The Hunt for Red October

WoW what an afternoon! Even when I tried to prepare myself, I failed..... okay let's start from the beginning.

I am doing a newborn photo shoot tomorrow and need a bean bag chair. I knew I would eventually need to find a bean bag, but I was waiting til I actually had my first newborn BOOKED, and that happens to be tomorrow WOO HOO! I had already looked online a while ago when I made my list of 'to get' items. I knew Target had a vinyl one (why vinyl you ask? because babies make messes and vinyl is easy to clean) but online it said it was an online only item. Well crap, I was afraid the search would be a pain. So on my way to work this morning I compiled a list of places to CALL while at work to save myself from running all over town. First call: Target because A - I love target, I'm a target girl and B - because it is a block from my work. Here's the conversation:

me: Hi I'm calling to see if you have any bean bags

her: um....

me: oh sorry I mean bean bag CHAIRS (i did the same with with someone else, I forget there are things called bean bags that aren't bean bag chairs, hee hee)

her: oh hold on I'll check......

::hold music::

her: yes we do! they are in the furniture department and there are also some in the kids decor area

me: thanks!

Sweet!! So that was easy, my list goes into the shred it box, since I won't be needing to call anywhere else. Now fast forward about 3 hours later to when I am finished working my half day. I go to target, thinking this afternoon is going to be an easy one, pick up a few items I need all in one place and head home to get some house work done. I pull down the furniture aisle... YuP there's the bean bags, but I forgot to mention I was looking for the vinyl bean bags... hmmm should I just get this one or attempt to locate a vinyl one? Well it was only about 12:15, I had some time. I could do some more searching and if nothing comes up I could just pick up the non-vinyl one at any target. At this point I was kicking myself for not asking for a vinyl one and not continuing my search via phone this morning.

Thank goodness for google text! I have internet on my phone, but by the time I open up the internet, go to google and type in the store I'm looking for then somehow locate a phone number on their website, the weekend would be over. So instead I use the wonderful google text feature. If you haven't used it and have unlimited texts, I highly recommend it. I first tried wal-mart because it was right across the highway. If you know me very well, you know I do NOT shop at wal-mart, besides the fact there are really none in the cities (I work in a suburb hence why there is one in this town) I just don't like shopping there. BUT when I am looking for something, I am willing to open my search to wal-mart. So I text "wal-mart 55369" to google (just a six letter number that spells google) and 2 seconds later I get a text back giving me the address and phone number of a few wal-marts near that zip code. For some reason the text sent me the tire and auto number and the photo dept number. So I try the first number, tire and auto... it rings and rings. I hang up. Then I try the photo number and get a snotty "hello, photo" (probably a teenager) I explain I'm trying to reach the main number and she says to hold on... I hold then the line dies. Grrrreat! Oh well, I'm right here so I'll just go in. No luck there.

Back in my car, google texting Kohl's: Nope, Bed, Bath, & Beyond: Nope, Home Goods: Nope, Sam's: Nope (that was a kyle find while I was also texting him). Oh and with all the google texting comes memorizing numbers then calling them to find out. I needed to get a few things at JoAnn's so all this continued on my way to JoAnn's. BabiesRUs: Nope, ToysRUs: Nope (I actually just wanted to call toys r us but I had to call babies r us first to get the toys number). Ah made it to JoAnn's, got a few items, checked for bean bags, nope. Party City was near by so I stopped in there, hey I was up for anything. No luck there, but she recommended Wal-Mart, I said "I just came from there" she suggested elk river or coon rapids. I'm thinking "okay lady I live near Minneapolis, I'm not going out to the boonies" if you don't know elk river and coon rapids are also suburbs, my goal was to get CLOSER to home on this wild goose chase for a bean bag chair. So I call another wal-mart, which is in Brooklyn Center... I get hung up on (that's wally world for me) and call back. Then she says no they don't have any. I was headed toward Brooklyn Center just in case at this point and decided just to head toward home and hit the Target by our house. Along the way Kyle had suggested to maybe just get the cloth bean bag chair from target and spray it with scotch guard. This idea was looking like the winner. I made it to Brooklyn Park and saw a target so I got off the highway. This target is kinda in a ghetto area, kinda where we used to live. I remembered there was a Big Lots nearby, so I thought I will try ONE more store then just get the bean bag at target. Big Lots HAD some!!!! Well they had the ones that have the back built into them, which wasn't going to work, besides they were three times the price as the target one. Sutherland's was right next door, so I dropped in there. The sales guy proceeded to list other stores to try, and my response after each one "nope, they don't have them, neither do they, not there either" I told him it's okay, not to waste his time thinking, it was going on three hours of me trying to find what I was looking for.

