scott's party input

scott got home around 10pm last night from class, and as i was telling him that i had started brainstorming time for matsy's party, he very helpfully said, "i was kind of thinking a south pole theme.  bring in a couple dozen penguins.  some artic icecaps."

to which i replied, "oh that's good.  except that arctic means north.  antarctic would be south."

"it's ice, the penguins won't know the difference.  maybe some polar bears, too.  hmm, except that polar bear eat penguins."

me, "also north, so no they don't."

scott, "what, really?  you always see polar bears and penguins together.  they don't eat penguins?"

quick google break in which i confirm that i am correct - polar bears only live in the north, penguins only in the south, and that polar bears eat seals, not penguins.

scott, "well then, we won't have to worry about the penguins being eaten!"

so helpful, this husband of mine.

party planning

matson turns one (can you believe it??) in a mere two and a half month!  being a planner, i've already started brainstorming what kind of first birthday party i want for him.  philosophically, though, i'm not into crazy huge extravagant themed events.  okay really, i'm not into themes in any facet of life - even with his nursery i really just wanted a cozy, cheery space and decorated it accordingly.  nor do i have any intention of doing a big birthday party every year for him (or any kid) - i think a big celebration for the milestone birthday like 1, 5, 10, 13, etc sounds good, with the in-between years just being fun, special days.

but i digress.  what do i want in a first birthday party?  i want it to celebrate matson making it to a year and all of the firsts that we got to enjoy with him this year.  i want it to be fun, festive, cheerful, but not stressful, over-the-top, or expensive.  i want it to be a celebration of his life, not a venue to get more toys.  i want it to be personal and colorful and exciting and to be a way to show our friends and family all of the things we love about our little man.  he's curious, and active, and sweet, and charges head-first at life.  he's our little dinosaur!  (he actually responds to dino as much as he does to his own name - haha.)

so ... how do we get from here to there?  we have friends over all the time, and while that's fun and all, i want to make this somehow separate from that.  some pinteresting, some googling, and then i discovered young house love's post about their girls' first birthday party.  perfect!  it's festive, it's personal, it's cheery and fun, and it's theme-free.

my takeaway ideas from yhl:

• post our matson-by-the-month pictures for viewing pleasure
• balloons!  colorful balloons!  (okay, i had this one down without them.)
• finish his first year video before the party to share with everyone
• share foods that are special to us - like pizza since that was my major first trimester craving, or steamed peas since that's matson's favorite food.  (hmm, might need to figure out a more fun food for him!)
• work the dino thing in there somewhere fun but subtle ... maybe little plastic dinos as a party favor for the kiddos?
• start a simple tradition that we can carry forward even in non-party years

so much brain food!  now to go get my real dino some real food.

lessons and resolutions

since i'm a goal oriented person, here are some things i've been learning in 2011, and what i want to learn this year:

1. on parenthood
1. lesson: parenthood does not suddenly make you an all-wise, perfect being.  i totally thought it did as a kid. (my parents seemed way more mature to me growing up than i feel right now, even though i'm the same age having mats as they were having me.)  it is, however an inately sanctifying experience.  it reminds me of our first year of marriage in that i'm suddenly seeing my own selfishness magnified against my abrupt closeness with this other person.
2. resolution: be more intentional about placing matson's wants above my own.  even if i have a really good want (like to finish the dishes before scott gets home), it's good to set that aside every once in a while if he is tugging at my leg wanting to play.  even better to let it go if it's a purely selfish want on my part - like hanging out for an hour on the couch browsing pinterest when mats wants attention.  i want him to know that he's more important to me than my laptop or a spotless sink.  (please don't read this to say that i think i should be spending all day doting on my baby ... i really do think independent play is good for both of us, but i think i could also be better about making sure we have simple fun together.)
2. on projects
1. lesson: i'm a big dreamer, and a little follow througher.  this has long been a stumbling block of mine, particularly with big projects, or house cleaning.  (my floor hasn't been mopped since before matson was born.)  i want to do what i say, though.  i've been working on vocalizing fewer project ideas so that i at least don't feel like i'm not following through on anything ... but i also really do want to work on finishing things!
2. resolution: follow through on projects!  i'm going to make a list of things that i have half-baked, and do them.  i'm going to have to get scott's input before finalizing this list, but it's going to include some things like setting up a college savings account for matsy, iras for us, staining our window sills, refinishing our coffee table, and finishing a picnic quilt.
3. on homemaking
1. lesson: for the last nine months, i've been telling myself that my house is messy and we still eat dinner at 8pm because i have a new baby ... but let's face it, he's nine months old now, generally naps well and is good about entertaining himself when he is up.  my house is messy and dinner is late because i choose other things like pinterest and errands and hanging out with friends and reading books.  i want a neat house and a non-rushed evening, though.
2. resolution: read the frugal girl's post about scheduling my time and do something with it!  possibly revisit flylady.net for inspiration.  plan one crock-pot meal per week.
4. on marriage
1. lesson: life is busy, and it's shockingly easy to not get quality time with my sweet husband now that he's added school to the mix and we have a baby.  lucky for him i'm exceedingly self-aware and will happily communicate when i feel like things aren't quite up to par with us.  which is why we're instituting ...
2. resolution: date night!  our date night has been things like take out and watching tv/movies for the last few years, and while that's not bad, it's also not good focused communication time.  since we don't have limitless hang out and communication time anymore, we need to work to get that communication time in there.  so, 1-2 times per month, we're going to do an outside-the-house, matsy-free date together.  could be dinner and a movie, could be a coffee date, could be a bike ride ... but something just the two of us to remember why we chose each other.
5. on cooking
1. lesson: we eat a lot of junk.  we also eat a fair bit of tasty, healthy food ... but my fallback is always things like macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, and potato anything.  as mats is getting closer to eating table food, i think i'm becoming more conscious of this - i feed him things daily which i enjoy but eat rarely.  (zucchini and sweet potato, for instance.)  i want him to enjoy healthful food, though, not just push it aside and want mommy and daddy's soda and cheese fries instead.  (we went to steak 'n shake last night - first one in the state!  and it was awesome.)
2. resolution: experiment with one healthy food at a time.  i go on new recipe kicks sometimes and get overwhelmed.  this year, i'll pick one new healthy food from time to time and go for it.  first up: quinoa!  i've been wanting to learn how to cook with it for a while and found some yummy recipes for it on pinterest, so we'll give it a shot.  easy dinners will remain, but i'll try to limit them in favor of quick healthy dinner options.  also, talk to scott about a soda ban in the house.  (i had started getting generic diet root beer at the grocery store as a treat for myself, which led to us always having soda in the house and drinking it on a pretty much daily basis.  diet so not terrible for us, but also not a good habit.  matsy loves the shiny cans.  hmm.)
6. on faith
1. lesson: i'm pretty bad about prioritizing bible reading time in day-to-day life.  prayer is definitely getting better, but bible time has definitely not been benefited by having a baby.  i joined a women's bible study at church this fall and loved it - totally loved it.  in the five months between having matsy and joining study, though, no time reading the bible (just being honest), and in the month since study ended, also nothing.
2. resolution: stay in bible study.  definitely worth it.  (there are studies offered every fall, spring, and i think even a short one in summer.)  during the off weeks between studies, make sure that i have a game plan for bible time before the break occurs ... and then follow through on it.
7. on finances
1. lesson: i had grand plans of a mostly-unchanged grocery budget once i was staying at home.  umm, yeah, that totally didn't happen!  i'm not sure just how much it didn't happen yet since i haven't done my final budget update of the year with comparisons of budgeted-to-actual spending and year-to-year changes and all that ... but my grocery spending was ridiculous.  my other plans of limiting food waste, eating leftovers, and doing cash for grocery also didn't pan out.  and, scott generally has no idea where we stand with our budget.
2. resolution: revisit my goals from a year ago.  we've switched most of our spending to credit card (which we pay off in full every month) to reap that lovely 1% cash back reward, but i think we really need to go back to cash for grocery for a while, to keep a better handle on where we are with our spending for the month.  i'm also toying with the idea of doing a weekly food waste photo (a la frugal girl) to motivate me on that front.  do my menu planning on tuesday evenings when the grocery ads come in the mail so i can shop produce sales better.  and do a monthly budget update for scott (also per fg).
8. on service
1. lesson: over the last few years, i've realized that my love language is acts of service, and one of my spiritual gifts is also service.  (makes sense.)  i love to help people.  i also want matsy to grow up wanting to help people.  i think it's good to live outside yourself.  for the past few years, i've tutored with whiz kids, but decided not to this year since mats needs to be my priority and scott's work/school schedule could interfere with that commitment with no notice, which isn't fair to the kid i'd tutor.  instead i committed to cooking a meal for the middle school whiz kids, but that happens maybe once a month.  i serve in the nursery at church two sundays a month, but i have lots of great time during the week with matsy, and i really want to be able to use it to help someone (in a way that matsy can do with me).
2. resolution: there's a great ministry in denver called open door ministries, which has a few residential houses to serve homeless men, women coming out of prostitution, and single moms.  i started an application a few weeks ago to babysit for the single moms so that they can do things like work and go to school, but i need to actually finish it.  as a new mom, i understand how totally overwhelming motherhood can be, and i have an awesome support network.  i want to help provide support for other moms, and it seems like it'd be something that i could easily do with matsy during the day or on nights when scott's at class.  also, i want to be open to other service opportunities that come up.

