Views from my front porch

So....we got some ice. Not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Looking down the street

Tree in our front yard

There is an identical tree next to it on the left that I obviously did not include in this photo. For some reason it does not look quite as pathetic as this one. Those trees always look awful when we get ice like this, but somehow they manage to bounce back once the ice melts.

Clarification

When I said that the skies could open up once I was done traveling this weekend I did not mean that the skies could dump up to an inch of ice. I was really looking for just enough wintry weather to maybe spark a snow day tomorrow...but that much ice we are talking snapped power lines and other assorted serious inconveniences.

Apparently that is what is in the plans beginning tomorrow evening.

I am trying to counteract that statement by being all prepared to hunker down in the even that we do get an inch of ice..groceries bought, flashlights, candles at the ready, replaced the sad tires on the car...

Because if we prepare then it won't happen, or at least it won't be as significant right??

Unless I have just undone what I was trying to counteract by making bold statements about it.

Crap?? How do I fix this??

Quick! I need a chant or sage to burn..something!

I guess at least an inch of ice is not as bad as 52 inches of snow out near Hatchet's neck of the woods!

Apparently there are no Folding Fairies

If there are then I need to know what to do to make them visit my house.

All classwork is done. HOORAY!

Now...I need the fairies that make ice/sleet/snow go away while I travel to and from KC the next two days.

As soon as I am home for the weekend Saturday evening the skies can open up, I just want it all to hold off while I am among crazy drivers on the interstate.

That isn't asking for so much is it?

Update

Because I need to say it I guess:

• Infant toddler paper- completed!
• Assessments to adapt-yet to be completed
• Basket of socks and unmentionables-I am hoping that the folding fairies will pay me a visit tonight and fold them while I sleep.

YAWN!!!

I am a practicioner in the art of procrastination

I think I am gearing up to receive a Ph.D in procrastination.

What I should be doing right now:

• Finishing my paper on infant and toddler mental health for my play therapy class
• Making up assessements for the above mentioned class
• Folding a basket of socks and unmentionables

What I am doing right now:

• Farting around on the internets
• Procrastinating through blogging

What is really dumb is that it won't take me all that long to do any of the tasks I should be doing, and I will feel so much better once they are done and over with. Of course now I won't get all three done because it is getting late and I need my beauty sleep and I will be tortured for another evening tomorrow because I have to have all this stuff done by Friday AM.

So what have I learned?

A lesson I know well...procrastination is stupid and I am always sorry when I engage in it.

OK. I think I can write my paper(s) now.

a bullet dodged and a comfy night's sleep awaits

Tonight I thought I just might be calling 15 or so sets of parents to inform them that we had accidentally exposed their child(ren) to Chickenpox while they were here for the birthday party(ies). Thankfully I didn't have to do that because the weird pimple looking bumps popping out all over #2's body were from a bacterial infection that she got from taking a dip in grandma and grandpa's hot tub on Saturday. Apparently such infections are not at all uncommon, even if you take good care of your hot tub and bathe immediately afterward. (All factors in this situation). I certainly never thought I would say, "Thank goodness it is an infection!" today however it was true. It is a mild case and we have started antibiotics to cure it. #2 has had two doses of the varicella vaccine and I have to say that I felt ripped off when we thought it was chickenpox. I was informed however that even getting the now recommended booster is no gurantee against the disease, but does generally ensure a mild case. So I am not sure if it is worth the booster after finding that out, but I guess I should not have been lazy and done my research before getting the second one. Then I would have had to have been even less lazy to fight the Department of Health and Environment who sent me a nice letter at the end of the school year last year telling me that #2 had to have the booster or she would not be able to attend school the following school year. That would have been a battle for sure.

So I can rest easy tonight beacuse my child is chickenpox free AND because we got our new mattress today!!! No more waking up with aching back, hips, and necks!!!!! WOO HOOOO!
If I do you had best believe the rant will be heard across the nation beacuse we did not go cheap for this mattress. Two cheapies in 12 years time and we have learned our lesson. Shop around, research, try out many mattresses and go for preferred comfort versus price. We started this process a few months ago and today our decision was delivered. A lovely Tempur-pedic mattress. I did get the opportunity to nap on it today with #2 and we both rated it top-notch comfy. We have a special base coming in a few weeks that will let us adjust the head and foot of the bed AND it has a massage feature too.(That makes me giggle. Kinda like staying at the Motel 6 or something!) Can't WAIT!!!!!

