TA DA! Here's the proof. I only got a trim, nothing drastic. 
Funny how life works. Every time I get a haircut (couple times a year) Nate happens to be out of town. Oh did I mention he isn't the biggest fan of surprises either. Thankfully, I'm not very theatrical when it comes to my hair. Love the curls, honestly I'd rather jump out of an airplane than do something drastic to my hair. 'Course that doesn't mean I stay out of trouble while the mister's away. That's half the fun of having a traveling man--the projects I can get done while he's gone. I'll be the first to admit it. My name is Sarah Kay and I'm an HGTV addict.
My little girl gave me the sweetest gift yesterday. While I was loading the car, I called to Sophia--distractedly, to pick up her doodle-pad laying on the sidewalk. But of course it didn't come out like that. I ended up saying "Sophia, can you pick up your. . . thing?"
Photography is not my art, and my simple camera hardly does her justice. But after this afternoon's delight I begin to understand the obsession to capture these moments of innocence
She maybe be Chadian by birth but she's Iowan by practicality. . .
No this isn't a comment on my intuitive abilities. It's a thank you to the GREATEST COUSIN EVER! I'm always touched when anyone in my family checks out my blog. But my cousins creative talent & taste makes me ever so thrilled that he's a regular reader. (Yes I know he probably wants see pictures of his little cousin but this is my moment people.) You've probably seen his work on the Super Bowl, he's the guy who gets you watching shows like Lost, Alias, Monk even Psych (if you've never watched any of these shows I'm not sure we can be friends.) Kelly modestly claims he has the best job in the world, because he gets to watch TV all the time, but see some of his work and you'll consider him gifted too!
Mom & Sophia are tag-teaming G.G. Mom's her massage-therapist and now Sophia's her trainer! Mom's wanted to get G.G. in the pool to strengthen legs & hips. But you know any daughter doesn't have the pull grand kids do, or great-grand-kids in this case! The whole family "visited" the pool area in their gorgeous 55+ community. (I'm serious people it's GORGEOUS! In their 1 bedroom they're kitchen is bigger than mine! And they get 2 meals a day at this great restaurant! Someone else cleans, they have a movie theatre, gym and a pool! I'm trying to get into the apartment next door!) 
In my opinion, Sophia & the lady in the bookstore were both angels this afternoon. Both made my day especially with Nate's increased travel schedule, Sophia's great behavior has been a gift from God. Have any of you ever tried to shop in a book store with a two year old? I remember being annoyed at mother's who would shop being so oblivious about their children. It's been a sensitive spot for me. 
Monday mornings mean an early flight for Nate & a tearful goodbye for Sophia. "I want to go too!" Is a common refrain in our house especially at the mere mention of airplanes. This morning my incredible husband invited us to join him for breakfast. It wasn't the first time we've eaten at the airport. Last week we had lunch with Nate while he waited for a delayed flight. I guess we made an impression because the waitress recognized us and gushed over Sophia. It was a wonderful family moment. Sophia practiced her colors over a bowl of Fruit Loops while Nate & I sipped coffee and marveled at articulate she's gotten. Sophia & Nate LOVE airplanes. So the view couldn't be better. But it was the company, the added moments with daddy, that made Sophia's day. At the last minute before he walked through security a familiar refrain lilted across the airport. "Daddy whe-R U?" Followed by lotz of blown kisses. This time it was a much easier to say goodbye. Especially when there's an escalator ride!
God answer's prayers in unusual ways, this I've known. But I'll admit I didn't expect this when I began to pray about my health. Now that my beautiful little girl is reaching two and a half, I can't blame all my poor health on motherhood. There is a reason that Fibromyalgia is linked with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ever since I heard the term, I've believed that CFS would be a fate worse than death) It really culminated when I was only functioning between 11am-3pm the rest of the time was an exhausted fog. Even with the improvements that anti-depressants gave me it wasn't enough. There had to be a better way. At the moment I'm so thankful to have a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm in the process of some radical lifestyle changes and have been rewarded with more energy, and better able to process daily problems. I'll keep you posted as I go organic, or natural or whatever you want to call it. I call it hope.Here is a list of some of the more common symptoms of Fibromyalgia syndrome.