so there we have it!  play with matsy more, make and do a to-do list, schedule my time better, date nights with scott, find healthy new foods to play with, plan in bible reading time, lay the smack down on grocery spending, and babysit for some single moms.

overall our life is in a pretty awesome place, but in general i feel like you're either moving forward or backward, and goals keep me moving forward.  sink or swim!  and for the record, these are all mental goals i've been ruminating on and working toward anyway, i just decided to list them out for better processing and in honor of the new year.

three month break

three month break ... whoops!  what's happened in the interim, since september?  a lot!
on the matson front:
- he started eating solids
- he started crawling
- he started standing up
- he started taking steps (only while holding onto something, so far)
- he started seperation anxiety (yaay)
- he started jabbering a lot more and saying "dada" constantly (pretty sure he doesn't know what it means yet)
- he discovered his love for christmas lights
- he started taking showers with daddy instead of baths, which is basically as great as a water park when you're 8 months old

on the me and scott front:
- scott finished his first semester of his mba - hooray!  he just finished last night and doesn't have his final grades back yet, but i'll be pretty shocked if he didn't get straight a's.  so proud!
- scott went to men's retreat for church, which meant he was gone for a whole weekend.  which means that i survived a whole weekend with mats on my own!
- we got our first artificial christmas tree.  the weather was too bad to go cut a tree the weekend we had set aside to do so, and i decided i was tired of paying for an overpriced lot tree on the years we couldn't go to the forest, so we found a nice fake tree on craigslist.
- i finished my first "semester" at mops and women's bible study and am loving both so far.
- i made myself take a break from saver's - it's just too easy to find so many things to buy there!  for the time being, i can only go when i have something concrete i need to look for (personal favorite: picture frames).

and what's happening with us now?
- scott just finished his semester last night at about 10:30pm (online test), so we celebrate!  we're going to look at christmas lights with goo and her boyfriend, grant, tonight.  scott is very excited to have a poker night tomorrow.  christmas party at a friend from nourish's on saturday.  and $5 movie and a fancy dinner out (via a giftcard that scott's first boss left in his desk when he left the company, which a coworker found when cleaning out the desk, and then gave to scott because we live way closer to the restaurant than do she and her husband - very generous!) on sunday evening while mats hangs out with the macauleys.
- finishing up christmas shopping and wrapping so that i can get gifts shipped out asap.
- flying out to illinois to see my parents for christmas.
- re-doing our kitchen!  scott said that we can look at updating our kitchen as our christmas present to ourselves (which we've been wanting to do since we moved in), so just yesterday i started looking at all of that.  the cabinets themselves are still nice, but i want new cabinet doors.  i'm debating painting the cabinets vs leaving them wood, and looking at all kinds of counter options - mostly corian vs laminate at this point.  (granite's out because it's so non-renewable and it makes me sad when we're out hiking over granite boulders to think of people stripping those away from the ground.)

