44. Take a bubble bath.

This weekend, Liam spent the night at Bill's parents' house. While he was away, I took the opportunity to relax in a nice bubble bath with a glass of wine and a good book. Heavenly, even if it was Toy Story bubble bath! :)

54. Carve a pumpkin.

After visiting the pumpkin patch today, we came home to carve pumpkins. I'd never actually carved one before (Bill usually does the honors). Liam of course enjoyed helping.




I went for a traditional jack-o-lantern face, and it was easier than I thought. Bill then decided to show me up by creating a Thomas the Train pumpkin for Liam...




Liam thinks this pumpkin is the coolest thing EVER!


The finished product

19. Complete 30 new arts & crafts projects with Liam (3/30).

This morning, Liam and I hosted playgroup at our house, and I had some mini-pumpkins for the kids to paint. Liam was very excited about this and couldn't wait for his friends to get here so that he could paint.


Ella and Liam


Wyatt, Ella and Liam painting


Liam's Hitler mustache

Painting the pumpkins was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, after the paint dried, it all flaked right off the pumpkin! In fact, most of it had actually blown off in the breeze in the backyard while it dried. Maybe that's because it was washable paint, but that's not really optional when you are dealing with 2 year olds! :) Oh well, they had fun, so it was still a success!

19. Complete 30 new arts & crafts projects with Liam (2/30).

I added this to the list because I've been a total slacker on arts projects for Liam, and he really enjoys them. So, we've enjoyed a few craft activities together in the past week.

First, I tried out a variation of this Halloween craft. Liam has a ton of broken crayons, so we decided to melt them down and make new ones. This was a fun afternoon craft but peeling all the paper off the crayons took a looong time!



After they were peeled, we put the broken pieces in a muffin tin and melted them in the oven.


Trying out his new crayon "disks".

Our second craft was inspired by some silk fall leaves I found in the Target dollar bin. Liam had a blast glueing leaves to construction paper, and then we decorated with some glitter. He really impressed me with his attention span on this one. I expected to do 1 or 2 pages, and he just wanted to keep going and going!

14. Try 5 new foods (4/5).

So, this was a few weeks ago, but I forgot to add it to the blog. We made a traditional southern jambalaya that included okra. Now, growing up in the south, I probably had okra as a child, not knowing what it was. But as an adult, I had always avoided it because it just didn't look appetizing. I mean, hello:



Anyway, it wasn't bad at all, and I'll definitely eat it again!

18. Eat at 10 local restaurants I've never eaten at before (10/10)

I went to a Mom's Night Out tonight at Lucky 32 in Cary - yummy southern comfort food. Best of all, I was thinking this was a different restaurant I'd already eaten at, but I hadn't eaten here before, so this completes my 10 new local restaurant challenge - yay!

September 2010 Progress

Completed in September: 0/101
Current Total: 26/101

5. Read 101 books (67/101).
I read 4 books this month, bringing my total to 67.

Hopefully this is not cheating, but since we didn't take a trip for our 5th anniversary, I'm changing #19 to be "Complete 30 new arts & crafts projects with Liam". I am almost halfway through my challenge, and only 1/4th through my challenges - I'm hoping to step that up in the next few months!

50. Have at least 10 real date nights, no babies allowed (5/10).

On Thursday night, Bill and I went to the Science of Beer event at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. It was a fun date night, with lots of local beers to sample. We even got to walk through the butterfly house after dark, which was fun because all the butterflies and birds were asleep. I was staring at one butterfly on a leaf right in front of my face, and he hopped on my shoulder for a few minutes. Anyway, I didn't enjoy this as much as the Science of Wine, but I'm just not that adventurous with beer, and didn't really like any of the samples I tried. Bill tasted several beers that he really liked though, and got some information on home brewing that he'd like to try out some time. Overall, it was a fun night out!

18. Eat at 10 local restaurants I've never eaten at before (9/10).

Well, we officially failed on #19 - Take a trip for our 5th anniversary. It just wasn't feasible this year for a number of reasons, but we did go out to a nice dinner at 18 Seaboard in Raleigh. The food was great, and we would definitely eat here again! Now, I wonder if I'd seen my swordfish being caught on Swords: Life on the Line? :)

68. Go to at least 5 concerts (1/5).

So, 1+ years after starting this challenge, I finally made it to a concert! If you knew me pre-Liam, you know what a long drought that is for me! I made a quick pilgrimage up to Boston Saturday morning, walked around the city and had lunch with Chrissy and my mom, before beginning our drive down to Mohegan Sun casino in CT for the concert. This was my first time seeing Aerosmith in 4 years (which again, considering I've seen them +/- 25 times, was a really, really long time!) We were sweating it out, not having tickets until about 1pm that afternoon. Chrissy and I have had so many awesome adventures together, and they often are like this one, not coming together until the last minute.

