leeska's Xanga

New Year's Party

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:30:11 GMT

I "heart" fall

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:32:00 GMT

OK, I haven't blogged since June, I know I am a total, total slacker...so here's the update.

Work and home life are pretty much the same ?work's good, staying busy, learning new things, get to work with some seriously cool people who are becoming better friends ? work friends help the day go faster. My amazing husband it still the stay-at-home variety, a ouse husband?I call it ?doing all the laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, bill paying, cleaning, cooking, ect. I go to work and make money, he pretty much does everything else ?I am SOOO spoiled. We end up having people over for dinner and stuff a lot more often, because my amazing husband is home to get everything ready, and he has his 'alone time' during the week, so having people over doesn't stress him out as much.

I LOVE FALL ?the 'sweater weather', the crunch of leaves, freshly sharpened #2 pencils. We've had many great fall experiences this season....

We went apple picking with Adam's family ?which resulted in some yummy cider, too much apple crisp for one couple to eat, fun being had by all and my first case of poison ivy ?thanks to good health insurances and living less then a block from urgent care it's all cleared up now :)

Swissfest was also great this year ?we had yummy fried food and got to hang out with Mellie and Beth ?always fun. In the end it as a bit too cold and rainy for some of the normal actives (ie having cute old men teach us to polka ? you'd think after 4 years of swissfest attendance I'd learn ?and ncouraging?all the people participating parade EAH Moonshine festival queen ?you have the best festival ever ? great crown!?or ORRAY for Sugarcreek public library ?way to let people barrow books! Yeah reading!? but we did put on PJ's and watch ean of the Dead?- it's a romantic comedy, with zombies ?so funny, and so strange and aiting for Guffman?- a mock-u-mentory on community theater ?Christopher Guest (also in Princess Bride and This is Spinal Tap) is a comic genius.
Halloween ?between candy and costumes how can you not love this holiday?! My amazing husband I and celebrated a bit early be dressing up as the Flintstones and Rubbles (with the help of Heather and Craig) and going to a hockey game. It was awesome ?a great game and we got free ice cream from Cold stone ?never underestimate the power of a great costume! Here's a Picture:

I made mine and my amazing husband's costume ?his is a 4 dollar piece of T-shirt fabric sewed into a square and mine was a 4 dollar piece of fabric sewed into a skirt and top, plus a $15 wig ? everything else I already had. I even had a little black fur stole I bought in April at walmart for $3 to wear to the game. I like the top so much I might wear it just for fun!

OK, that's it for me for now, I can say I will try to blog more often, but you all know I probably won't.

Lacking Eternal Perspective

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:04:51 GMT

The past couple of weeks have been weird for me...change is in the air. It seems like a lot (a lot is two words:) of the people I hang out with or know or try to keep track of through Xanga or email have undergone changes ( major life or otherwise) such as graduating, changing jobs or schools, moving, getting married, having kids, even just teachers and students ending their school year and starting another, while I haven't been doing any of those things! This is the longest consecutive period of time I have stayed in one city since I was in high school, and for some reason, I feel like at any minute now, I should be changing jobs or packing up all my stuff moving across town, or across the country or across the globe, but I'm not: I'm just here, doing the same old things as always. Maybe the summer makes me restless. I was so used to the summer being a change of pace, and now it's just more the the same, only hotter. Maybe I just need something to get excited about, to get a glimpse of the big guy's plan for me or the work he is doing here. I just need to realize that my daily grind can have significance in ways I cannot imagine. To know that the only way I will find rest is in He who created it. Once again, I need a more eternal perspective

whoa, I never knew you could title my blogs!

Sat, 13 May 2006 13:28:36 GMT

Ok, so I have not blogged in about a month, so new developments on my life:

