• personal,  travel

    7 for Sunday

    1. Fell asleep last night in Timmy’s bed around 10pm, woke up in my bed around 11am this morning (hence the late blog post!) Now, THAT was sleep!! Guess I’m still catching up from last year’s lack of sleep.

    2. We are all addicted to any electronic gadget. Ever. This is what the collection in Florida looked like. (Starting from the bottom) John’s laptop, my mom’s laptop, Patrick’s macbook, Jack’s macbook, my macbook pro, our ipad, my mom’s ipad, my mom’s kindle, my dad’s kindle, Jack’s Kindle, my Kindle, Timmy’s inherited kindle, Patrick’s kindle, John’s phone & blackberry, my blackberry, Mom & Dad’s droids, Patrick’s DS, Jack’s DS, Timmy’s DS, Jack’s phone. Can you even imagine the scene at airport security?  (and I just realized I forgot to add in the ipod touch to this picture). All of these gadgets makes me miss my grandpa. He was always, always up on the latest technology and had every gadget the moment it came out. I think he’d LOVE the ipad.

    3. I really hemmed and hawed about getting the 11 year olds their own macbooks, but I’m glad I did. They used the desktop at home (which is ooooold and filled with viruses from all the crap they are downloading all the time) almost everyday for homework so I figured these would be used often. And they are. And hopefully, they’ll last them a while. A long while.

    4. Sitting by the pool in Florida listening to some of the old folks music was actually quite nice- especially Moon River. Love that song. Realizing someday that I’ll be the old folks and wondering if the “kids” at the pool will enjoy listening to Echo and the Bunnymen or Depeche Mode from me.

    5. Speaking of 80’s music- my friend Suzanne and I are putting together a big 80’s party for March. Details coming soon but I really hope you’ll all come. I think it’s going to be a blast!! And if any of you are interested in helping with the planning, please email or call me! Do you think anyone will actually show up??

    6. Timmy calls God “the person after heaven”. I love that!!

    7. Got the boys mid-quarter progress reports and they were fantastic as always. It does a mom’s heart good to see nothing but “student is a pleasure to teach” and “student is an asset to the class” on each progress report and report card.

    Hope you all have a great Sunday!

  • personal,  travel

    florida favorites- part 1

    So, I’m back from vacation. Technically. Physically and mentally I’m still not quite back. And I’m seriously contemplating going back to bed shortly once everyone is in school this morning. Why not, right?

    When this is no longer the first thing you see in the morning, and all you see when you look out the window at home is NY brown & grey + snow for the forseeable future, going back to bed seems like a really good idea!

    A few more pretty sunsets. It was so nice that it was light out until around 6pm. A little bible sky. Patrick always finds a flower and picks it just for me. A little golfing on the putting green. He was in the middle of telling me some story. As always! The first half of our trip was definitely chilly (for South Florida standards) and was not pool or beach weather at all. (It did improve the second half though!) John brought the boys and Hakka to the Dolphins game and a Heat game. I had 3 90 minute massages over the course of the trip and slept almost every day until 11am.  We hit all of our favorite restaurants (a few more than once). And now I’m freezing, dieting, and getting up at 7am. Yeah, vacation’s over.

  • personal,  travel

    yeah, i got nothin

    My brain is an absolute void today and I cannot think of anything to blog about. Just trying to get my calendar straight for the spring. Watching a movie on my ipad while I edit (white oleander). All the christmas decorations are still up, taunting me with their christmasyness and knowing I have to take them down is driving me crazy. Banking, insurance, orders. Missing sleeping laaaate in Florida. Sorry it’s such a boring blog post today, but I guess it’s better than not posting at all. Right?

    A little Florida sunset. Wish I was still there.

  • elf on the shelf,  personal,  travel

    the christmas that was 2010

    Finally got around to editing and posting these (sorry for the delay if you were waiting for them but they aren’t all that exciting or anything so hopefully you won’t be terribly disappointed!). Christmas was fantastic this year and Santa was very good to all of us. Maybe that Bob had something to do with it, putting in an extra good word for the Beyrer family when he met up with Santa.

    I snuck downstairs after Santa came but before the boys were up to take some pictures of all the loot. And loot there was!

    Everyone left Santa notes, cookies, milk, some chocolate kisses for good measure, and carrots for the reindeer. Oh, and Timmy made a candy cane just for Santa. But that was after him saying that we couldn’t leave the Oreos out for Santa cause those are Timmy’s favorite cookie. Guess he isn’t willing to share, not even with Santa.

