Feeding the Whole Family

i really want to start eating better. so i got this book. it's for getting your kids to eat healthy foods. and i eat like a kid so i hope it works. we are going to try five new things per pay period.

and i thought, how can i make myself do it? i'll blog about it of course! i think that will motivate me. this week i actually bought fresh vegetables (i only ever by potatoes and onions) and i didn't by cookies or ice cream. when i want a snack i'm forcing myself to eat celery and almond butter, or carrots and hummus. so we'll see how it goes.

this morning we had millet for breakfast.




i cooked it with apple juice and a fresh peach. it was pretty good. next time i'll put more peaches in it. tomorrow we are going to have ancient grain cereal. hopefully it won't be terrible.




i bought some sunflowers for myself. they are on sale at work for half of what they normally cost so i thought, why not! they haven't fully opened up yet, so hopefully they will last a long time!




and look what dana brought me from knoxville!!!! i LOVE pennsylvania dutch hex signs and this is the best one i've ever seen!!!!! i can't decide where to hang it. it's so awesome i want to look at it all the time.

Movies In the Park: Legally Blonde

yesterday we went to movies in the park again. the movie was legally blond. i'm not a huge fan of the movie, but watching anything in the park is fun!
i'm loving travis' new haircut so much. he is letting the top get long so he can do the pompadour thing, but i think it's pretty adorable all wavy on top.it was super duper hot again (95!!!) so we debated a lot about taking rose, but since the sun was going down we decided to try it out. and she was so good! she was friendly to people and let everyone pet her. there was a dog a few blankets behind us that kept barking at her, but she mostly ignored him.
ahhhhhhh so cute!!!!! i just can't stand it sometimes. during the movie she was sitting in my lap facing me, and all i could really see were her eyes and her teeth and she looked just like toothless from how to train your dragon. so adorable.

then she almost pooped on someone's shoes. hahaha. so travis had to take her for a walk.

the most exciting/scary part was during the movie we heard two gun shots and then hundreds of people screaming from somewhere else in the park!!! it was so scary! there were police cars everywhere. the parthenon (which is in the park) is a huge gathering spot for tons of teenagers and apparently there have been shootings there before. i've been looking for a news story about it but haven't seen any. so maybe no one got hurt. hmmm.

Backyard Cookout

it's been in the 90s the past few days and i hate it! the air conditioning is out up by the registers at work so i sweat all day, then sweat the whole way home in my car with no air conditioner. horrible. it makes me very whiney.

on friday thomas forced me to have a cookout. haha. he bought everything for it. now i think he understands wh we don't do it all the time. it's expensive!

here are a few pictures.

got marc to man the grill again. travis burns everything. haha.
there is that silly sunburn. it looks bad in real life, but it doesn't hurt at all.
my friend lauren gave rose this little hoodie. it has a monkey on it! so cute! we ended up having to put her inside though. pugs get overheated really fast and it's just too hot for her to be outside longer than it takes her to go to the bathroom.we get thomas to do portraits of everyone for their cups. he did this at my bachelorette party (of course he came to it!).
brittany as a ghost/vampire.

dinner was really awesome. veggie dogs and potatoes grilled with onion and garlic.

then we played catchphrase!!! which might be the most fun game in the whole world. we had to stop playing the electronic one because we played it so many times we all knew the order of the clues.

so catchphrase is mostly just laughing really hard. especially at moments like:

dana: the sound a lion makes!

kyle: oohhhh! ahhhh! (apparently he thought she said audience)

i love my friends so very much. they are like family to me.

Conan O'Brien at Third Man Records

here is the day i was within hugging distance of conan! he is the third of my "boyfriends" i have gotten to see in the past two years. now i just need to somehow meet rivers cuomo.

so like i said before, the show was on thursday, and it got announced on wednesday. i was worried about how early we should get there because it was first come first serve and i definitely wanted to get in. we left to house around nine am so we could do a drive by and see what the line was like. it was just those people, and we decided to stay. some of them had gotten there at 8 pm wednesday night! and the girl right in front of us had been there since 6 am.
travis held an umbrella to keep us out of the sun and we read for a few hours. i tried to play my ds but it's impossible to see it unless you are somewhere kind of dark. which is annoying.

ryan and his friend erin go there around 1:30. it was so freaking hot. we were moved into the side alley and there was NO shade. i think it got into the high 80s/low 90s.

