my sister and brother-in-law's visit...

We were so excited to have my sister, Emily, and her husband, Paul, come visit us this weekend since Emily is a teacher and is off this week for spring break!  They drove down from Baltimore after they celebrated my grandmother’s 95th birthday with her on Saturday.  They had a long drive and didn’t get to our place until after midnight.  Somehow Andy and I managed to watch a movie and stay awake to greet them and show them to their bed.

We all slept in a little the next morning and chilled at home and around town for a while on Sunday.  Then they were nice enough to come out to Ft. Bragg with us to help us out with our youth volunteer program.  We delivered cookies, popcorn, and punch with some teens at the army hospital and then had our monthly meeting with a crazy activity thrown in there.  After the teens wore us out, we came home and had cake, wine, popcorn, and watched a movie.  Fun times.

On Monday we all went and found a local winery and did a tour and tasting – it was fun since we were the only ones there.  The wine was pretty good – we tried 8 of the sweet wines.  Andy was our DD and drank a Pepsi and ate all our crackers.

It was a gorgeous day!

We visited Fayetteville, then came home and the boys grilled and sisters went shopping.  And then they had to go home today.  So sad they had to leave.  But very thankful that they were able to come and visit.

thankful friday...

This week we are thankful for…

- Andy continuing to walk more without his cane and doing well in tharapy. He talked to his pt and they decided that he would start going to once a week sessions.
- Getting to see Andy’s family, my cousins, and my dad and brother last weekend.
- seeing my sister and her husband this weekend!
- my grandmother who is turning 95! My family is having party for her this weekend…wish we could be there, but are just glad that she is still healthy and doing so well. I want to be as energetic and full of life as she is when I get older.
- the sunshine and warm weather we have had week…so ready for spring and summer weather!
- Cadbury chocolate eggs….yum…

spotlight...

Andy made the newspaper!

Youth help people of Haiti
By Paula M. Fitzgerald
Paraglide

	Photo by Paula M. Fitzgerald/Paraglide Two-year-old Jacob Itzin gets some help from his mom, Anne-Marie, as he puts some pennies into a donation jar at Fort Bragg’s Cook Child Development Center. About two weeks ago, the childcare facility began collecting money which was donated to the Red Cross Haiti relief effort Friday.

Sometimes, making change in the world means you have to make change — the cold, hard kind to be exact.
That’s what the children at the Cook Child Development Center have done. For the past few weeks, the children here have been collecting money to donate to the Red Cross’ Haiti relief efforts.
The effort was dubbed “Pennies for Haiti” and concluded Friday. It was on that day that Andy Adams, the Fort Bragg Red Cross assistant station manager, picked up the donation during a ceremony attended by the center’s children. The grand total given to the Red Cross was $317.56, an amount that exceeded most expectations.
“The idea came after the earthquake hit Haiti,” said Priscilla Lord, the center’s assistant director. “One of our staff wanted us to give something to the people, so I called the Red Cross to see what we could donate. They told me that the best thing to give was money, so we came up with ‘Pennies for Haiti.’”
Lord explained that she wanted to make sure each of the facility’s children could participate.
“When we told the kids what we wanted to do, they were really excited,” she said. “Some of them understood that there were people who needed help, and others didn’t quite understand. But they all seemed very excited to put the pennies in the jar.”
When Adams asked Lord about how much money was in the big, plastic jug, Lord said, “You know, I have no clue, but I do know that this thing is very heavy.”
Luckily, Adams didn’t have to lug the heavy jug all the way to his car. Lord took the change to the bank and had it converted to paper money.
“The Red Cross slogan is ‘Change a life,’ and that’s exactly what we do and you are helping to do,” Adams said to the center’s staff and children during the ceremony. “The great thing about the Red Cross is that every penny you donate for the people of Haiti goes directly to the relief efforts.”

Pretty good article even if they slightly misquoted him – about 93% of the money donated goes directly to Haiti.

where a tank of gasoline took us...pt. 2

We finally made it up to Greensboro.  Andy got in some time with Nicki before his dad’s birthday concert.

We had a good time with Andy’s family at the concert that night.  We were so thankful Stacey and Ceasar let us crash at their house afterwards for the night.

Andy’s dad really seemed to enjoy the Randall Bramblett concert.  He was good and it was a nice private concert at the little bistro near where Andy grew up.

