It's March???!!!! When did that happen???!!

Seriously!  How did we go from Christmas to the middle of March so quickly?  I feel like I've been in a mini time warp of some sort.  My grandfather's death in February threw me for a loop and I feel like time sped up and slowed down at the same time.  It was a rough time for my family as he and my grandmother were visiting from South Africa and just two weeks from going home when he died.  It was a shock, to say the least.  Now it's almost spring and I have no idea how that happened!  

I also have no idea what I've been doing with my time.  We've been more or less wedding-less and enjoying our weekends these last few months.  Our "get fit" new year's resolution is still going strong.  I've lost 12 of the 25 pounds I needed to drop.  Woo hoo.  I'd say that with more enthusiasm, but I've hit a plateau and am having a hard time getting to the 15 lb mark, which sucks.  Pern has lost 32 pounds!  Yes, 32!!!  I am so proud of him!  We've both been making an extra effort to make smarter food choices, and get our butts off the couch more often.  I've been making every attempt to drag myself out of bed at 5:00 and walk on the treadmill every morning.  I am successful approximately 2 out of 5 days.  Not bad,  I suppose.  I prefer our weekend work-outs (typically a nice long walk on the W&OD trail on Saturday and then a trip to the gym on Sunday) and look forward to them all week.  That's about to change, however, as April looms on the horizon.  

April brings with it the start of wedding season and the realization that our weekends will no longer be our own.  Sigh.  Good for our business, bad for our waistlines.  We'll just have to make some adjustments.  Now that there's a little extra daylight in each day, we'll have to to start walking in the evenings when I get home from work.  

I'm on spring break right now, which is nice.  Got a lot done already!  Cleaned out my closet last night, cleaned out my car this morning (gave it some much-needed TLC, including a trip through the car wash), and will be cleaning out my Montessori room tomorrow.  "Girls Gone Wild - Spring Break!" it is not, but I'm happy.  We're off to NC tomorrow afternoon to see Dale, Joe, and the baby (how old do children have to be before we stop referring to them as "the baby" and start calling them by name?) for a couple of days.  If I have it my way, the rest of the week will consist of  a little time in the backyard working on my garden and a little bit of shopping to get some new clothes for summer (a little tricky when I still plan to lose another 13 pounds).  

Let's see.  Other than all that, I've been working on planning the school camping trip in May, and I went to the American Montessori Society's annual conference in D.C. last weekend.  And now it's the middle of March and you're all caught up!  Hopefully, I'll have some pics to post from our trip and the rest of my spring break.  I plan to have a beautiful garden this summer, so keep checking in for those updates.  Happy Easter!

Mii and Pii like to Wii !!!

More from the aspiring photographers...

Here are some recent pics we are quite proud of.  

We ran around Leesburg (quite literally, at times, as it was cold and rainy) and took some engagement pictures of our friends, Claudia and Jeff, who are getting married on October 11.  

They wanted some mushy, kissy-faced, pictures to celebrate their recent engagement.  Who doesn't?  Jeff really got into it, which somewhat surprised Claudia, I think.  But then again, who wouldn't get into public displays of affection in the rain while someone is pointing a camera at you?  Ummm... me?  and most of the people I know... 

This one's my favorite.  Pern took it after we got back to our house and had warmed our toes and fingers.  He took most of the others, too, by the way... I took a couple, but primarily stuck to color correction and touch ups for this shoot.

We like 'em.  The pictures, that is.  Oh, and Claudia and Jeff... we like them too :)

Oh, happy day!

It's the little things in life that make my day.  Like, saving the planet.  

You see, we do most of our grocery shopping at Target.  They have a decent grocery department and if we need say, a pillow or luggage, they have those things, too.  This has, until Thursday, filled us with guilt and despair, as every single shopping trip results in a minimum of 5 earth-unfriendly plastic bags.  The Target cashiers, mostly high school kids, don't know how to pack and as a result, we have oodles and oodles of extra bags floating around our house.  I'd always felt weird about taking our re-useable Giant bags into the store (didn't want to be tracked through the store via security cams as a potential shoplifter) so dealt with the plastic onslaught until... lo and behold!!!:  Target "green" bags (they're actually red)!!!  Woo Hoo!  Now we can bring official Target re-useable bags into the store, load them up, and bring them home without the extra plastic!  We both just stood there in the aisle, looking at them, and saying, "Oh, my God!  Are these what we think they are??"  It was a happy day!

Oh, yeah... Happy New Year! 

My niece, Ava...

...has arrived! I'm an aunt! Ava Louise Rinehart is already almost a week old, but you can't blame me for the lack of photos... that's the rest of my family's fault! My sister, Dale, and her husband, Joe, live in North Carolina, so when Dale went into labor (11:45 on Saturday night) my parents and grandparents (visiting from South Africa) drove down to be there for the birth. They missed it by a couple of hours, but promised to keep me updated with events as they unfolded. If updated means, "here's a postage stamp-sized picture of your sister's baby that we're sending to you from our camera phone" then they did a great job! It took several days and threats to call the police to have their grandparent licenses revoked, but I finally got some pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

Born on Sunday, December 9, 2007

at 9:48 a.m.

weighing in at 8.0 lbs (my dad won the bet!)

and measuring 20.75 inches!

Pern and I will be heading down to see the new family after the Holiday Program on Wednesday the 19th. We'll have a little pre-Christmas, Christmas and then head back up here for real Christmas with my 'rents and grand'rents. I am looking forward to seeing them and taking some pictures of my own!

Wasted time or time well-spent?

It snowed today. Not a lot, but enough to screw up traffic. It took me exactly two and a half hours to get to work this morning. Yes. Two. And. A. Half. Hours. !. I've been listening to "Citizen Girl," by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, so I was suitably entertained, but after the first hour, the whole stop and go traffic thing got a little old.

So the day flew by (helps when you get to work two hours late), and then Fairfax County schools cancelled after-school activities, which means we close at 3:00. So Keturah (my friend and boss) tells me to go home (it was 2:20), so I did. No arm-twisting needed. I got home in almost record time (the good, fast record, not the bad, painfully slow kind) and proceeded to do next to nothing for the rest of the afternoon. It's December. Everyone's most stressful month, right? Not for me. Not this year. I have decided to just chill out. My shopping is almost done and everything that has been bought has been wrapped. The school Holiday Program is under control. I'm good. No stress here.

So after watching Oprah, playing around with photoshop, cooking dinner, and basically doing nothing, I started thinking about all the things I could have done with my "extra" time this afternoon. Then I stopped. December is full enough.... no need to add more clutter to the chaos.

Check back in at the end of the month to see if my "life is good - no stress here!" mantra has held up. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's Christmas Dog!!

Hey Dale! I've got one, too!! It's not Chrismas without Christmas Dog! Rattiest ornament on the tree, but I can't start the holidays without him!