After 6 years of no Colombia...here we go!

So, for Valentines weekend Tom decided we should go to Colombia.











Now that i can travel, things will change a bit even though we intend on fully exploring America First! But now we can fulfill our many plans and dreams of going to African and helping distribution of our Insecticide Treated Tents, we started a Non Profit called "NET A BED" we are trying to fight against Malaria in some areas that have been neglected by the UN when dealing with distribution of tents, there is a strategy as far as fighting Malaria, which is interesting, but it is slowly spreading south and there is just so much need for these tents. I am primarily interested in Togo, that country makes me really curious. I'll devote a blog entry on this later. Anyways, Tom's brother is currently in Nairobi, Kenya in one of the southern slums, Dagoretti Corner, helping AIDS patients. The stories are heart wrenchingly sad...

We are making plans to try and do a yearly trip that is solely devoted to volunteering, whether it be in a Mexican orphanage or in Cambodia. But we are sticking to it. Currently, we decided to try and focus on our community, since I didn't have a work visa. The program began this month and we were all assigned a mentee between age 15-18, they are coming out of the Juvi detention Center and they are so sweet. I want to take them all home. Tom and I taught a music class and we are also teaching a running clase. These kids are soo so sweet. We don't know jack about the music they hear, but we are slowly learning! ;) , they are just kids and then you see a bullet wound and you realize the types of lives these kids have been living.... no opportunities, no parents, their gangs have been their parents...we are pretty excited...there is a trumpet player in the class (beth I thought of you!) so we got him a trumpet!

I'll keep you posted. I'll meet my mentee this weekend Latavia is her name...she has the cutest smile ever!!


So, COLOMBIA. We are going Feb. 26 til March 1st. We are SUPER PSYCHED! I get to see my granma and show Tom all the things I talk about when referring to Colombia. It will be an experience, even for me. It has changed a lot but we are super looking forward to it!!

I'll let you know more about wedding plans and stuff later... a lotta changes coming, moving to the beach with the europeans....Dante is starting Day Care...

Hope everyone is doing awesome!!!!

love u and miss u.

Countdown to Paris

So I have been planning our trip in the evenings now for the past two evenings. Because we have so little time over there I decided we needed a meticulous schedule that would make the most of our time over there. So I revived the itinerary - the one I used for the wedding and turned it into a trip planner. I am nothing if not detailed. Scheduled by the hour, taking into account estimated times between metro stops and allotting time in each destination based on Rick Steve's guidelines. I even put down potential restaurants in each location for every meal, by cross referencing with my Pudlo Paris book. I don't want to waste my time eating overpriced touristy food. And I also don't want to waste time wondering where we should go. And with the Garmin, finding places should be easy. It served us well in Italy and Greece. Now I realize some of you may be thinking that having such an exacting schedule would not be fun because the whole fun of traveling is wondering around and getting lost. Not to worry though, I scheduled in some very low key exploring the city activities. Of course they come with maps and specific picture points, but we can always pretend to be lost. :-)

Now of course I am a little bummed. Weather in Paris and London hasn't been so good the past few weeks. I'm tracking the weather daily. I had imagined myself in Paris in a very particular way - as you can see by the picture. But I suppose I will have to reinvent that image. We didn't want to look like tourists, but I suppose there is no getting around that now considering the weather. I am a little hopeful though, some of the days look like they will be in the 50's. Yeah!

More randomness

So to catch up a few random events of the past couple weeks.

I saw a beautiful movie recently, you have probably heard of it...Slumdog Millionaire. It is so wonderful. I'm rooting it for a best picture at the Oscars. It is funny, sad, romantic, everything. It is a love story about a lowly guy from the slums of India who winds up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (India version). The movie through a series of flashbacks shows how he was able to answer each question on the show and how each question relates back to the girl that he loves and the reason he is on the show. It might just be the best movie of 2008.

