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It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I LOVE this time of year. We’ve been shopping and decorating and listening to Christmas music and generally making merry. The calendar is packed with parties and outings and fun of all kinds. The kids are going just a leeetle mad and the darlings are refusing to nap which is exacerbating the situation. But it is so fun to see all of this through their eyes.

And in the aisles of the grocery store, they are taking notice too and putting out tons of holiday-flavored goodies. I picked these guys up at Target a couple of weeks ago and may or may not have eaten 4 before I even got them home. Surely not, right? Anyhow, THESE ARE AWESOME and if you have a Target near you, you should try them and then you will love and hate me because they are super tasty and yet not health food of course.

My biggest challenge this time of year is not taking advantage of every tasty goody that comes my way. My office is usually full-to-overflowing with gifts from our vendors and by Christmas Eve, all anyone around the office wants is some fruit and vegetables. So I’m working on limiting my consumption of goodies and adding in some extra running to compensate as well.

Speaking of running, I keep having to talk myself out of buying a new treadmill. Technically, ours still works even though it is almost 8 years old and has a LOT LOT of miles on it. It is a little creaky, especially when my hulking hubby runs on it, but that is a small complaint. Yet I keep seeing excellent deals on new treadmills – treadmills with built in Android tablets that show you beautiful outdoorsy things while you run and track your stats and stuff. Cool, no? Of course, but also not exactly a necessity.

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Four Days Well Done

It was such a nice long weekend. After our wonderful Thanksgiving, we slept like babies, but the kids, of course, were up by the crack of dawn and ready to go go go. So we went … shopping. We got some good black friday deals, including Tabby’s “big” gift.

I went for a nice long(er) run in the afternoon (and about to do a bit more of that!).

My folks came over in the evening and we served them Chicken Gumbo and we had some post-Thanksgiving vegging sort of fun, including building the lovely Gingerbread Home Depot.

Saturday, my parents met us for breakfast and took charge of the kids and Matt and I headed out for a date day. We did quite a bit of Christmas shopping. Matt finally found a new Christmas tree and got a great bargain on it. After two separate malls and about 5 hours on the job, we took a break for lunch and a movie. We saw Skyfall, the new James Bond movie. It was AWESOME.

Today was a more typical Sunday. We picked up the kids. Tabby had a b’day party. Ben and I did the grocery shopping. We put up the Christmas tree (but didn’t decorate it). Matt and I worked around the house. The kids refused to nap.

I’m not quite ready to go back to reality tomorrow …

 

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Thanksgiving Celebrations

We started out our day with a run … the 5K Turkey Chase, just a few miles from home. The kids were jazzed and ended up running  a good portion of the race. Ben shocked me by running the first .9 miles solid. They had breaks in the stroller, but ran well over half.

The kids’ stellar performance may have been due to a promise of donuts afterward. We kept our promise and met up with our friends just down the road at King Soopers. The dads went in and grabbed donuts and drinks and we parked away from the traffic and popped open the backs of our cars. In the unseasonably warm weather, we tailgated with donuts and milk and babies.

When we got home, we had showers and Matt decided to check on the turkey. Despite the fact that it had been hanging in our fridge for a week, it was still partially frozen and so it too got a shower before we headed out.

Then we headed for the hills, to my uncle’s house. Matt got the bird ready for frying

and the kids played in the great out of doors (did I mention the unseasonably warm weather??) and bonded with all of the relatives they don’t see that often.

Before long it was time for dinner.

I think I showed admirable restraint, don’t you??

All the food was super nummy (and very very plentiful) but the Sweet Potato Spoonbread was a HUGE hit (there was actually less left than this by the time it was said and done.

There was much more time spent sipping beverages and catching up with everyone. It is always nice to be with the extended family and even better seeing my kids loving on their great aunties and uncles and cousins.

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Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

Scenes from our Thanksgiving prep:

Matt’s favorite, the Green Bean Casserole almost ready to go …

These go on tomorrow!

Cornbread, decimated, all in the name of …

Cranberry Cornbread Dressing!!!

Matt Mashing the potatoes …

Tabby SNITCHING them.

Sweet potatoes getting their puree on for the tastiest dish of all, SWEET POTATO SPOON BREAD.

All in prep for America’s Eating Holiday. Mmmmm….

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30 Days of Thankfulness

I always like thinking about the things you’re thankful for this time of year. We all have so much to be thankful for and it’s a wonderful reminder to step back and take inventory. The things we worry about day to day are so small considering all we have.