And I think Andy’s dad enjoyed having his family there.  

We were glad we were able to be there and hope that he had a good birthday.

On Sunday we spent a little time at the lake and then ventured back into the car for another quick road trip.  My dad and little brother had been at a Civil War reenactment in Bentonville, NC that weekend.  We decided that the reenactment would involve way too much walking for Andy, but we really wanted to see my family…so we met for dinner in Raleigh before they drove back to Baltimore.  And it was only a few hours out of our way….

The funny part was that on the way to Raleigh we ran into more family.  We stopped at a Sheetz to grab a drink and I turned around and saw my cousin and his wife!  They had just recently moved to the Durham area and were heading back to their new home from visiting my aunt and uncle in VA.  It was fun to see them and we hope to see them again sometime soon (only a planned, longer visit next time!).  It was also fun to see my dad and brother – we took them to Moe’s for dinner and visited with them for an hour or so.  They had a great time at the reenactment and made good time getting home that night.

We finally made it back to our town safe and sound in time for our favorite Sunday night shows.

where a tank of gasoline took us...pt. 1

What a fun weekend we had!  We filled up our new car with gas and took off on Saturday morning.  We were heading up to Greensboro for Andy’s dads’ birthday celebration….but decided to do a little sightseeing on the way.  We had originally planned to have our good friends Josh, Becki, and baby James visiting us this weekend.  But when Becki and James got sick and they couldn’t come, Andy was trying to cheer me up and suggested we go and check out Seagrove pottery and then go up to Greensboro.

We had been talking about going to the famous “pottery highway” for a while and this was the perfect day for it.  Saturday was the first day of spring and it was absolutely gorgeous weather – sunny and in the 70s!  Seagrove is about 30 miles from our town and is a unique community of more than 90 potters and artisans who work and sell their handmade pottery all up and down a down a 20 mile stretch of Highway 220 South.  We stopped in a couple of little shops and then found the Museum of NC Traditional Pottery.  We looked around the museum and learned about the 200 year old history of pottery in that area.  We saw one of the potters giving a demo on his pottery wheel.

We got back on the road to Greensboro and saw a sign for the Pigsah covered bridge and decided to check it out.  It was a little further off the highway than we thought (3-4 miles) but not too bad.  It had been made into a park/hiking area and there were a lot of families out enjoying the nice weather.  I looked around a little and would have loved to hike some, but Andy’s leg isn’t quite up for it yet.  So maybe some other time…

Since Andy had been so good about taking me to see the pottery, we decided to go see the Richard Petty Museum.  I knew I wouldn’t get a lot out of it, so I took a walk around the little town of Randolph while Andy was exploring the museum.  He said it was neat to see.

After all that we needed a snack, so Andy wanted to round out the NC experience with a trip to Bojangles.  I tried my first Sweet Potato Pie…it was pretty good!

thankful friday....

this week we are thankful for….

• work stuff not being too crazy for either of us
• Andy’s big volunteer recognition program planning going so well – he has gotten a 3 star general to agree to attend and also a proclamation from the governor declaring that April 2010 is North Carolina’s American Red Cross Service to Armed Forces Volunteer month.  Maybe I’ll have him do a post on this at some point – getting the proclamation was a neat process that he found out about and initiated.  I’m really proud of him!
• me managing to workout pretty consistently for the past couple of weeks…feels good!
• Andy being able to do more in physical therapy – he’s doing more exercises to strengthen his leg and hip.
• yummy brownies I made last night for us to take to our jobs today.
• that it’s the beginning of spring tomorrow…and it’s going to feel like it – the forecast is 70 degrees and gorgeous!
• for our families and a very fun weekend planned.  I’ll probably have lots of pictures to post on Monday.
• for Andy’s dad – Happy Birthday!  We are so thankful to you for helping us out so much recently and that we are able to live close and come and visit often.
• for my awesome brother, Patrick, whose birthday is today – Happy Birthday!

And for this reminder – a quote I recently read:
“A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way. God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” C.S. Lewis

happy St. Patrick's day!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  I wore green.  Andy did not.  I saw some pretty crazy green outfits on customers today at work.  Oh well…we celebrated by eating some beer infused foods – my version of Irish – ha!  But my brother Patrick – the beer snob – would probably approve.  We had Guinness Stout Sausage and onions, potatoes, salad and Trader’s Joe’s Beer bread.  No green beer, but it was a good dinner.

