beach trip and new nephew

some pics from our trip to bald head island, a very amazing beach.






why do i include this picture you ask? because mark took this photo and after he took it i asked, "mark, is it good or should we take another?" he looked at the camera and said, "yeah, it's good." i guess it's good, except for our white faces and mel's HEAD BEING CUT OFF.


that's better :-)

and let's welcome to the world our new nephew, noah david flanders:

mark's birthday

so this is a little delayed, but here are some pics from mark's bday.

this is mark receiving his favorite gift, cracklin' oat bran cereal. he is basically forbidden to buy it on a regular basis since it is FIVE DOLLARS a box. but he got at least a month's supply for his birthday.


and this is the cake i made him: chocolate sour cream cake with cream cheese peanut butter frosting. oh yes.suffice it to say, he had a good day.

what does this look like to you?

that's right. it looks like success. "congratulations on all your success, you smell terrific." we have reaped some grape tomatoes this year and now our little green bell peppers are growing! so please invite yourself over sometime for a homegrown, organic salad.

this is our life

Denise: I hate driving the Infiniti. Can you give me my car back please?
Mark: Denise, the Infiniti is a luxury sedan
Denise: Mark, it’s seventeen years old
Mark: When that car was brand new it sold for $40,000!

Mark (looking at a puddle of water on the bathroom floor): so, did you take a shower inside the shower or outside of it this morning?

Denise: Mark, can you do me a favor and taste this brownie and tell me if it’s good?
Mark: What if I don’t want to?
Denise: Is that really a possibility?

Also, two times recently when we were riding in the car together, a song came on and Mark says to me, "this song always makes me think about you." Were the songs gushy love songs? False. The first one is a country song (by Sugarland) that is about a girl whose alarm goes off but she oversleeps, has to go to work with no coffee, no shower and arrives an hour late with two different shoes on. And you should know the second one: “..you’re hot then you’re cold, you’re yes then you’re no…” How exactly does that song describe me? I thought I was the epitome of consistency. ☺

if you see this man..

...run.

funny

so the other day i made a couple of cakes (actually it was two cakes that would eventually make one two-layer cake. are you following?). of course, after i took them out of the oven, i was in a hurry, going somewhere so i had to leave before they cooled. so i asked mark,

denise: mark, in like thirty minutes will you flip these cakes out of the pans so they can cool the rest of the way on the baking rack?
mark: sure

i come home way later that night and walk into the kitchen. and what do i see? the cakes are upside down on the cooling rack, STILL IN the pans. he just took the cakes and turned them over and set them on the baking rack. so i am dying laughing because he obviously misunderstood and probably thought i was insane for asking him to turn cakes upside down after thirty minutes. like how could that possibly help things.

another conversation. and this is just a smidge embarrassing.
me and mark are outside looking up at the sky trying to find the one constellation i know- orion.

mark says, pointing: well, that's north. so then that's east, south and west.
denise: Never Eat Soggy Waffles. if you say it and go around clockwise, then that's how you can know which way each direction is.
mark: do you really need an acronym to figure that out?
denise: well how do you figure it out?
mark: BECAUSE I'VE SEEN A MAP BEFORE

garden begun.

so as many of you know, last year mark and i planted a garden which failed miserably. we reaped zero fruit of our labors. but, let's be honest, there wasn't much labor. we basically threw some seeds in the ground and watered them like once a month. lol, what were we thinking. anyway- over easter weekend mark's family came to hang with us and help us tremendously in repairing our broken fence and building a new garden. below you have proof that i actually did some of the work.this photo was taken right before mark corrected my form in hammering nails. as you can see i was holding the hammer at the very top which was obviously incorrect.

so here's what it looks like now:

and here is mark with his best friend :-) (his nephew isaac.)