A Florida Bath

Of course I don't have any pictures to go with this, but I thought it would make a few of you laugh. This weekend was the grand opening of the pool at Mom's house. I know some of you are scratching your heads thinking...they live in FL, isn't the pool always open? Yes, you are correct, but this was the first weekend that it wasn't raining, we were home and the water was warm enough. Mom and Russ have the pool screened in so it takes a little longer to warm up and since we are Floridians, we don't get in the water unless it is the perfect temperature.

So on to the interesting part of this post, Adelaide now remembers how much she likes swimming. For the last few weeks she has been walking by the pool shaking her finger and head no, while saying nananananan baff. Translation: no bath, not allowed near the pool. So we finally had splash down and she went crazy. Daddy was in the pool spinning her around, she got to jump on the rafts and she immediately started putting her face in the water too. The reason for no pictures...mommy juice...if you don't know what I am talking about just read back to a few older posts.

So in true Florida fashion, a pool equals a bath on the weekend. I'm sure that I don't remember taking showers when I was a kid because we were always in the pool. Of course Mom says that's not true, but I think she just doesn't want to be embarrassed.

NOLA

Yes, this was a month ago, but I did want to share a great trip that Grant and I were able to go on with a bunch of new friends. One of my besties, Leah, got married in Memphis a little over a week ago, but before she could walk down the church aisle she had to take a stroll down Bourbon. No, I wasn't in charge of throwing a frilly shower or anything like that, instead I was put on Bachelorette Party duty.

We decided to go on a Bachelor/Bachelorette outing instead of your normal separate events. I have to say that it was a GREAT decision. Leah had her invite list, Rich had his and then everyone was able to invite a plus one. Not everyone was able to bring their significant other, but in total we had 25 people travel from all over the US to New Orleans.

We had LOTS of drinks, a TON of good food and most importantly we had a FANTASTIC time with all of our new friends.

Leah and Rich are two lucky people, not only because they have found one another, but because they have so many friends that care about them.





We went to Elizabeth's for brunch one day and it was a little scary trying to find the place, but we were so glad that we went. The food was wonderful!!
Look at the menu...Cafe Adelaide




We took this picture long before we realized that this was Sandra Bullock's house behind us.

Seeing your name on a tombstone is really crazy, especially when it isn't a common name.
bridesmaids night 2
This was the only picture of all 25 of usanother brunch group shot



dinner after Acme Oyster house on the first night out.
Grant was in oyster heaven.

etsy heaven

Have you taken the time to go out to www.etsy.com? Such a fantastic concept and it is my new addiction.

I finally worked up the nerve to purchase my first homemade item this week. You can search for days and days on this website or you can use their alchemy function, which is what I did. I scanned in a picture of Adelaide's birthday invitation and gave specific information on what I wanted for a shirt and the price. Believe it or not I had a ton of bids for my business and the person who I selected lives near me, so I don't even have to pay shipping.
Linda has sent me images of her progress on the shirt and I am so excited I can hardly stand it!! Of course I can't post the final product until after the party, but know that so far so good!

Here is my other addiction, BUT I have not purchased...hair bows for Toots. The problem is that you need to order two of them because she has so much hair you need a barrette for each pig tail AND we lose more of these than you can imagine. SO mostly we end up sticking with the Target brand.

after school

I haven't posted a video in awhile so here you go. This was taken 2 or 3 weeks ago in Adelaide's room while Grant was trying to put the final few pieces of the floor into place. This is our every day life; laughing one minute and crying the next, falling over and harassing poor Buddy.



Notice how mad Adelaide got when Buddy pushed her, this isn't something new. When she first learned to stand and take a few steps she would immediately sit down if she saw Buddy coming towards her.

Mark Your Calendars

Go ahead and laugh, but yes I am giving you a head ups that Adelaide's 2nd Birthday Party will be on August 14th at the Gasbarro house. I know we still have months until the party, but I know what always happens when I plan this kind of thing...I start out with a bang and by the time that the 14th comes around I will be scrambling because I haven't done anything.

So this year we are going to get Buggy! Not the gross boy kind, the sweet Tootie kind. Bright green caterpillars, vibrant red lady bugs and all that jazz. I've already bought the invitations and I'm coming up with ideas on decorations and food.

So in the next three months before we can have the party we first must finish the house makeover, go through a huge transition at work, live our everyday life, go to PA, go to Grand Cayman and quite frankly that is more than enough.

So I hope that some of you will be find time to get buggy with us on Saturday afternoon because my little baby is turning two!!

everyone needs change

Change can be difficult for some and exciting for others, but at the end of the day change is inevitable. We have been changing our house, new floors, kitchen, etc and where that has been physically demanding, it has been a fun change.