• Widespread Pain • Morning Stiffness
• Chronic abdominal bloating • TMJ (Temperomandibular Joint Syndrome)
• Sleep disorders • Skin complaints
• Depression • Muscle Twitches, Tingling and Weakness
• Myofascial Pain • Urinary and Pelvic Problems
• Cold Symptoms • Chest symptoms
• Chronic Headaches- disabling at times
• Memory loss • Nausea
• Dizziness • Chronic digestive problems
• Chronic anxiety • Chronic memory loss
• Chronic insomnia • Chronic muscle fatigue
• Chronic bedridden weakness and exhaustion
This is my new favorite recipe:
This beautiful hand-made piece of Rosemaling, created for our wedding by a dear friend. Mrs. Awes. I've never had a place to put it b/c I've never had a place for blue (sad but true)
Leftover bits from Paris, a street print and left over wine corks make my bulletin board looks sexy!
Covet thy neighbors. . . Iphone? 
"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine." 
Congratulations Nate on your last day! Eight great years at Duane Arnold! We're praying for you Monday as you start you latest venture! You deserve this new challenge! You're gonna be great!
"Speeding? I'd like to think of it as celebrating my fuel efficiency. . ."
Many of your have gushed about these incredible photo's that I've pasted up all over my site. Unfortunately I don't have ANY around my house because I can't choose. I want them all and I want them HUGE! (Tres chic let me tell you!) Like a SHRINE to Sophia! Many of you have also commented that if money weren't an issue, you'd gladly fly your child to Florida to have their pics taken by this genius who makes your children look as adorable as you believe they are. So I had to share some of the magic behind the scenes. 
If you think he looks like the autistic victim in Law & Order than you definitely don't have kids. Look closely parents-if you have a child between 1-5 you have a chance? Now imagine him in a green stripped rugby & khaki pants? Still nothing? Now picture him with an animated little dog. Yep--that's him Steve, from the original Blues Clues!
During a lull in the conversation the other day a little voice piped up from the backseat. "Are you a super-hero daddy?" It was adorable and completely caught him off guard. Nate's taken several days off to help me update our kitchen, just a little paint & new wood floors, but it's enough for me to consider him a saint. In fact, I may have gushed about daddy being a superhero. She certainly isn't interested in super-hero's unless SuperGrover counts? 
For
“The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s,” says Meyers. She is also a divorcée, following a 20-year marriage, who built her Hamptons house as “a gift to herself—no compromises—just her total vision of a peaceful life. Naturally, it’s a different mind-set than that of a woman who has been single or is part of a couple. There was no chance, for instance,” she chuckles, “that she was going to put a double sink in the bathroom.” Nor, for that matter, include an office. “The desk in her bedroom signifies she’s romantically shut down, in a stage of life where nothing’s going to be going on in the bedroom, so why not have a desk?”
The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing it down.
In other words, she is exactly the kind of dame primed for a romantic upset—who arrives in the form of music mogul Nicholson—“a chronic dater of young women,” says Meyers—who, upon showing up with Keaton’s daughter, Amanda Peet, for a Hamptons weekend, proceeds to collapse and get rushed by his hostess to the hospital, where his doctor happens to be Keanu Reeves. “It’s about people who know what the future holds—then find out it doesn’t, like Jack and Diane, who are falling in love late in life. This house is their desert island. If he hadn’t been stranded, he would never have noticed her.”
Though their five-room “island”—living room, dining room, two bedrooms and kitchen—originally called for a beach cottage, Meyers ended up “doing an elegant house, where I would like to live, with the feeling of ocean everywhere.” As a result, the interiors are awash in sea colors and blues. “They wanted me to go with white slipcovers,” says Meyers, “but this woman would say, ‘I don’t want slipcovers like everybody else.’ She was determined to be at the beach.”
