Thankful November 30, 2008

I had another post that I took a long time to write the other day about my aunt. We just found out that the first type of breast cancer that she had ten years ago (she has had it twice- estrogen related 10 years ago and not just a couple of years ago) has metastatized to her lungs. I wrote long and painfully about it and then the internet being all knowing like it is, erased it and now that I’ve gotten it all out I don’t want or need to go back and rewrite it. I will spend as much time as I am able with her while she is still here and pray for a miracle (they said its unlikely that chemotherapy will do any good because its so far advanced) and just love her. She is my mom’s oldest sister and if she dies, the oldest and youngest will have gone to the same foe. I have chosen to be thankful for this time that we have left.

I am also thankful for the friends and family that surround me. Dana, thank you so much for the beautiful card and your encouragement. I will show everyone else as soon as I have pictures. Thanks so much all of you who stop by to listen to me ramble- it means so much to me.

I will have stories and pictures soon of Thanksgiving and the rest of the weekend, but I just got a new toy- an HP All in one printer scanner and copier and I have to get it all set up. Stick with me a little longer and you will be rewarded for your patience.

Also, we got the first real snow of the year last night and I, being a winter baby, need to go soak up my element. I love Love LOVE the snow!

Pulling Nose Hairs November 18, 2008

There are things in life that are like that. Short painful jerks that bring a tear to your eye just from the impact and leave you smarting even longer. Controlled jabs at your tender parts that make you wince.

I don’t have anything more profound to add to this because it was just a random thought that popped into my head while I was walking through my house. So rather than messing it all up myself why don’t you expound on it either here or on your own space and tell me about it.

I’m boring November 18, 2008

I’m boring. I admit that readily. I read my favorite people’s blogs and sigh because they are talented funny individuals. They can discuss grocery shopping or flooded basements and still make me grin. Not at their pain or boredom, but they add a certain spin to everything that makes it funny. I’m only funny when I’m really mad I guess altho I’m not even sure about that. So with all this spinning around in my head maybe you can guess why I’ve been missing lately.

My husband is channel surfing. We finally bought a digital converter (sadly it was all my idea) and he is coming into his manly element- he has that remote firmly in hand and he is flipping through our new wealth of television channels. You have to understand that before the converter we had only one so having like 20 now is a big deal. For those of you with satelite or cable I don’t wanna hear it. We don’t have them and I don’t want them cuz then I’d never get a thing done. As it is I have discovered a channel from public television called Create that has craft, travel, and cooking shows that drug me under for quite a while today.

So I guess I need to warn you that I may get even more slow here in Helle for a while if I don’t manage to shake off the TV demon.

In other news, we’re planning the Thanksgiving to end all Thanksgivings here and I may be a bit crazy by the time its all over with. Heres the deal. 11 out of 14 kids with spouses (this includes me and Jarell) children, my In-Laws, my Dad, my step-mom, my younger step-brother and his girlfriend, my brother, possibly my step-mom’s mother, sister, brother in law, and niece. How many people is that? 27. 27 people in my happy little house that is going to get a lot smaller in a hurry.

I will be cooking. Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, pies, deviled eggs, bread; all the usual suspects. I will be cooking for two days no less in order to make sure we have enough food for a small (granted very small but with many males) army. The worst part is I really can’t stand a few of the people who may be there but have to be nice for the sake of family peace. Bleck!

So does anyone have any good recipes? Suggestions for feeding the entire world? How bout tips for cooking a turkey? I’m having people bring whatever they want aside from my main dishes so I’ll have appetizers, but I’ve never cooked for a crowd quite this large before and sadly the women in life who should be able to help me with this are either too far away (my mom in California) not the cooking type or somewhat of an unknown entity. My MIL can cook some things but not others or maybe she can. I honestly don’t know because she’s so haphazard about what she does and doesn’t do that she’s and unknown entity. However, she never ceases to amaze me both with what she knows and what she asks for advice about.

So now that I’m through with my Ben Stein impression let me direct you to more interesting waters if you don’t already know how to reach them.

Dana, Toi, Karen, Kathi, and Bryan are a good start and all the rest of my blog roll can pave the way to a more interesting and informative internet experience. Hope you enjoy!

Hats November 14, 2008

This week has started to feel a bit chilly here in the midwest and it got me thinking about Thanksgiving which brings the inevitable thoughts of Christmas right on its heels.

With those thoughts clamoring around in my brain I wandered through pages of projects in search of ideas for makeable Christmas presents- preferably projects that I could make with what I have on hand as much as possible. Stumbling through random webpages, I found a link on the side of the Threadbanger blog that was instructions on how to make a brimmed beanie because those are all the rage with teens and young adults right now. I wandered over to the instructions and found myself quite taken with the idea either with or without the brim included. Hmmm I thought to myself, Don’t I have some old sweaters hanging out in my craft stash waiting for something to be done to them? I checked and sure enough I found three right off the bat.

