and i'm kind of a homebody.

there's no place i'd rather be than sleeping in my own bed at night with my man. you've gotta do what you've gotta do though, and i really do always have a nice time when i travel as well. mostly because i work with some pretty amazing people.

one of my trips across texas this past month was to corpus christi.
camping on the beach seems like a fantastic idea in theory. the sunrise, the sound of the waves, the sand between your toes, etc...

well it turns out that it's the sand part that's the problem. that combined with 90 mph winds made for a very sandy weekend indeed!

no doubt though, the view was worth it. lots of fun was had by all. and you seriously can't beat an easter sunrise service right on the water!


you just kind of have to embrace the sand and the nasty though.
good times.

look what just came in the mail!!

ok, so if you tilt your head to the left, you will see it's a book about one of my immigrant ancestors at Jamestown!

the history geek in me is totally on cloud 9!

i can't wait until i get some free time to crack this baby open!! :)

ok, i'm not a sporty person.
i can't even get interested in football or baseball.

but today i was glued to the tv during the world cup cricket final.
amazing game. wonderful show of real teamwork and determination... i'm so proud of india!


congrats for winning the 2011 cricket world cup!

if anyone is married to an indian, then cricket automatically becomes a part of your life.

no, not the insects.

i mean the sport. if you still don't know what i'm talking about, just imagine the mother of baseball on crack. in india its almost closer to being a cult than entertainment. let's just suffice it to say that indians are passionate about their cricket.


and when india plays it's arch rival...pakistan... that just takes the crazy to a whole new level.
especially if it's in the cricket world cup semifinals!

which is what happened today.
which is why i stayed up all night to watch cricket for 9+ hours in a theater with my husband and desi friends!


thank you to india for making it worth my while, and thank you pakistan for playing a truly great game! both sides should be proud.


now we're off to the finals...which india hasn't won since 1983!
i think i should get instant wife points for knowing that... :)

so this past weekend, staining the fence and deck seemed like a good idea.
staining is just like painting, right? yeah maybe...at least what painting must be like in hell!

the deck stain was all worn and splintery, so since that definitely needed done, we just decided to do the fence too while we were at it. sure, why not? one thing i've learned since being a homeowner is that fences are stupid expensive, and we didn't want to have to replace ours anytime soon...even though it's already on the old side. so it's better to just take care of it and squeeze as much life out of it as possible.


i quickly discovered that the difference between staining and painting is that staining requires loooots more wood prep! the first step was stripping. (the wood, not us!) this was like toxic death. we used a chemical instead of a sander, and that stuff was intense! i small splatter flew up and hit my cheek, and burned straight through my skin! fortunately only the deck required stripping since the fence had never been treated... i would have quit right after the deck if the fence had needed it too! the stripping then required scrubbing the old stain off with a rough brush...creating a serious mess!

the next step was just the overall wood prep to kill mildew and get rid of the worn parts of the wood. this required scrubbing both the fence and deck with another chemical.

seriously toxic job. a few brain cells were lost. and my arms are still feeling it.


this pic was taken at about the super low point. crrrrazy rough. we're covered in liquid fence mildewy gunk. some of us more than others...hmmm....

but everything actually looked kind of awesome after this phase. i was half tempted to just call it a day. but then i would have cried in a few months when everything looked funky again.


the wood on the right is how the wood looked all prepped! it's like a miracle! it took years off the fence! (i forgot to take a pic before we started staining though, so just ignore the other part!)

so then we stained. and stained. and stained some more.

but finally...5 days and many sore muscles later, we made it! at least mostly. don't ask me about the neighbor's side that we haven't gotten to yet...i might cry. i'll think about it later when i'm recovered.




i must say that i'm truly happy with the outcome. it's like everything is brand new!
but never again people. never again.
i'm just praying that next time this needs done we'll have fallen into some money and can hire someone to do it. because seriously... i can work hard. i'm a texas girl... but that was rough.

so please admire.
and i'm sorry. i love you... but i won't help you stain yours!

history is cool.

i basically just stumbled across a huge genealogical gold nugget in my family.
and no, i'm not related to oprah. ;)

i still think it's pretty awesome though...

but first, part the of awesomeness of this is the way that i found out.
as i mentioned previously, i've kind of been on this genealogy kick lately. i don't really know what i'm doing, but it's been fun to dabble in.

