What's your personality?

(stolen from Mike)

Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Test

I'm an ESFJ.

Providers take it upon themselves to insure the health and welfare of those in their care, but they are also the most sociable of all the Guardians, and thus are the great nurturers of social institutions such as schools, churches, social clubs, and civic groups. Providers are very likely more than ten percent of the population, and this is fortunate for the rest of us, because friendly social service is a key to their nature. Wherever they go, Providers happily give their time and energy to make sure that the needs of others are met, and that social functions are a success.

Highly cooperative themselves, Providers are skilled in maintaining teamwork among their helpers, and are also tireless in their attention to the details of furnishing goods and services. They make excellent chairpersons in charge of dances, banquets, class reunions, charity fund-raisers, and the like. They are without peer as masters of ceremonies, able to speak publicly with ease and confidence. And they are outstanding hosts or hostesses, knowing everyone by name, and seemingly aware of what everyone's been doing. Providers love to entertain, and are always concerned about the needs of their guests, wanting to make sure that all are involved and provided for.

Friendly, outgoing, neighborly - in a word, Providers are gregarious, so much so that they can become restless when isolated from people. They love to talk with others, and will often strike up a conversation with strangers and chat pleasantly about any topic that comes to mind. Friendships matter a great deal to Providers, and their conversations with friends often touch on good times from years past. Family traditions are also sacred to them, and they carefully observe birthdays and anniversaries. In addition, Providers show a delightful fascination with news of their friends and neighbors. If we wish to know what's been going on in the local community, school, or church, they're happy to fill us in on all the details.

Providers are extremely sensitive to the feelings of others, which makes them perhaps the most sympathetic of all the types, but which also leaves them somewhat self-conscious, that is, highly sensitive to what others think of them. Loving and affectionate themselves, they need to be loved in return. In fact, Providers can be crushed by personal criticism, and are happiest when given ample appreciation both for themselves personally and for the tireless service they give to others.

Twilight

The last book in the Twilight series comes out August 2nd! If you look back at my Goodreads sidebar, you will see the three Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer. If you at all like fantasy books with a love story, you will like this series. AND the movie for the first book Twilight will be out in December. If you are on Facebook and have the Flair application, you may have seen the buttons that say Team Edward and Team Jacob. These are from Twilight. I seriously recommend them, they are good reads.

Avenue Q

If you plan to go see Avenue Q, don't listen to the soundtrack before you go. It will be so much funnier if you don't know what is coming. But even hearing most of the jokes doesn't keep it from being pretty funny anyway. Heads up too, it is strictly an adult show. DO NOT bring your kids thinking it's like Sesame Street.

My friend Mandi and her husband Barry are here, like I said in the last post. They had seen a couple of places from Charlotte featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives (from the Food Network). Yesterday we ate at both the Penguin Drive-in and the Bar-be-que King. The Penguin won as the better food, but both were good. We ate fried pickles at the Penguin and they were fabulous. My favorite of the entrees I tasted was the fried bologna sandwich. Who woulda thunk it? We did take out of BBQ King and ate it for dinner. It was traditional NC bbq with that slightly vinegar taste. The cole slaw was also the vinegar base. I normally don't like either of those things, but pile them on top of each other and they were pretty yummy. Thumbs up for D, D, and D!

Oh yeah, going back to the Avenue Q night. We left home at 5pm and didn't get home til 11:30. We had a teenage babysitter for all that time with the girls. The kids really seemed to like her. She fed them dinner AND put them to bed! And when we got home (although she didn't give me that much info), she said, and I quote, "They were fine." And that's that. So yay for finding a babysitter. We are looking forward to many more nights out now.

Getting Married

So Leah and I were talking this morning about our newest visitors, Mandi & Barry. They came in the middle of the night last night and Leah had yet to meet them. She thought they were two girls (sorry, Barry!) and I explained that Barry was Mandi's husband, that they were married. Leah then asked who I was married to and I said Daddy. She thought about that for a while. Then she said:

When Ian and I are Mommy and Daddy, I will marry him and he will be my husband.

I laughed at that and she said, "Why you laughed?"

Then later in the ride, I heard a sigh and then, "I wish we had husbands."

Don't be in a hurry to grow up, my baby girl!

The Er-bear

She is on the move! Finally last week she started crawling for real. Gates and bathroom door must be closed at all times. Today she was pulling to standing on the sofa and coffee table. She constantly wants to be holding your hands and walking around.

