Air Anyone?

Josh, Isabella and I went out to eat at our favorite cheap restaurant on Thursday (macados). Normally we really enjoy eating here but that night was weird. First of all it was our date night and we had to take Isa with us. She hates sitting there in the high chair watching us eat. We have discovered that if we get her a booster seat and let her sit at the table with us she loves it. So that worked out. Next we realize that to have any type of a conversation we had to yell pretty loud. Normally the music in there is quite background music but tonight someone had turned it al the way up. Then next thing really got to me and for good reason I think. The smoking and non smoking sections in this particular establishment are separated by a
~3ft wall with a little railing on it. Well about half way through our meal I start to really smell smoke and I look up at the wall and was baffled by what I saw. There was a hand, hanging over the railing into the NON-SMOKING section with a lit cigarette in it. I'm sorry but if you don't want the smoke in your booth I sure as hell don't want it in mine!! (especially with my one year old daughter sitting there). I point out the hand to josh who then tries to get their attention to tell them to move but he can't. Why do you suppose that is? Yep, because the music was so loud no body could hear anything! I wish every restaurant would go to non-smoking or at least make then be in a completely different room with a door on it. That might sound mean but if they really want to sit with everyone else then they should quit smoking.

2 hours 15 minutes and 01 second!

I have been running with my dad lately. I like running with him because he pushes me to do what he knows I can do. Well, on Wednesday I called him to see about going running. He said he was doing a long run and I thought that meant six miles (that is what we usually do). I came to find out that he really meant a half marathon. I thought he was crazy but I wanted it bad. I had to take Isabella with me in the jogging stroller and my dad and I had no idea if she would last the whole time. We were thinking it would take around 2 and a half hours. Well, I thought at mile nine I was going to die and I was planning on stopping but just as we finished the 8th mile I got what I lovingly refer to as runners high. Not soon enough in my mind. I am just amazed that I did it but I pushed on and ran the whole 13.1 miles.

I would like to add that the farthest I have ever run was 6.2 miles and I had only ran that once in the past two years. Isabella did great. She got fussy around miles 4-6 but fell asleep the rest of the way.

Granted I was really nauseous and could barely walk to next day but it was worth it and I was off to my 8 am class the next morning.

It Seems So Long Ago

It is amazing what can happen in a year. This time last year Isa was just born. The whole day I was thinking that this time last year I was in this stage of labor an this year I'm doing this. Today I ran 6 miles with my dad and last year I was starting transition labor. It is weird to think about because when she was born I wanted her to grow up so she could do stuff and now I wish she was a baby again. Here are some pictures to show what I mean.


look how little she was. 6lbs 12oz, 21 in long.


smiling already. Well, actually she was gassy already.


Cool huh?


She is so goofy:)

Well, it is time for me to give myself a little gift and go to sleep.

My Little Buttercup

Josh and I went running last week and he brought that camera. Surprise, surprise. That thing is like his baby. Anyway, he wanted to stop and take pictures when we were done. He took some cool flower pictures but my favorites by far are the ones I asked him to take of Isa standing in this patch of buttercups. Even though she wasn't at her cutest she still looked adorable. She loves flowers, and picking them. She hates to wear shoe outside if she is walking on grass because she loves the feel of grass on her toes:)

Chilly

I few days before my summer classes stared Isabella decided to get up at 3:3:00am. I brought her to be with us to sleep thinking I could get a little more sleep. This was only a fantasy however because even though I managed to get her back to sleep she tossed and turned the whole time and kept hitting me. So I layed there and she was up bright and early at 6:00am. This gave me the perfect opportunity to visit with Josh before he left for work but I was soooo tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Needless to say, Isabella had a lot of fun with him before he left. As soon as he walked out the door she crashed. She did not sleep though. She just crawled over to her recliner and layed down. Once josh had left and the excitement died down I realized how cold it was at that hour of the morning (we had left a window open and it had rained). I went and got Isa a jacket so she wouldn't not get cold and I layed on the couch. She came over to me after a minute and pulled herself up and layed down with me, which I thought was pretty darn cute. She got bored with that after a while and climbed down so she could return to her chair. I was afraid she was still cold so I went and put her blanket in the dryer for a while and then put it on her and wrapped her in another blanket resulting in the contented look you see here.



