what do I want to be when I grow up?

We went to a Chinese place for lunch - how are these for some good fortunes?


Let's hope it's a good unexpected event.

So I'm debating lately what to do with myself next year, job-wise. I could stay where I am, doing something I'm not too crazy about, not making much money, but with lots of flexibility and something I could easily do part time when we have kids to keep making some money. Or I could try to get a teaching job next fall, which would be something I would enjoy (hopefully), use my degree, and make more money, but would totally lose the flexibility I have here, not to mention having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn every morning until we moved up here to get to work on time. I'm looking at getting a teaching job in the county we're hopefully moving to rather than where we live now. I tried that last summer, didn't happen. There are 2 districts up here I would apply to; the one we will (hopefully) live in would be closer and is better to work for, from what I hear; the other is easier to get a job in, but would require more driving (that county is huge, I could potentially be working an hour or more from our house). Also, since it's the city, more chance to be in a tougher school with harder to teach kids. Both counties pay roughly the same. It's not like I hate my job now, I enjoy being able to be lazy and not do much if I don't want to, but it gets boring sometimes. Not to mention demeaning, having to make coffee and answer phones. It's just nothing I ever pictured myself doing. However, if I stay here I can also focus on building up the made-to-order bakery business I've sort of started.

SO, I made a poll - vote on my life-altering decision please! :)

Opinion Polls & Market Research

weekend

My parents have been here since Friday evening, so we had lots of good food this weekend. We made beer can chicken on Saturday, it turned out so moist and delicious and wonderful, I loved it. I forgot to take a picture after they were cooked so here's the before - please enjoy the giblets I accidentally left on the pan. They look so funny sitting up.


Then yesterday, on 4/20, we smoked some pork. He he.


Alfred's parents and brother came over for dinner yesterday too, which was nice. I got to bake some rolls yesterday, which came out pretty good, and some honey oatmeal bread on Saturday, which was awesome! Best bread ever. I can't wait to make it again. I could seriously eat an entire loaf, I think. Totally forgot to take a picture of it, but bread's bread. I also made the black bean brownies, and my dad's been eating them. I almost feel bad not telling him about the beans, but not really.

The other fun thing from yesterday was that Katie caught a kitten! There are tons of cats that just roam our neighborhood, reproducing all the time. This one looks nice and healthy, and it's super cute and tiny. Its name is Jude Squeakers McKittycat. (It has some Irish from its father's side. We can tell because it likes to drink. Ha!) Katie was like the kitten whisperer, it was sort of creeping out from a pile of branches right at the edge of our property (because when we clean up the yard, we dump all the crap in the woods where our property meets the uncleared lot next to us), she just kind of clucked at it and it came right to her. She even went and bought it a bottle and some kitten milk so we could feed it. We were letting it drink out of a tupperware lid, it kept diving in, smearing its face around in it, and basically just getting milk all over itself and whoever was holding it. It's very cute, and surprisingly social considering it's wild. I wish we could keep it, but Alfred and I are both allergic and Katie tried the kitten thing last spring - it didn't work out. She has a friend at work who wants a kitten, so she might have found a home for it already.

house meeting #3

(James Blunt sucks. All of his songs are the same. Lame guitar/piano music, then the same 3 lines sung over and over and over. I bet they're easy to write. I know they're easy to get stuck in your head. Guess what we were listening to in the car.)

So Alfred went to another meeting about the new house yesterday. This one was with DEP, who we had already met at the house site and who indicated it wouldn't be any problem to get a permit from them. There was also a woman from Water Management there, and she apparently was not so easy. We now have to pay an engineer to say that our house will not cause the surrounding area to flood. It seems a little silly to have to go through this step, since we're surrounded by swamp, which is connected directly to a canal, which drains into a lake, which connects to the St Johns River. We are literally less than a mile from the lake, less than 2 from the river. We couldn't flood the area if we tried. But we have to pay someone to write this down for her. Stupid rules.

The good house news is that between moving the house by 5 feet and shrinking the pad a little, we only need to request a permit to fill .06 acres of land now. That's almost half of what it was before. We're submitting the paperwork to the Army Corp today, hopefully he'll be satisfied with what we've done and will just give us a damn permit. He said if it all looks ok, we can have a permit in 3-4 weeks! That would be great. I just hope he accepts it, he said at our meeting it's a 1 try thing, if he says no the first time we can't change it and try again. It's a little nerve wracking, but hopefully it will work out ok.

