Tonight as I was completing the Study Guide that I have given to my English class on “The Pit and the Pendulum” (we are going over it in class tomorrow) Piper kept sighing and groaning at me, she does this when she is bored, until she finally settled-in and made herself comfortable on my school bag. Apparently, she thinks homework is as exciting as my 10th graders do.
Author: kristenperreault
Happy Birthday Jamie!!
Well my dear husband is 28 today! So I have decided to tell you 28 things that I love about him and a few fun facts…
1. He is a geek and I mean a real and true geek!! He even bought me a “I love my Geek” t-shirt, which I proudly wear.
2. He really cares about his job and believes in what he does. This is not to say that it doesn’t aggravate him from time to time, but he loves it anyway.
3. He loves our puppy, Piper, even though he will swear that he is really a cat person. He plays hide and seek with her almost every night- I am not sure who has more fun with this.
4. He can dance and he dances with me every time our song starts playing on the radio (sometimes I play it just so he will dance with me).
5. He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. Even if it is when he is fishing.
6. He will find every excuse in the book to not get up if Dolce (one of our kitties) has gotten comfortable in his lap, even if he has to do something.
7. He plays with the insides of computers- for fun. I found him in the garage storage room the other day surrounded by computer parts with a huge smile on his face.
8. He can fix my computer when it freaks out on me by simply looking at it- it is afraid of him.
9. He will put my toothbrush head on the electric toothbrush at night just so I don’t have to do it.
10. He can tell me anything technical about my camera when I am taking pictures and he loves to walk around for the day with me to shoot.
11. When we get home from taking pictures he will label and tag each one of them in our library so they are easy to find.
12. He will help me decorate the house during each season, just because he knows that it will make me happy.
13. He is a music snob. He can listen to a song pick out one specific instrument to listen to at a time (this is not part of the music snob thing, but I think that it is really cool trick).
14. He was in the marching band in high school and college, yup he was a Marching Chief and the drum major in high school.
15. He loves him some FSU football, even if they are not having a winning season.
16. He will drink any beer that I buy and put in the fridge. I have been known to buy beers based purely on how “cool” the label looks and he drinks them all.
17. He loves his family. Nuff said.
18. He doesn’t yell at me when I don’t want to ride my bike at super-human speeds. BTW- this is how he likes to ride his bike.
19. He will do just about anything to help anyone, big or small. He is the guy that will ask me to jump over to the drivers seat in the middle of the intersection so he can help someone push their car off of the side of the road. Yes, this is something that I have done.
20. He is really handy. Thanks to Dad for teaching him everything that he knows.
21. His favorite food is home made spaghetti (the recipe Memere uses) and he would eat it every night of the week if I let him. But he will eat just about anything that I put in front of him and the things that he begs to make are the easiest to make.
22. He paces while he talks on the phone, he actually has a route that he follows in the house.
23. He keeps in touch with his grade school friends.
24. He has to read before he goes to bed. He really likes to read the Sci-Fi fantasy books with wizards and magic. Again, I told you that he is a geek.
25. The Wii is the first game console that he has ever owned. He loves to play Mario Kart online with his friends and he gets really excited when he unlocks “new” things.
26. He has lunch every week with his Grandpa.
27. He knows me better than I know myself. He knows that things are bothering me before I do.
28. He married me after knowing me for only 3 months. Now that’s love.
Happy Birthday Jamie, I love you!!!
Really Cool New Toy!
Yesterday, I was so fed up with my palm pilot that I just about threw it across the room. This time of year is CRAZY for me and I need to be able to depend on something to keep me organized. Needless to say, my palm has been anything but organized lately! I have missed dates, I haven’t gotten reminders and well it has just added to my stress level. Jamie and I have been looking at the iPod touch as a replacement for my palm for quite some time, so when I was ready to heave it across the room yesterday we caved and decided to go look at them in an apple store.
Well, I am sure you can see where this is going. We went to the store and of course we came home with an 16GB iPod touch (happy early Christmas to me). It is soooo cool!! I feel like I should be in the in group at school or something because I have the newest coolest toy, it really is the “funnest iPod ever”. Today, we were walking with Piper and all I wanted to do was to go home and play with my new toy. I even had to “make a deal” with myself as to how much work I would have to do today before I could play on it. I finished the 4 stacks of grading that I had to do, so I get to play now. The only disappointing thing in this whole venture is that I have bumped up an age bracket. When registering it online I had to check the 25-34 year old box. Man-o-man did that make me feel old… but it’s okay- I may be old but I have a really cool new toy.
