Haircut

I started growing my hair long many years ago. After a stint with short hair about 5 years ago, I've enjoyed longer hair. At least most of the time. When Carl and I got engaged, it made sense for me to continue to grow it out so I could wear it the way I wanted.  After the wedding, it just seemed easy to keep growing it out to donate it to help someone going through cancer treatment access a wig.

Sadly, there are limitations in the hair donation department for those of us who have grey hair and dye it.  Luckily, I only use semi-permanent dye and I'm hoping I didn't have more than the allotted amount of grey hairs.  But, what I lack in some of the details, I made up for length.  The donation requirement was only 8 inches and I donated 13!

I'm really enjoying my short hair so far.  It's great for summer and Carl says he loves it!

Meet Arlo!

My great friend, Jess, had her baby almost 2 weeks ago.  He was a little bit late and didn't quite arrive into the world the way she planned but he is adorable and healthy and I got to meet him last week.

I can't wait to babysit, snuggle with and spend more time with him!

Cousins!

Sometime in the past couple of months (April maybe?) my brother and I did a road trip to Dallas to visit our cousin, Michelle and her husband Brian who live there.  Her sister, Jen (also our cousin - duh) and her husband, Brock, were visiting from Virginia (without their kids) and we decided to have an adult cousin weekend.

Unfortunately, Carl was out of town for the weekend and Missy stayed in Austin with the girls but Chris and I decided to go for the night on Saturday.  Despite a ridiculously long drive due to construction, an accident, traffic, who knows....we made it to Dallas on Saturday evening.

Michelle is an amazing hostess and had food and drinks ready for us upon arrival. She also has some amazing hostess tricks such as chocolates and water in your room and a personalized picture next to your bed, that make you feel even more special.  The six of us then headed out for a night of drinks and dinner. Michelle was interested in some dancing but the rest of us nixed that idea. Instead we went back to their house and watched Saturday Night Live.

Needless to say, it was a lot of fun.  We all grew up in Northern Virginia and spent a lot of time together as kids. We were the only grandchildren on my dad's side of the family and we only span 4 years in age.  They're like best friends in many ways because we can go a long time without seeing each other but it's so easy when we are together again. I just hope next time Carl and Missy can join us, too!

Long Lost Blog....

So I'm back.  Kind of.... I'm actually in San Diego for the next few days, straight off 5 days in Chicago. But I'm (finally) getting caught up on my blogs. At least some of them.

Trust me, I never thought I'd be that person who didn't blog for months. I give my friend, Jen, a hard time about her blog delays all the time. Turns out, I'm that person. Or I was?

Life has been busy. I wish I could say exactly what it was that has had me so busy but when I think about it all I can come up with is work.  As you all know, there has been some very public issues affecting my work place this year.  It's placed a lot of extra demands on all of us and additional responsibilities.  All of which I'm grateful for and enjoying but it's time consuming, to say the least.

So typically when I get home at night I'm either too tired, still working or not focused enough to blog.

But I'm going to turn it around.  At least for tonight!

Sadly the first update is not exactly good news.  It's about our chickens.  After over a year of taking care of 5 little chicks and enjoying fresh eggs and newly sprouting sunflowers in our yard (due to their food and, er, digestion), we are a chicken-less family.

As you may recall, we lost one chicken last summer, who had gone rogue.  Then, in the matter of one week, the remaining four chickens were attacked and killed.  I'll spare you the details but I'm so grateful for my amazing husband who really dealt with the after math of all of this.  While we don't know exactly what happened or how they were getting to the chickens, what we do know is that whatever killed them was very determined and came back multiple times over the course of the week to make sure none were left.

So, while I'll miss the chickens and the delicious eggs, we'll take a break from having a chicken family for awhile. Later this year, we're moving into a condo and will rent out my house so it would have been an issue to deal with then anyway.

In the meantime, I learned a lot from Barley, Gerty, Peggie, Patricia and Petunia.  RIP.