I've been pretty active in my sorority lately. Teleconferences, planning, meetings, social events. It's part of my trying to stay connected with old friends and get new ones. Part of my new year's resolution was to be more social. So I'm starting a recipe club and a supper club with the girls in the group...plus a few friends (that includes you Beth, if you're interested). I sent out an email and facebook'd some people and got a lot of interest. My target date is Feb. 6th for the first recipe club meeting. The night before my sorority's Founders' Day. Which reminds me I need a dress....gotta go shopping. :-)

I planned another baby shower at work. This was for one of the secretaries at my office. It turned out beautifully, and now I'm sort of the unofficial party planner for the office. We had the shower at noon on Friday and it just so happened that noon, Julie (the attorney having triplets at my office) was at the hospital about to deliver her three babies. She had them at 1pm on Friday. Crazy, huh. Three perfectly beautiful babies, all things considered. Check out their blog at http://leclercqfamily.blogspot.com/ for an update on their status.

All the baby madness makes me want to buy baby stuff and reaffirms my belief that I want babies some day. I think 2012, Year of the Dragon, sounds good to me. :-)

I'm reading....

It is sooo awesome to see everyone's entries!!!!!!!!!!! yey!!!!!!! totally excited about that! it's like being in everyones living room for like 10 seconds!

I'm reading 3 books, 1 is like crack...or the equivalent of revolutionary road, or the Okie girl, or twilight. It's PATHETIC, John Grisham's the appeal...i know, its shameful, but it's like crack.It makes me laugh, because the guy describes his characters in such black and white detail, that it's freakin insane!! I treat it like a comedy to be quite honest. I'm also reading 3 cups of tee, beautiful book that Tommy gave me. Mortensen's organization (the writer), is the Central Asia Institute, that helps providing education to girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He stumbled upon the whole idea, when he tried climbing K2 and was saved by some of the people he started helping! It's quite awesome and it helps me stay motivated. We are starting mentoring for kids in Overtown (1 of the poorest cities in the country), we are teaching them how to enjoy music (Tom's gonna teach em guitar) and I'm going to be their running instructor! These are kids that, just got out of jail, so we are tying to keep em off the streets. DOWN DAM RECIDIVISM! Quite awesome, i must say!

The third, is about the history of Wyoming and the National Parks of the West! P.S. that think that hurts the horses that people put on their boots, EM YEAH...invented guess where....in Texas NOT Wyoming!

Tommy and I are going to start in Yellowstone and then head to Seattle and Oregon...we plan on taking 3 weeks. We shall see. We are psyched! I'll write about wedding stuff later...but, it's coming along beautifully! It's good.

Beth, I think that is such an awesome idea!!!!!!!!!!!! great! I am excited for your plans, let us know what happens ,what you are interested in, all that!

Bon, you are an awesome attorney, I think, I'd rather have you in Texas!!!!!!!! yey

Kim, that movie looks, sooo sad....oH OH OH, ok an awesome movie....the Wrestler, I cannot wait to watch it tomorrow night!!!

more later!
c

Susan in Kim's Dress with Mikey on the Side

Congratulations Caro! I can't wait for Yellowstone.

I hope this picture turns out okay- I tried to move it, and I may have distorted it.

Brian and I recently acquired cable and now I'm hooked on Paula Deen. I can't get enough of her! I don't make her food too much because of all the butter, cream, and bacon. I just love watching her cook. It's like being in the kitchen while my mom and Aunt Claudia cook for our holiday meals. Brian and I also get a kick out of how much of a blatant flirt she can be. Sometimes with her guests, sometimes the camera, and many times the food!

That said, I joined weight watchers just before the holidays. Today, I found out I've lost five pounds. Yea, gold star for me. I am down to my law school graduation weight. Five more pounds, and I'm down to my pre-pregnancy weight. I won't stop there though, as I'd like to get to pre-law school weight.

