Random Thoughts

I'm sitting at my desk fully aware that I have real work to do, but I've been a procrastinator my entire life... so here I am blogging instead. Up until now I've been posting about significant things (well, significant to me) but today I thought that I just give you a glimpse in to my very random mind. Here we go...

The "Amazing" Race: (The Ultimate Reality TV...)

I can't wait for the election to be over! I don't know about you, but I am so sick of campaign ads that it's not even a pleasure to watch TV. Before I left for work yesterday morning the Today Show had a teaser as to what was coming up in their next half hour. One of the things they mentioned was "Why you can't get through a commercial break without seeing at least one campaign ad." It's a sad day when the media has to explain this to the general public.

I am in no way trying to come off as unpatriotic; I love this country and I am constantly telling my students that they need to remember how blessed we are that we live here. And yes, I still believe that. It's just been an extremely long race and I think our country is ready for the struggle for power to come to an end.

While I'm on the topic of campaigns let me get this off of my chest. Vote! Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. And if you don't... Don't complain! OK, I feel better. :)

For voter registration information, visit the following link:

http://www.eac.gov/voter/Register%20to%20Vote

Cloth Diapers:

I know, you're asking yourself, "What the heck is she blogging about cloth diapers for?!?" (And, no, I'm not trying to imply anything either...) For some reason the topic of cloth diapers has come up several times in the past few weeks and I have to say that the idea of using them on my future children does not thrill me. We live in a nation, dare I say world, of convenience and it seems to me that disposable diapers are truly one of those great conveniences! I know that using cloth diapers will lessen our environmental fingerprint, but there are other ways that I do my best to recycle, reuse, reduce. However, I did read that you can go from newborn to potty trained for $300 with cloth diapers or $3,000 with disposable diapers. Now, this figure of $300 seems a bit low to me. If my figuring is correct, assuming that a diaper is changed anywhere from 7-10 times per day, and also assuming that the mommy doesn't live in the laundry room, wouldn't it be a wise idea to at least have 15 diapers on hand? Even with that, wouldn't you constantly be washing diapers? Since this topic keeps coming up within my circle of friends, I looked on line and found that the average price for a decent cloth diaper is $17.

$17 x 15= $255, and that's just for one size diaper. Factor in the different sizes, extra washing (water and electricity), detergent, and precious time and that cost goes even higher. Am I wrong?

(I have no idea who this baby is!)

That being said, I just learned that two of my friends, both with newborns, are using cloth diapers. I am truly interested in learning about their experiences! I won't say that I 100% against trying this when God blesses Adam and I with a child, but it's going to take a lot of convincing that it's worth it. :)

Thanksgiving:

I know it's still two months away, but I am excited to say that we will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year. My Mom, Dad, Brother Michael & family, and my in-laws will be joining us. I'm pretty excited that family will be traveling to us for a change! I'm also excited that my brother and his family will finally get to see our house! (Now I just need to get Christopher down here...) Speaking of our house, here are a few pictures that I took a while back but never posted:

Dining Room- I painted it Woodlawn Colonial Gray this summer

Kitchen-Painted it green, but can't remember the name of the color off the top of my head. My dad put up the awesome "tin" back splash for us on my parents last visit.

Our new kitchen table. Up until now we still had my table from college. It took us a while to find one that we both liked, complimented the space, and came at a reasonable price. We love it!

Family Room: I painted this room and the hallway by our garage Toasted Almond. I also hung the ceiling fan (all by myself, thank you very much!) early in the summer. I just recently hung new curtains on the windows in this room and the windows next to our kitchen table, but I don't have a picture to share of those yet.

Downstairs Powder room: This is the first room that I painted soon after we first moved in to the house almost a year and a half ago. I recently added the shelves above the toilet and I also found a curtain that matched all the colors of this bathroom perfectly.

A close up of the shelves

I stenciled this around the same time that I painted the bathroom

OK, so the pictures aren't exactly random thoughts, but I DID randomly add them. :)

That's all for now!

