On the road again...

Nor Cal

Things I love about Nor Cal...
1. It really doesn't matter what you wear
2. Playing board games almost every night
3. Wrasslin' and throwing things at siblings and cousins
4. My "bonus" family... to be utterly cheesy, I've got the best of both worlds.

Goodnight, moon.

Before & After: Table Edition

Aaron and I tackled our first "all by ourselves" project of refinishing a table that we bought from a family at church. It took the pressure of the housewarming party to really get us motivated to do it, but now I'm SO glad we did! :) Okay, my mom ended up helping a little bit, but for the most part we really did do it by ourselves!

Doh! Aaron had already commenced with sanding before I took pictures.

Scout-tested, Kimbo-approved.

Ta-da!

Completely decorated with Ikea goodies, sans the napkins and rings.

Hooray!

Happy Birthday to me, I guess... Monty Python now has a YouTube channel. 

Now you can enjoy high quality hilarity for free.

Mouskeblog & Home Decor

First things first... I had an awesome weekend. :)

Aaron contacted one of our friends who works for the big Mouse, and got us signed in in honor of my birthday. We took Lori along, and we had a blast! I'll try to give the non-boring version.

After a quick stop at Corner Bakery for breakfast, we headed down to the big D.  As we were emerging from the parking structure, we were speculating on how far away Sylmar was from us because we thought that was the smoke we were smelling.  We met up with our friend and followed him in and over to Tomorrowland, where his girlfriend was prepping for the Jedi Academy show. The park was not crowded at all, at least, not for a Saturday. 

We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou, did a few rides, then headed over to see the Jedi show before we headed out to California Adventure (DCA). That's when we found out that the fires were much closer, in fact, our friend's house was in danger and he had to evacuate! Needless to say, his girlfriend (who also lives there) was pretty worried. We tried to reassure her, but what do you say?

It was a pretty eerie scene that day. As we were heading out down Main Street, it was quiet - there was a lack of the usual cheerful music pumping out into the atmosphere, and there seemed to be hardly anyone there. Not to mention the apocalyptic looking sky - orange smoke seemingly suspended over beautiful blue skies:

We went to DCA and hit the "good" rides, as in, Soaring over California and Toy Story Midway Mania. Toy Story was awesome, so we did it twice, and that was the longest line we waited in all day. 30 minutes. Yeah, not bad at all. I got my birthday tortillas (corn again, yuck), and we went back to Disneyland. 

One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing Lori & Aaron react to the Zoetrope over at the animation place in DCA. It was almost as good as having a kiddo there with us. ;) I didn't capture their reactions, but I did film the Zoetrope so you can see for yourself:

We also knew another friend who was working at the park, so we found her and said hello, and she met up with us after her shift ended. She made my day, because neither Lori or Aaron would go on Splash Mountain with me. We ended up staying until midnight, by which point, apparently, the 57 freeway was open because we took it all the way up to the 210.

I was absolutely exhausted Sunday and didn't get as much done to prepare for our housewarming as I would have liked. And my parents came and took us out to dinner for my birthday (which isn't until Wednesday). I realized that I was going to need to take Monday off from Scheu Plumbing and get some things done around here, so I asked my mom to come help. 

Sidenote: Thank God for my mom, seriously. She helped me with soooo much yesterday.

She and I headed out to Ikea, where I got curtains to hide our excess closet space in our bedroom, place settings for the refurbished table, and a few other odds and ends; storage containers, jars and the like. 

When we got back, she went to work on adding coats of stain to the table and I started cleaning and organizing our "whathaveyou" room. Which is now more of a craft / workout / extra entertaining room. :) 

After she left, Aaron helped me hang up that curtain in our bedroom. I think I got more accomplished yesterday than I had in a good week and a half. I needed those victories. Plus my mom is really crafty and she helped inspire the place settings, I don't know what I would have ended up without her help, but this is what we ended up with:

And this is a closeup of the napkin roll. I owe a lot of thanks to this great Napkin Folding site for teaching me to be a Napkin Ninja! 

One more political thought

I love reading, but it's hard to find the time and energy to do it now that there aren't assignments and deadlines anymore. So I have given myself a star for reading at least 30 minutes a day on the weekends. 

Last night, I had already climbed into bed before I realized I hadn't fulfilled the reading requirement that day, and in my nightstand I had Bird by Bird and Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, a book by Eric Bryant (one of the pastoral-types at Mosaic). 

I remember starting this book and not getting too terribly interested, so I cheated and picked out a chapter that sounded interesting from the Table of Contents. And of course, the one that stood out to me was entitled "Compassionate Conservatives and Loving Liberals."

The chapter was interesting and challenging, but what I really wanted to blog about coming out of it was this passage:

Often, whether we realize it or not, we assume that real issues can only be solved politically. As we study the history books, we hear of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War, and the Thirteenth Amendment, and we assume that Abraham Lincoln and other politicians ended slavery. Ironically, however, the goal of the Civil War was the bringing back of secessionist states while allowing slavery to continue in those states. As the war took its staggering toll, public sentiment in the North and in the border states shifted. Slavery's end was no longer just a concern for abolitionists. The public accepted the idea before the legislation ever went into effect.

Lincoln understood the dynamics of what was happening and proclaimed, 'With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed... Consequently, he who holds public sentiment goes deeper than he who erects statutes or pronounces decisions.'

For those who have worked so hard politically and legislatively to bring about an end to abortions, if public sentiment remains divided even as the laws change, abortions would continue illegally until a shift in political power legalized them once again. To reduce abortions, people need to change their view of when life begins and see the consequences of their actions. This change would become noticeable with or without a law in the books.

We need to vote, and we need Christian men and women who work both within the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The political arena represents a tremendous mission field filled with people who have great influence or at least a tremendous potential to influence others. More than anything, our politics should always be secondary to our practice as followers of Christ.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

New Hair

I can't quite get the bangs to cooperate yet, but not bad for a first try.

Funny Lookin'

Vote!

New Living Room

I got sad yesterday when I realized I didn't take "before" pictures of our living room and dining set. You'll have to take my word for it if you haven't seen it, but this is 1,000 times improved:

The couch we bought in September, the same day as the brown and blue pillows. The striped ones came with the couch (on Saturday). My mom and I went shopping and found the pictures at Home Goods and the rug at Lowe's (of all places).

Scout is being a good sport about staying off the pretty new furniture - well, at least when we are in the room. ;) She's been caught napping on the couch now on two separate occasions when either me or Aaron were in the office.

New chairs we found at Sears (2 for $49!!!). The material is a bit "greenish" but that's okay, because my kitchen accent color is green. We took the leaf out of the table and angled it. It makes a huge difference as far as space goes. I think next weekend we're going to try and tackle refinishing the table in a dark color to match the legs on the chairs. 

Excuse the mess, we were working on projects ALL weekend. One of those projects is a virus-infected Toshiba you see on the table. *shakes fist at viruses* Sorry, Lori, we'll get your compy back to normal soon!

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