when irish eyes are smiling

i am proud of my irish heritage. savannah is proud of it too! happy st. patrick's day week!

we kicked off the celebrations at the parade on tybee on saturday. aaron and i both have to work on wednesday when the big parade will be happening in downtown savannah. there is always next year...

we are buying a house!

this post has been a looooooooooooooooooong time coming. aaron and i have been searching and looking and paying down debt for months to get ready for this purchase. after christmas we were even dead set on moving home. however, we both have good jobs, solid incomes, little debt and decided that we needed to wait for the economy to get better before we both attempt to find new jobs in another state.

so, we are buying a house. its a cute little house that was built in 1956. the neighborhood is called magnolia park and it is about 2 miles from my office and about the same distance from aaron's. the best part is, daniel and e and ed and abby both live with in walking distance from house! basically we will all be living in the same neighborhood

there is a big back yard for dixie and rex. after our year and half, living in a social experiment, in the heat of downtown savannah, they deserve a nice, peaceful backyard. there is a garage for aaron and a nice sized kitchen for me. while it will need some updating, i know we will have a great time doing it. i can't wait for our first backyard party...i already have the menu planned! we love to have people over but we can't really do it where we live now and lately we would be keeping our fingers crossed the whole time people are over that no one starts a riot in the street!

here are some photos of the new house...i will post more on monday! keep your fingers crossed that the inspection is clean!

the kitchen

the living room

master bathroom

the front of the house

my calling center girls...

when i was a student at the college of charleston, i worked as a student caller in the cougar calling center. this is where i got my start as a fundraiser. i also met some great friends that i love dearly...four of the girls are now mommies and i have to admit, their little ones are too cute for words.

it makes my heart happy to look at their pictures and read their blogs and updates. ashley's little ones, neil and lyla are just too cute for words. i remember when ashley told me she was pregnant with neil after waiting for such a long time for the little guy to happen. i will never forget what she instant messaged me..."the bread is baking." best words ever! neil is already such a little man and little lyla is so pretty just like her mama!

carissa has one of the cutest little munchkins i have ever seen too! every time she blogs about how adam thinks toots are funny i crack up laughing! the funny part to me is that carissa thinks toots are funny too! the we have had lots of good belly laughs about that subject. plus, carissa is married to a great guy who i have never met but is the perfect match for her. perfection.

and courtney and little sully...what a pair. both cute as a button! courtney is one of the cutest people i have ever met so obviously she would have an adorable little guy too! when i saw sully's nursey before he was born it had courtney "fab" all over it! she is getting married this year and building a house and i couldn't be happier for her!

it just makes me so happy that these good friends are so happy too! even though time and distance seperate me from these girls...i still love them all dearly. i have to say that i am thankful for the internet and technology that helps me keep in touch with all of the people i love and to watch these little one grow up too!

a good hard laugh

my stomach hurts. not because i ate too much. not because i am sick. but because i literally laughed an ab workout!

you see...we have these friends. it seems like when we are all together, we bring out the goofy-ness in each other. i literally laughed outloud randomly about 12 times during the day yesterday about something funny from the night before. then, last night...i laughed and laughed and laughed some more. pretty much one funny thing after the other.

but here is the best part. we are about to all be neighbors! remember when you were a kid and you and your friends ran the neighborhood? we had our own little troop in my neighborhood, playing outside from sun up until the street lights came on. there have been so many times i wished my friends all lived in the same neighborhood and i could walk to their houses. in lugano, my super swiss friend, jenn lived right around the corner and i could walk to her house. we ate dinner together a few nights a week. awesome. now, aaron and i have found the perfect house for our little family of two and two furry kids. we are going to put an offer in tomorrow! the best part...we can walk to our goofy friends houses! this is going to be so great!

i am experiencing what my fab charleston friend courntney calls "soul shine". life is so good right now! hahahahahahahaha

the subjects i have been meaning to blog about..

1. Doubles Luge...this is how I imagine the convseration going..Hey man, I really want to win a gold medal but I am just not that good at anything. How do you feel about laying under me on a little sled in a really tight suit? Don't worry, I will lay on top and do all of the work. You just have to lay there and look pretty...

interesting...why wasn't there doubles luge for females?

2. The president came to savannah...someone got arrested for trying to touch him and there was a man standing on the side of the road with a sign welcoming "Brack Obama". WOW. I sure wish I could have seen him speak.

