Happy Blog-versary!

I realized that a year ago today, I started writing this blog. At first it was as much about my upcoming trip to Europe as anything, and has gradually expanded into somewhat of a chronicle of my life in general. I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would and plan to keep it up, at least once or twice a week when I have high-speed access.

My goal this year is to double my readership - maybe 6 instead of 3 : )


Forgot to mention in my Christmas blog that the three of us (Eric, Steve, and I) went to see Avatar on Wednesday night (Christmas Eve Eve.) We had hoped to see it at the Imax in 3D but tickets were already sold out for the night. The next 3D in a regular theater was an hour away, so we bought our tickets and walked over to Panera Bread to have a quick bite to eat. Came back to the theater, put on our geeky 3D glasses and watched a really good movie. At least for Eric and I. Steve unfortunately developed some motion sickness and had to leave about a third of the way into the movie. He ended up walking over to IHOP and grabbing some coffee, and was waiting for us when we got out. I felt bad for him, hope it doesn't affect him the same way when we eventually watch it on DVD.

A nice family evening together.

Christmas wrapup 2009

Christmas has now come and gone. The best gift, of course, was my Savior. But things turned out better than I thought they might. I can reveal some of the stories behind the scenes...

Eric's gift was a treadmill. Steve got a really really good deal on one and he brought it home on a Thursday night. Eric had to work on Saturday, starting at noon and until late evening, so it was the perfect time to get it into the house. Steve backed the van around the garage and stopped at the top of the hill down to the basement slider doors. We managed (I'm sure I wasn't all that much help) to get it in the doors and hidden away. Lots of tire tracks and boot tracks in the new fallen snow. Afterwards, I was wrapping the instruction book and had just finished when Eric walks in the door! He decided to take a break between shows and come on home for a while. He looked out the back but says now that he didn't notice tire or boot tracks back there. Good thing.

Steve's big gift from me was a HDTV. Television is one of the few things that he likes to do these days, so I figured it was time to get an HDTV for him. 32" Magnavox. I bought it at Sam's Club on a Friday. The next day was our Gold Wing Christmas party, and we had some time to kill. Ended up at Sam's Club where he made the comments about wanting a BIG HDTV (more like 50" or so) and when I tried to make the point that the smaller ones (ie 32") would fit better in the room, he looked at me suspiciously and said, "You didn't buy me a TV already, did you?" In fact I had, of course, but didn't tell him that. Just said that if I had and he didn't like it he could always take it back.

Hid the TV in Scott's room under a blanket. A few days later (Dec. 23) I came home from some last minute errands to find Steve in Scott's room, working about a foot away from the covered up TV. He was (with Scott's permission) taking Scott's TV downstairs to the basement to watch while working out. He was also adjusting the DISH lines so that the signal could either be down in the basement or up in Scott's room if he was home. I figured he'd probably peeked under the blanket and discovered the TV but he says now that he didn't. Eric said he even laid tools and cables on top of it without knowing.

Bottom line he has set it up in the living room and enjoys it. He says that when (if in my book) he gets a bigger one this one can go in the other living room.

I blogged previously about having no anticipation, no surprises, for Christmas. Did end up with one. Eric bought me a lid lifter for my new dutch oven. But he also made me a dutch oven cookbook (printed 95 pages off at school where he can print for free...) AND bought me a Julie & Julia DVD and wrapped up a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that had been on the counter.

Steve gave me the aforementioned dutch oven, a preseasoned Lodge Boy Scout model 12". He also gave me a new 2-person tent. Reality says there's room for one plus gear, but I really needed something to replace the blue and purple wonder which I inherited from the boys. Can't wait to get some camping in this summer!

Scott gave me a cupholder mount for my nuvi and also AC/DC recharger for it. Cash and gift certificates from Steve's dad and from my Mom & Phil. All in all a nice Christmas. I'm thankful for family and friends.

