Miscellaneous May

Hello all who read.

I apologize for not posting more often.  I read several blogs and I get impatient when they aren't updated every few days!

Since I've last posted on here several things have happened.

Mike and I drove to Savannah for mother's day weekend and got to see Pete, Maureen, Erin, and Evan. I posted the pics on Facebook but here are some favorites.

Savannah:

The next weekend, I booked a spur-of-the-moment flight home to Chicago for Bob's 30th birthday party! It was great to see everyone.  I didn't bring my camera so I didn't take any pictures :(  I'll just steal Margaret's :)

Bob even made it into the background!

I guess I'm leaving out the weekdays in this post.  Probably because they aren't very exciting.  Don't we all live for the weekends??  Well, our weekdays have been more of the same.  Mike is busy at class working on writing orders and briefing them.  I've been busy babysitting and helping the family unpack in their new home.  I'm sad because my time with them will be coming to an end. They are leaving to spend the summer in Belarus in less than two weeks!

Another fun thing we've done recently is last Thursday night we had the Able's and the Christensen's over for some of our homemade pizza and drinks! I know what you're thinking: do they make pizza for EVERYONE they have over?? The answer is yes, because it's EASY and a crowd-pleaser!  We had a great time that night playing some taboo and looking at real estate listings for Raeford, NC where we will all be moving shortly!

Random pictures from May:

We made deep dish pizza! (Ok, this is from earlier in the month, like the 7th or something.  We made it just for ourselves since it was our first time.  People, I know.  We eat WAY too much pizza.  Talk to my husband about it, please)

Jesse kinda wanted to try some...

Jesse REALLY wanted to try some...

The boys get tired after eating...

 Oh yeah, while starting to pack for my trip to Chicago we took a little video:

In other news, my Dad and I were about 10 minutes from midway airport (I was heading back to Georgia) and I realized I left my cell phone at the house.  Dad said he'd mail it to me, but we both agreed maybe it was time for me to jump on the iPhone bandwagon anyways! So when I got back to Columbus later that evening Mike and I went to the Verizon store and got me an iPhone! It's a white 4s with a purdy dark purple case on it. I think the next day I downloaded instagram and became addicted to it.  For anyone who'd like to follow me on there, my username is cmcasey2.

Instagram Pictures:

This past Saturday morning (while Mike was living it up in Vegas) I decided to check out the Columbus "Market" in the downtown area.  They have booths set up with local produce/crafts/baked goods.  I bought a few vegetables and blueberries and this magnificent loaf of sourdough bread:

So far, this is my favorite instagram picture.  Jesse was so good at keeping me company while Mike was in Vegas. Proof: I didn't even zoom-in to take this picture, he was sitting on my chest inches away from my face.

I baked some PW muffins with those fresh blueberries I bought at the market.  Monday morning's Memorial Day breakfast (still not a coffee drinker - green tea it is!):

 

 Monday afternoon before meeting April and Shawn for a movie and dinner:

 Mike and Shawn at dinner:

 April and Me:

 If I haven't mentioned it yet, Shawn and April are pretty much forced to be our good friends because we will be with them for the next 5 years! First in Raeford, NC and then in Colorado Springs!


This morning I had a personal trainer appointment at 8am that I almost forgot about! Luckily Mike's alarm went off at 7:45 and I jumped out of bed and was able to make it on time.  After a rough workout outside in a drizzling rain, a rainbow made me smile on my drive home:

Remember that sourdough bread I mentioned above? Makes for an excellent breakfast sandwich post-workout:

YUMMY!

Well, it is not 12:38pm and Mike is home from work! (Technically he didn't even work today, he just went to post to work out and attempted (but failed) to get his orders).  Now he wants me to make him a sandwich for lunch, because obviously he is incapable.  What do you think, should I use the sourdough bread and make it REALLY good or hoard it all for myself??

Anyways, sorry that this post was really disjointed and not in chronological order...I make no claims of being a great writer!

Until next time (hopefully soon),

Christine

Cinco de Mayo

I've always wanted to go to a Kentucky Derby party where I could wear a pretty dress and a big ol' hat and try out a mint julep.  That hasn't happened yet, but the good news is that we DID have a Cinco de Mayo party to go to...with DELICIOUS Mexican food.

New friends of ours here in Columbus, Ray & Dora, had some people over for the holiday.  Both Ray and Dora are of Mexican descent and come from Southern Texas....so they REALLY know how to make some good authentic Mexican.  I should mention that Mexican food is definitely on the top of my list of favorites.  There were so many great dips, including a very HOT salsa especially for Mike.  We also had some great steak tacos.  I contributed some "Mexican Hot Chocolate" cookies which were a hit, and really easy to make (and eat)!