SO I pulled into target, it's almost 3:00, and had decided I earned some chocolate after all this and was getting a Mounds bar when I checked out! I walked back to the furniture department, which this wasn't a super target so the lay out is a little different. I walk down the aisle and there are the purple princess $25 bean bags... AHHH that is not what I wanted, I wanted the plain jane red $19.99 bean bag!!!! Oh you've got to be kidding me. So I walk around looking for the kids decor area hoping that maybe they just have them there. I see a worker who asks what I am looking for, I state bean bag chairs and she says "yeah we don't really have any, we carry those during back to school" for one I KNOW they have them because I just came from a target that did, and I see that they do have some already, just not the one I want. I go back to the furniture aisle and there is the tag for the red bean bag chair I want... it's shelf sitting empty. I go to a red phone, call for an assistant and ask for them to check the back for this red bean bag. HALLELUJAH!! They have some in back!!!! My hunt is over and I could have saved myself an afternoon, just by getting the first red bean bag I saw at 12:15. Oh well, you live you learn.

but oh wait it's not over yet....

I was almost home and was thinking about this cute little blue rug I got at the first target and thought "you know what, I think I would prefer that in green, kinda like grass. then I can use it with boys and girls. I wonder if they have green" so I stopped at the target near our house to exchange the one I got. I left my blue one at the customer service desk and told the lady I wanted to make sure they had the one I wanted before I exchanged. So I walked to the back. Again a different style target so everything is in different places. Hmmm this is odd I don't see the kid decor section anywhere and that's where this rug was. So I went back up to the front and told her I couldn't find where they were. She scanned the blue one I brought in and said "well it says we have two" I told her I was wanting green so she looked that up, well first she could just find the various sizes then said "they are usually just one number off so let me try a few numbers" after finding that they had purple ones and pink ones she finally came to green "yes it says we have two" hmmmm "did you look along the back wall? they might be there" I said yes but that I'd go back and look again. This time I continued on PAST where it should have been with the bedding and bath and finally found the kids decor aisle near the toys. Well I can understand putting it by the toys since it's kids, but seriously every other store I had been in today had them near the bedding and bath section. Oh well, there it was and I was calling it a day!!!!

Now I'm home!

It comes every year

It's the end of February...


everyone gets to be a little cranky. Maybe it's the lingering winter or that some people didn't have a valentine. I'm starting to think that they put Valentine's Day where they did because everyone gets a little depressed this time of year. I know, I know that has nothing to do with the REAL meaning of St. Valentine's Day But it's a thought, why else did they put a cheery holiday in this icy, sluggy, winter depression month.


We woke up to zero degrees yesterday.... it just dropped down out of no where. Personally I kinda liked it. I feel like the winter has gone by fast. Maybe it's my new love for a winter activity that I haven't got to do very much or the thought of not being able to do it once the snow is all gone. Or maybe it's that my head has been a little fuzzy the past few weeks since my husband has gone back to school.

Kyle started grad school a few weeks ago, wow it's been a month actually, and it almost feels like I've lost my best friend. Well okay NOT completely, there's still harpo - hee hee. We're just used to spending every minute together, focused on each other. We had a nice talk this weekend, ideas to make it better. Like only one social event a weekend and that we are going to designate one night just to us :-D that made me happier.

Speaking of Harpo, he is so funny! We captured him being a bum on the couch the other day....


Of course he didn't sit like that on his own, we were playing around and he ended up like that and he stayed there. For quite a while too.


I had a similar picture to those above when he was just a few months old. I'll have to scan it in because well, my computer crashed in 2007 and I lost 5 months of pictures. It was a horrible moment, very upsetting. But luckily I had made Harpo's scrap book before hand so I have a printed out copy of that picture I'm thinking of.


He loves us, and we love him!


Warm Wishes and HAPPY February!

Year End

WoW what a year, I can't believe it's almost over. Ever year seems to go by faster and faster.
In 2009 I:
-witnessed a LIVE birth!!, the birth of my beautiful niece
-Ran a 5K
-Got Married
-obtained a new last name
-chopped all my hair off and donated it to locks of love
-went out of the country
-snorkeled for the first time
-got my first DSLR camera!!
-saw Chicago for the first time
-had my first FULL year as a homeowner

We have done a lot of work on our house over the past year, we actually have a yard now :-) and I'm starting to learn how to garden and plant plants. Not as much was done INSIDE the house, but we did the bulk of that when we moved in, back in 2008 (lol seems like a long time ago saying it that way).