Chocolate Cherry Mice

Steve brought home one of these adorable little mice from his Christmas party at work. I looked at it and said, "I can do that." Well, it turned out to be harder than it looked, but I made two dozen of them for the Christmas party we went to with our Gold Wing Riders group, and got many compliments for them!

And the best thing is that I don't like cherries so I won't eat them up!

Bought cherries, sliced almonds, and oreos at Meijer. Started off twisting the oreos apart. That didn't work so well. So used a knife (at Steve's suggestion) which worked much better. I might observe here that the picture (the one Steve brought home) shows a double stuff oreo and I bought regular ones. I think the double stuff will work better.

Unwrapped two dozen hershey kisses (ok, unwrapped a few more than that which quickly disappeared...) and melted a 12-oz bag of chocolate chips. Then dipped a cherry in the melted chocolate, put it on the oreo, and quickly attached the hershey kiss and the almond ears. WRONG! Discovered that trying to do it all at the same time resulted in a chocolate mess.

Dipped the rest of the cherries in chocolate, put them on a cookie sheet, and placed them in the freezer for 10 minutes. Ah, much better. Now - put a little melted chocolate on the cherry, attach the almonds and kiss, and place them on the oreos. I put them back into the freezer for a few minutes to set the new chocolate.

Then took them out of the freezer to decorate -- needed eyes and a little Christmas greenery. I had so many partial tubes of decorating frosting that I decided not to buy any. The eyes and red part of the greenery went off without a hitch. The green was a different story. Seemed a little hard in the tube and wasn't squeezing out very well. So decided that a short burst of microwaving (10 seconds) might help. 10 seconds was about 9 seconds too much, I think, as the tube was hot and the insides were liquidy.

Put it in the freezer for a few minutes to solidify. Afterwards, it was more solid but enough so that I had a lot of trouble getting it out of the tube. Steve actually went out and brought his vise grips in so that I could get enough green frosting out to finish the job.

So there you have it, the story of the chocolate cherry mice. More work than I thought, but the compliments were worth it.

No anticipation

Anticipation. There really isn't any this year. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, and that is what is most important about the day. His presence is the greatest present of all.

But the anticipation of what is under the tree just isn't there for me this year. My guys - I love all three of them - just don't go out and look for something they think I'd like. They all ask for lists. And then they go out and get what's on those lists. So I know what I'm getting from Scott, Eric, and from Steve this year. The major things anyway. And I always receive the same gift from Steve's dad, and from my Mom & Phil. I appreciate all of it, don't get me wrong. But is there anything wrong with wanting to be a little surprised at Christmas?

There is SOME anticipation out there, though. Watching everyone else when they get their gifts is becoming more fun than opening my own. Eric is getting a nice gift that he asked for but I really don't think he expected to get. We snuck it in the house when he was at work yesterday. My big gift for Steve is something that I think he wants, but now I'm not so sure because he saw some yesterday and wants bigger than what the one I got him was.

I will enjoy spending Christmas day with Eric & Steve, and with Steve's dad when we go to his house to visit. I'll miss having Scott with us, though, for the second year in a row. Can't be helped. He'd be home if he could.

I may not get to high speed so I can blog again between now and Christmas, so I hope my two and a half regular readers have a wonderful holiday!

12 days left until Christmas

Winding down, only 12 days until Christmas. The weather did improve yesterday, though Sargent Avenue is still a mess. So since I had a few errands, I expanded the "few" and went out to get some Christmas shopping finished.

First stop was a bookstore, looking for something for Eric. No luck. Then to Cost Plus World Market - had seen an Eiffel Tower ornament in their ad that I wanted. No luck there though I did find one that wasn't glass like I wanted. Also found a similar Big Ben so bought them both anyway. Also some stocking stuffers and my favorite, maple sugar candy. Yep, know I don't need it but bought one anyway. Bought a gift each here for Steve and his dad, ended up selling them to Eric to give to them.

Then to another bookstore nearby where I didn't find what I was looking for but did find a couple of books that I ended up "selling" to Eric to give to Scott.

