a beautiful day in the neighborhood

today was a very "fall" day. windy, leaves blowing with a crispness in the air. good football weather as i described it the other night when i was walking home and it felt like this. it is perfect for bundling up and drinking hot chocolate while watching the game. it makes me wish i went to a big state school where i could have continued to go to games and be pumped about them. last year we went to a minnesota game and even though i was in the fourth row it didn't feel quite right. not to mention it was in the metrodome where the whole "football weather" idea is non existent and everything echoes so you don't understand what was said. i liked the cheerleaders and the band, so i suppose it was good enough. the second grader i nanny brought a friend home today. on the ride from school they were discussing the length of their leg hair and how they will shave in fourth grade. fourth grade!? i was i just slow or is this early? i remember shaving in sixth grade for cheerleading tryouts at the end of the year. and then they continued to talk about how they will get armpit hair and that boys' armpits are so gross. maybe i don't remember the topics i discussed in second grade, but i feel like bodily hair was the last thing on my mind. i was more worried about the boys on the playground and my cousin who always got them instead of me. i'd have rather talked about new kids on the block than a "real" boy's armpits. they say kids are growing up faster these days...maybe i really is true.

making up for lost time

today nick got to enroll for this insurance benefits and now the cat is no longer the only one in our family who has preventive care. and speaking of the cat...we took kioko in to have her spayed, and after i filled out all the papers and waited forever for the nurse to come, it turns out she doesn't weigh enough to undergo the surgery. geez! and to think i got teary eyed when they took her into the back!! seriously i did, i don't know what came over me. but don't worry it was not for long. so throughout the weekend i kept thinking of great stories i could write in here, but i neglected to do so. i suppose now i'll try to fill you in, but in order to spare you from reading all day long i'll keep it short: 1. i love the diversity in my neighborhood! i have somalians on my block who hang out just along the street and at the coffee shop ran by a viatemese family. the community center in the park is mostly african americans, the nursing home and retired living are across the street from me, and of course north central with its mainly white middle class christians. and that's all in like 5 blocks!! 2. saturday night megan came over for pizza and lost. we had the blinds open and could see the elderly people in their common area. we witnessed a woman hunched over asleep for over an hour and a man fall down while walking with his walker (i actually saw the fall!). it took three nurses to walk by before someone saw him! 3. i'm addicted to desperate housewives. after extreme makeover home edition at dawn's, i was going to walk lydia to her apartment while i headed to megan's to finish watching "the wives" when i suddenly realized that after the opening credits it is not commercial and i freaked out, sat down and said something super rude like "sorry" or "i guess not". 4. strong abs = less back pain. today i didn't have time to do my usual hour long workout. so i decided to do some abs and legs since i have neglected them for a long time. i couldn't use my ab roller! my back almost broke! see, i've been complaining of back pain lately and now i remember it's because my abs are weak. guess it's back to the "fitness binder" where i collect the good workouts from my fitness magazines so that i can workout without machines. 5. i feel like five is a good amount to work with, but i'm fresh out. not to mention i have like 2 minutes before i'm off work. yep, i'm doing this on the clock. guess that can be my number five. 6. wait! i have a six. the 5 year old i nanny for today threw up cheese its just as her dad told me i could go home. great timing! :)

