Welcome Baby A!

Our new nephew was born!! And he is just perfect.

Baby Ashton

Born September 15, 10:34 am

7.8 lbs, 20 in.

Of course, we can't forget the super-amazing, Kylah!! Monday night after work, we called the hospital and had a special chat with the new big sister. She was so excited to tell me that she got to hold her new baby brother, it was adorable! I can't wait to see the two of them together in action, but for now I just have this picture. It is so sweet, I think I just got a cavity.

Talk about a cure-all for any kind of sour mood. Every time I look at this picture, I smile. Which is great since it is currently the background on my laptop at work. How lucky am I to get to be their Aunt?? :) :)

Mas, por favor!

What's that? You want more? Okay, okay. Twist my arm... ;)

We've been to Epcot and the Magic Kingdom so far. We went to both parks a second time later in the week because we didn't get to see and do everything on our list the first time around. However, there is way too much to document here, so I'm going to try and only hit the highlights. Alright! Next stop? Animal Kingdom where, among other things, we went on a jungle cruise, a safari ride to see some beautiful, exotic animals and a petting zoo for your run-of-the-mill sheep and goats.

Kylah wanted to brush every single one of them. She was so sweet and gentle with them.

Brothers!

The family in front of the Tree of Life. It's hard to see in this picture, but there are different wild animals carved out and sort of blend together. It is pretty amazing.

Next it was back to Epcot! This time, we focused on wandering through the countries and I tried to get some good pictures.

This is my favorite from the whole trip... I love the reflection of the clouds in the glass.

Me and my love in..."France." Can I just take a moment to comment on the fact that I HATE humidity. Every day I had to wear my hair back. Its making for some boring pictures...

We ended the night by staying at the park to watch the Epcot fireworks. We had great seats, right on the lake. Very cool.... particularly because they came with an ice cold margarita. :)

Lets just round this out with some of my favorite pictures to sum up the rest of the week...

Kylah loved her Crush doll we gave her.

::Sigh::

That was fun... So uh, when are we getting together again??! :)

Wish Upon A Star

We had a fantastic time with our family at Disney World. However, this was not an endeavor for the faint of heart! We braved rain, wind, blisters, ponchos that smelled like a tacklebox, mosquitoes and some wicked sunburns that will no doubt drain the world of its supply of aloe. All kidding aside, these were just tiny bits of our trip that just gave us more to laugh about, because who has ever been on a vacation where everything goes perfectly? (If you are raising your hand right now, you can just go ahead and slap yourself for me. ;))

I will now try to sum up our vacation with more pictures than anything else. Lets just put it this way, I think between all of us we have more than 600 pictures. I went through them and pulled 81 out that are must haves for our album (luckily it fits 200 photos, so I get to pick more!! mwa ha ha ha!) . But I am obviously not going to put up 81 pictures because, as awesome as we are... no one wants to wade through that many pictures on someone's blog. And I don't have the patience to upload that many either.

So here we go...

Rusty and I arrived to Orlando on Friday, June 13. We had a fantastic crab dinner (crab cakes for me... yummy!) to kick things off right. We were all excited and wound up but knew we had a big day ahead of us at Epcot, so we hit the sack relatively early. But first, Kylah helped me check out our new digs for the next week.

The parks we covered during our stay were Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios (some twice!). All were ridiculously fun and provided an unimaginable amount of walking. I wonder how many miles we walked overall...? I had to keep reminding myself not to complain out loud because my wonderful sister-in-law held up just fine and she's 6 months pregnant! What a trooper. :)

Anyway, I'll be up front with you all right now and say I honestly do not remember everything we did. Occasionally I'd write notes in my cell phone to remind me, but not often enough to remember what we did each day. Let's start with Epcot, shall we?

View of Epcot from our balcony. This was especially awesome because we could watch the fireworks from here every night!

First family picture of the trip...
We had heard Donald Duck was hard to spot. He was the first character we met!
Rusty and I in front of a waterfall in Norway...

Kylah got to meet almost all of the Disney princesses at her princess lunch. She met Cinderella, Sleeping Pooty (she can't say "Beauty" yet...), Ariel and a host of others but Belle was everyone's favorite. She was gorgeous and so sweet.

While Kylah got autographs from some other characters, Goofy gave me a big hug :)


Beautiful family... outside the Finding Nemo ride.