She ended up laying there watching her movie for a long time which isn't really like her


all this relaxing resulted in the sleepy look seen here


all in all it was a very exhausting but fun morning. I just hope she doesn't do that all the time.

A Little Dangerous

Josh had a really busy weekend last weekend because of band and chorus concerts every day. On Sunday after the chorus concert (which was great!) we turned onto hwy 421 and something caught my eye on the side of the road. I turned to get a better look only to realize that it was one of the roadside memorials. You know the ones, they have the pastel floral crosses and pictures or candles or just little things that remind them of the person who died there. It suddenly hit me that I was staring and I had an epiphany. Those things are really dangerous and slightly ironic. It was a good thing i wasn't driving. I mean, this person's loved one died at that very place, so they decided to put a bunch of stuff right there in the same spot that is obviously dangerous so that you will look and remember their friend or family member. If the road is so dangerous there then why would they try to have you take your eyes of the road for even a second! It just seems to me that this should be illegal. What do you guys think?

One Day I Pooed the Biggest Poo I Ever Met

I just checked my email and I got a funny one. My friend lance is writing a book with funny quotes from three year olds and the title was one of them. The pint is to remind adults about the innocence of being a child. The funniest part about it was that it reminded me of another story me friend "sharlene" (name has been changed) told our group of friends one Sunday afternoon. I don't know why but we started talking about peoples regularity and "sharlene" decided to share with the group that "she had pooed such a big poo that it stuck out of the water" we all burst out laughing and picked on her about it for a while. The next Sunday she once again pipes up and says that "it wasn't that big, the water in her toilet bowl was just low". The damage had already been done though. We still pick on her about it (obviously). I guess the point is that just because you talk about your poo doesn't mean you are an innocent child.

I have decided to change the name of my blog every once in a while to liven things up. This particular title refers to a problem I had last week. I have been doing some work for my dad. He wants his driveway widened. This means using a shovel and a pickaxe (for the rocks) to dig into the hill by his driveway. This is super hard to do. I could barely lift my arms or grasp anything for a few days after working on this project. Well, when you try to break the boulders little pieces fly everywhere. I thought I would be fine if I wore safety goggles but apparently not. When I got home later that day I started to have pains in my chestal area when ever I picked up Isa or anything touched me. I was getting worried because I thought it might be something serious. I found out later when I was getting in the shower that it was nothing to be worried about, just some rocks in my bra form the shower of rock shards I had earlier.

I guess is has been a while. Life has been pretty hectic but I have survived:) Isabella has bee growing like a weed. She has started looking like a real little person instead of a baby which makes me kind of sad. I was sitting around the other day wondering what all this busyness has accomplished. So here are some products I am particularly proud of.

This shows land use/landclass for the basin

This shows the hillshade of the elevation in the basin

This is the slope in cool colors

This is the final model of the basin in 3D with the rivers, lakes, roads and buildings.
It took my 11 weeks and countless hours in the computer lab using weird equipment as well as several hours in the field to produce these maps. It is a map of the winkler creek drainage basin (a drainage basin is an area where all the streams flow into winkler creek or whatever stream you have chosen).
I guess this could be pretty boring for some people but I just wanted you guys to see what has been keeping me from posting for so long. hopefully that will change now:)

So I went to get some pictures mad of Isabella today. I thought this would be a fun mother daughter outing for spring break, and it was. It was just the waiting at the doctors office for 1.5 hours to see the doctor before hand and then waiting hours in line to have the pictures made, and then being sent home with the wrong child's pictures that wasn't fun. But in the end it was worth it to have these super cute pictures of my cutie. We left the house at 9:30 and got home at 1:30. Isabella did really well considering she had a lunch of graham crackers and she missed her morning nap. Poor thing. She fell asleep before I pulled out of my parking space ( no kidding! ). She was adorable while her pictures were being made :) I couldn't have asked for a sweeter little girl. At least not at that moment. I would be singing a different tune if you asked me right before bed. Anyway, here are some of the cutests pictures.





