Thinking Small

So.  December happened.  Wow.  Holy over commitment, Batman!  Even though I got all of my shopping done well in advance, we barely managed to get the tree decorated in time.  Never the less, Christmas was great.  Kids had a blast.  Much food was consumed.  Great times with family and friends.  And then it was over.

Now it is that time of year when we feel the need to make resolutions.  Huh.

I don't currently have the mental wherewithal to make plans for an entire year, so maybe I will just make resolutions for this week.  Yeah, that sounds more manageable.

• Get out of bed.  I know this doesn't sound like much, but given the super-bug my kids gave me for Christmas, it is a SUPER big deal.  For the last three days I have been just this side of comatose while the kids were in school.  Staying awake when your body demands rest is more difficult than you would think.  Luckily, we were well stocked with mac and cheese and frozen pizza, because I couldn't manage any real cooking.
• Make a recycling run.  Wester doesn't have curbside recycling (DRAG!), but I still try to do my part.  The post Christmas packaging is taking over my personal garbage dump laundry room.  If I don't take care of it soon, my husband is going to have a planet-bashing hissy fit and throw it all in the dumpster.
• Clean the master bathroom.  It is just not right that I am required to dust my bathroom.  (My mom used to say that dust shouldn't happen to good people.  I couldn't agree more.)  But out here in the windy desert southwest, enough dust to write your name in accumulates over night.  Add some steam and hair products and you get almost instant yuck.
• Write two posts on this here blog.  Hey, already halfway there!  Chica is disgusted with my lack of writing, and I can feel my brain melting from lack of use.

That sounds like a manageable week.  Maybe.

Thanksgiving Memories

I am thankful to be part of such a wonderful family.  We are spending the day with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, but here are some pictures of favorite moments from years past.

Sister L and Bro R are the hosts with the most.

My sweet husband on our first Turkey Day

Daddy frying the turkey...

then sleeping it off with Z.

Parents,

In-laws,

Sisters,

Kids.

A good time was had by all!

I hope you and your lil' pilgrims

have a great Thanksgiving!

I know we will!

Halloween Humor

Happy Halloween!

So I Have This Blog...

So.  December happened.  Not that you could tell from the trusty ol' blog!

Lots of things happened:

• Finally attended my first PTA meeting as a parent.  Turned out to be just a 5th grade Christmas concert.  Figures.
• Got portraits taken of the spawn in their adorable Christmas regalia.  They turned out... okay.
• I hosted a cookie exchange.  The hidden side benny to hosting?  I got all the extra cookies for the gal who didn't show!
• Z had her dance recital.  Very cute.  But quick.  So quick that she was done with her number before GanGan got the video camera going.  Rats!  At least I got lots of stills.
• Daddy's house sold, so I went down for several days to gather up the things from my childhood that I couldn't live without. Total sob fest.  Lucked out and got movers to arrive my second day there.  They beat me back to Wester!
• Attended a Girls' Night/Gift Exchange with my besties.  Was so nice hanging out with them without having to mess with kiddos every few minutes.
• Took Z to her first ballet.  We watched her cousins dance in The Nutcracker.  Z was a little distracted by the cousin and friend that went with us, but had a great time and enjoyed the dancing.
• Hosted Christmas for the in-laws and two of my friends and their families.  It was lovely.  Great family.  Great friends.  Great food.  Made it most of the way through without crying, but still missed Daddy a lot.
• Had a fun New Year's Eve at home playing games with friends.  Watched fireworks from the (new) upstairs window.

And a few things didn't happen:

• I didn't ever finish decorating the house.  The stair rail on the wall had garland, but only a few ornaments and no bows.  (But the living room looked FABULOUS!)
• I didn't send out the family gifties.  They are sitting forlornly in the laundry room waiting for me to make the dreaded trip to the post office.  Blech.
• I didn't take the kids to look at Christmas lights.  This is a bummer because Wester does a nice drive-through display and I had hoped to do this whole I'm-a-good-parent-building-memories-with-my-children thing.  With hot cocoa.
• I didn't finish my Christmas cards.  So now I have 80+ copies of the (much doctored) aforementioned Christmas portraits sitting forlornly in the laundry room waiting for me to make them into Christmas New Year's cards.
• I didn't stick to my diet.  (See:  'Hosted cookie exchange' above)

Hope your December/Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/New Year was great!