Sweet Dreams Piper
This video is really dark, but the audio is precious (turn up your speakers to get the full effect)! Piper quite frequently has the cutest puppy dreams. She lays at our feet while we work at our computers and often we will stop what we are doing just to listen to her dreaming. I have yet to capture this phenomenon in all of it’s glory (she wakes up when I go to reach for the camera) however, this one will have to do for now (you can kind of see her face in the video). I know that these dreams are wonderful, I mean I am sure that in her dreams she is playing in some type of dog park heaven with all of her dog friends, eating all of the peanut butter that she can get.
Comfortable Kitties
In the new house Jamie and I have a little bit of extra room so we are “holding” a couch for his parents until either Nicole or Holly Ann have a place for it in their home. Jamie and George moved the couch over here today. It was going to go in Pipers room however, it wouldn’t make it around the corner to actually get into that room. So after a little bit of rearranging it has found a home in the guest room. Moving things around in there pushed me to clean up a little bit; up until this point that room was just a holding place for all things that hadn’t yet found a place in the house. I didn’t clean a lot but I did move some stuff off of the bed so it doesn’t look like a junk hole anymore and it is clean enough that I will leave the door open. Needless to say, the kitties were really excited to have the bed to nap on again. This is how I found them tonight after dinner- they can really be cute sometimes. Do you think they could be related?
The Naturalization Process
Well, for those of you that don’t know, I started the process to become a US citizen about a month and a half ago. I decided to take the leap and make this permanent, and well I wanted to be able to officially take my husband’s name.
This process includes a hefty sum of money, a ridiculously long application, and the patience of a saint. The application is really quite long, about 15 pages, and actually asks questions like “Have you ever been a habitual drunkard”. I am not sure how many people actually say “yes” to that, but I guess there have been a few. The application took a long to time to complete, but now that I have finished that I am at the mercy of the government. I occasionally get these very “official” looking letters in the mail from the department of homeland security, they are printed on high-tech watermarked paper. My first letter simply said that my application had been received and that not to contact them unless I hadn’t heard anything within the next 365 days. What- 365 days, yup only after a year of not hearing anything would they answer any of my questions. I guess I will count myself lucky because I received my first follow-up letter about 2 1/2 weeks after the first one. I was told to show up for finger prints on 09-11-08 at 8am at some obscure building off of 436. If you don’t show for that appointment they drop your application and you don’t get your money back. So, I scheduled off from work and left the house 1 1/2 hours before my appointment, just in case. I was in and out of there in less than 1/2 an hour, I guess that is what happens when you are first in line and have been waiting for over an hour.
I do find it interesting that I had my first official appointment on 09-11, if that is not irony I am not sure what is. I will be sure to keep you posted on this interesting experience. Jamie and I will invite you all to the party when it’s official (my name change and the citizenship thing) the menu will have to be hamburgers and apple pie, you know, American food :)
Football and Flowers
It has been awhile since I have posted; school has been sucking up all of my time. This weekend Jamie and I had a wonderful work-free Saturday. It was a wonderful mix of football and flowers. Jamie and I spent the morning at Leu Gardens (Uncle Bob came too), enjoying the time outside and taking pictures. We occasionally go to gardens in the area just to be outside and play with the cameras. The rest of the day was spent watching football. Southern Miss in the morning, and although they lost, the game wasn’t a complete bust; they weren’t murdered and they were playing Auburn who was ranked 9th. After that we headed to Wing House to watch the FSU game; it was pay-per-view so we figured that we could have dinner and catch the game at the same time. However, we were able to finish dinner and get back to the house before the game actually resumed play; they had a huge rain delay. The game was worth the wait and the $30 spent to watch it- they won 69-0; a real confidence booster for Seminoles Fans. Another game that I will mention, because it makes me happy inside, is the UCF one. Yup, they lost in overtime to USF. I would have preferred them to be killed, but a loss is a loss and I will take it.
Just as our day started with flowers, it ended with them as well. Jamie’s grandpa has a beautiful flower, the Night Blooming Cerius, that blooms for only one night and usually only one time throughout the year. The flowers bloomed once back in August, so we were surprised to see that it was blooming again. I have attached a few pictures of the flowers along with one of me in my mosquito proof outfit. You can laugh at me but they are ferocious right now!
Happy Birthday Jeremy!