We camped, golfed, explored museums and went the farthest north we've ever been so far. We tried to enjoy the summer as much as possible since the year before was consumed by house hunting.

Who knows what's in store for us in 2010. Many things will be different, Kyle is starting school in February, I am also applying to graduate school and if I get accepted with start in the fall. We hope to get one or two camping trips in this summer, and our year will begin with a cross country ski adventure :-)


What have you done in 2009?
What are you looking forward to in 2010?

My Normal

Before my husband and I got married we did a seven week pre-marriage class with 3 other couples. (the best thing I think we could have done in preparation for marriage) One thing we talked about, that ended up making a lot of sense was 'our normal'.  Getting married is the unity of two separate, different families... yeah on the surface that is kind of a duh statement, but really have you thought about it?  A spouse is just more than a person... they are what they grew up with, what their parents grew up with and so on. Some families learned to dunk their peanut butter sandwiches... others learned not to. Some families learned that you keep the door shut when you go to the bathroom, while others were care free and visited with their brothers while taking a poop and the other is in the shower.  Even things such as when you have something to say you say it even if it's not nice verses you never say anything not nice, you just keep it to yourself and bottle it up.  When a couple starts their own family, all these things collide to 'his way' 'her way'... but what we learned is it's 'our normal'... and recognizing this from the beginning and accomodating each other is one step closer to happiness :-)

That just brings me to share my normal... my halloween normal :-)

Growing up we ALWAYS dressed up. It was fun! And my mom was the BEST costume maker! We would go all out, because well it was fun and that's what we just did.  I remember one year, third grade I think, I was going to be a genie and not just any genie, not just a genie that you bought off the rack at Osco-Drug... a UNIQUE genie that only my mother would make and only I would be wearing!!! 

I remember that evening clearly, it was just me and my mom in the front seat... buckled in to probably the only two seat belts located in that big white hoss of a van... hey it was the early 90's you didn't really wear seatbelts if you weren't in the front seat.  We had just found the perfect material at the FM store and were headed home on hwy 65. When out of NO WHERE came this big brown blog, right in front of us. There was nothing else to do but to hit it... I remember seeing a head fly left, some legs fly right and a body fly over us! Luckily our tank would not let a wondering deer stop us... although it did cause some grill damage. I then cried, I was scared and sad that the pore little deer was now shredded to pieces. But I will never forget that halloween year. And I will never forget our dedication to have a kickass halloween costume.

**Later I learned that the deer wasn't shattered to pieces... but for some reason that is the image I held.




Thanks for reading!
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Ode to Fall

I heard a strange but familiar noise the other day
When I looked out the window my breath was taken away
There were leaves on the ground
And leaves falling all around
The summer green color was changing
And I knew a season was beginning




Wow I don't think I've written a poem since college English class...Thanks for getting through that! ;-)
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A moment of rememberance

8 Years ago today, our country was changed. It wasn't until after I lived in New York, five years ago, that I developed a great love for that city. But I remember this day, eight years ago, and hearing my brother call me into the living room from my cozy, warm bed that I was sleeping in since my classes started later on a Tuesday.  It was devastating, but not as devastating to me as to others.  My cousins live in New York, ones that I didn't really know til I lived there and I am so grateful for that year of getting to know them. They took me in like family (oh wait we were) but still I was practically a stranger when I first met them. Granted I had met them a few times at family reunions with about 75 other family members. 

When I lived in NY, I spent Thanksgiving with them, I spent Easter with them, I spent MANY weekends with them. They were my home away from home, because I was infact over 1,000 miles from home. Living in New York was one of the best years of my life, I learned so much and grew a lot too. I know it wouldn't have been as great of a year if it didn't involve getting to know the Fallone's!

Before that year in New York, I was touched by the events that occurred on September eleventh, but not as touched as I am now, after knowing how it touches my family.  I can't help but think of them on this day.  I think Patty said it best with her facebook status:

"It's been 8 years since the world lost a set of mischieviously twinkling brown eyes. The thought of them will always make me smile. I still see them when I look at my children. 9/11 means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For me and my kids, we think about the man we all loved who never came home. But tonight, and tomorrow, as always, we will honor him by laughing and smiling and remembering us."

