My Schmuckers

June 27, 2008 at 12:05 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Today I would like to dedicate this post to my wonderful husband, Eric.

10 things I love about my husband (in no particular order):

1 – I love the way he makes me laugh.  Eric is so silly and goofy and makes me laugh everyday!

2 – I love that he is romantic.  For instance, the other day he came home, gave me a hug, took my hand and brought me into our office, turned on We Will Dance by Steven Curtis Chapman (the song we danced to at our wedding) and we danced…just because.

3 – I love the feeling of safety I get when he holds me in his arms.

4 – He is a kid at heart.  Every time we go to Target, no matter what we need to get there, we always make a trip down the toy aisle!

5 – I love when he sings to me. 

6 – He is my best friend and I love hanging out with him.

7 – I love that he has a strong relationship with God.

8 – He treats me like a princess!

9 – He is gorgeous!

10 – He loves me for me…despite all of my flaws.

I love you Eric!

All the leaves are brown…

June 26, 2008 at 8:04 pm | In Family | Leave a Comment
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For as long as I can remember, my sister Mary and I shared a room.  Some nights (a lot of nights) we would spend a good half hour singing before we went to sleep.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I was not blessed with a good voice however, Mary can sing pretty well.  I remember many nights singing I Swear and Mary trying to teach me to hit the right notes.  To this day, I can not get it right, but those are fun memories.  Some of our other favorite songs to sing were various theme songs (Golden Girls, Growing Pains), the Kris KrossSprite commercial and a local news channel commercial (let’s stand together, every neighborhood…’member Mar?).  Oh, and we can’t forget the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  We love to sing the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  In fact, just the other day, Mary called and what did I hear right when I picked up the phone?  All the leaves are brown…

Tuesday Trivia

June 24, 2008 at 8:40 am | In Tuesday Trivia | 1 Comment

Did you know…

~ Every day, more money is printed for Monopoly than for the U.S. Treasury?

~ Men can read smaller print than women, but women can hear better?

~ In 1987, American Airlines saved $40,000 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class?

~ The pig is the only animal besides humans that can get sunburned?

~ The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515?

The Island Legend

June 23, 2008 at 2:06 pm | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
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The new picture on my header is of the bridge crossing Lake Marian to the island on the Saint Mary’s College campus.  According to legend, the first guy to take you across the bridge will be the guy you marry.  When Eric and I were dating, he would come to visit me for the day on Saturday’s.  One Saturday, we were sitting on a bench by the lake and (without my asking) he got up, took my hand and led me across the bridge – he was the first guy to take me across the bridge.  He did not know of this legend at the time and this was pretty early on in our relationship, so I didn’t tell him about it for fear of scaring him away!  I did tell him eventually and he thought it was pretty cool.  Flash forward a couple years…Eric and I were heading to Notre Dame to take one of his friends on a tour of the campus.  Eric said that his friend Rob was going to ND for grad school and he volunteered us to show him around campus.  Of course I was excited to do this – I love ND and I would be able to see SMC as well!  Rob was going to have a meeting with an adviser around 11am, so we were going to meet him there for a morning tour.  We got in the car around 6am to make the 2 hour trip.  Along the drive, Eric would call Rob to make sure they were on the road, see how far behind they were, etc.  I also made a couple calls to my parents to see what size shirt my dad wore (so I could get him the new student shirt) and see if I should get my grandpa a hat or anything – for some reason, Eric didn’t seem to pleased that I was making these calls.  We were going to be meeting Rob at Saint Mary’s since he had been there before and knew where to go.  Well, I insisted that Eric and I stop at the ND bookstore first because it was freshman move-in weekend and I didn’t want them to sell out of the student shirts!  For some reason, he didn’t seem too pleased about that either.  Well, we finally made it to SMC and made our way across the bridge and onto the island.  We took a seat on a bench to wait for Rob…but Rob never came.  After a few minutes, Eric proposed.  All the phone calls in the car were a hoax and he wasn’t pleased about my calls to my parents because they knew what was happening that morning (he had talked with them a couple weeks earlier and asked their permission) and he was afraid they would say congratulations too early.

So that is the Saint Mary’s island legend and how it came true for me!