Alaska, The Beautiful (Part I)

08-08-08 was a day that Adam and I had marked on the calendar just like the rest of the world, but for a different reason. Yes, we were excited about the start of the Olympic games, but we were even more excited about going on our Alaskan cruise. We left on Friday afternoon and traveled for approximately 17 hours until we reached Anchorage, AK. This was certainly not a fun day--we took three different flights to reach our final destination. But the long hours and lack of sleep was worth it. We arrived at our hotel in Anchorage around 1am (5am EST), slept for a few hours, then headed off to check in for our criuse. We got to walk around down town Anchorage for a couple of hours while we waited for our transfer to the ship, which was docked in Whittier, AK.

Below is a picture of our cruise itinerary which was as follows:

Anchorage, AK; Whittier, AK (embarkation); College Fjord; day of cruising; Glacier Bay National Park; Skagway, AK; Juneau, AK; Ketchikan, AK; day of cruising; Vancouver, BC (disembarkation).

We took almost 500 pictures while on vacation so I had a tough time choosing just a few of my favorites to share with everyone. Here they are:

Anchorage Information Center: Aren't the flowers beautiful? This exact picture was sold as a postcard in all of the local shops.

Whittier, AK, our embarkation port. This small town is about an hour from Anchorage and can only be entered by driving through a three mile long tunnel through a mountain. The tunnel serves both cars and trains but is only wide enough for one way traffic. A strict schedule is kept and is held in place with a traffic light to ensure safety. The picture almost captures the entire town of Whittier--it's that small! See the pinkish building in the background? It's the home to ALL of Whittier's population!

College Fjord: We cruised College Fjord (pronounced fee-yord) very early in the morning on the first full day of the cruise. The picture below was taken as we were exiting the fjord, but it showcases all of the glaciers within the fjord. Each swipe of white up the mountains that you see is a different glacier. These glaciers are all named after east coast ivy league colleges.

Glacier Bay National Park, Margerie Glacier: First of all, let me just say that Glacier Bay National Park was AWESOME. I think that Adam and I both agree that this was the highlight of our entire trip. We truly were thanking God for His beautiful creation the entire day...we were in awe and overwhelmed that He created such beauty for us to take pleasure in.

The picture at the top of the blog page is also of Margerie Glacier, however the picture below allows you to see more of the glacier's detail. The face of the glacier is 250 ft. high from the top to the water. Because we were standing on the top deck of such a large ship, we really had to put things into perspective to understand just how massive this glacier is. Once we realized that the bushes we were looking at along the shore with our binoculars were actually FULL GROWN trees and the little specs of movement around the glacier were seagulls, we got it. Although it seemed that the ship was so close to the glacier, we were about 2+ miles away from it. I still am in awe when I look at these pictures! We visited four glaciers in Glacier Bay National Park, but this glacier is the only one that is advancing instead of receeding. We were also blessed to see this glacier calve twice! They call the sound of the ice falling off of the glacier Arctic Thunder. It truly is amazing!

Glacier Bay National Park, Lamplugh Glacier: This is the third glacier we saw during our time in GBNP. Look at the picture carefully... does it look blue? It is! In fact, if you look at any of the glaciers you'll notice that they all have a blue tint to them. This has to do with how tightly compressed the ice is. Notice anything else? Look along the bottom and toward the right and you'll see a waterfall. Just beautiful!






Glacier Bay National Park, Johns Hopkins Glacier: At this point we were about 5 miles away from the glacier. This particular glacier calves such giant pieces of ice that it is not safe to get close to it. Even at five miles, the view of the glacier was spectacular!

We've been home from our Alaskan adventure for almost a month now and we are still reliving the feeling of being surrounded by breathtaking beauty! With that being said, there is still so much to tell about our vacation, so stay tuned for Alaska, The Beautiful Part II!