I had a really nice Mother's Day. I hope you all did too!

Saturday afternoon, Scout and I walked around the mall while DH went to hang out and play music with some ex-bandmates. I decided to pick out a Mother's Day gift for myself, since I assumed I wouldn't be getting one from DH. He is usually kind of bah-humbug about "Hallmark Holidays" and last year - which was my first Mother's Day, by the way - he didn't really do anything. (To his credit, though, he is always telling me what a great mom he thinks I am and that attributes Scout being so healthy and smart to me....and that means WAY more to me than any Mother's Day card or gift bought out of obligation)

Anyway, I bought myself $50 worth of underwear that aren't frumpy granny-panties and don't look like I've been wearing them every day for 10 years. I was in desperate need of some semi-fancy undergarments. It's hard to feel at all sexy when you are sporting underwear to bed that look like they should be turned into dust rags. Seriously.

When DH got home, I told him about the gift I bought for myself. By his reaction, at first I thought he was peeved at me for blowing $50 on undies and I was about to get a little irritated, since I never spend money on stuff like that. But then he told me that he thought about getting me a gift, but got too busy and ran out of time and he felt bad about that. I had already prepared myself for not getting anything, so it was really no big deal. Then he told me that his original idea for my gift was to find me a bottle of my favorite Bath & Body Works spray that was discontinued a loooooong time ago. It was the scent I wore all the time when we first met and he really liked it and knew I was sad when it got discontinued. Sometimes there are unopened bottles of the body spray and lotion on eBay, so he looked there and bought me one. I thought that was so sweet and it meant a lot to me. It sounds cliche, but it really was the thought that counted.

Yesterday, we went out to eat after church with some friends. We ate at one of those Japanese hibachi grill places and then to C0ld Stone Creamery. It was super yummy and we all had a good time. Well, Scout did have a meltdown when the hibachi chef lit the grill on fire during his "show", but she got over it pretty quickly.

Then, we visited DH's grandpa in the hospital (he just had surgery) and hung out w/ DH's parents at the hospital coffee shop for a while. We gave MIL a CD, a card, and some pics of Scout. I think she appreciated that.

It was a nice Mother's Day. I really couldn't have asked for much more! Here is a pic of me with my baby girl. If I'd have known she was making her funny laughing/snorting face for the camera, I would've made one too!

Labels: dh, holidays, home business, pics of scout, special occasions

Happy Mother's Day, all you beautiful hard-working mommies out there! Treat yourself to something nice. I bought myself 50 bucks worth of fancy undies just because I felt like it and I never ever buy myself stuff like that. Go on, momma, go buy yourself a thong-th-thong-thong-thong. (Mine aren't thongs, by the way. I can't stand butt floss.)

Labels: holidays

Tonight, DH and I are going out by ourselves for the FIRST TIME since Scout was born. Tomorrow is our 7 year wedding anniversary and a lady at church offered to come over and watch Scout for a few hours while we go out to dinner. She has pretty much been begging me to let her babysit ever since she kept Scout in the church nursery for me. Scout took to her really well and she's an experienced momma who I trust, so I figured now would be a great time to take her up on her offer. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. I'm not worried about Scout's well-being - I know she'll be in great hands. I'm more nervous about timing things so that DH and I can get a good long date in, while keeping Scout in a relatively good mood. My plan is to put Scout down for a nap right before the babysitter gets here. That way, when Scout wakes up in her normal chipper mood, she will be ready to play and have fun - rather than being on a downward spiral toward sleepyville. Here's hoping!

Labels: dates, dh, firsts, holidays

Scout received a lot of nice toys for Christmas. I am so thankful to my family for all of the thought and love they put into her gifts. I was a little disappointed that she didn't get more non-made-in-China/non-plastic toys, but she did get some, and I applaud my family for venturing into the world of online toy shopping for our little gal.

Here is some of the loot:

Labels: holidays, toys

Labels: family, holidays, pics of scout, travels, trips

We're leaving tomorrow to fly North for Christmas. I'm so excited for my family to meet Scout! Even though my mom and grandma were here when she was born, it'll be like they are meeting her all over again because she is (obviously) so different now. My dad and stepmom, who have never met her, will be picking us up from the airport. That will definitely be a photo-worthy moment!

I stayed up ALL NIGHT working on a diaper bag for my niece, who is really into baby dolls right now. I should've been working on it a little at a time, but (surprise, surprise) I waited until the last minute. Here's a pic of the applique on the front of the bag. I'll take a pic of the completed bag as soon as it's done (waiting for Scout to nap so I can turn it right side out and stitch up a little 4 inch section).