Grandma Booth

June 20, 2008 at 11:15 pm | In Family | 1 Comment
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When the Booth cousins get together, one of our favorite things to do is tell Grandma stories.  After years of visiting my grandparents in Florida and Canada, we have dozens of Grandma stories and memories to share.  Some of my favorite memories include visiting a windmill, strawberry picking with giant straw hats, walks along the beach to collect beach glass or shark’s teeth, car rides with Werther’s Originals tossed back to the passengers, baking muffins for neighbors, and so on.  At lunch and dinner, Grandma would always have a dessert for everyone.  Usually it was ice cream (in a dish or a cone) or brownies with frosting.  One time, Grandma was serving up ice cream cones for dessert and Mary seemed to get just a bit more on her cone than Katie or I.  Katie made the mistake of calling Grandma out on this, “Hey! Mary got more than us!”  Without a word, my Grandma took Mary’s cone and gave her a whole other scoop!  Katie never complained about serving sizes after that!  Oh, but man did I love those brownies!  I remember one time when we were in Florida visiting, I was snooping in the freezer and found her tin of brownies.  She would bake a whole batch and cut them in to one or two inch squares, freeze them and then take them out when needed.  Well, when I found that tin I hit the jackpot!  I think I secretly had about 10 extra brownies on that visit!

Just Call Me the Cookie Monster

June 19, 2008 at 10:09 am | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments
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I love cookies!  I’m not sure when this all started, but I can not get enough of them!  As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I do have a bit of a sweet tooth, but I don’t remember growing up loving cookies.  If anything, I think my favorite treat was ice cream.  (GPers, do you remember Over the Rainbow??) I think my favorite cookies are snickerdoodles and chocolate chip.  Have you ever had a Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich?  My mouth is watering right now!

When I was working in our Detroit office, my co-workers and I would always stay late on Tuesdays to prepare for a client meeting on Wednesday.  We would order in dinner from various restaurants, one of which was Subway.  Subway has the best cookies – I love their double chocolate chip ones!  Well, with my meal I would always get two cookies instead of the chips.  Shortly before I left, a new restaurant was built near the office and we went to lunch there a few times.  They had these delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  Oh man were they good!  So moist and delicious!  On my last trip back to the office, we all went out to lunch and I decided to skip on the cookie.  Well, my boss comes to the table and places a cookie on my tray!

Recently Martha Stewart came out with a new book – Martha Stewart’s Cookies.  Good grief, could there be a better cook book?  She did a cookies show as well that I’ve seen a couple times and all of the recipes look so good!  I need to get my hands on that book and start baking!

What’s your favorite treat?

Moderate to Strenuous

June 14, 2008 at 8:46 pm | In Friends | 1 Comment
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This morning we got up at 6am to go to Morrow Mountain.  We met the group at Jessi and Laura’s apartment around 7am and then made our way to the state park.  Eric and I drove with Adam and Laura.  We listened to Adam’s ipod on the way which had a pretty eclectic mix of songs – including Ace of Base! :)   We passed through Albemarle and saw the Sonic Burger where Kelly Pickler worked (exciting, eh?!). 

Once we arrived, we parked the cars, geared up and began our hike.  We took the Sugarloaf trail to the Morrow Mountain trail, which took us to the top.  Now, I know we were hiking up to the top of the mountain, but man was it steep!  The trail we took was ‘moderate’ and I don’t think any of us expected this hike to be too hard.  It was definitely a work out.  Fortunately, the entire hike was in the woods, so we had the shade of the trees to keep us cool in the heat!  We made it to the top of the mountain, had a snack, and then started to make our way back.  We came to a cross road where it was either hike a short way back to the car or hike another 2 miles back to the car.  Charlie, Eric and I were the smart ones and decided to take the short trail while the others (Jessi, Erika, Kelly, Laura, Adam) decided to go the long way. 

We got back to the car, took off our hiking boots and socks and just hung out.  We watched three guys come back from the horse trail and wash off their horses and then we had some excitement with a deer spotting!  About an hour later the others made it back.  Turns out the trail they took was up another mountain and was one of two ’strenuous’ trails in the park.  They were tiredwhen they got back!  We packed up the cars and then made our way over to the picnic area for some lunch.  Jessi and Kelly were kind enough to go shopping last night and provide all of the fixing’s for a nice lunch.  We had some ham/turkey/salami sandwiches, chips, dip, grapes, cookies -mmm!  After lunch we stopped by the lake to see the view and then made our way back home.