Happy Turkey Day!

This video makes me sad for the turkey, but it made me laugh anyway.  I hope you have lots to be thankful for this year!

A Month of Thanksgiving: Days 1 - 10

As it has been a hard couple of months here at Casa Critical Mass, I decided that I would put some effort into seeing the things that are good in my life.  Each day this month, I will post something for which I am thankful.  Since I am good at ideas and slow at follow-through, I will do the first ten items today.  Feel free to play along!  Grab the button from the sidebar.  Gobble, gobble!

1.  I am thankful for the good man that was my father.  In all that he said and did, he taught me how to be an honorable person.

2.  I am thankful for my sisters.  Laughing or crying, life is better with them by my side.

3.  I am thankful for my husband.  He has loved me through thick and thin thicker.  Clearly, he loves me for what is inside - a rare and precious gift.

4.  I am thankful for my two beautiful healthy children.  Enough said!

5.  I am thankful for my in-laws.  I truly won the in-laws lottery.  They love me like I am theirs and don't hesitate to drive all the way across the state to help out/attend a soccer games and/or dance recitals/give the hubs and me a chance to go on a date.  Wow.  Just wow.

6.  I am thankful for extended family the next town over.  I love that Z and Q get to hang out and spend holidays with their cousins.  I always wished for that kind of relationship with my cousins and am glad my kids get to experience it.

7.  I am thankful for my friends, old and new.  They fill my life with laughter and are WAY cheaper than therapy!  In that vein, I am also grateful for Meet Up.  It led me to my great group o' gals here in Wester.

8.  I am thankful for my small herd of dogs.  They are shed-y and slobber-y and ill-behaved and wonderful.  I love that my smallest dog thinks he is big and and my biggest dog thinks she is small.  Mostly I am thankful for the buckets and buckets of unconditional adoration.

9.  I am thankful for my health.  As a middle-aged-out-of-shape-round person, I am lucky I have good genes.

10.  I am thankful that soccer season is over, if only for a little while.

Happy (Belated) Fourth!

Things are funny here in Wester.  Instead of celebrating July 4th on, say, the fourth, the powers that be declared that the big fireworks fun should be held on the more convenient third of July.  To maximize the opportunity for folks to get wasted and drive around after the fireworks, you couldn't possibly set them off on a Sunday! Humph.

Anyway, we planned accordingly.  The in-laws planned their swing through Wester on the way to Colorado to coincide with the fireworks display and T invited the night unit to come have steaks with us. 

Enter the rain.  My fam has long compared me to Rob McKenna from Douglas Adam's So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:  a "Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer," aka: a rain god(dess).  Having recently been to east Texas, I apparently soaked up moisture like a sponge and brought it home with me.  Wester is now the wettest desert known to man. 

The fireworks were canceled because the (beer) vendors couldn't set up shop safely in the standing water at the fair grounds.  Awesome.

Our dinner was great, but somewhat anticlimactic.  It certainly didn't end with a bang!  (Ha!  Fireworks humor!)  After the required patriotic flag cake, everyone went home.

The actual fourth was such a non-event that I forgot to put the kids in their cute July 4th outfits!  It was only after I started hearing the neighbors blowing up the horse pastures that we ventured outside.  The great thing about living outside the city limits is that fireworks are legal here.  I am personally too cheap/chicken to purchase incendiaries.  Lucky for my poor deprived (all-their-digits-having) children, my affluent neighbors have no such problems. 

The local display started around 9:00 and continued until past midnight.  And not the cheap fire crackers, either.   Big, gorgeous, bursts lit up the sky for 360 degrees .  It was like theater in the round, but more explode-y. 

The kids were entranced.  For about ten minutes.  Then they were entertained with the novelty of being allowed to run around outside in the dark.  Once they got whiny, we went back inside.  Unfortunately, the big free display going on around us did not take bed times into consideration.  I think we made it into bed sometime after midnight.

Happy birthday, America!  Thanks for letting me sleep in today!

Weekend Wordles: Valentine's Day Edition

Join the fun at The Asylum, aka Last Shreds Of Sanity, to participate in Shan's Week~End Wordles. She has Mr. Linky up and running. For instructions on how to participate, go here.

Happy Heart Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It figures that the one weekend a month that T has to work would fall on Valentine's Day. Humph. Not that I had anything planned other than getting the kids hopped up on sugar!

