weekend can't come any quicker?

so here i am, sitting on my kitchen floor amid a mix of trash, leftover boxes, things that don't fit into those boxes, and an amazing accumulation of dust bunnies that i have never noticed until today. this is my last night in our first home together and all i can think is that i can't wait until saturday morning, when i can sleep in until at least 9. there is no sadness about leaving this place behind, just an urgency to get to the next phase of our lives. i just cannot wait to leave. more importantly, i cannot wait until there is nothing left to pack and i can just sit and enjoy these last few moments in this cute little house with a red door. goodbye dirty little sweet-to-us home!

see...i'm outdoorsy

took finn to happy hollow park last wednesday with my friend elisa and her kids. finn and joey are only two weeks apart in age, so elisa and i have been hanging out a lot and sharing stories of new motherhood. it was way too hot to play on the playground, so we ended up walking the trails and dipping our feet in the dirty stream water. it was a good break from the stresses of packing and the count down to the big move.

box kingdom

if you have been wondering why we haven't been posting, it is because we are counting down the hours until we are moved into our new home. at this point, we have about 39 hours left to get everything we have accumulated over the last 5 years into a finite number of oddly-shaped pharmacy boxes. i keep saying to myself, "we have no choice! this has to get done." a little self-defeating but thus far is keeping me moving forward and on task (minus this blogging break). when we're settled, we update more often in our new little office. until then, get off your butt and help us move/paint/clean/survive. :)

sadness and confusion

he knows something is up but can't quite figure it out. we keep putting stuff in his spaces and getting him off his normal routine. he is a sad and depressed dog who has no idea that he will soon have so much more space to run around. yesterday, he peed on our bed in disagreement. can't wait to just be moved and this be over!

on the way home from plymouth last night

josh: "wow, that's a really big cat."
me: "josh, that was a dog."

water-dogged

brody is obsessed with the water. he spent the weekend with his grandparents and spent much of the day playing in the lake and riding on the boat. i love that he literally shakes with excitement while running down to the water. sometimes, i wish i were him, including biscuits for being good (or average on most days) and people walking behind me picking up my poo. this dog has it made.

forgot to mention that our friend, elizabeth, took pictures of finn. check them out.

"you are so much sunshine to the square inch" - walt whitman

happy 1/2 birthday, finn! thanks for coming into our lives!

green thumb and chef

flowers actually growing in my garden and food actually being cooked on my stove.




















































after watching top chef: masters, i felt this compelling need to cook vegetable soup (i know, not on par with their sake poached prawn, yet good enough for me).

we still love you!

coldplay

wow! such a fantastic concert! these men are truly amazing musicians. midway through the concert, josh leaned over and asked if this would be the band our kids would be amazed we saw. you know how your parents tell you they saw the grateful dead or went to woodstock, and you think "wow, cool, you're old." someday, finn will think that of us.

at the end of the concert, chris martin announced they were giving out free cds of a live concert. it is also available for free download. enjoy.

anyways, here are the pre-concert* photos.




*forgive me for getting no pictures of the actual concert. it has been a while since i attended deer creek (excuse me, "verizon wireless music center") and i was unaware that i could bring in a camera. back in the day (yikes, i'm old), they wouldn't allow flash photography. oh how the times they are a changin'!

i can't tell if he is excited to see the boxes piling up or if he is sad to be leaving and is trying to hold all of his stuff down in defiance.

yay! it's your birthday!

cause you had a bad day...

imagine this scene. on an unordinarily cool june night at 9:15pm, a woman walks into the local applebee's with her 6-month-old son screaming from the carseat she is lugging behind her. wanting to sit at the bar and have a huge glass of wine, she instead opts to sit in the window to watch the stranded car she left in the middle of the intersection, police lights flickering behind it. suddenly, she hears daniel powter serenade her on the radio. "you had a bad day, the camera don't lie...."

now imagine my face on that woman, because that was me. so apparently the mcdowell family is having a stream of bad luck. yesterday, we took our jeep into the dealer to get it checked out. after calling today, they said sorry, but they never got to it. no big deal, right? wrong. on the way to bible study from dinner, the cadillac wouldn't start. after giving her (the car) a little break and relaxation, she finally started. then, post-bible study, mid-conversation about taking it in once we get the jeep back, josh declares, "oh no, the car stalled." in the middle of a busy intersection on the highway, i lept into the back, grabbed finn's carseat, and marched to the closest business...applebees. talk about white trash! oh yeah, and finn had no clothes on or blanket because he had just thrown up (literal vomit, not spit-up) all over his clothes and mine. fantastic night.

i finished the white trash applebees night by coming home, opening up a screw-top bottle of sangria, and drinking a nice size glass. goodnight!

finn doesn't look too sad, huh?

blast from the past

betsy just sent me a couple photos from college. i wonder why the photographer didn't get the first one of me; it was a crucial moment of our wedding day. the second is evidence that bets and i were extreme partiers in college! :)

how to make another house our home...

so we have a new house (pending contracts, inspections, etc). it all happened so quickly. on friday, we received an offer, counter-offered, then they accepted. on saturday, we put in an offer on the new place and yesterday, they accepted. in 48 hours, our new plans were in motion. on june 26th, a mere 25 days away, we will leave this amazing little brown house with a red door and move on. it's bittersweet to think that we will be making tons of new memories in a house only 0.65 miles away from where we are now. we don't have any of our own pictures of the new place, but there are a few on here. it is a two-story, four bedroom, two and a half bath that we have plenty of room to grow into. our prayers seem to have been fully answered.

finn is worn out from even the thought of moving.

josh is old.

happy birthday josh. 29 years (minus 3 days) and still going strong. you share a birthday with jim lachey (no relation to drew and nick), horatio sanz, and phillipe regis denis de keredern de trobriand (not sure who he is). glad the mini-surprise party worked!

mim and finn!





















can you tell we're related?















the only picture i have of the birthday boy!