Fun With Despair.com

I forget now which friendly soul pointed this site out to me, but it never fails to make me laugh! It's full of pessimism, and despair (duh!), but the humor is really good too! You can buy t-shirts and mugs and other things, but my favorites are the posters. You know those motivational posters offices have hanging up? These are like anti-motivational posters. Here's an example of one I got off their site:

For extra fun, you can also craft your own poster with your own photo and depressing verbiage, like the one I did:


So, if you're feeling a little down and need a pick-me-up today, head over to despair.com and have a laugh on me!

My Pampered Chef Party

Well, it was mine and Joe's really. I'd booked it from Angie's party at the end of April, because I know how much Joe likes kitchen gadgets and this way he'd get to try some out. Of course, for me having these parties is very nerve-wracking. I have to get my house nice and clean (and then pretend it's like that all the time!), and I have to obsess over whether or not anyone will actually come. That's why I don't have these things too often.

But it worked out just fine! We had five guests for the party, and Amanda (the consultant) made a tasty Jerk Chicken Nacho dish for us all to share. With orders at the party, and orders from work, Joe and I were able to get our hands on some free stuff, which is why it's so good to have a party!

And I'm happy to report that Joe was on pretty good behavior, even though some of his gal pals were there that he likes to torment. And Xander was happy that his cousins came to play with him while the grownups did their thing. He greeted our guests at the door with a potato chip and dip, it was so cute!

Now, how so I get Joe to become a Pampered Chef consultant so we get even more free stuff? LOL!

The Lost Egypt (A Story By Xander)

My delightful 4 year old son told me this story the other day, and I taped it so I could 1) craft a scrapbook page of it, and 2) show everyone what a literary genius he is! So enjoy this original tale by Mr. Xander Bruno! (Please note the in the original telling, Egypt was pronounced Engypt.)

Once upon a time, there was a lost, lost, lost Egypt. And a guy named Pharaoh, who had a gun and a sword. And he went somewhere. He went somewhere. To a big, big pyramid. And that was the lost Egypt.

And he stopped the car, opened the door, and shutted it really tight. He went inside the pyramid. It was really spooky. There were green glowing eyes. He looked to see what it was and it was huge. It was a really huge, huge, huge spider! It was creeping along and he shot it with his sword, then it laid down softly, closed its eyes, and it was dead.

Then behind him there was a big sound like this: “ooowwaaaahh”. And he looked and you know what he saw? Mummies! And then he just looked at them, and shot them right through the face. Real quick. Then he tried to run but he couldn’t. There was tons of mummies. The mummies had swords. And then he saw a guy that looked better than him. It looked a lot like Steve, his brother. Then he fighted all the mummies. He drove his sword right into their eyeballs, and he shooted them right in the mouth. Then they died. The end.

Bruno Vacation - Day Four

It's check-out day, time to head home. The weather, which was beautiful all week, was rainy and overcast - good driving weather! We lingered in the room for a while, Joe and Xander enjoying one last go at the hot tub. (I'll spare you more photos of that!) Then we turned in our key cards and packed up the car. We lunched at Friendly's before hitting the highway.

Of course, on the way we had to stop at The Dinosaur Place in Montville, CT. We'd passed it on the way to Mystic and Xander really wanted to go there on the way home. So we did! Xander got a chance to dig in the mine for precious stones, and pan for gold (pyrite). We also spent considerable time in the huge gift shop, and Xander walked out of there with a new "guy" and a t-shirt.
Luckily, Xander slept most of the way home so that we weren't bombarded by the "Are we there yet?" questions. We rolled through Oneonta on around dinner time, so we stopped at Denny's to eat. We all got breakfast platters, since we hadn't eaten any actual breakfasts our whole vacation. And then we were home.

It was a great vacation! We all had such a fun time, even Joe! When I asked Xander about his favorite parts of the trip, he said: "Watching tv, playing with my guys, and the hot tub." Little sucker! I for one am glad to be home, back in my own bed, and no longer subjected to countless SpongeBob episodes (I'll probably never get the theme song out of my head, though). Thanks for sharing in our first - but hopefully not last - family vacation!