Wish I had taken video of the process of getting that monster of a mattress upstairs to our bedroom. I feared for several minutes that it was not going to happen. Apparently the memory foam gets pretty rock solid when it is cold, and the mattress had been in a cold delivery truck for most of the morning. That baby had no give. It was like a cement slab when I laid down on it after they finally got it up the stairs. I hope the base comes in pieces or we are in for a world of hurt. Rather the delivery people will be. I will just stand and wring my hands nervously.

I think I shall retire early tonight.

Sweet Dreams!!

#1 is 10!!!

Yes folks 10 years ago today at about this time I was being checked out of the hospital so that I could go across the street to the other hospital in order to finally get a really good look at my first born who unfortunately had to stay a week and a day in the NICU before coming home. She was a cutie. Still is for that matter. But don't tell her I said that, she prefers being referred to as cool instead of cute. I have tried to find a way to combine the two words so that both of us are happy, but I just haven't hit on an acceptable combination yet.

#1 is something. She sure has come a long way after having such a rocky and absolutely terrifying beginning to her life.

Let me tell you a little bit about her....

She is S-M-A-R-T Smart! Straight A's since she has begun to receive letter grades. She loves to learn that one! Her intelligence is noticeable right away. People who don't know her usually comment about her intelligence after only a few minutes of conversation with her.

This is a child that is almost never without a book in hand to read. Even if it is a five minute trip to the grocery store, she's gotta have something to read for the drive. Her current reading obsession is Harry Potter. She began the series this summer and I honestly can not tell you how many times she has read them all. I would guess we have reached double digits. We gave her all four movies for her gift today, so now she can obsess over those. She is also following in the footsteps of her father and developing a love for those things geeky, like comic books. Current favorite is Spiderman. (Only appropriate ones of course!)

#1 is no girly girl. No pink. No Barbie. No Bratz. (Thank the dear baby Jesus!) Absolutely positively NO DRESSES!! My girl likes spy gear, anything to do with science, bugs, and most especially butterflies. She can tell you a LOT about butterflies.

This dear child loves animals more than anything. If I would allow it she would have even more pets than she already does. Her room currently houses a hamster, three fish, and two frogs. The dog and cat enjoy spending time in there as well. Soon she will be the proud parent of an undetermined number of Sea Monkeys. She plans to be a vet someday, and I can absolutely see it happening.

Oohhh the imagination. I can not even put it in to words. Thankfully she does and who knows...perhaps she will write novels in between taking care of sick animals.

She loves her younger sister and they can play happily for impressively long periods of time and develop long complicated pretend games that I don't even pretend to try and follow.

She is a Daddy's girl....but has her special things that only Mommy can do.

She is a kind and patient child, and has often befriended those that others will not.

#1 is a complex kid...we like her that way! It is hard sometimes to realize how quickly time is passing, but we look forward to discovering the person she will become.

Now I present the birthday girl!

One down one to go

Birthday party #1 for #1 was a great success today. Though I feel I must mention that 10 fourth graders together and hyped up about a party are L-O-U-D. Really truly brain searing loud. They are also fast. They blew through the party activities in record time, leaving us tapping our watches absolutely certain that they must (GOD PLEASE PLEASE!) be telling the wrong time.

I did make the cupcakes for the party from scratch. They turned out OK. Not raving about them by any means, but fairly tasty. (However it should be noted that #1 felt it her duty to tell me right after the treat eating was finished that her cupcake was dry and as such she did not eat all of it. We had a little tete-a-tete away from the guests about rudeness, and you will be glad to know that I kept my voice at a conversational level for this mini meeting.)

Right now the cake for tomorrow's family party is baking away. Different recipe from the cupcakes and hopefully it will be at the correct level of moistness so as to please the birthday princesses delicate palate.

So here are my Wizard Hat Cupcakes, because the theme of course was Harry Potter!

Unfortunately the force is not with her

This about made me pee I laughed so hard.

B.H. showed me this about a month or so ago, and I just never got around to sharing.

