While the cat is away, the mice will play!

I'm sitting here this evening... missing my dear hubby. He's been on the left coast for the past week. So, I thought I'd post some VERY random photos and thoughts that have crossed my mind since I've had much time to do... nothing! :)
**Disclosure - P. took the camera to the left coast with him, so most of these photos are horrid quality as they are via my phone**
Firstly, serious business. Our favorite little kitty has to have hip surgery again. :( It is the same diagnosis as last time. The problem is officially called "Physeal Dysplasia" and in his case is bilateral, or affecting both sides. Photo below of the x-ray - if you click on it hopefully you can read my very scientific comments.
And, while we're on the topic of surgery (oh, P. is gonna kill me for this). :-D
This photo is actually over three months old - Peter had sinus surgery in December. As you may already know, he survived and is alive and well. He'd be glad to tell you details if you're into that kind of gory-ness. :) (Love you hon!) ;-)
In just over a month I'm going to be laying on a beach that I suspect will look something like this:
And definitely scuba-diving - hopefully with some of these:
And most certainly lots of these:
In other news, my car was finally delivered this week. I'm so glad they got the paint color right this time. I'd hate to have to order a third...
Some of our friends took pity on single-ole' me and invited me for supper on Sunday. Homemade, from scratch Mexican food. Amazing.
Mmm. Has me salivating just thinking about it again. When I called and told P. what he was missing out on (hoping it would make him miss me, or at least the food I was eating!), he just reminded me that he had In-N-Out for lunch. Hmph.
One of the more hilarious events of the week... It obviously doesn't take much to entertain me when I'm home alone! Kitty thought he was being pretty sneaky in investigating the empty bag of chips... until he got his head stuck! HA!
Today I went to a lovely wedding of two of our friends out here. In no particular order are some photos of the festivities (remember, from my phone - not quality photos, but you'll get the gist of the event).
Sisters of the groom:
Menu - please note it was on Saturday, March 18th... wait, when WAS that???
Bride and Groom!
Mushroom Veloute (with an accent on the last e) ;-)
Potato Crusted Wild Bass:
Amish Chicken: (it rode up to my plate on horse and buggy)
Almond Sponge Cake:
T'was a beautiful wedding - very elegant. The food was amazing. The weather was gorgeous. Couldn't have asked for a much better day! Congrats to the Bride and Groom!
I s'pose that'll conclude my random thoughts for this evening. I best get some sleep before I turn into a pumpkin! Adios amigos!

Baby Shower!

Today my friend Liesl and I hostess-ed :-) a baby shower! We had it at our place, for a friend of ours, Carol who's having her baby boy in about a month. The preparation was so FUN - I loved thinking about details and how things would look, work, flow, etc! It turned out wonderful. Here's a quick journal of the afternoon:
Safety-pins decorated for the buzz-word game~
The "cake" table. :) A diaper cake on the right and cake pops on the left. Carol's nursery theme is safari, so we tried to stick with that a bit throughout the party~ (Never-mind the drywall mud and tape in the background!)
A side view of the cake table presentation~
Gifts for the game winners~
Cake Pops! By far these were the hardest, most time-consuming, but most FUN part of the preparation! Liesl came to our house Friday afternoon to start the rolling, balling, refrigerating and dipping. I joined her after work and we decorated together!
Lions, Tigers and Bears, OH MY! :)
Sunflowers to brighten the table~
...What's a party without food?! We had a lovely spread... once I got over my fears of not having enough food I was able to enjoy it a bit too. :-)
Liesl's ever-famous Quinoa salad... my favorite!
Meat, cheese & olive skewers ~
Veggies~
Fruit~ (A ripe watermelon in the winter...? YEP! Score!)
Sweet A.S. and her baby~
J.N.
S., R., and E.
J. & J.T
S.K & B.L.
M.D. and R.L. - sorry I caught you with your mouths full... it's the only photo I have tho!
A.V.
K.V.
The lady of the hour!! Carol playing the game "What's that smell?"
A.V. and Liesl. :)

Liesl and I~
Sweet little K.
L.L. and the momma-to-be~
H.R.
We had a lovely afternoon... fun games, friends and lots of presents for the new baby.
Congrats Carol and James ~ we wish you and baby boy F. all the best!

Dry suit scuba certification

A few weeks ago we temporarily lost connection with our brain cells and thought jumping into 38* water (twice!) would be a fun idea. Actually we signed up and PAID someone to LET us do this! (Insert sarcastic, "boy, you really got taken" comment here). In all reality, we were training for our dry-suit scuba certification, which I can proudly say, two VERY frigid dives later we have! :-)
First, we had to don some extremely unflattering matrix/ninja type apparel which would keep us (mostly) dry. Because, you certainly won't get cold if you're dry, right? Not true. :-) I have at minimum, five layers of clothing underneath my dry-suit. My body temperature was bearable during the dives, although my hands and face were fuh-reeeee-zing (they have direct contact with the H20). This photo was pre-dive #1. I didn't take any photos after the first dive as my fingers were too frozen to push any type of button!
Our instructor, Martin.
Not to brag or anything, but we're now Open Water, Advanced Open Water, Nitrox and Dry Suit certified! Ok, that WAS pretty shameless but really, wanna come dive with us? Join us in Cozumel in April for some amazing drift diving!

