Our Friend, Ms. Garmin

For our birthdays, my parents bought this little doo-dad for Brendon and me. I must say I am loving her (we call her Ms. Garmin until we can come up with a better pet name...if you have any other great ideas for names please feel free to share them). Ms. Garmin tells me when to turn and how to find a gas station. My favorite feature is her blue tooth capabilities, though. Whenever a call comes into my phone and I am with Ms. Garmin it rings and connects through her speakers (which are much louder than my speakerphone). So I can just touch her screen to talk and never have to deal with digging in my purse and finding my phone. Love her!

Become a Zipster

As many of you know...I cannot stop heralding the many praises of Zipcar. It has saved my rear more times than I can count trying to get to appointments with real estate. And if I want to go to Target and Bren has the car...I just reserve a zip car and head on over (bonus...it's not stickshift!!) I just think it is the neatest, most cool idea. I wish I would have thought of it!

Anyways...they are doing an amazing promotion right now where you get $100 free driving credit if you sign up before Halloween (can you say "trick or treat"?) and if a friend refers you they get $50 for entering the code "frienddc".

So if you've been thinking about zipping...I would highly encourage it...and I wouldn't be angry if you decided to say I referred you and give me some free driving credit :) Ha ha!

Hardy Har Har

Courtesy of Laffy Taffy:

Q: What did the math text book say to the pencil?
A: Man...I got lots of problems!

*snicker, snicker*

Finally Finished

If you remember a few months ago I signed up for a quilt block exchange with some awesome ladies in Idaho. Little did I know when I signed up that this would turn out to be the busiest, fastest summer of my life! I was quite stressed about getting my 16 quilt blocks done on time, and done well, so as not to dissapoint any of my quilt block exchange ladies. Well, I am super excited that I finished last night (ok, so I didn't start until Monday night because I've been on vacation and trying to balance working two jobs) and they are in the mail! And I don't think they turned out too bad for a first-timer. I have already received 7 other blocks from ladies and they are cute. I think it's going to be super cute when it's finished. Here's to falling in love with yet another hobby I don't have time for!

Here's one of my 16 squares...

and here's all 16 of them...

...these are some of the quilt square I've received from fellow quilt exchangers. They look amazing! In hindsight I wish I would have used fabrics with smaller prints and more contrast. It's so hard to tell when you're ordering fabric online! Darn.

A Well Deserved Vacation

Last week we flew home to my parent's house in California. Home sweet home. We had such a great time! When we got there my dad had a surprise waiting for Brendon...this huge D9 tractor.

Brendon did not waste any time getting on the tractors...Cody was glad because Bren helped him load up his scrap steel.

He looks good in Dad's wranglers doesn't he? Ha ha.

As soon as we got there my dad had Bren and Jared helping shoot the squirrels and pests on the farm. We also got a box of skeet from the hardware store to keep us entertained.

Here's Jared trying to teach Rissa to shoot.

We also had lots of fun cruising in Mom's new convertible Corvette. We drove it down to San Francisco Thursday evening - what a beautiful drive.

The rest of the trip we spent lazy-ing around on the houseboat. Here's Cody and Bren attacking their watermelon.

Brooke, Mom, and Taryn bundled up for morning boat ride.

Tiffany, Gabe and BrenOur favorite thing to do is tube. That's Cody, Jared, Brendon, Tiffany, Taryn and Rissa out there.

Jared, Brendon, and Cody were completely tuckered out after their long ride!Brendon has HUGE muscles - don't you think? He he.This was one of Brendon's first few times wake boarding...we were very impressed. Check out his jumps below. He is very courageous.Taryn, on the other hand, thinks courageous means venturing outside the wake. Ha ha. I am a wuss.
Other highlights of our trip include touring the farm we hope to possibly lease, riding dirtbikes and 4 wheelers and the golf cart all around the ranch, eating heaps and mounds of homemade salsa, touring Berkeley campus, officially changing my name on my driver's license to from "Taryn Leishman" to "Taryn Merkley" (it's about time!), amazing homemade pies with Brooke and CB, touring model homes in Gridley, penny candy and Hawaiian Snow, seeing tons of family and friends, and just being on the farm. What a great vacation!

Birthday Celebration

It's tradition that for the last 26 years (with one exception) I've been home in California to celebrate my birthday...so I had to have a little shindig get together while we were home.
Jared (our soon to be brother in law), Cody, Brendon and I all had birthdays coming up - so they sun a tounge-twister of a "happy birthday" song to us. It's not easy to fit four names in the "happy birthday to _____" line :)

We told Cody to pick up three half gallons of ice cream. He misunderstood and bought three AND A HALF gallons of ice cream. Ice cream anyone?
I finally got to see Tatum's prego belly. She is about to pop. Three more weeks to go.

NYC with the Ladies

This weekend my three girlfriends (Melanie, Kayla, & Brooke) and I took a quick trip up to NYC. Friday night we bussed up after work. When we got there we were feeling excited and energetic so we decided to walk to our hotel...until it started POURING with an amazing lightning storm (Jeri would have loved it). By then no taxis wanted to pick us up because they were all full (see photo below of Kayla with our only umbrella standing in the middle of the road trying to hail a taxi), so we started our trip off with a [wet] bang.

After we finally made it to our hotel we immediately took off for a midnight snack. Brooke requested we go to S'mac - a little hole in the wall that only serves mac'n'cheese. They had every kind of mac'n'cheese you can imagine. Yum!

