A Southern Accent

So Mike and Walker met me last Thursday in Washington for a fun weekend of site-seeing and doing the tourist thing. Walker has been wanting to go to the Smithsonian Museum of National History since he saw Night at the Museum and we've been on every page of the Smithsonian website learning about it. We hit all the major spots, including the Air and Space Museum, Museum of Natural History, Museum of American History (where you can see Dorothy's actual shoes from the Wizard of Oz - which was much more exciting to me than anyone else in my family.) Hanging out with the butterflies in the bug area: Then some down-time to relax and eat ice cream! We bought tickets for the double-decker bus tour through the city (which is one of the best ways to see a city - works especially wonderfully when touring London). Walker loved riding high above everyone else and Mike and I enjoyed it as well. We stopped at the Lincoln Memorial and Walker grabbed this pic of us. Swung by

This is a shameless plug to ask you to vote for me or link your favorite easy recipe to my post on Momtrends. The entry with the most links and comments gets to be the new food blogger on Momtrends! Here's the link: http://momtrends.blogspot.com/2010/04/easy-family-recipes.html Thank you so much!

Remember when Swatch watches were all the rage? If you grew up in the 80's like me, you do. I remember dying to have one, and I finally got a red one. Then I wanted another one, the bigger one, so I could wear both of them together on the same wrist. Then my boyfriend and I swapped Swatch watches and when he decided to break up with me, he sent my watch back via his friend. I was flipping through Rachel Ray magazine last week and I saw a cute new watch - The Sprout Watch -that is environmentally friendly and it reminded me a little of the Swatch because it had that fun, whimsical look about it. I mostly forgot about it, but then walking through the National Mall in DC this past weekend, I saw them again. A lot of the Earth Day booths and exhibits were still up, and the folks from Sprout were passing out frisbees and I got to look at a watch in person. I think they are fun, would make great gifts and would work for all ages for  birthday, graduation, recognition, or just becaus

I've been trying to talk my best friend Daria into starting her own blog because she frankly is the best story-teller I know and can drop the funniest one-liners without skipping a beat. So far, I haven't convinced her to start her own, but I did ask her if she wanted to be a guest blogger on my site and this showed up in my inbox last week. I promise I didn't pay her to write this. Ok, so my best friend Wendy asked me to be a guest blogger on her ever-so popular blog. I feel special. Gosh darn it, she must like me. But then I thought - Oy vey the pressure. Who reads this blog? What can I do? I need to ROCK THIS! And I re-read her blog and look at her pictures on her blog. Man, those pictures. . . is it just me or does her camera take better pictures than National Geographic? So when she asked I immediately thought of a million things I could vent about or share my thoughts on. Sports. Check. Shopping. Check. Exercise. Check. Hollywood celebrities. Check. It has all bee

We went to the National Zoo in DC yesterday and in the bird exhibit, I saw probably one of the coolest things ever: a peacock with its feathers fully displayed, doing some sort of mating dance for the female peacock. What was so neat was that they were right in the middle of the walkway and we were literally standing three feet away from them. Mike surprised us with a new Flip cam for the trip, so I was actually able to catch it on video. It really is amazing and beautiful. Take a look for yourself!

I love to hear stories about how things used to be, how my grandparents and Mike's granparents grew up. When my great aunt sent this yesterday about my great-grandmother Bessie Dickerson, I asked her permission to share it on my blog because it's just another beautiful example of stories and memories from the past - things that we often forget, but need to remember to share with generations to come. I used to go to Grandma Bessie's house every day after school when I was little. She would always be making biscuits, and I'd always sneak some of the raw dough. She'd make me a snack, and would always keep her Pepsi in the fridge, so it was always very cold. She liked to watch her stories and took walks outside to the pond and she'd grab a stick from the "toothbrush tree" to clean her teeth. I always thought that was so neat. She taught me tatting and I always tried to make biscuits like her, but never got them as good as her. "I think today is Ma

Baby birds are ugly and cute all at the same time. I have baby birds on my front porch and I think they are adorable. They are actually on the railing, so we can get really good looks at them. I don't think I've ever seen baby birds so close. Walker is loving checking on them every day and the day they hatched I asked my neighbor to come over with his fancy lens and take some pics of them. If you shake the vine around their nest a little bit, they all pop up with their mouths wide open, waiting for food. Mama bird sits on a branch not too far away and makes as much noise as she can until we leave, but I think she's starting to warm up to us and realize we are not going to hurt. I can't wait to see them when they start trying to fly.

