Month: November 2008

You can go ahead and add “4 day weekends” to that “What I'm Thankful For List.” Geez we needed that. I had no idea how much!!

Wednesday night we got together and cooked up our offerings for the larger extended family Thanksgiving party. We made sweet potato spoon bread, cranberry cornbread stuffing, apple cranberry relish and Russian veggie pie. They were all awesome and I would make them all again, paticularly the spoon bread. YUM.

Thanksgiving day was nice. We hung around in the AM and Tabby did some painting and had a nap. We had a very nice time with the extended family, eating a lot and playing games.

Friday was the day of LAZY. We mostly just each did our own thing, Matt or I switching off playing with Tabby who completely refused to nap. My mom came over and we had leftovers and watched Ever After.

Saturday we did our family adventure. We went to Matt's woodworking store, my art supply store, a kids' consignment clothing place (where we paid $30 for awesome shoes and a cashmere sweater!) and had lunch at a great fish 'n' chips joint. After that grocery shopping had to be done and when we got home we didn't even take the groceries out of the car … just left them there in the cold (it finally snowed!!) and I deeeeep cleaned the fridge while Matt and Tabby napped. After the nap, Matt and I both went a little nuts and cleaned out quite a few messy corners here and there that we never seem to get around to

Today was the day of decorating and since we had a freshly cleaned house and a stocked pantry, we could get on with it. My mom and sister came over and we all watched Elmo's Christmas Countdown (an early xmas present to Tabby from my mom) and decorated the tree … then mom went out in the snow with Matt to light up the huge pine that is in our front yard. It looks great.

A few loads of laundry, a few cleaned up corners and some more gorgeous snow and the weekend is done. Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Life has been challenging lately. And I have trying hard to be a good sport, but I get overwhelmed and sometimes a bit whiny. So 'tis the time of year to put all that crap aside and take inventory of your blessings. Truly, we are blessed.

In no paticular order … a few things I'm thankful for.
• A wonderful, supportive family (blood and otherwise) who make my days merry and bright.
• Good jobs that are relatively stable and we even like on most days.
• Generally good health and well-being.
• A new baby on the way.
• A canine so skilled that he can deftly pluck annoying flies from the air with his jaws. He's a sweetie besides.
• A roof over our heads, food on the table.
• A lovely state and country to live in.
• The library: hours and hours of entertainment all because I pay taxes.
• Tivo, man. Tivo.
• Matt … he's an excellent husband and father and is always there for me, Tabby and just about everyone else.

We were spectacularly boring this weekend. I started to write about it, but my eyes glazed over about halfway through and I just couldn't do it. So I'll show you this photo of Tabby I took last weekend just after we did our Christmas Card shoot at a local park.

As for this weekend, it was very typical, full of the normal stuff. A stand out was having dinner at White Fence Farm on Saturday evening. This place is a huge operation restaurant that specializaes in fried chicken and has a farm animal petting zoo outside for the kids. My southern boy husband and animal-loving daughter had a great time.

We also had the dubious pleasure of attending a Broncos home game yesterday … dubious because a) they lost and b) we did not dress warmly enough!

The little one is also making his/her presence known more regularly. I keep inadvertantly referring to the baby as a him and I wonder if there's something to that. We scheduled or ultrasound for Dec 16 (we couldn't make it earlier since Matt has JURY DUTY), so hopefully we'll find out then!

Now I am pretty happy to start my short week and very much looking forward to that 4-day weekend … and of course, the official start of the holiday season.

It's getting to be LATE November and still no snow to speak of. This is getting weird, people! We usually have at least a decent snow by now … and still nothing. Usually I want the white stuff for skiing, but they do not advocate women in a family way do the skiing thing, so I am looking for it for another reason: I want to get snowed in.

That's a bizarre request I know, but I have mixed feelings about snow. I don't really like to drive in it, walk through it or deal with it (unless skiing is involved), but I love to look at it. But what I do love to do is sit at home in the comfort of my cozy house and watch it … falling and falling and falling. I would be annoyed if the power went out, I suppose (though this is hard in our 'hood since the linses are buried).

