hangin' with the fam

jonathan & laure were town this past week for a wedding. we packed as much fun into their short visit as circumstances would allow: a cookout with laure's family (complete with croquet. i want to play croquet more.), a cookout with jonathan's family, some bloody gaming, some non-bloody gaming, some lemonless lemon rice soup ... and, obviously, some silly-face making.

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'becca thinks the dog outside sounds miserable.

bloody games

i've decided that as good as 'zombie fluxx' is with two people ... it's even better with more. i'm sure that's not surprising. after all, what zombie fun isn't better when multiplied?

thankfully, jonathan had played 'falling' before, as it was a little tricky to get the hang of. a very fast-paced card game where everyone is falling, and everyone is going to hit the ground ... you just want to be the last one to splat.

i also purchased 'unexploded cow' while they were in town. it's out of print, and i wasn't having any luck finding it. while laure & i were lamenting that fact, my dad searched for it and found one place that still had one copy left. i snatched it up quickly, along with the 'unwelcome guests' expansion for 'gloom'.

that actually makes FOUR bloody games added to my game stash. i overachieved that goal.

i wonder if i should do a goal check?

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'becca needs to get back to reading catch-22.

carrie's wedding

if i had a scanner, i'd have this photo side-by-side with the one of us 10 years ago. i cannot believe she's married. it's fabulous.



the wedding afforded me the opportunity to hang out with some great longtime friends. we were, without a doubt, the proverbial "kids table", regardless of the fact we're all almost 10 years older than the bride & groom and therefore were definitely NOT the youngest people there. we had a great time and laughed a lot. the picture, if you can't tell, is a butter bridge. when they brought the spare butter, it had not been tempered. and everyone knows spreading cold butter just tears up the roll. so we fixed the problem with a couple of knives & the center piece. sure, we felt like the loudest table in the room ... but we're more than just pretty faces. :)

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'becca is getting sleepy.

gulls ...

i have a thing against seagulls. near the sea, they can be cute. or, at least, they're fitting with the surroundings. hanging out in parking lots 20 miles from a large body of water? the fact that they don't belong makes them untrustworthy. and when flocks of them swoop around in close proximity to my car? yikes. i hope that chicken bone was tasty.

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'becca thinks seagulls need a healthy fear of humans.

new shoes

have you seen my cute new shoes, yet? of course not. i wore the pink one for about four hours one morning & they gouged a hole in the back of my foot that has yet to heal. a hole in my heel that has yet to heal? yeah. that's it. i bought some little peds to help combat the rubbing ... and i'll be wearing band-aids during the rest of the breaking-in process.

but aren't they adorable?

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'becca does love shoes.

memorial day fire

we ended our memorial day weekend with a bonfire. doesn't it look like we're burning a human figure here?




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'becca is mesmerized by fire.

memorial day weekend - day 2

saturday started with a trip to the grocery store, which netted us a kiwano. the kiwano the also known as a horned melon. i'm not sure which name i like more. but i'm fairly certain (heads up - 'friends' reference ahead) these are the fruit that are in the bowl on monica's table in the episode where she doesn't know what the fruit is that's in the bowl on her table. they taste like green bananas. or, at least, ours did. it even left the same filmy feeling in my mouth after eating it.


we sat out in the sunshine so we could spit the seeds. maybe i'll have a kiwano bush growing next year. it'd be fun to consistently have to run the neighbor kids away from my horned melons.

yeah, i like 'horned melons' best.


beth joined us that evening for a railcats game & general merriment. she was even so kind as to wear these fabulously reflective glasses for me.

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'becca thinks that's enough catching up for now.

memorial day weekend - day 1

lynn was in town this weekend. friday afternoon we headed to the outlet mall in michigan city and got a little sidetracked taking photos of some old buildings.


you gotta admit: they're more picture-worthy than the outlet mall. although my new stir fry pan would look good in a photograph. ;)


then we headed to the beach & shot photos as the sun set. it was my first time to the lighthouse.

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'becca got very close to some seagulls at the beach.

color magic

how does hair dye this color barely make my hair red?

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'becca doesn't have a nipsco bill this month!

yellow rose

my friends matt & jeanette had their baby shower back in january, and at each table there was a li'l potted flower. when the flowers were given away as door prizes, my table was instantly a chorus of "no, no ... YOU take it. i'll kill it." so i decided to be brave and let it die at my house.

sure enough, none of the half a dozen buds ever bloomed. they dried out & looked sad, instead. so i decided to try watering it on a regular basis. and like magic - i got some fresh leaves, a fresh bud and a bloom! amazing!

now that i've nurtured this one yellow rose, the rest of the plant can die without any guilty feelings. :)


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'becca is using words. see that? words.

the return of baseball

last monday was the railcats home opener.


i went with beth & kathy, corlin, allen & matthew.

good times. i do love baseball.

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'becca is enjoying a thunderstorm as she catches up her blog.

hotdog wrapper-bet

round the clock-abet

lilacs

the fungus among us

before

during

after

pretzelbet

looking for the beauty

spring dishes

favorite tulip