Someday I hope to learn how to embed these videos in my blog instead of simply linking.

Embedding is so much cooler.

Just Keep Swimming.....

Whew!

It has been a big ol' steamin' pile of constant activity here at Chez Us the past few weeks.

Beloved put up his musical production for the year at the high school where he teaches, and it was a great success. That of course has meant I have been a single parent while he put in a gazillion hours working, hence the lack of blog postings. Well...that and obsessively watching the 7th season of the Gilmore Girls on DVD. That takes up a lot of a girl's time.

The musical wrapped up just in time for Thanksgiving preparations for the huge masses of people that rained down on our home. We clocked in just over 30 people this year I believe. I chronicled my cooking adventures in earlier posts as you are likely aware. I was gravely disappointed to see that I was the only family member to actually bake pies this year. We had a boatload of pumpkin and pecan pies purchased from the local Sam's Club. Neither pie is my favorite and I flat out do not like baked goods that come from a grocery store bakery. Not cakes, pies, nuthin'! I am devout about making birthday cakes and decorating them myself such is my dislike of the grocery store bakery. My family members were arguing that the store bought pies were just as good as homemade. Take a guess which pies went first come desert time????? Harrumph! I did not gloat to anyone except BH after everyone left. I have that much restraint. Barely.

While I have negelected my own blog recently I have kept up my devout perusal of other people's musings. Lot's of interesting things going on in the blogs that I read lately. Some have given me some food for thought. One particular day or maybe it was over a few days I seemed to be reading a lot of posts about Stay At Home Mothers (SAHM). Most of those posts seemed to be about guilt, or justification. I thought I would put in my two cents here speaking as a Working Away From Home Mother (WAFHM...I really wanted an acronym! There is probably an official one out there but I am woefully uninformed if there is.) My two cents is this: Stop feeling guilty and stop feeling that you have to justify what you are doing. Because you don't have to and shouldn't do either of those things. More parents need to spend more time with their children. There is no guilt or shame in that. That time is especially crucial the first five years of life for a child.

I will not lie and tell you that I did not get a little pissy reading about this topic. I did get a little pissy and it has everything to do with jealousy and I recognize that and own it completely. If it were possible for me and my family I would walk away from my job right now, but it isn't so there is no point in "going there" as the kids say. My initial thoughts were, "Guilt?? I'll give you guilt!! Try coming home after working for 8+ hours to kids who just want to play and have some attention from you, and have every right to expect that attention but you just snap at them and start cracking the whip as soon as you walk through the door because you have dinner, chores, homework, reading aloud, showers, hair drying, violin practice, lunches to make, and God knows what else to accomplish in the two and half hours before the children must be in bed to get the prescribed amount of sleep to keep them healthy and happy. All the while knowing (because you are a professional who deals with children and what is best for them and their mental health) that you are not being the best mom you should be, but what do you let go of? Homework has to be done, people have to eat and be clean and..and...." then I got overwhelmed and had to stop thinking.

So SAHM's embrace your situation! Celebrate it! Hats off to you from me! Wish I could wear your hat too!

I think that is all I have to say about that.

In other news....my pie baking seems to have set off a very strong desire to bake within me. This is good because I have much baking in my future. #1 turns....GULP....I don't know if I can type this.....ok....here goes....10...YIKES!!! On Sunday. That means one cake (I am going totally from scratch this year!!!) Cupcakes (yup...going for the from scratch on those too!) and a batch of cookies. Speaking of cookies I made some kick ass peanut butter chocolate chip cookies on Saturday. Got the recipe from my Ghiradelli Chocolate Cookbook. Yuh-HUM!

Alrighty I think I have ranted enough for now. Hopefully I can come up with something interesting to say with more frequency over the next month.

Ta!

update

Ok so the pie count now stands at 3 pumpkin and 1 cherry pie that feels like it weighs 50 lbs and was baked in a 9x13 pan. I am blaming the weight on my stoneware pan. (I am pretty sure I have enough filling left to make at least one more 9 inch cherry pie, alas I have run out of ingredients for pie crust and don't feel like making a third trip to the store in two days.)