Also this past week, she has been doing a bunch more signs. We have seen change (a diaper), eat, milk, more, bath, the "roll it" from Pat-a-Cake, and tonight completely unsolicited, she signed bed. So we put her to bed, even though it was a little earlier than I had planned. She went right to sleep. I LOVE that my 11 month old can tell me when she is tired. That is awesome!

The Land of Waterfalls

And we saw most of them. We had such an awesome time in Brevard. We drove over there on Thursday. I just realized that I didn't get ANY pictures of the cabin. I know Myrn did, so I may have to steal hers. It was a 3 bedroom, a full bed in each of the downstairs bedrooms and two sets of bunks in the upstairs bedroom. The porch on the back was really cool, the swing was made of tree trunks. We had nighttime issues though because I wanted to put the two girls in the bunkbed room, but Erin would have none of it. She always sleeps alone, so we had NO idea she was such a light sleeper. Finally we took a mattress from upstairs and put it in our bedroom for Leah and everyone slept better after that.

On Friday, we headed over to Pisgah National Forest and hiked to Looking Glass Falls. It was time for a picnic after that. Then we stopped in at Sliding Rock where Mike took a few slides. He claimed it was the COLDEST water he had EVER felt. We took a quick jaunt (like that word?) to Jackson Falls where I was interviewed for the evening news. Yes, you read that right. There was a bridge that had been washed out in a hurricane in like 2001. They had finally rebuilt it and they were doing a piece on the bridge for the news. We just happened to be walking across it when the guy was looking for people to talk to. So we chatted a bit about it. :) We watched the news that night but we never saw it. We did miss the first 20 minutes, so maybe we missed the bit. Oh well. Leah ended up wet so we had to stop by Walmart to get her some clothes to wear.

Anyway, we got some ice cream and went back to check out Slick Rock Falls. Then it was back to the cabin for dinner and clean up. Mike and I put the girls to bed and got to go out for dinner on our own.

Saturday my dad and Myrn headed in to Brevard to shop while Mike and I took the girls to Hooker Falls (that was a good one). It was actually a swimming hole.
The water was FREEZING and I had not brought a suit for me or Erin. She ended up getting wet anyway. Dad & Myrn met us there and we headed home for lunch. I put Erin down for a nap and Mike & I took Leah to the Zero Gravity Skatepark. Here are some highlights of that outing.

Then we all went out to the Pisgah Fish Camp for dinner. We tooled around Walmart. The kids went to bed and we sat on the porch drinking wine and laughing til the wee hours. That was fun.

Sunday my dad & Myrn left at 8am and we took the girls on one more hike to Triple Falls. It was awesome! The falls were all stone and Mike and I took turns climbing to the very top of the third fall(s?).
Then we went swimming one last time at Hooker Falls. I even swam all the way out to the falls! And if you know me, you know I am a total wuss when it comes to cold water. We packed up and headed home soon after.

SYTYCD Week ??

I know I am behind, but we just got back (will tell about that in next post). I forget what week we are on now, but I cannot believe Kherington and Gev got kicked off! I thought for sure it would be Comfort and Mark. Comfort got saved by her hip hop and I have no idea why Mark was kept over Gev. Dang!

Good Eats!

Here is what we've had to eat so far since my dad has been here:

grilled pork chops with a peach glaze
smashed rosemary potatoes
sauteed garlic green beans
sourdough bread

grilled steaks (1 1/4 in thick!)
grilled honey garlic shrimp
grilled asparagus

his famous spaghetti & meatballs

and now were are making lasagna with the red sauce from yesterday!

My freezer is PACKED now with all kinds of goodies. I have to inventory it next week so that I know what I even have.

We are leaving tomorrow to spend a few days in Brevard, NC. Hopefully we will get to do this. And Mike is excited about this. and my dad wants to do this with Leah. It should be lots of fun.

Cruisin' 09

So the Theriot family has decided that an adventure is in order. My dad's family is booking a cruise sailing July 2, 2009 to Cozumel from New Orleans. Those of you who attended our wedding probably remember how much fun the Theriot family is. They PARTY, if you are into that sort of thing. :) Anyway, Mike and I are going, as I think I mentioned before, and leaving the kids at home with my mom. The family is inviting all kids of people, including friends and distant cousins. And so I wanted to extend the invitation to you, my friends. Anyone who is interested in possibly attending, email me and I can give you more details. It promises to be a REALLY fun time.

