Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Together Forever

June 20, 2009 Micah Rice and Claragrace Farr exchanged vows to have and to hold through all that life brings for as long as they both shall live. With a ring each and huge smiles they took each other as husband and wife.

I know pronounce Mr. & Mrs. Micah and Clara Rice.
(she is formally: Mrs. Clara Grace Farr Rice)


(Photo Credit: Melissa Roberts)

Monday, June 15, 2009

My Birthday


Dear Veronique,
I love you with all that I am and all that I have. I hope that you enjoy these small tokens of my love for you.

Your loving husband,
Jonathan


They look even prettier in real life.



Post Script. I know I haven't blogged for more than a week before with no good excuse, but I am here guaranteeing no posts for at least a week with a very good excuse. My dear friend, Claragrace, CG, is going to be married this Saturday at 4pm to Micah Rice in San Fransisco, CA. We have two full days now of getting "Stuff" for our trip and cleaning and packing. We leave VERY early Weds morning and arrive in SF mid day and will return after a jam packed week of friends and family fun on Monday late.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Gelatin

gel⋅a⋅tin
[jel-uh-tn] Show IPA
–noun
1. a nearly transparent, faintly yellow, odorless, and almost tasteless glutinous substance obtained by boiling in water the ligaments, bones, skin, etc., of animals, and forming the basis of jellies, glues, and the like.
2. any of various similar substances, as vegetable gelatin.
3. a preparation or product in which such an animal or vegetable substance is the essential constituent.
4. an edible jelly made of this substance.
5. Also called gelatin slide. Theater. a thin sheet made of translucent gelatin colored with an aniline dye, placed over stage lights, and used as a color medium in obtaining lighting effects.
Also, gel⋅a⋅tine.


Origin:
1790–1800; < class="ital-inline">gélatine < class="ital-inline">gelātina, equiv. to L gelāt(us) frozen, thickened, ptp. of gelāre (gel- freeze + -ātus -ate 1 ) + -ina -in 2
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok..so I guess you could argue that it's "all natural", "organic" but THIS STUFF IS IN BABY FOOD!!!!! (Pot is "organic" too...I'm not giving that to my 7 month old...)

That's right. I actually looked at the ingredients of Gerber ( your know that famous baby face) baby food. Let's just say that there's more than apples and raspberries in the "apples and raspberries". Case in point why my mother's training when it comes to looking before putting something in your body and maybe choosing something that is better for you has come to good use. Don't get me wrong, there were some things that took me years to get her to allow in our household (like Cheerios...the plain version, none other...that took till I was about 15 years old) and then there are other things like, Kraft Mac & Cheese. Oreos. Ohh...Oreos... But, I will admit that when it comes to MY child, I am much like my mom. "I'm not going to SPOON FEED my BABY...what was it now....a nearly transparent, faintly yellow, odorless, and almost tasteless glutinous substance obtained by boiling in water the ligaments, bones, skin, etc., of animals, and forming the basis of jellies, glues, and the like." Yuck.

This is what I feed my baby (when I don't make something homemade)


Earth's Best
First Bananas
Ingredients: Organic bananas, water, citric acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Ok, so here's the other...I couldn't find apples and raspberries, but this is the same "stage" I was looking at.

2nd FOODS Purees with DHA – Banana Peach Granola

Ingredients:WATER, FULLY RIPENED BANANAS, PEACH PUREE FROM CONCENTRATE (WATER, PEACH PUREE CONCENTRATE), APPLE JUICE CONCENTRATE, WHOLE GRAIN OAT FLOUR, WHOLE GRAIN RYE FLOUR, WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, CITRIC ACID, TUNA OIL (SOURCE OF DHA), ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), GELATIN, CALCIUM HYDROXIDE


I think that's a run-on sentence. Oh no. I don't think so.

Here's an even better comparison
Earth's Best
Peach Oatmeal Banana Fruit & Whole Grain Combinations
Ingredients: Organic peaches, water, organic apples, organic oat flour, organic bananas, ascorbic acid (vitamin c).

Pure numbers: The ingredients for the Gerber one is 4 FULL lines...Earth Best: 1.5

'nuf said.





My baby's not getting that Crap!...ok now...'nuf said.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The rest of yesterday's post...

So, I meant to write what my life had been like recently and what the plan is for the near future...Apparently, the near past was so much that I couldn't write anymore and totally forgot to write the near future.