Nancy Meyers’s most pressing conundrum was how to keep her film, an hour of which takes place in five rooms, from feeling like a stage play. “It’s about depth of field, constantly looking from room to room, out a window, believing the beach is beyond,” Meyers explains. “In one scene, where Jack is in the bedroom and Diane stands in the doorway, you see past her into the living room and kitchen. You shouldn’t feel claustrophobic.”
“Hamptons houses that size have space, simplicity and a certain austerity,” adds set decorator Beth Rubino, who, along with Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman, scouted hundreds of Long Island homes before settling on a Southampton beachfront (used for exterior shots only) that Rubino calls their “visual barometer.” “Nancy wanted a house that looked decorated,” she continues, “so we created something wonderful and homey, but chilling”—a feeling Nicholson picked up on when he first visited the set. “During wardrobe fittings,” re-calls Meyers, “I could see Jack was going toward shorts and polo shirts. So I said, ‘Let’s take a look at the house where you’ll be spending time,’ and as soon as we got there, he said, ‘Oh, I get it. No shorts.’”
It wasn’t Nicholson’s only melding with his make-believe environment. “Jack is a great art collector,” says Meyers, “and when he saw the original piece over the living room fireplace, he said, ‘You don’t have any of the great beach art,’ and turned us on to Edward Henry Potthast,” whose whimsical sand-and-umbrella landscape “is the centerpiece of the room. You don’t see it much, but its presence is felt.”
Presence is all when moviemakers are trying to make what is not real—seem so. For starters, movie homes automatically feature the permanent accoutrements of a camera and crew, whose accommodations require space and mobility, like the kitchen’s islands, easily zoomed around on casters. During her survey, Meyers noticed that all fabulous Hamptons houses had “blowout kitchens”— as does the director herself. “There’s a lot of action in the kitchen because lots of scenes in my life take place in mine, which, like the movie’s, is a little too big.”
“Diane’s character loves to cook, so we had to have a practical, functional kitchen,” says Rubino, “that could also hold a lot of people.” Even so, Meyers preferred to keep her walls right where they were. “I don’t like to take down walls because you always think, Where did that wall go? How did that camera get inside the refrigerator? I like to keep things real-looking.”
Which was no problem for the self-admitted perfectionist Rubino, an Academy Award nominee for
Take, for instance, the 3,000 books that Rubino shipped out from New York’s Strand Book Store. “Writers are passionate about books, so you don’t just get a collection of spines, you arrange them as an evolution of what Diane was reading: Is she interested in perennials, native beach plants, self- help? In the bedroom, where she’s working on a play, it’s all reference books. Though you only see books shot by shot”—indeed, a mezzanine loaded with tomes, categorized foot by foot, goes virtually unnoticed—“it builds depth for the set, making a very rounded environment for the actors.”
For her part, Meyers called friend and playwright Donald Margulies, demanding: “Tell me what’s on your desk,” a request that elicited a “highly detailed e-mail.” As a result, when the cast took their initial walk-through of their new “home,” “we had Diane’s plays, hardbound, sitting on her desk, along with scrapbooks filled with her clippings. Beth even sprayed suntan lotion around so they’d feel they’d just come in from the beach.”
When it came to the dining room, Rubino and Meyers reserved the place of honor for the 70-inch round table designed to adapt to a specific 360-degree shot. Nearby is a wall of plates, “beautiful but absolutely colorless except for one that has a little color, as Beth pointed out to me one day,” recalls Meyers. “Well, in the movie, Diane’s character collects beach stones, and there’s a scene where Jack indicates that they’re all white. She says, ‘I don’t collect only white. Oh, God, I didn’t know. Does that mean I’m controlling? Not adventurous?’ So he hands her a big, dark brown stone, saying, ‘Here’s something to remember me by.’” Art imitating art, perhaps? “Well, it made us laugh.”
