Weekend Recap

I have a feeling that hanging out with Thomas and Lara every weekend, plus neither Matt nor I having to work, will make weekend posts a rare occurrence. A regular weekend recap, I believe, should be in order in that case! So let us make a tradition of it, shan't we?

(Who doesn't love the word shan't...makes me feel like this

When more than likely I actually look like this

)

Is anyone else proud that I remembered the end parenthesis in that long winded explanation? Comment and let me know.

Okay so Saturday was a looooong day. Matthew and I foolishly thought that trying to do everything all at once would somehow make the day more fun. It didn't, really. But here's how it went down.

Everyone piled into MY car with my favorite chauffeur, Mr. McCaslin, at the wheel to head to Dyersburg. We went to Walmart for a few items, such as a coat rack and a vaccuum filter. Good times were had by all, and Matt got his haircut! Now he looks, well, just as wonderful as he always has. It must be nice for him to be so handsome all the time.

Stop Numero Dos was Matt's work, where he broke into the shop inconspicuously - or just went in the front door and opened the shop door for himself - to get some tools to bring home for working on the Datsun over the weekend. After that was finished, we drove thru Chick-fil-a for lunch and began our drive to Jackson. All this driving DID get old by the end of the day, before you ask ;). It was a good time to find out that Thomas and Lara had memorized the words to "Oh Where is My Hairbrush" and "C is for Cookie," both of which I had on a mix CD for just such car rides. I'm so proud, two classic songs have been planted in the heads of my stepbabies. :) That's what I call a successful day.

 Where was I? We've made it to Jackson by now for Carson's bowling party! We had lots of fun bowling with all of Carson's family and friends. He's a pretty popular 7 year old!

It was fun to hang out with the Cool Crew all day long.

 I bowled miserably, as usual. Got the lowest score but one of the bunch. Thomas and Lara were very very tired by the end of it all and struggled to keep their enthusiasm up through the whole party. Needless to say, their eyes were shut by the time we got out of Jackson.

Then we came on home and had some more resting time and started to pull apart the car! It's looking...well, not good. It looks like a car that doesn't have anything in it :P And that was our Saturday, folks. Sunday was typical of every other Sunday: church, short hanging out with Thomas and Lara before they went to Mommy's house, then messed with the car some more and Top Gear time with me and Daddy. This is what we do; we're very exciting people.

That's all folks!

The future Mrs. McCaslin

Be A Man

I am sure that all of you caught the Mulan reference in the title of this blog post. As it is obviously one of Disney's modern classics, Dark Side of the Moon is better known in my social circles as the greatest song in Mulan...rather than a mediocre rock album by some unknown band from decades past that did a lot of drugs. Am I right? Don't answer that.

Um, so anyway. It does turn out after further research that "Dark Side of the Moon" is the most memorable phrase from the Mulan song, but it's really called "I'll Make a Man Out of You," probably due to copyrighting issues with Pink Floyd. Still don't remember? Here's a video for your viewing pleasure.

Reminiscing about one of my favorite movies really was not the point of this post. It was, however, about being a man. Being on my own the whole day is kind of boring, and I found out today that it can be dangerous, too! The clock has only just struck 8:00 AM, meaning I've been awake for two hours, and I already had to slay A DRAGON...and by dragon I mean a CRICKET. Right there in my own kitchen in front of God and everybody! It was about 7:05 when I saw the little monster, meaning Matt was probably less than a mile away from the house (he drives to work slash to take the kids to school at 7:00), but was I going to chicken out and call him to ask if he could pretty please drop by and squash it for me? I was not. Because 1. That is a stupid reason to be late for work. and 2. I am manly and strong and can kill crickets all by meself. (In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day being less than a month out. What up Shamrock Shakes!)

So I did! I got a big ole shoe, moved the rug that was right next to the beastie (with my toe, from a very safe distance away), snuck up behind it so there wouldn't be a shadow to freak it out, and BAM! Dead cricket. All by myself.

