Movin on out to the East side...

... to that de-lux town house in VA.

That's right. I packed our first moving box tonight. Actually I packed three. Mostly just winter stuff that I would be putting away anyway, but I figured I'd actually put it in a box and tape it up and not deal with it again until next winter. And so it begins....

by the way, does anyone else get frustrated with packing tape? I mean, someone should seriously come up with a better device so that the tape does not constantly get stuck to all the pieces it is supposed to slide through. I did eventually figure it out, but I still blame it on the thingy.

New Furniture!!

soooo.... we went to the thrift store to look for picture frames, and we came back with two new living room chairs and a dining room table. The dining room table is not pictured here, but we got a fantastic deal. It's a solid oak table, over 250 lbs, that still had the packing slip on it from the furniture store. We looked it up online when we got back, and full retail, this hunk is over $1500!! We got it with two leaves (which can make the table up to 9 feet long!) and all four legs, and just a few knicks and scratches in the black finish (which I guess is why they couldn't sell it) for a grand total of.... $150! Our new place has a dining room, which we didn't NEED to fill right away, but for such a great deal, we decided to jump on it as an anniversary present to each other.

Then we also got these two awesome matching chairs in practically perfect condition. We're pretty sure that no one but a cat ever sat in these. We love them! The orange goes with the rest of our living room really well, but if you have any suggestions for how to tie in the slate blue color of the chairs chairs with the dark olive green color of our couches, feel free to pass them along. Gotta love some good thrift steals.

Happy Baby!!

My friend Emily is about to have a baby! It will be a boy, and for now we are calling him Stanley. On Sunday we got celebrate the very soon arrival of baby Stanley Somerville! He's due in like two weeks... so it was time to get her some baby goods. We had a lot of good laughs and and a lot of good food. I'm so so so glad we'll be here to meet Baby Somerville when he comes!!

This is Harkins, striking a pose for the camera as he takes a break from handing Emily the presents.

Countin down the days...

Do you know what this is a picture of? It's a paper chain! Do you know what this paper chain represents?? This is how many days I have left at my job. Go ahead, count them. Oh, okay, I'll just tell you. It's 20!! Exactly 4 weeks from today will be my last day of work at Washington University. Don't get me wrong, I will definitely be sad to leave the place, especially the people. But I will be pretty glad to leave the work itself. Starting tomorrow, I will rip one link off this chain every day when I come home from work. And on May 12 I will get to take that very last yellow one at the top off the wall altogether!!



For those who are interested in my countdown, i will try to take pictures once a week to show you the progressive shortening of my paper chain. Then you can visualize how many days I have left at work along with me :-)

Compliments of the chef...

I got home a little later than usual this evening, but I was glad I did when I arrived and Schub had already begun cooking me a gourmet meal. He made an almond-crusted tilapia with salad, green beans, bruschetta, and wine... and pandora for ambiance. Every bite was DE-lish.

We've had this awesome bruschetta twice now at Acero, and we've been dying to try to make it ourselves. Now that we know we can, I'm sure we'll be serving it a lot more often. If you're lucky, you might get to taste it too. It's carmelized onions, melted blue cheese, rosemary, and HONEY. yummers.

... and the tilapia

Well done Schub. I think I'll keep you.

Esther + Icecream = fun night

It is my wonderful friend Esther's birthday tomorrow (Tuesday). We helped her celebrate a little bit early by surprising her at Serendipity on Saturday night. It was fun and yummy... a great combination. Happy Birthday, Esther.

March Madness #5 Champ

I'd just like everyone to know that I filled out a March Madness bracket with some people on Yahoo Sports this year. I never fill them out b/c I don't keep up enough. But Clemson had a pretty good year and there was no money involved, so I thought - why not? I filled out a bracket with 15 other people (that makes 16 total - I was one of two girls in the bracket "league) and named my bracket "I Have no Idea what I'm Doing." Thanks the Chapel Hill win tonight (who I picked to win only b/c they were an ACC team and I hoped they would win), I came in 5th place. Out of 16 people - mostly dudes. I must say I'm pretty proud of myself.

This could be YOUR pastor

In the van on the way to Ikea, I was sitting in the middle bucket seat of the van and Schub was in the "way back." I made up a fun game where I held the camera above my head and, without looking, took Schub's picture and then brought the camera back down to see what kind of face he had made for me. I love this first one - Bible on one knee, map on the other.

Sick. Brooke, I think he picked up some of these faces from Miles and Noah. Be sure you show them what they've taught their Uncle Jason.

Jump up jump up and get down...

The following photos document our attempt to capture all of us in the air simultaneously in front of the big bean. If you'd like you may blow these pictures up and look at each of our faces (especially Steven's) in each picture for a good laugh. Please note my husband in the very last picture. He is a freak of nature - half man, half frog.

Ridiculousness

I'm not sure if you can really tell in these pictures how much it was snowing this morning (APRIL 6, if you were wondering). But it was really snowing A LOT. It was like a blizzard that didn't stick to the ground. And the flakes were giant. It was ridiculous.