To you

Happy Birthday Henry!

Still Addicted

So, I'm enjoying watching Brotherhood 2.0 every weekday. Today's installment involved watchers wishing Hank a happy birthday. You should check it out, for in it you can see CreepyKarl, Anne, Brogan. I did not participate in this one. My creativity has been at an abysmal low lately and I couldn't think of anything to do.

Cut

Awwwwww

Look at the lovely roses Roland got for me! Aren't they pretty?

and 1

Ahhhhh...I'm sitting at Jason's house relaxing. We arrived yesterday afternoon so Roland could have some quiet time for grading. He is now finished...he stayed up until 4 in the morning to do it, but he's finished. So he is sleeping in a bit this morning/afternoon to make up for his late night. So I'm sitting in Jason's basement watching Galaxy Quest on his sweet new TV.

Tuesday was Roland's birthday and we went to Grand Rapids in the late afternoon to meet people at Buffalo Wild Wings. We weren't sure who would be showing up but it turned out to be quite a few. Jason came, although Jocelin was still in New York so we missed her. Katie and Henry came with Charlotte (who totally loved the wings and beer ;), along with Jennifer and Brian. But the people that absolutely made my year were Kate and Joe Leggett and Veronica and Joe.

I went to high school with Kate and Joe. Kate was in my year while Joe is a little younger. Kate and I played soccer together and both went to Western, then ended up as roommates for a while. Then in 2003 we took a wee vacation to Disney World together (where I learned that Kate talks and sometimes yells at her books, when they suck). I'm sure we used to tease Joe a bunch but now he's tall, dark, and handsome so he got the last laugh there. Although apparently he has a little trouble with sunglasses.

Veronica and Joe I used to work with and the Humane Society. Now she is working at K-College and he is an Animal Control Officer with Kent County Animal Control. They also bought our house when we left for Florida. They are a coupla crazy kids and I miss them a great deal.

We stayed at B-Dubs for three hours or so and then meandered off to Henry and Katie's house for afters. Although we may have lost our way a bit and ended up at Cold Stone Creamery first (oops). Then we stayed there for a few more hours chatting and generally catching up. As a total bonus Ryan and Laura showed up at the house. They were busy all day moving a bunch of stuff to their new house in North Muskegon. It was just awesome that after a day of moving heavy stuff they drove to GR (hardcore).

Hopefully as many of those people as possible will be able to come to New Years. I'm not sure how many will be able to though. I guess Charlotte is not so keen on taking a bottle, which means that Katie can't drink which is a mega bummer. Especially since she hasn't had any of that kind of fun for like 11 months now. I wouldn't be nearly as accommodating about it as she has been with Henry. If I was having a kid I would probably cut Roland off from pretty much all alcohol until I could join him again. I think it would be totally infuriating to watch him along with everyone else have a rollicking good time while I had to feed the baby and probably drive home because I was the only sober one. I think not. Logical? No, as a matter of fact it isn't. Why do you ask?

It's his party!

As I mentioned in an earlier post we got to attend Jackson's 2nd birthday party. He was adorable and I got a few good pictures of the festivities.

Jackson couldn't quite figure out how to get the sit and spin to actually sping so Laura ended up doing all the work.


Jackson trying to get into one of his gifts, he's still working on that whole fine motor coordination thing so he got a little help on most of the gifts.


Next was a sequence of three pictures showing the triumph of opening a card, and discovering money!




I also got a nice video of Jackson and his cake. Jackson is a very neat little boy who doesn't really like to be dirty at all (including getting cake on his hands). So, if you listen to the sound you can hear Nathan (Ryan's brother) egging Jackson on to dive into his cake headfirst and making fun of him when he won't do it.

Congratulations!

Welcome Charlotte Jane Baker, born yesterday afternoon. Cheers to the new parents, Henry and Katie. We can't wait to see you and meet your new daughter.

The twins have landed!

Congratulations to Shannon and Ronda! They are now the proud parents of:

Avery Grace and Eli Oliver


Born 5/25/2006 at 11:11 pm. I'm sure they are super busy settling in and I wish them well . I sure hope you got that washing machine fixed, Shannon!

Happy Birthday to me!

