Cleveland

LeBron is gracing the cover of GQ this month and for the article a bunch of their reporters made the trek from NY to Cleveland to play basketball with him. They were staying downtown, and although it was unusually cold, the sense and gray of Cleveland left them with a feel for the city that's not all that far off...

"The people of Cleveland live a large portion of their lives inside a howling, subfreezing, youth-repelling, job-vanishing, anti-light box."

Okay, so it's possibly a little harsh (unfortunatley not really exaggerated) and I'm forced to update the count. Colorado: 12,650 Ohio: 110



WOW. already I have to throw out a quick T for timeout here – I’m not going fake naivety that their quote is negative nancy or can easily be taken with offense, but I think it’s important to take the quote in context of what they were talking about: the downtown city (not Ohio as a whole) which at this point I hold fast and unapologetically to my agreement with it. I’m downtown five days a week over eight hours a day surrounded by windows, yet inundated by the grouchy gray clouds constantly on the horizon (which is only heightened by the often overwhelming depressing and negative attitude spewed from its citizens and media daily). Really sincerely I don’t hate the state, but I'm not going to pretend like I didn't laugh a little when these writers basically hit the nail on the head... the article in full

on the move!

For about five weeks Bella has been crawling - but only backward. if she had to get something in front of her she would just lunge forward and roll the rest of the way. it was hilarious! when she ran into something crawling backward she would just butt bump against it for a solid 30 seconds and sit down. our girl cracks us up! yesterday when I dropped her off at day care I turned to see her once more before leaving but had a hard time spotting her in the midst of all the crawling kids. it took a minute to realize she was one of them!! I freaked out with excitement, teared up and spent the next five minutes taking her toys away from her so she'd crawl to me to get them! the workers at day care were laughing because apparently she's been crawling for a little while, just never at home, and they were under strict instructions not to tell me any milestones that happen at day care so I never feel like I'm missing anything, and we'll be there for all her firsts. haha! it was so awesome - I love her smile at the end of this video, so proud of herself!

it goes without saying that Bella crawling is the highlight of the video, but I loved that we
caught this while she was on the blanket I made Justin four years ago...
just a little bit of past and present.

Picture Post

Going Once, Going Twice, SOLD!

A couple weeks before Christmas I was looking for a radio clip for a media summary I was working on at work, and I heard about this online auction a group of radio stations had put together and was donating all bids to charity – I’d tried to do this last year because you could bid on a year of day care, but my computer froze right when I was trying to sign on and I lost the opportunity… This year I signed on immediately and made sure to stay signed in and on their website for the final four hours of the auction. I may miss the employee of the month plaque, but I did win 52 weeks of snooty day care for $5,000. That’s less than $100/week!

The event was pretty intense, I had Justin on the phone, who was also watching the auction as time slowly expired… you should have heard us talking to each other panicking when this crazy lady kept trying to outbid me last minute! Unfortunately for her, I was a solid ebayer in my college days so I played the game better than she did and beat her in the last 30 seconds. victory was ours! I think my favorite part of the whole thing was that I won – not that we got day care so cheap. haha, something may be wrong with me!

The day care she’s going to now is really nice, I’d heard about it and it had been recommended to me when I was pregnant, but I couldn’t afford it. The kids start learning French when they’re two years-old and add Spanish at three years. They have the opportunity for gymnastics, piano and taekwondo and Bella already has lesson plans prepared for her weekly which are considerably more impressive than anything I can do with her.

For now we have to drive her 20 minutes out of our way, but we’re first on the waiting list at another center that’s much more convenient, and she seems to handle changes really well so I’m not that worried about switching her to another one whenever the opportunity presents itself. Dropping her off on her first day was really hard for some reason, almost as hard as my first day back at work. I think she was almost glad to get back to day care to play with kids and toys and the songs and dances I don’t know – I’m almost certain she was getting bored with us over Christmas and New Years, shoot – but it almost had this preschool/kindergarten feel… augh she’s growing up WAY too fast already!