photo booth find

Niva Grace (aka Halle) and me during her last visit

lucky tomorrows

Tonight I'll be sharing a life lesson from my baby sister. 

Due to a months-old toe fracture that won't heal, Tekia is currently wearing a boot and walking with crutches. The other night she and I were returning home from a trip to Walgreens, and she dropped some of her change while getting out of the car. I told her, "Kia, you dropped a penny."
 

She (realizing that bending down to get it would require some extra effort) shrugged and said "That's okay. I'll just leave it. Then I can find it tomorrow! And you know what they say about finding pennies, don't you?"
 

What if we lived every day with that attitude? Planning for and expecting good things to happen to us the next day?

Expect lucky tomorrows.

p.s. "I just burped and it came out my eye." (other wisdom shared by Tekia this week) (or something) 

what I've been up to lately

Gardening,

 

gardening,

 

gardening,

gardening,

 and more gardening.

 The garden that was once Paw Paw's . . . and then mine and Mom's and Paw Paw's . . . has now become mine and Mom's and our friend Cindi's. And we are spending a lot of time there . . . growing such wonderful things as okra, tomatoes (regular, cherry, and roma), yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers (so many cucumbers!), peppers, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, sunflowers, zinnias, and some accidental peas. Actually, we have no idea if eggplants are wonderful or not . . . we don't know what we're going to do with them, but we're growing them anyway . . . just because we can.
  

Oh yes, and we've also been doing some eating lately. 

Lots and lots of eating.

Have I mentioned I love summertime?

babies on a changing table

So there's this changing table in our garage. My sister-in-law had borrowed it from Trish and returned some time ago. It was the changing table upon which she'd diapered my niece and nephews. Anyway, this changing table has since taken up residence in our garage. It comes in really handy for storing things like gardening tools, an old comforter, and the occasional sleeping cat.

The old comforter is inside of a trash bag, and we noticed recently that a bird had made herself a home inside the trash bag as well. Makes sense, I suppose . . . what bird wouldn't want to sleep on a down comforter?

Turns out that bird became a mama this week.

Yes, in a nest on a down comforter inside a trash bag on a changing table in our garage lie five or six newborn baby birds.

They are not cute.

But they are hungry.

And they do have very fuzzy heads.

So there's that.  

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

So. I love tea. No, I mean I really love tea. Here's my current tea collection.

Trish says there should be a support group for people like me who are addicted to hot tea and buying baby blankets (when you know you could get a call to pick up a baby on any given day, why would you not use that excuse to buy really great blankets every chance you get??).

Anyway, back to my tea confessions. Being raised in the south, I didn't even know that people drank tea without ice (or sugar, for that matter) until I was eight years old. My parents took my older brother Jared and me on our first mission trip to Kingston, Jamaica, and our hotel served hot tea with breakfast every morning. At first it just confused me but I quickly came to love it! They served their tea with warm milk and fresh cane sugar. It was heavenly and I was hooked.

Fast foward a few years. I spent the first semester of my junior year of college in Scandicci, Italy (suburb of Florence). Every night at 10:00 was "tea time" at the villa. My friends and I drank peach tea out of cups with little faces on them and ate these awesome cookies and lived in Italy. Again...heavenly.

Perhaps my obsession with tea became a real problem when Trish was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I knew conventional treatments offered us very little hope, so I began researching all different kinds of alternative treatments just in case we should we ever need them. And guess what I found out? Tea is the answer! (Well, maybe not the only answer, though some might disagree...) That's when I started drinking tea for the health benefits and not just because it's totally awesome. I bought several teas that I thought might help Mom manage her post-Whipple/chemo side effects (notice the "eater's digest" and "sleepytime" teas) and several that are thought to be "anti-cancer." Trish, however, is not very compliant with my efforts to make her healthier (at least not since she's started feeling better...I'm glad she's better but it was much easier to make her drink my teas when she couldn't get out of the recliner!). She says my "healthy" tea tastes like dirt and calls it "dirt tea." Sometimes I can get her to drink green tea, though. Sometimes.

