A Post About Me

January is almost over and this is my first post. Not a great way to start out the year, but it leaves lots of room for improvement.

Work has been crazy. Beyond crazy actually. It has never been this busy and hectic in the almost 11 years I’ve been there. There are a couple major reasons for the craziness, and unfortunately they both happened at the same time. My co-worker described it best yesterday when she said it feels like we are in a snow globe and someone keeps shaking it. I am going to use this as my excuse for not posting anything this month because by the time I get home from work the last thing I want to do is get back on the computer.

The other thing that has kept me busy this month is a little diet experiment. I have to say, I am not a good dieter. I have virtually no will power to stick to anything and I tend to get discouraged easily if I don’t see results quickly. I’m also not much of a fisherman for the same reason….

However, I had more motivation this time for two reasons. One, I was bad, bad, bad over the holidays and my clothes were all getting a tad too snug. But more importantly, I have to fit into a short, strapless bridesmaid dress in two months. The dress I’m not so worried about. It’s the other five bridesmaids, all but one of which are 10 years younger than me and half of them are not mothers. Big sigh. I don’t want the wedding guests asking, “Who is the old fat one on the end?”

So Dear Husband and I decided to try a diet that worked well for a few people we know. I thought about posting a daily diary of our progress, but then the entire world would know if I failed. By some miracle I succeeded and lost 13 lbs. so now I’m going to brag because I think I deserve it. DH did very well too, but he doesn’t like to brag. Now our mission is to maintain and continue our healthy habits. The more I think about it, this may be harder than the original diet. Wish me luck!

So Long 2010!

If you are reading in chronological order, you already know we had an exciting trip to Grandma and Grandpa's on Christmas Eve. In addition to the moose we saw a flock of wild turkeys, two golden eagles, and the usual deer, antelope and geese.

We arrived in time for dinner. For dessert Great Grandma made Uncle S an angel food cake. Angel food cake is not my favorite so I don't make it for the girls. Flower thought it was pretty good. When we told her it was called angel food cake, she looked at Grandma and said, "Did you shoot an angel?".


Keilie dog was ready for bed on Christmas Eve…she didn’t want Santa to pass us by.

On our way home we saw a gorgeous sunset. I considered pulling over to take a photo, but we were on the interstate and there was quite a bit of traffic. Princess asked why I didn't want to pull over. I told her I didn't want anyone to stop to see if we needed help. (Note: Princess and I had a tire blow out on the way to school a couple weeks ago on the interstate.) Princess shrugged and said, "Why? No one stopped to help the last time." Good point.

We have spent the week hanging out at home playing with our new Christmas toys. The girls got a new dance game for the Wii which is a big hit with them and very entertaining for the rest of us as well. A big storm rolled in Wednesday and dumped a bunch of snow. A cold front followed it so today we are supposed to reach a balmy 5 below.

The girls and I didn't leave the house yesterday and might not today either. Dear Husband braved the cold and went skiing yesterday because he couldn't pass up the fresh powder. He is complaining about being old and sore today.

We might break out the fondue pot tonight. Princess likes fondue on New Year's Eve...that's how we ring in the New Year. For those of you with big plans for tonight, have fun, be safe, and Happy New Year!

Mooseltoe

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

We were headed north on the cut-a-cross
With snow in every direction, from Mother Nature’s toss;

When to our surprise, a moose did we see;
Feasting upon a cottonwood tree!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you!

Since I didn't have time to write anything this month, I thought I'd post a few photos of what we've been doing (Christmas programs, piano recital, decorating the tree, baking cookies...you get the idea). Merry Christmas!

December - Week 1

I remembered why the end of November always makes me grumpy. It is because the first week of December is always crazy. Here is how it goes.

December 1st - start of 3-day conference for work...now I'm behind at work.
December 2nd - Dear Husband's office holiday open house.
December 3rd - ice skating party.
December 4th - annual trek to cut down our Christmas tree.
December 5th - festival of trees and photos with Santa.

Between the above festivities I need to fit in laundry, cleaning, shopping, and decorating. I think I'm going to need a case of red bull.

Are You Ready?

Goodbye November. Hello December. Shoppers, start your engines.

I am terribly behind this year. I need motivation. The girls want Christmas lights. Lots and lots of Christmas lights. I want time to stop for about 3 days so I can get my shopping done, cut a tree, decorate said tree, hang copious amounts of white lights on the house, bake cookies, make popcorn balls, fudge and caramels, and drink lots of hot cocoa.

Tomorrow I vow to have a better attitude. I will update my list, mark off the few things I have done, and add the other 40 things to the list that are bouncing around in my head. Tonight I am going to grumble about all the things I have to do in the next 25 days. Ho, ho, ho....Merry Christmas!

