Holidays

We did the DADDY pictures again (and Carrie’s “famous”, up on Kodak’s Tips & Projects with this idea!) One more year and Denis will have a complete set – with the first ‘D’ from 2005 and the final letter ‘Y’ from 2009. I think because the two girls will be so far apart in age I’ll start a new one with little sister by herself next year. We’ll see… Other than that, we didn’t really do much today. Denis has gotten the baby’s room primed and ready for painting, and we managed to get in the pool today for a while. That’s about it!

Oh, and I’m 35 weeks along and NOT on bedrest…yet. My blood pressure has been creeping up a bit at each appointment, but considering I’d already been housebound for two weeks at this point last pregnancy, I’m counting every day I’m allowed to go about my normal life as a bonus at this point!

I hope everyone had a nice day. We just kind of hung out since I’m still not over my cold and Denis wanted to try to get the pool pump running. (It was, briefly, but unfortunately didn’t stay that way.)

I realized this afternoon that I’m 30 weeks along. Which means that I’m at least 3/4 of the way to meeting this baby! 10 weeks seems like a long time to wait, but when you consider that in those 10 weeks we have to transition Carrie to a twin bed, clean out the guest room, strip wallpaper (ugh), prime and paint the walls, find and re-assemble the crib, put Carrie’s dresser in the baby’s room and move in her “new” dresser (we’re going to use my childhood furniture), find all of Carrie’s old clothes and sort through what we’ll be able to use… Ack, we only have 10 weeks to do all that?!?

Anyone up for a wallpaper stripping/painting party in the next week or two??

Easter is just too early this year. I like my holidays to have more than a few days between them, and St. Patrick’s Day was less than a week ago. But despite that, we managed to fit in cookie baking:

Cookie decorating:

Cookie eating:

Egg coloring:

And an egg hunt:

The rest of Easter morning involved Calico Critter bunnies and standing-room-only at church. Then it was off to Great-Grandma’s for Easter dinner, cousins and another egg hunt! Now it’s just a matter of rationing the chocolate and black jelly beans. (Yes, Carrie adores black jelly beans. Apparently she gets that from both of her Grandpas.)

I will freely admit I’m crazy. The show closed last night, my house has not been “clean” in weeks, and the past couple of weeks at the shop have been rather busy because the two full-time partners have been out sick with the flu. But because Easter is next weekend, we decided to go ahead and have our annual St. Patty’s Day party on schedule today. I. Am. Exhausted. But it was worth it to see all of our friends and have a nice, relaxing party. Especially since Denis did almost all of the cooking and tidying up beforehand.

We took hat pictures last year, so this year we took crazy headband pictures. Next year, who knows…?

I know I’ve been really, really behind in the whole blogging thing. I don’t have a good reason for that, other than being busy. I suppose I should make a resolution to keep my blog more up-to-date this year…but resolutions for me tend to last, oh, three days, as is evidenced by my using my paper planner from last year for, oh, three days or so.

I can only promise that I’ll try to be better…especially since it’s much easier to finish blog posts in a timely manner than try to go back and edit several draft posts and add pictures when the last two months are pretty much a blur. Sigh.

We’ve had a busy few days, traveling, baking, wrapping…unwrapping… So I for one am looking forward to some calm family time for the next day or two!

Carrie says “Merry Christmas” too!

When I was a kid, my grandparents used to take me to Midtown Plaza to ride the monorail and see Santa. It was really magical. And then as an adult I discovered the tuba Christmas event held in front of the giant Christmas tree. Well, this year is the last year that either of those things are going to happen there, since they’re going to be demolishing the building sometime next year, so we decided to take Carrie to the final Christmas at Midtown.

I have to admit, I was fighting back tears several times – not for what the place is now, but for my memories of it. And the place was packed. More than I’ve ever seen before. Maybe if they’d had those kinds of crowds in past years the place wouldn’t have gone so far downhill that it would need to be demolished…?

Carolyn helped us get ready for Thanksgiving, by making some pumpkin pies. While Great-Grandpa looked on, she stirred and mixed, and made a very lovely pie:

Final verdict?

Delicious!

OK, I need to preface this by saying that I adore Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving, I will be breaking out the Christmas music and starting to decorate the house. But today I am feeling pretty malevolent towards the whole Christmas thing…

See, I need a rake. Specifically, a kid-sized rake that Carrie can use this weekend with Denis so they can get some yard work done while I’m at the shop. I’d like a decent quality rake, but at this point I’d settle for some piece of plastic junk that will be recalled in six months due to excessive lead paint.

Target was a bust. They haven’t had fall stuff out since before Halloween. In fact, the sales associate actually laughed at me when I asked where they might be hiding. KMart was also a bust, although I couldn’t even find anyone to ask. So I thought, Home Depot! They must still have rakes, because their business is home, lawn and garden stuff, not Christmas!

I was encouraged by the big “Fall Cleanup” sign hanging near the door, but that turned out to be a grand total of 17 giant black plastic rakes sticking out of a box…right next to a field of plastic Christmas trees. And when I went to the service desk to ask, I was told “oh, kid rakes sold out a long time ago.” Um, it hasn’t really been fall for all that long… “But it’s Christmas now, and people see them and buy them for gifts so they sell out really fast.”

OK I have two problems with that statement. First of all, who in heck buys a rake as a Christmas gift for a kid? And second of all, last I checked, it’s November 7th. If I’m reading my calendar correctly (and it’s been a long day, maybe I’m not) Christmas is December 25th. If I had walked in on December 7th and asked for a rake, then maybe I could see the reasoning behind telling me it’s Christmas now and rakes are “only sold during the fall. Um, you know, while the leaves are falling.” (OK, um, as a matter of fact all the leaves are actually still mostly on my trees. So, I was kind of thinking that fall isn’t exactly over yet…?)

I’m all for holiday spirit and all that, but please, for the love of Christmas, can’t we at least enjoy some turkey first? And perhaps a good bit of raking and leaf-pile jumping?!?