then jack white came out and started throwing water bottles to us.

it was pretty cute.

ryan caught one! ahh!
million years of waiting. it was pretty fun at the front of the line. we'd all been there so long we didn't worry about our spots. people were spread out getting sunburns and playing cards.
travis and ryan left to get dinner. this is the first piece of broccoli i've ever eaten.


travis got a horribly hilarious sunburn. it was his fault though, he refused to put on sun screen for some reason. i got a funny little burn from missing a spot.
so out of the over 1000 people who showed up, only 300 got in. and there were almost 100 on the guest list. so i'm glad we go there early. no pictures allowed inside, which is a bummer because we were SO CLOSE! as in less than 20 feet between me and the cone zone.
jack white came out and introduced conan as an up and coming rockabilly star. we weren't sure what to expect, i was thinking mostly stand up, but he played it pretty straight and it was really just an awesome set of rockabilly songs! he did three elvis songs (King Creole, Blue Moon of Kentucky, and Poke Salad Annie), rock this town! monkey business! a cover of 7 nation army! on the road again!
at one point he said, ""I've had a crazy six months. ... Six months ago, I was the host of 'The Tonight Show,' the greatest franchise in the history of television. Then I started a live tour, going from small theater to small theater. And tonight I'm pressing a vinyl recording. I'm going back in time! Next week I'll be on vaudeville. Then I'll be a steamship captain."
best of all he started playing "creep" by radiohead and was laughing saying he couldn't play it unless he did a chimney sweep accent. and needed a top hat. so he ended up singing the whole song in a hilarious accent and jack white hopped up on stage halfway through and brought him a hat.
at the end jack white joined him to play "20 flight rock" and it was awesome, just as you would expect. before he left the stage conan said “This is probably the most fun I've had in show business…This means everything to me. This was so cool.” and he was clearly moved.
the whole thing was taped and it's being put out on vinyl! if you came to the show you got to order the limited two color vinyl edition. amazing. i can't wait to get it!

as we left they handed us these little silkscreen tickets! adorable!

so we got in the huge line to buy merchandise. we heard he was signing posters up front by he didn't do it very long. i was a little bummed that i wasn't going to meet him, but then he walked out through the front to get to the bus!

ryan shaking his hand! he was talking to erin here. she said something like "wow that was great!" and he said, "you got in? great!" very enthusiastically.

he told her "PLEASE don't get this tattooed" security was really rushing him by, so you couldn't really talk to him, but i got my ticket signed.

so it was totally worth waiting in the hot sun for 12 hours. pretty much a once in a lifetime thing. i love conan even more than i did before.

Anniversary Trip: Day Seven

well here it is, the last day of our anniversary trip.

we woke up here!


i loved it!

we've been looking for concrete stuff for our yard (because we are old ladies) and were really excited when we passed this place in the dark last night! so much stuff!!

i love everything in rows. we bought one of those dogs.we found some really old painted things in the back of the lot. we bought one of these too. so cute.we head to the wildlife museum! i've been wanting to go here for a while. because i love taxidermy. and i heard it was crappy.

there was an entry in the guest book that said "you should advertise that the animals are DEAD." like they thought it was a zoo or something. hahah. dummy.

time for the mystery house!
inside the mystery house! dali and escher posters! how spooky.

first room is a black light room! the teenage girl giving us the tour seems to think we will be very impressed by the fact our shirts/nails/lint are glowing.

optical illusions!

hall of mirrors! this was totally cheesy and totally worth a dollar.

i'm really hot and want some ice cream so we stop at a little diner.

i get a root beer float. he orders a sundae with all the toppings. we share fries. we were supposed to go to mammoth cave, but we've been gone for 7 days and we're only an hour and a half from home and we miss our animals so we decide to just go home.
tennessee!!

we stop at my favorite firework outlet to get some sparklers, but they didn't have the kind i wanted.
final mile count! we went over 1500 miles on our trip!
as soon as we get home we put our new cement deer out!

scampi is very excited that we are home! she is travis' cat.
we drive to my parent's house to pick up our baby! rose!

she is really happy to see us!

she loves it when he growls at her and bites her ears. look at that face!
i took 42 pictures of her in the car. haha.
so all in all we had a great trip! but i was really glad to finally be home.