The women’s collective sensibility was not lost on Diane Keaton. “Diane has a brilliant eye,” says Meyers. “I showed her the house empty, then with furniture, and both times she went crazy, which was great for me because it wasn’t really her taste.”
Clearly, Meyers and Rubino were exquisitely in sync. “Nancy is very involved in the visual process,” says Rubino. “She approved every fabric, every shape.” Upon hearing this compliment, Meyers laughs. “That’s code for ‘She’s a pain in the butt.’ But if you’ve spent a chunk of your life writing a character and someone puts them in the wrong clothes, or in a bed with sheets you know she would never own, it’s as if someone’s written dialogue. Sometimes you pick up more from what you’re seeing than hearing.”
The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing down fully appointed rooms where, for two and a half months, people lived and worked. “It’s horrible,” admits Meyers. “People say, ‘Go watch them tear it down,’ but I can’t. It’s simply too sad.”
Unlike
“The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s,” says Meyers. She is also a divorcée, following a 20-year marriage, who built her Hamptons house as “a gift to herself—no compromises—just her total vision of a peaceful life. Naturally, it’s a different mind-set than that of a woman who has been single or is part of a couple. There was no chance, for instance,” she chuckles, “that she was going to put a double sink in the bathroom.” Nor, for that matter, include an office. “The desk in her bedroom signifies she’s romantically shut down, in a stage of life where nothing’s going to be going on in the bedroom, so why not have a desk?”
The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing it down.
In other words, she is exactly the kind of dame primed for a romantic upset—who arrives in the form of music mogul Nicholson—“a chronic dater of young women,” says Meyers—who, upon showing up with Keaton’s daughter, Amanda Peet, for a Hamptons weekend, proceeds to collapse and get rushed by his hostess to the hospital, where his doctor happens to be Keanu Reeves. “It’s about people who know what the future holds—then find out it doesn’t, like Jack and Diane, who are falling in love late in life. This house is their desert island. If he hadn’t been stranded, he would never have noticed her.”
Though their five-room “island”—living room, dining room, two bedrooms and kitchen—originally called for a beach cottage, Meyers ended up “doing an elegant house, where I would like to live, with the feeling of ocean everywhere.” As a result, the interiors are awash in sea colors and blues. “They wanted me to go with white slipcovers,” says Meyers, “but this woman would say, ‘I don’t want slipcovers like everybody else.’ She was determined to be at the beach.”
Nancy Meyers’s most pressing conundrum was how to keep her film, an hour of which takes place in five rooms, from feeling like a stage play. “It’s about depth of field, constantly looking from room to room, out a window, believing the beach is beyond,” Meyers explains. “In one scene, where Jack is in the bedroom and Diane stands in the doorway, you see past her into the living room and kitchen. You shouldn’t feel claustrophobic.”
“Hamptons houses that size have space, simplicity and a certain austerity,” adds set decorator Beth Rubino, who, along with Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman, scouted hundreds of Long Island homes before settling on a Southampton beachfront (used for exterior shots only) that Rubino calls their “visual barometer.” “Nancy wanted a house that looked decorated,” she continues, “so we created something wonderful and homey, but chilling”—a feeling Nicholson picked up on when he first visited the set. “During wardrobe fittings,” re-calls Meyers, “I could see Jack was going toward shorts and polo shirts. So I said, ‘Let’s take a look at the house where you’ll be spending time,’ and as soon as we got there, he said, ‘Oh, I get it. No shorts.’”
It wasn’t Nicholson’s only melding with his make-believe environment. “Jack is a great art collector,” says Meyers, “and when he saw the original piece over the living room fireplace, he said, ‘You don’t have any of the great beach art,’ and turned us on to Edward Henry Potthast,” whose whimsical sand-and-umbrella landscape “is the centerpiece of the room. You don’t see it much, but its presence is felt.”