3. House Shopping...why is every house that seems like the right fit just outside of our budget? We really need to move. Yesterday there was a man, passed out drunk on the church steps across from my house. Neighborhood, yes please!

4. Losing weight...why is it called losing weight. Once it is lost, I really don't want it back. It's not like you are going to find me hanging up a sign on the closest telephone pole "Missing 15 pounds" Yeah, right. It would be more like a Dear John letter....Dear Weight I Lost at Weight Watchers last week, thanks but no thanks for the many years of size extra large t-shirts and poor body image. Good riddance. Please don't respond to this letter.

Totally random, I know. I would have liked to devote a post to all four. However, my ADD brain is about to explode with ideas and information and before I move on to the next item, I thought I better put these down.

the long road home

Tomorrow can't get here soon enough! I am not sure how I am even going to sleep tonight.

Out of Office Message...check
Way to much that has to be done on vacation packed....check
Chicken Salad Sanwiches...check
Oil Change...check
Dixie's bath...check
Presents Wrapped...check
Playlist made...check
Winter clothes....check
House cleaned....check
Christmas Jammies...check (two pairs :) )
Love...check
Luck...check
Blessings...check
My Cook...check
Spending time with Family this year for the first time since last October...check
Happy Girl...Check

The Day I met Bono In Italy....

Ok, some of you know this and some of you don't. But, when I went to interview for my job at Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland, I met Bono. I was eating in a Chinese Resturant with my soon to be boss, Alesia, her niece and another colleague, Calhoun. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a man who I was sure was Bono. All through dinner I could not help but stare at him. Could this really be true? Could I be in the same place as this mega super star in a little town in Italy? I talked about it with the company at my table. They wanted to me to ask him and I of course was acting shy. But I really wanted to know...

As we got ready to leave, I got up the nerve to ask the man if he was Bono. Calhoun was so embarassed that he was hiding out in the parking lot. I have Alesia my camera to snap a photo, just in case, and walked over to the man. "Excuse me sir, are you Bono?" Bono looked right at me and said, "Are you drunk?" Me, "No sir, I have only had one beer. Can I take a picutre with you?" And that was that. He never responded yes or no, a whole entourage of people came close when we took our picture, it was Bono and I met him in  a small Chinese resturant in Italy. I went back and emailed the photo of me with Bono to my Aunt Pat, the resident Bono expert, and she really could not confirm or deny either. I will always remember that day as the day I met Bono.

A year later I went back to the Chinese resturant with some friends. We reminded the owner who we were and that we had been there the night that Bono came in. He told us that Bono had just been there the week before. Confirmation, that was Bono and me in the picture.

Fast Forward three years...yesterday, December 17, 2009. I got this email from my good friend Laura in Lugano....

Rachel,


How are you? I received your Xmas card. THANK YOU! I hope all is well and happy for you in Georgia. Some day, I really want to go there! I got a call from Nathan a week ago...what a surprise! It was fun to hear from him and felt like we had talked just days before. Same ol' Nate.

So, here's a funny story. I was at a dinner party a few weeks ago. U2 was playing and we started talking about them.I proceeded to tell them the story about how my friend was interviewing here and met Bono at the Chinese restaurant past gandria. How you went up to him and Said, are you Bono? He said, ARe you drunk? etc etc.
So a few days later, one of the guys, Robb, emails me and says, guess what? A colleague of mine at work was Just talking about how her friend looks like Bono and that they were in a restaurant one time and people came up to them and asked to take a photo. I told robb, no, that we were in the restaurant a year later and that the owner had said that Bono had been there again the week before. So, I'm sure this was a different case.

Well, I forgot about the whole thing, and YESTERDAY out of the blue, I get the below photo!!

I almost fell out of my chair!

Anyway... I had to share!
:) Hope you have a great Xmas..

Love, Laura



The Email she is referring too...
Hey,
If I don't see you have a great time in Vietnam!!

Happy Holidays!
I hope this is your friend.....probably not, but funny!!!


Robb

I almost fell out of my chair too! I laughed so hard on the phone with my aunt that I was crying! There is my camera in the picutre and you can see my picture on the camera screen! The world is so small...so so small...

Remind me to blog about another "It's a small world afterall" experience soon. But for now, I hope you get a kick out of the picture too!