I think for her first professional portrait she did pretty well. maybe i should try and get her on the cover of some baby magazine cause she is way cuter than most of those babies:)

I have some extra time between my classes today so I thought I should probably update. I can't really think about anything but school right now so this is going to be a geography post.
I have to do a book report for my senior seminar class and I chose a book entitled, Geography of Nowhere: the Rise and Decline of the Man-Made Landscape. This is a really good book and would recommend it for recreational reading. It is about how sprawl (rapid growth) of our cities has led to us being a automobile dependent society and that everywhere looks like nowhere in particular. This is what I am going to rant about today.
it just baffles me that we have let our landscape turn into what it has. How many of you can walk to the grocery store? How many of you can walk to any store? Every time you want to run errands do you find yourself getting in the car? I don't know about you but this really bothers me. I would love to live in a pace where Isabella and I could walk to the park or grocery store. It seems like a dream when people describe towns where you can walk everywhere you need to go and you know your neighbors or have a garden. What happened to this town? People not wanting to share, that is what happened. People just can't stand not having their own space. Think about it, when you were a kid, did you want to share a room with your sibling? If people would just suck it up and share some stuff we wouldn't be stuck in the car all day. Did you know the average American spends four days stuck in traffic per year? Why are we so obsessed with cars? I hate driving because as you can imagine, people make me angry. I think I would be a lot more relaxed if there were n't so many cars around here, or anywhere for that t matter. Cars make you fatter too. I wrote a paper last semester and Studies actually show that people living in a town or city where they can't walk to run errands have a high body mass index.
anyway I'm rambling a little so here it is, SPRAWL SUCKS!!!!!!!!

I have a question for my readers that saw the super bowl on Sunday. If you happened to tune in for the half time show than you probably saw the "flash". I want to know how many of you think this was done intentionally or by accident and why? If you have any reasons to support you theory. I was going to put up a link that someone sent me of a picture of the occasion but since I have some young readers I will leave it off, I'm sure if you want to find a picture of the incident you can do it yourself.

I must admit I was disappointed by the show but not surprised. Our society is going down the crapper:(

Guess who I saw today? The halls of the geography building were once again graced by the presence of Jake the snake. I was hoping I would have a little bit more time before I saw him again but no. I thought this encounter would be like all the others I had had with him but I was pleasantly surprised he didn't really say much to me even though we were the only two people in the break room but I didn't mind. He was waiting for the honors advisor to come in and had apparently been there for a while. I had the advisor as a teacher last year while I was pregnant and he loved me. For those of you who have heard it, he sounds like the bird who sings the color song on the Disney songs collection when he talks. He loved me because he loves babies and his children weren't having any. When he finally did come in he walked right past jake and started talking to me about my classes and Isabella. This only irked Jake further. When Dr. Gade was done talking to me he said hello to Jake,who then proceeded to tell him how unprofessional he was for being late and not talking to him first. What happened next was something I would've loved to see everyone do when Jake said something rude. Dr. Gade started to chase Jake around the room punch him in the stomach (hard) and make fun of him. It took all myself control to not run into the hallway and yell fight!, so everyone could enjoy it as much as I did. By the way,this professor is in his mid 60's and Jake is like 23.

