the back door

so i'm out of town right now and this time with my friend izzie b (names have been changed to protect the people we know). we are actually at a conference that is rocking my world, but we are two crazy girls alone in a big city. anyways.....she is a weird person. she likes car rides and she likes to watch the sunrise while riding in the car so we started our trip at 5:30 AM!!! 5:30 AM friends...ugh. but we had a non-eventful trip and honestly it wasn't so bad. i'm weird so i had packed us ham and cheese sandwichs. we stopped several times to get out and walk. we stopped for gas somewhere a bit redneck and they sold mostly fireworks. lots and lots of fireworks. that place also had some kind of super duper blue light hand dryer. it was honestly a bit freaky. then we checked in and found we had a smoking room. it was quite smoky and so we asked for a change. no luck, but the nice lady offered to bring up an odor remover machine while we were at the conference. um.

i have had several requests for a follow up on the cheerio feast here on the homefront. well a couple weeks have passed since then and i believe i can say SUCCESS!!!! it was definitely a rough day around here. i had never seen him consume so many cheerios in all my life and he was very good at shoveling them in as a baby! i also am pretty sure he hadn't been that mad at me in several weeks. that night we had quite a discussion about meals, how much time i put into preparing, etc and on obeying/respecting our parents. the following morning he knew he had to eat whatever i prepared - no complaints or the cheerios came right back out! he patiently waited for me to serve him breakfast and he ate every last bit. then we had lunch and another joyful meal. dinner was at our friends house - he ate quite joyfully again! so saturday came and he was allowed a tad more freedom in that i gave him a few choices at both breakfast and lunch. dinner came and he started to lose it a bit ove

...well kind of anyways! i had the chance to get away with my amazing hubby last week. it was 3 days of nothingness, but time spent with hubby and nature and oh.....the dozen of ladybugs that felt the need to make the trip with us. oh yes, friends, within about 15 minutes of checking into our room we noticed the little creatures crawling about. they kind of taunted me. we are awaiting the phone call from the hotel stating that we brought an infestation of asian beetles. so far so good! so back to the getaway.....hubby had a conference in the town we honeymooned. of course i'm up for tagging along and since my parents recently returned from 3 months in the south they were just as excited to have our kiddos. and hubby's mom was pretty excited to seek refuge here at sycamore hill to care for the dog and suck up the lady bugs that didn't make the trip with us. okay....back to the getaway one more time! when we left i packed up some work and my laptop. i fully intende