Missing a Few

Well, a month of daily, consecutive blog posts has eluded me once again. There you go.
Once I missed the first post, suddenly it wasn't so urgent to write every day. Of course, last week we were at my parents' house two states away, and a daily post meant staying up later than was helpful each night (I took along a novel that never even made it out of my bag!).
Our annual Thanksgiving vacation was good: spending time with family and friends and hitting a few favorite haunts always feels just right. I could have tacked a few extra days onto our vacation with great gladness, but it also feels really good to be home. What is it about sleeping in your own bed - even if no one in the house sleeps very well, as last night - that feels so good?
We arrived home late-evening yesterday, and hit the ground running. G got the car unloaded (we came home with WAY more stuff than we headed west with, after more shopping than we should have done...) and I got the first load of laundry into the washing machine. This morning we all overslept after our night of horrible sleep, and I got to the office about 10am, was home for 45minutes of lunch, and didn't get home again until close to 8pm. G got to church for the first Advent midweek soup supper (he even made soup this afternoon!) and then led Evening Prayer and got home just as I was putting the Munchkin to bed.
 Of course we didn't manage to get the house very clean or tidy before we hit the road 10 days ago, so there's still plenty of work left to do around here. My hope is to get all the autumn decorations put away and the first Advent decorations up before the end of the week. We'll see... If the tidying and cleaning get done, and I can get the advent wreath out and the mantel "done" I'll feel pretty good...

What's the state of Advent/Christmas decorating at your house? How ambitious are you this year?

Oh, and before I forget: as promised, Santa Picture #39

My sister's family and my family. The tradition lives!
Too bad the little ones weren't happy about it!

#39

Santa Picture #39: check.
I'll post it as soon as I get the email with the jpeg attached...

So Much

There is much to be thankful for.
Today I am especially thankful for my husband, whose birthday is today. And I'm thankful we were able to get him a couple of gifts that were "just right."
I am thankful for my family, and that we get to be together from time to time.
I am thankful that the Munchkin has great cousins.
I am thankful that I have no pressing need to stay up late tonight or get up early tomorrow to go shopping for Christmas presents or other deals (though we do plan to hit a shop that's got half-price socks tomorrow morning. G's feet are pretty rough on his socks).
What are you feeling especially thankful for??

All I Want for Christmas

It's wish-list season. My family has a long history of wish-lists, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as we've also got a long history of buying extremely practical gifts - so practical that sometimes the wisher goes out and gets said item for him- or herself before the gift-giving occasion rolls around. That could happen to me this year: this afternoon the Munchkin and I ventured to the mall to get her mormor (that'd be "mom's mom" in Norwegian) a Christmas present: eye make-up remover from a particular cosmetics counter. I won't be surprised in the least if it turns out that my mom has acquired her own new bottle of this stuff before the calendar hits the 24th of December.
One of the benefits of the wish-list is knowing that family will be spending money on things we actually want/need/will use, and that we'll be giving them gifts they want/need/will use, which certainly beats the alternative. There's not much point in spending money just for the sake of spending money, and I hate the feeling of having NO IDEA what to give someone.
However, this year, when asked what I want for Christmas, the answer is LESS STUFF. I not only don't really want any STUFF, I'd love it if someone would come over and help me (us) let go of some of the stuff that lives in our house already. Of course, given that we live states away from our families, and they really do want to give us something for Christmas (evidently - if any of my relatives are reading this and you don't really feel like getting me something for Christmas, then please donate the money to your food bank or something instead!!!), I also need to have a couple of "real" things on my wishlist. Here they are:
Aveda Hand Relief lotion (I go through one of these a year since SW Montana is a semi-arid climate and my hands do not like winter weather very much).
A new box of chargers for my most excellent whipped cream dispenser (go through about a box of those a year, too).
Origins Ginger hand lotion and hand cleanser (that way there's lotion in the downstairs bathroom too! And, Origins Ginger is my favorite scent - even though other than that I'm mostly moving away from smelly products...).
After that, there are some big-ticket items I'd like for our household to have: a camcorder to capture the Munchkin's hijinks, an external hard drive to back up our photos, etc., a telephoto lens for taking stealth Munchkin pictures. But I don't expect anyone to get any of these things for me. At this point, the exercise of writing a Christmas wish list helps me think about savings goals for the weeks and months ahead. And that's okay.

What do YOU want for Christmas this year (besides world peace, of course)?

PS - This post was inspired by today's testosterhome post. Enjoy!