The first hat I made reduced the sweater used into only enough material for one hat but I learned my lesson for the next bunch and ended up making 4 more hats this morning after my initial attempt. The easy breezy part is that you use the hem of the sweater for the bottom of your hat, allowing you to make two adult size hats (probably 3 or 4 kid’s sized) from one sweater. Wonderful! I now have a project that takes me about 10 minutes per hat that will work wonderfully for all the kids in the family because in our neck of the woods the cold weather tends to hit after Christmas. Now all I need are a bunch of scarfs!

Hats! I especially like the white one with ears

Our romantic weekend November 13, 2008

A while back I mentioned that we were taking a romantic weekend to enjoy ourselves somewhere other than home and we did in fact go. I have been meaning rub it in tell you about it ever since but never quite got around to it. So today as I sit here surrounded by the sounds of silence- my fish tank in the other room, the freeway in front of our property, and the ever present humming of appliances- I will share with you a few pictures and a bit about the gorgeous hotel where we stayed.

Chateau Avalon is a lovely hotel located near the Kansas City International Speedway. Amazingly the walls were thick enough to drown out the sound of the cars racing around the track even tho our window looked out over said track.

View from our window

This view was not however what we saw when we first walked through the door. Instead we saw this.

and this…

Finally after some deliberation and warnings to my husband not to “break anything” we found this and were quite pleased with our deductive skills.

We walked through the door/book case to find this

 As you can see I kicked my shoes off even before taking pictures. I also had one of the towels unwrapped in preparation for taking a bath in that big beautiful tub. It was some sort of fancy shmancy chromatherapy tub which is basically colored light therapy (how weird yes?) but all we cared about was that it was big enough for two and it had jacuzzi jets. Yeah that was nice. Obviously tubs that big come in handy for romantic getaways and now we have vowed to replace our space hogging jacuzzi tub for half a person (it came witht the house) with one of these babies.

We went to dinner at a Cajun restaurant nearby and fell in love with their crabcakes. Then we returned to watch a movie and eat a lovely dessert- white chocolate blondie outside in front of the fountain.

Welcome to my blog November 13, 2008

Welcome from…

Minneapolis MN, Somewhere IN, Los Angeles CA, Kansas City MO and KS, Waco TX, the UK, Chenai Tamil Nadu India, Delhi India, Herndon VA, Atlanta GA, Austin TX, Tulsa OK, Ft Worth TX, Camarillo CA, More Og Romsdale Norway, Stockholm Sweden, London England, Hayward CA, St Catherines Ontario Canada, Brooklyn NY, Latham NY, Springdale AR, Thousand Oaks CA, Knoxville TN, Saskatoon Saskatchewan Canada, Queen’s Village NY, Morrisville PA, Toronto Ontario Canada, Boston MA, Koeln Nordrhein-Westfallen Germany, Bangalore Karnataka India, Vancouver British Columbia Canada, Little Rock AR, Johannesburg Guateng South Africa, Brazil, Reston VA, Crystal Lake IL, Montgomery TX, and Croswell MI.

I hope you all enjoy your visit!

Photos from this weekend (Image HEAVY!) November 11, 2008

These pictures are of course all clickable and to really see the detail you’ll need to do just that. I appologise in advance but the internet hates me so this was the best I could do.

In order left to right, top to bottom

My baby brother Clifford in all his finery, My darling dearest in one of his many costume incarnations, J11 putting the finishing touches on J13 for his Pyramid head costume, J11 and my MIL as Mrs. Doubtfire, Jarell again in another incarnation of the costume and his mom, J9 as the redneck Spartan (complete with Uncrustables box helmet , J13 posing in the basement in full regalia, Me in my not Tia Dalma costume, and again me, J13’s back with fake scars and cuts, J’s 9,11,13, and 14, J11 in her costume- how cool are her eyes here, T-bucket in his not costume, A couple of closeups of my make-up – I was feeling bloodthirsty, J14’s full costume- aren’t she and her sister beautiful dolls?, J12- the other twin LOL and yet he’s not the one witht the nickname of Bubba, and the last three (sorry Dana!) are of our pumpkin display and haunted house candle holder.

Photos courtesy of myself, Jarell, and the rest of the J’s.

*oh and J11 went for the Jigsaw from the movie Saw look while J14 was leaning towards the look of a female Joker a la Heath Ledger.

Life November 6, 2008

Well I’m sure some of you must have been wondering if I had gone “gently into that good night” but the answer is no. I’ve just been busy.