In other news, my parents are on their way down to visit. They left yesterday and should be here tonight around 6 or 7. We bought lots of meat and TP at Costco last night. I hope we make it through the week. My dad's on a diet because he's either borderline or actually diabetic, so I'm going to make a brownie recipe that has black beans and splenda instead of oil and sugar. I'm obviously not telling him that's what's in them until they're gone. I bet he'll like them until he finds out about the beans, then he'll hate them on principle. I made a similar recipe for the Superbowl and they were actually pretty good.

Hm, no pictures yet. Well, since Alfred's the one who bugs me when there are no pictures, here's an old one of him holding Ella. See, he totally loves babies!

MN continued

I got Katie's pictures last night, so here are some more from our trip! We went to a hibachi place for Lisa's birthday, it was kind of funny because the guy kept dropping stuff and messing up. He threw one of the eggs too high, it hit the ceiling and broke and fell into the shrimp, then he kept breaking the other ones when he tossed them on his spatula. He was rather entertaining. Look how snazzy we all are.


I was taking a picture of Ella playing with the Wii and Tony and Mason just happened to be in the bottom of the picture. I think it's so cute.


Drunky McDrunkersons.


Some more dress up.


Ella helped me make a cake one night. She kept sticking her fingers into the eggs as we beat them to see what it felt like. Then I turned around to get the pan, I turn back and the girl's coated in chocolate - she just dunked her hand in the batter and started licking it off. It got all over her bathrobe, her face, in her hair, everywhere. It was pretty damn funny. (Please note the bottle of gin behind her. She asked when we were putting that in the cake.)

back to real life

Our trip to Minnesota was awesome. We had lots of fun. We drank a lot, played lots of Uno and Wii, hung out. Thursday night we knocked back an impressive 7 bottles of wine. This isn't the best picture, but it's probably the funniest. Although Cathy has a sequence of 4 or 5 pictures of Tony that are hysterical.

The kids were super cute, of course. We watched some Star Wars, played some beads, several dozen rounds of hide and seek. A couple of times they hid so well we actually didn't find them, but I'm going to assume the 7 bottles of wine had something to do with that.

Also, lots and lots of Wii. Tony and Cathy don't have one (yet), their friend Lisa had just gotten one for her birthday and brought it over for us to play with. We all had sore arms and backs from all the boxing, but hey, at least we didn't just sit on our asses the whole weekend! Me boxing Tony (and losing, if I recall correctly; golf was my game):


Tony and Cathy resolving a marital dispute:


And Ella, with a little backup from Mason and his squirt gun:

in transit

We're coming at you LIVE from the Charlotte airport, gate B1. We left the house at 9:15, it's currently 2:02, and we've got one more flight to go! The excitement is never ending! Katie, how has your experience been so far today?


I'm trying to figure out which of these thousands of magazines I haven't read. Why do you keep bugging me? Can't you stop talking for 5 minutes?

Ok! Thank you for sharing, Katie. Alfred, what are your feelings on the journey so far?


Are you talking? Can't you see I'm busy? Some of us have work to do. Pipe down over there.

Wonderful! And our travels continue. Next stop: Minnesota! Weather.com says there's 100% chance of snow tonight, and the high for tomorrow is 33! I can't wait!

I was running!

I went jogging last night after work. 3 miles, it sucked. Actually the first half sucked, the second half was fine, and I felt great when I was done. I wasn't even sore this morning. Considering I haven't jogged in about a month, I thought I did pretty good. Also, I got heckled! A guy a few houses down from us started running next to me, telling me to pick up the pace. I told him I was fine, thanks, and he actually said "sorry, I'm just messing with you," and left me alone. Then I got honked at. Awesome. I was going to post a picture of Forrest Gump running and photoshop my head onto his body, but I don't have any good pictures of my head on this computer. Sorry. I know you're disappointed.

We leave for MN tomorrow! I'm super excited. I hope my liver is prepared for all the drinking we're going to be doing. A couple pictures of last year: the first one is of the boys doing a power hour. For some reason I was super nice and volunteered to be DD. Cathy missed this because she was home sick, I believe. The second picture is Mike and Tony diving in an aquarium, they got to go for free because they're military, so Alfred and I watched. It was fun watching, all the kids who were around got all excited to see the divers in the tank. They found a bunch of shark teeth. Oh yeah, they were in a tank with sharks. We'll miss Mike this year (stupid army), but Katie's coming along, which is nice - built in DD!

Our flight is at 12:30 tomorrow, we get back really late Monday night, and then my parents arrive for a week long visit on Friday. Action packed excitement up in these parts. So I'm not sure how much I'll be posting over the next several days, at least until next Tuesday, but I'll have my laptop with me. Try not to miss me too much! :)