We’ll be back in about a week or so. Hope everyone stays well.

The Petrellas had a garage sale last June. One of our departing (satisfied) customers left a large scratch across the left corner of my rear bumper. It’s a little embarrassing but not entirely noticeable, so I never cared too much about it.

Fast forward to this morning.

I was leaving around 7:15 and the dew was still all over my car. I was backing out of my parking space and saw a guy walking through the front gate.(I blame the coming account of paranoia on recent episodes of Lost that show those suspicious Others in casual garments.) It seemed odd for a man to be walking through the gate at that time of morning. I didn’t recognize him as a neighbor, he wasn’t dressed that warmly, and I had brief moments to wonder what would possess a man to take a casual walk in jeans that early in the morning. Just one of those sights where something doesn’t add up. In this case, I think the lack of spandex. There’s no way that guy was taking a morning jog. This is the kind of observation that seems to take a good twenty seconds but it was more like five seconds and I was in the middle of thinking about it when-
CR-UNK. (Excuse my attempts at onomatopoeia. I read a lot of children’s books aloud these days. Believe me- if you were seven, you’d love it.)
I had hit the curb. Hopefully it was the curb. I still couldn’t see out of the back windshield and the guy was staring at me. Maybe he even knew that he looked like an Other. Anyway, I felt myself get completely flushed and sped (sort of) away.
As soon as I was out of sight of the pedestrian, I got out of my car to check the trunk. I didn’t see any kind of mark or scratch.
However. If my mental outline of the parking lot was off, it meant there was a chance I had backed into one of the handicapped spaces just to the right of the curb. Since I had driven off so quickly, I hadn’t checked to see if I had only bumped the curb… or a handicapped vehicle.
My weighty conscience instantly went to work and I felt a rushing wave of nausea. I got back in the car, drove back past the same guy- so, so embarrassing- and back to where I had just been. More good news- there was no way I had hit a handicapped car, because a huge OAK tree was growing behind my former parking space. (So my mental image was way off- I had no recollection of an oak tree.) I felt much better knowing I could go off and sculpt young minds without having to leave a note on a handicapped vehicle explaining that I had hit their car due to ridiculous suspicians and an obsession with a sci-fi show.
When I got to school, I unpacked my (huge amounts of) teacher stuff and went to close my back door.
Large scratch across the RIGHT rear corner of my bumper. Oak colored.

So now the rear bumper corners match.

In case you haven’t been counting like we have been, you may have missed that today was our 6 month anniversary. Half way to the big ONE! So to celebrate this milestone, we’d like to show everyone every single last photo that we chose to keep from our magnificent photographer. Scanned in, cropped and finally added to our iPhoto library, this ordeal was quite the undertaking — what better way to celebrate the MLK holiday, right? But hey, now we’ve got backups gallore of our photos. What’s more? We scanned them in at ultra 600dpi High Res — thats right — each image, if we were to print as is, would be poster sized. Something like 42″ X 36″ of pure wedding bliss. So here’s a fairly large selection of the images for you to see once and for all. We recommend that you do not sit through them all in one sitting. Yes, instead we recommend that you come back a couple of times this week to check them out in small doses . . . so that 1.) That you don’t get sick of seeing our pretty faces. AND 2.) So that our daily visitor stats go up, so that Lauren can sleep better.

Finally, at Lauren’s request, she recommends that you put on some really sappy music to enjoy the images best.

Enjoy!

Ladies and Gentleman, the winner is……
Annie! Yay, Annie!

Yes, the bags contained a scrumptious mixture of Nesquik, powdered sugar, and dry milk. Yummmm. My kids are so lucky to be in my class. Imagine, other teachers gave books. Ha! (By the way, a side note, I bought all the ingredients at our favorite store- Walmart! A SUPERwalmart. Which means I got even more lost trying to find all these random ingredients I have never bought before. (such as dry milk). And when I asked for help finding powdered sugar, the lady asked if that was a brand of sugar that perhaps Walmart doesn’t carry. Which somehow made me feel incompetent because I couldn’t describe the difference. Once again, Walmart leaves me at a loss.

And as a New Year’s Gift to everyone, I am also including some………..
Josh Talking in His Sleep Stories!

(And just so you know how dedicated I’ve become to report these, I have not only begun questioning the sleeping Josh to get more information out of him, but I also keep a notepad and pen next to the bed.)
Yes, I do that for you and here we go-

Josh fell asleep on the couch the other night. I called to him several times and asked if he was comfortable. He finally came stumbling into the room where he said, “Now, just so you know….. just so you’re not, like, shocked….” and then he stopped talking, put his head down on the pillow, and was out.

He was moving around in his sleep and completely took over my pillow. I told him he was on my side of the bed and he said, “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie. That’s what I do when I’m really comfortable.”

About a week ago he picked his head up off the pillow and held it there for awhile. I finally asked him what was wrong. In a voice about three octaves higher than normal- we actually think he was quoting Sydney, our three year old niece- “Who-who-who-who- Who is crying?”
“What?”
(still Sydney) “I hear someone crying- who is it?”

And finally—
Josh held the covers up over his head, paused, seemed to make a decision, and dived underneath. He laid there holding the covers over his head.
“What are you doing?”
“I was told to do this.” (He sounded very firm and resolved about this.)
“Josh, you don’t have to hide.”
Unsure- “I don’t?”
“No, you don’t. “
“Oh, okay.”
At this point, I was chuckling and he got a little offended.
“Punk.”
Which only made me laugh harder. He rolled over to face away.
“Who told you to do that?”
“My brother! Okay?!?”

(Unfortunately, he ignored me after that, so we’ll never know exactly which brother.)