And I must confess that the allure of forced leisure time at home with my favorite humans and canine after the stress of the past couple of weeks holds a helluva lot of charm for me.

I'm sure I'll take this all back if it actually snows. Happy Friday, y'all.

P.S. That photo is of Loki in our winter o' blizzards two years ago!

Last night I had a long stretch of free time (Matt and Tabby went to the Lowe's and Home Depot to price compressors) and so I finally got some of the business of Christmas this and that going. I worked on holiday cards first, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Then I turned my attention to getting rid of the pumpkin theme.

About 5 minutes into work, the server went down. Well down is probably the wrong phrase. My server likes to get slow. PAINFULLY SLOW. What do you expect for $7/month, I guess, right? I'm pretty sure my hosting company is a nerd in a basement with a dog. But I at least got the work done, even if I couldn't test it. Either way, I got some good trash TV watched. I ♥ Gossip Girl.

I think I like the results … either way it's here to stay. I have no time to change it!

Dude. It was a long weekend. Well in some ways. In all of the ways I wanted it to be long it was very short and visa versa. It has been damn stressful at our house lately and I hate hate hate it. I'm exhausted.

Anyhow, let's highlight some positives:
• Tabby is awesome and cracks me up all the time with the funny things she says and does. I really have no concrete examples to amaze and impress you with at the moment (brain fuzzy on Monday morning), but she is cute and sweet and makes me smile like every two seconds.
• Saw the doc on Friday and everything is great. I am pretty sure I feel this kid be-bopping around in there.
• Had a lovely family dinner on Friday night and got to see my grandma (Tabby's G.G.).
• Got some great clearance rack buys on maternity clothes at Babystyle and Pumpkin Patch.
• Got an awesome new water bottle at Target on Sunday (I lost my old fave sometime on the way to Hawaii).
• Made one of my favorite dinners last night.
• Got to see Quantum of Solace on Saturday night while Mom watched Miss Tabby. I really enjoyed it. Great action scenes.
• Not long until Thanksgiving!!

Thank goodness it's Friday. I am so relieved to know that I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. Though Tabby will get us up just after the crack of dawn, I'm sure.

It has been a very long week. Instead of occupying his normal position working at home, Matt has been doing training all the way accross town two days this week and all of you with little kids know that an upset to the schedule is no small thing. And in addition to that, there have been some personal and work-related things that have us stressed and overwrought. I am not at liberty to discuss any of these things openly, but nothing so far is affecting us very directly, just causing us worry and stress.

On the lighter side, our weekend calendar is pretty clear and the plan is to spend a lot of time relaxing. I also want to take our poor neglected pooch outside and get him (and us) some much needed exercise … and spend some time working on Christmas cards (have to get that photo taken!) and other holiday-related things that I'm behind on (including a blog theme, maybe??). I'm thinking it would also be nice to do some more involved cooking that I don't have time for during the week. We'll see how it goes!

Have a great weekend.

• Happy Veteran's Day. Thanks to all of the men and women who work so hard to protect our amazing if flawed nation.
• Thanksgiving is getting close … yay for 4-day weekends and turkey!!
• This has been plaguing me since I first saw the man: Is it just me or does Obama sort of look like a grown up Jimmy Brooks?!! Matt thinks I'm nuts.
• Karaoke night was supposed to be Friday. We had 6 signed up at one time (maybe 7) we're down to 2 (including me). I cancelled it. I'm bummed. This happened to the last pottery night too! From 9 down to 3.
• In her 20 months on this planet my daughter has had no less than 4 pairs of Converse sneakers. She also has two in reserve (one bought at a garage sale, one bought on clearance for $12) for growing feet. Still, she MUST have these!
• My sister-in-law sent us a recipe for Chili Cheese Dog Pizza … I will have to try it and see how it turns out. I am very curious.
• I understand a new season of Top Chef is starting soon. Awesome!
• I really need to change around this blog theme, but I am being lazy.
• We are making Cap'n Crunch Chicken for dinner tonight. I am jazzed.