I guess you early risers can start calling me in the morning now. Apparently Isabella is suffering from separation anxiety. I knew babies would cry when you left and stuff like that but I had no idea how it really affects them. Apparently when babies are separated from their primary care giver they have severe adjustment problems. The first thing to change is their sleeping schedule. They start to wake up in the middle of the night and cry for you. I thought this meant that I might hear her whimper every once in a while but no. This means blood curdling screams even after they pass out. The only way to get them quite is to go in and touch or whisper to them. Isabella has perfected this. She will only sleep for about two hours at a time at night without waking up and maybe one hour during the day. It is like having a newborn again but the bottle doesn't sooth her. She also will not lay down. She keeps herself stiff as a board so you cant set her down. Next come the eating problems. She will only eat about half of her meal. She just cries and whines the whole time, tries to spit the food out or blow it off the spoon. Overall she is super moody and wants me or josh to hold her but then when we pick her up she just cries like she is fussing at us for leaving her. I hate school!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, here's the thing. Why do people assume that just because I am a mother I get up before 8:00am? Just because your children don't sleep past 8 doesn't mean that everyone else's don't. I happen to be blessed with a baby who likes to sleep in. In fact I usually have to wake her up around 9:00am. I think appropriate phone hours to call someone should be from 9:30-10:00am until 9:30 pm. That is unless you have been told to call earlier or later than that. I like to take advantage of all the sleeping time I could possibly have and when someone calls to early then I can't go back to sleep and I don't want to get up. So please, DON'T CALL BEFORE 9:00 AM!!!!! ( unless someone is bleeding or broken).

As I was poking around in Isabella's mouth yesterday I discovered something. She has cut another tooth!!! She is getting pretty good at this. She now has two lower front teeth. I can't wait for them to grow in so everyone can see them when she smiles. It will be so cute.

I'm sure this news will make some of you sad but I am thrilled. Jake the snake graduated last semester so I will no longer be graced with his presence on a regular basis. He seems like one of those guys who graduates and never goes away though so I think there will still be the occasional post about him. I have run a little dry on people who annoyed me that I am allowed to write about but I am sure that will change when I go back to school next week so fear not. Since I haven't put any pictures up here in forever, here you go.


I am pretty sure my baby has the longest tongue ever (besides that guys from KISS)

this is my brother matt and his daughter Stella (she's German)

I am debating on whether I am going to tell any family holiday stories. A good reason not to is because both of our families read this site and I don't really need the drama right now. Something exciting did happen over the break though. Isabella cut her first tooth on her seven month birthday. It only took her about ten hours to get it out. The thing that really sucked about it was that while she was crying we were on a charter bus with about 45 high school kids coming back from Florida. Isa was very brave about it though. She keeps sucking on her bottom lip so she can rub her lip on her new tooth. I can't wait until it is big enough that you can see it when she smiles.
I will try to think of a cool story about the break that wont get anyone in trouble but that might be hard.

It is a requirement for my major for me to take a lass about what is in a computer and how it works etc. The class is one of the more boring ones I have taken because most people already know this information. Well, one day in class the teacher was passing around different pieces of the computer around the classroom so every one could see what the insides really looked like. Every thing was going fine for a while and he continued with he lesson. But then it reached a point where this guy had to pass the pieces up one row. I didn't think this was as hard as he made it since my whole side of the room had been passing it up to the next row without a problem but this kid apparently had no idea what to do. I am pretty sure, that if he had thought about it a little bit longer, he would have been able to come up with a better option then the one he did. Keep in mind that the teacher is still lecturing. This guy, instead of reaching up and tapping the guy or whispering his name or even "hey you", decided that the best way to get the other person's attention would be to simply start banging the computer pieces on the table. He did this not once but for about 10 seconds. He only stopped at this point because the teacher walked over and took them away from him. The stupidity on this kid was funny yet very irritating. Did he think that only the guy in front of him could hear it? I don't know, but what I do know is that this kid is defiantly very self absorbed.

we took Isabella to her six month check up today and she is doing great:) she is 26 7/10 inches long and weighs almost 18 pounds. Her head is still in the upper percentiles but since she is so long it fits. She had to get five shots today because josh and I decided to give her a flu shot in addition to her other four. Poor thing, she did really good though. Josh held her hand for me which was really sweet. I can't stand to do that. I usually hid in the corner so she doesn't know I am just standing there letting people hurt her. She has started moving all over the room now. She can't quite crawl yet. She can get her back half moving and her front half moving but not at the same time so she gets around be rolling everywhere. I figured that meant she could only go in a straight line but if she wants to change direction she just gets on her tummy and pivots around until she is facing the right way and off she goes. She also grabbed the entertainment center door and tried to open it this afternoon so it guess it is time to baby proof everything. I can't wait for her to crawl and walk, it will be so much fun!!!

