Liliana Mae Salmon

She's here!! Liliana Mae Salmon arrived at 2:14 pm on April 29, 2009. A full 19 inches and 7 lbs. of pure cuteness. I think she looks like Nick but the pout she has in this picture is all Maria!

I know there will be a million pictures of her but here are my favorites of the first batch...

Liliana and her beautiful Mommy. I love that pout!! I know she'll have her daddy wrapped around her finger in no time!


Hehe. What a cutie holding her daddy's finger!!


HAHAHA! I can't help it... I laugh each time I see this one. I think because it reminds me of Nick.I love her already and I can't wait to hold her!

Love to the proud Mom and Pop and lovely little Liliana!

Coffee Coffee Coffee

Last week I switched from coffee with cream and Equal to straight black. I figured this would be a difficult transition because I've been drinking my coffee the same way for as long as I can remember with short stints substituting Equal for Splenda, or regular sugar. I liked the creamy sweetness and there really wasn't anything that could beat a perfectly creamed and Equaled cup of coffee in the morning. Yum. But, last week I went cold turkey - no slowly cutting cream or sugar - cold turkey. It's interesting... it's bitter and smooth and totally delicious. It'll be hard to go back.

On the down side, I will miss chatting with the little old man at the Starbucks as dressed my coffee. Not that I went to Starbucks all that often, but clearly often enough to be remembered by this little guy and exchange a few pleasant words about randomness. On one such occasion a couple months ago he posed an interesting question... "Is coffee better on a cold day or a hot day?" Simple, no? But I ended up thinking about it the entire way to work and finally decided that coffee is good on any day but is far superior on a cold day. Specifically, snuggled on the couch with Eron and Mr. Blanket. So, I put the question on you - is coffee better on a cold day or a hot day?

All by Myself!

I made a quiche today! Egg, cream, ham, spinach, and fontina/asiago cheese. Mmmm! And I only cut myself once... it's a doozie. Okay, maybe not... but it was a bleeder. sigh.

Ain't it pretty? :)

Not much going on these days... I bought a new Roomba today. Just the body, not the guts. It'll be here early next week. I'm so excited.

Why Not?

Chloe in a bowl :)

That'll Leave a Mark

I learned a couple of things this weekend... For starters, I learned that a tiller is pretty heavy and leaves fantastic bruises. I have 3 pretty nasty bruises on my legs... and possibly on on my shoulder... but I'm not 100% sure on that one. I'm not so bright. The second thing I learned was that if you leave a kitchen timer on the burner while the oven is on (not the burner), it will melt. Yeah... Then I decided that after I killed the timer that it was as good a time as any to take it apart and see how it worked. Why not? It looks like this...

Saturday was spent working on the vegetable garden. Eron tilled and I watched and threw dirt at him... 750 pounds of manure later it was looking pretty good. We also transferred the cucumbers from the starter kit to pots of their own! Cause, well... they kinda blew up...

Sunday was also spent in the garden. We formed the rows, buried the soaker hose, and sowed the lettuce, spinach, and peas! As soon as the carrots seeds arrive they'll go in too.

You can kinda see the rows we have here (above)... Tomatoes are going along the wall (spout to chimney), in the next row we'll have peas, beans, and carrots. beside that row will be lettuce, spinach and peppers. The last row along the fence will be the cucumbers and herbs!

Earlier last week I convinced Eron that we should cook a ham on Sunday. He ran with the idea after he saw and Good Eats episode on ham. Mmm... City Ham. Delicious. There are tons of leftovers and I foresee a huge pot of beans the near future.

Not much else happened this weekend... I'm looking forward to a (hopefully) quiet week at the office and maybe some sushi... and fajitas... and sleep... perhaps I'll vaccum... and clean in general... maybe... Hope you have a great week! Later kiddies!

Half Pony!!

Holy crapola! After months of growing my hair I have finally reached half-pony status! It is a proud day!

Fresh out of the shower!

Now, I do have a hair appointment in a week to trim this but hopefully this won't be short lived.

I'm sorry for being a...

For the past week and a half I feel like I've been in a half-human daze. Almost since we got back from vacation I hadn't been sleeping well. At first I attributed it to reacclimating myself to my bed but after a a few days I ruled that out and moved on to theory #2- that work was stressing me out. Sure, I had taken a week off, but I didn't come back to a huge mess. Tim and Megan were really on the ball. But then work did get a bit hairy and a little stressful but honestly, not enough to keep me from sleeping. Everyone who knows and loves me, knows that I turn in to senorita cranky pants (putting it VERY mildly) when I don't sleepy. I turn into one heck of a weepy, cranky, SNAPISH, wreck... not fun.

It wasn't until lunch on Wednesday that I realized what was going on. I was on meth! Not reeeally. Pseudoephedrine. You know, the drug that meth-heads extract from the cold medicines to make meth. I was taking my PRESCRIPTION Allegra-D for my allergies religiously when I woke up and right before bed. It was making me jittery and restless. I didn't take any on Wednesday night and surprise, surprise, I slept. Now, a day and a half later I've had two great nights of sleep and I feel like a whole person again! Yea!!

Last Saturday Eron and I started a few of our victory garden veggies inside. Cucumbers, bell peppers, sweet banana peppers, hot peppers, and parsley (!?). By Tuesday we had sproutage! One teeny-tiny little cucumber leaf had poked through. By Thursday we had this...

Yea cucumbers!! And if you look closely you can see two bell pepper plants just beginning to poke through (top left, just below the cucumbers). Our little seedlings have to stay indoors for some crazy 6-8 weeks before we can actually put them in the ground - which is good because the garden is still covered in grass and waiting to be tilled. At some point we'll move some of the seedlings outdoors to get them hardy but I think we have to wait for the last frost, estimated for around April 15th... I think.

Nothing super spectacular has really gone on this week... you know besides the whole meth thing... Eron made a fantastic dinner for me last Saturday. He pulled two filets from the freezer and we were going to keep it simple with a nice salad and baked potatoes. We ended up with this instead... Petite Filet with Gorgonzola and Porcini Mushroom Sauce with a couple substitutions. Onions over shallots and portobella over poricini - we used what we already had! It. was. so. good. If you're inclined to try it, be warned that it's a bit oily (I blame the nasty mayo) but it really, really is worth a try!

Tomorrow we're having an early softball/end of season hockey/UNC final four party. Thankfully it looks like the wather is turning and it'll be perfect weather for grilling, hot tubbing, and chilling on the deck! Can't wait!! Mmmm... grill foods...

I hope everyone enjoys their weekends -- Mom in Jersey with 2 of her sisters, Dad in Wichita at his frat's 50th anniversery! Later kiddies!