Before everyone goes and appreciates my immense valor for handling this all by meself (there it is again), I would like to add that this was nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE, as terrifying as the time that my sister's dog, Peanut, and I were having a sleepover in my bed (on the second floor...totally unfair) and somehow there was a cricket (a big'un, this one was like three times the size of this morning's) IN MY BED UNDER MY COMFORTER. That was just unfair. Especially as my sister, Betsy, had just taken the time to tell me all about their cricket invasion downstairs but surely they can't climb stairs, so there weren't any on the second floor. OH CONTRAIRE, BETISS. So yeah that night was terrifying. This morning pales in comparison, but I try very hard not to think about that night very often. As I said, though, no need to applaud my bravery this morning. Killing crickets is rather old hat for me, come to think of it. So there. Take that, long legged jumping unpredictable arthropods.

In other news, Happy Friday y'all! Yesterday was my future nephew's 7th birthday, and tomorrow we will be heading to town for a bowling alley birthday party for him. It promises to be a good time, I'm sure. If I weren't such a miserable bowler, I'd be even more excited. Watching the smidgeons bowl will definitely be a laugh, though. I promise pictures!

See Y'all,
The future Mrs. McCaslin

The Datsun

The future McCaslin family has a new project. It's sitting outside Matthew's garage, and it looks remarkably like this:

1978 Datsun B210 

I don't know why looking at it makes me so happy and expectant about my life together with Matt. I guess it really thrills me to be spending the rest of my life with someone who actually carried out the projects he wants to complete. Also, not putting down my somewhat less automotive-savvy immediate family, but a guy who knows how a car operates is really, really...cool. I am only just beginning to realize this about myself. Driving to the shop to see Matthew for whatever reason just makes me so happy. He may feel self-conscious about the perpetual grease underneath his fingernails and calloused hands, but I love it. I feel like I am being so cliche by loving it all, but I guess I am actually just a little bit traditional in everything I do. On the other hand, I dropped out of college and moved to Tennessee, so I might need a little tradition here and there to keep me on track with all of that craziness.

Items that came with the car that Matt is excited about and I am clueless about! Yay!

It is my theory that this car will evolve purely as a labor of love - Matthew's for classic imported cars, and mine for him. This car is going to symbolize a lot for me, little does he know. My heart beats faster just thinking about bringing him lemonade when it's hot, coffee when it's...well, coffee in any weather at any time of day or night, knowing him...and learning what promises to be precious little about cars by helping him. I'm a work in progress in that realm.

If nothing else, I can volunteer to help wash it!

Another view of the beauty: yes, that is a chunk of bumper.

Please stay tuned to hear more about the work being done to our new family member, Mr. Datsun. Trivia for all you people that know as much about automotives as I do: did you know that Datsun is the original brand name of what we now just call Nissans? This means that once it is up and running, Matthew will be driving around the same car as me...mine is just 23 years younger. I'm sure he would disagree...because there is probably a whole lot of difference between our two cars -_- but according to me, his car is the father of my car. And that's all there is to it.

The baby car :)

I don't know if I'm supposed to put up pictures of license plates but the tags are out of date by about 14 years...I'm just wondering how the car got from California to here in the first place.

I believe the first few adjustments we're going to put on will be basic housekeeping to make the thing run again. Something about sparkplugs....and the carburetor...um, so what that means is: the next couple blogs I post about this, if I post about this, will be somewhat anticlimactic. Stay with me kids!

Xoxo,

The future Mrs. McCaslin

Southerners really DO deep fry everything.

Matthew and I went out on a date last night to celebrate our favorite holiday, Tuesday. He took me to see the Vow, which I have to admit, I was really super excited about. I felt justified in going to an undeniable "chick flick" with him, since we watch an episode or two of Top Gear every single night on Netflix. :-D I'm not complaining at all, but I had definitely racked up enough Man TV Points to bump up the femininity notch a bit. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, we were going to see The Vow, starring Rachel McAdams (so much love) and Channing Tatum (so much of that other 4-letter 'L' word):

The movie was, needless to say, very lovey dovey. I would venture to say that Matt and I both liked it pretty good...to use a local turn of phrase. The point of this post, however, was what preceded our movie. The movie was not until 7:00 PM, and Matthew gets off work at 5:00, so we went to Shogun Japanese Steakhouse to eat sushi. And oh did we ever.