two highly adventurous days

yesterday was the first of my fun...i was just trying to get errands done - a little library, a little dry cleaners. you would think a classic like uncle tom's cabin and a simple dry cleaning place would be easy to find, but oh no! nick and i finally located the book downtown, then headed to the address we had of a dry cleaners. instead we ended up in the "bad" part of town where tons of folks were hangin out in the streets. not that i was scared b/c i don't worry about that stuff, but i found it funny that google maps (my ever so faithful friend) had let me down and taken me to an obviously residential area. on our search for any dry cleaners a loud "bing, bing, bing" started going off in my car along with the flashing light on the dash. it was overheating!!! that's never happened in my life! so we pull off to the "ghetto target" and take a look. really we could only look. we know nothing about cars. i did some reading of the manual but found nothing useful. we let the car cool off while we walked to wendy's. this wendy's was worse than kmart in winchester! i don't really know how else to describe it. think of a kmart and imagine how it could be worse. that was the wendy's. today we had an oil change which solved the problem, and after my nanny job i headed out for another attempt at finding a dry cleaners. i had a coupon for one chain and i was set on going there to save money. on the way to this new location we passed two other dry cleaners before traveling through a park and around a lake without finding the one i was looking for! oh i was mad - not to mention i had now made a complete circle and was almost back to where i started. despite my need to save, i returned to another chain and was surprised to find white people running the place! funny, but i was a little relieved. you see this was my first dry cleaning experience and i was worried i wouldn't be able to understand the folks working (like when you get your nails done). but this was not the case. AND to top it off, the woman took down my address so i could receive coupons! what a relief! then tonight we had a tornado warning with sirens going off and everything! nick tells me tornados have nothing to do with the wide open spaces, it's all about the climate. but i promise you i have been taught the other way. i will do some research and report back when i have the correct info.

an "amazing" evening

last night my wonderful husband took me to see joseph and the amazing technecolor dream coat! we made a deal a long time ago that if i went to an opera with him, he would come to a musical with me. so a year after phantom of the opera, he completed his part of the deal. it was my first broadway show ever (traveling, but still) and i loved it! it was a little hard to get used to a blonde joseph after watching donny osmond play him in the dvd, but this guy had a really ripped body so i didn't mind too much :) the narrator was amy adams from american idol. you know the one that always had pink in her hair? she was fantastic! i ended up crying during several of the dance numbers. not because they were so incredible, but because i was wishing it was me. it's always been a dream of mine to be in a broadway show. now it's too late to pursue dance as a career. i gave it up for cheerleading in high school, which i loved, but now i wonder what my life would have been like if i had become a dancer. it brings me so much joy. nick and i decided i have i must take ballet classes this year and try out again for the timberwolves. maybe one day i really can be on a big stage or tv dancing. who knows?

bowl-a-rama

i went bowling last night! now this may sound rather uneventful for many of you, but for me it was high excitement. allow me to explain: 1. i was being a fun married person. so many times people get married and they stop haning out with non married folks. this could easily be the case with us, especially since so many of our friends got married this summer. but we went with two of our good friends that are single and had a blast. 2. i have not been bowling in almost three years! yes, that's right. for some reason the idea of bowling doesn't come up around here much. it's eating out, going for walks, seeing a band play and watching movies. why? you may ask when you live in the city...that's a great question. 3. it was smoke free! thanks to the smoking ban in minneapolis i was able to bowl and not come home smelling like an ash tray. 4. they made it cosmic bowling. we got there after the leagues were over and all the lights were on with no music. but half way through our first game the lights went out and the music was crankin. this also improved my game with the energy of the music :) 5. i didn't think once about homework. i've been doing that alot lately and i really needed a break. there you have it...why bowling was a huge highlight in my life even after years of it being one of the few options for a place to go in winchester and springfield. it has brought me joy once again.

gotta love tweens

lately i've been thinking about how i really need to teach middle school. you know how some people say they're a kid at heart? well i feel as if i'm an adolescent at heart. and according to one of the books i'm reading, i quite possibly could be until i'm 26! i feel like because i have such a vivid memory of my middle school years that i would be able to relate to my students. i also have this desire to be one of the teachers that kids hang out in her room between classes and after school. that doesn't really happen in elementary school because you're with the same one all the time. i also find great joy in creating sweet powerpoint slides and making visually appealing worksheets which i feel like middle schoolers would appreciate. they don't want the cheesy stuff with cute bunnies on it anymore, they need trendy. i say these things now possibly because i am in my middle school methods course. last year i had kindergarten education and i found myself wanting to teach the little ones. who knows. maybe i'm just meant to be a teacher and no matter where i am i will love it. or maybe those are the two ages i would do best with. in some ways the kids are similar :) also, i'm terrible at cursive writing and math and with those two options i'm not required to do either - well not the hard math anyway.