Master Bath Progress

Hi folks. Time for an update, eh?
The huge jacuzzi tub has been set and plumbed. I'm really not a big bath-taker ...rest assured I do shower periodically ;-)... however this tub makes me think a bath wouldn't be so bad! We could almost have a hot tub party in our bathroom! :-) Hmm, maybe not such a good idea.
Shower drain, pan and curb are prepped:
Hot and cold water to the vanity (or rather, where the vanity WILL be ) are pulled:
The toilet is installed & functional (Whee, something works!)
Shower supply lines are pulled and hooked up:
Concrete board for shower surround in installed:
And that brings you up to speed to within the last 24 hours!! :) Hope you have a lovely Sunday and a wonderful week ahead!

Cupcakes!!

Let me just say, I LOVE to bake... it is so relaxing to me. Today was the perfect day to make some fun, Valentiney cupcakes. :) I love how they turned out!!


Aren't they fun?! Hope you have a LOVE-ly Valentines Day!!

Advanced Open Water Scuba Certification!

Last weekend P&I spent a whirlwind weekend in Florida! It was a 12 hour drive one-way... Oofta. We left home on Thursday night and returned back home early Monday morning (3am!) in time for work at 7am! :) The weekend was packed full, but we had a great time, made some new friends, and best of all we completed our advanced open water scuba certification!! Our diving was all done in some of Florida's freshwater springs - so refreshing! 73 degrees, consistently!
Here we are before our first dive... still warm. :)
Ready to dive!

Most of our certification was done in caverns. It was quite an experience! We both enjoyed it immensely although I was a bit more timid than Peter. The following photo is borrowed from one of our dive mates, Jay. Thanks Jay!
After the first dive, feeling a little queasy and cold, but happy!
Ginnie Springs, FL was our first dive site; we completed five dives here. :)
Isn't it beautiful?!

After Ginnie Springs, we went to Blue Grotto, another neat dive site! We didn't take any photos there unfortunately, but we completed two dives and then hopped onto the road for the long drive home!
Some of the Brown's were asking about what our diving was like so Peter wrote an email that I thought I'd share:

"How does it look and feel to be that deep... Good question.

In the Caribbean, you might have 100+ feet of visibility, so you can see all the way to the surface and it's pretty bright down at depth. You'll notice the shorter wavelength colors start to quickly filter out as you go deeper (reds first, quickly followed by orange and yellows). Green, blue, indigo and violet remain the longest. Imagine looking through a big blue filter - that gets bigger as you go deeper. Cool little science project here about it. While the process is of colors interesting, it is all VERY pretty and you (or at least me) rarely notice the change.

In the caverns in Florida, we had very good visibility - probably almost as good as the Caribbean since it is fresh water and has less particulates (other than some silt divers had kicked up off the bottom). Colors get filtered out the same as salt water, but being in a cavern adds the element of darkness - somewhat mitigated by your flashlight (I have a good one). :-) Oddly enough, the darkness didn't bother me much (maybe Marissa a bit more than me). One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was being back in the Blue Grotto cavern and being slightly negatively buoyant as I descended the shaft just flicking a fin left and right occasionally to dodge the limestone boulders as I went deeper. VERY serene and exciting at the same time. While not as much plant and animal life to look at, the freshwater dives were still very interesting.

Back to the feeling... Once you are comfortable with your gear and have your buoyancy dialed in, you feel kind of like this weightless foreign observer looking into another planet's world (and you really are). I think it feels more like your own world too as you get more bottom time.

We aren't fast divers. We dive slowly and try to concentrate on the small things in front of us, the nooks and crannies, and the dark corners. Marissa is really good at noticing all the different sea life. A lot of the fun in diving is finding something neat and pointing it out to your dive buddies. (This almost never happens to me - the finding part - in fact, I think if I DID see something really cool I would keep it to myself and not tell anyone until we got back to the shore - 'cuz I'm kinda jealous of everyone else. It hasn't happened yet, so I'm not sure what I would do...) It doesn't take much skill to see a whale shark (although still very exciting), but to notice a little sea horse, frog fish, eel, or octopus takes good eyes and attention. You won't see them if you're moving very quickly. Even in fresh water, it is amazing how much there is to see if you are willing to pause and watch for a while. Night dives have even more activity! Float and watch - a LOT more fun than it may sound... Try a resort dive sometime and see for yourself. :-)"

I should have him write this blog!! He's far more entertaining than I am. :)