Presence is all when moviemakers are trying to make what is not real—seem so. For starters, movie homes automatically feature the permanent accoutrements of a camera and crew, whose accommodations require space and mobility, like the kitchen’s islands, easily zoomed around on casters. During her survey, Meyers noticed that all fabulous Hamptons houses had “blowout kitchens”— as does the director herself. “There’s a lot of action in the kitchen because lots of scenes in my life take place in mine, which, like the movie’s, is a little too big.”
“Diane’s character loves to cook, so we had to have a practical, functional kitchen,” says Rubino, “that could also hold a lot of people.” Even so, Meyers preferred to keep her walls right where they were. “I don’t like to take down walls because you always think, Where did that wall go? How did that camera get inside the refrigerator? I like to keep things real-looking.”
Which was no problem for the self-admitted perfectionist Rubino, an Academy Award nominee for
Take, for instance, the 3,000 books that Rubino shipped out from New York’s Strand Book Store. “Writers are passionate about books, so you don’t just get a collection of spines, you arrange them as an evolution of what Diane was reading: Is she interested in perennials, native beach plants, self- help? In the bedroom, where she’s working on a play, it’s all reference books. Though you only see books shot by shot”—indeed, a mezzanine loaded with tomes, categorized foot by foot, goes virtually unnoticed—“it builds depth for the set, making a very rounded environment for the actors.”
For her part, Meyers called friend and playwright Donald Margulies, demanding: “Tell me what’s on your desk,” a request that elicited a “highly detailed e-mail.” As a result, when the cast took their initial walk-through of their new “home,” “we had Diane’s plays, hardbound, sitting on her desk, along with scrapbooks filled with her clippings. Beth even sprayed suntan lotion around so they’d feel they’d just come in from the beach.”
When it came to the dining room, Rubino and Meyers reserved the place of honor for the 70-inch round table designed to adapt to a specific 360-degree shot. Nearby is a wall of plates, “beautiful but absolutely colorless except for one that has a little color, as Beth pointed out to me one day,” recalls Meyers. “Well, in the movie, Diane’s character collects beach stones, and there’s a scene where Jack indicates that they’re all white. She says, ‘I don’t collect only white. Oh, God, I didn’t know. Does that mean I’m controlling? Not adventurous?’ So he hands her a big, dark brown stone, saying, ‘Here’s something to remember me by.’” Art imitating art, perhaps? “Well, it made us laugh.”
The women’s collective sensibility was not lost on Diane Keaton. “Diane has a brilliant eye,” says Meyers. “I showed her the house empty, then with furniture, and both times she went crazy, which was great for me because it wasn’t really her taste.”
Clearly, Meyers and Rubino were exquisitely in sync. “Nancy is very involved in the visual process,” says Rubino. “She approved every fabric, every shape.” Upon hearing this compliment, Meyers laughs. “That’s code for ‘She’s a pain in the butt.’ But if you’ve spent a chunk of your life writing a character and someone puts them in the wrong clothes, or in a bed with sheets you know she would never own, it’s as if someone’s written dialogue. Sometimes you pick up more from what you’re seeing than hearing.”
The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing down fully appointed rooms where, for two and a half months, people lived and worked. “It’s horrible,” admits Meyers. “People say, ‘Go watch them tear it down,’ but I can’t. It’s simply too sad.”
Unlike
Oil is making millionaires in North DakotaBy JAMES MacPHERSON, Associated Press Writer
Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments.
"It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.
State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.
The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.
"I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.
Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising.
The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.
There are about 1,000 some people in Parshall, a lovely little town on the wide-open expanse, that has been getting a lot of attention recently. Personally, it's the hometown of several family members. On the LONG drive from Iowa to North Dakota, it was also the first sign that we were close to Grandma's! This area is made up of hard-working farmers who've experienced extreme winters and some heartbreaking harvests. I can't imagine a more deserving people.
