cheesy chocolatey goodness

mmmmmm. chocolate chip cheesecake. the saddest thing that's happened to me in a long time. let me explain. i love cheesecake. it's easy to make and i've done it several times before. chris's favorite dessert is cheesecake. here comes the sad part: this is the first cheesecake i've ever made. bah!! i was going to make it for his birthday back in december, but we had been rolling in decadent everything for about 2 weeks there, and the thought of another rich dessert made us both feel icky. so he asked me to wait to make it. so a couple of days ago while he was at work and i was still spring breakin it, i whipped it up. the next day (b/c we were having dinner with my family that night), i put candles in it and sang happy birthday to him! it was really fun!! and talk about DELICIOUS!!!!!!!

banjo, the one and only, and other ramblings

chris realized a few months ago that his subconscious named our cat after an existing cartoon cat. and when he showed me the youtube video of banjo the woodpile cat, i almost cried. no! we did NOT copy this by naming our cat banjo!! but it seriously creeped me out that he even LOOKS like our banjo. (markings, ear hair and all) *sigh* compare:













well, it doesn't matter. our banjo is way cuter and much more cuddly. he just jumped into my lap (which is sort of rare - he's not one of those "always in your face" cats) for a little snuggle session. *sigh* he really is the best cat ever.

today is my last day of spring break and i feel almost sick. there was so much more i wanted to get done! so much i wanted to see! so much i wanted to accomplish!! oh well. what's done is done. and i wouldn't trade my trip to houston for ANYTHING. chris got up at 5 (which was really 4:50 since his clock is 10 minutes fast...vomit!) to get school stuff finished up. i offered in my fakest, cheeriest voice i could muster "is there anything i can do to help you? no seriously - i'm offering..." when he said "nah" i can't lie, i wasn't too disappointed. i dozed until about 8:30 at which time banjo big my finger so hard he broke the skin (NOT happy about this biting-in-bed habit), went to the grocery store, and have been in the kitchen ever since. baking is my therapy. i made two batches of granola for two lucky recipients (you'll just have to wait to see who you are...), a big batch of pimiento cheese for sandwiches next week, and am about to make another big surprise. if i'm really motivated and continue to pump life support into my once-dying blog, you might get to see a picture of the big surprise...


speaking of bad banjo habits, he keeps jumping on the counter. AAH! he NEVER did this until the last time he spent time at the slatens with that hooligan cat rascal (the cat previously known as jasper) whom i hold solely responsible for this new detestable habit. i canNOT live in a house with a cat that jumps on the counter. we're never around when he gets up there (and i KNOW he's up there when we're gone) and when he hears us coming, he jumps down immediately, so you KNOW he knows he's not supposed to do it. but. (i hate this but.) today i was finishing up the p. cheese, and up he came. right beside me. meowing cutely the whole time. i screamed and yelled "no. no. no. no." so loud my voice echoed in the house and put him on the ground. oooooooh!!! i HATE it. i looked up some stuff about how to stop him from doing it, and there's several things we can do. before i leave today, i'm going to set up a little booby trap of plastic tupperware containers and cups around the edge. that way, if he DOES jump up there, they will come crashing down and scare him without hurting him. we'll see if it works....



oooooh. yesterday i witnessed a most amazing thing. a kildeer bird has laid her eggs directly on gravel, literally inches away from the ccs track. and every time someone comes near her (think track meet) she flips out. i don't think she dive bombs people, but she circles around making distress calls. kildeers will fake a broken wing to lure predators away from their nest, which i think is just AMAZING. anyway, i called the nature center to see if there was anything we could do to relocate the eggs to a safer spot (anywhere near middle school boys are NOT a good environment to lay your eggs...) but they said to just leave her alone. and apparently, right when the chicks hatch, they're in such a state that they can get up and follow her anywhere. AMAZING AGAIN!!! usually the eggs are incubated for a couple of weeks and then they're unable to leave the nest for another couple of weeks. killdeers. amazing.



i was going to post some pics from houston, but my internet is being stupidly slow...maybe later. off to work on my huge giant surprise!!!

for real deal

did you know that a 200 foot long, 40 foot deep pool will hold 6.2 million gallons of water and take over a month to fill?









did you know that a rocket that sends people to the moon, when laid down, is longer than a football field? (click on these pictures to see their full size, and then notice the people standing around)














did you know that when astronauts are in space, they have to exercise or their bones will deteriorate and their muscles will shrink because they aren't having to use them as much?


did you know?!

did you know???

did you KNOW????


(this is the crew in space right now - on the STS-119 on the spaceship Discovery.)

oh my word. i just spent a few hours walking around the johnson space center in houston, and good GRIEF it was cool. thank you SO MUCH jeremy. it. was. awesome. he didn't think he would get to take me into the mission control center since there's a shuttle up right now, but he found out last night (he's been working 9pm-6am for 2 weeks) that he COULD! so i got to watch the people at their desks communicating with the people way up there. no wait - there. *points* or maybe it's over there...anyway, it was amazing. very overwhelming. i felt like i was at disney world, which was kinda sad because this was the real deal.

he also found out that he had access to take me into see the HUGE pool (see above stats and pic) where they train with weightlessness, and there were actually people down there training which he said he had never seen. people in huge white space suits floating around working on a mock space station. wow.

and we got to walk around where they train in normal gravity just to learn where everything is at the station.






and i got to see an actual rocket that didn't actually go to the moon, but it could have - it wasn't just a model. (see above stats and pic)

and i got to see an exact replica of the "cock pit" of one of the shuttles. during launch, it's a rocket. in space, it's a space ship. during landing, it's an airplane. so many buttons. so many switches. such a small space. he took a picture of me sitting there...i'll upload pictures later...um...probably to my facebook. all these pics are just from google images.