and more immediately:
- i need to paint a bunch of picture frames.  i'm bummed that i slacked on this last month when it was still nice out, because it's chilly enough outside now that i have to clear out my laundry room, lay out tarps, and spray paint inside rather than in my back yard.
- i finally bought myself a sander and need to start using it!  first on the list: refinishing our chipped up cheapo coffee and end tables.  next up: refinish a cool old dresser that i got on craigslist and put wheels on it - sideboard for the dining room that can easily be wheeled 10 feet over into the kitchen as a moveable island when needed!
- finish washing matson's diapers.
- go grocery shopping.  i resolved to not buy meat the month of december so that we can start using up some of the 1/4 cow of grass fed beef that we have in the basement freezer, and the pounds upon pounds of chicken breast that i've been stocking up on all fall since it's been so cheap - $1.67/lb some weeks!  i bought chicken wings last weekend per scott's request because we had a friend over to watch football, but other than that, so far so good!
- figure out why the little man is squeaking rather than sleeping.

changes, changes

life has changed so dramatically over the last six months.
six months ago, i was 36 weeks pregnant, working full time, eagerly anticipating matson's arrival "any day now", and nesting like crazy.

five months ago, i was 40 weeks pregnant, home on early maternity leave, eagerly anticipating matson's arrival "any day now", and nesting like crazy.

four months ago, i had a two week old baby who had just started sleeping through the night, loved him and was glad to have him, but also kind of thought i may have ruined our happy life by deciding to have him and felt totally crazy.

three months ago, i had a snuggly seven week old baby, had put in my notice at work, was slowly but surely finding a rhythm in our new life, and was eagerly anticipating our first roadtrip with matson (and 10 whole days with scott!).

two months ago, i was kind of reeling from the fact that i had asked the previous week to go back to work part time but my office said no, trying to figure out ways to get plugged into ministry and volunteer opportunities with matsy so that we'd be doing something productive and not just sitting around at home alone, but also realizing that eleven weeks is an awesome age and feeling sad for people who have to go back to work at that point - mats was just starting to get so fun!

one month ago, i was back to feeling nice and settled, looking up new recipes, desperately trying to avoid housework, and driving mats all over the front range with my mom and brother visiting.

which brings us to today: realizing that this is real life and not just summer vacation or maternity leave, sometimes still missing having a full time job but knowing that it wouldn't be the same, loving playtime with matson and seeing him discover life - like spend twenty minutes trying to grab his feet through his footie pajamas, glad that scott's starting his mba program this week but not looking forward to him being tied up with school work, and trying to figure out what the future holds for us and where mats and i should get involved.

i realized this week as i was reflecting on the ups and downs of this summer:

1. leaving work and having a baby are two huge stressors and it's normal to feel these ups and downs.
2. most of my friends who are now full time moms had either been working from home or had already left work prior to having their baby which is somehow very different than leaving a full time job at the same time that you have your baby and potentially why i felt like none of my friends had experienced quite what i was going through (although they were still very supportive).
3. i was at my job for four years - the same amount of time i was in college.  even though it had been "just a job", that's still a significant length of time to get used to the relationships at work and that certain rhythm of life.
4. i'm grieving my job and "old life" - and that's good!  i want life to feel happy and normal rightnowplease, and it really truly does most days.  mats and i genuinely have a great time together.  but, scott and i had a really good thing going and i'm glad that i enjoyed my job and our pre-baby early marriage years enough to miss them when they're gone.  grief leads to healing, and even though there are moments (moments now, days and weeks earlier this summer) where it's hard, it's a good thing to go through.
5. god has blessed me pretty significantly.  for some reason, when i feel stressed i also feel lonely.  yet one consistent theme of this summer has been friends.  hanging out and talking with old friends, meeting and getting to know new friends, etc.  on one particularly lonely day, it suddenly occurred to me that i had put five new contacts into my phone that week alone - god has truly given me an abundance of friends to remind me that i'm not alone.  (i know i'm not alone ever in that i always have god to rely on ... but i really like the tangible reminder.)
6. we have a pretty awesome life ahead of us.  things i'm looking forward to this fall and winter include in no particular order: starting to attend mops and a women's bible study at church, playdates with my new mom friends from nourish, hiking and camping with friends this next weekend, matsy starting solid foods sometime in the next six weeks (okay, that one makes me mopey - i like him being my tiny baby who nurses exclusively!), christmas with my parents at their house back in illinois, my parents visiting us here for a whole week in october, hosting a mom brunch, a friend from college stopping by for a few days on a roadtrip west, taking mats to things like free museum and zoo days, a fancy dinner with my sweet husband, seeing scott be excited to learn things in his mba program, and on.  this is life, and it'll change without warning, but it will be good.

processing motherhood

so, taking care of a baby is much easier when you have someone else around.

for the first week that we were home with matson, my parents were here.  that was an awesome decision, because my parents are spectacularly supportive, and i was super-duper hormonal and thus emotional.  i cried at least once a day, and it was so nice having them here to both to lend a hand with making dinner and holding/playing with matson, and to have them to talk to about how hard it was.  honestly, matson's first week home was right up there among the hardest weeks of my life.

the second week we were home with mats, scott's family was here.  (we had a day gap in between them - tuesday, i went to breastfeeding support group, walked with a friend, then cried for the 45 minutes i was alone with mats before scott got home.  wednesday, scott stayed home with me, and i still cried.)  that was awesome because they're so much fun and have such a high energy level that there were always things going on, always people to hold mats, errands to run, games to play, etc.  i didn't actually cry at all the week that they were here, probably largely because i was so distracted.

mats also was sleeping better by this point - his first two nights at home, he cried unless he was being held, which was so so hard.  i stayed up most of the night with him, then would give him to my dad for a few hours ... but i'd still sleep restlessly for fear that he'd cry.  that friday, we discovered that he'd sleep in his bouncer seat, so we began to get 3 hour stretches from beginning of feeding to beginning of feeding at night, but i'd still wake up every time he squeaked in his sleep since he was in our room.  the first night that scott's family was in town, though, we moved him to his own room (still in his bouncer), and my own sleep transition was amazing - actual sound sleeping!  he's started to give us at least one 4 hour stretch between feedings at night, sometimes two, which i know is really spectacular.  unfortunately, i don't think i've actually had a real nap since he was born - in part because i just can't fall asleep, and in part because i've been so anxious that laying down and trying to be quiet just seems to be fodder for my internal anxiety.

yesterday, we took scott's family to the airport, and it's now officially just me and mats all day.  i know that he's a great baby, but his cries are way less cute when it's just the two of us at home - no one else to laugh with, or to provide perspective that there is life outside of us right here and now.  i actually got through today without crying - success!  i was so in awe of scott's ability to play with him and have fun with him last night, though.  he'll sing to him, splash the water at bath time, bounce him on the bed, and just take pleasure with snuggling mats when he's crying.  i'm so not there yet!