Most important picture of all: the family with Mickey!

The next day we headed to Magic Kingdom.

Sheesh! Only been here an hour and we're in trouble already! Haha!

"Can I see??"

You thought I was kidding about the ponchos. Seriously, they're making a comeback! In any case, when its raining as hard as it was, you'll wear ANYTHING to stay dry!

Uncle Rusty holding Sleepy Kylah... this makes my uterus ache... ;)

Kylah and I settle in after a looong day to watch Ratatouille.

That about wraps up the first couple days. I have more that I'd like to share with everyone, so stay tuned!

Bueller? ... Bueller?

Is anyone here??

Fear not, for I am back! I just got home from a 10 day vacation to Disney World with the in-laws and I.Am.Beat. Right now I'm working on going through the hundreds and hundreds of pictures we all took while we were there. As soon I've managed to whittle them down to a reasonable number, I'll put up a proper post.

For now, please entertain yourselves with a little clip of the inspiration for the title of my blog. Our beautiful - and funny - niece, Kylah. God, I love this kid.


Inspiration from meghan johnson on Vimeo.

And we're back!

I got home yesterday and I am still exhausted. But never say that I didn't put aside my own suffering for the sake of my blog. :)

Anyway, my trip home was great! Too short, but totally worth it. I flew in to New Jersey Thursday night and finally left the airport a little past 1am after waiting for my bags for an hour. Not fun. Luckily I had nothing planned for Friday except sleeping in and catching up with my dogs and oh yeah, my parents!

Friday night I met up with Kim, my oldest, bestest friend from high school. We headed over to Grasshopper Off the Green, a cool Irish bar in Morristown for some drinks, dinner and good old catching up. SO much fun I can't do it justice. I love my Kimmie. :) (Hey Kim, "Mierdamente!" "I can still do whatever the fuck I want!" "You gotta honor your craft, man!" I have no recollection of what any of that means. Gotta love notes on a cocktail napkin after a few drinks!)

Saturday morning my sister, Bridget, and I hopped on a train into NYC to meet up with our other sister, Kristy for a fun weekend, just the three of us. First up: Rent at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway. Just as good as the first time! I'm so sad its leaving. I'd go a hundred more times if I could!

After the show, we wandered through Times Square (ugh, not exactly the most fun, but necessary to get to our car) and found some fun billboards. Like this one for Sex and the City. Okay, it was really for Bacardi, but they used the girls to get more attention ;)
Saturday night the three of us went to my all-time favorite destination in all of New York: Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. ::sigh:: This place never gets old for me! We got such awesome seats, we were literally ON the stage. Check it out. I took this from where I was sitting - no zoom.
Here's me and my sisters having a BLAST! Between all the beer, the awesome music and crowd, how could we not??
Sunday we helped celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge by walking across it. Great views and impressive construction made it something to remember.
Heading towards Brooklyn...
The construction geek in me couldn't get over how incredible the craftsmanship of this bridge was...Walking back towards Manhattan, the view to the right...

And the left...

We walked around more of the city and past Ground Zero. Not much to take pictures of there because of the construction fencing that blocks everything. Even though we didn't see anything, I'm glad we went. I kind of felt like it completed my trip into the city.

That about sums it up! I spent Sunday night eating my favorite dish of my dad's - lemon chicken (mmmmmmm....) and learning how to make it, playing with the dogs and chatting with my mom. Unfortunately, first thing Monday morning I was in the car driving back to the airport. :( Have I mentioned I'm tired? Because I am. I feel like I need a vacation from vacation! Lucky for me, I've got a 10 day trip to Orlando coming up in 2 1/2 weeks. Woohoo!!

Hope you all had a great, long Memorial Day weekend!

Forgive me

... for being so incredibly boring lately, but I just can't seem to muster up anything interesting to write about! I don't have a house to renovate or dedicate an entire post to; I'm not really into partying anymore; I'm not a particularly good photographer, cook, baker, etc. so there's not a whole lot there.... (translation: I'm a horrible housewife. Hence, the reason I will always work.) ... blah blah blah. What I do have is a job I love, a husband I love (and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual ;)) and two dogs who keep me on my toes (as you can see here and here).