anyway, it. was. so. cool. i knew nothing (well, very very little) about anything they did before going in, and now i'm a walking information source. well, i've forgotten most of it...but it was unbelievably fun to hear about it first hand today.

i go home tomorrow and i'm very, very sad. that's all.

lovely monday

today we went to the kemah boardwalk, a charming little amusement park/village by the gulf. it was w-iiiiiiiii-ndy and a bit overcast. we didn't ride any rides because we had little audrey with us, and we didn't go in any stores because they weren't open - much to our cofusion. but we had a great time just walking around and looking at the place. i appreciated the fact that you could just walk around without having to pay an admission fee. i would really like to see the place at night, all lit up and crowded.

i just woke up from an hour-and-a-half nap on the couch. mmmm. spring break.

elizabeth is the kind of person i can just sit with and say i've had the best time EVER. we both think that we might have been twins separated at birth by how similar we are. i can't tell you how many hours we've spent laughing and chatting together in our lifetime. and their little audrey, we both agreed on earlier today, is the cutest thing on earth. she's at that hilarious stage where babble is her main form of talking, but she'll mimic anything - ANYTHING - she hears. look out, tongue!! little ears are listening. elizabeth is the kind of person that, if we lived in the same town, we would be inseparable friends. move back to chattanooga, ebit!!!


tomorrow we get to have an official, real-deal tour of NASA. are you kidding me?? ebit's hubby works there. he's been working the night shift for about 2 weeks now since they have a shuttle up there. see it? up there...anyway, i'm super excited. we don't get to go into mission control though, since they lock everything down to outsiders when they have a shuttle up there. no, there. up there....i'm a little nervous. what if i push a button or something that makes something blow up?? what if i say something stupid like "what's that?" and they'll be like "oh my gosh. you don't know what THAT is?? pppsshhhaw!!" *sigh*

off to finish perelandra. happy monday!

everything for anything

hello. i'm sitting in the breezy, welcoming living room of my dear friend, elizabeth. i'm officially on spring break, and it's weird! spring break, summer break, christmas break - all for students. AND TEACHERS!! glory. chris and i found out that our spring breaks were different at the beginning of the year and were disappointed, but then realized that we could go places alone and still have fun. plus we have summer break together, so we really can't complain. so i bought a ticket to houston, tx, and here i am.

i think the reason i don't update my blog anymore is because it overwhelms me. i feel like i have to update you, the reader, who probably isn't even there because it's been so quiet here you've wandered away for good, on EVERYTHING if i'm going to update you on anything. but i realized the other day that that's just not true. so here i am on a quiet sunday afternoon while audrey and jeremy are asleep and ebit is taking a shower. just rambling...

the whitmires are gone. they moved to spain a few weeks ago, and i probably won't see them until alice is a teenager and tallulah is in kindergarten. ouch! hopefully we'll be over for a visit at some point. and maybe they'll come home before their five years are up. but i'm preparing for the worst, people.

i'm almost done reading "perelandra" by cs lewis, and it's amazing. you should totally read the space trilogy by cs lewis. it's not a typical sci-fi book...of course, i've never read one of those, so i really don't know if that's true or not...hm. anyway, the hero of the book is from earth, and perelandra (which is just venus) is just beginning - only one woman and one man on it. evil is trying to make the woman sin against God, and ransom (that's the name of the hero...hmmm) has been sent to stop it. oosh. it's great.

i'm also reading "the princess and the goblin" by george macdonald, and it's just fabulous. i'm not a fast reader (well, i'm getting faster the more i read) and i was on page 60 before i knew what had happened.



i'm also reading the original mary poppins book. i found it for sale in bi-lo (the local grocery store) for $3 the other day, and snatched it up. it's in a cute classic cover and has all the original illustrations and everything. it goes well with my "mary poppins in the kitchen" that christopher got me for valentines' day in england. (epcot's version of england)

yes, i read a lot since meeting christopher. thank goodness. it's a fabulous world that i avoided for most of my life - much to my mother's dismay.

there are so many pictures i could share with you, but i don't have them with me, obviously, and i've already posted most of the ones that are of interest on my facebook page. so go there if you want exciting pictures.

the owens go to church at night, and i'm a HUGE fan already. it's hard for me to rest on sundays because i feel like i'm up and out the door, and then we have to worry about lunch, and by the time i'm home and "supposed" to relax, i'm wound up and feel like i need to up and at 'em. but today we just slept in, rolled out of bed whenever, had a quiet simple breakfast, and have just hung around the house, playing with little audrey and reading some. we'll leave for church around 4:15 and then go to dinner afterwards. brilliant!

another great idea i've heard recently was from my other dear friend, carrie who has her sabbath rest on saturday. she goes to church on sunday, but her day of actual "rest" is saturday. it makes sense to me because i'm always exhausted on saturday. it's the first day after a long week of work, and i'm not really motivated to do much on that day. and most of the time, i lie around and do nothing anyway, and on sunday, i'm motivated to get work done. hmm...

well, happy spring. finally. friday was a really great laid back day - partly because it was a half day and there were only 7 (out of 15!) kids in my class. but we made bird feeders (stringing cheerios on yarn and tying in a circle, and then spreading peanut butter on bagels and dipping in bird seed) and colored flowers to hang on the door and from the ceiling. yes, welcome spring!! i've been ready for you for a while!!

off to paint my toenails...:)