Mrs. DP^2

Our friends Dave and Dana are getting hitched!  Bachelorette party was a heavenly long weekend in Napa.

Our hotel/spa was really gorgeous and old school.

It had a steamy mineral spring pool.

The weather was typical gorgeous CA weather.

Also, there were lots of message trees in the little city of Calistoga.

We all had super fun at the wineries.

As well as the pool.

Dana loved those robes. I hardly ever saw her without one. Did I mention that I got a free rental car upgrade?

That's right. I am wearing a full turtle neck sweater in California in May. I live in TX, dammit! Everywhere but here is cold!

Leopard Print Robes

Recently I had to travel to Austin for a conference.

Work Nicci! Despite the fact that I was suffering from some type of plague-like sickness, we (just) managed to enjoy some yumsies from one of our favorite joints, Enoteca Vespaio.

But the most fabulous part was our sweet Far East room at our B&B.

It had a cute little balcony.

We will definitely stay here again, and again, and again...

Librarians Love Weeding

Back on the homefront, I did a huge weeding projects, the likes of which I usually reserve for Eddy (due to the nasty creepy crawlies that live on the side of our house.)

See how scary that looks! This is the after shot where you can actually see that we have an air conditioner back there.

The good news is that I got all of these nice "wildflowers" from back in that weed paradise.

The other "good" news is that Norman made a creepy crawly friend that day. Can you spot him here?

How about here?

I will spare you the details of what happened to his new found friend.

Another Zooquarium

In addition to Cel and Tom's wedding, Eddy (finally!) took me to the Brookfield Zoo for the first time!  Now, I have a deep affection for the Lincoln Park Zoo, so I set my expectations pre-tty-high.

Let me just declare up front, that they did have penguins, so that's a plus.

(Can you tell we got a new camera?) They also had the most gorgeous sea lions.

At lunch, I had my first Chicago dog! This is Eddy, but just pretend that it's me. Mmm... Chicago dogs...

There were some scary things at this zoo too. Such as this sign declaring that even though you should go in this real dark room with bats just loose in there, they will not land on you. Promise...

Also, this big bug.

It doesn't look that scary, but it's animatronic. Trust me. It will give you nightmares.

Cel and Tom!

So the reason we were in Chicago (you know, other than because we like to stick our heads through stuff) was because Celeste and Tom were getting hitched!

Cel and I are good SLU friends, so of course we had to have the obligatory SLU picture.

Look at Eddy's dapper outfit on the way to the reception.

Congratulations to the brand new couple!  {Peeps 4ever!}

p.s. Eddy got to open the door when they exited the church. He's so famous.

Jackpot!

You may know that we like sticking our heads through stuff.  It's a thing.  Well, recently visited the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and we basically hit the jackpot.  Behold!

This owl is definitely eating my face.

And the pièce de résistance:

That kid is looking at us like, "What the H is wrong with this grown ass people?!"

The Good Dog

So we've been taking Norman to obedience school because when he was just a wee dog he was quite the ball of crazy.  In fact, we'd been months without our beloved Discovery Green because it was just such a chore to take him.  But we think he finally turned a corner and is turning into a pretty darned good dog!  We decided to test this theory with a trip to see some zydeco.

We armed ourselves with our various Norman control devices--treats, squirt guns shaped like elephants.  You know, the usual.

Turns out, he behaved himself beautifully!

Of course, maybe he was just tired...

When Librarians Play Jokes

So Eddy is kind and sweet and thoughtful enough to read to me each night before we go to sleep.  I know.  He's the greatest.  Usually I even get to choose the books that we read.  In the absence of dystopian YA literature (my favorite!) I have this habit of foraging through the Juvenile literature section of the library I work at for oddities.  One night I brought this home.

Now Eddy and I will pretty much read anything. When we first started dating we read 832 pages of pure terrible awfulness and that set the tone for what we were willing trudge through.

That said, Eddy seriously hates the Green Fairy Book. He has even quit catching me up on what I missed when I fell asleep the night before. I mean he is blazing through this book as fast as he possibly can. To be fair, it's basically the same [uninteresting, un-cohesive, un-politically correct] "fable" over and over and over and over.

Imagine his surprise when I told him the other night I was bringing home a surprise... Behold!

The Yellow Fairy Book
The Red Fairy Book
The Pink Fairy Book
The Lilac Fairy Book
The Orange Fairy Book
The Olive Fairy Book
The Crimson Fairy Book
The Brown Fairy Book
The Violet Fairy Book
The Blue Fairy Book

Muahahahaha!

Festivalski

We recently attended a totally amazing Polish Festival at this little Polish church that we pass by all the time on the way to Norman's bad dog classes.

There were lots of beautiful paper flowers.

I mean really, lots of them. We danced some polka while we were there.

Also, we put our heads through stuff, which is sort of what we do.

We also ate some really amazing food, but we were too busy scarffing to take pictures, so here's this instead.