José

Dear Husband was home for a brief visit last night between work in Idaho and hunting trips. We had an early dinner and sat down to watch TV for a few minutes. DH had the Thursday night football game on and a man with an awesome voice was singing the national anthem.

Princess sang along and then we went downstairs to practice our music lesson. While I was waiting for Princess to get her books out I started to play a few notes from the national anthem on the piano.

Princess put her books on the piano and I quit playing and moved over for her. She looked at me and said, “Mommy, play the José Song again!” I was confused for a moment and then it occurred to me what she was saying.

José, can you see, by the dawn's early light….

Boating

In our haste this morning Flower thought we were going to take the raft on the river. She looked at me and asked if we were going on the boat. I was confused for a moment and then it occurred to me that she must have misunderstood Princess when she woke her up. Princess loves to help me vote but Flower didn’t remember voting in the primary. So when Princess told her we were going to vote on the way to school I think Flower thought she said boat. I don’t think Flower had as much fun voting as she has boating, but we got our stickers to wear proudly today.

Election Day 2010

Did you do your patriotic duty and vote today? I did. As a government employee who was given the day off, it was the least I could do.

Another strange thing happened this morning. I set my alarm for one hour later than I usually set it on weekday mornings. I got up when it went off rather than hitting snooze a couple times. I showered, got dressed, did quick makeup and hair. Princess got up on her own and got dressed. Lunch and backpack were ready to go so I decided to see if we could get out the door early enough to vote on our way to school.

Princess got Flower up and helped her get dressed. I combed their hair and brushed teeth while Dear Husband sliced an apple and got my coffee ready. Princess got breakfast bars and coats. We found shoes and were out the door. One hour and ten minutes from the time my alarm went off. The exact same routine usually takes us 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Now I am wondering what the hectic do I do for an hour every morning? Now I have to think of a new excuse why I don’t have time to workout in the morning.

Thankful

I think I know what Flower meant at lunch on Friday when she asked God to please keep Mommy and Daddy together. Dear Husband had a minor incident on his way home from town Saturday afternoon which could very easily have been a major accident.

DH bought new tires for the Expedition last Tuesday. He drove the Expedition home Tuesday, to work on Wednesday, and then left it sitting at his office until Saturday when got back from Idaho. DH returned his work truck to his office and met the girls and I to get groceries and a pumpkin to carve. We needed one last item so he went to another store and the girls and I went home with the groceries.

I had just finished putting away the groceries when DH called to say his rig broke down. He didn’t sound very happy and I don’t blame him. He was half way home when three bolts were sheared off of his rear driver side wheel and the back end of the Expedition started fishtailing all over the road.

Fortunately he was able to slow down and stop. He found three lug nuts on the interstate, the fourth came off in his hand and the last one was still on the bolt but he could loosen it easily with his hand. Apparently whoever put the new tires on forgot to tighten the lug nuts.

There is no doubt in my mind that God was watching over DH. I can’t even think about what might have happened if the last two bolts had sheared off and the wheel had come off at 80 mph. It makes you stop and think about what’s really important in life. I didn’t worry about how messy the house was last weekend, I was thankful we were all home safely.

Happy Halloween!

A Premonition?

Flower and I were sitting down to lunch today and I asked her to say grace before we eat. She delivers her usually blessing for the food, to which I add “and please bring daddy home safely today.” Dear Husband is coming home from his project in Idaho today. So Flower repeats her blessing and adds a peculiar request at the end.

Thank you Jesus for this food, bring Daddy home safely, and keep Mommy and Daddy together.

I am not kidding. Those were her exact words. It’s a good thing we hadn’t started eating yet or I might have choked. Where does she get this stuff?

October

How did we get to the middle of October already? Halloween is almost a week away. Big game season opens this weekend. I hate to even say this but at this rate it will be Christmas soon. Ugh.

So if you are wondering what exciting things we've been up to that keeps us so busy I don't have an answer. SSDD.

Dear Husband has spent the last two weeks in Idaho working on a project at a mine. He has canceled two hunting trips the past two weekends for various reasons but he will be gone this weekend and part of next week.

The girls and I went spent the first weekend in October at Grandpa and Grandma's and we'll be headed there on Thursday for another visit. It seems that is what we do during hunting season.

The weather has been beautiful so we floated the river a couple weekends ago. Last weekend we started to cut down some of our dead trees. We cut one trailer load of dead branches and you can't even tell we did anything. It's going to be a bigger project than we thought.

The girls started music lessons again so that keeps us busy. So far there has only been two school activities; open house and the annual fund raiser dinner.

Princess loves kindergarten. She told me Mrs. B is the best teacher in the entire world. I reminded her that she said Mrs. F was the best teacher in the entire world last year and she said they both were. Princess lost her 7th tooth last week so she only has one more tooth to lose and she'll be done for a while....and tooth number 8 is very loose.