This week: Jon has something every night Weds-Friday.
Sat-Tues: Clean, pack, lots of errands, etc, etc... find someone to drop us off and pick us up at the airport. Continue to get the cats acclimated. Oh yeah and Sunday's my birthday..go out to dinner, just me and Jon!
Weds: Leave for CA!!!!!!!
Thurs: Lunch with the Van Brunts, other pre wedding errands or whatever CG needs or wants.
Thurs pm: Girls night out...
Friday: Bridesmaids luncheon
Friday pm: Rehersal, Rehersal dinner...CG's last night as a single woman...whatever will she do?? ;)
Sat: Get ready for the wedding. CG and Micah get MARRIED!!! Party like it's 1999. Someone's getting laid this night.
Late Sat pm: drive up to Navato to stay with my brother
Sunday: See as much as possible of my big brother's world.
Monday: Drive back to SFO, Fly home.
Monday late pm: Arrive back in Bos, which will probably be hotter than CA..go figure.. SLEEP
Jon goes back to work...Sleep, clean, go grocery shopping, laundry, etc. etc. Get cats reacclimated.
Sat (I think) Caleb, Emily and Anastasia Shoemaker are coming to stay for a few nights...don't exactly know how long, I should probably find out, but it really doesn't matter. I'm SO excited to have them stay with us and see them and meet Ana!!!
July...4thish I think we might to go VT.

I think we get 2 weeks off then before we go away again, then another 3-4 weeks, and another vacation before the fall and Jon will have been at his job for a year!

Ok...breathe in....breathe out....

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Double Post Tuesday

A sum of my life then and now.

Memorial Day weekend.
Sunday night: Nate, Liz, Alicia, Abby and Anna (Jon's brother & fam) came down from VT to spend the night.
Monday: spent the day at the walking to the parade and Mem. Day events and cooked out at the park.
Monday pm: V and Joseph went up to NH to spend Monday-Friday taking care of Nathan, Tyler and Ashley while my brother, Chris and wife, Louann went to Jamacia (we got rum out of the deal)...So there was ME and an 8, 6, 4 year and 7 month old kids. Plus the neighbor boy in the afternoons. Got it? Good.
Friday pm: Drove back to MA after being away from Jon for the longest amount of time since before we were married and the first time he's been away from Joseph over night (let alone 4 nights). I came home to a very clean apartment (Thank GOD, cuse....)
Friday later pm: Sarah and David arrive, spend night.
Saturday pm: Sarah and David leave for Cape.
Saturday later pm: Sarah and David come back from cape with her 2 cats that we're fostering till she gets a place of her own where she can have them and spend night.
Sunday: Church, to which we all attend and a friend from seminary comes down for as well. We all go back to our place and Jon and I make homemade pizza.
Sunday pm: Jon and I FINALLY go out, just the two of us for the first time since Joseph was born. We went to go see Angels & Demons. I was totally weirded out the entire time by not having Joseph with us.
Sunday later pm: Sarah goes back to cape, David stays.
Monday: Errands with Joseph and David.
Tuesday: Sarah comes up and she and David go off to Framigham for some shopping fun.
Tuesday pm: Sarah goes back to cape, David stays.
Weds am: David, Joseph and I go down to the cape. Movers have come with Sarah's stuff. They rearrange her mother's house with her newly arrived stuff and Joseph and I go spend the day with my mom (yeah!)
Weds pm: Joseph and I head home. Sarah and David are 10 min behind me. We all sleep in our apartment.
Thurs am: We all oversleep (except for Jon who left at 7:45am) and when I get out of bed with Joseph, there's 15 min before someone needs to leave to bring David to the airport. I offer, get us together...and we're out the door, headed to Logan. David goes back to the flat lands. Sarah comes back to my place for a little regroup, mac & cheese, and directions and then heads out to Belchertown (yes, a real town) in Western MA where she's staying/working this summer.
Thurs pm: Jon comes home. Sarah calls and says that she arrived there safely and things are
good. Jon and I have our appartment back.

Wow.


Lists

My list is almost an entire page. Full of things to get before our trip to CA, things to do, things to return. I have knowingly not put on my list things, projects really, around the house that need to be done, I want to do, but frankly take an extreme backseat (I'm talking the backseat of a stretch limo here) to everything else.

Here's my latest circle of not getting something done. I need to back up my computer and external hard drive onto DVD (our old external HD got corrupted and we nearly lost every picture of Joseph between his birth and March 20th...among other things) before I call and get it fixed (the fan's been making a retched noise). I keep thinking, I need to empty my camera's on pics and do the back up then call and probably have to send it away. I think I've emptied my camera's 3 or 4 times. And of couse, there's more pics and videos on them now...what can I say, I'm a digital proof junkie. I did attempt to back up my computer on two occasions. The first ended up with me trying to figure out a way to select a lot of data to burn to a dvd and when the dvd is full a little box pop up and say "Disk full. Insert new disk to continue." Apparently no such thing exists with Windows Vista. So now I have to go about it manually, which means figuring out 4.6 GB of data to go on individual disks, one at a time. A sane person would simply open up what they want to copy, select as much as closely fits and hit burn, not concerened about "What if there's a file there that could fit into the last .02 GB" Welcome to my life. I suppose I just need to get over myself and JUST DO IT!

I have several painting projects (getting back to that) that I want / need to get done, but alas, it's very rainy this week so no painting for me. I should concentrate on backing up the computer, keeping the hard work of Jon's cleaning weekend and getting things ready for CA on the top of my list. That is, the "at home" list. The "out of the house" list is a whole other story.

Memorial Day.

Friday, June 5, 2009

yet again

I do have a good excuse...reason..reasonS...really. Soon. I promise dear blog. Soon.