I got a new car, and I don't mean just new to me, I mean brand new. Louise, our old car given to us by Rachel Richardson and Pete Springirth, was a 1990 Ford Escort, and I could just not keep her running any more. She is now the trusty new car of a nice mechanic man who will take good care of her, and can keep her running. My new car is a 2006 Honda Civic, 4 door, named Cecilia. Adam wanted to name her something with a C so it would go with he civic? and he was thinking Cecil, but then he honked the horn and it was such a girlie horn we had to go with Cecilia. Plus then we she starts to break down we could always sing ecilia, your breaking my heart, your shaking my confidence daily. Woah, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please get me home, get me home!?/p>
The unbirthday party was a lot of fun! I don't have any pictures to post (that is actually part of why I was waiting to blog, not 100% because I'm lazy, more like 98% because I'm lazy and 2% because I didn't have pictures). The reason I don't have pics to show you is that Adam's sister and our friends Sarah and Kristin took most of the pictures and we were like ool, we'll just get pictures from them.?Then the next day they all went on a cruse together, so I still haven't gotten pictures from them yet. But anyway it was fun. We had TONS of food, some of it tea related, some of it random ?strawberry tarts, scones, English muffins with jam, chocolates, mini cheese balls presented in the form of a topiary with crackers, sushi, sugared pecans, and of course TEA! We set up the table on the porch (it was a BEAUTIFUL day) with about twice and many settings we needed (I got some tea cups from good will, which I am going to give back to good will, so it more like renting, but for 45 cents a cup.) Anyway, everybody go there late, we had 2 Alices, a carpenter, a mad hatter, a butterfly, and some people who didn't dress up. We ate and ate and ate, then played croquet, then we sang, and blew out candles in hostess cupcakes and exchanged unbirthday white elephant gifts and ate the cupcakes (even though we were pretty full). All in all super fun.
I've had computer problems, my hard drive committed suicide, lucky for me I was 62 days before my warranty runs out, and I have a computer savvy hubbie to take care of it. So it's fixed now, and since the new hard drive is empty, my computer is running pretty fast! Adam managed to recover all my documents and save them on a disk if I ever need them, I did however loose my Internet book marks, no big loss really.

So that's for me for now, more on the unbirthday party when I get pictures.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 23:38:46 GMT

Ok, so my amazing husband watching LOST right now, a show I cannot get into because it is WAY too demanding, I can commit to television shows enough to watch stuff like LOST or 24, so Il blog instead. The little bar at the top should say usband currently watching?nbsp;

Jean-Queen ?on Presidents Day I did indeed buy jeans, 3 pairs! And I successfully hemmed them all one Tuesday night while my amazing husband was out doing visitation for the Sunday Place, so for the first time in a LONG time I have jeans that fit me and don drag on the ground! PLUS I hemmed m the ool way?so that the original hem still shows - Horary for sewing machines!

Getting Bartlett-ed uster coined the term etting Bartlett-ed?to mean he extreme one-up-man-ship of a bad day?based on one day my amazing husband had when they were freshman in college. Apparently when I took my amazing husband name, I also took his tendency for bad days to get worse until they are to the point of ridiculous. Here is my story: A few weeks ago, at work, I was going to the University of Dayton (UD) to image materials on their Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM ?it basically taking pictures of materials on the nano scale with a hundred thousand dollar camera). So I get there (had to barrow my co-workers car because mine was broken ?still is broken actually ?maybe more on that later), get my visitor pass to park in the lot, and go to the research lab. I take my pictures and things are going pretty good. But on my last sample I mount it improperly (stupid mistake), and it gets stuck inside the machine! It starts beeping at me and flashing and I had to get the lab guy and they had to call in a technician to figure out what is wrong. All this time I pretty much freaking out thinking HIS IS A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR MACHINE! I BROKE A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR MACHINE!!!!!?So they call the guy in, he says there is nothing they can do about it right now because he has to take the thing apart and fix it. He tells me to just save my files and go back to work (and he is none too happy with me at this point). So I put my flash disk in the computer to save and it doesn want to save! The network at UD won enable my secure flash disk! Grrrrr! So, I save my files on the desk top of the computer and vow to come back with a different flash drive to get them later that afternoon. I walk to the car (of course I am parked in bufu visitor parking), and half way there, it starts to our down the rain?as my amazing husband would say. I am not wearing a coat because it was warm and sunny when I went in. So I get to the car, soaking wet, and there is a parking ticket on it! I swear they make those things bright orange so they can piss you off from 100 feet away! So I get to car, take my ticket and my parking pass to the parking Nazis at UD and ask them why they gave me a ticket since I had a parking pass. They explained to me that my pass (which you hang on your rear view mirror) must have fallen down when I shut the door, because the ticket said ass on the dashboard.? I just thought ou have got to be kidding me! Even thought he could SEE my pass, he gave me a fine for it falling off my mirror!? but the guy at the campus safety office must of sensed that I was not having the best day and was just like ell, since I see you have a valid pass, I will make this go away?

**sigh**

So I get back to work, figure out what wrong with my flash drive, get another one and get ready to go back to UD (with my coworker car) to get my images. I call the UD lab guy to see if they fixed the SEM and the good news; they fixed it and everything is fine (horray!) the bad news: they had to completely shut down the computer and ALL my images are gone, deleted, forever. A whole day of work pretty much down the drain, I couldn help but laugh! I would have thrown in the towel and went home, if I wouldn have been car-pooling because my car was broken! Ha ha ha ha ha! I guess I was Bartlett-ed!

