January Album of the Month

Yes!!! I'm getting this in just under the wire. We still have 31.5 hours of January left!

For the past 2 weeks I have lost an hour of my Thursdays that I can never have back. And the worst part of it is that I plan to continue in this lifestyle for 4 more weeks. Yes, it's the final episodes of the OC, which, let's be honest, has thankfully been cancelled. I shamelessly admit that Missy hooked me to the teeny-bopper show while we were in college and I have developed a true loyalty to it through the good (Season 1), the bad (Peter Gallagher's eyebrows - don't hurt me Rebs), and the ugly (the last two episodes). I have been simply astounded that it actually continues to get worse and worse, if that's possible. The past two weeks have actually made me dream longingly for the days of Mischa Barton and her awkward hands.



That's definitely stooping to a low point. BUT, I have to say, the OC continues to be a benchmark with its outstanding musical selections. So 2 weeks ago, it was like a breath of fresh air to hear a song from this month's album in the midst of an otherwise pain-inflicting hour. I think it was during the dream sequence where Seth was discovering what his inner animal was . . . yeah. I'm not even kidding about that.

As usual, I have to give credit to Adam for introducing me to this month's artist, Tally Hall, and their album Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.


I have truly been thinking about this one all month and trying to figure how to describe them. Hmmm . . . quite tricky. This article describes them as mix between Queen, Weezer, and the Beatles. They're just excellant and I'm not sure how else to say it. They have such an eclectic and upbeat sound that everyone is bound to find at least one song that you like . . . that is if you can embrace a small dose of the weird and whimsical. Be sure to visit their website and click on the cassette tape for a short sample of each song.

Here's the monthly breakdown:

Artist: Tally Hall (named after their local mall food court in Michigan)
Album: Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
Album Release: November 2005
Time of Possesion: ummm . . . several months but I've only been listening to it intently for about 2 months
How I feel when listening to Tally Hall: happy, possibly even delighted
Favorite Tracks:#2 - Greener, #6 - Be Born, but overall a very solid album through and through
Friends who would NOT like this album: my brother Daniel (he claims he's more of a Hillary Duff kind of guy - listen to the sample of Two Wuv for clarification)
Friends who would like this album: Any of Adam's brothers, most specifically Mike, and possibly the Richies (if they haven't owned the album for 3 years already despite the fact that its only been released for 1)

Dec Album update: Patty Griffin has a new album coming out on Feb.6 - yes we are all quite thrilled. And even better, she is playing at the Hotel Cafe in LA on Feb.13 (it was already sold out by the time that I discovered it - anyone have connections? I'm DYING to go!!) and also at the Alabama Theater on Feb. 17 - if you care at all about good music and you live within driving distance of Birmingham, you should go, and tell me all about it so I can live vicariously.

Rosenbaum Christmas

It was a year of firsts at the Rosenbaum family Christmas:

Everyone's first Christmas in the new house.
My first Christmas as a Rosenbaum.
Sydney's first Christmas in the world!


Little did I know that quite the ordeal awaited me when we arrived on Christmas morning. Apparently, there's this little family tradition that everyone forgot to mention to me that the newest member of the family gets the honor of passing out presents. No big deal, right? Oh, contrare, my friends. I grew up one of 3 where as Adam grew up one of FIVE which makes this process a mite more complicated. You see, rather than gifttags, the Rosenbaums use a special wrapping paper code. Each member of the family has their own designated paper, so now that we are up to 10 people with this the year's additions of Sydney and I, its a lot to keep track of! This shows only a fraction of the mounds of gifts (you'll notice that they are arranged to be oh so aethstetically pleasing - Melissa's specialty):


We started doing the math of how many family members there could potentially be in say, 10 years . . . lets just say thats a lot of cinnamon rolls!! Sorry Mimi!!

So, needless to say, Andy was more than happy to pass me the torch after a couple of years of being on duty. I'm hoping that Matt gets married this year so his wife can be the designated gift distributor next Christmas! In the end it was actually quite fun and (with a little help from my husband), I think I managed to distribute the correct giftcards, DVD's, and galoshes (thats right - Mike got galoshes) to the correct recipients.

One of our favorite gifts was from Andy and Melissa - they got us this great vintage-style poster of the Plantation where we got married. It's from the Spirit of Nashville collection that has tons of great posters of some of Nashville's landmarks. What a great gift!!