After gorging ourselves with Mac'n'cheese we had to get dessert...so we went to the well-known Veniero Paticceria to have eclairs and N.Y. cheesecake. Also yum!
Between eating stints we did lots of shopping and walking. We spent most of our time in Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown. We had fun getting cheapie 30 minutes massages in Chinatown. We also had fun posing with skeletons and mannequins. :)We couldn't resist these matching Monopoly shirts: Luxury Tax, Free Parking, You've Won 2nd Prize in a Beauty Contest, and Community Chest. We are the epitome of mature 26 year olds! Kayla had her first experience with Dean & Deluca where Melanie ate red velvet cupcakes for breakfast. So nutritious.
To further support the fact that most of our trip was about eating, we spent half the time running around to all the places people wanted to eat as proven by our pictures :) Melanie insisted we go to Gray's Papaya for hotdogs and Pina Colada juice.
Enjoying our hot dogs! ......and Kayla insisted we go to "Burgers & Cupcakes" in Chelsea and get these amazing cupcakes.
Next door to "Burgers & Cupcakes" I found the store that was made for me..."Big Booty Bread Company".

Four Sleeps

Brendon and I are so excited - only four more sleeps until we go to California!

Magical Month of August

August is my birthday month, and I never grew out of the egocentric idea that I am the only person born in August and everyone knows it's my special month and I must just glow or something all August long.

The Merkley's go to Williamsburg

Brendon's parents came to visit this weekend from Utah. We love having visitors! They graciously helped me get another item checked off my "things to do this summer" list. Saturday afternoon we drove to Williamsburg, VA. We found the hotel Brendon reserved for us and he was so proud of himself because the hotel was ADORABLE and a bargain price. Check out the cute toile wallpaper - how much more authentic could it be?!

Saturday night after we got settled we went over to Colonial Williamsburg to Bruton Parish church and listened to/participated in a choir hymn sing-a-long. It was very cool.

Sunday morning we took the shuttle into Colonial Williamsburg again and experienced life in the 18th century. One of my favorite places was the apothecary. The woman (actress) behind the counter told me how she had been treating a lot of whooping cough that week, and she didn't have any clue how to fix Brendon's allergies but she thought maybe he had the whooping cough himself. We saw the tools they used to do surgery back then - scary! Also a favorite was the wig shop. We watched them make a wig and string individual hairs onto a net. She said the net stayed on by sheer luck, and they used to shave their heads to make the fit more proper (even the women). Wigs ran anywhere from a day's worth of pay to two months salary. My absolute favorite place was the tailor/dressmaker. Can you imagine sewing all those elegants gowns and uniforms by hand?! Even just the button holes would take hours to stitch by hand. Amazing.
Brendon caused a ruckus in the tavern and we got locked up in the town square. :)
Later in the afternoon we left Colonial Williamsburg and went to Jamestown island where we saw the statues of Pocahontas and John Smith, lots of artifacts that have been recovered from archeological digs, and the site where 400 years ago the settlers landed in America. It was really cool.

Mmmmm....pizza

Laughter - The Best Medicine

A little mid-day humor courtesy of Laffy Taffy:

Q: What do you call a cow with a twitch?
A: Beef Jerky

Q: Which are the stronger days of the week?
A: Saturday and Sunday - the rest of the days are weekdays.

Ha ha!

Häagen-Dazs

Last week Brendon and I were watching tv and we came across a reality show where people were in a competition to create the new Häagen-Dazs flavor. It was so fun - the top people got to go to the Häagen-Dazs labs and create their flavors for a panel of judges, and then there was a huge marketing campaign and the winning flavor was launched. Needless to say, since i am so culinary inclined (ha) I predicted the winning flavor from the beginning - Sticky Toffee Pudding. Last night at the grocery store Brendon found the flavor and we had to buy it so we could complete our tv experience. I'm glad this flavor won - it is amazing. Everyone needs to try it.

So now Häagen-Dazs is at it again with another round of the competition for a new flavor. If anyone wants to try out their sample flavors on me I am happy to oblige.

Proud Aunt

My cute little niece and nephew, Rylee and Cole, took their parents to Disneyland this weekend. Doesn't it look so fun? It makes me want to be a kid again.

Happy Birthday Blake!

Blake is getting old (just kidding...we all are) so Kayla threw him a youngster's birthday party on Sunday with Shrek ear headbands, party favors, and a pinata. She cooked a yummy dinner of chicken cordon bleu and we had the best cake ever from Cake Love. YUM! Afterwards we played Canasta - I don't even remember who won, but it wasn't me! We had such a great time. The very best part of the night though, was when the pinata busted and nothing came out and Kayla said, "What?! Where's all the candy?" She has no idea pinatas don't come pre-filled. Ha!

Arlington Cemetery

Friday afternoon we had the honor of attending the funeral service of a brave fallen soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. On Memorial Day 2006, the President delivered a speech at Arlington Cemetery that mentioned this brave soldier. He had been killed by a terrorist bomb, and before he left he had given his parents a letter in case he didn't return. He wrote: "Remember that my leaving was in the service of something that we loved, and be proud. The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made." When his family held the funeral service this past Friday they invited Brendon to attend. It was a touching service, and I was overwhelmed by the sacrifice that so many people have made for the freedoms I enjoy. Looking around at the gravestones we noticed how young most of the soldiers were. The man that officiated the ceremony made wonderful remarks filled with hope and respect, and he used a phrase that stuck with me: "In life he honored the flag, in death the flag honors him".

Books with Brendon

Our calling at church has been Senior Nursery for about a year now. It's exhausting at times - but usually we truly enjoy ourselves and come away with the best stories! Some of you know the "my windshield wipers went out of control" story courtesy of Clarke. Besides the great stories and entertainment we get to eat gold fish and raisins and take walks with the kids. Brendon tried to incorporate "nap time" but only a few of the kids got it, and they thought it was a game so they giggled the whole time. This is what nursery always ends up looking like every Sunday - Brendon piled high with kids reading books over and over again for two hours. He's going to make such a good dad :)