We were seated on the floor, about 3 rows off the end of the catwalk and maybe 15 feet to the right of it. At an Aerosmith show, you'd probably rather be near the end of the catwalk than the main stage, because Steven spends at least 50% of his time there. Having heard so much drama and crap about them over the past few years, I wasn't sure what to expect, but the show was phenomenal. This was their last US tour date, and tons of their family was there. Steven's dad, all 3 of his daughters, and his sister were there. Chelsea and Mia sang with him several times (Chrissy and I walked past Mia in the casino earlier in the evening as well). Brad's son (Harry, I think?) came out and played guitar during Come Together, which was really cool.

They looked and sounded fantastic, Steven can still rock purple lace pants and a bare chest at age 62! They were all obviously having a great time, and Joe and Steven especially seemed to be getting along like their old selves. They played for over 2 hours. "Movin' Out" was probably the highlight for me, I've heard it live before, but Steven told us the story about how it was the first Aerosmith song ever written. It was an awesome night!

Chrissy made this awesome video during Dream On:


1 down, 4 to go! No one I like has been coming to NC lately - I really, really hope to get to some more concerts soon!

August 2010 Progress

Completed in August: 2/101
Current Total: 26/101

5. Read 101 books (63/101).
I read 5 books this month, bringing my total to 63.

74. Visit 5 places in the NC region I've never been to before (4/5).

We've just gotten home from a week at the beach in Emerald Isle, NC. I've put lots more photos on my main blog, but we really enjoyed the beach here. It was so uncrowded, even on the last week before school started back. We are hoping to make an annual family beach vacation, and would definitely visit Emerald Isle again!

7. Take Liam hiking.

This morning, I brought Liam hiking at Umstead State Park. It is a wonderful state park right here in the middle of the Triangle that Bill, Lacy and I used to hike at all the time before Liam came along. We chose an easy, 1.4 mile loop and set off.

Liam really enjoyed that our trail led alongside a stream!




We saw a hawk, some squirrels, and several of these millipedes:

Liam did great, and enjoyed looking at various leaves and pine cones that had fallen along the trail. There was a slight miscommunication where he thought we were hiking to a playground, and he was disappointed when he realized that was not the case, but he enjoyed himself anyway. He got tired about 2/3rds through, and I carried him for a little while.


Snack time at the lookout deck



This was a lot of fun, and I hope we can do it again soon. I have so many wonderful memories of hiking with my dad and sister when I was growing up, and I hope to create some of the same memories for Liam. I wish I could have brought Lacy with us today, it felt wrong hiking without her, but I didn't think I could handle the two of them by myself. Maybe next time, we'll go on a weekend so that Bill and Lacy can come along too!

14. Try 5 new foods, 18. Eat at 10 local restaurants, and 100. Try Indian food.

Bill's parents had Liam over for dinner tonight, so Bill and I seized another opportunity for a non-munchkin-friendly meal. We headed first for Waraji for sushi, but for like the 3rd time in a row, they were closed when we got there. I am SO done with them - must find a new sushi restaurant! Anyway, we decided to try Azitra in Brier Creek for Indian. I've always wanted to try Indian food, but was afraid I wouldn't know what to order and had been waiting around to go with someone who knew their way around the menu.

In the end, I don't know what we were waiting for, neither of us had ever had Indian before, but we did just fine on our own LOL, and it was really good! I got chicken tikka masala (because I'd heard of it before haha) and Bill had chicken curry. We also got an order of naan bread. It was all delicious! We will definitely be eating here again.

July 2010 Progress

Completed in July: 0/101
Current Total: 24/101

5. Read 101 books (58/101).
I read 12 books this month, another record - I am on a total book reading binge right now! This brings my total to 58.

I am a year into this challenge, and should be at least 1/3rd of the way through my list of goals, but as you can see, I'm only about a quarter of the way through. Time to step it up, or I'm going to be owing a lot of money to charity when this is over LOL!