Sydney got her first red wagon - just like her mommy got on her first Christmas. Ok, maybe not just like. Who knew that Radio Flyers now come complete with seatbelts, 2 passenger seats, and cupholders? I'm expecting an iPod connection by the time we have kids.


It's hard to tell if Sydney or Mimi is more excited. Ok, I think it was Mimi. But Sydney was definitely totally psyched about the red wagon's box! Almost as much as Uncle Adam . . .



Th morning after Christmas we managed to get everyone in the same place for a yummy breakfast at Noshville. Here are Dan and Mike looking very dapper in their stripes (and very excited to be up at 8am for family time!):

Sydney loves Uncle Matthew:

It was such a great few days of spending time with family and relaxing. We saw several great movies (Dreamgirls, The Holiday, Little Miss Sunshine, Family Stone - all quite excellant). I finally finished Harry Potter 4 which I have been reading since last August or so - definitely my favorite so far. And we spent a lot of time, believe it or not, watching and being entertained by Sydney.

We had such a fun first Christmas together with each other and with our families! Can't wait for #2!! Merry Belated Christmas!

First loves die hard

Courtney and I are looking for a good hip hop class. Anyone got any tips? Preferably not at a gym that you have to be a member of . . .

Let me know if you'd like to join us . . . Brittany? No?

Speaking of . . . yes. I do love JLo's new show DanceLife.

Catching up . . .

I am quickly falling behind on my blogging. Lots to share and never enough time. First in the announcements of the day, we welcome Katie and Shae to the blogging world. Check with them on announcements and updates from the world of new parents, as their daughter Annabelle is coming any minute now!! That's right, Katie got induced this afternoon so we are all anxiously awaiting Annabelle's arrival.

Now, to play a little catch-up, I know that you are all dying to see some pictures from Christmas break. So here we go.

It was our first dual-family holiday. Always a little tricky, but I think it went quite nicely. We got to spend several days with both families, starting with mine.

I love Christmas at my parents' house. My mom is the master of decorating, cooking, and making us all feel special when all the kids pile back home for the holidays. Dan was home from college, Anne and George and their beagle Bailey were in from Birmingham, and Mom, Dad and our maltese Gracie were all waiting to welcome us home. It was the first time that we've all been in one place since our wedding, and was nice to just hang out and not have any official events to go to! Here are some of the highlights of our time together:

1) The Tri-Cake Tournament: No, this isn't a contest where cakes battle each other in a variety of baking challanges (can you tell I finished HP4 over break?), but rather where we sought to once and for all put to rest the issue of "Which Coconut Cake recipe is the best?" Mom makes it every year, with much more success than I had at Thanksgiving, and is constantly debating which of her 3 favorite recipes takes the Prize. So this year we put it to rest by sampling all three, putting our votes in the hat, and hearing the results read in true Tribal Council format.



2) The First Annual Back of the Truck Ride: For the first time this year, all of us kept noticing a sign for a live nativity right in our very own neighborhood. So after Christmas Dinner, we all decided to go for a drive to view it. I think someone (probably me) made a joke about us hopping in the back of my brother's old truck so we could all fit in one car. But then we really did. Who knows how cold it was outside, but with parents and grandparents packed in the cab, and all 5 of us kids + 1 dog piled in the back, we went for a little spin around the neighborhood. Here's Anne, Dan, and Bailey enjoying the crisp night air.


Of course, it turned into a little longer of a trip when we realized how unbelievebly cold it would be with the wind blowing us, when my dad got a little turned around in the neighborhood we've lived in for almost 15 years, and when we got to the Nativity and it had already closed. But great bonding in the back of the F150, nonetheless.


3) Gifts from My Publisher: For several of our gifts this year, we decided to print MyPublisher books. Big fan. They are quick and very affordable. They have easy simple templates that you can just drop photos into, or if you go way overboard on projects like me, you can design each page yourself in Photoshop and upload as a single jpg. I had a blast designing the pages and it made me want to do more Graphic Design stuff like this. I think that I was infinitly more excited about them than the people who received them! Here are a couple of my favorite pages:


4) The Annual Cousins Picture but without the Annual Cousins Football Game: Every year at my grandmother's, we take the Annual Cousins Picture. This year, with the addition of Adam, we outgrew the couches and moved the photo outdoors to the playing field. Unfortunately, due to time restraints and injuries, the Annual Cousins Football Game didn't happen this year. Some of us were disappointed, but Daniel and Tyler were pumped, as that means that they have 1 more year to strategize about how to destroy the rest of us in the Winter '07 game.


