they came, they saw, they ate pt. 1

Emily and Dan visited us this weekend.

We:

-ate Pasquale’s pizza and wings

-sampled sponge candy and ice cream at Fowler’s

-walked around the village in East Aurora

-worked out

-ate Greek food on Elmwood in downtown Buffalo

-visited Niagara Falls

-got wet at Niagara Falls

-overate at the Pearl Street Grill

-watched part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

-worked out

-swam

-ate blueberry pancakes at Charlie’s Diner

-toured Vidler’s Five and Dime

-got drinks at Taste

-said goodbye

Longer post (with some photos) coming soon!

it’s a jungle in there

Laundry day.  Here, it was yesterday.

I’ve been doing laundry about once a week since we’ve been here, which means I have about two bins full of dirty clothes between the two of us.  I shouldn’t complain; the laundry room is just down the hall and free to use.  All I need to do is provide soap, time and elbow grease.

However, there is a little wrinkle (haha, no pun intended) in my laundry routine.  I hang all, and I mean ALL, my workout clothes to dry.  The high heat from the dryer breaks down the elastic–I read that somewhere.  I did this at home, too, but I always did smaller loads throughout the week, so I never had more than about seven or eight items to hang at any one time.

Well.  This laundry-once-a-week-thing transforms my bathroom into what looks like a cramped running goods store.  Or a jungle of brightly colored dry-fit wear.

Twenty-five items total hung in my bathroom yesterday.

Sports bras: 8

Shorts: 6

Shirts: 6

Long-sleeve shirts: 2

Yoga shorts: 2

Running capris: 1

ONE of the above items was a “regular” article of clothing; a part-cashmere top I wore to church last weekend.  (I have a phobia of drying ANYTHING that might ruin, shrink or otherwise become less nice because of the dryer.  I will say, however, now that I’ve lost a few pounds, I’ve been throwing things in the dryer right and left!  It’s so freeing…)

On a side note, I didn’t actually wear eight sports bras in one week; I picked up a few more the other day since the last couple times I had to do laundry out of necessity (as in I had nothing left to wear for my workouts)!

I ended up scoring some great deals at Marshalls–two sports bras, a pair of Nike running capri pants for fall and a pair of New Balance yoga shorts for $60!  The running capris at Dick’s are typically $60 alone, so I was pretty stoked.

ANYWAY…

…it really was pretty jungle-like in there for awhile!  And that didn’t include any of Andrew’s shorts (he’s started running again in the mornings), which I hung up in his bathroom.  I guess I should be thankful he hasn’t hung up any of his clothes in his closet (they remain in the Rubbermaid tub and duffle they arrived in) so I have thirty-odd extra hangers at any given time…

 

happy birthday, carolyn

We celebrated Carolyn’s birthday (which is actually today) on the Fourth due to scheduling conflicts.  How could just a handful of people be so busy we couldn’t spare a random Wednesday night?  I don’t know, either.

Anyway, we had a birthday dinner for her at Andrew’s parents’ house.  The kid-Layers are all going to P. F. Chang’s for another celebratory dinner tonight–bring on the lettuce wraps!

Ben and Andrew’s dad dressed alike.  It was cute.  And the tablecloth zipped onto the table (around the pole for the umbrella)–how neat!

Note my reddish lips–not sure how I feel about it yet.  A post on new makeup colors will be coming soon.  (I know you’re all waiting with baited breath.)

You can’t see them very well, but Carolyn’s candles were animal-print striped.  She was a fan.

Presents!  (You’d think it was Abigail’s birthday with all the pink around…)

Showing off some of her new goodies.  Grandma did well with the purse 🙂

After presents, a walk in the woods and a quick game of KanJam, we headed down to the creek in the back of the yard for a fire.

Abigail with her “horsey.”

Andrew’s mom had gotten a couple boxes of sparklers on her last trip to Indiana (selling fireworks is illegal in New York).

We roasted marshmallows for s’mores.  I’m not a big marshmallow fan, but roast ’em and mix ’em with chocolate and I’m in!

The girls and Andrew started having fun with the sparklers and the camera.  Andrew’s a pretty good amateur photographer, so he was able to adjust the camera settings to get some really great shots.

Next, they thought it would be an awesome picture to get their names written with the sparklers.  It took a couple tries to get the timing right…

If only her name were Carol…

The gazillionth try was a winner!

Thankfully, my name is a bit shorter, so it didn’t take too long to get an OK shot.

If you can believe it, this picture took TEN SECONDS to shoot.  Seriously, the shutter was open for that long and we had enough time to write our names and actually move in the shot, which you can see above.

Next, Andrew experimented with the fire.  Here it is taken in an automatic shot:

Here is another shot taken with a VERY short (1/300th of a second) shutter speed:

VERY different.  I’m excited to carve some time out and peruse the photography books I have so I can take great photos like Andrew.  (How cheesy does that sound?!)

Remember those marshmallows?  I may have overdone it in the s’mores department…

I’m holding my hands out because they are covered in chocolate and marshmallows, and apparently some chocolate missed my mouth…