Animus Opibusque Parati: Our month in review

So, we packed Eliza up in a suitcase...

and quickly got busy going redneck style, letting our kid run naked in yards and get eaten up by mosquito bites (I covered them with band-aids, check out her legs)! She's loved it, though! At some point I'll have to post the pics of all of Eliza's adorable bathing suits!

We have LOVED playing at Oma, Grandpa and Abby's house. Oma has the best toys ever! Remember Duplos? Well, Eliza thinks they're the coolest thing since pacifiers! and legos.

And I had a birthday in between classes, swimming pools, SC bbq, and poodle play time!

I got to have a fancy dinner with this hunk:

We went out to the Motor Supply Co., which is this AWESOME restaurant in Columbia. For all of you SCers, it's one of the best places for fancy dinners in the VISTA. Robby used to take a bunch of his dates there to woo them with his high-roller, classy taste.

Steve said by the name he expected the place to be greasy and have hubcabs hung on the walls. Not quite. Our favorite dish was the fried green tomatoes-- the best EVER-- stacked in b/t the tomatoes was this delicious peach and napolean cheese souille. YUM!!

And then on Sunday night, my actual birthday, my mom made me her delicious Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner.

and some chocolate mousse and brownie icecream cake.

We've LOVED seeing these people on a daily basis this month!

So at the end of my birthday day, I headed back to our apartment to my new "study" that's inside of our walk-in closet. It's cozy and helps me focus w/o distractions. I had to finish up several papers, group research stuff, and do several chapters of reading that were due the next day for my classes. Fun, fun. "Guess that's Grad School!"

Also our big news for this week is that Eliza learned to swim!,

Eliza peed in her potty for the first time today!,

she painted for the first time today to decorate her Father's Day card!,

and learned to sing her ABC's!!
Woohoo!

And I'll leave you with a cute video of Eliza doing something random and hilarious from my birthday dinner:

I must be back in school...

... because yesterday evening, I fell asleep face down on my textbook in the USC library.

Drool on the page.

Big red mark on my forehead.

Awesome.

Sound familiar?

Never done it? Whatever...

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Marseilles Dress SHABBY APPLE GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

I like these dresses at Shabby Apple.

I would especially like it if they were free.

Check out the giveaway.

We still don't have internet....

... but I'm at Mom and Dad's house. Apparently the local internet/phone company couldn't come get us set up for a week and two days after we requested it. We've been going through withdrawals!

(Moving day. Moving is miserable. Enough said.)

I made it through my first "Week" of grad school classes. That is, I don't have class again until Monday, but I do have homework, reading, and papers to write before then.

For those of you who don't know. I'm taking two classes (6 credits total) in the month of June which are Social Work Research Methods and Human Behavior in the Larger Social Environment. I will then take two more (6 credits) in the month of July. I'll have the first week of August off, and then I jump into the Fall Semester (2nd year Social Work Master's program).

Eliza's going through some great Southern Acculturation thus far. She LOVES boiled peanuts almost as much as her mom (I'm so proud!!). However, she's still not quite a gamecock. Today at the Lexington Library, Cockie the Game Cock (USC's mascot) came to do story time for the kids as part of the summer reading kick off. As soon as Eliza saw him, her eyes got really wide and turned to Steve and nervously said, "Go home!?"

The best part of this move has been having Mom, Dad, and Abby down the street. Awesome. I don't know how we've lived so long without them this close!! Mostly because they have a Wii... with guitar hero. Just kidding. It's the free babysitting. Or the free food. Or the 5 person chorus Eliza gets singing Itsy Bitsy Spider to her. Or the extra room they've let Steve convert to a studio (sorry, Robby, it's your room). Or the poodles.

Or THE LOVE. Yeah, probably that.

So it's been a fun welcome back to my home town, despite the 90+ degree weather, ungodly amount of mesquitoes, and Gov. Mark Sanford. It's looking like a fun year!