I am so very thankful for:

  1. our health – this year has very much been one that reminds us how blessed we are to be 99.9% healthy!
  2. a husband who is truly my teammate – who values me and treats me as his equal – and who, after 10 years, I still truly enjoy spending time with
  3. a sweet daughter who amazes me every day with her knowledge, insight, humor and kindness
  4. a sweet son, who is everyday more articulate and thoughtful and wonderful … and hilarious
  5. a sweet puppy who loves on us and protects us from all baddies, imagined or otherwise
  6. wonderful family who are fun to be with and provide us with unparalleled support
  7. friends who make our days fun and keep us sane
  8. a lovely roof over our heads
  9. money for everything we need and a generous percentage of what we want
  10. jobs that provide us with not only money, but that we enjoy and feel useful at and fulfilled in daily
  11. good schools and caretakers for our kids
  12. my running/swimming buddies
  13. the wonderful ladies at my gym who challenge and cheer me on
  14. our amazing public library system that provides me with virtually free, virtually unlimited entertainment
  15. my treadmill!
  16. that my kids are good eaters and will eat hot lunch at their schools once a week so we only have to pack for them 4x/ week!
  17. that we have enough in the budget to pay for someone to clean the house every other week
  18. living in CO … awesome weather, amazingly beautiful
  19. my crazy awesome camera
  20. all the mundane modern conveniences we totally take for granted (cars, running water, electricity, HEAT)
  21. the interwebs (most days anyhow)
  22. my flexible work schedule
  23. citizenship in this wonderful, amazing, if slightly-flawed country
  24. date nights!
  25. girls’ nights and weekends out
  26. online shopping
  27. the opportunity to travel and the good sense to take advantage of it
  28. quiet weekends at home
  29. the time and means to create, whether on the computer at home or work, in the kitchen or the workshop
  30. this amazing life as a whole. Truly I am, we are, blessed.
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Weekend Bye Bye

We’ve been pretty lucky to have a few great weekends lately … weekends where we did a lot, but we also stayed at home a lot. I like these. They feel longer and I’m not so bummed when Sunday rolls around and I have to get my act together and get ready for the week.

Friday was my day off and Matt and I had a glorious 4 mile run. I remembered (for once) to actually use my inhaler and I felt like a real runner for the first time in a long time. I clocked some great splits and actually ENJOYED myself. Then I spent the rest of the day getting the house in order and my ducks in a row to host friends for the evening. All of our friends are the sort that I do not clean FOR THEM, but it is an excellent excuse to clean for myself.

After I picked Tabby up from school, we made the side dishes for dinner – sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole – since our friends were coming over for our Third Annual Turkey Fry. These folks are dear friends with schedules similar to ours, meaning that we only see them about once a quarter – and we always have a wonderful time. The turkey came out great, the kids played really well together and we had a fab time catching up with our friends.

Saturday I made banana pancakes for everyone. I don’t do this very often, but we had bananas that were past their prime and buttermilk and so it would have been crazy NOT to, right? After breakfast and some goofing around, we were drawn outside by our neighbors whose grandkids were over for the day. Our kids love their grandkids and they had a wonderful few hours playing outside on bikes and scooters and with sidewalk chalk. Loki gave us a bad few hours when during this time, he snuck off to have a little walk-about and we couldn’t find him. Our neighbors eventually spotted him though and we were very relieved to have him home.

After naps, we cleaned up the house again (turkey fryer makes such a mess!) and my folks came bearing Lasagna which we enjoyed very much. The kids played Wii (Mariokart) endlessly and entertained us all. We were all reluctant for the night to end.

Sunday I decided we needed to go see a movie so we skipped breakfast and went straight to the movie theatre to see Wreck it Ralph. The kids thought it was super decadent to have popcorn for breakfast and we all LOVED the movie. It is super clever, really funny and definitely worth seeing. It’s one I definitely want to own when it comes out – and I hope they make at least one full-fledged video game out of it.

After the movie, we ran an errand or two and then headed home for naps. Matt and I did some small projects while the kids napped. Then Matt oversaw cleanup of the playroom while I went for a run. When I was done I found them back in front of the Wii, battling it out on the road.

We had dinner, a little more Wii fun, showers, and off to bed. I love a good weekend with my family.

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Bad Blogging

I have been such a bad blogger lately, but I am giving myself a pass on all this bad bloggerness. It’s just been a game of picking and choosing what I can get done in a day and blogging has not often made the list.

But I have been working a lot, not skipping my workouts – I took only  ONE day off all week – and continuing to keep things together on the homefront, including  spending lots of time in the kitchen.

We have been making lots of recipes … all of our recent hits have been from Iowa Girl Eats:

I really need to do some updates on the kids too. It’s been forever. They’ve changed so much since school started. Ben has become so much more articulate. The things he says … ! And Tabby has not only shot up in height, but she’s leaped ahead in all things school. She writes and reads so well I can hardly believe she’s the same girl who started Kindergarten just a couple of months ago. It’s wonderful.

