x. I took the Lola bear to see Dr. McLaughlin and the big baby dog is 61.2 pounds of hound!
x. We went to the Master Gardeners' Spring Festival and bought some plants for the front yard.  Some sort of jasmine and some yellow speckly crotons.  So pretty!
x. Hamantashen, chicken soup.  I rock the kitchen.
x. Experienced the Gatornationals.  I was not prepared for the earth-shatteringness that is the sound from an engine fueled by nitro-methane.  Even with earplugs, it vibrates your chest and blurs your vision!  Crazy.  Michael got to meet a few of his favorite drivers.  I didn't find Lewis Bloom, but I hope to meet him next year.  Oh yes.  Jewey statistician, you and I shall meet!
x. Hey, I got 96 out of 100 on my paper for policy.  Not bad for one I wrote in a hotel room and Michael edited on the plane!
x. Looking forward to fancy dinner.

Today is our First Anniversary.  Everybody, aww.

This past weekend, Michael's sister and family drove up to visit.  The family includes our nephews, Benjamin, who is five, and Sammy, who is eight months.

We met them for dinner at Cody's where they have the best ever house salad in existence.  I'll bet anyone to find a better one elsewhere.

When we got home, we set Benjamin off on his treasure hunt.  Earlier in the day, I went to the bank and got some presidential gold coins and we buried them in a tin can in the yard.  We gave him a map and a flash light and helped him follow the clues.  After taking ten big jumps from Michael's car trailer, we gave him a shovel and told him to dig.  He loved it! 

On Saturday, we went to the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire in Gainesville.  It was a gorgeous day and I nicely put on festival.  We watched the joust tournament and I really liked the tent full of birds of prey.  They had some gorgeous owls.  I was also amused to see some of the same performers I used to see in South Florida almost fifteen years ago.  It's a different company, so I was surprised.

**This next part might offend some of you.  Don't worry, I defended your honor and told Michael a large dude in armor might have to beat his ass.***

Michael told Benjamin that we were going to the "Dork Fair" and Benjamin kept yelling that in excitement.  It was funny, but not nice at all.

That night, Benjamin helped me make pizza for everybody and he absolutely loved it.  I let him get good and messy and covered in flour. 

Sammy is just learning to crawl, so he had a blast scooting himself around the living room.  Lola had a blast covering him in puppy kisses.

On Sunday morning, Benjamin came to play in our bed.  We told him we were going to feed him to Lola.  Michael said he was going to turn him into a "Shiskabenjamin."  He fired back, "I'm going to make a Michael kabob!"  Come on, that is totally brilliant coming from a kindergartener.  We also told him that Lola loves Benjamin flavor and he said that his flavor was "blue."  Love it. 

We love when family visits.

Tomorrow is the day!

So my Mom gave me a sweet travel Scrabble set for Chanukah.  We played a few games while the folks visited. 

On New Years Day, while Michael and I were vegetating on the couch, I jokingly asked him if he wanted to play a game.  Scrabble really isn't his thing.  Amazingly, he said yes and we had a fun, trash talking game.  I helped him a little with his spelling and allowed some proper nouns, just to keep him into it.  For example, I let him play Dzus for a triple word score.  Dzus is a manufacturer of car parts.

So then two days later, he wanted to play again.  And last night, before bed, he challenged me to yet another game!  Specifically, he said, "Are you ready for me to kick your ass at Scrabble?"  It was, in the end, me who kicked his ass instead.  Although, he thought he deserved bonus points for spelling "vaginal" though it wasn't a bingo.

I told his Mom and she was shocked that he wanted to play. 

Hee!

Seriously, I am counting down the minutes until I can eat my mom's latkes tonight!!!

Everybody shine up your trumpets!  I got straight A's!

And 300/300 on my bibliography project and 24/25 on my literature review.

Celebrate good times, come on!

Happy Birthday, Sonia!

miss you and love you xoxo

Obama as Prez, best birthday ever!

This is amazing.  We did it.  We actually did it. 

I love all of you and can't wait for what's next.

President-Elect Obama.

It's all happening!

I forgot to mention that I voted on Tuesday!  Yay!  I was the 1670th voter in our location.

The library is an early voting location, one of six in the county.  The poll workers say they're averaging about 800 voters a day at our library alone!  Awesome.

Yay democracy!