Cafe de Valentine

fall means a lot of things to us around here. we anticipate it with much joy. *not dying of heat stroke *remembering what long sleeves look like *pumpkins! *hay rides at the pumpkin patch *beautiful leaves on the trees *mums! *scarecrows *thanksgiving with equals FOOD! *christmas shopping *pumpkin spice candles *little kids in cute costumes *red starbucks cups! *FOOTBALL! go bulldogs! *caruthers fair *pie *crisp mornings with the windows open and coffee in hand *shorter days (too bad the word day didn't get shorter with the daylight huh?) *family get togethers and this year... *baby CARSYN, our first nephew! (pending arrival on or before nov 10th) *tara's coming to visit! (she's really coming to see carsyn, but i won't let myself believe that)

today is sept 24. the first official day of fall was two days ago. i should be breaking out the long sleeves, close toed shoes, scarves, hot chocolate, blankets, sweatshirts etc. i should be snapping pictures on the side of the road of these leaves. i should be able to head to the park to gaze at the beautiful colors. instead i'm turning down the air, wearing tank tops, staying indoors so not to have heat stroke, and hydrating myself regularly. it's still hot, it's still sunny, and i'm just plain sick of it. i just can't put out my pumpkins and scarecrows and fall wreaths when i'm sweating profusely . i just can't. so until that forecast changes a bit, it's still summer here to me. regardless of what the calendar says. my seasons are dictated my the thermometer these days. we're supposed to have an " el nino " year this year which means LOTS of rain. we'll see if that happens. we sure need it. big things are happening around her...

i have a long list of projects i'd love to do. great ideas come from blog stalking i tell you! i've never been a creative person as far as coming up with projects or ideas. i am however pretty good and duplicating someone else creativity. my most favorite gal "thrifty decor chick" has hundreds upon hundreds of fantastic ideas that i hope to someday recreate. check out her fantastic blog, but this post is my favorite. http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-most-favorite-room.html i'm not having kids anytime soon, but i want these built in shelves in our spare bedroom that would one day be a nursery. i also want to add the crown modling around the top and the chair rail around the middle and do stripes on the bottom half of the room. the issue comes when i try and decide what color to do the stripes knowing it will one day be a nursery and not wanting to have to do them all again. maybe we could just build the shelves and do the molding and not add the ...

we're at the point in our marriage where we consider the "what ifs" a lot. what if... something happened to one of us? what if.... we wanted to have kids (money, work schedules, maternity health coverage, etc etc)? what if.... we wanted to do some major upgrades to our house? what if... something happened with our jobs? what if... we moved out of state? and the list goes and on and on. so we decided to prepare for the what ifs. i applied for life insurance (hubs had a heart attack at age 21 and prob can't get it), i got rated higher due to my family's health history. thanks mom & dad! we are researching death and dismemberment insurance for hubs (they often don't research medical history for that). it's not cheap and there are restrictions. we looked into adding me on his health insurance through work that would cover maternity coverage well and would cover the kid should we decide to have one. do you wanna know how much that would be???? *brace yourse...

this labor day weekend marks college football kick off. for us valentine's... it means we're heading to the dog house! we are hoping that this guy: head coach, pat hill can lead us to victory week after week this season. i feel like we have some great new players (i wasn't a fan of the former quarterback) that can really help us out. we did lose some great guys to the NFL this year. bear pascoe (ryan wants our future son to be named bear after this guy) is currently playing for the 49ers and is doing very well in the preseason. he will be missed by the bulldogs this year! we're going tonight to grab us some new gear for the season opener. we can't wait. there are 5 home games this year and the first is here saturday night at 7pm. i'm hoping and praying it's not 102 degrees, but we'll sit through it if it is! our bulldogs will take on hte UC Davis Aggies and we'll be there front and center to watch. ok, maybe not front and center. we're about 20 ...

Why I Blog: A Survey I found this survey on another blog. I loved it, so I stole it. I think it answers some of those questions that otherwise would never get covered. 1. How long have you been blogging? Since fall of 2008 so coming up on a year! 2. Why did you start blogging? my friend monica had told me i should and she finally started one so i thought i'd give it a try. funny thing is she's had a total of three blog posts in almost a year. 3. What have you found to be the benefits of blogging? i think for me it's like a journal and a way to document our lives and to share photos that people want to see from different events. i read more blogs than i do anything and i LOVE the fellowship, prayer requests, advice, photography tips etc that others offer. it's a great community. 4. How many times a week do you post an entry? depends on the week. i shoot for once a week, but sometimes even that doesn't happen. 5. How many different blogs do you read on a regular basi...

on august 19th we celebrated three years of marriage. we decided to do something we've been talking about doing since we got married... see a dodger game in dodger stadium. bless his heart, my husband wanted to catch a ball during batting practice so bad and the kid in front of us caught TWO. i thought ryan was going to tackle him for it! :) from our seats on sunday's game (we also saw saturday nights game, but the camera batteries died as we were walking in, so thankfully i brought the charger to the hotel and we were ready for day two) such a rough life. just hanging out blowing a bubble. i swear if we weren't so far away that he was looking right at the camera for this shot. that's matt kemp by the way. one our favs. he plays centerfield and our seats were RIGHT behind him. gimme a pound. kids get to run out on the field before each game with their favorite player, the player signs a ball for the kid and then the kids run back. it's so stinkin' cute! just wan...