For our first course, Matt wanted squid salad...but the chef was out of squid (bummer), so we went with baby octopus salad. Okay, weird. I did not remember to take pictures of all these bizarre delicacies, but I promise it really did look like tentacles. It also really didn't taste bad or even weird. It didn't taste like much of anything. Teriyaki sauce, I lied. It all had been doused in teriyaki sauce. End salad course.

There were approximately 838593573920295687 things on the menu to choose from, so Matt picked one roll and I picked another roll. Matt's was called a Bagel Roll and mine was called a Happy Roll. Trust me to go for that one, right? I don't surprise anybody. (Fun trivia fact on that note: I have always disliked Eeyore. Why is it okay for a character to be morose all the time? That is sending kids a terrible message. "Oh, Eeyore's just never happy about anything, and everyone still likes him. You can have a bad day everyday too! And your cute little face will still wind up on sweatshirts and backpacks all over the world!" Ridiculous.)   There they were, bagel roll and happy roll. I was ready. I've had sushi before, and I know there's really not a whole lot that can be put in it to make it taste bad. Plus, the few things that I would think might make it taste bad - read: baby octopus - I had just tried, so really there wasn't much to worry about.

I found this picture online, but it is pretty close to what ours looked like.

Our sushi arrives fresh out of the deep fryer. Wait, what? Yes, it was covered in what I guess was tempura and deep fried. Perhaps this really is normal, and Japanese people all over the country/world get out their Fry Daddy to make their meal a little warmer than raw fish and seaweed. At this particular moment, however, I just thought it was hilarious. Never in my life have I seen deep fried sushi, but it seemed like a completely Southern cliche playing itself out in front of my eyes. I hope I'm not offending anyone. But really, if you can order something deep fried that is by all definitions in the common world served raw, nevertheless COLD...well, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. Or the north, because who knows what whacky things go down in Kansas.

Found on www.fibers.com

My disclaimer for the evening though? The Happy Roll and Bagel Roll were both absolutely delicious. I mean, really. The Southern Japanese Americans are really onto something. After the heart attack on a plate was gone, Matt and I decided to order to more rolls, a mackerel and a Tokyo roll. They were both okay but just normal sushi. Less thrilling. I would recommend anyone that can find a deep fried sushi roll on their menu at the local sushi restaurant to try it. It's just as healthy as it sounds, and you won't regret the extra calories.

And these last photos are just for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy very small people dressed up as the above mentioned delicacies.

Whatever is Wonderful Wednesday

1. Last night before I went to Dyersburg to meet Matthew for our date to go eat sushi and see The Vow, I put in a load of laundry and completely forgot about it until this morning. Knowing for sure that it would all have mildewed somewhere in the space of 20 hours, I opened the washing machine to start it all over again. By some Washing Machiracle, none of the laundry had mildewed! What a great way to start my chores for the day!

2. Matthew didn't crash his bike on the way to work today even though it had rained, and this is the first time he's ridden it since summer. Hooray for fiances staying alive!

3. This Saturday, there will only be 15 months until Mr. McCaslin and I are getting married. We will certainly have to celebrate.

4. We're finally out of ice cream and brownie scraps, so I don't feel obligated to eat dessert after every meal...when there's pressure like sweets that need to be used up, it's a lot harder to resist the urge to eat junk food.

5. My second box of clothes and things I need for my bedroom arrived yesterday. Now I have more or less a full wardrobe! Hooray!


Edit as of 12:18 PM, Wednesday got even more wonderful.
6. My FREE replacement Kindle just came from the UPS guy (who looked about 16, weird) and is charging on my laptop as you read this! Thank you again to Andres, you random Amazon customer service employee who decided that my leaning on my Kindle screen with my elbow was "involuntary damage" and I could get a replacement one for free. I have no idea why you thought so, but I'm glad you did.

Think on these things.

Positive thinking - putting things into perspective and realizing which mountains are really molehills - is one of the most important parts of my life. I am not one to dwell or hold grudges for even a second longer than I have to. The title of this blog, not to mention my whole life, blossoms from my very favorite Bible verse that encourages believers to put that into practice, Philippians 4:8.

Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.

The next two years are going to be full of adventure for me, so I thought a blog covering the many things I'm  figuring out would be fun documentation as well as an excellent way to keep in touch with all of the many many friends I have all over the world. I can't wait to see where God takes us next.

Until next time,

The future Mrs. McCaslin