let it snow, let it snow...until i have to drive

yes i got to drive to work at 5:45 this morning, possibly the first time that i was thankful for this hour. i got a good parking space at work and when i slipped on the road, there was no danger of hitting anyone else. i seem to have missed the heavy snowfall based on all the people walking in with white heads this morning. i hate the cold, but i love the snow...until it gets dirty and serves no purpose except to come between me and my summer.

welcome home!

krysty kay

this is just a shout-out to my good friend krysty. thank you for being there to listen to me and so many others. you are always willing to lend an ear and that's not common. so for what it's worth, thank you for listening, encouraging, laughing and being a totally ridiculous person. love you!

are we in chinatown?

just wondering if anyone else thinks this is funny? i found this at our local gas station before pulling out of town last sunday morning and i thought for a second it must have been imported from asia since they always have signs like "funny cry happy" or any of a number of other engrish mess-ups. low carb attitude? that is one i'll personally never choose to take.

hey there big eyes

yeah i might have to make an apology to rael for this one but i think this pic is fantastic and we had some of the best laughs of our friendship career taking them. isn't it creepy? we were having fun at the planet playing around with the new toys she got at a craft fair for $10. (manual camera w two lenses!) so i kept taking her picture while she held the lenses up to her eyes, which may have caused irreparable damage, but boy did we laugh hard. simultaneously we were trying to decide if the girl behind her was cute or annoying. she spoke with a whispery, sugary sweet voice to this guy with her and at first i thought she was cute but before long we both concluded that she was annoying. i'll take a wacky brunette any day over a breathy blonde. i'm talking friendship here...but i don't wanna date one either. blond guys are totally eighties. is anyone with me on this? it doesn't matter how they dress or do their hair, they will always be johnny from the karate kid:)

creepy crawly

yep. looks like he mighta lost a leg.

fro-sting?

this one's dedicated to krysty kay. i was whipping up some frosting for our pumpkin cookies when, out of nowhere, a spider dropped into the bowl. before i could do anything about it the little guy went right through the beaters and ended up looking like this. we rinsed him off into cody's sink, but judging from this picture i think he was a little worse for the wear...maybe lost a leg. but i'm sure that doesn't bother YOU too much:)

(non) dairy queens

well i called sara in slovakia yesterday and daniela from slovakia in michigan yesterday and it looks like things are really progressing for me to spend the summer in sk. until now it has been all excitement, and it still is, but i'm just realizing that i will be away from this all summer. my friends. i know the trade off is great but i am not looking forward to not having easy access to the best friends in the world. and i mean the world. i know, i've been there. well i guess i have 6 1/2 months to get the most out of them before possibly exiting this country for a season. i love you guys.

tough cookie

this is my version of zachajawea. isn't it sweet??? get it? see, it's funny 'cause it's a cookie and cookies are sweet. cody was really grossed out at his blue-green eyes and by the girly ponytail holder. hey, i didn't exactly have a black rubber band available, ok?

saweet

just a quick little bloglette about the "all-you-can-eat-buffet" at the airport bar last night. we went to see ed off to zimbabwe and as rockabella and i headed to the restaurant he called back to rael that she should come because there was an all-you-can-eat-buffet. little did he know that there really was...in a big orange bowl.

autumn, nate-urally

i had an incredible weekend with too many good things to speak of. but one of them was celebrating the life memories of my friends bryan and nate. God blessed me on the 30th in so many ways. i got to make a little package with ed for his parents, bring flowers and tears (and mini pumpkins:) to the cemetery and reminisce with glenna, and hike the m in his memory. but i didn't realize til that night that glenna had invited me to bernice's (the last place i saw him) and rocky invited me to finnegan's (a place with many fond memories with him) on that day. it was just like a little wink from God, saying "i'm smiling down on you." and the leaves? when nato was in new orleans i laminated some autumn leaves and sent them to him because he "liked it cold in november."

get on the bus

this picture has absolutely nothing to do with this blog other than that it was taken by my new camera. i'm so excited about it, despite my anti-digital attitude (for which i got plenty enough crap from dan-o and riley last night). anyhoo, we had a ball with our cameraphone scavenger hunt last night. cuchillo brilliantly pulled off the technical end of things and we all had a lot of fun in "the war room." and now i'm looking forward to this weekend when hopefully i'll get to make pumpkin cookies with james, cody and erin and hopefully come up with a good costume idea for saturday night. blah. this blog is kind of blah. but i love it.

Scott Bon-nett

ok, so that joke could have gone either way. i intended it to be a play on words, relating our fearless (xa)leader with the megastar he, em, admires?...bono from u2, not to be confused with sonny and cher. but given that he's wearing cuchillo's hat (it was, right?) you rightly could have taken the "joke" as bonnett. nevertheless, it's been 9 days without our rockstar and we all breathe a collective "welcome home!"

things that don't suck

so i'm toying with the idea of starting a segment at xa with this title. i don't know though, hmm. well, nevertheless, here are a few things that don't:
coffee with a friend...or a pathetically watered-down raspberry "italian soda" begrudgingly made for you by an unfriendly "bear-ista" with a friend, pie a la mode at ruby's with mom, a fun new toy (the tiniest camera whose earned a big place in my heart), getting to see my handsome guy walk by my office (and i use the word "my" loosely), seeing jd morton with a smile on her face and a dead animal in her hands, jitterbugging with zach? well, i'm not sure i can classify that as not sucking, at least on my end, hmm. last night's heart to heart w rachael. yeah, that didn't suck. anyone got any more???

joy

this pirated pic is dedicated to cuchillo, and the joy he shared with me about at tds last night:) looking forward to winter hmmm?

babes and noble

i just can't stop marvelling at how cute this girl is. em, i just realized if you look at my last couple entries you might deduce that my biological clock is not only ticking, but pounding to beat the proverbial band. well, yes it would be nice to have a baby but while that's not in God's sites for me i will settle for playing "grandma" to all these dollies (grandmas get to spoil them and send them home when they get crabby:) i'm hoping to have another surrogate child after my operation christmas child box this year. just rambling. gotta go eat.

Lera

this is kazakh child cutie #2. well, actually #1. no matter, what a great picture too, eh?

boy on train with father

i searched through flickr under the tag "kazakhstan" and found two of the most adorable kids i have ever seen. this is one of them and i'll post the other too. why the search? well, on monday i was at our montana state chi alpha meeting and while we were worshiping, God laid it on my heart to see about going to Kazakhnstan. then i began to talk to curtis and he really encouraged me to go this summer. so my heart is being drawn...

Red hot

well this is not a sight you see too often, but i'd also say it's a sight you don't see enough...campfire in the living room. in celebration of janine's birthday, jill and some others set up her birthday present (which was a fancy schmancy little tent) in the living room and we made s'mores and ate little smokies, sitting around the lampfire. this is megan the red enjoying one such creation. zach was another poor soul who tried, and indeed failed, to convince me that s'mores are better slow-roasted. brown shmrown i say. black is where it's at.

with persona-latte

i was impressed when rw made a personalized drink for rs, but nothing could have surpassed the impression, impressed-ness with which i retrieved my drink, made by pb (with caramel, to boot). too bad the goodness was so short-lived. it seems as soon as my name was gone, rs and i got treated like a couple of no-name, good-for-nothings by an anxious patron, internet code in hand, vulturing around our booth. good thing we got friends in high places...and that rs had little room left for crap that day.