Thursday, July 31, 2003

Summer Reading

Well, I finished "Priestess of Avalon" a few weeks ago and I'm still on a fantasy/historical fiction kick so now I'm reading Rosalind Miles' "Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country". It's pretty decent so far and an easy read for lying out in the backyard while Juli plays in the pool. I picked up one of her other books too about Elizabeth I so I'll most likely be reading that one next. When I get tired of reading about kings and queens and the battle between Pagans and Christians, I pick up "The Idiots Guide to Baby Names".

  

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

It's Nemo!!

We went to the Shedd Aquarium last Sunday and I've been meaning to post this gorgeous picture of the anemones and clown fish. Needless to say, Juliana flipped for the "Nemos" she saw in the tank.



Saturday, July 26, 2003

This Dollhouse rULeZ

Well, I placed an order for Juliana's big birthday gift tonight! I've been looking at dollhouses for a while since she loves to play with the townhouse Bailee got for Christmas last year. I was going to get her the exact same one that Bailee had (because, frankly it was the coolest one I could find!) until I saw that just this week, Fisher Price put out a NEW Loving Family model dollhouse! Woo hoo! Really, I'm probably more excited about this than she will be right now. I absolutely love toys and I love the fact that I have an excuse to buy toys now so I tend to go overboard for her birthday and Christmas. I'm just so glad that she can have a dollhouse of her own that is different from what she plays with at Bailee's house- plus it's soooooo cute! I can't wait for it to get here. I wish her birthday party wasn't 4 weeks away...

Mmmmmm..... Angel.....

We picked up the Angel Season 1 box set last night and watched the first couple of episodes. I 'm very excited to watch all of them since I didn't see Season 1 when it first aired. I don't really remember why I came to the show later since I've been a Buffy fan from the beginning, but I think it was because I wan't a huge fan of Angel's character at first. I didn't really like him that much until I started watching the spinoff regularly and got into how they brought in the goofy/nerdy dimension to Angel's personality rather than make him sulk and brood every week (which I find not only boring but quite laughable!) I still like to poke fun at "Broody Angel" scenes when they pop up but at least the other characters on the show poke fun at him too now and don't take him so incredibly seriously. It's so hard to contain my laughter when I go back and look at early Buffy episodes when Angel was so serious (and shirtless) every episode! I still love those eps but not in a "BUFFY+ANGEL 4EVA!!!" type of way.

Anyway, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first two episodes in the set becasue I had always heard that the first half of the season was a bit rocky and didn't find it's way until the later episodes. I'm looking forward to viewing the rest of the set now (even more than before.)



Friday, July 25, 2003

Juliana's Photos

Ok, I finally put the gallery up of Juli's first roll of film. Keep in mind, this was a disposable camera without a flash, which explains the dark graininess of the images. I was fairly impressed at how well she framed the shots, being not even three years old and all...

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Birthday Video

Yay! I finished editing Juliana's "Year 3" Birthday video! I absolutely love it. This year I used Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" along with Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". The Louis Armstrong song actually was playing when Juli was born so I'm happy I used that one this year. I just love making these videos and I can't wait for people to see it at her party. Which reminds me, I should start working on some invitations this week and actually decide which day we are going to have it.

Also, I'm hoping to post a gallery of Juliana's first roll of film. Billy visited over the weekend and he brought her a little disposable camera, which she just adored. We took the film to Ritz and had it processed that day so I just have to upload them to a gallery page now. I was really impressed at how well she did! Look for that later today or tomorrow...

In other news, Jason and I watched Adaptation last night and it was great. I just knew we would love it when Jason's parents told us they hated it so much they had to turn it off! Nicolas Cage did an amazing job and in my opinion was much more deserving of an Oscar than Adrian Brody (the Pianist was also an excellent movie, I just thought that Cage's character was more challenging acting-wise and showed more range). The ending of Adaptation was a bit over the top for me but it was still funny and definitley worth seeing (that is if you are not related to Jason, at least.) :-)


Thursday, July 17, 2003

Counting the days...

I know this is technically "newbie news" material but I just have to say again here how super-excited I am about my ultrasound appointment being only 19 days away! YAY!!!

Monday, July 14, 2003

Home Again...

Ahhh....I couldn't have asked for a more relaxing vacation. Juliana went absolutely nuts, she had so much fun! We swam in the pool a few times, had a trip to the beach to swim in the ocean, and visited a zoo where we saw aligators and lots of funny monkeys. Jason and I also got to spend a lot of time together by ourselves and went out and about Naples, FL a few times. We got to see Terminator 3 which was not totally great, but worth seeing for a five dollar matinee. We estimated that Arnold made a couple hundred thousand dollars for every word he spoke in the movie. It was pretty funny. Juliana had a blast playing with "Baba Joanie" and "Papa Willis" and made friends with their cat, Simba as well. Here's a nice shot of her after my grandma put curlers in her hair:



I'm thinking now that I'd better get cracking on her birthday music video. I've got a little over a month so it's time to start sifting through all the footage we shot over the past year!

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

Vacation!

Well, after a fun filled 4th of July weekend, the fam is heading to Florida for the next 5 days. Yay! This past weekend, we all went to Bartlett's 4th celebration and even though it was about 92 degrees, we still had a blast. Juliana rode on every ride she was tall enough to go on at least once. I put up some really great pictures of the festivities on Juliana Picture Central. We also saw the fireworks on Friday night which was a lot of fun, and had two barbeques over the weekend, one hosted at our house and one at Mr. Anderson's abode in Milwaukee. Good times...

 

Sunday, July 6, 2003

Juliana Art

I just wanted to post this picture that Juliana drew since I've been meaning to do so for a while. It's one of my favorites... Now I'm off to my second barbeque of the weekend!