Yet to be cooked:
1 23 lb turkey
2 big pans of hashbrown casserole

That turkey weight is no typo either. I have about 30 people converging on my home tomorrow. We have another turkey and a ham that will be brought over. In my family there seems to be no such thing as too much meat, starch (I believe there will be at least three different types of potatoes not to mention the homemade noodles), and dessert.

Again I share because I thought you would want to know. Or maybe I just need to vent. Who knows, I am tired after spending so much time in the kitchen. Nice to cook though I must admit. I need to improve my pie crust skills.

Pie Countdown

The count so far:


1 pumpkin down


2 more pumpkin, and an undetermined number of cherry pies to go. (To give you an idea, I have about 3/4 of a stock pot full of cherry pie filling. This recipe takes 8 cans of cherries people. 8 CANS!!! I think I just may use of cake pan for one of the pies or I will be up until next Thanksgiving making them all, and I think I only have three pie pans left.)


Because I thought you should know.

Get in the giving spirit

Check this out. Rather apporopriate for the upcoming holidays I thought.

More later this week.

Crazy busy here.

Many thoughts running around my head that I hope to organize and put into writing soon.

A Little Trivia, a Little Anarchy

Today as I was on my way home for lunch I learned that today was the anniversary of the Sex Pistols first time on stage in 1975.

Apparently getting on stage was all there was to it, they were booed off before they even got to play a note.


So I say in honor of this historic day, go out and get your punk on and explore a little anarchy!


Or at the very least dig out that old copy of a copy of Nevermind the Bollocks and have a listen.

What you get when

Two children trick or treat for an hour:

That is my large sized mixing bowl. If you think I haven't been dipping my hot little hands in that bowl which contains mostly chocolate just about every time I walk past it, then I have not done a good job sharing with you my powerlessness against all things chocolaty.

I have to go get on the treadmill now and will need to stay on it until tomorrow morning.

I just may start drinkin' and this is boring...

Yeeeaaaahhhh......

Pretty much all I have to talk about is what is coming out of this germ factory formerly known as Chez Us.

So for the past two weeks we had the stomach ick making it's way through.

This week it's STREP!

Good ol' #2 is having her annual bout a little early this year. In reality though.... strep was far better news than what we took her to the minor med clinic for in the first place. We were fearful that she had broken her arm after a fall this morning at church, and I just decided to have them take a gander in her throat since she had been complaining of a sore throat for a day or two. Also I thought it might be a good idea to mention that sore throat when they took her temp and it was 101. What with the arm pain and all they did not subject her\us to a throat culture which was mightly kindly I thought, especially since all signs point to strep, we've had it enough around here to know the deal. Luckily the arm is just a sprain. Ace bandage and no wrestling or other such activities for a week.

Now I must leave you to hang a red cross on the door or whatever sign it is you are supposed to use when your home is nothing but a host for sickly germs.

Perhaps next week I will have something other than illness reports to entertain you.

I am really hoping there is something besides illness around her to entertain ME.

Happy Hallow...zzzzz....zzzzz

Get kids in costume

Parade.

Party.

Clean up party.

Clean House.

Visit relatives.

Trick or Treat.

Get kids ready for bed.

Clean up house.

Read blo...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Question posed to my daughters this morning:

"So do the two of you get together at night when we think you are sleeping and devise a schedule for who is grouchy at different times during the morning?"

Ummm...I would like to file a complaint please

OK. So last week #2 has this weird stomach-flu thing that involved her barfing once a day (always at night around 11-12) being ok for a day, then barfing again. We had this Saturday-Friday last week. No fever just vomit.

Tonight it apparently strikes #1. I am sure there are those out there who would say I am nuts given what I am about to say, but I am gonna say it anyway.

Why the hell can't they both be sick at the same time? My kids do this with every illness they pass around and it sucks. Instead of a week of illness we get two, sometimes 4 if BH and I get it too. I would far rather get it all over with at once then have this dragging it out forever shit.

Oh yeah....let us not forget that we are but a couple of days from Halloween.

If someone else was going to get this crap I was kind of hoping it would be me and that it would strike tomorrow night and then I could possibly get out of testifying in court this week. I hate it when I have to do that.

Can you get out of testifying if you are puking your guts out?

Because we all need something...

Here is something fun!

Pumpkin carving without the mess!

But no seeds to roast.