Not quite treasure

It's snowing. It's been snowing. Since before I got up a little before 7:30 this morning. For the 5th of November - that's a lot of snow. Fortunately, it hasn't piled up too high yet; I'm not quite ready to hear the roar of the snow thrower...
One of the joys of the onset of winter, besides already drying out skin and hair, is the return of outerwear to my regular wardrobe. I can get by with my 18 year old Patagonia fleece for quite a while as the temperatures start to drop, and having grown up in Seattle, I can walk through a lot of rain before I would classify the weather as "wet" instead of "damp."
That said, I do not especially enjoy being cold, and so this evening on my way to worship I pulled my red down vest from the coat closet and put it on for the first time in months. And what to my pocket-seeking hands did appear? But a whole pile of junk that hasn't seen the light of day since the last time I wore the vest, last winter... including: a wad of Kleenex (not used, thank God), a starlight peppermint, a couple of peppermint wrappers, and one of those not-even-bite-sized Three Musketeers nuggets, which at this point could probably break a tooth. Not exactly buried treasure. Not even some spare change!
These spontaneous treasure hunts happen every year, and with just about every coat, jacket or vest I own (which I would have to admit are greater in number than one girl actually NEEDS). You'd think I'd manage to clean out my pockets before relegating the warm stuff to the back of the closet in the spring, but I never know the last time I wear something will be the last time I wear it for the season.
I remember something similar happening when I was growing up. As the oldest of two sisters, I was the one who handed things down, not the handee. The upside: lots of new clothes, including beautiful wool coats thanks to a Grandma who also did not enjoy being cold. The downside: I rarely cleaned out those pockets, either, at the end of winter, and when they became hand-me-downs, the ownership of pocket contents transferred to my younger sister along with the pockets. Maybe that's why I rarely find any money in my own coats winter to winter these days...

28 days is at least one day too many, evidently

So, I missed posting yesterday. And it was only the 4th of the month. Whatcha gonna do... One of the reasons I didn't manage to write anything yesterday was that after we got home from our mutual ministry committee meeting (one of the few committee meetings I really look forward to and enjoy) we spent some quality screen time looking at cruises online. My father has decided he wants to take Grant, me, my sister, her husband and son, and my mom, of course, on an Alaskan cruise this summer. It's something we can all do together, while hopefully still offering enough variety to meet everyone's needs and wants. Needless to say, just finding a time frame that works for everyone is going to be a challenge. I've never been on a cruise, and don't really think of myself as the cruising type. I tend to like to be in charge of where I go and what I do, and WHEN, all of which is compromised once you get on the ship. At the same time, I don't want to look a gift cruise in the mouth, either. A June cruise north to glacier-land should make for a pretty fun and beautiful adventure. I'll just have to keep reminding myself that I can go back someday if I want to. So, we have the weekend to choose our cruiseline and itinerary, keeping in mind that cruising with an almost three year old and a woman in a wheel chair means making different choices than we might if it was just the two of us. Maybe it will help me slow down a little. Couldn't hurt.

Dining Room Organization Duet

Once again it has gotten late. Technically it's tomorrow, but I'm so close to finishing NaBloPoMo that I am thankful once again I haven't changed the time zone on my blogger settings... A college friend of mine, who also moved to Bozeman last year, came over this evening to help me sort out boxes in our dining room. We still don't have a dining room table in the dining room, which has made it a convenient catch all for all kinds of things, including half-unpacked boxes of china, crystal, and heirloom dishes and silver. Now it is organized, and quite a thing of beauty. The pile of "figure out what to do with this" stuff isn't too big, and I will confess has more things originally belonging to Grant than to me, but it feels good to have at least one more space in the house a little more organized and tidy. At this point things mostly have places, and are mostly in them. We'll see how long that lasts. The great thing about having this friend over was that she gets as excited as I do about vintage textiles, dishes that belonged to my great-grandmother, and that when I held up my Grandma's butter ball paddles she instantly knew what they were. We even looked online to find out how to make butter balls. Someday I will be the ultimate hostess, just like my grandmother always was, perfect butter balls and everything. Enough for tonight, it's past my bedtime and I'm afraid this stream of consciousness might spill over its banks in unseemly ways... Happy 6th day of Christmas!

My favorite human petri dish and the disappearance of my voice

This is a picture of my nephew, Erik. He and his parents (my sister and her husband) visited us over Memorial Day weekend and we had a great time. It was a first trip to Montana ("Mon-TAN-AAAaaaaa!!" with arms in the air) for Erik. A first trip to Yellowstone National Park for his dad, as well. I've heard it said that everyone loves the sound of his/her own name. That's exponentially true for me when it's Erik saying "Auntie Lindean." I've also heard it said that kids who spend time in day care get just about every cold virus known to humanity out of the way before they hit preschool. Erik could be a good case in point. I have moved multiple times in the last few years, and usually manage to catch the germs of the neighborhood fairly quickly. Perhaps my previous tenure in Bozeman rendered me slightly more immune this time around, because I'd been remarkably healthy for me, even during the winter, when the queen-of-upper-respiratory-infections usually asserts her reign. Enter nephew from Washington, age nearly-two-years, the cutest petri dish out there. And... I am finally on the mend, after being pretty out of it for a week and a half. I lost my voice completely for 3+ days (it's amazing how much I talk! and how hard it is NOT to talk!). My husband acutally scheduled a doctor's appointment for me and then drove me to it. I missed our Synod Assembly. I'm still a walking pharmacy, with a love/hate relationship with amoxicillin. But those slurpy sloppy nephew kisses are worth it. Every time.