Pie Pops, Dahlias and a Trip to the Twin Cities

It was Bunco night two Fridays ago and I decided I was going to try making some pie pops. They were first on Luxirare but thankfully Bakerella did a batch too that she blogged about with instructions. Not that I couldn't have figured it out but it is still nice to have some directions to follow. Both have far better pictures than I do but here are how mine turned out.




I didn't even try any because they were cherry and I don't like cherry pie. I was going to make more with apple pie filling but I ran out of energy. Though easy to make, they are time consuming and I was over it by the time I was finished with the cherry pie pops. I was told they were good so that was a relief- I was a little nervous about giving them out to eat when I hadn't even tried them first. It was a good night at Bunco with the fun snacks and I even won. Yay for that!

The next morning (last Saturday 9/19) we left to go to Minneapolis. We have never made it downtown since I have major fears of going across bridges, particularly ones that have previously collapsed and resulted in death. I tried to talk myself into it this time but I still couldn't do it so we stayed around the southerly end of the Twin Cities area. We went to the Mall of America, the Minnesota Zoo and IKEA. It's hard to get out and do much when you have to go back to the hotel twice a day for naps but we had a nice time being on vacation and away from home for a few days. We ate out at a few restaurants and Rex did great and especially enjoyed the Rainforest Cafe. Here are some pictures but there are more on my Flickr page.




Since we've been home, Rob has been helping Rex put together some of our IKEA purchases.



Yesterday was super windy and I think today is even worse. I had a hard time pushing the cart into the store today just going from the car to the front door! Sadly though, my dahlias have had the worst luck with all the wind. I noticed today that the wind had knocked nearly all of them down.



I tried to save as many as I could and brought them inside to make a little bouquet of them. I doubt anyone would think a florist put this together but, for me, I think I did good. And everything is out of our yard too which I think makes it pretty cool.



So that's what we've been up to for the last two weeks. Oh, and I've been reading a bunch lately too and we finished the John Adams miniseries on dvd finally. I read Janet Evanovich's Finger Lickin' Fifteen (love all the Stephanie Plum novels) and I read Twilight (not the last person on Earth to read it but probably pretty close). I enjoyed Twilight much more than I thought I would. Now I'm on to New Moon and soon will need to go the video store to get the movie to watch...

I was going to end it there but I just remembered a funny story about going to the video store on Friday. Rex and I were running a few errands and I decided to stop at the video store and get Wolverine since I didn't get to see it in the theater. Boohoo. Anyhow, while waiting in line, Rex starts smiling and keeps telling the cashier "hi" and waving even though she was helping someone else and we were waiting behind them. It was very cute and he had been quite a charmer with the lady at the bank (who wanted to give him a sticker) and quite a few ladies at the grocery store. So when we got up there, I gave the lady my card and the movie and she tells me, "Oh, you have a free movie on your account. There's no charge today." Hmm. I have never gotten a free movie there and as far as I know, they don't have any kind of reward programs. All I can figure is that my very cute and charming son got us a free movie. Awesome. Rex, now go on down to the video store and rent Twilight for mommy!

The Things He Does

We haven't been doing much lately. Seriously. I have been scrapbooking like crazy since my work space got all set up and Rob fixed a window on the side of the garage. Nothing exciting to write about there. We are planning a trip this weekend to Minneapolis and I have Bunco on Friday so things are looking a little more lively in the near future. I thought I'd take the opportunity to share what Rex is up to these days.

Where's Rex?



Peekaboo- There he is!



Obviously, peekaboo is still a big hit. (By the way, I did trim up his hair a little since these pictures were taken a few days ago.) He tells Elmo and Vanna "bye" when they say bye at the end of their shows which cracks me up! I have been trying to get a video of it but have not yet been successful. When Rex is finished eating, he says "done" and he uses hi and bye appropriately and waves when he says either. He can make monkey sounds when you say "Monkey" and he also makes the noises to his favorite stuffed animal, Curious George, without any prompting. He stacks all the rings up on the Fisher Price ring stacker thing and can even get them in the right order sometimes. I'm sure there are plenty more fun things he is doing but I can't think of them all right now and Mr. Sleepyhead finally decided to wake up this morning so I better go get him. We just have the best time with him and he is an outstanding little boy.

And on a completely random side note, I just saw Dennis Quaid on tv and man, did he look bad! I have always thought he was a pretty handsome guy but he's had some work done that didn't seem to go too well. Sometimes it is best to just try and age gracefully instead of fighting it. If you don't believe me, just ask Kenny Rogers.

Take A Picture, It'll Last Longer

I think I have owned most of the scrapbooking supplies shown below for at least four years. There are more too that are not even shown here. I took a lot of pictures on a trip to Europe in 2005 and I came home thinking I would make a beautiful scrapbook of my trip so I bought all the supplies. I knew I would get around to it someday so I have moved all the supplies from my old house to apartment to another apartment and to my house now. And now, I am finally getting around to doing something with them.



The biggest issue for me was getting all my photos printed. And by now, it wasn't just pictures from one trip. It's wedding pictures, Rex pictures, vacation pictures and everything else from the last 4 1/2 years of my life. I didn't want to deal with getting 500+ photos printed because that meant a LOT of uploading to Walgreens website. I had the good sense last week to check on the prices Apple has for printing services (no uploading- just order straight from iPhoto) and they were so cheap! Shipping was only $2.99 and the pictures were delivered two days after I ordered them. The next issue was photo albums. I had a couple but needed more. The local arts/crafts/hobby store had all their scrapbooking supplies on sale for 50% off so I picked up the rest of needed. Final problem- a place to work. Rob solved that one by making a huge work table in our office for me.



As you can see by the plan sets on the table, Rob was the first to use the new desk. But after all his hard work, I'd say he deserved it. I still have to move in and get all my stuff set up but I can't wait to finally get my photo albums put together!