(now friday - didn't get this finished yesterday!) i actually spent a fair bit of yesterday looking at day care options online so that i could go back to work. i always thought i'd be thrilled to stay at home with a baby, and there are aspects of it that i totally love (more doing the stuff that i was able to do on maternity leave - getting the house clean, running errands, cooking so that we could enjoy our evenings and weekends together). i like the idea of taking mats to storytime at the library, and joining a daytime women's bible study at church, and hanging out with friends and their babies - and more than anything being matson's primary moral guide and teacher as he's figuring out life. but if i can't get to a point where i enjoy being with him all day, that won't mean terribly much, or be a great experience for either of us.  per scott's encouragement, though, i am going to try my hardest to stop thinking about work vs home and trying to lean one way or another. i really need to give it a few weeks and re-address things then.
on the plus side, matson is gaining weight like a champ! he weighed in at 9lb 2oz at nourish (breastfeeding support group) yesterday, which is up 7oz from his doctor appointment last friday, 6 days prior. babies are supposed to gain like .75-1oz/day, and any more than that is apparently just awesome. so, he's awesome! and, he is a really good sleeper. he typically gives us 3-4 hours between feedings at night (at least one 4 hour stretch). last night, we decided to stop setting an alarm to go wake him up to eat, and just get him when he'd cry. he ate at 9:30pm, fussed for a while (by which i mean screamed bloody murder) until scott got him down at 11 ... and didn't wake us up to feed him until 5:15am! i actually woke up at 2am to check on him (i think my body was like, "alright, it's been a few hours, it's time to get up!"), but he was sound out so i left him. that's 7h45m between feedings!!! i'm not going to hold my breath that it'll happen again for a while - but still, so so nice to get 6 hours of not really interrupted sleep.

weekend via recipe review

we had a super fun weekend: my parents came into town, i had my baby shower, scott and my dad installed closet doors and put together the crib, etc.  with the furniture in and the rug down, the nursery is finally starting to really look like a nursery, which is so fun!  the crib kit was missing one bolt, so i need to contact them this week - we finally got a crib mattress this weekend ($82 after tax at walmart!), but we're waiting until the bolt comes to put the mattress in.  we also played boggle, and not only did i not win, but i lost to scott (and to my mom, i think!).  i blame pregnancy brain.

and, of course, since we had company, i spent a lot of time cooking!  friday night, we had cooking light's slow cooker beef stroganoff and steamed broccoli, saturday for breakfast i made cottage cheese pancakes which were amazing, and for dinner, we had friends over in addition to my parents, so i made guac, cooking light's salsa chicken, and refried bean tostadas.  sunday, we went out for chinese for lunch and had leftovers for dinner.  i'd made the beef stroganoff before and knew that it was a good solid recipe, but all of saturday's cooking was with new recipes - all three were big hits and definitely keepers!

of the three, i think the cottage cheese pancakes were hands down my favorite - a coworker gave me a tip this morning that they freeze well, so you can make them ahead of time, freeze, and microwave them as needed.  you can count on finding some cottage cheese pancakes in my freezer before matson comes!  they're a great way to add extra protein and calcium to your breakfast, even if you're not otherwise a fan of cottage cheese.  the cottage cheese made the pancakes a little denser than normal, perhaps, but in a really yummy, filling way - and the cottage cheese all seemed to melt into the pancakes so that there weren't white chunks as you cut up your pancakes.  the cinnamon in the recipe also gave it a great flavor.  honestly, i can't recommend these highly enough!  we had them on their own, but i think a fruit salad would go perfectly with them.

the refried bean tostadas were also really good, super easy, cheap, and reheated well.  (i think they're intended as a main course, but i'd probably need to add a little ground beef to them to get that one past scott.)  you bake tortillas in a muffin tin for a few minutes, throw in some beans, salsa, and cheese, and put them back in the oven to heat up - no actual cooking involved!  the most challenging part of that recipe was making sure that the tortillas (which you stuff into muffin tin holes) had enough of an open bowl in the middle before you heat them up, to make it easier to get beans and salsa once they're a little crispy.

the salsa chicken seemed to be well received, and it was so easy (brown up chunks of chicken breast, throw in a pyrex, cover with salsa and cheese, and bake for ~10 minutes) i'll have to experiment with it some more.  i didn't think it had a ton of flavor, but i use my own spices rather than a packet of taco seasoning, and i think that i just didn't use enough spice for the amount of chicken i had.  plus, i used super generic mild salsa - i think going with a medium spiciness rather than mild would help, in addition to maybe getting a better salsa.  (or using a fruit salsa, as they recommend!)  worth playing with, for sure.

11 weeks to go

i can't believe it's 2011 already!  the change in year is really making this whole pregnancy/impending parenthood thing more real.  it's no longer, "next year when we have matson", it's "in 11 weeks when we have matson."  yikes!

as i was surfing babycenter.com this morning, i saw that a woman who's actually due about a week after me posted a picture of her almost complete nursery ... umm, wow.  we have a bookcase (actually my first nursery purchase for mats, via craigslist - literacy and frugality are both important!), a changing table, a cute city play mat from ikea, a stroller, and after checking out ikea while in phoenix and dismissing their cribs, we finally ordered a crib last week which should arrive today.  (no crib mattress yet, though.)  none of it's actually put into place, though.  not to mention, i did a bit of organizing/cleaning out of matson's room back at thanksgiving, but when we hosted our sunday school class's christmas party a few weeks ago, everything got put back in there - whoops!  so we're back to square one with nursery organization.  and haven't done any of the touch up painting or working on obtaining closet doors.  now that college football season is over, though, i'm a little bit more optimistic about being able to talk scott into setting aside a full saturday for us to work together on getting the room in order.