Then made stops at a couple of sporting goods stores since we were looking for a particular pair of Nike socks that were on Scott's Christmas list. He had provided a link but the Nike store apparently doesn't ship to APO, wanted $8 to ship one pair of socks, so I told Eric I'd look locally. Well, no luck locally, and no luck with other online sources. So Scott won't be getting this particular style of running socks, sorry about that.

Stopped at Bed, Bath, and Beyond - no luck finding anything there though I did sit and have a nice massage in the demo chairs.

Ended up at Target next. Had to buy soup for Steve and pick up a prescription for me (my original "errands") and did some shopping there as well. Last stop ended up being the Hallmark store. I had a $5 off coupon good on anything so bought some individual Christmas cards for a lot less than usual!

So it ended up that most of my day turned out to be doing Eric's Christmas shopping! He doesn't have much of a budget this year because of school expenses, etc. and not much time either with finals starting this week. So since I found some presents that fit his budget, I was glad to help him out. He'd have picked out similar things had he had the time, I'm sure.

Da Blizzard of 2009?

Don't know what to think about this so-called Blizzard we've been having. They'd been building up the hype all week, and we were awakened at 5 a.m. on Wednesday by the weather radio informing us that a blizzard warning was beginning at 1 p.m. that afternoon. (Yep, forgot to turn it off after tornado season was done!)

Well, 1 p.m. came and went. Earlier, there had been rain, sleet, and a variety of weather, nothing bad enough to be called a blizzard. Still, roads were tricky and I didn't have to work after all. (I usually don't now on Wednesdays, but had been scheduled on because of a need.) Since Lowell schools were closed, Awana was cancelled as well.

Eric went to school and came home. He said the roads weren't great, but not too bad. It was supposed to start snowing harder and get windy but neither really happened.

So this morning - still in blizzard warning (until 4 p.m.) but Lowell schools were OPEN, as well as Greenville's. That was significant because if school was cancelled in Greenville, Cub Scout Roundtable was officially cancelled. Also, work decided to be open as well.

So I had my work cut out for me. Still had to burn CDs for Roundtable as well as some other prep. I'd pretty much convinced myself that RT would be cancelled and hadn't done the burning yet (why waste CDs if I'm not going to need them?) Also had to finish making some new bead holders since I was out of them. Got everything done and got on the road about 11 a.m. (needed to be at work at noon.)

Roads were not too bad, even the Sargent hill has been worse. Made it to work in 45 minutes, going about 30-40 all the way. Visibility was definitely reduced the more west I headed. Made it to work where I found out in a quick e-mail check that Roundtable was cancelled anyway.

And now we've decided to close work at 4 p.m. So I'll get to go home a little early, too. Seems that the Blizzard warning has been extended until tomorrow and that conditions are finally befitting the name. I'm gonna head straight home and probably not go anywhere until church on Sunday! (and if the weather isn't good, I can probably stay home from church with a safe conscience since I don't teach Sunday School this week.)

I've just about decided to start watching Channel 13's weather instead of Channel 8 since Channel 8 seems to over-dramatize the weather situation. That just gets me all anxious about getting out on the roads. Just because I know how to drive in this stuff, doesn't mean I like it!

Stay warm, stay dry, stay home!

No Snow to Snow, No!

We have had quite a nice stretch of good weather in November, even extending into early December. That all came to a screeching halt on Thursday night. Yeah, they told us it was coming, but it was still cruel.

The snow started falling while I was in my troop committee meeting on Thursday night. Still, as I left it wasn't sticking to the roads and was still pretty light. So I figured I had time to stop at Meijer. WRONG. I came out of Meijer to snow that was sticking on the ground (and roads) as well as coming down at a fast enough clip that it was what I call "Star Wars" snow, comes right at you like the stars do when the Star Wars ships are traveling through space. Still, with nice and slow I made it home ok.

Thankfully, I don't work on Fridays anymore because that little bit of lake effect snow turned into 8+ inches around home, and even more to the west of us. All of the area schools were closed (though not colleges. But Eric chose to stay home anyway as he only had one 50 minute lecture and it would have taken twice as long to get there as he needed to spend there.)

