happy birthday, monkey face!

my baby dog is officially an old woman. she turns 10 today... or 70 in dog years. i cannot imagine the last decade without her by my side. she has been a constant companion and i am grateful. happy birthday, rhodie!

blue bungalow in manhattan, ks 

2000 

belated vacation pictures

we just planned a last minute vacation to celebrate steve's graduation. i found a nice little house on the lake of the ozarks and we are heading there in a couple of weeks.

our vacation in may to lake hamilton was really nice too and i realized i never posted any pictures so i thought i'd get them up while i had "lake" on my mind.

my husband the graduate.

well... it is finally over! last thursday marked the end of stephen's schooling. my husband is now the proud owner of an MBA.  throughout our entire relationship (5 years next month) he has been in school... first he got his associates, then his bachelors, and now his masters. pretty impressive for 5 years, huh? 

it is time to look for a grown up day job and to learn what it is like to be home during evening and weekends... hopefully we'll still like each other when we start spending so much time together. it is time to say goodbye to the peanut. don't get me wrong, i'm grateful to the peanut for bringing us together... but i'm over it. 

one thing i'm most excited about? i can't wait to finally start exploring more recipes... to know what it is like to have dinner with my husband more than a couple nights a week.... i've been compiling recipes i want to try for years and now finally i won't have any more excuses. 

keep your fingers crossed that he finds a job soon! i don't want to lose my motivation. 

sleepover!

last friday our nieces and nephews invaded our house for the night. anastasia was visiting from atlanta and she gets along so well with addy, savannah, thomas and joseph. they think of each other as cousins and we love that.

there was music and popcorn and movies and play-doh and sidewalk chalk and lightening bugs and on and on and on. needless to say, steve, rhodie, mookie and i took a long nap after they all went home.

here are a few of my favorite pictures of all the fun.

addy

savannah

thomas

joseph

anastasia and steve

fro-yo and honey.

i just had to share one of my favorite combinations of all time... tart frozen yogurt and honey. it is like a dream come true. edy's was my first experience and they have since discontinued the masterpiece, at least in our area. for months i've been without one of my favorite things, but then i came across this recipe and i am once again satisfied. a little honey drizzled on top completes the deliciousness. try it. seriously. you won't be disappointed. 

upside down.

i think i stood still and time went really quickly. i seem to have missed the month of june. suddenly its the (almost) fourth of july. how did that happen?

life in the mcclernon house has been unusually productive. we bought ourselves a new couch - surprisingly, after nearly five years together this was really our first big joint purchase. we'd been living on merged furniture and hand me downs. this purchase set off a whirlwind of giving stuff away to steve's sister and goodwill, selling furniture, trashing things that should have been trashed long ago, shredding, organizing, rearranging... needless to say, we're feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

this house has been transformed from when we first found it... and it is hard to believe steve has been living here since october 2006. for the first year and a half he was here, i was pretty much a house guest. he had a roommate and his roommates girlfriend living here and rhodie and i traveled back and forth from here to my parents' house like vagabonds. when i moved in we started painting and he and his dad put in a new kitchen floor. our work sort of stopped after the engagement and then we were busy with the planning....and he was busy with school... and i was busy with work. and from time to time we start working again.

as i'm laying here on our new comfy couch and looking around, i'm smiling.  we've turned this house inside out and upside down. eventually it will be everything we want it to be, probably right before we're ready to sell.

why?

on saturday i learned about another tragic loss of a child and i can't stop asking why.

last thursday a 4 year old boy was critically injured when an older model TV fell on him when he was climbing on the counter. he was just trying to change out a dvd for him and his brother... a household accident. one minute life is normal and the next, everything falls apart. when i heard about his death i just went into shock and then was overcome with sadness... and of course it stirred up my grief for leah and her family which needed no stirring up. it is still very much at the surface.

i know this child's mother from middle school and high school... we were never great friends or anything, but thanks to facebook, i feel like i know her better. she is one of the most positive people i know, especially on my facebook news feed, and i look forward to her encouraging status updates. even now, she is trying to be positive. she has donated 12 of her son's organs to save other people and wrote that he always wanted to be a super hero, and now he is.

still,  i can't understand why god allows tragic accidents to happen but i try to cling to the idea that everything happens for a reason, that he knows what he is doing... when children are involved, and especially so many lately, i have a much harder time.

in the car, i find myself crying out of nowhere after spending time with my nieces and nephews. i just can't imagine life without them. i am feeling very deeply for my friends who are having to face that reality.