it.

Isabella whistles Camptown Races using a straw!

She’s got the choreography down pretty well too!

CJ’s trying to teach her how to spin it around really fast to make a high pitched whistle but she hasn’t figured out how to do that without hitting someone/something….

We’ll stick with the regular whistling for now!

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5Jul2012

June Bug

Posted in Family, Goals by teamtradermom

The year is half over. We’re in to July and that means summer will be done before we know it. Excuse me for a moment…

*SOB*

Ok, I feel better now.

This also means that I should be halfway done with my goals right? Mmm, maybe. Many of them are ongoing but I do feel pressure to be making more progress on other ones. Let’s take a look-see.

Family and Home:

1. Do at least one family outing a month. We were VERY busy this month.

We went to Sand in the City

(shout out to my friend Jay who designed this one and won an award for it!)

And Taste of Omaha.

We spent a rainy afternoon playing at the indoor kids area in the mall.

And we checked out the Architects of Air Luminaria exhibit.

We also stopped to see the big swimmer dude coming up out of the ground, in honor of the Olympics Swim Trials.

Which leads us to our next family event – last but not least – the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials

Isabella thought it was too noisy…

I’d say we did pretty darn good!!

2. Tackle the following home projects this year:

Buy and hang curtains on all the windows. Nope, didn’t do anything. The only room we have left to do is the living room and I’m not in a huge hurry.

Unpack the remaining boxes in the basement. I actually got rid of 2 more boxes! I found great ways to use a lot of the stuff I found too.

Create a sitting room within the master bedroom. I’ve been on the lookout for stuff but haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for yet.

Add built in shelves to the living room by the end of the year. This will be a big project and we haven’t had the time or money to tackle it yet. Sometime before the end of the year though for sure!

3. Have Isabella potty trained by her 3rd birthday (September 30). We started and she is clearly not ready. She has no interest in sitting on the potty nor does she seem to mind wearing a dirty diaper. We’ll give her some more time, then try again.

4. Research pre-schools and enroll Isabella in one to start in the fall of 2012. I’m thinking more and more that she won’t be ready for pre-school in the fall. Mentally I think she could handle it but in terms of potty training, no (as mentioned above).

Financial and career:

5. Attend one career professional event a month. Yep, I attended one even this month.

6. Spend less money. Well we try. It’s a daily/weekly battle. Some weeks are better than others, depending on what comes up. But overall I think we’re doing quite well.

Physical and health:

7. Adopt one new healthy habit each month. I’ve given up on this one. I don’t seem to have enough discipline to do anything healthy except for exercise. I’ll keep fighting the good fight but I’m going to stop with the monthly habits. I’m tired of disappointing myself.

Social and cultural:

8. Attend at least 4 cultural events this year (e.g. Broadway shows, concerts, museum exhibitions). As you can see from the list above, we did many things, including the Luminaria exhibit and the Fremont Dinner Train.

9. Regularly participate in events put on by the social clubs I belong to (speakers events, parties, happy hours, etc). Again, very busy month. I attended several FACs (Friday Afternoon Club) get togethers through work, a baseball game, Luminaria, the Fremont Dinner Train, and a spontaneous neighborhood beer night

10. Go on a date night with CJ once a month. The Fremont Dinner Train was one of our date nights. The Warrior Dash was another. Ok maybe that doesn’t count? But this does – we went to a wedding, sans the Munchkin. I know this will sound awful and crazy to some people but I prefer to attend weddings without children. They take over the dance floor and many parents use the wedding as their personal baby-sitter. Not cool. So we almost always leave the little one at home when we go to weddings and instead use the time for us!

There you have it, another month in the books. While all the things we did in June were fun, I’m hoping that July is a little more calm. Although it’s not starting off that way. Already this week we’ve gone to 2 movies, a baseball game/fireworks show and a neighborhood block party. What can I say – you gotta grab life by the horns because it’s just too darn short to sit around and let it pass you by!

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30Jun2012

Little Touches

Posted in House and Home by teamtradermom

We have officially lived in our house for 9 months.

9 MONTHS!

I can hardly believe it. Some moments it feels like 9 days; others like 9 years.

We love it. I pinch myself sometimes to think about how perfectly everything came together. This house literally had everything we were looking for (the only house that did) and we got such a good deal on it.

Are we totally settled in? Mostly. I say that because while all the rooms have the essentials in them – furniture and items to live on – there are still some finishing touches to be done.