I'm not even close to being done packing yet. Yikes!

**ETA**
The finished diaper bag:


I'm pretty happy w/ how it turned out. I'm going to fill it with accessories for my niece's doll babies. I hope she likes it!

Labels: family, holidays, sewing, travels

Still tweaking my site. Please excuse the mess. I am thinking about trying to figure out a way to get my blog switched over to WordPress because DH is really familiar with it now that he's had to do a bunch of work-related WordPress stuff and could help me get my blog exactly the way I want it.
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It's a little late, but I thought I'd fill you in on our Thanksgiving. It was pretty nice. We went way overboard and deep fried 2 huge turkeys....and there were only 4 adults at our little get-together. Silly, I know. But now we have a bunch of delicious leftovers. Since we had the fryer going and all of that expensive peanut oil, we (I mean, the guys) decided to fry everything in sight. We fried Twinkies, candy bars, oreos, chicken pot pies, and even black licorice. All coated in a crispy funnel cake batter. Totally disgusting...yet somehow yummy. (Well, the black licorice was not yummy. I didn't try any, but DH did and he spit it out...and he's usually a fan of black licorice)

Of all the random fried things, I enjoyed the Oreos the most. Here is a pic of an Oreo and a Snickers:



Sweet potato fries:



Simmering turkey necks for the gravy:



It was difficult for me to fully relax and have a good time. We were over at some friends' house and I knew that Scout would not nap well while there. She is not the kind of baby that can just sleep anywhere. Sometimes I wish I could just lay her down in a Pack-n-Play and she would drift to sleep peacefully while sucking a pacifier. But that is not how she operates. The bedroom where I tried to lay her down for a nap was close to the kitchen, (small house - the other bedroom would've been just as noisy) and the sun was shining through the curtains, making the entire room glow. On top of that, was pretty warm in there. Scout is used to a cool, quiet, dark room when she goes to sleep. When I finally got her down, she stayed asleep for maybe 15 minutes....just long enough for me to fix my plate and sit down. (sigh) Needless to say, she was pretty cranky for the rest of our visit. We went home earlier than our friends really wanted us to, but Scout needed a nap so bad. When we got home, she only slept for 45 minutes. I don't know what her deal was.

Believe it or not, this pic was taken on the way to the festivities, BEFORE she got cranky:

Labels: food, general complaining, holidays, pics of scout

I forgot to post a pic of Scout in her Halloween costume. We didn't have anything special to do on Halloween and it was a church night, so we didn't stay home and pass out candy. But I thought it would be sad if she didn't get dressed up at all for her first Halloween, so I threw a hand-me-down Humpty Dumpty costume on her and took a few quick pics. She hates getting dressed and undressed sometimes, so I didn't want to press my luck by fiddling with the costume too much.

Looks like Humpty lost an arm in the Great Fall.

Labels: firsts, holidays, pics of scout

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
2007 is special.
This is the year my husband and I will become parents! Amazing!

Labels: holidays

Festivus was a success! We didn't do much planning. Just put up a pole and had a few pals over for PB & J sandwiches. One of our friends brought a pot of chili and stuff to make virgin margaritas and daquiris. We played karaoke games on the XBox and watched the episode of Seinfeld that made Festivus popular. We unintentionally skipped over the "Airing of Grievances"....I guess we were busy having too much fun. DH did get wrestled to the ground in the "Feats of Strength" by his pregnant wife and 2 other people at the night's end.



A pic of our Festivus Pole.....tainted by a scary snowman sent to me by my grandma. DH likes to scare our dog by chasing her around with its loud creepy music and glowing eyes. The blurry puff-ball behind the pole is our friend's dog, who joined us for the Festivus festivities.



Our dog thinks she's a person.



The dogs dance merrily around yon Festivus Pole, which ultimately ends in a ritualistic butt-sniffing.



The Pole.


DH bought one of those Jones Soda holiday gift sets. We each had our own tea cup to sample each flavor one "course" at a time. They were all pretty nasty. Especially the green pea flavored soda. The antacid flavored soda wasn't so bad, though.



Our friends received a gift set at an office party that included margarita and daquiri fixins. They don't drink, and neither do we....so we all decided to get totally wasted on sugar. I was so hung over the next day.


