Royal Wedding

With the Royal Wedding taking place yesterday (if you don't know what I'm talking about, please get out from underneath your rock and google "royal wedding", thanks) I can't help but think about Kate constantly.

Last night as we were putting food on the table I thought "I wonder if Kate will get to cook again in her life... or go to the grocery store... or do dishes..."

Then this morning as I'm changing the sheets on my bed I thought "I wonder if Kate will ever have to make her bed, or change the sheets, or do laundry"

I'm pretty sure the answers to my wondering thoughts are for the most part a big, fat no. But what if she actually wants to go to the grocery store? what if she wants to make her bed? Will she be allowed?

What if she's weird like me and enjoys (for the most part) doing house chores such as cleaning mirrors...

I Might be Losing My Touch

This morning, as I switched the date in my kitchen calendar I realized today was April 26. I knew it was an important date for sure - but couldn't quite figure out what the importance was.

So I texted Pablo
F: is today anniversary of Opa [my dad's dad] passing away? 4/26
P: no. today is 20 yrs we got here
F: oooooo. ok.

For the most part I'm rather good at remembering birthdays, anniversaries, significant dates, etc. But it looks like I might be losing my touch... could it be that my brain is getting old? or could it be that as life goes on my brain retains more information and therefore getting overloaded?

No telling. Either way, 20 years is quite a long time.

The awesome part (one of the awesome parts) about keeping a blog is that you can go back and read old posts and keep yourself entertained. Here are the links to what I wrote on April 26 in 2010 [click here] and in 2009 [click here]. And just in case you are wondering what Pablo has to say about today's significance... you can read by clicking this link.

Not a Little Boy Anymore

Due to unfortunate circumstances (Michelle had to head down to Florida because her dad was very ill and passed away), Juan Ma is spending this long weekend with us.

Taking care/watching Juan Ma is nothing unfamiliar, it's actually second nature. But oh how things have changed in the past fifteen years since he was a brand new baby. I am no longer woken up to a toddler beating me and  screaming "wake-ak tati! wake-ak tati!" because he is hungry and wants breakfast. We no longer play "emergency! emergency!" and we no longer compare shapes and sizes "medium size, small size" and we definitely don't watch Blue's Clues or Veggie Tales.

Now I'm asked what I would like for breakfast. We have intelligent conversations about the similarities between beer and bread due to fermentation (that conversation involved Norm). I get to listen to the high-school lunch table dilemmas and exciting camp-outs to Carowinds.

I do miss that little boy that would get mad at you if you laughed at him (even if he was doing something funny). But at the same time I am ecstatic to share these moments now - moments that I have been wondering for fifteen years what they would be like and are now coming true.

And yes Juan Ma - I am blogging about you.

Manuals No More

Earlier today the iPod froze. The screen went black and it would not charge, it would not come on, nothing. It would just beep when the button was pressed.

Norm started to get worried, wanting to look for the instruction manual - I do have to insert at this moment that we have one drawer in the living room dedicated to all the manuals. When I say all the manuals I mean all the manuals - rice cooker manual: in there. A/C unit manual: in there. Iron manual: in there too. Without boring you with all the details of all the manuals in the drawer, it's pretty self explanatory that "looking for the iPod manual" could easily take a week.

So instead I decided to use technology! I binged (apparently googling is out) "how to reset ipod nano" and within 2 minutes the iPod was back up an running.

What would we have done back in the day without ehow.com? Then again, back then we probably had simpler technological problems that did not involve resetting tiny machines with one button.

Our Backyard Stinks

 Our backyard stinks. Literally it stinks for about a week out of the year.

We have four trees in the backyard:

The one on the left (the one that looks like has two trunks) smells like fish meal when it blooms. It has these tiny white flowers with a red center:

Yes - I said it smells like fish meal - therefore it stinks. As much as I like being outside during this time of the year I am really hesitant on stepping foot in our backyard while this tree is in bloom.

Auto-Pilot

I am convinced that Norm and I live our lives through April and May through auto-pilot. It's the busy season at work so we are in a constant movement that involves: long hours at work, home, dinner, feeding the dogs, cutting the grass, going to Mass, grocery shopping, picking up poop from the backyard and doing laundry. And the cycle begins all over again the minute one week ends.

Last Saturday though, a good friend of mine and I threw a little shower/get together for a good friend of ours who is expecting a little boy (although her grandma is convinced it will be a little girl) at the end of May. I will take two seconds to toot my own horn and announce to the world that I - the crafty and creatively challenged person I am - made a diaper cake that was the centerpiece for the table!

 

I will not disclose the number of glasses of wines consumed or the number of times I had to start over...

Masters 2011

This year we got our act together and actually managed to get tickets to the Masters at the Augusta National. So today we drove up to Augusta early in the morning.

The landscape and the course is way more beautiful than CBS and ESPN could ever possibly manage to get on our TVs at home. To the point that when we got there and started walking the course (we walked pretty much the whole course... we must have walked about 4.5 miles...) I dared Norm to touch the grass to see if it was real - everything in me believed the "grass" to be AstroTurf... it was so perfectly real!

Please disregard the guys to the right - I would crop them, but the only problem is if I were to crop them I would also end up cropping "MASTERS" and that defeats the purpose of the picture:

 We saw some golfers - nobody really we knew, or famous. Just some regular Masters players:

Palm tree - yes, that's a palm tree at the National

6th Hole. Azaleas were breathtaking:

6th Hole. So were the dogwoods:

That's the clubhouse in the background:

The lawn right behind the clubhouse was set with pretty green and white umbrellas- people were actually eating there! And they were eating at the clubhouse! Everything was so classy and perfect:

Amen Corner:

Concessions were so ridiculously cheap. In case you can't figure out the writing, sandwiches ranged from $1.50 to $2.50. Domestic beer? $3.00. And in case you wanted to go fancy and drink import: $3.75.

Bobby Jones sundial:

On our way in we had heard on the radio that golfer Bubba Watson was going to be at Best Buy later on in the afternoon. Well everything worked out perfectly and we were able to see him there. So he autographed our yellow Masters 2011 Banner!

What an awesome day! The weather was beautiful and the scenery remarkable. Time to put our feet up!

I somehow have forgotten to mention that as we were crossing the 15th hole, we inadvertently stopped dead in the center of the fairway as we looked at our course map to decide which way we had to go to move on to the 16th hole (it felt like we were at the theme park). Next thing we knew we heard a whispering scream "SIR! SIR! you have to move!". So realizing that the crowd had already cleared around us and the workers were waiting on us to get out of the golfer's way, I start running and immediately I hear that whispering scream: "please don't run!" followed by hand gestures indicating for us to slow down. Embarrassing.

First Pool Day

This was my view as I laid out by the pool this afternoon. So pretty!