Flower is, well, Flower. Princess was being a bit sassy the other night as we were getting ready for bed so I told Princess she was not allowed to talk until she could do so nicely. Flower, in a very serious manner, looked at me and said "Princess can't talk because you said so and you our mama." I told her she was correct. Flower looked downstairs into the living room where DH was watching TV. She pointed to DH and said, "That guy our daddy." Again, I told her she was correct. She looked down at DH again and said, "I like him." Me too pretty girl, me too!

It's the Little Things

A couple weeks ago I was in our bathroom getting ready for bed when Flower came sneaking around the corner. She wanted to snuggle in our bed for just 60 minutes...please mommy, just 60 minutes!!! Sometimes I can't bring myself to tell her no, she's just so darn cute, so we jumped in bed to snuggle, for 5 minutes, not 60.

When Flower says snuggle, she really means talk non-stop while twisting and turning and flopping around. It's really more like ducking and dodging an octopus than snuggling. I learned long ago to take off my glasses and shield my face from her flailing arms.

As we were "snuggling", Flower told me she wanted a bedspread, like Princess's bedspread. I didn't buy Flower a bedspread after she moved into the bottom of the trundle bed because she sleeps with her doggy blanket on top of the sheets. But she was very serious about the bedspread so that Friday we went shopping after we dropped Princess off at school.

We went to the usual places; Ross, Target, ShopKo. Nothing was what we (and by we, I mean, I) wanted. Target was too expensive, Ross didn't have anything in a twin, and I can't remember what ShopKo had so it must have been ugly. Princess was sad. She was sure we would never find a bedspread for her no matter how many times I told her we would keep looking until we found something.

After school that day we stopped at JCPenney. They had one comforter but it was bright orange and red....we were looking for something purple. Again, Flower was sad. As a last resort I went to WalMart last week and I'll be darned, they had two really cute bedspreads in purple and pink.

I hid Flower's new bedspread until last Saturday. Even though it was Princess's birthday I thought Flower might like a surprise too. She was so excite about her new bedspread. Every morning when she wakes up she thanks me and tells me how much she likes it. Sometimes it's the little things that really make me smile.

Birthday Weekend

We survived another birthday weekend. Princess turned 6 yesterday. Grandma and Grandpa came Friday night. They took the girls shopping and out to lunch at Applebee’s on Saturday. Grandma said the girls worried the entire time that their waiter wouldn’t bring the birthday sundae and sing. They were happily mistaken.

We had a party for her and her friends at the park, which included a scavenger hunt and lots of fun in the sun. The weather was perfect. We could not have asked for a better day.

After the party all the grandparents came to our house for dinner. Princess is into spaghetti these days….as in she wants spaghetti for dinner every, single, night. So Dear Husband made a big batch of sauce Friday evening and he served it up with a big bowl of pasta, salad and garlic bread for dinner. It was really good, and I don’t even like spaghetti.

We spent the evening watching Princess open gifts and model her new clothes. She liked most of them, which is very surprising and we only have to exchange a few things. Grandma L got her a pair of Puma sweats that were size 7/8 and they are too small. Too small? Who were they made for? Princess is a little tall for her age but she is not a giant. Great Grandma C gave her a fancy pair of high heel shoes with tiny straps….they were a big hit. We stayed up way, way past our bedtime but a fun day was had by all.

Today we missed church. I was just plain tired. I woke up about 4:00 am with a raging headache. Not sure why, but it was a monster. Grandma and Grandpa played a game of Jenga with us over coffee and then took off for home. Grandpa was itching to get his seeding done. Then we played a heated game of Mouse Trap in our pjs.

We spent the rest of the morning surgically removing Barbie dolls from their boxes (Who at Mattel decided Barbies need four thousand tiny pieces of plastic to hold them in their boxes??? Really, where are they going???). Princess received a swimming pool for Barbie that came with a yellow lab who swims around the pool. It’s actually pretty cool; I played with it for a while too. Then the girls decided the swimming pool wasn’t big enough and they ran a bath for all the water Barbies they have….I didn’t realize how many they had until I looked at them all lined up drying on the bathroom counter.

Then we had snow cones, got dressed, and ate lunch. Princess chose a new blue skirt with a busy blue and green flower print with a purple and white horizontal striped shirt. There is no question, the girl has a style all her own. After lunch we made play dough ice cream cones and sundaes. Then we watched a new DVD, played with the Barbie pool some more, and now we are starting another game of Jenga.

Dear Husband is making chicken potpie for dinner, one of my favorites. There is a mess in every single room of the house except for our bedroom, I think but I haven’t been upstairs in a while so I can’t be certain. DH and I just finished off the last two glass of IPA from the growler we opened last night. So far it’s been a darn good weekend.