And lastly, I'll close with the family Christmas picture. Another staple of any Lewis Christmas.


Check back for an update on the Rosenbaum Christmas. I think I tend to be a little what they call "long-winded" so I'll save the rest for another day!

It's nice to be a Rosenbaum

Ok, confess. You've all done it. Multiple times. You know . . . googled yourself. We all have an uncanny desire to know how important we are in the world of cyberspace . . . or if we exist at all.

It's a slow day at work so I decided to check myself and my new name out on Google. I definitely don't exist but here are some other Mary Rosenbaum's that do. Or maybe these are me and I just haven't told you all about my other secret identities as a

DOG BREEDER: Mary Rosenbaum - an expert pomeranian breeder producing many prize-winning canines including multiple Best In Show titles. I'm the one on the left holding the ribbon.



QUILT MAKER: Mary Rosenbaum - maker of the famous Kaleidoscope quilt (pictured below) from the late 19th century. A vital piece of Nebraskan history. I actually think this is super cool. I wonder if they'll let me have it . . . I did make it afterall.



FAITH MERGER: Mary Rosenbaum - Spokesperson for the Dovetail Institute, a support group for inter-faith marriages.



This is a great one - you know . . . Lewis and Rosenbaum. Thats about as inter-faith as it gets.



OPTOMETRIST: Mary Rosenbaum - Doctor of optometry in Jascksonville, Florida. In my free time, I enjoy gardening and riding my Honda Shadow motorcycle.

A Literal and Virtual Shower

Over Christmas break, we had a ball throwing a surprise literal and virtual shower for Shannon. What is this, you may ask. Let me explain.

We wanted to get together to do something special for Shannon because of the whole "I'm going to have a baby" thing. But, since our friends from SU days are scattered near and far, it was next to impossible to get everyone together in one place. So, we gathered those of us who could get together over Christmas (hence the literal shower) and had those who could not make it send gifts and photos from afar (hence the virtual shower). Here are some of our guests mingling: Melissa, Kelly, Claire, Callen, and Emily.


As everyone knows, I tend to be a little overly obsessive about surprises. No, not for myself - please don't. But I love surprising other people and watching them be surprised! The classic story is that freshman year of college, there was a girl who was getting a new car as a surprise out in front of our dorm (Vail circle). I was SO excited that I watched out of a hallmate's window for hours, just waiting for her (I had no idea who she was) to arrive. I cried once she actually came and saw it!

So of course, I felt a strong need to make our shower a surprise for Shannon. We enlisted the help of her mom, Robin. Always a little risky as she tends to get a little over-dramatic about things at times and thinks she's being quite subtle when she's really not. But she pulled it off perfectly and Shan was completely surprised! Here are Heather and I waiting for the mom-to-be to arrive:

It was such a fun time of hanging out with friends and catching up. We all ate Puffy Muffin chicken salad - yum! Shan opened all of her little presents for Samuel.
For old times' sake, a family picture:

We are all so excited for Shannon and Josh and looking forward to when Samuel arrives in April! We just hope that he hangs in there until after the family RV trip to Texas! But no worries, Shan, Dr. Yother agreed come along in case of emergencies!

Cool to quite cool

OK. So work with me here a little on this one. Maybe I'm just jumping on the bandwagon here with the whole Project Runway, Next Top Model, etc. craze. But, this is just so much fun to me that I could do it for hours (and maybe I have). I definitely do have a little fashionista in me and I suspect that you do, too.

Exhibit A: Nicole Richie wearing a orange argyle cropped sweater and gray leggings. Own it, Nicole, own it.

This and much more fun can be yours here: Stardoll.com. My only disappointment is that the website used to be called PaperDollHeaven.com which is a way better name. Basically you just pick a celebrity and then get to dress them up exactly like a paper doll. Its fabulous, and oh, the fun to be had with layering. Its amazing.

Exhibit B: Scarlett Johanson - not sure how to spell her name but supposedly she is my nearest celebrity-look-alike (either her or the little girl in My Girl). I thought it might be fun to dress me . . . I mean her up.



