miscellaneous may memories

This post is brought to you by two totally unrelated things that happened in May.

PART ONE:


We had an epic weather day - tornado sirens; hailstorms; flash flooding; house-shaking thunderstorms - just normal Iowa spring weather :)


Cody sang me several renditions of 'My Favorite Things' during the thunderstorm, but ditched me during the hailstorms to collect the half-dollar sized hail pieces.


And I took pictures from safely inside our undamaged house.

PART TWO:
We hung out with Mitt! And hopefully more presidential candidates . . .
One sweet perk of living in Iowa is that politicians actually care about getting your vote. What a novel concept! Consequently, there are plenty of opportunities to meet the candidates - rub shoulders with them - and get a real-life, in-person chance to form an opinion of them. But I digress . . .


Our fabulous neighbors invited us to a BBQ for Mitt Romney last weekend. We headed up to a beautiful farm - the main event was inside the neatest barn I have ever laid eyes on. We walked in and Mitt was right there - just hanging out & chatting with people like nobody's business. Of course, Cody walked right up to say hey - without me. I was too star struck to move :)


I did get myself together in time to sit behind Mitt during his speech, get my picture taken with a Mitt campaign sign & try to push my way up to the man himself (which resulted in the above picture).
Overall, I was very impressed with my first presidential candidate experience. Mitt seemed down to earth and very determined to have a better showing this election. Good luck Mitt! Maybe next time you visit we can get a better picture - and I will do my part by actually brushing my hair before our next rendezvous :)

pink eye

{fyi - there are pictures of a grossly infected eye in this post - in case that makes you squeamish}

Last week, I woke up for work & my eye hurt like crazy. I thought it was only my allergies - then I looked in the mirror. This is what I saw:






Definitely NOT allergies . . .

Luckily, our neighbor is an opthamology resident and gave me the scoop about how to recover fully from the wrath of pink eye.

Just in case you ever get pink eye, here is what you need to do:
- stay home from work for 3 days. This is particularly important if it is the last week your schools are in session and you really need to be at work.
- encourage your spouse to sleep on the couch (because the little germies are all over the king size bed & pillows . . . so you can have the bed all to yourself); stop working on anything important to his schooling so he can check on how pink your eye is every two and a half minutes; and bring you frosties at least once each day
- every hour on the hour, call your mom to whine about having to stay inside when the weather is beautiful outside. Consistency is key on this step, right mom?
- sleep 12 hours each day (10 at night, with a 2 hour nap in the afternoon)
- watch your teeny-bopper crush win American Idol :)

this is why I love my dad

competition

Cody has some competition these days. From a 7th grade artic student. Here's the official transcript of a recent conversation:

Joe*: Ring.
Me: Nice r sound. Use ring in a sentence.
Joe: Is that a wedding ring you are wearing?
Me: Yes.
Joe: He's a lucky guy.
Me: What's your next word?

*names have been changed to protect the (not so) innocent

grandparents day

Today is grandparents day at one of my schools. And it is funny. Grandparents come in all shapes, ages, and sizes. Some kids act like being with their grandparents is a novelty; for other kids, it's no big deal.
One of my speech babes asked if my grandparents were coming to school today. I told him no. Apparently, that was the wrong answer. 'Why aren't they coming?' he demanded. I told him they lived too far away to come. That wasn't okay with him; and, honestly, it's not okay with me either.

something borrowed; something blue

Lance & Taylor got married! Yay! We were so glad to be able to both make a quick trip to Utah to visit & participate in the wedding festivities. For your viewing pleasure:

the girlies

cody's best bud -- still :)  hope that never changes!

los hermanos

only Corgan & Greyson had the guts to portray how we all felt during the freezing dang cold post-wedding pictures

thanks for the polish bean!

the windy city

Dave & Jessie passed up a trip to Italy to come visit us (and by us, I mean Chicago). We had a fabulous long weekend. Since I prefer to just see pictures on blogs, I am assuming that you do too :) So here they are!

the NBC building

wrigley field

it really was that windy

still windy & cold (you can tell it was cold because of my eye wrinkles)

lake michigan

I know that this is an incredibly unflattering picture, but Dave was trying to take a picture of Soldier Field & I jumped into it.  He was so dang mad! 

the Chicago skyline

jellies

boys will be boys?