Happy Birthday to my Aunt Jana (my mom said she got tired of green cakes on her birthday growing up)!

And Happy (almost) Birthday to my brother Patrick!

(I sorta remember when my mom was trying to pick a name after he was born I think?  or maybe on St. Patrick’s day before he was born? I was only 5…).

getting LOST on Tuesdays...

For the last month and a half or so, my Tuesday evenings have been spent on the couch eating popcorn, and watching LOST on TV.  Sad, I know.  But I’ve been watching it since the first season and just want to see how they finish it out.  This season has been pretty interesting with the “flash sideways”.  I’m sure it is completely confusing my dad.  And anyone else reading this who has never seen the show.

Only 9 more Tuesdays to go until the show finale.  Andy will be glad.  He has just been heading to the back room to avoid it all.

weekend is over...

Andy decided that he really wanted to go up and visit his family in Greensboro this weekend, so we drove up Friday after work.  Andy’s step-sister and brother-in-law let us crash at their house and we really enjoyed visiting with them.

On Saturday morning, Andy went over to his step-brother’s house and helped him and his dad put in new flooring.  Andy couldn’t help much but he had a good time hanging out with them while they worked.  After I dropped him off there, I went to a little used bookstore that I enjoy checking out every time we go up to Greensboro and browsed for a while.   Then I met up with Andy’s step-mother and step-sister for lunch and shopping.  We had a good time and got some good deals – I got a few tops and Andy’s step-mother bought me this fun ring – I love it!

(and I decided I really like this nail polish color!)

On Sunday I went to church with Andy’s sister and then we went and met the rest of his family at the lake house.  We had a relaxing afternoon and good food before we had to head back home.  Back to reality and work today…..

Hope everyone had as good and relaxing a weekend as we did!

thankful friday....

We are thankful….

- that a long week is over.
- I did well on my work review…always good to have the validation that you are doing a good job. And that it’s over for this year.
- all the major pieces of Andy’s big annual volunteer recognition ceremony have fallen into place…which is good because he says he will have “very few maalox moments” stressing about it for the next few weeks (since he is the staff coordinator for this event taking place in April).
- for our church…enjoying getting to know more people there and opportunities to serve.
- for my new camera….now I can post better pics on the blog instead of the BlackBerry pics I’ve been putting up here lately.

check out my manicure...

I haven’t painted my nails in a realllly long time, mostly because I get annoyed when they chip all the time.  But for some reason I decided to get a new trendy color at the drugstore today and give it a try.  It’s a purple-y gray color by Sally Hansen’s new Complete Salon Manicure line.  I think I like it.  Not quite sure yet.  We’ll see if I like it enough to retouch  and/or paint my nails again any time soon.

and then there was today...

Yesterday was a good day…today was just really long and stressful.  At work we had a big audit and of course we had people out so it was more stressful on the few of us that were there.  I did pretty good – my paper work and the testing we have to take was perfect – I just missed one procedural thing.  But as a whole our team as a whole didn’t do as well as our regional team would like so it was disappointing.  And just stressful and tiring.  I had a headache most of the day.

Andy had a doctor’s appointment that went late, so I went and did a little shopping therapy and bought a new little camera (since our other one was big and bulky) with a little bonus money we just got from work for a good year last year – I figured that was only fitting….since work stressed me out today, may as well use bonus money to get a little de-stressed!  And I picked up dinner.  Since I forgot to thaw out chicken to put in the crockpot.  Headache still there so I’m not thinking I’m going to get any exercising done tonight.  Oh well.  Day is done and I don’t even care about work stuff anymore.  That’s one of the great things about my job…can’t take it home with me and I don’t want to.

working wife...

A lot of days I feel like I don’t get a lot done, but am too tired to want to do any of it after working all day.  Some days I don’t even have much energy to come up with anything for dinner and say “how about pancakes?” for dinner.  But today was one of those (somewhat rare) days where I actually felt like I got a decent amount done.
I got up and put away some clothes that I had washed the night before.  We had a pretty slow morning at work, so I looked up the recipe I was going to use for dinner on my blackberry and then came home and got it ready during my lunch break (I love living so close to my job that I can come home, eat, and still have time to do other things too!).  At lunch, I talked to husband and he said he needed to go to Walmart to get some drinks and supplies for the office – which translates to “we have to go to Walmart tonight” since he still can’t lift much because of his hip.  Fun.

