Oh baby it's good!

It's here, it's amazing and you should get your copy today! I have this deep seeded passion and love for music but my very, most absolute wonderfullest favorite are the Indigo Girls and they have just released a new fabulously wonderful cd, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug. Coolest title ever right? Yeah, it is but I'm byased because I love them and their music and I am SO stinking excited about this new album. Click here to hear a snipit of "What are you like" one of the new fabulous songs. Then buy the cd, play it and love it. I do.

Ok, seriously!

So I have recommended these books in the past, I read a few of them and took a break and I'm now trucking through the rest. I can't get enough of this adorably quirky and funny story. Michael Buckley has woven such a brilliant and beautiful story about fairy tale characters and their entrapment in a small town...together...forever. The Sisters Grimm books have become a new favorite in my growing closet of favorites. They're directed to the "tween" crowd but have an adorable little romance that I'm totally digging. More importantly of course the plot is unbelievable. Evil and good alike are trapped in a little town, everyone from Red Riding Hood to Robin Hood, it's a delicious little fiction treat. The characters are interwoven into the story so beautifully, you can tell Buckley knows his fairy tales and mythology like it's nobody's business. You go Mr. Buckley, and please keep writing these fabulous little books, I'm completely smitten with them.


For all of you "vampire" fans out there, here is another series that has caught my eye (I know I have the vampire bug right now). The Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz was a fun, intriguing teen vampires series. There are so many out there right now and some really are complete junk but this series was very well written, well thought out and very nicely executed. (It sounds like a jump in ice skating or something right? Sorry). Simply put, I liked it, it was well done. There wasn't a feeling of closure at the end of the book though, it was set up for the next book and I felt a little bit like this book really was just an introduction for the next two. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's great if you want to sell books but for my personal preference I want to feel satiated at the end of a novel, this didn't fill that need. So yeah, I wanted more but I was still happy enough with it that I have the next one on my library queue.

There are a few recent reads, if you want some thoughts on some books I DIDN'T like recently, let me know, I have a stack that I threw out. There is just a lot of bad literature out there mixed in with the good.

Happy reading one and all!

Take That!

All I have to say is...

TAKE THAT!!!!!!

If this performance didn't win all of you Adam-haters over, then you're a lost cause. That was brilliant!

My friend Laura came over and watched with me, she hadn't seen him before and we both did triumphant shouts and jumps of joy after that performance, sending poor little E. into a fit of tears because we scared him. But even he had the reverence of a great performance.

Take that baby, take that.

Mmmmmm...

Ok, lame, my video's always get removed, here's a link though Adam rocks my freaking world!!!

Sorry everyone, try the link, it will be better, promise.

It's pronounced Looavul

So this could sound strange but get over it because we think it's great. M. and I have this strange love for the movie "Elizabethtown". It's our favorite movie to watch together, I won't go into all of the reasons why because no one else ever seems to like it nearly as much as we do but needless to say, we love it. So since we are only a few hours away from the actual Elizabethtown where the movie takes place we decided to make that our destination of choice for Spring break. We went this last week and had a delicious time eating fried food and hearing hilarious stories from full accented Kentuckians. It was a trip to remember for sure. Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy of our trip.

M. and E. by the town sign. Everywhere you went they talked about the movie and how "We inspired Hollywood, now it's your turn..." It was great.

This my friends was the restaurant of champions. Never before have we seen anything like it, nor do I think we ever will again. Let me list the five ridiculously amazing things about "Gettin' Together Over Gatti's"...

1. "Gettin' Together Over Gatti's" is a pizza buffet restaurant where you can eat endless amounts of any kind of pizza you could ever want. You can order whatever you want at the buffet and they will make it for you, seriously, no lie there was SO much pizza! I have never seen such a glutenous and purely wrong environment in my life. Absolutely hilarious and sad at the same time. M. and I couldn't believe our eyes when we saw the massive plates of pizza people were bringing back to their tables.

2. The "nutritious" salad was bagged ice-berg that was passed over by everyone but M. and I. I don't think they have to refill the salad all day because no one got any - they just ate the endless amounts of pizza that is slowly killing the entire town of Elizabethtown! And for dressing you better believe that there was only Ranch and French, heaven forbid anything low fat or vinagrette-ish. I guess no one worries about what they're putting on their salad when they're eating 20 pieces of pizza (no exageration on the number of pieces consumed by some of these people).