Pretty much anytime we go to someone's house here in Columbus we are asked to bring our "corn-hole" set.  Now we just leave it in the trunk and bring it everywhere!  We played several games of bags at the party, and I have to tell you...it has been awhile since I've played so well!  Now, I'm not really trying to toot my own horn here but I was just so flipping excited because I had THREE sombreros that night!  My partner, Mike's friend Mark, kept saying he had never seen anyone have a perfect round.  For those of you who are not in "the know" with bean bags....a sombrero is when you throw all four bags in the hole in one round.  In other words, you can score up to 12 points depending on what your opponent does that round. Two of my sombreros were game-enders :-)   Now, before all you negative Nancys start commenting on the lack of competition down South (or, like my father, ask me how close the boards were), it's still pretty great to get a sombrero...or three.  Oh, and the boards were a regulation 10-paces apart, hole to hole   ;-)

Enough blabbing...here are some photos from the night:

Me and Dora playing some corn-hole:

 
My excellent partner Mark in the sombrero hat (Mark and his sister brought plenty of sombreros and mustaches for everyone!) and Ray:

Me, Katherine, and Dora:

Small army story...Katherine and her husband are really good friends with Matt and Katie Parker! They lived in Hawaii together, lucky ducks!

This mustache is a little darker than the one he grew in Iraq.  Let's compare:

Ray & Dora's new puppy Jesse wanted to check out the Modelo...unfortunately someone had already finished it:

Shawn agreed to take our picture.  "Here Mike, let me help you with your mustache." :

Dora's beautiful daughter Ileani was so helpful in passing out mustaches to everyone:

Once it was too dark to play bags, we all headed inside to watch the boxing matches.

Mike and I were too tired to make it to the Mayweather v. Cotto fight, but we saw the rest of them!  It was another great night with friends.

Love,
CC

Men are From Mars, Woman are from Venus

In other words...my husband and I are very different.

This post will be pretty meaningless. So if you have many more important things to be doing with your life, by all means get out of here now. No offense will be taken....because I really couldn't know either way. :-)

Mike and I have this understanding that whomever gets out of bed latest in the morning "should" make the bed.  I put "should" in parentheses because one of us (cough-Mike) doesn't always do this.  Usually this is not an issue because Mike typically has PT early in the morning and I am the later riser, which means I make the bed.

Today was one of those days where Mike got up later and actually made the bed! Hooray, right? Not exactly.  I discovered upon coming home from my army-spouse leadership classes this afternoon that Mike's idea of "making" the bed does not match mine.  Here comes the proof.

Mike's idea of a nicely-made bed*:

* And no, Mike was NOT in a rush this morning. He had plenty of time to sit on the couch with a bowl of cereal and Sports-center. 

My (correct) idea of a nicely-made bed**:

**Please excuse the lack of painted walls/wall decoration/headboard/matching furniture in our bedroom.  We are, after all, moving again in July.  Getting a new bedroom set will be one of the first things I do in North Carolina. 

Anyways, this actually didn't irritate me.  It made me chuckle.  And I got to thinking, in what other ways around the house to Mike and I differ?  Now, stereotypically, men are more slobby than women  (A little red squiggly line under "slobby" tells me that this is not actually a word...but I will still use it). BUT I don't consider Mike to be very messy.  He is actually one of the neatest guys I know.

Let's look at some other examples.


  Mike's stacks of t-shirts:

My stacks of t-shirts*:

* Notice how Mike has WAY more shirts than me.  I regularly try to purge myself of the t-shirts that I don't actually wear.  Also, I should probably do my laundry sometime this week.


Mike's shelving in the closet, complete with random black garbage bag and cluttered shoe-boxes:

My shelving in the closet:

I can't even show you our spare-bedroom closet because it is so cluttered with Mike's army paraphernalia--which, if you're not familiar with the army, is WAY more than you can imagine.  I'm talking 5-6 pairs of those tan army boots....TWO sleep systems (each consisting of two sleeping bags and a bivy-cover for sleeping outdoors)...duffel bags....tough-boxes....I can't go on.  This wouldn't be so bad if it had ANY organization to it at all.  It's actually pretty funny when Mike is trying to find something and has to pull out all kinds of bags and boxes to get to it. Ok, now I kinda want to show you a picture of it:

 

 This post wouldn't be complete without a picture of MY half of the spare-bedroom closet:

Can you believe this organization exists directly across from such chaos??The thing is, Mike is very organized when it comes to important things like the class he is currently taking.  And our finances, I think :-)

Do any of you experiences these difference between you and your significant other?

Love,
Christine