liz's birthday

well, if liz won't post the photo from her birthday dinner, i will. :) we had a good group of people show up at sanfratello's to celebrate liz's 30th birthday. lots of pizza, lots of laughter ... it was a good night.

favorite school memories

my senior year of high school, my friend marisa and i were tutors during homeroom. we hung out in the guidance counselors' office and if no one came down for help, we got to chat or help with office stuff. at Christmastime the door to the office had been decorated with paper wreaths, stockings and holly. when we came back from Christmas break, one of the counselors asked us to take the door down. being the obedient li'l tutors that we were, we quickly did, indeed, take the door down. granted, she probably meant we should take the decorations off the door ... but that's not what she said. and the pins in the hinges came out quite easily. :) if i remember correctly, we put the door back up (and probably removed the decorations) before we left for our first class.

my junior year of high school, i parked my car in the back of the building. i had a silver plymouth reliant, and so did my friend natalie. i came out to my car one day and was quite humored d to see that someone had tied up the inside of natalie's car with yarn. it was looped from door handle to door handle, around the rear view mirror, through the head rests, etc. and then i realize it was my car.

there was the dance in sixth grade when kevin & i danced.

in elementary school i was part of the Challenges Unlimited class. there were maybe 8-10 of us, and we got to skip some regular class time each week to meet and do other projects. i don't remember any one particular time ... but i remember really enjoying the class and the teacher.

ooooo! first grade! there was this super-cute boy in my class named Timmy. and all the girls liked him. and he & i knew each other from church. and when we did our class program for our parents, he wanted to square dance with me, not the cute girls. that pretty much rocked.

i went to school with erin one day our senior year. i don't remember why i went ... but i was there during homeroom and maybe part of her first class?

summer vacation

summer of 2009 consisted of a lot of baseball games,



my first visit to the porter county fair,




a couple of amazing road trips,


and a total of almost 2500 photos taken.

past

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two goals, one afternoon

i hosted a Pumpkin Slaughter party this past sunday. we had a great time. now i just need to do something with the bowls of seeds in my fridge before they rot. :)


must. remove. the brains.


jon l. taunting his pumpkin before starting the facial reconstruction.


kathy's sassy cat.


corlin's ghoul has spiky hair!


mikey's alien pumpkin has a probe under his hat.


and poor melanie's pumpkin's got swine flu!


april carved a cute owl.


and dave came! that's the second goal - i got to hang out with dave! i'm so glad he came. and impressed since he didn't know anyone else at the slaughter but me. hopefully the rest of my people didn't scare him too badly. :)


i'm pretty sure mike's attempting jedi mind tricks on beth in this photo.


jon l's pumpkin after the reconstruction.


becca's pumpkin's got a cute li'l smile.


and jes' has the biggest grin of them all.


patti's li'l elfin pumpkin head was simply adorable. although i hear it didn't fair well once she got it home. :(


and i forgot to take a photo of my own. so here it is a couple of days later, lit up on the front porch. see those black spots? yeah, they're ants. it's kind of infested. it's nature helping out the creepy factor. :)

fabulous weekend

i spent the better part of this weekend in indy with marlana. she's making jewelry to sell at convention, and i offered to help her get started. as it ended up, her mom helped her get started last weekend - which meant we were able to dive right into the fun part. :) we got a good amount of necklaces and bracelets made, and our trip to hobby lobby landed me with a couple of great pendants and a spectacular pair of earrings. i should show you a picture ... i took a picture ... let me get the picture ...



cute, right? but not really why i started writing this post. i started writing this post because i had an absolutely fabulous time with marlana this weekend. and i'll see her again on thursday when she, beth and i leave for niagara falls. i'm so excited! :)

mikey's birthday

for mikey's birthday, a group of us from work went to the railcats game. we even got mikey to throw out a ceremonial first pitch!


approaching the mound.


the wind up, after shaking off the first couple of signals from the catcher.


the pitch.


the follow through


the catcher, who was quite humored by mikey shaking off the signals. :)

porter county fair

i made my first visit to the porter county fair this year. i hadn't really planned to photograph the trip, but once i got there i decided upon a little challenge. i was going to photograph the fair, without looking at what i was photographing. yup. i shot randomly, without looking at the back of the camera for help lining up shots.


some of the photos got people i knew in them.