Un-birthday Party! That coming up in just a few weeks! Horray! It will be so fun ?I am going to be the caterpillar after he turns into a butterfly (re-making my butterfly wings I left in China, and wearing this blue velvet as a robe thingie) and my amazing husband is going to be the mad hatter (we made him a lime green top hat out of kids fun foam, and hopefully find a cheap white suit at good will we can dye lime green). And we will have tea and croquet and a gift exchange. We might make hats too, I haven decided it all yet. But it will be fun, and I will definitely post pictures.

Ok, that it for now ?more to come!

The next great thing

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:44:49 GMT

Monday, February 20, 2006

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:52:53 GMT

For some reason I had thought I had blogged since my brother wedding, but apparently I did notust be better about that!

My brother wedding ?It was so beautiful, but it was also a lot of work! We took Wednesday afternoon off and we drove up to Chicago. Then all day Thursday we worked to set up the church. My brother had made all these chandeliers out of Christmas lights and wire wreath forms (they sound tacky but actually looked really pretty) for super cheap because he hit the after Christmas sales, but he hadn figured out how to run extension cords through the ceiling of the church basement so they wouldn A) show ?nothing is tackier then bright orange extension cords at a wedding and B) blow a fuse, or all the fuses. My amazing husband to the rescue! He spend all day planning how to wire up the chandeliers so they wouldn set the place on fire, going shopping for extension cords and other necessities with my mother (who was totally going crazy at this point), and going up and down on a ladder weaving extension cords under the ceiling tiles. It was a hot sweaty, thankless job. Meanwhile my sister decorated 20 cheesecakes to make them look pretty, and I did random things, like set up tables, sweep the floor and assemble favors with the help of Rachel (my brother wife) and her family. Then on Thursday night we had a little bachelorette party for Rachel at a Mongolian barbecue restaurant where we gave her little presents of fun underwear and made her wear a crown ? it was very low-key, but Rachel was still a little embarrassed. Then Friday we got up, Kelly came into town to help me with flowers and we de-thorned and wrapped roses, made boutonnieres, bouquets, corsages and arrangements all the day. If Kelly wasn there I seriously wouldn have been able to do this ?Kelly if you read this you rock my face off! Then we went to rehearsal dinner (deep dish pizza, yum) and tried to get some sleep. Then Saturday (the big day) we all went over to my sister Laura beauty salon to get hair/makeup done and OF COURSE do some last minute things like put snowflake stamps on the programs, and I had to run out and buy a strapless bra. I treated Kelly and Laura to manicures ?it was a nice quiet luxury for them, and they needed some down time in this crazy day. We did pictures before the wedding and they had a really nice wedding. They had a pretty traditional wedding - a slide show the makes people cry, tons of candles, a unity candle of course, and the wedding march. They also had TONS of little kids at this wedding ?Rachel teaches at an after school program, Nate works in Campfire (like co-ed boy scouts), and they both work in Awana and they invited all their kids and their parents. It was so cute! The little girls would be like id you see that! I got to TOUCH her DRESS!?and rs. Culver, Mrs. Culver!! (not missing a beat with her new married name!) Are you gonna toss the bouquet!?span style=""> For the reception they had cheesecakes and a normal wedding cake, a chocolate fountain, chocolate punch and normal punch, mints, nuts and candies. It was like a Willy Wanka wedding! Then they did toasts, forgot to toss the bouquet, and we saw them off with sparklers instead of rice (we did not throw the sparklers, just made an arch for them to walk under) It was very pretty. My amazing husband sent me home early because I was getting tired and crabby and he didn want to deal with me, and he stayed to help tare down, along with tons of people from church and family folks. Oh, and the cutest thing ever, is since they were just going to their apartment on their wedding night (Rachel had been living there for about a month, Nate was still living at home) my grandma got them roses, champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, and candles and set up a little surprise midnight picnic for them so they would find it when they got back from the church. I love Rachel and I am so glad she is part of my family, why she likes by brother I will never know.

Since my brother wedding wee been kind of recuperating ?but having lots of people over for dinner and/or going out for dinner with people ?My amazing husband poker night, other pastors at My amazing husband Sunday place, 5 of the mag 7 (we actually all met up at colonials for pizza and then went to beans and cream ? we were craving those cheesy breadsticks, and Cedarville is actually in the middle for the 5 of us that live on Ohio ?it was fun to get together), upstairs neighbors, and Patty and Nate Bell (we had Chinese dumplings, not perfect, but pretty good). I love having people over, My amazing husband, not so much, people kind of wear him out, so on Friday he put a big red X on the calendar and said e are not going to meet with people or have people over, just you and me.?span style=""> We ended up just going to barns and noble and getting chai and reading/browsing for books. We ended up getting a $1 book on gambling games to help us plan our News Years Eve party.