Like many people this season, I have gotten sick. I wasn't quite sure what it was because I would be fine one day and then really sick the next day. Finally I decided to go to the health center at school. I figured they would give me some antibiotics and I would get better pretty fast. Well, when I got there there were only two other students in the whole center. I register and then they ask me my symptoms so I rattle the list off, burns to breath and cough, clogging in my ears, nasal congestion and burning from dryness as well as a low grade temp and a weird red rash in the back of my mouth and down my throat. After telling the nurse this she asks me to go and sit back in the waiting area. At this point I should say that when I checked in I filled out a form saying I wanted all medicines given to me explained. Well, after sitting in the waiting area for a few minutes the Dr. calls my name and I go back for what I thought would be another mild examination. In reality I only stayed in that room for roughly 45 seconds while he tells me my lungs are clear, my ears are fine and my throat is not swollen. I was in shock for a second and by the time I came out of it I was back in the lobby. It all of those things were fine then I must not be sick, but wait........yep there it is, I am still sick. Then the nurse comes out and hands me a bottle of super decongestants and walks off before I can say anything. I could understand being rushed out like this if it were really busy but there was more medical staff there than students.
I just don't understand how I have nothing in my lungs when stuff comes out when I cough or why I can't hear if my ears are clean not to mention that my throat hurts. This must be all my imagination. I guess I just enjoy being sick so much that I would inflict all these symptoms on myself just to I could feel like crap. Silly me, I should have know that the incredibly wonderful doctors at the health center would see right though that.
needless to say, I will not be going to the health center ever again if I am really sick with something. They are completely incompetent. I'm sure I could complain more but against the advise of my physician I am sick.

Josh and I missed our date last week. We decided to try and make up for it by going out to eat at Macados. After we found a babysitter we were off. We arrived at Macados at about 7:00 pm and there was a line. This doesn't happen very often so they don't really have a system when the restaurant is full. Well, anyway, there was a party of six in front of us and after they told us there restaurant was full we stepped back to make room for people were would get seated before us and so it wouldn't been so crowded. About five minutes later a young college age couple comes in and walks right past the people waiting and gets in the front of the line. Josh looked at me and said "I would feel a lot better if they were at the back of the line" I agreed and about that time more people came in and we had to move up so they could get in the door. After a few more minutes the hostess comes up and asks me if I was waiting for a tow top and said she would seat us after she rang up some people waiting to pay there bill. I was surprised yet prepared for what happened next. The guy from the college couple turns abound and says "actually we were in front of you" , without much of a pause I turned and said " actually we were in front of you but you walked past us and got in the front of the line" he looked a little surprised at this but backed down. The waitress laughed about it on the way to the table because she was surprised that he had done that and said she remembered us and would have said something if I had not.
I just don't get people. Why did he think he was first? The whole lobby was full of people when he got there. It just baffles me.

I love living in the mountains! With all the beautiful trees, streams and rolling green hills. I especially love the fall and winter. The leaves changing and the white fluffy snow. My cute little family decided to go and take some pictures, with Josh's digital camera which I a sure you have all heard about, at Grandfather Mountain and then blowing rock. I was then reminded why I hate living in the mountains, floridiots. They are everywhere and Blowing Rock is crawling with then. They just walk out in front of your car at intersections and then look at you like you have broken some law. I guess we should be grateful that they actually came to the crosswalk. They usually just walk out into the street and stop traffic in both directions. These people are also proof of an earlier theory that stupid pedestrians make stupid drivers. I can't get anywhere in under 25 minutes and without stopped for several people who can't drive and cut me off or hold up traffic because there reflexes are so slow that it takes them 8 seconds after the light changes to push their gas petal, and there are speed limits for a reason. If you don't feel safe driving the posted limit then you shouldn't be driving! I could go on about his for a while but I think I will save some for another time.