It was an hour-long trip and I slept pretty much the whole way back.  When Eric and I got back to our apartment, we went for a quick swim to cool off a bit, then came home and showered.  Oh man did that shower feel good!  After just relaxing for a bit we both fell asleep and slept for another 2 hours!  I was worn-out, but it was such a fun day.  It really got Eric and I in the mood to go backpacking!  Hopefully this summer we’ll make a trip.

Summer Memories

June 11, 2008 at 9:27 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
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Who doesn’t love summer?  Growing up, my mom worked during the day, so my sisters and I would be home by ourselves (once Katie, the oldest, was middle-school aged).  Our mornings were spent at the park – first at swim team and then swim lessons.  We would ride our bikes to and from the park; my favorite part of the bike ride was one particular block on University Place.  This street, for whatever reason, was paved in a windy pattern and was so much fun to ride down.  Sometimes on the way home we would ride over to the hospital my mom worked at and have lunch with her in the cafeteria.  Other days, we just rode home.  Waiting for us would be a list of chores my mom set out, although they were rarely finished when she got home.  Instead, we spent our days making movies and playing games.  One of my favorite games was auction.  One person would be the designated auctioneer and that person would spend about half an hour going around the house and pick out items to “sell.”  The auctioneer would then display the items on the couch while the buyers got out the monopoly money and divided the cash in two.  We would then spend up to an hour auctioning off our household items to each other.  My mom would come home to see her belongings spread out all over the living room and the chores unfinished.

Some of my favorite summer memories are activities with my dad.  On hot, summer nights after dinner, we would ride our bikes down to the park for a night swim.  We would usually stay until close.  My dad would also make us treats in the summer – chocolate milk shakes.  He didn’t make these very often, so they really were a treat when he did.  MMMMMM….home-made chocolaty goodness!  My dad also loved to get snickers ice cream bars or drumsticks.  I love those things!  I definitely got my sweet tooth from him!

Fast

June 11, 2008 at 2:08 pm | In Elevation | Leave a Comment

This is my first post on the wordpress blog. I really like all of the features that wordpress offers, although it’s a bit more complicated than blogger. I have some experimenting to do on this site to figure everything out, but so far I’m enjoying it. If any of you reading this use wordpress, do you have any tips for a new user of the site?

Well, Eric and I have taken a cue from our church and we have put ourselves on a spending fast.  We haven’t discussed how long we are going to fast, but I think it will at least be a month.  Eric and I are by no means over spenders.  We buy what we need, along with a few “wants” here and there, but we don’t over do it.

When I first heard that our church was in a spending fast for a month, I thought it was a great idea.  Their reason for the fast is to get back to their roots.  Our Pastor and the original families started Elevation without a dime in their pockets.  This month, they are being forced to be creative and plan ahead for what they’ll need – like they had to do in the beginning.

The reason for our spending fast is to get our budget back in line.  The cost of living is slowly rising and our goal is to buy a house one of these days.  We need to plan ahead for this and work on saving more for the future.  Too often we will fall into temptation and buy what we want because we can, rather than saving because we can.  We are still going to tithe, buy the necessities (gas, groceries) and pay our bills, but whatever we take in on top of what is needed each month is a gift from God.  I’m hoping this fast will keep us from taking those gifts for granted and bring us closer to Him.

Tuesday Trivia

June 11, 2008 at 1:19 am | In Tuesday Trivia | Leave a Comment
My summer job in high school and college was lifeguarding at our local park. One of the best parts of guarding were stormy days. I loved watching the storm front roll in and seeing that first flash of lightning that would allow us to close the pool! Once the pool was clear of swimmers, we would sit in the office, looking over Lake St. Clair and watch the storm pass by. I especially loved to watch the lightning. My favorite are the long bolts that were purple in color. A purple lightning bolt against a grey sky – beautiful!
Today’s trivia is all about lightning! Did you know…
~ Lightning is one of the leading weather-related causes of death and injury in the U.S.?
~ Talking on the telephone is the leading cause of lightning injuries inside the home?
~ The Earth as a whole is struck by an average of over 100 lightning bolts per second?
~ The temperature of a typical lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the sun?

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