also on babycenter, i've been seeing postings by women who already have their hospital bags ready.  on the one hand, i think that's utterly absurd since we still have almost 3 months til that'll be an issue - if you go into labor at 29 weeks, i think you'll have more on your mind than, "did i bring my extra chapstick and my comfy slippers?"  on the other had ... the planner in me really feels like i should at least have a list going of what i will be packing.  maybe that'll be one of my goals for the week?

funny story of the weekend: scott has a myriad of ever-changing nicknames for me - his latest standard is "potamus".  yes, as in short for "hippopotamus", but i think completely unrelated to my expanding girth and more related to the flight of the conchords song "hiphopopotamus vs rhymenoceros" and my personal favorite lyric, "i am the hiphopopotamus, my lyrics are bottomless" (followed by an awkward pause).  anyway, we've been reading the book "natural childbirth the bradley way" in preparation for labor, and the author has lots of tips and exercises for the "coach" (husband) and mom-to-be.  last night, we were reading a section about early labor and how the woman in labor should be careful to not lie on her back, but may need gentle reminding by her husband ... to which my own dear husband responded, "roll over, potamus!"  it was hilarious, and almost made me roll off the bed with laughing so hard.

and, unrelated to pregnancy, we played the game carcassonne this weekend (on new year's eve, actually) and i am obsessed!  you pull tiles at random, and each one has a bit of map on it - you place it on the existing map/gameboard wherever it's strategic for you, matching up city, pasture, or road, and get points by making claims on any of those three items as the map grows.  we have played settlers of catan a fair bit, and the two games are similar in style, but i think what clicks with me about carcassonne that doesn't about settlers is that with carcassonne, you get to watch and be a part of the map growing, rather than having a pre-set map on top of which you put roads and buildings.  i thought it was super fun.  scott didn't love it quite as much as i did off hand, but i think if he figures out more of the strategy part of it, i can get him hooked.

july commitments

for the last year or two, scott and i have instituted july as a no tv month in our house.  july's a good month for it because, well, all of our shows are on summer break and there aren't any sports scott'll be missing (although we do allow for watching major sporting events, like the world cup or olympics).  it's oddly refreshing, too.  we usually allow tv to be our relax time at home - get home from work and working out and veg on the couch watching tv for the night.  when tv's not an option, though, we talk more, read more, get more little projects done around the house, are more active, sleep more.

last july we were in the midst of our commitment to explore colorado with our vacation time, so we had a few small trips lined up that month, which made the no tv thing easier.  my favorite was a two day trip to a cabin in twin lakes, co at the base of mount elbert - no tv, just a two room cabin in the cool mountain air surrounded by aspens with a hummingbird feeder hanging in the window and a babbling brook running behind.  it was glorious and refreshing, and made us really glad we didn't have tv to distract us from relaxing and enjoying the world around us.

anyway, this july we're again doing the no tv thing.  we don't have any trips planned (i'm sure we'll come up with a few hikes to throw in), but we do have several friends coming in for a day or three at a time.  it'll be very different from last year's experience, but hopefully just as refreshing and meaningful.

in addition to no tv july, though, we're also doing no dessert july.  (this is beginning to sound like "no fun july"!)  i've been working out more regularly for the past year or two and have certainly gotten into better shape and maybe lost a pound or two but have been holding pretty steady for a while.  not that i think i have a ton of weight i need to lose, but i could stand to give it a shot.  anyway, i realized over the past month that i eat a lot of sweets.  chocolate chip cookie dough ball after i get home from work here, mid-afternoon cupcake from the denver cupcake truck (yumm) there, brownies with small group on occasion, etc.  anyway, i decided that it can't be good for me.  not in terms of the fat and sugar i'm putting into my body, and not in terms of the habits i'm getting into.  so, i'm taking a break from it.  (as is scott.)  i think i'm going to have a lot of sugar cravings at the beginning of the month, but hopefully by the end i'll be happy i did it.

birthday gifts

i'm very up in the air about what to do for scott's birthday.  we normally don't exchange birthday gifts, just get an extra allowance for buying whatever we want (which normally goes into scott's play-poker-at-a-casino fund).  a few months ago, though, scott declared that he wanted a new ipod for his birthday.  right-o.  i started pondering the idea and thinking about it in terms of christmas.

then a few weeks ago, scott got back from picking up a new sprinkler head (to replace the one he'd shattered with the lawnmower), pulled the ipod shuffle out of his pocket where he'd left it from doing yard work that morning, and found that he'd apparently sat on it in the car and broken off the clip.  as in, the thing that attaches the ipod to his clothes while working out and running.  it's still useable, but it's now a four year old, 512mb ipod shuffle with a broken clip.

as regards the new ipod, i had been thinking of getting him an ipod nano, you can connect to the nike+ipod system so it keeps track of miles run, time, calories, that sort of thing.  you can even set a special song to play for your cooldown every run.  he'd love it!  and apparently you don't even have to get the special nike+ shoes to hold the sensor anymore - you can get a thing that straps onto any shoe's laces to hold it in place.  i was thinking of doing the nano for him and having his sisters get him the nike+ipod kit and armband.  perfect, right?

well, according to my wikipedia research, apple has released a new nano every september for the last 5 years.  which means that if i get him a nano now, in less than three months, there'll be a new one on the market (and the current one will be probably dropped by 1/3-1/2 the current price).  scott's not really up on gadgets, so he probably wouldn't care, but i remember how bitter i was that apple released the color ipod within months of me getting my "classic" ipod for graduation from my parents.  so what to do?  get him the nano now, or wait and make him use the old one in the meantime?

family week

this is a good week for my family!

today (june 2) is my parents' 31st wedding anniversary, which is pretty fabulous.  growing up, i always took for granted that my parents were together (yet loved getting to put their wedding ornament on the christmas tree every year), but as an adult i am thankful that i have parents who are still happily married and enjoy being together and planning a future together.  happy anniversary, parents!

today also happens to be our housiversary - the 2nd anniversary of the day that scott and i closed on our house!  while i went through a bout of buyer's remorse a few months after the purchase, two years in i'm heartily convinced that we have the perfect house in the best location for us.  it has its quirks, takes work, and there are always projects on the horizon, but its ours and i like it.