Ok, so it was a few days ago, but I've spent the last three days playing with my presents. This year I got WAY more than I was expecting. Roland got me some really rockin' presents (he makes me so happy). When we got up he gave told me he had arranged his schedule so he could stay home with me all day. Then he gave me my first gift, a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure. So nice. I went over and had my manicure and pedicure and since I was there and they weren't busy I also got my hair trimmed (for the first time in over a year - yikes). I came home feeling very refreshed and relaxed. Then we hung out together all day. He told me we were going out to dinner at 6:30, but wouldn't tell me where. So I asked him what he was wearing so I could judge what I should wear and got ready. We ended up at the Melting Pot, which was the perfect choice. We had a fabulous dinner and dessert (mmm melted chocolate - I used a spoon Jason, not a straw). Then we came home and I got to open presents. Roland also got me some books I really wanted and screen covers for my DS which I really needed. Mom and Dad C. got me HP and the Goblet of Fire on DVD and some candy (yeah baby). Anne and Karl got me some jewelry, a cool new DS game that we can interact wirelessly with, and other assorted fun stuff.

I mentioned in a previous post that my parents got me a computer, which came earlier this month, is totally awesome, and I use it every day. It has been extremely helpful in the creation of the AnneArchy website. Needless to say I thought that was all I was getting from my parents (I mean, really, that is more than one would expect anyway). Then my mom told me to be expecting another package from them as she had gotten me another small gift, so I would have something to open on my birthday. So I'm thinking, cool they got me a book, or some chocolates, or whatever. I was out when the UPS dude tried to deliver it on the 29th, so Roland was nice enough to stick around the apartment on the 30th so he could sign for it while I went out and got pampered. When I got home the package was huge...and heavy. It turned out to be an embroidery sewing machine. What? What! I have wanted one of these...well, as long as I've known that such an animal existed. But I never expected anyone to get me one.

It is incredibly cool. It has about a ton of built in stitches including two different one step button holes. Then it has the ability to connect to a computer via USB and using the program provided with the machine you can embroider with it. Most of the machines I've seen out there have that program built into the actual sewing machine. A person then inserts what amounts to a flash drive into the machine with the designs on it. However these machines often only accept a certain format of designs. The Futura software allows you to use a bunch of different formats. I think all the cool stuff it can do like that is because the whole computer is at your disposal instead of just the resources in the machine. This also means it is updatable. When I first opened it, I thought that I would install the software on the laptop and just bring that in the craft room/library when I needed it, but then I realized I have a better solution. I just got a new computer, remember? Now I have a perfectly good desktop just sitting around not doing anything. Sure it's not the fastest thing in the world, but it still works (thanks to a new hard drive). So I set that up in the craft room and after a few false starts (one thing the Singer people could do a little better with the documentation end of things) I have embroidered a couple of samples. I just used some left-over fabric I had sitting around. Anyone who has been to the house we used to have in Grand Rapids might recognize it as the fabric I used to make the roman shades in the master bedroom.



This is my first one. It turned out pretty well, but the white bobbin was pulling through to the top a little bit, so on the next one



I started playing with the top thread tension. As you can see the right side of the design was where I was really messing with it. The left side I put it back to where it is supposed to be. I still see it a little though, so I'm going to see if I can improve that as I go on. Then I downloaded a design on-line and embroidered it.



I like that one a lot, but clearly I need some help with the picture taking side of things. So far I've stuck with designs with only a few colors for two reasons. I don't have very many colors in embroidery thread, and I'm new at this so I'm keeping it simple. Anyway, this thing is super cool and I'm totally in craft-geek-topia.

An interesting experience though. I went to Joann yesterday to get some bobbin and embroidery thread to get started and as I was looking at the thread, a lady there turned to me and said "You know those are embroidery thread, right?" There was just something in her tone that made me think, she assumes that because I'm under the age of 50 I couldn't possibly know about or be involved in embroidery. Since I've been doing embroidery of one kind or another for over 20 years now, I felt a little offended by her remark. I tried to shrug it off, but it bothered me for most of rest of the day.

They

The day after Christmas is Roland's birthday, and he is so totally old now. I only get three months to taunt him about this before my birthday so I'm going to have to milk it while I have it. He tried to pull the I'm older you should listen to my wisdom crap, but Jason quickly let him know it wasn't working. Jason has been old for a while now and apparently nobody is listening to his wisdom either. I got Roland some books, some DVDs, and some magnetic spice containers like AB has on his show. I was lucky though, a couple of days after I bought them, Dave found some at Target and almost bought them. Whew! Now I just need to figure out how to label them that looks as nice as they do.

Another bonus about the day after Christmas was that my parents flew in to visit for a few days. We went out to the Bonefish Grill for Roland's birthday and it was very good. During their stay we also found this really great Thai place that I think Roland and I will be going back to, especially when Jason comes to visit (they also have sushi). Roland got the Zagat's guide to South Florida for his birthday and it got a lot of use. My parents and I visited Butterfly World, went on an Everglades tour thing, and went to the beach. I had a very good time and hope they did too. My Dad took a lot of pictures and I'm hoping that I will be able to get my hands on them. They just went back home yesterday and I already miss them.