When I got home from work, I put dinner in the oven, changed and then went for a walk while Andy was at PT.  It was such a nice day out today.  I got done walking and took dinner out of the oven.  We ate and chilled for a few minutes while watching the news (yep we’re exciting like that).  Went to Walmart and loaded in the cart 3 cases of water and 10 boxes of soda = very heavy cart that I had to push = upper body workout, yep definitely all about multi-tasking today.  When I asked husband why someone else at his office (someone who doesn’t have a broken hip maybe?) wasn’t getting all of the drinks, he said that he was the only one in the office anymore who had a card and authorization to purchase (since several of his co-workers have left recently).  Lucky us.  But he did say he would get some volunteers to help him unload it all at work tomorrow.  I grabbed some fruit that was on sale at Walmart and came home and did the dishes and had some fresh pineapple for dessert.  Yum.
Cleaning/laundry
Dinner waiting on husband
Exercise
Helping with Red Cross stuff

and now am watching LOST.  Good day.

thankful friday...

things I’m thankful for today….

1. we’re both happy it’s Friday…amazing how much happier we wake up knowing we have the weekend to look forward to…yay!
2. my blackberry: I love it for so many reasons, but recently was thankful for how much it helps me while going grocery shopping – I type in my list on it throughout the week (so I don’t forget things or forget to take the list I’ve worked on…I’ve definitely done that before!) and then use the calculator on it to keep a running total so I stick to my budget.
3. our new car and getting better gas mileage now that husband is back to work.
4. how happy Andy is to be back to work!  He really does enjoy his job (how many of us can say that?) and is so much happier and less frustrated now that he is able to work than he was for the months he had to be out of work.
5. Sonic happy hour in the MORNING – on my way to work!  Andy pointed out the sign to me last week about how Sonic was starting to do a morning happy hour….so I made it a point to swing by there before work once….or twice already this week.
6. my new women’s Bible study group…I had really been missing a group like this and am loving the new friends and fellowship as we pray with each other and study the Bible.

homemade tomato sauce....

I saw this really good looking tomato sauce (that also looked super easy) on smitten kitchen last week and decided to try making it for dinner last night.

It was delicious!  

(well Andy said that it was a little bland and could use some spices…I really liked it as it was though)

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking
Serves 4 as a main course; makes enough sauce to lightly coat most of a pound of spaghetti
28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)*
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste
Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.
Serve with spaghetti, with or without grated parmesan cheese.

nice, relaxing weekend...

This was the first weekend in a while that we didn’t have much going on…Andy was quite happy to have nothing on the agenda except for taking several naps!  I didn’t mind too much either – good to have a break every now and then.
On Saturday we slept in then leisurely got up and got going.  We went and signed our new apartment lease for 6 months since we think that there is a good possibility that we may need to be moving sometime this summer.  We would rather be on

the safe side and go with the 6 mo. lease even if we don’t end up needing to move, then to have to try and get out of a year long lease if we do (it’s all still unknown, so we’ll let you know more details when we know anything definite).  Then we got some Sonic drinks and wandered around town a little before getting Andy a haircut.  Andy is getting around more and more easily these days and starting to walk around the house without his cane.  He is still doing physical therapy 2x per week and working on walking and strengthening his hip.
We came home and made some pizza and watched The Hangover – it wasn’t a great movie, but it was free (I had a free redbox code)….it was funny in that slapstick way I don’t usually like, but it was ok and Andy watched the whole movie so that was a plus!  The plot was like a trainwreck – you just had to keep watching to see how much further they would take the ridiculousness.
Today we went to church, lunch and then came home and chilled for a bit.  I did some more accident paperwork and filing (it’s still a never-ending job) and a little cleaning.  Andy came out grocery shopping with me, but even with him along, we stuck to our list and spent a few cents under the amount I planned to spend (and all this was at Walmart where we usually find more that we “need” besides groceries) – score!
And that was our exciting weekend.  This week and weekend will be a little busier for both of us, but not too bad.