Our not so fun change has reared it's head now and I will be going through some pretty dramatic change at work. No, I'm not leaving Mercantile Bank at this time, but I will be working for TD Bank in the near future. No resignation necessary on my behalf, we have been bought.

Anyone who pays attention to the financial world or happens to turn a tv on knows that the financial world has been flipped upside down. The bank I work for and have done so for almost five years has lost an unfathomable amount of money and as a result we needed another option. It was announced yesterday through an email that we were acquired, so needless to say yesterday was a blur of meetings and emotions.

Where to go from here...just keep working.

Tootles Facebook

I have decided to forgo my Facebook time and trade it in for something else. I don't care what that something else is, I just am over it. When I first started using FB, it was a fun way to keep up with everyone without having to type out an email and remember to get it out in a timely manner. As those of you know, I have a hard enough time doing that with my blog.

Recently, I'm noticing things on FB that aren't what I am interested in anymore. Most of the friends that I enjoy keeping tabs on aren't posting new pictures or comments, so I find myself being the Facebook stalker and that is not what I want to be. Also, I got an annoying message from somebody that I didn't know well AT ALL, so I decided that my time was up. So for now I am going to leave my account open and I get email updates if someone posts to my page, but I have no plans of getting on the site in the near future. Who knows, maybe it will lead to more quality blogging time.

Speaking of blogging time, I have to say that this site can be difficult to keep up with at times but I enjoy doing it and hope that you do too. So if you are a follower of the blog, would you let me know? Drop me a line, post a comment, become an official blogger...anything just so that I know that someone out there is reading.

babies and travel

I have had quite a few comments about traveling with Tootie that I wanted to address.
1. Is traveling the same as before? NO WAY! Do we still get to go to the same places, yes, but we don't necessarily get the R&R that we used to. Thankfully we typical travel with other people, so we do get a few moments to ourselves here and there.
2. Have you traveled without her? Yes, twice she has spent extended weekends with my parents. The first time we went on a short cruise to the Bahamas and we had a very high anxiety level about not being able to get home right away if something happened and we were lonely without her. The second time we went to New Orleans and it was much easier to leave her for three reasons, 1-she was older and could have cared less if we were there or not, 2-we were always just a phone call away versus being out to sea, 3-large intake of alcohol with friends.
3. Are you going to continue to travel with her now that you have to pay her airfare? Don't be mistaken, children under 2 that fly international are not free, so yes it will be a little more expensive here in a few months, but that's ok there are too many place and people to see in this lifetime to stop now. In fact, we just booked our first 2011 vacation which will be a 8 day cruise to Cozumel, Panama and Costa Rica.

We have had a lot of funny questions and comments made, but you get the point that we love Adelaide and we love to travel, so we are going to keep on seeing the world one vacation day at a time.

bad mojo

Have you ever heard the term bad mojo? No, I'm not talking about the local bbq place that we go to on Friday nights, I'm talking about having a magical power that breaks everything expensive. A few of my coworkers have declared that I have bad mojo this month and let me give you the run down of why...

washing machine
laptop
tv
tires
refrigerator (home)
refrigerator (work)



yes, these are all of the more expensive items that have failed in the last 3 weeks. I won't even go into all of the items that are less exhausting to think about.


Here are the good things that have as a result of my mojo...
washing machine - under warranty, so a free fix by the Maytag repair man who found an Adelaide sock
laptop - thank goodness for extended warranties that you never really get to use. Went two days without a computer at home, which was actually really nice except that I couldn't catch up on tv shows and by the time I went into apple stood in front of the guy and there you have it a WORKING laptop. Crap, I was so embarrassed. Oh well, maybe this is a good time to throw in the fact that I put a terabyte external hard drive on my Mother's Day wish list so I can upload more pictures, right now the memory is shot. I guess that's what 15,000 pictures will do to a computer.
tv - it was old anyway, so we moved the tv from the playroom into the living room and have started plans to make it an official playroom with all of Adelaide's stuff and a new bed so that when we are ready for baby number 2 Adelaide's big girl room will be ready.
tires - I got 52,000 miles out of my ginormous tires so if I can get another 50,000 out of the new ones I won't complain too loudly when it's time to replace them again.
refrigerator (home) - all new stainless steel Whirlpool Gold appliances to arrive in another week or two or three or four. For now we got the refrigerator working enough to get us by...don't ask.
refrigerator (work) - not my problem after the water stopped pouring into the break room.