My current read is a Sarah Vowel (sp?) book that Brian got me for Christmas. It's called Assassination Vacation. It's pretty funny. She is a historian of our generation that has a very unique voice - similar to Lisa Simpson's. And, she's from Oklahoma. Assassination Vacation is about her travels to various cites that have connections to three presidential assassinations. The first is Lincoln's, of course. She points out that Booth, being an actor, picked exactly when the audience would laugh as the moment for his assassination. During the tour of Ford's theatre, no one gives you that laugh line. That is because it is not funny. I assume it was in Lincoln's time. She takes pleasure in knowing that Lincoln's last conscious moment was one of guffaw. This was especially touching to her because of the many hardships he endured while alive. I mean, isn't that a great point? Here he was at the end of the Civil War, his first love dead, his sons dead, his wife inconsolable, and in an ebb and flow of life long depression. He was shot, presumably, while laughing. Anyway, I can't wait to read more.

In MO, we have a new Governor implementing "change." It seems as though I've survived the first round of layoffs. Wish me luck on those to come.

Miss you all tons!

Bon

My first attempt . . .

This is my first attempt at blogging, so please excuse the rudimentary fashion of this post. Mostly, this is simply an attempt to see if I can do it correctly. In response to Kim's last entry regarding Revolutionary Road, I have already decided to avoid the book entirely and possibly the movie. Not sure I can handle hearing the story without becoming irreversibly depressed. I am most interested to hear your critique of the Twilight series. I, too, took my shameful turn in reading the series - and this exactly what I felt as I turned each page - shame. I definitely share in part of Kim's assessment - absolute predictability. The series was also HORRIBLY written - I can't even begin to provide a detailed explanation of why because there is simply too much to say. However, I cannot deny that my easily entertained mind found the story interesting - particularly the concept of having forever to live without the inconvenience of even sleeping. Since reading the series the first time - yes, that's right, the FIRST time - I haven't been able to stop cataloguing all the things I would use my eternity for: go back to school and become an archaeologist, travel to every country, finally learn French . . .

As you can see from my profile, I've decided to reclaim my personality in a way. It's so easy to get caught up in school, study, career, work, home, husband, baby . . . that you forget the things you used to do for yourself. I regret to say I've fallen into that very trap. So I've decided as of late that I will pick up where I left in college and start living MY life again, without placing so much importance on where each step I take will lead me. I may start writing again, maybe take dance lessons . . . whatever. In all I do in the next however long period of my life, I do promise that I am making the commitment to be a more consistent blogger and more available friend.

Congrats to Bon on returning to work - Congrats to Caro on your engagement and setting the date!

Currently Reading...

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I saw a preview recently for a new movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road, which looked pretty intriguing and when I found out it was a book I had to go get it. I'm about half way through now, and it is nice to finally read something with depth (unlike the Twilight series, which was nothing but a guilty pleasure at first and quickly became incredibly boring and predictable) and not about vampires. After reading all four books in the Twilight series I read Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark. It is also a series, the southern vampire series. HBO has a show, True Blood based off of it that everyone keeps telling me is so "awesome." Well, the book was okay.

Anyways, back to Revolutionary Road. It is about a young couple, Frank and April, in the 50's who seem perfect. They live in a cute suburban house with two young children. Their lives are in actuality suffocating them, because it is no longer what they originally dreamed it to be. They enjoy talking about their hatred for suburbia and the people who populate it with their insignificant issues, but come to realize that everything they said they hated is what they are. The book deconstructs the "American Dream." It can be very depressing, but also incredibly fascinating.

Here is a passage I find myself reading over and over. It is when Frank and April are having a fight early on in the book and Frank is reflecting about how the whole mess started - with having a child, he didn't even want, too soon. Wasn't it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn't really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly dull job to prove he could be as responsible as any other family man, moving to an overpriced, genteel apartment to prove his mature belief in the fundamentals of orderliness and good health, having another child to prove that the first one hadn't been a mistake, buying a house in the country because that was the next logical step and had to prove himself capable of taking it. Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time -- this was the hell of -- who might at the end of the day or night just happen to feel like leaving him.