A flash back from our college days- out in front of the dorm
Anxiously counting down the minutes until he got to marry his beautiful bride
Hiding from the camera
Yup, he always looks at her that way (that’s his lovely wife by the way)
My dear friend Jeremy is another year older today- woohoo for birthdays! Jeremy and I met in college at USM, he was a big brother for KD and was always hanging out in the halls- man were those the good old days. Really and truly Jeremy is one of the greatest guys I know. He loves his job and is amazing at it, has the ability to make everyone important, gives great bear hugs and loves his ever growing family- by the way his wife is amazing too, but I am partial. I hope you have a wonderful day!
WooHoo!!
Two Cars!
The before picture of the bathroom.
A during picture.
Another during picture. We were so excited because the wallpaper was coming off so easily, which did not happen in any of the other wallpapered rooms in the house. What we didn’t realize was that the glue wasn’t going to come off without a fight.
The finished, guest friendly- the door is on too, product!
Yup, those are pictures of a garage that is home to two parked cars and a completed guest bathroom. As some of you know, Jamie and I have a long list of things to do around the house, which included finishing the guest bath and cleaning out the garage (two of our large items to check off). It is a wish list of sorts; you know, I wish we could do that or more realistically I wish we had time to finish that. So, checking off these two items from the list made me do a little happy dance, no there are not pictures of that. I do wish that I would have taken more pictures of the stages that the bathroom went through; it would help to accurately show how big of a pain this little room was and how different it looked during each stage really.
Below are some fun pictures of the other family members enjoying the newly finished bathroom.
Piper in the tub at the new house, she keeps jumping in and out of the tub; she loved the tub at the old house and I think she missed it.
Couldn’t resist the opportunity to post cute baby Piper pictures. We would find her sound asleep in the tub often.
Piper and Daddy in the tub.
Dolce, he is so innocent looking isn’t he?
A Weary Traveler
Jamie and I made our last summer trip this past weekend up to Tallahassee to attend a college friend of Jamie’s wedding. We also added a detour on the way home to visit Memere and Aunt Odette in Jax. It was great to celebrate with our friends and to see our family however; I am over the novelty of travel. Two and a half weeks is the longest period of time that we have been at home during this summer. And let me tell you, 2 1/2 weeks is just long enough to enjoy your bed, feel like you might actually get caught up on everything at the house (but you don’t), throw in a little work and then pack again. My head is spinning literally, and my summer was officially over on Monday. I keep looking around our house and twitching when I see all of the unfinished projects that surround me. However, that is another post.
On Saturday, Jamie and I got up really early and hopped in the car to head up to Tally; we left in plenty of time to make the 2:30 wedding after cleaning up at the hotel when we got into town. The roads were great and we arrived two hours before the wedding. Sounds great doesn’t it? Not the reality, due to the poor service at the LaQuinta in Tallahassee. We rolled into their parking lot at 12:30, two hours before we needed to be at the wedding, and went up to the front desk (which we called the day before to verify the 1:00 or before check-in time) and were told that we couldn’t get in until 3. 3?!?! The wedding was at 2:30! Surely the woman would understand our predicament and see what she could do for us. However, the lady at the front counter was being a beast! She made no effort to help us despite the fact that we had seen rooms that were cleaned while we were waiting in the parking lot trying to figure out this mess. I think she may be bitter for never having attended a wedding herself, I mean one must have to have friends to be invited in the first place.
So let me paint the picture for you, the two of us were standing in the hotel parking lot in our gym clothes (during FSU & FAMU graduation weekend, i.e. there were no last minute hotels to be heard of), me with my hair piled on my head in desperate need of a shower and somewhere to change, with no hotel room and well no one that we could think of to call. Crap was the only thing that I could say before visions of “showering” in a gas station bathroom filed my head. Needless to say, Jamie didn’t immediately go to the same place as I did (that’s why I love him) and thought to call a colleague of his that lives in Tallahassee (the only other person we know in the city that wasn’t the bride or groom and isn’t home for the summer). Ed (Jamie’s colleague) lives 8 miles outside of town, which was not too close to where we were or to the wedding, but they had a shower that we could use and they were home- I was sold. So, we jumped into the truck headed over there at a safe lightening speed and took what was the fastest showers imaginable only to be late to the ceremony. Side note: do you know how terrible it feels to arrive a few minutes late a wedding? Well it is horrible, and I won’t ever criticize late wedding guests again.
Moral of the story, don’t ever think that traveling to an out of town wedding the day of and having plenty of time to change when you get there is a good idea. Also, never, never ever book a night at the LaQuinta. On another side note, the wedding was beautiful! I attached a few pictures for you all to enjoy.
Here is a link to all of the pictures that Jamie and I took, if you are interested.
the perreault family 