Thankful

since last night felt like fall once again, nick and i slept with the bedroom window open to let the cool breeze come in. both to feel relaxed and to save money by not running the fan or air conditioner. with the curtains open and the blinds pulled up, we have a spectacular view of the skyline. now without my contacts i'm pretty blind, but i love to look out and see the city at night(or its glow in my case), especially when the weather is so gorgeous. i have been so blessed that each place i've lived in the past four years has had a downtown view. nick and i talk about moving to st. paul in a year when our lease is up, but i don't know if i could sacrifice the scene out my window. that's something we have control over, but with his new job we will be moved out of here in two years or so and relocated to a new city. hopefully it is one with a skyline and i'm praying we can afford a home with a view.

i'm tryin'

so i've realized i'm not as great at writing in here as i had hoped. i mean once a week is better than some folks do, but at the beginning of this blog thing i wanted to write a few times a week if possible. so i'll work on it, but honestly my life doesn't seem interesting enough to write everyday sometimes. i used to be able to tell funny or interesting stories every day. maybe i'm just not looking hard enough for the exciting things. i started my nanny job this week. oh how i missed my girls! the oldest now has some "sas" as her mom calls it and the kindergartener has become a drama queen and super sensitive (or that could have just been today). i'm thankful to have a "mom" car to drive them in because the two doors before just wasn't doing it. i have already begun to think like a teacher with them. they have been instructed to read for 30 mins every day. now for the second grader no problem! except that she's reading harry potter and not comprehending. she likes to just say she finished it. and the kindergartener was reading judy moody (a book for 7yr. olds and up) which amazed me. come to find out she has no idea about sentence structure and dialog in a book and is not at all comprehending. she can read the words, but she hates it. how do i tell their parents that? they think their kids are so smart...i don't want to tell them they're wrong since i'm not their teacher, but i want them to love reading and get the most out of it. what do i do? OH i remember a funny story from my week... i am taking methods of music this semester and in it we will all learn the recorder (or relearn from 4th grade) plus either the piano or guitar. a girl in my class raises her hand and warns us that we can laugh if we need to, but she would like to learn the piano and guitar since she had 6 YEARS of private recorder lessons! 6 years!??? we were rolling on the floor!! especially because she is one of our school's star athletes in volleyball. we would have never expected. and who does that anyway? she didn't move on to the flute or clarinet...oh dear. can you imagine a ninth grader performing in recorder recitals? ok...enough for tonight. i'll try to find the excitement in everyday things for you guys.

just what i always wanted

below you can see my new car! sorry it's not me in a hot bikini on the hood. but it's been rainy here and we couldn't work it out with the photographer :) Just Kidding! (well it really has been raining) it was third on the list and just what i needed. yes, i would have loved the heated seats and moon roof the others had, but we saved $4,000 picking one with the basics. not to mention i've always wanted a black jetta. my favorite part is that the inside dash glows a purpilsh color at night. well i also love the trunk space, the four doors and that it's an automatic. i'm a very happy girl right now :)

My new ride! 

car shopping we will go...

this afternoon should be quite the adventure - car shopping! nick has never been to a dealer to test drive and i've gone once in my life and was the one in the back seat. usually my dad would stop by the dealerships on sundays and peek in the window of cars he liked. i used to think car places were never open! :) so today will be a new experience for both of us. the best part about his "trip" as we are calling it is how organized nick was in preparing it. he came home from work last night with a folder of papers. it was each of the cars we had decided were worth looking at printed from online, with the address and google map of the dealership attached to it. he then printed one large map of the area and numbered each spot we would be stopping at and the numbers on the map correspond with each of the cars and close up maps. i don't know if i'm more excited to drive cars or to follow the treasure map he made :) i will update you with the car decision once we have brought one home. we are looking at jettas, mazda proteges and audi quattros. my heart is set on a jetta, but if the other ones drive nicer (or if i'm greedy and want the leather interior of the audi) that could change.