This is what happens when I take a pic in the dark and then try to fix it later. (Have I ever mentioned that I HATE using a flash and will avoid it at all costs?) Here are our pals laughing at eachother's karaoke attempts.

We're going over to our friends' house today to feast on quail. I've never had quail.

Labels: holidays

I think I'm going to try and make an interesting dessert that uses apricot baby food as one of the ingredients. My aunt often made it and brought it to various family gatherings when I was little. It's one of my favorite desserts and I haven't had it in forever!

2 packages apricot Jell-o
⅔ cup water
1 can crushed pineapple, undrained
1 ½ cup chopped nuts
⅔ cup sugar
2 jars apricot baby food
1 can sweetened condensed milk, chilled
1 package cream cheese (8 oz.)

Combine jello, sugar and water, bring to a boil and dissolve jello. Remove from heat, stir in fruit; set aside to cool. Combine milk and cream cheese, beat until smooth. Stir in jello mixture, add nuts. Pour into mold or bowl and refrigerate.

I was going to call my aunt to ask her for the recipe, but then I figured it might be somewhere on the net. Low and behold, it is. If all goes well, it should end up as a big bowl full of cold and fluffy, fruity, cream-cheesey yumminess.

**EDIT**
I ended up adding 4 cups of Cool Whip to the cream cheese mixture, only using 1/2 can of the sweetened condensed milk, and using 2 cups of water to dissolve jello instead of just 2/3 cups. I found another recipe on the web with these modifications, and decided to try it out. I'm pretty sure it'll end up more like my aunt's recipe - hers was set like jello, yet light and fluffy.
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My friend invited us to her Christmas Eve family get-together and I wanted to take a dish that is simple, inexpensive, and unusual. Plus, I almost ALWAYS make some sort of Jell-O concoction when bringing a dish to a potluck. We are also invited to another friend's house for Christmas Day. Maybe I'll make 2 batches and take one to each party.

We are still planning on celebrating "Festivus" on Saturday. (See previous post) We even bought a Festivus pole! But it is not as cool as the poles that this company makes. Thanks, Gladiator's Mommy for sending me that link! That company charges $38 for a 6' Festivus pole with a colapsible aluminum base, not including shipping. We bought a 7' pole at Lowe's for approx. $15, which is actually a metal composite electrical conduit pipe, not pure aluminum. It's much heavier than what I imagine Frank Costanza's original "High strength-to-weight ratio" pole being......but all in all, it looks just like a Festivus pole. The only problem is, we don't currently have a way to stand it up. It's leaning up against our dining room wall for now. I thought about getting a big plastic flower pot or a galvanized metal bucket, standing the pole up in it, and filling it w/ concrete....but I suppose it's getting a little late for a project like that, with Festivus being tomorrow and all. Oh well. Maybe next year. Next year, we'll be able to take a picture of our adorable 8-month-old baby all dressed up in his (or her) Festivus best (whatever that may be) sitting next to the glorious Festivus Pole.

**EDIT**
I went to Lowe's and bought some concrete and a piece of PCV pipe that the Festivus Pole would fit into. But instead of buying a plastic flower pot, I ended up getting a Christmas tree stand from Wal-Mart. When I got it all home, I found out that the concrete and piece of PVC pipe was not necessary at all. The pole itself fits securely into the tree stand and proves to be very sturdy. It is proudly displayed in our living room with a plain white sheet hiding the ugly tree stand. Hooray!
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Labels: food, holidays

I've been highly intrigued by the holiday "Festivus" lately. As some of you may know, Festivus was "invented" by George Costanza's father, Frank, on an episode of Seinfeld back in '97.



In the episode (called "The Strike") Frank explains to Kramer that he invented Festivus out of his disgust for holiday commercialism. Many years ago, while shopping for a doll for young George, a fight errupted between him and another holiday shopper who grabbed for the same doll. "As I rained blows opon him, I realized there had to be another way!", says Frank.

During Festivus, a plain aluminum pole is displayed in lieu of a Christmas tree.....because Frank "finds tinsel distracting". Immediately following the holiday meal, there is something called the Airing of Grievances. Each person at the festivities gets up and tells the others how they have let him or her down throughout the past year. As Frank boldly proclaims at the dinner table, "I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!"

Festivus is celebrated on December 23rd and is officially over when the head of the household is wrestled to the ground in something call the Feats of Strength . Many modern-day Festivus observers have added other competive activities to the "Feats of Strength", such as thumb wrestling, washer tossing, and hula-hooping.