At this point, I’m not pushing myself to have the house “Better Homes and Gardens” ready by any certain date. I find it goes better if I tackle a little bit here and there. Sometimes I need to have a moment of inspiration before I decide how to fill a space. Also, as I unpack boxes from the basement (yes, there are still quite a few) I find new homes for things (possibly different than where I had those same things in our old house).

All that to say, I’ve made some more progress in the last few weeks that I wanted to share.

Let’s start with the dining room. The last time we saw this tray, that I made using leftover fabric, it looked like this:

Since then, I’ve changed it up a bit by adding a vase of fresh flowers and a candle that my sister gave me for Mother’s Day (it’s actually yellow inside so sometimes I leave the lid off for an added punch of color and extra fragrance).

I like the grouping of 3 MUCH better and love the touch of organic and color added by having the flowers (also ties in nicely with the plant next to it).

Moving on to the kitchen….

So one of the things I found when digging through boxes was a bag full of magnets. See, we have a tradition that we buy a magnet from every new place we visit. However, our refrigerator is stainless steel so the front is not magnetized but the sides are. I decided to make a “wall of magnets” on the side with our travel ones.

I think it looks pretty cool and it’s a fun thing to see when you walk in from the garage! Isabella likes checking out all the different places and finding them on the map we have downstairs.

The kitchen in our old house was done in a coffee theme so I have a lot of wall hangings and decorations related to coffee. The new kitchen doesn’t have much room for that kind of stuff as we have a ton of cabinets and no real ‘free’ wall space.

I was able to find a sliver of wall wide enough for these little guys though.

They add that little extra something that the kitchen needed in that corner.

I also put some stuff up on top of the cabinets (pretend the counters are perfectly clean and that you don’t see the pile of dirty dishes).

Here’s the close-up.

I’d like to keep adding to the top of the cabinets as I think it provides additional interest and color without being too obvious, but I want to be careful not to overcrowd them.

While I was sorting through kitchen boxes, I came across my stack of cookbooks. I don’t use all of them (a couple I’ve never used), but they’re a natural item to display in the kitchen so I put them on the bottom of this accent table.

If you look back here, you’ll notice that originally I had some coffee trinkets on that bottom shelf. Those got put up on top of the cabinets to make room for the books!

Now let’s wander in to the living room, shall we?

So let’s start with my FABULOUS clearance find. I was shopping at Kohl’s and wandered over to the clearance bin in the home goods section. Nothing caught my eye until I glanced down at the bottom shelf and saw a beautiful orange/grey/tan/white rug. I noticed it because those are the colors in our living room, along with turquoise and the occasional splash of green. I picked it up and didn’t see any tags on it so I put it back and walked away. But I didn’t get far. I turned around and looked at it again, unsure. Do we really need a rug in there? What if it was a lot of money?

Then I remembered the Goodwill Incident of last week. See, I had spotted a really nice standalone full length mirror in one of the stores that would have been perfect in our bedroom. I didn’t get it because I didn’t feel like messing with hauling it to the car, blah blah. Well after a few days it was nagging at me so I went back and the mirror was gone.

Lesson learned: trust your gut!

So I took that rug up front and it was marked down 80% to $15!! Plus I had a 20% off coupon! Done and done!

And it looks awesome…

While we’re here, I’ll show you the rest of the living room, which is the one room in the house that is the most done.

By the way, those orange tub chairs were a garage sale find by CJ. He got both for $30. We had them in the basement of the old house, just to stage it, figuring we might get rid of them once we moved. The movers plopped them in the living room and we loved how it looked and ended up building the rest of the room around them!

I really like the unexpectedness of the round ottoman/coffee table. Ties in the curves of the tub chairs with the leather of the couch.

We bought that rocker when Isabella was born, to use for nursing at night and such. Since we’re way past all that, it got placed in here for extra seating. That’s pretty much where you’ll find CJ any night of the week that we’re home.

And of course the fireplace.

By the way, that back wall with the black and white pics is where we want to put built-in shelves. I think it would look awesome to have white built-ins with a space in the middle for a TV and picture. We will hopefully get going on that project soon…

All in all, I love how the room has come together. It’s very eclectic and unique (you won’t really find anything in our house that’s too matchy-matchy).

Couple more little things to point out.

This tray was born out of necessity.

See, I was painting my nails one night and put a polish remover soaked cotton ball on the table without thinking….and it ate away at the finish. Oops. What’s a girl to do but cover it up?

