For the ups and downs

This song just came on my Pandora station.  

I love it.

~kc

After every storm is a rainbow

I came home from walking the dogs the other night to seeing this gorgeous rainbow right outside my house.  It was amazing to see a full rainbow from end to end.  It has to be a good sign, right?

Look at how brilliant the colors were!  My camera doesn't do it justice.

It brought a smile to my face.  Mother Nature has some cool tricks up her sleeve.

~Kc

So big so fast!

Remember this picture?

The two of them could fit in the dog bed together...even if they fell out of it.  There was plenty of room for their tiny little puppy bodies.

And now...

They can barely fit on it alone let alone together!  Which means they end up wrestling.

Crazy puppies. But oh so cute.

~Kc

It's a Love Story, Baby Just Say "Yes"...

Check out those two love birds, pretty adorable huh? Today is the 44th anniversary of my parent's wedding. They have one of the BEST love stories ever, it's like a fairytale! For the 38 years they had to celebrate together my dad always made a HUGE deal out of this day: flowers and a great meal (usually calamari included) and some bling! But the real magic of their marriage was how they treated each other every day, the little moments are the ones that counted the most and gave me the best example of what a loving, happy marriage should be.

 

Thanks mom & dad for taking a chance on love- for being crazy kids determined to make things work, even when "there was a war on". August 24th will always have a special place in my heart, it's a great day to be in love :)

~M

I heart ice cream

Remember this post:  Can Ice Cream Change Your Life?  And this one:  Infused Vodka?   We've been at it again.  My husband had the brilliant idea to extrapolate our vodka infusing to include bourbon.  He did his thing and made a peach-infused bourbon that is definitely something to write home about.

Image found  here 

Afterwards, we were left with bourbon-infused peaches.  We didn't want to just throw them away.  Originally I thought we could eat them as an after-dinner treat.  But, after tasting one and getting slightly tipsy from it (who knew fruit could absorb SO MUCH liquor), we decided to go in a different direction.  This is where homemade ice cream entered the thought process.  

Image found  here

I used the same decadent  vanilla custard base as usual.  After much thought, I decided to add in silky, salted caramel,  crunchy, sugared pecans , and the bourbon-infused peaches.  yum, YUM, YUM!  I can't get enough.  I just wish I had made twice ten-times as much.

Hugs to our followers,

LC

New Phone

I'm the proud new owner of a smart phone.  I'll admit, I fought tooth and nail to keep this new addition out of my life for as long as possible.  But times are a-changing, and I knew I had to get with the program.  With the upgraded Samsung Galaxy now out in markets, I got a steal on this phone.  Much to my husband's dismay, once the phone arrived, I waited a week before activating it.  I had to make sure I was really ready to move away from my cute, small, indestructible, came-back-to-life TWICE Razzle phone I'd been using for the last two and half years of my life.  Look at it.  So cute.  So dated.

Image found  here

After giving myself a small motivational speech and making my husband sit next to me (but not touch anything) for an HOUR, I turned on the phone, read the manual, and proceeded to conquer my fears.  Say hello to my Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Image found  here 

Its so pretty and new.  I love almost everything about it (but really miss the flip-around keypad of the Razzle.  The tweens in my life couldn't get enough of that.)

What I love the most (and how have I survived 30 years without it?) is the camera.  How convenient to have a great built-in camera next to me 15+ hours a day.  Check out some of the spontaneous photos I've been able to capture in the last week.

bounce house fun

for the love of peanut butter

Hugs to our followers,
LC

Not Lazy, Nor Cross, Just Perfect

Look at this boy.  Total cuteness, right?

If you're like me, after I move pass the chubby cheeks, oh-so-cute smile and button nose, I see one eye that's slightly off-center.  Despite hearing time after time that I was over-thinking and over-analyzing Maverick's pictures, I had to figure out why that eye had a mind of its own.  Even after his pediatrician checked the direction of reflecting light in his eye and confirmed that everything looked normal, the mom in me had to get a second opinion from a specialist.

The pediatric ophthalmologist did a series of tests and concluded that Maverick's eye was not lazy, nor cross.  It was just as it was meant to be.  So, why does his eye look off-center?  It turns out that some babies, Maverick included, are born with a flat upper nose (looks pretty cute to me!).  One's body knows that the nose will grow throughout life and compensates by "storing" a little extra skin around the area, so the skin won't pull/stretch later in life.  The extra skin around the eye changes the shape of the eyelid.  So, the eye is straight and working perfectly, but the eyelid makes it appear off-centered (similar to an optical illusion.  Here's a good example of one: Induced Grating).

 Give it a few years, a bigger nose, and stretched eyelids, and this boy will have the girls lined up around the block.  For now, I'll take that he's allllll mine.

Hugs to our followers,
LC