Apparently, many of the Festivus traditions mentioned throughout the episode are loosely adapted from the childhood memories of one of the show's writers, Dan O'Keefe. His father is the true inventor of the holiday, which came to be in the mid 1960's. The original holiday does differ a bit from what was portrayed on Seinfeld and is described in O'Keefe's book, "The Real Festivus". There is also a book called "Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us" by Allen Salkin, which deals more with Festivus as it is celebrated today. I haven't read either of these books, but would love to get my hands on them to educate myself further on the phenomenon of Festivus.

I recently told DH that I thought it would be fun to start a Festivus tradition in our own household. I like its connection with disgust for modern holiday commercialism. I also like the idea of our children growing up with a fun and unorthodox "holiday" that no one else (that we know) celebrates. The wonderful thing about Festivus is that its traditions are not meant to be rigid. Aside from the Festivus pole, the Airing of Grievances, and the Feats of Strength, there are no other activities set in stone. In fact, O'Keefe states that each year his family celebration had a different "theme".

This holiday really fits DH like a glove. He's never been terribly fond of me putting up Christmas decorations each year.....and I never hear the end of it if I actually spend money on Christmas ornaments or something. :) I grew up in a family that makes a huge deal of Christmas. The shopping madness, the over-the-top decorations....and things ALWAYS had to happen the exact same way each year. Mostly, it was my mom's family propelling this huge holiday machine, and my dad was just along for the ride. I remember my dad once saying, "I wish we didn't have to do this every year", referring to the stress-induced frenzy that my mom always got herself worked into. I didn't realize it when I was younger, but now I see that my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles all subscribed to the mindset that even if you don't have the money, go ahead and spend like crazy anyway....and then pay dearly for it throughout the coming year. Stupid.

Although DH's family does celebrate Christmas, it's certainly not the huge mandatory extravaganza that I grew up with. At first, I had a hard time getting used to DH's bah-humbug spirit. I just thought that everybody was crazy about the holidays and when I moved 900 miles away from my family 6 1/2 years ago, it just felt weird not to make Christmas into a huge event. I have since come to respect DH's bah-humbugness and even share it to some extent. I am probably not putting up our tree this year or any of our decorations, and it doesn't bother me. When I mentioned to DH that he should get the Christmas decorations down from the attic for me, he replied with, "Why? I'll just have to put them all back up there in January." He has a point. Really.

I would just end up spending an entire day rummaging through boxes and putting up decorations that no one but DH and I would see or care about, since we don't usually have people over for Christmas and we don't have kids yet. I would have to keep Bob's busy toddler hands away from the fragile 1950's silver aluminum tree and dainty glass ornaments, and frankly, that doesn't sound like fun to me. Not worth the effort.

So, a plain unadorned aluminum pole sounds pretty good to me right about now.

I realize that when our kids are old enough to get excited about Christmas, we will have to subscribe to it on some level, but I'd like to create our OWN traditions that are flexible and fun.... A stress-free holiday that the kids can still get hyped up about. We all know that Christmas is no longer Christ-centered (if it ever was), so I don't think our kids will be missing out on the spiritual aspect of Christmas. I believe that we can still use this time of year to honor the birth of Christ without having Santa, lights, and snowmen plastered all over the place.

Some random ideas to add to the normal "Festivus" traditions:

• Instead of froo-froo Christmas stockings, have the kids pick out a couple of their dad's ugliest, most worn out tube socks for mom and dad (not Santa) to fill with goodies.
  


• Have a huge holiday dinner, (I believe the Costanzas had spaghetti) but change it up every year and let the kids help choose what we have. Maybe one year we can have a sushi feast.....and the next, a meal made up of fancy peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. Anything goes.
  


• Since the "Airing of Grievances" seems a little harsh and isn't a very Christ-like thing to be teaching our kids, we can lighten it up a bit by making it non-threatening and funny.....like "I think it's totally gross when little Billy picks his nose and eats his boogers"....
  


• Each year could carry a different theme that the kids help choose. Maybe when the kids are a bit older, we can reward them throughout the year for acts of kindness and good behavior by using some sort of points system. Whoever has the most points at the end of the year gets to choose the Festivus theme. We can put up decorations that coincide with the theme, but they should be inexpensive and, for the most part, homemade.

Just a few ideas.
And of course, at the end of a busy Festivus day, the tired little tots will have a grand old time trying to wrestle daddy to the ground.

Hee hee....yes, more reasons for my family to think I'm weird.

Labels: holidays