the best compliment i have ever received

While sitting in the car chatting (apparently about fashion),

My dear friend, Rose: "Well, I really learned how to layer from watching you."

In honor of that fabulous compliment, I guess I will never wear just one shirt at a time ever again.

Thank you, Mr. President(s)!

I love president's day weekend.

First, my girl, Rutha, came for a Friday visit. Her trip involved the best 8 hours spent doing nothing ever. We lounged on the couch and took what felt like a million bathroom breaks (actually, it just meant we sat on the couch all day long) - it was perfect.

Then Noel and I went to the greatest and most magical place I have ever been, the Sugar Tree Inn.Our weekend involved many naps. Yes, on Sunday, we ate breakfast, and then went back to bed for 2 1/2 hours. If only we could get away with that in real life. We spent our time in their magical robes and on our first night Noel took a longggg time building a fire with toilet paper to then realize the next day (with dismay) there was a fire starter kit. Duh.

Our only real activity involved a serious hike. Literally, we hiked up a mountain, in which I did slip several times and almost fell a few more times. I almost turned around several times, except there was a woman in front of us carrying a LARGE toddler on her back, and I was unwilling to believe she could climb the mountain and I could not. Pride can get you so many places, including to the top of Crabtree falls! I was hoping we would see one of these guys, but no such luck.

Noel and I were like boy scouts together, singing camping songs and eating pb and js with our freezing hands.

We had all packed up and were about 9 minutes away from the inn when we realized we hadn't taken any pictures of the wilderness and us in it! So, we turned around to take some lovely pics with our epilectic camera to share with you all ( actually just Isis since I think she is one of the only person who reads this blog).

I love Noel's gigantic grin replacing the "Blue" in "Blue Ridge."

Noel is a goober in all these pictures, and I love it.

Hubs, guest blogger

Due to popular demand, I will not delete hacked in blogpost.


It is called NoofandNoel anyways.

WHAT SHE ISN'T TELLING YOU

Greetings faithful blog readers,
(yes I just said greetings)

As I'm sure you've all noticed NoofandNoel has a lot more Noof than Noel in it (part of the reason there are any faithful followers, trust me) and as you may have guessed Nefret leaves a lot out.

I'm not going to try to "correct" the blog's entire history now but I do want to point one thing out. In ancient Egyptian, the name Nefretiti means "Beauty has Come" (Nefer="Beauty" and Titi="Come"). The queen named Nefretiti was given her name later in life because the Egytians believed she was the most beautiful women they had ever seen (Neferet means "most beautiful"). Pharaoh had his pick of the whole country but his choice was obvious, lets just say I know how he felt.

For the sake of narcissism

For those of you who haven't heard, this is what I am currently reading:



This is exciting for two reasons: nobody has my name. NOBODY. When I was a young child, I would pretend my name was Melissa and buy the key chains/random trinket at ocean city with my "name", Melissa, on it just to fit in.

So, as you can imagine, I was ecstatic when this was one of the titles in the elite "front table" at the Richmond Barnes and Noble.
And you wouldn't have imagined my horror when it wasn't at said noted table in the Charlottesville Barnes and Noble.
I filed a strong complaint, found copies of Nefertiti in the stacks (who gets books from there anyways?!), and then sneakily started my own pile of Nefertiti books on the elite table. Noel watched this all from afar, amused and as he said "not surprised."

If anyone wants to read along with me, feel free to start on page 177 when Nefertiti is rumored to be refered to as "Neferet" by the townspeople, an even better and hotter name that Nefertiti. ( !!!!!!) I almost peed my pants.

All to say, it is good for my ego.

Lets back track to December...

15 hours in the chicago o'hare airport, crappy chinese food and its' consequential stomach ache, and a lost drivers license (yes, I had to go to the dmv AGAIN and take another crazy non-smiling picture of myself) later, we finally made it to Lincoln, NE for Christmas.

This is what we did.



After 5 days in the blinding snow with lots of wonderful crazy indoor quality time, we went swimming with the Visedal ( visedal.org) children in Managua, Nicaragua.

This is our little girl we sponsor, Ana. She is wearing the cutest hooded towel in the whole entire world.






Noel is smiling so big his eyes are closed and we are all so sweaty, but that pretty much summarizes the trip anyways. Thanks, dy-lan, for becoming friends with all those sweet kiddies...they are the bomb.

PS- Dylan gave me the job of giving the older girls a "growing up/ sex talk", which really included me reminding the girls to be careful with their bodies over and over again. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I do not have the spanish vocabulary to go any further than that.

NOEL was born....

TODAY ! 25 YEARS AGO !



This is Abraham Lincoln's favorite cake ( with its own flavor suited for Noel)

Yes, this does say Happy Day. The B did not fit in my sloppy chocolate-shell handwriting.

It was well enjoyed by our friends and half left if anyone wants to try Abe's fave!