coincidentally also this week last year (june 4), scott and i bought sir walden, affectionately known as wally - my highly anticipated and much beloved subaru forester.  one year and 16,000 miles (yes, you read that right) later, it still makes me smile to walk down to my parking garage, click my unlock button from across the garage, and hear his perky "chirp chirp" in response.  my mental image of wally includes big pink heart bubbles hovering over his roof.

sunshine times eleven

we had a positively blissful weekend.  in eleven parts:

1. i learned that wd-40 can fix almost anything.  cases in point: we spent 20 minutes trying to screw a fresh blade onto the lawnmower but it kept sticking - lathered it all up with wd-40 and voila!  also, scott ran over a sprinkler head with said lawnmower, and it turned out that he broke not only the head, but also the plastic stem that connects the head to the sprinkler lines a foot into the soil.  part of the stem was broken off inside the little junction, and pliers alone weren't able to unscrew it - add wd-40, though, and scott had it off within minutes.  (which was doubly awesome because then we didn't have to pay the sprinkler guy to come out and fix it for us.)
2. i found my broom after 3 weeks of being without and was able to give my floors a good sweeping - the dust mop just can't do everything.
3. we finally caved and signed up for trugreen.  we have just had a super weedy yard, to the point where if it had been a week or so since scott mowed, i'd be embarassed to be seen out there even picking up mail because of all the dandelions.  scott's opinion was that trugreen is an unnecessary expense and we can do it ourselves, but as we currently don't do anything about it on our own, i figured that we need some professional help to get our lawn on the right track, and we'll see next year if we want to take it from there.  sadly one of our next door neighbors doesn't do anything about her weeds, so i'm not sure how much good it'll do with all of her weed seeds still infesting our yard ... but it can't hurt.  their first visit is today.
4. we got wally's oil changed and tires rotated for a grand total of $23.xx!  since we faithfully take all of our service to firestone, they sent me a gold club membership for free in the mail a few months back which entitles me to free tire rotations (although i'd get that for free from the tire shop we use anyway), and i got a coupon for a $20 oil change from the back of a grocery store receipt.
5. we turned the heat off on saturday morning and haven't had it on since then - plus we had the windows open all weekend and got to enjoy lovely warm, sunny smelling fresh air.
6. i finally got my vegetable garden planted!  two cherry tomato plants, one regular tomato, one zucchini, one yellow squash, one green bell pepper, and one red bell pepper.  i also finally took back my dead basil plant to home depot and got it replaced with a living one, and picked up some petunias and moss roses for my front porch planter.  i feel sort of like an odd mother hen over my little veggie garden now - i got home after dark last night (had dinner with some girlfriends) and went outside to check and make sure my little plants all survived the crazy windstorm we had yesterday, and this morning got ready earlier than i normally do so that i'd have time to water my garden before leaving for work.  we'll see if i keep it up for the next two months until they start to give us fresh produce.
7. i had a $30 pre-paid gift card as a rebate from buying my contacts lenses earlier this year, which paid for my flowers and veggies - i bought some miracle gro, too, though, and paid maybe $8 out of pocket!
8. we enjoyed chicken tikka masala with naan for dinner on friday night, and grilled steaks to go with fresh corn on the cob, steamed artichokes, and baked potatoes on saturday night.  (sunday night we had salad.)
9. we watched the last king of scotland on saturday night which was intense but really good.  sunday night post-suns victory we caught up on our tivoed episodes of lost; we still haven't seen the series finale - sniff sniff - so don't ruin it for us!
10. i went grocery shopping on sunday and actually stayed on budget with groceries this month!  i guess dave ramsey's cash method really does work.
11. i made a mid-may resolution to like yard work, and so far so good.  i don't naturally love working in the yard - i see the benefit of it, but when i think of things i can do with my free time, yard work just doesn't ever spring to mind.  similarly, i've historically had the same attitude with things like reading the bible and exercising.  i see the benefit and i know i should do them, but i just have other things i'd rather do.  i found that once i put my mind to enjoying them and seeing legitimate benefit in doing them, though, it's not as much of a struggle.  so, i'm going to attempt the same practice with my yard.

okay, in retrospect, it sounds like we had a very work-ful weekend.  which i guess it was.  it was also just so gloriously peaceful and sunny and warm, and we got to enjoy being outdoors and didn't have any outside obligations (other than that scott had to go in to work for a few hours sunday afternoon).  it was nice, and oh-so relaxing.

sunshine!

we are having such a lovely sunshiney weekend!  we slept in this morning til 9 (ooh la la), finished picking our house colors, and went on a nice bike ride in the 55* sunshine for an hour or so.  so fun - i love lazy saturdays!  we also had leftover pizza for lunch, which i think is the 4th time this week that i've had pizza for a meal.  we had planned to hang out with friends tonight and bring over a pizza, which will make 5 meals.  i love pizza (truly, it's one of my favorite foods), but healthwise i think i might should take at least a week off of it.

last night was my birthday date, and it was super fun.  we had another 5280 dinner at the melting pot which was soooooo good.  i love fondue.  we had fondue once at geja's in chicago and loved it, and i have been wanting fondue again ever since (wow, just realized that our geja's date was six years ago).  i decided that if the melting pot participates in 5280 every year, i will happily make it my annual birthday dinner.  in keeping with our tradition of doing a cultural date activity for my birthday each year, we got tickets to guys and dolls at the littleton town hall arts center, conveniently located three blocks from the melting pot.  also very fun!  the theater is small, maybe six or seven rows deep, but they do seating in the round, sort of a semi-circle shape around the stage so there really aren't any bad seats in the house.  the musical was funny, engaging, and well acted.  had i known at the time that the melting pot extended their 5280 special through the whole month of march (it was supposed to end last night) i think we would have done dinner and the show on a saturday night rather than after work on a friday, but still, very fun birthday date night!

at least i ironed

i am adding "getting up on time" to my list of new year's resolutions ... i've been sleeping in too late (til 6:30 - ridiculous that that's "late") and was 20 minutes late for work today.  no bueno.