Then, to top it all off, I discovered that there is a place where you can design yourself, as well, not completely unlike Nintendo Wii. Or is that part called Mii? Or Me? Not sure. Anyway, here's the best I could do. What do you think? Convincing? I haven't figured out how to actually do the dress-me-up part on the one of myself that I created. Probably you have to become a member of StarDoll.com, and I'm not sure if I'm prepared to stoop THAT low. Ok, probably I am. I'll keep you posted.



I know that you are a little skeptical but give it a try. You will love it. Or at least maybe your 5-year-old will.

Why 2007 Will be Excellant Despite the Fact that Burt's on the Bluff is Closing

Now, I know that 2007 has gotten off to a rough start for some of us. It ushered in the news that the beloved Burt's on the Bluff in Birmingham has been bought and closed. But I submit that there are lots of reasons to be excited about 2007, such as:

Mark and Emily's wedding! I mean, seriously, how long has this been coming for? Like 15 years or something like that? Let's all say it together: FINALLY! Sunny Orlando, here we come!
I can't help but take a little bit of credit for this one with a little something I like to call "The Intentional Bouquet Toss". I think that is what pushed them over the edge.

Annabelle Grace - Coming soon to a hospital near you! I heard that there is a pool going for what day she will arrive. Entry fee is $1000 and all proceeds go directly to Annabelle.


Nintendo Wii - No, we don't own it, but the Rutenbars AND Witts do - why do you think that we hang out with them? We pretty much did nothing else but play it all of New Year's Eve. Highlights include creating characters on Nintendo Wii, playing doubles tennis on Nintendo Wii, boxing on Nintendo Wii, and watching Jonathan throw a Nintendo Wii controller at the plasma TV. I'm not so much the video game type, but wow. I'm a big fan. Don't get me wrong, its no power pad . . . but its mighty close. And yes, my arm was sore the next day from my killer forehand.




Rachel and Jonathan's Wedding: Yay for marrying high school sweethearts! Again, I think this one has been coming for about 15 years, too!


The Country Music Marathon: Yes, folks. It's true. After our overwhelming success at the Dana Point Turkey Trot, we have decided to run the Country Music Marathon - or at least half of it, anyway. What could be more fun than getting up every morning bright and early for a quick little 5-10 mile run? I figured if we are ever going to tackle something like this, now is the time in our lives to do it. We were so inspired over Christmas by our siblings - Anne and George are training for a mini-triathlon and Andy is training for the full marathon, so we figured it's time for us to jump on the band wagon. I'm not quite sure what I've signed myself up for, but here we go!

Samuel David: Yay, yay! Samuel will be arriving in late March/ early April and will be delivered in one of two places:
a) a hospital in Louisville
b) the back of an RV in the middle of Texas


Visitors to SoCal: We are immensely looking forward to visits from the following people: DLew, The Platts, Matty, The Davenports, the Albertsens, Mither and Sallie, the Lawtons, the Malones, Missy, The Hesters, Reba, the Hinsons, the Richies, the Martins, both sets of parents, and anyone else that we can coerce into coming! Southwest has $69 each way right now from Nashville to OC!

Sydney Rose turns 1: Our precious little niece is turning 1 in just a couple of days! We are looking forward to her walking and talking!


Regardless of what 2007 brings, we are super excited that it probably does not hold (knock on wood): moving across the country, planning a wedding, buying a house, or changing residences mutliple times. Happy 2007!

My husband will love this . . .

I love a good quiz. Which character from the (now cancelled - sniff sniff) OC are you? Haley. What color are you? Ok, the OC one is the only one I know off the top of my head.

Found this today on my soon-to-be-former neighbor Jason's blog. Probably the more interesting thing about this quiz is that I only know who 3 of them are. Luckily, one of them is my result.

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% Robin 77% Supergirl 58% The Flash 50% Spider-Man 40% Batman 40% Wonder Woman 38% Green Lantern 30% Iron Man 25% Catwoman 25% Hulk 20%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

For all the Eagles out there . . .

Here's a special treat for Brentwood Academy alum . . . alumnae . . . alumni . . . ummm . . . obviously Miss Hill's Latin class didn't teach me too much. But this class certainly did!