This week has been crazy busy and it's not gonna stop anytime soon! I don't know how people with more than one child do it, I really don't! Tomorrow, we have two birthday parties and one soccer game. Not to mention the 7:00 am car service appointment. Good thing Mike likes to get up early. Sunday, I'm off to DC for a conference, I'll be here for all of next week. Don't be jealous when I tweet about room service and my comfy bed. I'll be working my butt off too for sure.

Walker is obsessed with just about all sports, so when it came time to pick a theme for his fifth birthday party, any and all sports was the perfect idea! I rented a local park this past Saturday for Walker's sports party and it was a beautiful day with perfect temperatures for playing outside! Walker invited all of his friends from school along with his neighborhood buddies and they played baseball, basketball, climbed on the playground and tore open a basketball-shaped pinata that was filled with sports-shaped candy with a golf club! Guests received orange paper bags filled with their pinata loot along with sports-shaped eggs filled with candy. We served sports drinks and sports-themed water, along with chips, ice cream and yummy cake that I spent several nights last week making. And let's not forget the fabulous ball-shaped cake-pops made by the wonderful Baker's Cakes! I can't believe my little guy is five! The time truly does fly by, but it has been a blast a

So, have you seen the new commercial and what do you think? Personally, I say bravo to Nike for putting it out there and confronting the issue. How else are they going to stand by Tiger? They absolutely have to address it. This commercial has gotten good reviews and bad reviews - but one thing has happened - the Nike brand is on everyone's lips again, and ultimately, that's every marketer's goal. Are they getting too personal with this? My opinion - no - because the press and celebrity media have done everything they can to dig up stories on Tiger and they have shared every tidbit of information they can about his personal life. Nike, with Tiger's permission, approached it head on and I applaud them. If you read my blog often, you know I have close ties to golf through my husband and Tiger has always been my favorite player. I don't agree with what he has done in his personal life, but I still think he is an amazing athelete. I've always loved Tiger and Nike&#

I've never had much luck with sunglasses, so I've never really invested much in them. I've decided now that I'm a big girl, I deserve a nice pair to protect my aging eyes. My husband bought me a pair of Maui Jim's and they are OK, but I'm not in love, so I'm selling them on eBay (they are currently in the midst of a bidding war so I'm getting good money for them- yeah!) and buying these. Aren't they pretty? I'm wondering if I should get the brown ones or the grey ones? What do you guys think? (these are the brown, but you can see the grey here ) Now if I can just trust myself not to loose them, drop them, scratch them, leave them in a store....Does anyone offer sunglasses insurance? I mean, I have it for my cell phone.

I am a graduate of UNC. My husband grew up in Durham, NC and has long family ties to Duke. We live in Durham and about 10 miles from Chapel Hill. We cannot watch a basketball game between UNC and Duke together. We tried it once and it didn't go so well. We are truly the definition of "A House Divided". At our wedding, both the Carolina Ram and the Duke Devil sat on the front pews of the church. My son is wavering between the two, currently he calls himself a fan of both teams. I know this can't last. I've tried to make him Carolina blue, but this season hasn't help my cause very much. It's quite humorous to watch Mike on game days. He's nervous the entire day, can't eat dinner and then gets so nervous during a game, ends up changing the channel. Today, Mike had a huge smile on his face. Last year, so did I. Not bad to have two NCAA championships in two years in our house I suppose.

Mike had to work all weekend at the golf course, so Walker and I loaded up the car and headed to Roxboro Friday to spend the weekend with my family. Our weekend consisted of two easter egg hunts, one afternoon fishing (zero fish caught), six adorable little chicks, countless dragons and one beautiful Easter Sunday! Friday night we went to see How to Train Your Dragon, and I loved it. I really wasn't too excited about seeing it, but so glad I did. The music was beautiful, the story was sweet and I just wanted to pick one of those cute little dragons up and cuddle with it. Then Saturday we went to a church egg hunt and spent the afternoon and evening at my dad's house and then  my sister's house. We fished, played Rock Band (I'm actually not too bad at drums and vocals) and my sister brought home these cuties for Easter! My mom said growing up they used to get baby chicks for Easter that were colored pink and blue and purple - but they stopped doing that because it