in better news, i ironed last night!  it had probably been at least nine months or a year since i last ironed anything, and longer than that since i last did a major batch of ironing.  (ie, there were clothes sitting in my closet for the last year or two not being worn because they were too wrinkly and i didn't want to sit down and iron.  yes, i am that person.)  it was less awful than i thought it would be, though.  i got to go through my closet and find clothes i'd forgotten about, and i was able to do something productive while i watched tv!  major bonus in my book.  (i think the tvs in the cardio section at the gym are a major part of my learning to like working out, not going to lie.)  as i was leaving for work this morning, scott looked at my shirt and asked me if it was new - he was serious, but sadly i've had it for a few years!  it made me laugh.  it is nice feeling like i have a new wardrobe just because my clothes are once again wearable.

scott was home from work by 9 last night which was nice.  (so sad that scott getting off work by 7 seems "early" and 9 seems "not too bad"!)  his company's board meeting is on thursday, so he's mildly optimistic that his work hours will revert at least somewhat to a normal 40 hour week.  it'll still be hectic for a while (specifically til they get their own accounting system in place in the next few months), but hopefully not as much mad crunch time.

no word on the roof stuff - the adjuster called monday night asking to push the appointment back a week because of the snow.  since he kind of needs to be on the roof during the appointment, that made sense to me.  next tuesday morning now, we'll see how it goes!

save money to spend money

subtitle: efficiency, a decision making process

goo got me a few seasons of gilmore girls on dvd for christmas (yay!), and since scott's been working a lot of late evenings with his new job lately, i invited her over on tuesday to hang out, have dinner, and watch some gilmore.  as she is recently graduated from college and her main income is babysitting, she's free during the days, and decided to get here early to do her laundry.  that's clearly fine by us ... but then i got a call from her around 4pm asking why our washing machine wasn't draining.  ummmm - i don't know??  i told her to fiddle with it, try to drain it on a different cycle, etc, but otherwise she'd have to wait until close to 6 when i get home.  alas, still no draining by the time i got home, and i couldn't get it to work either, so we ended up wringing out her towels and bath mat by hand (she washes on cold - brr!) and putting them in the dryer for like 3 hours, then bailing out the washer with a plastic pitcher, a measuring cup, and a turkey baster.  sweet.

scott and i tried the washer again the next day, and still no draining, but there is a discernable "click" where you can hear the washer try to switch to draining, but then nothing happens.  we called sears first off as it's a kenmore, but they wanted $130 for the service call - no thank you.  i googled around trying to find a less expensive option, but none of the appliance repair places i found listed their prices on the web.  my parents suggested that one of their local appliance places has a $15 service call fee, which gave me renewed hope to look around.  then this evening, i remembered the local news guy who gives his seal of approval to reliable/affordable companies around the metro, and went to his website to see if they have listings of companies he endorses - lo and behold, they do!  one of them is an appliance repair guy who will give you a free over the phone diagnosis and estimate, and according to the reviews on the web, he's very willing to give you his honest opinion about fixing vs replacing.  i'll be calling tomorrow.

very relatedly, i started shopping around for washing machines this week.  i stopped into a scratch and dent place yesterday after browsing ads online, printing off consumer reports' ratings, and downloading the info on our water company's rebate on high efficiency machines.  at that point, i was pretty set on (if we do need to replace) a front loading machine because of the energy/water efficiency (ie, savings), but apparently there are also top loading high efficiency machines.  who knew?  they are apparently a smidge less water efficient, but have the same overall energy efficiency as front loaders.  and they're usually cheaper.  my first reaction was that if i wanted a top loader, i'd just go with craigslist and save my pennies for a cool (ie, front loading) machine down the road ... but then i realized that that's ridiculous.  yes, i did look at craigslist, but most of the h.e. machines are still pricey, you don't get a rebate on used machines, and i'd rather get something new and have somewhat more of a guarantee of a longer product life.  i could get a cheap standard top loader used on clist, but we're so not-handy that i really don't want to put myself in this same position in another year.  plus, the outlets have some great prices on new machines - the shop i visited the other night had a top loader h.e. machine for about $379 after water rebate.

not to mention that i finally installed our magicjack, and not going to lie, it's pretty awesome.  literally plugged it in, typed in our info, and i was in business.  we got it in the mail a month ago and i kept putting off installing it because i didn't want to deal with troubleshooting it if there were problems.  anyway, the device was like $46 after fees, and provides me with free local and long distance calls for the next year, and will be something like $20/year after that.  we had been paying $27/month for local only to the phone company - i called and cancelled our service today.  so that's a savings of what, $280 this year?  sweet.

anyway, i figured that if we're saving $280 on phone service, and we'd probably save around $50/year on our electric/gas bill with a high efficiency washer, that's $320 that we're saving right there this year, so a $380 machine sort of balances out.  we'll see what free-phone-estimate appliance repair guy says tomorrow, though.

(in case you were interested about water savings between a standard machine and a high efficiency machine, it's about 40% savings per load.  wow, you think, that's awesome!  well, the realistic savings there is maybe 20 gallons per load.  say we do three loads at a time (lights, darks, whites), and we do laundry three times a month.  20*3*3=180 gallons of water a month that we save.  multiply that times 12 months in a year, that's 2160 gallons of water saved.  awesome, right?  well, environmentally, sure, it's fabulous and definitely adds up ... but financially?  i checked our water bill, and we pay $2.46/1000 gallons.  so saving 2160 gallons of water over the course of the year will save us a grand total of $5.31.  per year.)

compatible

in case there was any doubt that scott and i are perfect for each other:

yesterday at church, i walked past the kids' wing on my way to our youngish marrieds class, and caught a glimpse of the elementary-age sunday school program.  it's in a gym with a stage, all of the grade schoolers standing around with the high school youth group volunteers wearing bright green shirts, a guy in a crazy outfit crouched on stage with bright lights, the "crowd" of kids chanting a countdown "4-3-2-1!" and the crazy outfit guy standing and throwing a beach ball into the air while shouting "happy new year!"

i laughed and moved on - then mentioned to scott on our way home from church that a) i could never do youth ministry, and b) i would have hated that sort of sunday school program as a kid.  when i was in maybe 3rd or 4th grade, our church went from a normal sunday school format (bible lesson on a felt board, color a few pictures, sing songs) where you're in the same classroom the whole hour to one where you do the lesson with your teacher, then go into a bigger room to do activities with a few other classes.  i think i went once, and all i remember is that we were supposed to stand in line and take turns acting like our favorite rock star.  umm - i was what, 8?  i listened to amy grant, had never seen mtv - let alone gone to a concert, and was unbelievably shy.  i tried my hardest to stay at the back of the line, and just stood there when my turn came.  after that, i stayed in my normal sunday school room when the rest of the kids went to the activity - my teacher was a friend of my mom's, and told me that i really should go to the activity time, but i'd have to learn something if i wanted to stay in there with her.  i was thrilled with that suggestion, so she taught me the books of the bible in order.