I leave you with another link she posted: http://www.mousetrax.com/pub/tribute.swf

Give someone you love a hug today, because not all of us can.

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Have I told you lately that I love you?

"Each man's life represents a road toward himself." -- Hermann Hesse

As hurt and disconnected I may have felt at times throughout my life, I know it is part of becoming who I am. I know I get confused and use anger as an expression of hurt or I use blame as an expression of overwhelmth. But as I travel down this road.... called life.... I learn more and more each passing day.

Unless they have loved someone effected by the disease of addiction, people don't truly understand what it is all about. It's a disease that makes a person... well not a person at all. Yeah humans are selfish, it's in all of our natural ways of thinking, but an addict is truly selfish, an addict is so wrapped into what they are addicted to, even their own needs, like eating and self hygiene aren't even a thought.

Even though an addict continually does things that hurt the ones they say they love, they are not doing them to intentionally hurt that loved one.

He didn't forget my birthday to hurt me, he didn't forget to call me, because he didn't care. He was consumed... consumed by a disease.

And when that disease is under control, me (as a human) often forgets that there is a person under all that mess. There is someone that is trying to make what was wrong, right. It's hard for them, it's hard for me.



My dad came to visit me this weekend. I spent more time with him in the past three days than I have in over ten years. I saw that he is trying, trying to be there for me now because he couldn't be there for me before. It was a good visit. It is a blessing that he was able to come visit us, able to tell us stories from his teenage years, his life is a big story. But like us all, he just wants someone to listen, someone to care.

A few weeks ago my dad had a heart attack, I knew this would happen someday, I mean he hasn't been the kindest to his body over the past few years. I think situations like this help to put life in perspective for everyone and anyone that has to deal with it. We're getting old, and as I get old, my parents get older. And this all makes me look at life a little more precious.

One story he told me was about his high school reunion he attended a few weeks back and how he was once voted most likely to be a comedian. I thought "WHAT? MY Dad, a comedian? Um... he's not funny, he's just embarrassing" Then talking with Kyle, he could see how what other people think is funny, I think as embarrassing. This made me take a step back, and take a look at things, not from how I see them or how I think other people see them, but just how things are and how I don't really need to take everything so seriously. So what if an inappropriate comment is made out loud in the middle of a movie in a dark theater... am I really going to see these people ever again? Who cares!

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image." --Thomas Merton

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." --Norman Vincent Peale

I've learned that I let the little irritating things get to me, when it fact it doesn't matter at all. And when that does happen I end up getting upset with myself for wasting the time I had on those little things. Since Kyle and I don't live near our family, when they come to visit, or when we go to visit I have to remind myself that I need treat these times the same way I have looked forward to them. I always look forward to visiting family, I'm excited, I miss them and love them - I'm just horrible at expressing it. In the moment I get consumed with all the little things that annoy me, but really, those little things aren't what I need to focus on.

"Today I'll use the slogan, 'How Important Is It?' It will help me think things through before I act and it will give me a better picture of just what is important in my life" -- Alateen-a day at a time.

It's interesting how as I get older I learn things (wow!, who knew that would happen?!), the interesting things are what I learn about my family and myself. It's funny to see how the way my mother is and then see the way my father is and it makes total sense about the way I can be. Getting married has opened up a lot of windows in my mind, as well. Kyle and I took a pre-marital class at church last winter and it was probably one of the best things we could have done in preparing for our lives together. We learned a lot about each other and married couples in general. My normal is not his normal, or is it anyone else's normal for that matter. But one of my normals that differs from Kyle's normal is talking... I saw this weekend that I was doomed to be a talker :-) Between my mother who loves to talk and give her opinion, I learned that my dad also loves to talk! Sorry Kyle ;-) but that's why he loves me, right? I also learned little things like why I find it necessary to log the miles I travel or time different routes and see which is faster. After spending a weekend with a parent I see ALL the things I do, which I had always thought were MY great ideas or habits, were really the great ideas of my parents! LOL. It's okay, we're family right? I have ever right to want to organize things, keep maps of all the places I've been, highlight the hiking trails we've used. But I can't throw it away, we might one day go back to that exact spot and want to know what trails were hiked ;-) or so I tell Kyle so he'll let me keep my room 'o' junk. Clutter... it's all clutter... but it's ME, it's my normal.


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