Birthday boat day

We had an AWESOME time today on the boat. We rented a boat for 4 hours from a marina. Well, actually we went through a marina, but they set us up with an individual and we met him at his house. Mike thought the whole thing sounded shady, but it ended up working out really well. We were actually late getting there so he let us keep the boat a little longer. I remember when I booked it, I was thinking 4 hours on a boat with 3 kids (Stacy and Landon were with us too, as well as Steve and Ronni) was going to be interesting. That was not the case. The kids were GREAT and we could have stayed out longer.

We started out heading to a beachy little island in the middle of Lake Norman. We ate our sandwiches and the kids played in the water for a LONG time. Then we went tubing. This is me:
I know lovely, right? Here is Mike:
And here is Stacy:

And how adorable are these munchkins?




We are so getting a boat...

Happy Birthday to You....

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Mikey,
Happy birthday to you!

Happy 30th birthday, my love.

30 is the new 20.

Isn't he hot?

Odds & Ends

Two nights ago, we had SUCH a bad storm. Tiffany called me and said, "Did you know your swingset fell over?" We looked in the backyard and sure enough, it had fallen over backwards! Yikes! We haven't picked it up yet because everyday since, it has been pouring rain when Mike gets home from work. I guess we'll get to it this weekend.

We have this book called Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Manners. In it, Mama Bear says that if you call people names, you have to do a chore like dusting or something. This morning, Leah was calling Erin silly things like Bubbie and she turned and asked, "Mama, is that name-calling?" I had to convince her that it was okay to say silly things. Just not when you are mad. She is so cute!

I get reprimanded EVERY time I use the word stupid. I never use it when I am talking TO Leah, but I still say with with adults. EVERY time, I hear a little voice say, "Mama, that's not nice to say stupid." While I love that she is so aware of that, it is pretty annoying to stop my conversation to apologize so often. I guess I need to get out of the habit of using "bad" words. :)

Milestones

Erin has been rocking on all fours for a week or two now. Today for the first time she took one "step" on all fours, then army crawled to a toy. She has never even army crawled before! She usually just rolls and twists around until she gets to where she wants to go. Anyway, without further ado, here is the video.

Our little gymnast

Leah had SUCH a good time at gymnastics! She climbed, jumped, swung, balanced, flipped, and snacked on pretzels. For two hours she never acted like she was done. She was always ready for the next activity. Here's a quick video clip of the obstacle course.



At the end of class, the teacher asked me if she had ever done gymnastics before. I said no and she said "She's got some talent." Of course as a mother, I almost burst with pride. It's ridiculous because she's 3, right? But I was having visions of competitions and travel and such. Not the Olympics, though. Because really, I don't think we want that lifestyle. But high school and maybe college? Bring it on...

Very busy week

My mom arrived on Wednesday night. We stopped for dinner at On the Border and went to Michael's before heading home.

Thursday went to PF Changs for dinner and then on to Symphony in the Park where the Charlotte Symphony played all-American music and there was a fireworks show after. Erin HATED it! Every time one of those loud ones burst, she would whimper and crawl all over me. I eventually got her to sit fairly still with my hands TIGHT over her ears. I ended up in a chair behind a tree so I couldn't see the fireworks very well. :( Leah, on the other hand, declared "It's not scary!" after the first few bursts. She laid on the blanket with Ian and discussed each one.

On Friday, we were supposed to go to Carowinds (bring a friend for $19.99!) but Mike came down with a 24 hr stomach bug, so he was in bed most of the day. Mom and I took the kids to Chick-fil-a for lunch instead. I made Shepherd's Pie and berry trifle for the Larsens and Maddexes.

By dinner Mike felt well enough to go out with us. We ended up going to the farm with the Larsens and Maddexes. Their church owns 110 acres in the middle of nowhere that the members can use to farm. Tiffany's family has tomatoes, watermelons, and zucchini among other things planted. We set up on a tiny stage and Bryan and Brandon lit off some pretty cool fireworks over the field. We built a fire and made s'mores. Again Erin was agitated with the loud noises, but when it got late, Mike set up her pack-n-play in the back of the van (IT FITS!) and she went to bed with her music playing at high volume to drown out the fireworks. We got home at midnight. My poor girls had been up late for two nights and needed more sleep!

Saturday my mom had the stomach bug. :( She was in bed most of the day so we stayed around home. Mike and I took the girls to Sam's Club for diapers and formula (last can, I hope) and they ate all kinds of samples. Key Lime cake is yummy! The girls went to bed at 7:30 and we watched Premonition after that.

So that was our weekend in a nutshell. Everyone seems to be well so far today so I don't know what the plan is yet.