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Freezing Fog

We had a very cool weather phenomenon occur on Friday … freezing fog. We had beautiful fog in the morning and it sort of iced all the trees so that they came out looking subtly white and perfect. It was really beautiful. I have no idea what it did to all of our plants, but it was pretty enough I’m not sure I care. We had had temps in the 50s all week and unfortunately, the freezing fog ended our beautiful weather. But I hear tomorrow it will be back.

We had a fab weekend. Friday was chill and easy. We went to the gym, had a playdate, had naps and got to hang at home. I got to make loaded potato soup and popovers (more on those tomorrow). Saturday was similarly chill … gym time, a trip to the frozen yogurt shoppe, some errands, NAPS (again) and then dinner with my parents and grandma. The kids stayed over at my parents house and Matt and I met up with a friend in the AM and made it 6 miles at a good clip. Then we grabbed the kids and met up with a bunch of friends for a long trip to the zoo followed by a super chaotic (and fun) dinner at Wynkoop Brewery. Tabby made fast friends with our friend’s little girl who unfortunately lives on the other side of the country. And Mommy, who hadn’t eaten all day allowed herself a fairly rare and incredibly yummy BURGER, with fries. I think it’s fair to say that everyone enjoyed the day.

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Childcare Dilemma

Yesterday I found out we will be facing a childcare dilemma. Since Tabby was about 2 months old and I started back to work on a part-time basis, we’ve had one sitter who we adore. She came recommended by a coworker and we’ve loved sending our kids to her house for nearly four years now. My kids have a second home there and she treats them like members of her family. It has been pretty much an ideal situation. But yesterday I got confirmation on something that we knew was probably coming. Our beloved sitter is retiring. Continue reading “Childcare Dilemma”

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From the Mouths of Babes

A conversation between my babes a few weeks ago while riding in the car:

Ben: babble babble
Tabby: That’s a house, Ben. A  house.
Ben: babble babble
Tabby: Say house, Ben! Say house! You need to use your words.
Ben: *screams loudy*
Tabby: He doesn’t seem very interested.
Ben: House! House!

Tabby and I laughed the rest of the way home.

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The Haps

It’s been a busy busy week. And it’s only Tuesday.

  • We are ALMOST all over our colds (flu??) I’m still a bit hazy around the edges.
  • We’re planning a send-off for Uncle Buck (Matt’s brother who’s been living with us this month) as he heads back to TN and eventually to the army. We’re going to go play trivia at DNote on Thursday. Yay!
  • We’re going to see Gigi tonight because it’s been way too long.
  • I went to a very unsatisfying sports conditioning class last night. I’m pretty sure she was conditioning me to sleep … or maybe do yoga.
  • We are planning our LAST ski weekend of the season (how is this possible??).
  • We are planning Tabby’s 4th b’day festivities – TEN days people … TEN days!!!
  • Speaking of which, I have no idea what to get Tabby for her b’day … I was going to get her  a Leapster Explorer, but the bad reviews scared me off. I don’t want a ton more junky plastic. Maybe we’ll go shopping for an outfit and visit the paint-your-own pottery store. The girl loves her art.
  • The house is a semi-wreck from busyness/sickness.
  • My Visa has suddenly decided not to work, so I cannot pay my library fines. Now I have to spend time on the phone figuring out WHY.
  • The above is only ONE of about 100 phone calls I need to make … during business hours.
  • I am supposed to run a half marathon in less than 7 weeks and I have not run more than 4.5 miles since … December? That’s a problem.
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Ch-ch-ch Changes

After years and years of lovingly crafting my own blogging engine, I have finally defected to a pre-produced one. I am a bit sad about this, but I simply no longer have the time to maintain the code … so WordPress it is. It’s a good engine with lots of room for extension and excellent themes. Moving the data from my old blog was no mean feat and I spent lots of time creating scripts to convert the posts, comments, categories and recipes (converted to posts!). And then I had got to craft a new theme as well.

Things are far from done, but I feel like I’ve made a really good start on things and I’m quite pleased with how things are progressing.

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Inevitably ….

It is weird how these things work. Does anyone else have the experience of only watching a random TV show … say I Love Lucy or Family Ties or Hey Dude … only once in a blue moon; sometimes not for months and years, and yet if you DO catch it one random evening when you’re flipping through the channels it’s the SAME EPISODE you caught that other random time. Maybe it’s just me.

We also “laugh” about how when Matt’s out of town the kids get sick and/or it snows buckets. Maybe not ALL the time, but pretty darn frequently. When I was pregnant with Tabby, we’d had the winter from heck and I dropped him off at the park ‘n’ ride and I could hardly get back to the house because there were cars stuck in the middle of the road all over our neighborhood!

The kids were sick over the weekend and continue to be, so of course Matt left on a business trip this morning. Luckily we have Matt’s brother staying with us so I was able to go to work this AM and get meetings and essentials out of the way and then I could come home at noon and come home to be with my sick kids. We will be doing the same gig tomorrow and possibly Thursday.

They have been good, sweet kids … and of course the upside to them being sick is that they want to snuggle … LOTS … and they like to sleep, except perhaps in the middle of the night. Tabby is mostly on the mend, but Ben is still in the feverish throes of it and he does not appreciate being made to take Tylenol. He does, however, enjoy the Gatorade in his sippy cup. Woot.