I'm incredibly grateful for all I do have, but I'll admit I have moments of jealousy over the things/skills I don't have. I'm always on the hunt for a new hobby that I might be good at, better than average even, but so far I haven't found anything aside from work and grad school. Neither live up to the definition of "fun" but I am pretty good at both and they give me a solid feeling of accomplishment.

So. Now that I am entering into my very last class to earn my graduate degree, I've been thinking a lot about how I want to spend my new found free time come September. I've been throwing around a few ideas:

• Volunteer! Ideally, I would be able to do this at one of the local SPCA/Humane Society sites. If my career can't involve animals, I might as well dedicate some extra time to them!


• Get a second job. Okay, so admittedly, this is not my favorite option because I am inherently lazy and my favorite thing to do after work Monday through Friday is walk in the door, take off my heels and work clothes and settle into my slippers and comfy fat pants. This generally does not happen when one has a second job. However, the Husband and I have upped our deadline to buy a house, so there is no time like the present to start sacrificing some free time to make a little extra cash. (Mmmmmm.... discount at Banana Republic..... drool.....)


• Go to the gym. Hahahahaha! I know. Who am I kidding? I can't even believe I wrote that!


• Join a book club! Take a knitting class or cooking class! Visit my grandma so she can teach me how to sew! She's just up in San Francisco, so its not that far and I really need to be spending more time with her. So...


• Let's just go ahead and make that one a definite: Visit Grandma WAY more often!

There are all sorts of things that I could do in my spare time (once I have it). I'm going to weigh the pros and cons of the volunteer vs. second job thing, which is going to be hard because both have 'pros' that I am very passionate about. Its just that one only benefits my heart and my karma, while the other puts good ol' dinero in my pocket. Or our savings account to be more exact. So we can all look forward to the coming months as I'll actually have a life - I hope - from which I will draw upon in an attempt to make this blog thingy ever so slightly more interesting. :)

Okay, so this photo has absolutely nothing to do with my post, but I've been missing having a tiny puppy around. So in my perusal of Harley's puppy pictures, I found this pic that I had to share. Harley at about 15 weeks old greeting our niece (7 months old). She slept right through this...

It's in the water

Babies babies, everywhere! Just to name a few: my sister-in-law is due in the fall, as is the wife of one of our groomsmen, the sister of a friend of mine just had her baby yesterday and a couple weeks ago I found out that another friend of mine at work is expecting! Yay! I'm so happy for everyone, I could literally explode. :) And my coworker found out last week that she's having a boy! Double Yay! This fabulous news prompted her to question what is in the water at our company because every woman at work in the last 3 years has had a boy (some of them have had more than one boy in that span of time). It makes me wonder if when we're ready, - whichisnotrightnowthankyouverymuch - should I still be working there when I get pregnant since I want at least one girl??

I kid I kid! But it has sparked a conversation or two - granted they are mostly in my head - about what exactly our plans are in terms of kids and why do we bother making plans anyway? Its inevitable that whatever we "decide"will be overridden by the man upstairs. Of course, for the most part we can control the timing of the whole thing, but there are other issues too. Anyone who has ever wanted kids has at some point said something along the lines of "I want two kids. One boy and one girl, preferably in that order." Okay, so that's what I say... whatever. ;) But I think its a well known fact that, except for the lucky few, we rarely get what we want.... or think we want. When it comes to kids, in the end it really doesn't matter if we have all boys, all girls or one of each because its not up to us. Then you've got my husband, ever the optimist, who figures with our luck we'll have one and when we go for the second, we'll end up with twins or ::gulp:: triplets! Yikes!

The point I think I'm trying to make is I'm trying really hard to not over plan our future because... well... its pointless! I've seen people try to live their life by a timeline or a "plan" and when things don't go accordingly, they're lost and upset and that makes me sad. It's great to have goals and all that and try to time things as best you can, but in the end, the best thing we can do is just let go and live by the que será, será attitude.

I know I know. Easier said than done... :) For now, these two mutts are all the kids I can handle.

At Peace

Early Monday morning we got the news that my father-in-law's fiancé lost her battle with cancer. Our hearts, thoughts and prayers are with him, her daughter and the rest of the family right now.

I really wish we could hop on a plane back to NJ for the funeral and to be with Rusty's dad but we just can't afford the flights. Sending our love, good thoughts and lots of prayers will have to do for now.