others did not.


and a few i did take with purpose, looking to be sure i got the shot i wanted: fried pepsi & a fabulous waffle cone. :) we were convinced the fried pepsi was just poor type placement on the sign. you know, that they sold deep fried goodies AND served pepsi. we were wrong. apparently they make a pepsi-laced dough & fry it up in balls. four pepsi balls per order, to be exact.



and then i had to take this one. two things to point out here. A - does the kid seriously not know he's mooning the entire fair? and 2 - check out the gal in front of me who's also taking a photo of the kid who's mooning the entire fair. :)


we were at the fair to see the switchfoot concert. we had really good seats, and it was a great show.


the four of us, looking cute. :)

binocular fun

mikey was rummaging about his junk drawer at work the other day, and he came across the prism he'd pulled from a set of binoculars. i was instantly enamored with it, and i just had to take a photo. see what it's doing there? in actuality, mikey's on the left & april's on the right. but in the prism, they're the other way around. somehow the fact that they're flipped, but not mirrored is exciting to me.

now i just need to remember where i put the prism and take more photos with it ...

the obsession

okay, i'll admit it. i might be slightly obsessed with the RailCats. i might go to every game i possibly can. i might know all their names & numbers (jersey numbers, that is. i'm not THAT girl.). i might even know the opening lyrics to the songs a few of them have played when they come up to bat. it's possible.

fairly early this season, beth & i got RailCats jerseys. i've got the away jersey with Wallace on the back; beth has the alternate jersey with Marconi. then, this past month, we were able to introduce mikey to the goodness that is the RailCats. and he, being the wise guy *ehem* that he is, jumped right on the bandwagon and got an away jersey with Czarniecki on the back.

we have quite a presence in the stands. :)

weekend with marlana

marlana & i were finally able to line up our schedules in the middle of july. i drove down on saturday morning. she made me lunch (that's right, she cooked for me. i know!), and we headed to the outlet mall for a little shopping. we both got some cute clothes, which we happily showcased at dinner that evening. :) we had to wait quite awhile for our table, and we began discussing the White Pants Issue. where you do stand on this? are white pants good or bad on women? on men? do you wear them?

after dinner we had some margaritas & watched the movie version of RENT. marlana saw the stage version earlier this year, but hadn't seen the movie, yet. then we crashed for the night; got up sunday and met marisa for lunch. it's been more than two years since i've seen marisa (two years?! ugh ... time flies.), so that was fabulous. i got to meet her little boy and take a tour of their house.

compared to a lot of people, i still talk to a lot of my friends from high school. i am blessed to have been surrounded by people who i still love so dearly.

playin' at the red dot boutique

beth & i found this fabulous display of puppets at the red dot boutique last week.



this one was my favorite. he looked all fluffy & cute ...



and then he tried to eat beth.

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'becca likes cameras small enough to take everywhere.

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.

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.

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.

surprise party!

my mother is amazing. let's just get that out in the open to begin with: my mom is amazing. and my sister is wonderful. and my friends are fantastic. and if i knew enough adjectives to describe them all, this post would go on forever.

i met my mom for lunch saturday. she asked me to be at her house by 12:30, and we started driving west. she was going on about how she wanted to take me to this place in homewood, but it didn't open until 3, and there was this little place in beecher, and she hoped my dad didn't get her lost taking the back roads. and we turn at this one corner and she says, "did i even say happy birthday, yet? happy birthday!" and i as i'm turning to her to say thank you, i realize we're turning into a parking lot that's filled with my friends' cars and there's a happy birthday banner on the door. and i almost started to cry.

my bunco girls were there; my girls night girls were there; my game night girls were there; marlana came up from indianapolis; malissa drove up from louisville even though i was just at her house two days before ... overwhelming. seriously. it was fabulous.

i don't have the group pictures on my camera, but i'll post 'em when i get 'em from joanie. i do have photos of the game playing, however, as after we had a delicious lunch (i think the goal was to fit as many of my favorite foods as possible onto two tables) we jumped into a game of partini. never played? it's a very good time.




yes, becca and chrissy were drawing on their heads. seriously, it's a fun game. and thanks to my generous friends, i know have the original game & both expansion packs. :)

i was taken completely by surprise. you are all so fantastic.

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'becca had an amazing birthday weekend.