Category: Misc

This was the first of many busy holiday weekends. We got started on Friday afternoon by baking cookies for my mom's group pottery event. I spent the night with some great ladies and painted some cool stuff and Matt and Tabby got to have a night for just the two of them.

Saturday evening, Matt and I got all gussied up and went to my company Christmas party which is always a lot of fun. Tabby got to spend the evening with Auntie Kelly. I hear they watched Elmo a couple of times. This evening we went to my parents' house and had dinner and decorated their tree.

In the inbetween times (besides cooking, cleaning, running errands, napping etc.) we worked on various Christmas projects and checked this and that off the old to-do list.

The Christmas present Matt and I decided to give each other arrived on Friday. It's a Logitech Squeezebox which transmits music from our fileserver to the stereo system so we can have music in the living room. Brilliant!

Hope your days are getting merry and bright.

Every other day, practically, I make the comment “Well there goes my mother of the year award!”

I really do consider myself to be a good mom. I feel my daughter is bright, well-adjusted and generally a nice kid. I don't know how much of that has to do with me and how much of it is just her, but I give myself (and of course my great hubby and all of her other caregivers) a modicum of credit.

But I will never be the uber mom. It's just not in me. I will bake cookies with her. I will do crafts. I will kiss boo-boos and tuck her in. I will play games with her, make her her favorite dinner, read her the same book 30000 times and miss her when I'm not with her.

I will not, however, forsake all of my other adult relationships for my kiddos. I will let my husband put her to bed on his own now and again so I can kick back and read a book or watch Gossip Girl. If I get off early from work, I will sometimes go home and do a few things (even lazy non productive things) before going to pick her up. I will let her have a sleepover at grandma's so Matt and I can have date night.

I think I'm a better, more patient mom when I get a break now and again. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for my kiddo … if she needed it. She doesn't need me with her 24/7. She likes to spend time with her dad, her grandparents and her auntie and her babysitter.

And while she is my everything and always will be, she will one day go to school, get her driver's license and *sob* move out. I don't want to wake up in 10-15 years and realize I have no interests or friends of my own.

And I will certainly not reply to invitations for an adults only event with “I don't really like to go anywhere without my kids.” Honestly, I think Tabby would prefer it that way.

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!!