since my dad and aunt had traced back our family pretty far on some lines, i basically decided to cheat a little. i figured on the lines that go the furthest back, there would more likely be some research already done out there...since there would be a bigger pool of descendants to work with.

so i started searching around for the name of one of our further back ancestors.
william capps. born in 1724. my 7th great grandfather.

that's all we really knew about him...except for that his son was also named william capps (my 6th great grandpa), and he was married to a zilpha bulls.

when i searched these names i ran across the title of a book:
William Capps of Jamestown, VA, his Johnston Co., NC Descendants, and his Bulls and Rains Kin

Capps? Bulls? That all sounded familiar.

so i went to my local library to see if i could get an interlibrary loan or something for that book.
no dice. apparently libraries won't loan out genealogical materials.

but i got my library to give me a list of the libraries in the US that did carry the book...
there were only like 4...and they were all in NC, VA, or DC. not cool.

so i thought maybe at least i could get a librarian somewhere to check in the index of the book for me so that i could see if it was something worth tracking down.

i randomly called the first library on the list.
i had them transfer me to the genealogy department, where i gave the librarian all the info i had. he was really helpful, and he said he'd look into it and call me back to let me know if the book had any of my ancestors listed in it.

that was a couple weeks ago. fast forward to today.

i spoke to the library again.
the librarian of the genealogy department happened to have the last name Rains. he told me he had some good news for me. the book was indeed about my family, and it was also about his! we were related!

how crazy is that?! what a small world.
for me it filled in so many missing gaps of a mystery, and apparently it did for him as well!

so, to tell you a bit about our ancestor, we've finally traced back our first immigrant on that line of the family!

william capps, born in 1575 in norwich, england, was one of the original jamestown colonists. he was on the ship, the sea venture, which ship wrecked in bermuda on it's way to virginia. that shipwreck was actually the inspiration of shakespeare's play, "The Tempest".


they rebuilt the wreckage from the ship into two smaller ships after several months in bermuda, and finally made their way to jamestown... where he was on the first virginia council, and traveled back and forth from england with a message from king james!

ironically, 160 years later, his namesake and descendant would fight in the american revolution to be free of the british government.

history is pretty cool.
especially when it becomes personal.

so now i'm inspired to unravel more family stories. the irish side, the german side, the native american side, and who knows what else there is to discover!

ok, so remember a couple months ago when i posted about my brother planning to make me a headboard?!

well, that headboard is now living behind my bed!


for my birthday, my lil bro said he would make a headboard for me out of an old door from our family home.


i love old doors. they certainly dont make them like they used to. this one is probably 50 years old, and there isn't a single nail in it. the door is just pieces of wood locked in perfectly together to make the panels.

anyways. i love it! it's such a special gift!

and to make things even more awesome, he added shelves and back lighting!!



that solves my night stand issues! since our bed fits right in between two windows, there's really been no place for a nightstand with out blocking something. so alas, we have gone without...

and the result has usually been piles of books on the floor, and junk getting lost in the abyss under our bed...or getting dragged under there and destroyed by the under-the-bed monster...aka bindi.

oh, and i just have to brag for a second...the back lighting has 3 levels of brightness that is activated by touch! and guess what we touch to turn it on? the old door hinges! my bro is not only handy, but he's also smart!


and let me just tell you...that back lighting sets an awesome mood in there! my crappy cell phone pics don't do it justice...


so now that i have my headboard, i'm thinking again what kind of art or decor to use to fill in the blank space over the bed. the previous stuff we had there just looks too dinky now next to the headboard.

also, the headboard sticks out about a foot from the wall since it has the shelves and lighting and all back there, so i'm trying to think of multi-dimensional solutions to fill the space as well.

for the moment though i have a few moorish lanterns just hanging there. not sure if they'll stay or not, but i got a super crazy steal on them for $1 each, so that made them look pretty good to me for now!


i had another idea though that may be just really stupid, or it may be totally awesome...that's how most of my decorating ideas usually are it seems. but what if we put a long narrow planter back there against the wall and grew some tall indoor bamboo?? too crazy?? too creepy?

hmmm...i'm open to suggestions.
but anyways...thank you lil' bro! i love you!