Actually, I was going to give them their Heart Day loot after snacks, but discovered that they had emptied all the book shelves onto Q's bed (that's hundreds of books) and had pulled every. single. blanket out of the cupboard. I saw red. There was yelling.

What's the big deal, you ask? They have gotten into BIG trouble for these exact activities - as recently as yesterday! They got sent to their rooms once the clean up had been accomplished. They think it is punishment, but it is really just nap time.

Maybe they'll get their prizes after dinner?

Afterthought

After thinking about my resolutions a bit (and reading a lot of yours, too!) I decided that I needed to add one. So here it is:

5. I will make an effort to be a better domestic engineer.

As you know if you have read my blog at all, I am the first to admit I am a lackluster housekeeper at best. Clean enough to sanitary - barely - and drowning in clutter. It's not like I don't like a clean house, but if the choice is put the dishes in the dishwasher/de-clutter the living room/hang up the clean clothes or get some sleep/read a book/take a shower, the latter wins by a landslide. Present me screws future me every time.

I have been thinking about it, and being a home maker is my job and I haven't been doing it particularly well. In a professional setting, I would not be doing bad enough to get fired, but I wouldn't be climbing the corporate ladder either. When I was working outside the home, that would never have been okay with me.

My plan is this: I will take those few extra minutes after meals and before bed to take care of the smallish tasks before little undone chores become junk-sucking vortexes (vorteces? vorteci?) of clutter and become monumental tasks. Once it reaches those epic proportions, I feel defeated before I have even started. My theory is that if I can get it clean, keeping it clean shouldn't be quite so hard.

Wish me luck!

Welcome Baby New Year!

2009 was an exciting year in the Critical Mass household. New jobs, new houses, selling old houses kept us on our toes. The changes have been good. T loves his new job. Z and Q are very happy at their schools. I love having extended family near by and I'm having a pretty easy time of making new friends. Those pesky webbed feet (from living in swampy east Texas) have finally started to clear up. All in all, life in the desert suits us. Of course, I have now jinxed us and we will be asked to move immediately.

I am excited about the new year. This year I look forward to (finally) getting settled into Wester and our new house. I am jazzed/devastated that Z will be starting kindergarten this year. (How did that happen? She was born ten minutes ago!) I will be having a milestone birthday this year. The 11th anniversary of my 29th birthday. I have mixed feelings about the big 4-0. I am hoping that it will help motivate me to keep my resolutions (for once!). I want to be a RED HOT mama on my 40th birthday. You know, for all the pictures that will be taken at my birthday party. (Hint. Hint.)

So. Resolutions. I name the usual suspects:

1. Get some any more exercise.
2. Eat better.
3. Have more patience with my spawn.
4. Make sure I get enough "me time" to make #4 possible.

I am getting cautiously excited about the exercise thing. My new friend, Bun, is encouraging me to go to the Y with her. She is a substitute Pilates instructor, so she is pretty serious about the whole going to the gym thing. She has even threatened to come to my house and drag me there should it become necessary. It's like a personal trainer without the expense and with lots more laughing!

As for the eating thing, I know what I need to do. It's just a matter of doing it. It is no mystery to me how I got to this weight. I have no delusions of 'I have a slow metabolism' or 'I eat the same as everyone else and gain weight'. I need to write down everything that goes in my mouth. (Blah. That was always my downfall at WW.) I need to measure, measure, measure. I need to cut out mindless snacking.

I'm not sure how I'm going to make numbers three and four happen, but I'll keep you posted!

What do you resolve this year?

...and then there were FOUR

For years I have introduced our family as "one dog shy of being weird people." If this statement is true, I am now officially a weird dog person.

T called me at the crack of dawn on Christmas Eve from a weigh station in the middle of nowhere. Once I was awake enough to answer the phone and form coherent sentences, T asked me if I had been serious the night before when we discussed the (distant) possibility of another large dog to keep Blackie's separation anxiety from destroying our house while we are out. I warily asked him why.

"I was around back going on a tree when this huge chocolate lab ran right up to me. I practically peed on her head!" (Like the fact that he had almost marked her was somehow a selling point.) "She's super friendly and can already do tricks! She sits and shakes! If I just leave her here, she will get hit by a truck on the interstate. I guess I could take her to the pound, but they don't keep them very long before they put them to sleep. Can I bring her home?" All of this is said very quickly, six-year-old-begging-for-candy-style.