Things had cleared up enough by yesterday that I got out and did some Christmas shopping. Still, it was the first trip down the Sargent Hill this season, back to creeping down at 10 mph...

Sunny but cold today. Calling for more snow tomorrow, as well as the potential for a blizzard Wed and Thurs. Goody. (not) Just in time for Roundtable.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Christmas is coming. 25 days away now. I brought up the Christmas decorations over the weekend since I had the time. Pulled the tree out of the box first. Three sections, pre-lighted, easy to put up. You have to fluff the branches, though. I don't always do so well with that part. But I digress. After the tree is together, add the garland. Gold colored, wind it around the tree. I always have fun remembering how Eric used to call it the "garlic." Then the angel topper. Where is it? Looked through all the boxes I'd brought up. Nope. Went back downstairs and it was in a box I hadn't brought up. Put it on the tree and put the tree skirt on as well. That was as far as I got on Saturday night.

Sunday evening, I decided to get started on the ornaments. For a few more years at least, I can still use all the beautiful antique glass ornaments handed down to us through mostly the Eidemiller part of the family, but also some Cooper, Gentner, and even Pomrenke ornaments mixed in. Add a few newer glass ornaments, and it does make for a beautiful tree once it's done. Once there are small children in the house again (ie GRANDCHILDREN) it won't be so practical.

Started at the top with the tiny ornaments. Exquisite. Then to the main first layer of the ornament box. First to unpack: our First Christmas Together ornament, from 1983. Second, Baby's First Christmas from 1985 (Scott's.) and next comes A Baby Boy's First Christmas from 1987 (Eric's.) The last two are pretty much the only non-glass ornaments, other than some vintage shiny plastic ornaments. Then the unpacking continues with many beautiful memorable ornaments. Some I remember from childhood, others more recent acquisitions. Got tired of hanging them about a third of the way through the box so quit for the night. On FB, I posted the question "How many ornaments does it take for your tree to be considered decorated?" and got lots of answers. They ranged from "one" from several guys, to "if you can see any part of the tree it's not decorated enough (from my sister.) Interesting!

This morning, I figured I'd better get the job done. It was fun - played some Christmas music on the stereo (yep, one of those antique CD's called "records") and did a pretty good job of covering the tree. Sat back and noticed a few places where I could have fluffed better. But overall pretty good. Placed the basket of children's Christmas books next to the tree, added the gingerbread boy and girl next to them, and there it was.

Next the nativity. This is the second year I've put up the Cooper family's nativity rather than the big one that my grandparents made. When we added some furniture to the living room, there just wasn't a good place for the big one any more. Hopefully that will change some day. But for now, unpacked the smaller nativity and set it up. This is a vintage set, figures made in Germany, and "goes" with the ornaments on the tree quite nicely. I set up the wise men and their entourage on top of the little fireplace instead of with the rest of the set - after all, the wise men didn't actually visit the stable, it wasn't until Jesus was about two years old that they found him in Egypt.

After the nativity comes the Santa scene. This comes mostly from Steve's Uncle Forrest, a vintage handmade fireplace with the proper accessories. Also a vintage Santa, and a couple of reindeer too. Add a small tree with miniature ornaments and presents under the tree, and we're all set. Scott has the second small tree in Germany now, I hope he puts it up in his room.

Miscellaneous decorations, mostly in the living room and dining room: the bell from my Grandparents house (pull the cord and it plays Jingle Bells); a stuffed Santa to sit atop the TV; a card holder, Santa jiggling down into the chimney toy, some gold miniature trees on the coffee table, a photo collage of the boys as babies and toddlers at Christmas, and the N-O-E-L letters.
The letters take on a life of their own, as they are often rearranged by Santa's troublemaking elves into different configurations such as L-E-O-N. Hmmm....

Ok, looks good. Now to haul the boxes back downstairs and it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Now comes the shopping and baking and cards and everything else. I need to find time to slow down and remember the true meaning of the season.