Valentines Day ?We went out to eat to Indian food ?not too crowded and the food and service was excellent! I so glad people in Dayton do not think of Indian food as romantic, maybe because it so spicy, and you do have to brush your teeth like before you can kiss someone without making then recoil just a little bit. But it was GOOD. And I got my valentines day present ?a little red pocket knife ?I LOVE it! So little, so red, so useful! I got my amazing husband a gift certificate to get a massage at the Dayton School of Medical Massage, I figured he needed to de-stress after all the wedding craziness ?hel have to tell me how it goes when he finally uses it.

President Day ? Is today, and I actually have the day off! I am going to shopping for a new pair of jeans, because I just lost on pair of jeans ?worn out to the point that I shouldn wear them in public any more, leaving me with only one pair of jeans ?dangerous place to be while working with chemicals most days. So I will go jean shopping, which can be a frustrating all day affair, but we will see!

Wish me Luck!

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:00:29 GMT

Yeah, so it already January 21, 2006 ?wow, time flies when youe having fun (or apparently even when youe not having fun). Ok, so updates:

Thanksgiving and Christmas were great! Thanksgiving in Chicago with my fam, Christmas in Ohio/West Virginia with My amazing husband family. It was good to see everybody after 2 years of being away! I didn realize how much I missed the holiday season in China until it happened this year. We got a real live tree which we decorated with lime green, turquoise, orange, hot pink, red and green ornaments ?the best part of our color scheme is that the wrapping paper was just solid colored and can now be used for any occasion! Neither my amazing husband or I had ever had one before, and we decided that while we have no puppies or babies or fireplaces, this would be the year to try it. I think I might be in the live tree camp - it smelled AMAZING, didn take that much maintenance, and it was well worth the $37 not to have to store it the rest of the year. We also decorated a gingerbread house, and made peppermint bark to round out the holiday. We didn have too many holiday traditions, and after 2 years of baking 700+ cookies for all the teachers at the Chinese school, I was ok with not baking cookies or sending Christmas cards. (although I found super cute/funny Christmas cards at the after Christmas sales, so youl all get m next year!)

My brother is getting married ?02-04-06 (he definitely gets points for asiest anniversary date to remember?) That is now only 2 weeks away! Times a tickin? I have already made snowflake shaped chocolates for the reception, and I am doing the flowers ?they are having callililies for the bouquets and arrangements and white roses for the boutonnieres. I have already enlisted the help of my super creative cousin Kelly (she helped with my wedding flowers), so that will help. It looks like it is going to be a lovely wedding ?an evening wedding with candlelight and a dessert reception: simple and elegant, small but classy. Now if only my brother would stop being so pig-headed that he will ask for help when he needs it.

New Years Eve ? ROCKED! A big thank you to all those who braved the weather and drive and formalwear and came out ?it was great to see all you there! If you didn see your pictures they are (well, I was gonna post a link, but I can't find it, they are on Adam's flicker...) Next year? 007 themed ?break out the slinky dresses, martini glasses and poker faces. Itl be a casino royal night full and will be sure to have beverages that were haken, not stirred? Mark your calendars ?December 31^st, from 8pm to 2am where ever it is we are living ? everyone is invited!

My amazing husband and I started First Place ?it a weight lost program/bible study at his Sunday place. Now before I get all you guys saying ou don need to lose weight!?your right, I don and I am happy with my body appearance - but I am not as healthy as I should be ?I mean I am 24 and can get winded running up 3 flights of stairs! America laziness has set in, as I don need to ride my bike to the grocery store, or walk to work. The class is basically about having healthy boundaries in all areas of you life, and learning how to feed yourself ?not only to fulfill physical needs, but emotional, mental and spiritual needs too. It is helping me be more consistent with my walk with the Big Guy. (Plus it gets me to drink water and my amazing husband to eat his veggies, and us both to get off our rears and exercise a bit). So far it has been a little frustrating to plan meals and figure out what I should eat, but Ie also noticed I have more energy and feel better, so it worth it.

I think that all anyone will want to read ?I will try to update more, its part of my New Years resolutions (along with flossing, Jared the dentistry student would be disappointed at my flossing habits)!

Take Luck

Lisa

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:46:35 GMT

Hey, Adam here. Just sticking my head in for a second to say that my blog has moved (last time, i promise!) to www.adamjamesbartlett.com . Stop by and see me sometime, will ya?

Announcing...

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:54:17 GMT

The Moment you've all been waiting for...