Fatties

I love my fat cat. Love love love her. She is big fat and mushy and while she is sometimes snotty, she loves me too. She snuggles up next to me at night and often times burries herself under the covers. She's a big ball of love, I like to say. :)

She wasn't always this fat. When she came to live with me, she was thinner. I have a habbit of making cats, humans, etc fatter when they come in close contact with me! Regardless, she is my Chubs. She even responds to Chubs.

I just like "fluffy" animals. I feel like they are more lovey. When I saw "Princess Chunk" on the Today Show the other morning I instantly fell in love with her too.


Then today I read its actually a "him" named Powder. Whatever. Still cute. So the site also had a photo album attached of people sending in their chubby pets. I enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share it with all of you!

My Food Diary

Monday
3 Cups of Coffee
Cookies
1 Banana
Coffee Cake Bread
*I'm sure there was something for lunch...
Macaroni and Cheese
With Hotdogs
Ice Creame
Made Brownies at 9pm - Rob and I finished off two rows before bed.

Tuesday
3 Cups of Coffee
A Banana
Some more bread
3 Cheese Ziti (from Smart Ones)
Steamed Brocoli and Carrots (trying to be healthy)
More Cookies
A Better Butter Cheeseburger
Fried Cheese Balls
Concrete Mixer made with Chocolate & M&Ms
*resisted brownies...

Wednesday
Dunkin Donuts Med Iced Coffee
Glazed Fritter
Monicals! Pizza Rolls
Salad
...and its only 3pm

The point of this is I am a pig. I am going to grow big fat and disgusting.
Something like the lady from the Slimquick commercials. You know. Its disturbing. I will have to curb myself. Only food from the ground the rest of the week. HA! There is still a half a pan of brownies at home. And I can not resist them. I don't have the will power.
I did mow the lawn though. My one thing of exercise this week. My goal is to start swimming again...but thats been my goal for a number of months now. We'll see...

My Garden

I've always wanted a garden. Always. With Tomatoes and Basil and other delicious items. After my mom and grandma came, I was inspired to dig in. I dug up a spot in the back yard that I thought would get enough light and thus began my garden. :)

I started with 6 plants. Tomato, Cucumber, Yellow Pepper, Strawberry, Basil and Catnip (for Teeka). They started all rather small and I was excited to watch them grow.

So was Teeka.

So the above was taken not too long after I planted. See the plant behind Teeka...thats a cucumber. See how small it is? It is not that way anymore. No one told me that thing grows ENORMOUS! It took over the garden! Its crazy. As the plants grew, Rob started to get excited about it. He started calling himself a gardener, but I pointed out all he did was watch. That is not gardening. So a couple weeks ago, with the cucumber exploding out of my little patch, Rob and I went and tilled up some more of the yard to make the garden larger. With Rob excited, we went and got a few more plants...a green pepper and a jalepeno pepper plant.

Last week we were out and noticed our veggies were popping up left and right! So exciting.

The Cucumbers

The Tomatoes

Jalepeno
The Green Pepper

I Can See the Potential!

Last week my mother came to visit. Its always nice to have her around as she helps fix up my house...and this time was no exception.

When I bought my house, it was not a "oh this house is adorable, I want to live in it forever." No. It was a steal and a major fixer-upper. See below.


See. It looks like a shack. The inside was just as bad. But I saw the potential. It just needed some TLC and a little elbow grease. Rob and I got to work on the inside immediately. Ripping out carpet and refinishing the original hard wood floors, painting and patching the walls. It was a lot of work! The outside of the house however, continued to look like a shack. My mother and grandmother came in May and brought enormous amounts of flowers and plants with them. The transformation began! We spent all weekend pulling weeds, picking out rocks and planting. What a change!

Still, the shack looked remained. While I love the huge porch up front, all the wood made the house look like it should have been in the middle of the woods in Montana. My mother kept saying she wanted to come out and paint it. I knew it would make a big change, but I felt bad having her come out here to do it. I could do it. I just need the time! Under unfortunate circumstances, she came to Peoria last week and armed herself with paint clothes and informed me that she would be painting the front of my house. Well....if she's here... So we went and picked out colors and she got to work while I was at work. Rob's mom came and helped a little and I helped when I got home, but for the most part my mom was out in the nasty sticky heat painting the front of my house. I felt a bit guilty, but seeing the end result, all I could say was Thank You!!!! I no longer look like I live in a shack!!

See, now it looks like a house! Yay! I can't wait until this humidity disappears and I can sit out on my fresh porch and enjoy my morning coffee. :)

A New Something

Its been in my mind to try this for a while, but I just have never sat down to do it. I'm inspired by all the fun blogs I see on the net. I really decided I wanted to do this when I got my new camera and had all these great pictures that had little stories (or big ones) to go with them. So here I go. I'm going to try! I hope you enjoy...or maybe learn something...of maybe just are able to waste some time here. :)

Girl's Weekend

A girl's weekend always includes a few things...good food, good wine and good company! This weekend was no different. We all met up at Miller's (though now Lubich, but that doesn't flow as nicely...sorry Jason) near Springfield, IL. She welcomed us with bottles of wine and enchilada's in the oven! There were no boys to be seen and we filled our plates and glasses and sat around the basement coffee table to enjoy ourselves.

We laughed and talked about the past, present and everything in between. It may have been months since we'd all been together, but soon it felt like no time had passed. As the night slipped on, so did the glasses of wine and soon we had to break into Jason's Dad's wine. It was a different experience, but as Emily suggested, a little OJ made it all better. Stories continued late into the night. We laughed at each other and told stories from our college years.



It was somewhere around 3am when we decided to call it quits and turn off the lights. Most of us didn't only fall asleep, but flat out passed out. Still a little hung over, Anna and Sara woke up at 7am to drive back to Peoria to pick up their family and continue up to Chicago for separate family events. Emily, Amanda and I woke up shortly thereafter and lazyily made ourselves some much needed coffee and cinnamon muffins. After what seemed like 11 cups of coffee each, Emily and I said goodbye to Amanda and headed to St. Louis so Emily could attend a high school friend's wedding. I went for fun. While she was at the wedding I wondered a bit downtown (because I work at the Embassy, I got us a great deal on the Hilton in downtown) and ate dinner at some tasty little diner around the corner...stuffing myself with Alfredo and Chocolate Cake. When Emily returned from the wedding, I got dressed up to match and we ventured off in search of a great little St Louis bar. After a broken heal and major blisters, we gave up searching and landed in a loud Irish Pub - not exactly what we were looking for. We made due. After a drink there, we headed off in search of something a little less loud and landed in a bar/restaurant that was about to close but seemed to have the atmosphere we'd been looking for. We opted for a cab to take us back to the hotel and fell into bed immediately. As we sank into slumber, we realized once again, we forgot to take a picture of us!

Sunday morning we took our sweet time getting up and getting going. Hell, it was vacation. But we did promise to be back in Peoria for a BBQ later that afternoon. With a quick pit stop at Bob Evans, we drove up to Peoria. After picking up Rob and Ellie, we headed over to Sara and Bobs for an afternoon with the families. The babies were there and so were the boys (Miller's was boyfree - for the most part). Bob lit up a fantastic grill and got everyone some tasty treats. We all brought sides that were delicious and mostly sat around and stuffed our mouths and talked some more.

It was a fantastic weekend that ended way too soon, but we all had a great time. We definitely have to do it again soon!

The Girls
The Girls...with their girls