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My Funny Valentines

Happy Valentines to all of my favorite people! I know it’s a cheesy greeting card company holiday, but I always like any excuse to tell the special people in your life how much you love them (and of course, involving Hallmark is a personal decision). So to all of my family and friends, near and far … thanks for being in my life and I LOVE YOU!

This year, with all of our recent out-of-town-ness, we didn’t do so well with making Valentines. Tabby and I constructed 18 glittery messes for her classmates and I made these mailboxes for the kids (they are filled with new socks and sunglasses and probably some sort of candy I’ve since forgotten about). I will hand them over to the kids at dinner tonight.

I was happy to see the mailboxes in the Target dollar bin when we were there one day. I still have a little white mailbox with red hearts on it that was given to me one Valentine’s day by my parents. It sits on a shelf in my office and holds my sticky notes. I just decked these out with a little light pink vinyl, cut on my Silhouette.

I hope you all have a Happy Valentine’s day with your special people.

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Blogging Excuses

I Want to Blog, but … (pick your favorite)

• I am in the midst of converting this here blog to Word Press (I just don't have time to keep up with the blogging engine anymore) and it is sucking ALL my time
• my kids are so darn cute and I can't stop staring at their darling little faces.
• we're heading out of town again this weekend and someone needs to pack!
• I'm about half passed out from my tempo run this AM. Long runs, faster pace than normal. Yikes.
• Tabby and I have to make Valentines for her class.
• Ben is drawing himself a bath. *
• it's time to concoct the Pioneer Woman's French Toast Bake so we can eat yummy things tomorrow morning.
• someone has to shovel the walk!
• Big Bang Theory is on and I have to watch it.
• my office is freezing and I've got to rub a couple of highlighters together to start a fire.
• all work and no play makes Jess a dull girl.

*True story – we went to a Superbowl Party on Sunday. The kids were given the run of the upstairs but Matt and I (as well as other parents) were checking on them intermittently. I was downstairs bidding a friend farewell. Ben had been playing near us and just then I noticed he was gone. I mentioned he was not there and my friend said noted that he had been there not 30 seconds ago. I sent Matt off to check on him and a few seconds later the hosting Dad came downstairs holding Ben who was wet from toe to mid-calf. Apparently he'd run upstairs, gotten in the tub and turned it on all in the span of about 90 seconds. Nice job, kiddo.

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Back in Action

I am back – exhausted but back – after a much needed weekend in the mountains with my girls. We didn't get much skiing done (terrible conditions) but we had a great time and I'm (other than the tiredness) very recharged and glad to be home.

We capped off the weekend with a very fun Superbowl Party and I am officially very very behind. It's going to be quite a week – we're heading out of town again on Thursday. So in the meantime, I've got to get laundry done, house cleaned up, everybody packed up and at least one haircut handled.

I think I need a personal assistant.

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Organizing!

I’m stealing borrowing a blog topic from Kjersten today. She is talking on her blog about her current organizing projects and challenges. I love all things organizing, so I thought I’d do the same.

1. CLUTTER I am forever at war with clutter. With paper clutter I try to immediately eliminate what I can (junk mail) and then scan the rest to our fileserver. Tabby’s art work has a box in her closet (rapidly getting full) that we put the A list stuff in. The rest, I am a bit chagrined to admit, goes in the trash. All the rest of the clutter is subject to my rather heavy tossing hand. I randomly attack sections of our house that look too “full” and toss toss toss. Closets, dressers, drawers, pantry … nothing is safe from me. As soon as I get one section done, I notice two others that need attention. It’s never ending. I make a conscious effort not to buy or otherwise acquire junk, but nonetheless, we still manage to ship off a box or two to Good Will every month.

2. KID STUFF Any parent can commiserate I’m sure. Kids just have tons of stuff. They outgrow toys, clothes, books, kitchen equipment, DVDs, and even furniture at an alarming rate. That means I’m always trying to sort out the discarded. Clothes are especially tricky because sometimes they might be able to wear something next season, but meanwhile it’s taking up space in their drawers. Yet if you put it away you might not remember to take it out in time. I’m sure Martha has a perfect system but I don’t!

The other thing we’re running into now is a reluctance from my kids to get rid of things, even if they never play with it or have 15 just like it. So I take a similar tact with the kids’ rooms that I do with everywhere else. When I can’t stands it no more, I go nuts and fill up boxes to go to Good Will or friends. But it seems like barely a month passes and I’m back at square one all over.

3. BLACK HOLE PANTRY Of all of the many things I love about our house, the #1 thing I HATE about it is our crap pantry. I’m not even sure you could call it that. It’s just a giant, DEEP, DARK Black hole food cabinet. We have discussed myriad solutions to the problem, but (arguably) the best one involves moving our washer and dryer into Matt’s shop (in the basement) and neither of us wants that, though for very different reasons (he: wants his shop space, me: lazy). So I am now hounding him about installing one of these swing out pantry contraptions in order to fix the black hole scenario. It’s pretty much still in the theoretical stages.

4. BEN’S ROOM My forgotten second child is still living in a thrown-together castoffs sort of bedroom. I don’t think he cares, but I of course feel some amount of mommy guilt over this. Fairly soon, as I have mentioned, he will probably need a big boy bed and at that time we will get him new furniture and decorate and organize his room properly … so that maybe it won’t look like a home office with a crib and some board books thrown in.