3. The dessert section is even pizza! They just put various fatening sweets on top and called it dessert. I'm pretty sure you could order whatever you wanted on that too. We got some cinnamon sugar something and neither of us could finish it because half the plate was full of grease, wow. Wow, that's all we could thing. I couldn't believe the amazing places "Gettin' Together Over Gatti's" went with the invention of round dough. Incredible.

4. This one is just for you Marcos - "Gettin' Together Over Gatti's" is your 5 food group heaven!
1. Pizza
2. Bread
3. Cheese
4. Noodles
5. Cold Cereal (Ok, they didn't have that but I bet you could bring some in and you would really be in Marcos-five-food-group heaven!)

5. There is an arcade in the back. Enough said right?

It was amazing. Those are the only words I know to describe what we saw, heard, felt and how ringing grease out of our pizza before consuming it made us feel.


So after exploring Elizabethtown for a day we decided to investigate the town Hodgenville, allegedly the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. Who knew?! I guess Indiana, Illinois and now Kentucky all claim him as theirs. It was great to go and check out where he was born, eat at "Abe's Country Cookin'" and shop in the hundreds of Abraham Lincoln gift shops. What an adventure, I highly recommend it to any Abe fans out there. Check it out. Hodgenville, KY.


Naturally, we had to have fried green tomatoes, M's first time, hopefully we won't undergo heart failure because of this trip but they were good. Then at "Abe's Country Cookin'" how could we resist getting the "Big Abe" and the "Mary Todd"? That's right, we couldn't, M. got the "Big Abe" burger and I happily enjoyed the "Mary Todd" (a smaller version of the "Big Abe"). It was definitely "Country Cookin" and we left full, greasy and happy.

After a visit to a yummy little Sweet Shope we were given a recommendation to come to the "Whistle Stop", a little restaurant right on the train tracks in Glendale. I think this was E's favorite part of the entire trip. He was so in love with watching the trains go by that we ended up sitting outside for nearly an hour after we had eaten just so we could watch another train go by. What a little boy right?
We also enjoyed a strange yet delicious plate of fried dill pickles here at the Whistle Stop. I had no idea that was possible, ok, I probably knew it was possible, I just had never thought anyone would ever try it. M. loved them, I thought they were ok but we both ended up ordering salads because we just couldn't handle any more fried and fatening food. Yea for vegetables!


Our hotel had a pool that was FREEZING cold. M. and E. braved the cold and had a blast but I just hung out in the "warm-tub". I can call it that because it was in no way hot, we even let E. in it because it was about the temperature we set his bath to. It was fun though.
This is the legendary "The Brown" hotel where Drew Baylor stays in the movie. Naturally we had to go and investigate it while we were in Louisville. It really is beautiful and we felt so star-struck standing inside. I have met quite a few famous people in my little life, including Steven Spielberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harry Connick Jr., Lisa Loeb and more but I don't think I was as star struck and a little giddy then as I was to be in this hotel. Isn't that ridiculous? Well, what can I say, that's just the way I roll.
We did a little sight-seeing through Louisville, a really cool city that we both would love to go back too. There were tons of cool streets we would love to explore when it isn't so horribly cold. We will definitely be back.

On our way out of town we were hungry and were absolutely not getting anything deep fried or dripping with grease so we stumbled onto this little deli called Safier Mediterranean Deli (just down the street from "The Brown") that had the most to-die for hummus I have ever had. It was fabulous and so refreshing after a few days of praying that my arteries wouldn't clog up with all the grease we were eating we really enjoyed it and E. even ate half the hummus himself. Mmmmm...


So that completes the crazy adventures of our Elizabethtown, Louisville adventure. We saw a lot, experienced some very new things and loved every minute of it. I hope you enjoyed coming with us for a few minutes. Happy traveling!

As one more additional treat (I know, could I make this post any longer?) I included a video of E. laughing like a mad man. He was "scaring" M. and would die with laughter when he would turn around and look at him. It was hilarious. Enjoy!

Happy St. Paddy's

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope your holiday was as green as ours.

PS The food looks disgusting but it actually tasted great!
And yes, all you Adam Lambert haters--I loved it!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

This post goes out to my little brother and my soon-to-be little sister! Congratulations Marcos and Danielle! They made it official last night, they are engaged to be married on June 12 of this year. We are oh-so-excited for you and anticipate hearing all about the many adventures of your engagement! Yea for you!