    Of course Bob was on call. He’s decide to stay with us instead of heading back to the North Pole just yet. We’re happy he’s hanging around. 

    Someone was happy with his Galactic Heroes. All 9,000 of them.

    After much debating, we picked up some macbooks for the boys. They use the desktop PC often for homework but it’s old and tired and filled with viruses. I’m hoping that these will last them a while and they are definitely enjoying them so far. 

    Some catchers gear for Patrick.

    The aftermath of weeks of shopping, hours of wrapping, lists for Santa and maybe 15 minutes of opening. Santa brought the big boys the Xbox with extra controllers and a few games including Call of Duty (with instructions that they just cannot play it when Timmy’s around), he brought us all an ipad to share, and he brought Timmy a new DS and a few games for that. Not to mention the tons of jerseys, sporting goods, shirts, slippers, clothes for me and books (for John-we all have Kindles) that were opened. It was a very good Christmas and we were so happy to spend it together. The look of disbelief on the big boys faces when they opened the Xbox was the best!!

    After a crazy morning of opening, sorting, eating and packing we got on the plane to Florida. As it turns out, we got out of dodge just in time before the blizzard of 2010 hit, closing the airports, roads and dumping a ton of snow all over NY. So glad we missed that. That was the biggest Christmas miracle of all!!

  • bsquared business,  personal,  product,  travel

    10 for Tuesday

    It’s been so long since I’ve blogged anything other than client sessions with the exception of Thanksgiving last week (it is that time of year, after all) but I honestly don’t think I can come up with 10 things to blog about. I’ll do my best. And the pictures (cause a post is worthless without the pictures) are all from our annual trip out east in October.

    1. I don’t really leave my computer these days (hence the lack of bloggable material). The other day I went out to do some long put off errands in the morning and all I could think was “oh, this is what normal people do during the day”. It was so odd to see the light of day someplace other than my driveway or pickup/dropoff at schools and activities.

    2. My life is so totally pathetic right now that I have to have a list of friends I want to see in January when I can actually breathe again. And leave the computer. Sad.

    3. This past weekend was my last for shooting for guaranteed holiday delivery. For those of you out there who have not yet ordered your prints or your holiday cards, just a reminder that FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11th  is the LAST DAY bsquared will be accepting orders for guaranteed holiday delivery. So, don’t delay and get your orders in asap so I can have your stuff for you before Christmas.

    4. So excited to be working on my bsquared newsletter for 2011. Please be sure to sign up at the top of the blog. The newsletter will be going out once a month and will have information that my newsletter subscribers will get before anyone else. I’ll also be adding lots of new bsquared products and promotions for 2011 which I can’t wait to share with you! The first edition of the newsletter will be going out by the middle of December, so be sure to sign up soon!


    5. The bsquared calendar for January-March 2011 as well as the new bsquared pricing will be available late December. There will be some specials available so be sure to watch out for that info on the newsletter, on the bsquared page on Facebook, and here on the blog. So keep your eyes open.

    6. When we were out east in October, I actually ran into two of my bsquared brides at a local vineyard. Random and so nice! Melissa actually snapped the family photo that we’ll be using on our holiday card this year. Thanks Meliss!!! (she’s the one on the far right, and my other bride Suzanne is next to her- Suzanne is the one who jumped into the pool in her wedding dress!)

    7. The big boys report cards were outstanding and I couldn’t be prouder. More on that in a post all their own, but I’m just feeling like bragging a little extra on them.

    8. Guess I need to decorate for Christmas this week, get my holiday cards mailed, and get all my Christmas shopping done. Nothing like a little pressure to get me out of my computer chair, at least for a little while.

    9. Thanksgiving here was really great and I think this year’s turkey was my best to date. Maybe because it was 20lbs instead of the 30+ pounds it’s been in years past. And we even ate on time (5pm- I refuse to eat dinner before that!!)

    10. Going to try to get into NYC with the boys and John sometime in the next 3 weeks for our annual Christmas visit and going to try and throw in a trip to the King Tut exhibit before that’s gone at the beginning of January. Has anyone been? What did you think of it? I know it’s not really very christmasy but I really want to catch it before it’s gone. (some shots from last year’s city christmas expedition)

    Made it. Sorry if it was boring but that’s what you get when I can’t separate my ass from the computer chair.