This year has been one of those years where the giant batting machine of life has been pitching non-stop curve balls at us and it seems that just as soon as we knock one outta the park the next one is there ready to hit us in the face if we’re not careful. The most recent being our septic tank not draining properly and the cleanout pipe in our basement… overflowing. Yeah how disgusting and puke-worthy is that?

So we’ve been cleaning up after that mess in our basement and Jarell has been working on finishing a couple of .22’s he bought. They are the most beautiful things I’ve seen despite the fact that they are guns because of the amazing stocks he bought for them. They’re laminate or something like that in varying colors- one is pink, purple, blue, and green and the other is brown, green, black, and blue. The colors vary at different layers making for an absolutely amazing gun stock and I know this sounds silly, but I think they’re beautiful.

In this area and with car restoration my husband is an artist. The big burly guy that he is, he matches colors and styles so beautifully that you can’t help but admit that even something like a gun is a work of art. He has similar wonderful taste for our house helping me to create a space that is warm and inviting without being overly masculine or feminine- just comfortable and lovely. Yeah I really got the pick of the litter (and with 13 siblings, it almost IS a litter).  So if I’m absent a bit, just understand that I’m reveling in having my darling dearest home and here underfoot around the house. Tomorrow we go to take our three female dogs to get spayed (Yee haw) and then next week I’m sure he’ll be back to work and I’ll be back here.

For now I’m off to make some breakfast.

Foreign language for parents November 3, 2008

I don’t advocate cussing in front of small children at any time. However there are times (like when the whole pan of hot oil decides to spatter your face) when you want to scream fu*kitty f*ck fuc* mother *ucker and then you realize that your nieces/nephews/sons/daughters/puppies of tender age are standing right there looking at you in awe and thinking “OOOOh sentence enhancers just like on Spongebob!” And then since you don’t have a convenient dolphin or foghorn to bleep you out you become the worst aunt/uncle/parent in the world when the little one repeats what you said in polite company.

Well I was thinking this morning and all of a sudden my brain switched to Spanish to cuss and I thought… “Hmmm if everybody new a few extra swear words in foreign languages the kids would go unscathed for just a short while longer.” So I’m going to share my limited knowledge with you in honor of the upcoming Holiday Season. Cuz we all know damn well that this is a particularly trying time of year. I’m only sorry I didn’t get it up in time for all the Halloween costume arguments……

Spanish

• Hijo (ee-ho) de (day) Puta (poo-tuh) – Son of a b*tch
• Mierdo (me-air-doh) de (day) torro (tore-o) – Bull sh*t
• Pendejo (pen-day-ho) – just a fun all purpose word
• Cabron (ka-brone) – B*stard

French

• Merde (mayrd) – Sh*t
• Tu (to) m’emmerdes (may-mayrd) – You’re bugging the sh*t outta me
• Putain (puteh) – Origanally whore but now just a general expletive like cr*p or f*ck
• C’est (set) un (uhn) gran (grahn) con (cohn) – He’s a big *sshole
• Petit (petty) con (cohn) – little prick
• Trou (tru) de (day) cul (koo) – A*shole
• Bite (beet) – Dick
• Nichons (nee-shon) – boobs

Hope these help!

A Romantic Getaway or all the reasons I haven’t posted this week…. November 2, 2008

Well I know I’ve been MIA here for a few days, but it got down to the wire and I had a whole load of cleaning to do before Jarell got home. Added to that I watched my nieces 2 days in a row and went shopping on a third, had a funeral and a visitation in there for a wonderful former coworker and adopted grandmother, and had a lot of planning to do.

The cleaning I managed to get done even with the help of my 4 year old niece. *grin* She has different ideas of how a kitchen should be swept which made me smile.

Cookie was 83 years old and by her looks could have been my grandmother’s sister or cousin. She had a wonderful personality and a wicked sense of humor and will be missed by all of us who knew her. Rest in Peace Cookie, I know you’ll be keeping God on his toes up there.

The planning was for Jarell and I to have a romantic getaway (hence the title) somewhere close by so that we didn’t have to spend a fortune on gas. We found it in a gorgeous hotel/B&B up near the KC Speedway called Chateau Avalon that will put us near Jarell’s favorite store plus a bunch of cool shopping and restaurants. Not that we plan to leave the hotel much…. but its there if we’re bored. Just a one night stay, but it will be nice to have a break away from home.

So to end this rather short and scattered post, I leave you with a picture. This morning when I got up everything was coated in a thick thick fog that reminded me of life on the West Coast. I went outside and saw the foxtails and had to get a picture because nature is so beautiful.

Foxtail and dew