My response? Well, don't let her get run over.

So now we have another dog. Another BIG dog. T brought her home before I had even made it out of bed. When the dogs started freaking out, I jumped out of bed and treated T's partner to a show (imagine a fat, bra-less, squint-eyed, wild-haired woman in a ratty night shirt and a bite guard. Pretty.) and saw the most gorgeous brown dog I have ever seen. She stole our hearts immediately.


I called around and found a vet open on Christmas Eve to check her out and make sure she wasn't going to give my other hounds the plague. Oh, and to see if she was chipped so we could give her back to her real owners. Yeah, like that was going to happen. They would have to have a really good reason why she was dumpster diving next to an interstate before T would relinquish her. Anyhoo, no chip. We got her wormed and vaccinated. She weighs a whopping 82 pounds. The vet estimates her to be two or three years old. He gave us the wormer for free since we were adopting her on Christmas and all. I think he was half hoping I would let him have her!

So far, she has done remarkably well. She seems to be fine with letting the tiny male pom remain the alpha dog - even though she could eat Griffin in two hairy bites. When Izzy barks at her, she is fascinated rather than annoyed. She lets the kids climb all over her. She did eat a stick and a half of butter and the beginnings of a breakfast casserole off the counter on the first day. There were, ahem, digestive consequences for that in the middle of the night. Blech.

Last night she hopped up on my bed with me to snuggle while I was on the phone with my fam. So. very. sweet. So, weird dog people it is - though T says we only have one dog per person, so we are still one dog shy of weird dog people. Whatever. I'll take it!


UPDATED: We named her Holly. Holly Berry actually. A nod to both the season and another gorgeous brown girl. T is trying to stage a mutiny and is calling her "Brownie." I am not going to have it. (Blackie and Brownie? Uh, no. Blackie is bad enough - everyone assumes the kids named her.) Besides, her real name has already been recorded at the vet's office!

Merry Catmas!

Nothing says merry Christmas like a bunch of ticked off cats! Enjoy!

Ho freaking ho. This is why I barf in your shoes.

I posted this one last year, but it still makes me laugh out loud.
I hope your holiday was filled with lots of laughter - and no cat barf!

Addicted

I am addicted to crack. Christmas Crack, that is. It is the sweet version of Chex Mix, and it should be illegal. Actually, I renamed is Christmas Crunch so that there would not be any unfortunate misunderstandings involving family services or jail time. I stumbled on the recipe here, and made a few modifications that make it just that much more addictive yummy.

Rae Ann's Christmas Crunch

• 3 pounds vanilla candy coating (aka: Almond Bark)
• 1 box each: Coco Puffs, Kix, Corn Chex, and Wheat Chex (or generic equivalents)
• 1 bag stick or ring pretzels
• 1 bag Christmas M&Ms

Mix all of the dry ingredients together. This recipe makes about a bushel, so I usually do it in three or four batches. Melt candy coating and pour over cereal mixture. Mix to coat. Turn out on waxed paper and allow to set. Store in air-tight containers. Would keep forever if you could keep your children from snarfing it down like they are starving.

There you go. Now you can be an addict, too. You're welcome!

Ho Freaking Ho

The Christmas season is officially kicking my rear this year. I have managed a few victories: getting the tree inside (and lit); taking the kids to see Santa; going to see the gingerbread houses at the Children's Museum; finishing my holiday shopping. And yet have suffered ignoble defeat at the hands of getting the tree decorated, the making of the Christmas goodies and getting my Christmas cards in the mail. Forget about getting the presents wrapped!

The decorations on the tree only go up about two feet. With about three ornaments per branch. One sad specimen is weighed all the way down to the ground. The rest of the ornaments are waiting hopefully in their boxes - down from the attic, at least! - behind the couch. I keep waiting for T to be home so we can decorate the tree as a family. I am too stubborn to just cave and do it myself. We are going to have some family fun, dammit!

It almost goes without saying that the house won't be completely put together in time for the festivities. Just close enough to make me crazy. @#$%! It is so tempting to spend my dwindling hours until the big day cranking out curtains for the public areas of the house, but somehow I don't think that would be a wise use of my time. Better to corral the massive herd of dust bunnies and get the spots out of the carpet than worry about finishing details so far from the finish!