So I am going to try and remember to be a better blogger. I know blogs have mostly fallen by the wayside, but I still enjoy this as my little family’s history.

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Nashville

This was one of those trips where I could play a highlights reel that would make you think this was the worst trip ever … my 24 hours of stomach flu HELL, Tabby throwing up thrice, Ben ruining a pair of underwear on our flight out, me hauling Ben bodily from Vanderbilt’s bookstore thrashing and throwing the world’s hugest fit, etc. But the truth is that in between all of that no so fun stuff, we really had a nice time.

The trip was pretty low-key, so we had some fun doing the simple things like going to the park with Grammy Sherrie …

… and playing on the riding lawnmower.

We celebrated Miss Autumn’s birthday (that’s Ben with a cupcake) …

and baptism.

We saw some old friends, some extended family. We went to the zoo.

It was exhausting at times  and also nice. I always love spending a good block of time with my babies. The kids were, overall, excellent travelers. And on the way out of the airport, I once again noticed the London/Heathrow gate. It is starting to seem like a real possibility.

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SWAMPED

We got back from Nashville on Tuesday (late) and I fully intend to write up a nice post about it, but so far I. have. not. had. time! Since we’ve been home, I’ve put in over 20 hrs at the office and a few more on top of those at home. Tabby had climbing class last night and tonight we finally went to pick up our darling doggie. I just finally got some time tonight to pull the photos from our trip off the camera. I still need to process the photos from the weeks before we left. Whatever.

We’re having fun along the way. Matt’s got a boy’s poker night tomorrow he’s looking forward to. Tabby’s got a stranger-danger class on Saturday. We’ve got some fun Thanksgiving homework to do this weekend. And I plan on resting quite a lot. I want to cook up some tasty food.

But now it’s bedtime.

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All About the Weekend

This weekend actually seemed longer than normal – in a good way. Talking, we think what did it was the fact that my parents had the kids on Friday night (they typically take them on Sat night). I got lots of stuff done Friday and Saturday too so that we had almost all day Sunday to just be. It was very very nice.

Friday was my day off and I volunteered at Tabby’s school and mostly just did housework … other than the 3 or 4 hours I spent on a work project. It is hard for me to get away right now. After Matt got off work, we dropped the kids off at my parents’ house and grabbed some food at Qdoba and brought it home to eat with margaritas while we played video games. We’ve gotten really into an old school Final Fantasy (SNES) that we downloaded on the Wii and we had a great time playing that.

Saturday morning we went for a run and then got some errands done – we had to pick up white shirts for a photo shoot and buy a birthday gift and of course, groceries. By the time we went to get the kids from my parents’ house, it was after 12 and we too them right home for a quick lunch and a nap. We headed out right after nap to a friend’s 40th birthday party. The house was packed with people of all ages. We had a great time chatting with our friends and the kids went mad in the basement with Legos and games and eventually had a dance party with glowsticks in the darkened living room.

The kids were exhausted when we got home after 9 and no one complained even a little when we put them right to bed. Unfortunately, the night was not over since Ben woke up at midnight to puke all over his bed. After a shower, we moved him into the little toddler bed we still have in his room and he woke only once more, though happily no more puking.

He was pretty subdued all day Sunday and didn’t eat much. That worked out well because we didn’t do much all day. We had breakfast, cleaned up the house a little, lounged on the couch and played video games and watched TV. The kids had naps and in the late afternoon we ran an errand. Around 4:45 I started making dinner and it err … didn’t go well. See I tried a new recipe, Butternut Squash Gnocchi, and completely missed the step where you cook out excess moisture. So I  kept adding flour and kept adding and adding and could barely get it into dough and when I did, it tasted awful, like pure flour (pretty much was). We ended up calling for a pizza.

After dinner we suited the kids up in their costumes and headed to the community center down the street for the kids’ Halloween party. It wasn’t too well attended, but we had a nice time. Our favorite neighbor was there painting faces and she did a glittery blushy lipsticky job on our little butterfly that looked awesome. Tabby is going to go back over and have her do a repeat on the big night.

By the time we got home it was bedtime for the kids and back to the kitchen for me. I made 20 ghost-shaped rice krispie treat pops for the kids in T’s class. It was a delicate balance between melting and freezing. Sticks had to go in when soft. Candy coating had to go on when frozen. Had to be refrozen for wrapping, etc. etc. Matt helped me a while and then took off to meet the neighborhood guys for the Bronco’s game. I finished up in plenty of time, but ignored my OCD ways and left cleanup for another day.