The Big Game

Last night Dear Husband’s office had their first annual company softball game and bbq. I took a couple hours off work, picked up Princess from school, and met DH and Flower at the softball field.

DH hasn’t played softball since we moved here ten years ago. He has always enjoyed playing softball so he was excited about last night, even if most of his coworkers have never played in a league and those who did haven’t played in years.

Princess and I arrived at the fields a minute before DH and Flower so we waited in the parking lot for them. DH jumped out of the Expedition, quickly unbuckled Flower, grabbed his bag and headed for the fields….he was late for batting practice.

The girls crawled in the back of the Denali to get their coats on and I was in the front seat changing my shirt. As DH walks away from us (dressed in one of his softball uniforms from the 90s), Princess said, “Daddy’s pants look funny”. Flower replied, “Yeah, I know!” with a giant eye roll and sigh. I’m afraid this is only the beginning of the eye rolling but at least we know a sure fire way to embarrass our children, drag out the baseball pants….

Chocolate Milk

One of the items in the school newsletter last week was milk. The teacher asked every family to sign up for a week to bring a gallon of milk for the kids. I decided to get my turn out of the way so we brought milk this week.

I picked Princess up from school today so I asked her if she had milk with her lunch. She said she didn’t want milk today so I reminded her all she needed to do is ask for milk at lunchtime and it doesn’t matter who brought the milk because we are sharing.

Princess doesn’t like chocolate milk so she was worried that someone might bring chocolate milk. I assured her that chocolate milk was for snacks and special treats, not for meals. I told Princess I was sure no one would bring chocolate milk to share at lunch. Princess thought about it for a minute and said, “Yeah, but you’re the only mom smart enough to know that.” It's nice to know Princess thinks I’m smart.

To Labor or Not to Labor?

Our sleepy Sunday turned into a working Sunday. In my post yesterday I said harvesting the garden shouldn’t take long….I was wrong. Dear Husband and I slaved away all day and we didn’t get half of the garden in. This is our first garden and we underestimated the time it takes to put up a few vegetables and herbs.

Yesterday DH brought in some of the carrots and beets. I cleaned them and put them in freezer bags until we decide what to do with them. Then we made a quick trip to town for groceries and baking supplies.

It took us all afternoon to bake a carrot cake, four loaves of zucchini bread, and lasagna. Saturday night our friends were telling us about the veggie lasagna they made with their zucchini and it sounded really good. So DH took Nana’s lasagna recipe, which we love, and replaced half of the noodles with zucchini slices and added some carrots and cubed zucchini to the meat sauce. We invited Nana, Papa and Grandma over for dinner to try out our experiment. The lasagna was delicious and cake turned out really good too.

DH left early this morning to go fishing with his buddies. Princess got up before Flower and I and made breakfast for us. She set the table with the red tablecloth. She made us all a bowl of cheerios with a glass of milk and a cookie for dessert.

I am trying to find the motivation to do something about the floor. It doesn’t look so good after all the cooking yesterday. I’m procrastinating with a cup of coffee sitting at the computer. The girls put the ABBA cd in the stereo and they are acting out their favorite scenes from Mamma Mia. Maybe I’ll labor a little on Labor Day, or maybe not.

BTW-did anyone notice today is the 5th day of the month and I have 4 posts already...and this makes 5...that is 2 more posts than July and August together. Now, if I could just write about something useful....

Sleepy Sunday

We should be getting ready to leave for church right now. Instead, I’m blogging, Dear Husband is watching a survival show on TV, Princess just got up and curled up on our bed to watch cartoons, and Flower is still asleep. I guess we’ll write it off to a holiday weekend and let Flower sleep.

The girls are tired. Friday night we had friends over. We roasted marshmallows and the kids ran around the yard until 11:00 pm. DH had planned a “camping trip” in the backyard and set the tent up earlier that evening so we slept outside and the sun came up very early Saturday morning.

Yesterday the girls wanted a play date at Nana and Papa’s house. DH and I dropped them off after lunch and went to town to run some errands. We ran into some friends and ended up with dinner plans, which morphed into more friends at a wings joint. By the time we got back to pick up the girls it was late. It’s overcast the cool this morning, perfect weather for sleeping and Flower is taking full advantage.

Today we are planning to harvest the garden, which shouldn’t take long. We have a bumper crop of carrots, beets, and basil. Our friends brought us a sack of zucchini last night. This afternoon we’ll be making pesto and baking carrot cake and zucchini bread.

Tomorrow DH has a fishing trip planned with his buddies. I’m not sure what the girls and I will do. The weather forecast looks cold and wet so maybe we’ll stay in, drink hot cocoa, and say goodbye to summer.