I made this tray using a picture we got in Ireland and a frame with the stand torn off (and some felt ‘feet’ tacked to it so as not to scratch up the table). Works like a charm!

I found this tray at Goodwill for $3.

That little ottoman was getting stained up from CJ putting his drinks on it so now he has a tray to put them in!

Finally, some additions to the gallery wall.

Here’s the before:

And the after:

Can you spot the additoins?

Yep, this collage I did of all the photo booth pics we’ve taken over the years.

We sort of have a thing about photo booths. If we see one while out on a date or traveling or something, we stop and get some pics taken. What can I say, it’s cheap fun!

I also added these 2 little prints that I found in the basement. Both of them are original prints I did in college.

So that’s the latest on the house! I have a lot of fun digging up new stuff and finding “homes” for them all. More updates to come as we continue to progress!

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26Jun2012

It’s a Mystery

Posted in CJ by teamtradermom

Have you ever played the game Clue? We played it all the time as a family growing up and I loved it!

Colonel Mustard, in the Ballroom with the lead pipe!

I’ve always had a fascination with mysteries – books, movies, TV shows, games, you name it. As a kid I read all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. As an adult I’ve loved anything by John Grisham, Alex Kava, James Patterson, and the like. CJ and I spend many nights watching Bones, Castle and Rizzoli and Isles too.

At one point I even wanted to be a detective when I grew up. Not sure when or why that changed. Heck, part of me STILL to be one.

So it should come as no surprise that when an opportunity to partake in the Fremont Dinner Train Murder Mystery with a group of co-workers came up, I was all over it.

In a nutshell, the Murder Mystery dinner train is a dining experience that gets the audience involved in solving a murder that took place on the train. Actors in full costume walk amongst you and provide clues while you enjoy a 5 course meal.

We boarded the train at 7:15pm on Saturday night.

We ate crudités and crackers while waiting for all to board and the train to start up. Once we got going, a funny little old man gave us a history of the train, along with rules (no smoking) and details about the evening’s agenda.

As the train moved along, we were treated to beautiful scenery.

I was glad we were able to do an evening in the summer, when it’s light out later in the day, so that we could see the landscape outside our windows. Had it been in the winter we would have missed it all.

The actors were walking around, in character, engaging in conversation with the tables. One of the gals started referring to CJ as “Dairy Queen”* because she said his hair looked like the swoosh on top of the cones.

What do you think?

Then this actress asked the 2 ladies sitting at the table with us if they would like to be part of the show! They would be playing the part of sisters who were models. One of the ‘sisters’ jumped right in (*cough* Kelly *cough*) while the other grudgingly agreed.

Don’t they look smashing?

Pretty soon the first course came out, which was a beef and barley soup.

I am a picky eater and was immediately suspicious of the soup – I mean beef and BARLEY?!? Really??? Plus, it looks kinda gross….but I gave it a go – and surprisingly liked it! I inhaled it as a matter of fact!

As we were eating, the actors got up and started the show. They had each table of 4 appoint a secretary (me, naturally) who would take notes and write down clues. Then they introduced the characters and started in on the story (which I won’t give the details of so as not to spoil it for anyone). Our job was to figure out who the killer was, how they did it and their motive.

We chomped on some salad (very good but I forgot to get a picture of it) while putting our heads together to decipher all the clues we got.

We continued our detective work over the main course.

I had the Pasta Primavera, which came with peas and fruit. CJ and the rest of our table ordered the Prime Rib. My pasta was decent and the peas and fruit were good. CJ said the Prime Rib was good too, though not anything to write home about.

At one point it was starting to get overwhelming with all the information from the actors. We had a lot of clues but none of them seemed to help narrow down the list of suspects.

Finally they served dessert, which was carrot cake.

As we pulled back in to the station, we were asked to write down our guess for the murderer, their means and motive and turn it in. Our table was split 50/50 as to who we thought it was. One of the actors came over and gave us a final clue, which was the last piece of the puzzle we needed. We turned in our answers and crossed our fingers.

They then announced that of all the tables (maybe 30 in total), only 5 got it right. And guess who was one of the 5?

That’s right – us!

And we got certificates to prove it!

All in all it was a really fun experience. It’s kind of pricey ($86 per person) but worth it for a date night splurge. We got dinner and a unique entertainment experience all in one! I would definitely recommend trying it at least once. They also do other kinds of shows besides mysteries, so those would be neat to check out too.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel like having some ice cream.

*Update: in no way am I trying to endorse or malign a certain ice cream restaurant chain’s image.

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