Chile Festival

I'm exhausted, and it's not even 8pm. One minute 'til, but still, that's early for me to be ready for bed.

We had a late night (because I couldn't stop playing on the www.yearbookyourself.com website). Too much fun, I thought it was hilarious, but maybe I was just tired.

See for yourself:

Makes me laugh. Still.  But even more than doing my own pictures, I loved playing with pictures of Ricardo.  

Yep, that's a mullet.  Crazyfun!

I hope he becomes this kind of math professor some day.  It's just too cute!

But after staying awake way too late last night, we also had an eventful day.  After washing 2 cars, the dog, and then myself, while Ric mowed the lawn, we went swimming and then to the Hatch Chile Festival at Central Market.  I was starving by the time we got there, so we ordered 2 Hatch Cheesburgers (complete with Hatch chile cheese and roasted hatch peppers!) which were huge and I'm still too full.  We meandered around the store, finding chile treats for our at-home-enjoyment, and basically basking in the marvelous world that is Central Market.  We love it there, and could probably do our regular grocery shopping there if we only ate about twice a week.  So the special occasions make it a celebration.

HATCH! (such a big festival named for such a tiny town! Really--we've been there!)

My chile face-paint adventure--showing my enthusiasm.

Ginormous Green Chile Burgers. 

Couldn't tell you what this is, other than it was next to the broccoli and cauliflower.  (we also saw PURPLE cauliflower...really?)  After studying this for a few seconds, I turned to Ricardo and told him that we were looking at fractals!  (math joke--mine are rare, but I can sometimes make Ricardo laugh).

Ricardo choosing some of his treats: at the longest olive bar in the world...or the longest one I've ever seen--that's a lot of olives.  

I'm grateful for the long weekend--Monday will be a fun day of sheetrocking and playing with Rainey--we get her until Wednesday, and then we'll also meet Frango!  Exciting week--look for more cute puppy pictures.

Oh yeah...and school's fine so far.  I had one class yesterday, and the rest begin this week.  Should be a good semester.  But it's a holiday weekend, so I'm not gonna think about it anymore.  

My Saturday

Since it's the last one before school starts again, I took advantage of it.  Of course we worked on the new bathroom for several hours, (sheetrock is going up!), but I have this list of things I'm still working on (the never-ending list) and several things I better get done before the semester starts.  One such thing: take care of the overgrown basil.  It was huge. I've never seen basil leaves that gigantic.  Today I'll be at church all day, and preach tonight.  I'll pick up with the "get everything done" fever tomorrow.

Lots of basil...

Equals lots of pesto

Frozen into pineapples.  (It's the only ice cube tray I have!)

Back from Colorado

Hi friends,

I'm home from Colorado, and grateful that the weather has been about 25+ degrees cooler here in Dallas than when we left. Our grass looks like it's starting to grow back, and it's really not horrible to walk outside. It's been raining all week, which I love. Except we're still working on our bathroom-laundry-room-project, and our clothes dryer is not yet connected. It has not been much of a problem, because it is so warm here, I hang the clothes on a line outside and they dry faster than they would inside in the dryer. No bueno=all our clothes from Colorado smell like a campfire and are in piles waiting to be washed. I attempted it today, when the sky was deceptively sunny and nearly cloudless, but 20 minutes later I heard the rain and had to dash out to rip everything off the line. Most of the furniture in our house is now draped with jeans or a t-shirt.

The bathroom project is coming along though...Good news: we finally got all three of our green slips, meaning we passed inspections! We can put up the sheetrock! We'll have to still get final inspections, but at least now we can work again. 

Since it's been awhile since I blogged, there's a lot to catch up on! I've been meaning to post Colorado pictures, talk about my feelings about going back to school next week, (really? already? and what am I gonna do afterwards since this is my last semester? Can I survive Texas without being a student?), discuss my next projects (Stole #3!), and everything else that's been on my mind. Maybe some of those things will surface in later blogs, but priorities first--here are a sample of pictures from Colorado!

Hello. Beautiful. Wish you were here.

Me and Hugo, my nephew.

Home Sweet Home

Ricardo the terrific climber.

<3>

Dunking my head in a waterfall to cool off.

We climbed up a waterfall/river. Forever. 

Watching the fog/rain/snow come in.

Rainbow after (and during) the storm.

View from the top!

We made it!

A flock (herd? gaggle?) of Mule Deer.

This was a cool hike.

Elk!  (I thought it was Caribou, which is more fun to say. But it wasn't one.)

I brought my non-digital camera too, so about half of the pictures I took (especially the ones of the MOOSE) still need to be developed.  I feel much better having caught up with one thing on my never-ending To-Do List.   I hope you enjoy the pictures and the update...I enjoyed re-living the experience on my blog.  

It's a weekend!

Thank you for all the birthday love!

It was a wonderful day, full of phone calls and facebook messages and birthday fun.  

Ricardo came home for lunch before I had to go to the church for the afternoon/evening...and he brought me flowers!

They are really pretty! My favorite colors!

Look close to what he wrote on the card.  Yep, he called me Cutie Pi.  

Pi as in 3.1415926535....

He's such a cute GEEK!

Right now, I'm off to start packing for a camping/hiking trip in Colorado.  We leave on Sunday and come back next Saturday so I'll be blogless (and probably internet-less and phone-less) for awhile.  I'm excited to get out of the insane Dallas heat, and to see mountains and "pointy" trees and just plain old beauty everywhere I look.  (Vs: Having to look REALLY hard to find beauty anywhere). 

Happy Birthday!

to me...getting ready for tomorrow

cupcakes required.