This year, for the first time, I can see why my mom was always such a crab at Christmas. I'd better get a lid on myself or it will be bay leaves and melted butter for me!

And now for gratuitous offspring pictures!

Bah Humbug.

***WARNING***

The following post involves money and bickering and other assorted whining. It is a buzz kill. If you are feeling chipper, move on. I'll see you tomorrow.




















Ah, the Christmas season! The tree! The lights! The annual fight about money! Good times. Seriously, I might just have an aneurysm if T whines about buying gifts for my family again. No, wait. He already did! Arrg!

Like I'm just throwing money out the window! I have a budget for each person and I stick to it. I look for good deals. I use coupons. I. am. responsible. with. money. This year I even cut WAY back on purchases for the kids. Of course, it is easy for him to complain about my spending because he is completely excused from Christmas shopping for the masses. He is only responsible for me and any armaments/hunting gear that his dad might need.

He even came back and apologized after the initial freak out. I imagine it did look like a lot all at once. But even so, I had a full head of righteously indignant steam going for most of the afternoon. On the plus side, you can now get two cars into our garage. I worked off my mood viciously culling the flotsam that has accumulated in the garage since the move.

Also? I unpacked the liquor. I may need it.

Makes It All Worth It

While the kids were napping this afternoon, I put the lights on the Christmas tree. This is officially my job because T loves the tree, but the decorating? Not so much.

Q took an unusually long nap and woke up in a mood. He wanted nothing to do with me getting him out of his crib. (He has recently entered a virulent 'I-do-MYSELF!!!' phase.) And changing his diaper? High treason. So after I did the dreaded diaper deed, I left him squalling in his room.

Some time later, he deigned to grace us with his presence and immediately noticed the newly lighted tree. His eyes grew big and he exclaimed, "Chrisim lights! Boooful." (translation for those of you who don't speak two-year-old: Christmas lights! Beautiful!).

And my heart melted.

Snow Day

We woke up this morning to great giant snowflakes falling at an alarming rate. A quick call to T confirmed that we should probably just stay home. Of course, Z was crazed to get out into it. Unfortunately, by the time we got her dressed in all of her layers, the snow had stopped and the melting had commenced.

This didn't thwart her one bit. She went out and stomped around in the slush for around 20 minutes only to come inside and tearfully complain about the cold. She was easily cheered up with a cup of hot chocolate and a Christmas special on Tivo.

Speaking of Christmas, we bought our tree over the weekend. I tried to throw a little business into the local economy at a little corner gas-station-turned-nursery, but they had clearly been smoking their merchandise. They wanted $129 for a Noble fir. Crazy. We ended up finding a lovely Frasier fir at Lowe's for half the price.

We got it into the stand yesterday. Nothing like putting up your tree to get you in the Christmas spirit make you fight with your spouse. T is in charge of lifting the tree and I am in charge of tightening the screws that hold it into the stand. Unfortunately, something about holding up the tree renders my husband mute and rather than giving me instructions, he grunts at me monosyllabic-ly. Meanwhile, Z orbits us like a crazed comet bent on self destruction. By the time we are finished, the adults are grumpy, the kids are oblivious and the dogs are scared. Good times.

Z is obsessed with the tree. After the kazillionth time of asking if we are going to decorate the tree today (we weren't), she decided that she would arrange every. single. toy. she. owns. underneath it. She was determined to get toys all the way around the darn thing in spite of numerous warnings not to get behind it/not to knock it down. Once she had enough toys in the living room to constitute a fire code violation, we finally convinced her that maybe it was time to get the toys back into her room. So she dumped them in Q's room (it is marginally closer to the living room). When I commented on how nice it was of her to give all of her toys to her brother, she finally got everything put where it belongs.

It is only the first day of December. Please tell me that every day from now until Christmas isn't going to be like this! I might have to break out the big gun: Santa is watching! Make sure you are on his 'good' list!

An Embarrassment of Riches

On this Thanksgiving I am thankful for:

• my husband who loves me through thick and thin (literally!)
• my children who are the most beautiful creatures I have ever met - even if they do occasionally make me nuts
• T's job, which provides for us, but more importantly makes him happy
• friends, old and new
• family, near and far
• having family close enough to celebrate the holiday together
• not having to clean my house for company!

Hope your day was lovely, too!

Gobble, Gobble!