Peace of Mind

It's a great product from Origins. I went today for their famous mini facial and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Well, not at first. My appointment was at 10 am and I was running late. I still had to run to HEB to pick up some latex free cartoon band aids so I would be able to receive my "peace of mind journey". You see they're doing a special right now that if you bring in a new children's book or a box of children's band aids you get this extra treatment. I'm not an inconsiderate late person. I always call to inform those waiting on me that I'm running late. The girl that answered the phone sounded a little shrill. I didn't think much of it. I arrived around 10:15 and walked into the store. It was a mess! The glass wall side of the store was empty. All those glass shelves were totally bare. There was a window washer there. The other side of the store was stocked like it always is but added to all the normal merchandise was all the stuff from the glass shelves. To top it off, they just had received a shipment. Covering the floor of the store was about 40 boxes. The poor girl was not off to a good start.

I cheerfully said, "Good Morning, I'm Nicole Carmines, your 10 o'clock".
"Hello, I'll be right with you. Have a seat, please"
I sat down and to myself let out a little "hmmf!"
Then she looked at me and asked in her no nonsense tone, "So, tell me about your skin." Very gruff. Not my skin.....her attitude. I quickly let her know that I'd be glad to leave and call to reschedule with someone else. I wasn't going to let her be that rude to me and get away with it. She could hear the irritation in my voice and apologized and then began to explain the situation. The 90 minute version of her morning, her boyfriend, her entire life! I feel bad for barking back the way I did. She was a sweet girl and she was just having a bad, bad morning. All in all, I left there feeling refreshed and like I had peace of mind.

I Love Shrimp Paisano!!

Tuesday I worked and was very tired from Monday night's confirmation banquet. After work I went home and worked with Nathan in the backyard for a little while. He wanted to plant another Japanese Maple tree. I told you he loves them!

We planted it in a pot. It's still very, very small. Once it gets big enough we'll put it in the ground in our backyard. Zeta loves it when we're out in the yard with her. She gets so excited and seems like she's proudly showing off her territory.

Anyway, after that we came inside and washed up to go to dinner with TJ and Rachel. We went to Paisano's! I love their Shrimp Paisano. It's so yummy! Here we are at dinner. We had a great time!

On a side note, they found out that they are having a little girl!! Here's TJ right before he left to go meet Rachel for their sonogram.

Baby Shower in New Braunfels

Nathan's family got together for a baby shower in New Braunfels on Sunday afternoon for his cousin, Karen. It was the most "guy friendly" baby shower I've ever been to!

It was in a bar.

They served delicous brisket tacos.

Cold beer was flowing and on tap.

The Spurs game was on! The only sad thing was the Spurs lost. Bad!

In fact, the baby shower wasn't technically a "baby shower". The mother to be, Karen (Nathan's cousin), explained to us that it was technically a "baby PARTY". I asked her what the difference was between a baby shower and a baby party and she simply told me, "This will be a cool party. Not GAY like typical showers". Hee Hee!

She looked so beautiful and I think she had fun. We had a great time visiting everyone.

Happy Fiesta!

It's Fiesta time in San Antonio! The city practically shuts down to have a huge party and it always falls around my birthday so it makes for a fun time with friends! Fiesta is huge and spans over 10 days. There are about 100 events from NIOSA, Oyster Bake, Alamo Heights Night, Fiesta Nueva (@St. John's), Texas Cavaliers River Parade and Battle of Flowers Parade just to name a few. There are about 3.5 million people that attend all these events.

There's one event that isn't listed on the official Fiesta Website that should be and that's Concordia's Day Care and Tiny Tots parade. Lucky for you, I went to it and took some pictures...


















Later that night I went to NIOSA. Again. It's probably been about 10 years since I've gone on a Thursday night. Thursday night of NIOSA is known as "college night". I like to call it jail bait, high school under-age drunk fest. You know those shirts that are blousy around the tummy but then have a band that goes around your hips and butt? I always thought those were supposed to be worn with leggings. Nope. Not at NIOSA. Girls just wear them alone. Just a shirt. No pants. No skirt. No leggings. I guess if guys can wear their jeans and belts tightened around the bottom of their bum then girls can wear just a shirt and call it a complete outfit.

Here are some girls with a more sophisticated "style". We had fun!!





On a side note, today at work, TJ and I thought we'd try and play a joke on Joy since she's always hiding under our desk to scare us or jump out from a corner. Since she's pregnant we didn't want to scare her really bad. Here's a harmless joke involving a phone, a piece of tape, me and TJ...

Another year

Yesterday was my birthday. I had a wonderful day! I went to work in the morning and then Kelly and Clint took us to eat lunch down on the Riverwalk at Boudros
It was one of the best meals I've ever had. The presentation, flavor, atmosphere was wonderful.

They make their guacamole table-side. It's out of this world. I ordered a seafood tostada and a side salad. It was all delicious....




After lunch Nathan wanted to take me by a certain intersection downtown he recently came across. Check this out...

After our time downtown we went home. While I freshened up Nathan put together a scavenger hunt with my birthday gifts. He's so thoughtful and fun!! It started at the mailbox (Juno movie) then off to the laundry room (Notebook movie) then to the air conditioning unit outside (a Woodwick candle) and finally to our compost pile out back ( A NEW CAMERA!!) I got a new Kodak easy share camera and I love it. It's smaller than my Kodak easy share I have now and it's an 8.1 megapixal whereas my old one is 4 mpix. Plus, my old one has a jacked up battery door flap. This ditz on our whale watching tour in Sydney broke it when she bumped into Nathan.


After I opened my gifts some friends came over to hang out before we went downtown for NIOSA. A good friend of mine from work heads up the Yak-i-tor-i chicken booth down at NIOSA. We had a great time and it was a great "birthday party" downtown!













Here's Joy on the VIA Park N Ride. She snagged the Rosa Parks seat. You can see it made her feel special. I was also so glad to have Amy and Mike join us. She is feeling so much better. Thank You, God! She has more picutes on her camera and I'll post them soon.

All in all....a great, great start to my 34th year.

Happy Birthday, Tommy!

Tommy's birthday is April 21st. He was born 9 years and 1 day before me. In fact, I think I've heard the story of how my mom had to leave right after Tommy's 9th birthday party to go to the hospital to have me. I guess you could say I was his best gift that year.

To celebrate Tommy's birthday (and mine) we went to Ding How for dinner with Tommy and Chris, her boys, her parents, mom & mamo.. We had a great time. Even though Tommy turned 43 he proved that he's still a kid at heart. Check out his PJ pants...

During dinner we got to scope out the rock on Christine's hand. Wow! Nice job, Tommy! It's amazing!

Our weekend

This weekend Larry's son Sam came in for a visit from Mississippi with his wife Michelle and their grandson Aaron. We met for breakfast on Saturday at Magnolia Pancake Haus. It's a great Saturday brunch place. Just be ready to WAIT for a table. My goodness! Nathan had to go to work but met up with me, Joy, Brad and Kari for a movie when he got off at night. We saw 88 minutes with Al Pacino. It was good but it was scary and twisted. I think I had some nightmares.

Here's a little sneak peak of what my Sunday mornings look like...
PK-5th grade. 18 Sunday school classrooms. 300 kids. 30+ teachers. A lot of fun!






After church Nathan and I met Dad and Ludi for lunch. They drove down to take us out to celebrate my birthday. My actual birthday was Tuesday but they work and we had a busy day planned. We went to Paloma Blanca.....one of my new favorite restaurants.