So there you have it. I'm a little addicted to tea. I'm pretty sure it's the answer to all of life's problems. Black tea is my favorite (with milk and sugar or some type of sweetener...currently trying out agave nectar). Matcha green tea is my least favorite. If anyone has any secrets about how to make matcha taste awesome, let me hear them. It's so good for you and I'm trying really hard to like it! No luck so far, though.

Okay, I'm going to stop talking about tea now. I promise. One more picture, though...

The bad thing about having a blog is that you're always coming up with these great blog posts in your head (at least I think this one's great...because it's about tea). And then you have the desire to make those blog posts happen. And the next thing you know you're building a tower of tea on your dining room table and photographing it and blogging about it at 2am.

On second thought, maybe this tea thing isn't my only problem...

photo booth find

(something fun to do when I: have nothing else to blog about/have no time to come up with something creative/am being really lazy)

Lucky for you, photo booth finds on my computer are always entertaining.

Trish and Tekia. My favorite part are the glasses that Mom's wearing on top of her mask.

squirrels

So I heard it was National Squirrel Appreciation Day. Have you hugged a squirrel today?

 

If not, I wouldn't recommend it . . . at least not without long sleeves on.

Yeah, maybe it's better to just watch one through the window. 

 

Happy Squirrel Day.

 

P.S. Click here if you're wondering why I have so many squirrel photos.

Bayside is the school that's cool and you know that it's true.

Recent conversation between my mom and me . . .

me: (humming)

Mom: Why are you singing Home on the Range?

me: I don't know. Actually I'm not singing Home on the Range; I'm singing Screech's school song from Saved by the Bell.

Mom: I think that's worse.


Speaking of, if any of my fellow Saved by the Bell fans missed Zack Morris's appearance on Jimmy Fallon last year, here it is. It's kind of awesome.

Dear MacBook,

I'm sorry I just spilled an entire glass of sweet tea Crystal Light on you. Thanks for being a trooper and not letting it get you down. You're the best.

love,
Callie

P.S. I'm also sorry that I screamed.


Note: This is what I like to call a filler post. The meat is coming. And by "meat," I mean "pictures", of course.

not the best at hide-and-seek

You'll never guess what I'm hiding under this washcloth.

What can I say? He's not the best at hide-and-seek.

too far

Dear Green People,

I came across this article the other day - "Green Baby Names: 100% Natural Names for Your Baby". Among those listed are Aqua, Beach, Field, Rain, and Spruce. Green People, I really think you've taken this green thing a little too far. I mean, I'm not anti-green or anything (nor am I only-organic-eating-and-hybrid-driving), but . . . seriously?? Are you guys joking?

Green People, relax! You have enough things to worry about. I promise the earth won't grow any warmer if you name your kids Aiden and Emily. Really. And your kids (probably) won't even get teased at school!

So you guys just keep up the good work with your cloth-diapering and homemade-baby-food-making, but don't sweat the small stuff (by the way, I would draw the "small stuff" line at using disposable diapers and Gerber baby food, but we're not talking about that now. We're talking about the "too far" line, so . . . whatev). Just leave the names of plants and bodies of water to, well, plants and bodies of water.

However, if you do insist on being all-green all the time, even in your baby-naming, I won't judge. And if I meet you in my workplace, I promise to take super care of little Branch Cedar Lake or Meadow Cloud Sequoia. I'll even decorate their crib card with stickers (made from recycled paper, of course) of leaves and flowers. Just for you.

love,
Callie

One time I held a stingray.

(I was not, however, in the buff while holding this stingray. My swim suit was strapless.)

That's all. Just thought you should know. Carry on.

I think I've changed my mind . . .

I might want to be a baby panda nurse.


Seriously, how cute are these little things??

But, then again, these little things are pretty cute, too.

Think anyone would notice if I just stuck a baby panda in one of our incubators?

Let it be known

that I am packed and ready to go and have time to sit here and blog about it while waiting for the rest of my family! That's all. I'm the first one ready. I'm waiting on everyone else. Just wanted everyone to know.

Sometimes I take pictures while driving.

No big deal. I was driving from Searcy to Little Rock a few weeks ago and just thought the sky looked cool.