Gushing Over Blushing

Random Product Advertisement:

I just thought I'd share this fun little product with you all that I have really enjoyed. It's made by Neutrogena and is called "Healthy Skin Blends".


As you can see, it is a blush that has lots of different colors and shades on it for a more natural look when applied. I find that if I first run my brush over the outer, darker colors and use that under my cheekbones by my hairline, it helps with definition of the face, and has a thinning factor. Then I run the brush all over the palette for the rest of my cheeks, using the lightest inner color for the "apple" of the cheek. ( I also put a light layer on the crease in my eyelid under my regular eye shadow just for blending and kicks!) The hardest part is just finding the color you want to buy since you can't try it out first like at a department store make-up counter. (Unless you buy it at Wal-Mart and aren't a chicken, they'll take anything back if you're "not satisfied.) I hope you like it as much as I do!

A Shoe In

If anyone doubts that children come to us with their personality already in tact, they've obviously never had kids.


London has discovered shoes. If she sees you don't have shoes on, she'll go get some for you and ask you to put them on. She's actually very good at bringing the right pair of shoes to the right person, and knows how to match the two shoes. We have to hide her shoes from her because if she sees them, she has to have them on, even to go to bed. She can also bring me her matching socks. (I'm quite impressed with her matching ability at such a young age.) If we go to a store where we pass a shoe aisle, she loses it if we don't stop so she can look at all the shoes. I'm not a crazy shoe person, although I like fun shoes, but not enough to have my daughter learn this behavior from me. It's innate. I fear for whats to come...


By the way, can anyone look at this child and say who she looks like yet?

Make-Up Call

There seems to be this interesting phenomenon in sports, where, if a ref makes a really dumb call against one team, a really lame call is soon thereafter called against the opposing team to make up for the original dumb call. Of course there is no proof of this, but every sports fanatic will tell you the "make-up call" exists.
This concept came to my head first thing this morning as I turned on the news and saw the headlines:

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

My first thought was, "Oh how sad, he didn't wind the Olympic Games so they had to give him another international prize so he would feel better!" Then I thought, that would be a pretty pathetic reason to give someone the Nobel Peace Prize. That's some Make-up call! It was shocking to have someone nominated only 2 weeks after becoming President, but it was unbelievable to have that same person win after only 9 months of being President, when it seems the only focus of his presidency in that time has been on appointing random Tsars and attempting health care reform. Can the time-honored and most respected recognition in the world have been reduced to a 'make-up call' ? Now, I'm not trying to be mean here. There's no reason why in a couple of years he couldn't have earned the right to this acknowledgement. I think every President of the United States is put in the position to be the World Leader that inspires peace. But it wasn't just me and the rest of the gasping world as his name was called, Obama himself realizes it was an odd choice, "I am both surprised and deeply humbled," Obama said this morning at the White House when he found out. He also said he did not feel he deserves "to be in the company" of past winners, which I don't think many will argue with. I really hope this doesn't deteriorate the prestige this award can have, and diminish the work that the other nominees have done. My last thought is this: I hope this international recognition doesn't manipulate him to make unwise decisions when it comes to our military, where they are and what they are doing, and our own national security. I don't want the weight of "Nobel PEACE Prize Winner" controling his actions to try and live up to what he has been 'awarded' in the name of Peace. Peace: something we all want but ironically have to fight to obtain. And we need to all remember, the absence of war is not necessarily peace.

This week in Key West

We were able to go to Key West this week with Grandma and Grandpa Palmer. Our kids are doing really well living here in Florida, but it doesn't mean that only a couple days can go by before they talk about how much they miss their grandparents and their cousins. So this was an extra special trip because Grandma and Grandpa were going to be there at the end of the very long drive. We went swimming and to the beach everyday, and by the end of the trip had caught a total of 5 jelly fish, one hermit crab and lots of seaweed! The boys ate more shrimp and mussels than is normal and visited a pirate museum where they all left with pirate swords. It was a very eventful and fun trip.

The other nice thing we were able to do was take our family picture. This is the spot where over 10 years ago Brad and I took our engagement photos, so it's fun to see how our life has changed since the first time we posed in this beautiful spot.