The beauty of fiction...

So every season when the weather changes my wrist goes crazy on me and I have to take a little crocheting/ knitting hiatus. I love this silly hobby of mine (yes I know that it's very "Grandma-ish" of me, no offense to all the grandma's reading this, but I love it, so deal with it), so it's really hard to put it aside for awhile. Well, to help me cope during this period of yarn deprivation I upped my reading and have been a YA fiction fool lately. I have read several books and have enjoyed most of them but the series that is currently standing out is one I'm reluctantly going to talk about and recommend, only because it was lovely but not for everyone, and yeah, just keep reading.
I have admitted in the past that I am a fan of Vampire mythology and I really love vampire related books, I have also related that I am a bit of a Twilight-hater. I didn't care for them but I am extremely happy for Stephanie Meyer's success, that is my opinion. I have read the Vampire Academy series and really liked that, another vampire teen series. I thought since I liked that series I would try another series of teen vampire books. I started Marked, the first book in the House of Night series and I was mildly impressed with the unique twist on mythology but not impressed with the writing. I decided to try the second book and see if the mother-daughter duo improved their writing with time. (Jim Butcher improved dramatically from book to book and since I enjoyed those books more and more as I continued reading, so after learning a valuable lesson I decided to give the Cast's a shot). I did and I was captivated. The second book in the series, Betrayed started out slow but as it picked up I was completely caught up in the story and the writing really was...lovely. I enjoyed the characters, I even cried at a dramatic scene toward the end and I was really swept up in the emotions. I could relate to the character, as she seems to never be able to catch up to the present, a feeling I feel overwhelmed with every day.
Well, to sum up, I'm anxious to read the next book and upset that I am fifth on the library queue. More than that though I have learned a lot about writing, there are so many important and complicated elements to writing and I'm completely fascinated with it. It's a beautiful art and I take my hat off to all you writers out there, of any genre. It's tough to write period, and near impossible to write well. I'm surrounded by amazing writers and I am amazed every day at how dedicated and talented you all are. Good for you and thanks for giving me some fabulous entertainment while my wrist takes a little vacation.
Happy reading!

So it's just after 1:00 in the afternoon, I am still in my pajamas (a horrid arrangement of black yoga pants, a pink night-shirt and a ridiculously old hoodie that says "Roy Redskins", yeah it's that old. I look like this crazy lady from the Simpsons - it's remarkably accurate, just put E. in my arms instead of cat, I'm allergic to those.) I am also currently listening to my son, whose diaper I just changed because I put him in his bed and yes, he pooped at will yet again, it's a daily occurance here, seriously. He's screaming at the top of his lungs because he thought me changing him was his ticket to freedom and now he's so mad he's freaking out. So...I'm not sure where this new, fun rebellious behavior came from (I thought he was just like his dad but I guess there is a little bit of me in there after all eh?) but it seems to be stickin' around. Sorry for the lack of posts, I just thought I would update you as to why. Crazy cat lady minus the cat but instead a ornery pooping little boy that is hating to nap. Anyone who wants to offer up a little pray that I make it to the shower today would be greatly appreciated!

This is for my husband. Just because I love you! Best intro to just about anything, ever.

Peace out!
~Crazy lady

The talented Mr. E, ladies and gentlemen...

So...E. has this disgusting talent that makes me so mad everyday. I put him down for his first nap of the day and, he's one, so of course he starts to cry and throw a fit. I leave the room and after a minute he gets quiet. THEN...about three minutes later he starts to yell and call for me. I usually give him a few minutes of calling until he's "finished" (yes, this word has special meaning in this story). After a few minutes of that I will go in to find that he has managed to poop at will. He does this EVERY DAY people!!!! I'm assuming that everyday he thinks he will get out of having to go to bed if he poops, and for a minute he does because I have to change him so that he's not sleeping in poop, because what kind of mom lets their little boy sleep in poop if they can help it. Gross right? So yeah, then I put him back in his crib and he screams harder than the last time. This typically lasts for quite awhile and I type up posts like this to distract myself from a stinky, poop at will, screaming baby. How does he do this you ask? I don't know, I don't know. But he does, every day, without fail, every day.

Next in this post...

Another talent from Mr. E. Douglas...

A small sampling for all the "unbelievers" (and a little nose-picking, sorry)...