when i finished telling scott the story, he said that when he was in 4th grade, his family switched from a small baptist church to a megachurch with the bigger kids' program.  he was totally shy, hated going, and managed to weasel his way out of it until 7th grade.  then he told me that when he was in shop class in 9th grade (try to imagine that, please), his teacher had them doing book work for the first few weeks and threatened that if they didn't behave themselves, they'd do book work the entire semester and not actually build anything.  oooh.  while i'm sure that was a terrific threat for most of the jr. high boys, scott thought that idea sounded amazing and secretly hoped that - in shop class - they would indeed have to do book work the entire semester.

my take-aways from our shared story time were as follows: a) i wonder how many shy kids there are out there who don't go to the new high energy format sunday school or youth group because it feels awkward and forced to them?  b) this explains so much about our shared level of handiness around the house.  c) our kids have no hope.  no hope of not being shy, and no hope of not being nerds.

month in review

merry belated christmas!  we spent the week before christmas packing and cleaning and wrapping and finishing up last-minute shopping.  and getting our shower fixed - i tried to turn it on one morning only to have water spray out from behind the handle.  no good.  the plumber came the next morning and had to replace the handle because some valve ring behind it was broken and he couldn't get a replacement as the handle is so old.  i had to take the morning off of work to be here for that, and while i had found myself thinking that i wanted a few extra hours at home to clean and wrap, i really hadn't expected it to come in the form of a $300 plumber bill.  (plus we have to have someone else out to fix the drywall and tiles where he had to cut out to access pipes.)  be careful what you wish for!

all of that got taken care of, though, so we left bright and early the saturday before christmas to drive back to illinois.  we stopped on the way in columbia, missouri to see our dear friends matt and alison and had a wonderful time catching up and hanging out, even though the visit was short.  then on to springfield - we had five full days there, and it was relaxing and fun.  we taught my parents how to play settlers of catan, saw my brother a few times, watched a few movies, and generally just had a good time.  i made a lasagna for christmas eve dinner - it was a little overdone because i set the oven's timed cook feature, but the christmas service at church started 30 minutes later than we thought, whoops.  still tasty, just not as gooey on top as it should have been.  oh well.  christmas day, i made the pioneer woman's orange marmalade rolls and some fruit salad for breakfast, we opened presents, i watched "julie & julia" on dvd with my mom in the afternoon while snacking on cheese and crackers, and then made a cranberry orange pork loin with mashed potatoes and gravy and steamed broccoli and rolls and a peach cobbler for christmas dinner!  so tasty.

the drive back yesterday was mildly more dramatic than the drive out to illinois - all was going smoothly, we used my handy iphone to find a pizza hut in oakley about 20 minutes away and called in an order, and the low fuel light popped on.  no biggie, we figured we could stop in oakley and fill up on our way to pick up dinner.  driving, driving, then suddenly the car starts shaking and scott says, "oh crap."  we were running out of gas.  we put on the hazards and got onto the shoulder in case the car stopped - i could see the lights of the oakley exit, but didn't know how far away it was.  i think we made it about two miles after wally started shaking, and managed to coast down to the bottom of the oakley exit ramp.  thankfully the gas station was right at the opposite corner of the intersection that we landed at, and it was a big travel center that had gas cans for sale.  the can was unfortunately a child-proof model that is highly frustrating to try to use when it is a) dark, b) approximately 0* with wind chill, and c) you have big gloves on, but we got it worked out in the end.  it was definitely one of those moments that you recognize god's hand of protection on you - we could have run out of gas miles from an exit or a gas station, or landed at a tiny gas station that didn't have any gas cans available, etc.  and we learned our lesson that highway speeds combined with high cross winds really eat gas - we didn't let wally get below a quarter tank for the rest of the trip.

brr thru grey's

(i wrote this entry, reread it for general clarity editing and realized that it is very stream of consciousness, so i added some transitions.  that's literally how my brain works.  only when i'm talking, i don't usually add the transitions, and most of this would happen in my mind, so i'd be prone to tell you how cold it is today, then skip straight to grey's anatomy.  scott thinks it's hilarious.  oh, and speaking of mental narration, i've been listening to the sweetness at the bottom of the pie on cd book during my commute - it's set it england, thus has a british narrator.  as a consequence,  my mental narrator has had a bit of a british accent for the past week or so.  tally ho.)

i am so glad i'm inside today - it's currently 8* (feels like -9*!) with a high of 13*.  and, of course, snowy.  i don't think i have ever been so grateful for my attached garage at home, or my garage-under-my-building at work.  speaking of cold ...

we cut our christmas tree on sunday.  we were supposed to drive up to winter park with friends, but the snow storm began late saturday night and we didn't feel like risking our lives on berthoud pass just to cut christmas trees, so we found a tree farm up near greeley and went there instead.  it was cold, but fun.  we all got our trees, played on the sled with kinley, and got to watch our trees be shaken and baled to tie onto the top of the car.  all things considered, though - and i feel like a total grinch saying this - i think i'll be okay if next year we just go to a tree lot and make plans to go sledding with friends separately.  i'll probably change my mind on that by the time next december rolls around, though, so don't hold me to it!

when we got our tree home, scott chopped a few extra inches off of the bottom to get rid of some dead branches, then we took it in to put in the stand ... and it wouldn't fit!  we found a bigger tree stand at home depot, but by that point, we were running late to go back up to mike and maura's for dinner and hanging out/watching kinley decorate their tree, so we went straight there - we put our tree in the stand when we got home around 9 that evening, but have yet to decorate or light it.  maybe tonight.  we couldn't decorate it last night because ...

last week, scott would come home from work and say that he'd been bored all day (mainly because his coworker and boss just didn't have time to give him any training or set him up with files or data that he needed to get anything done).  yesterday, they evidently got things figured out, because the poor guy was at work until 9pm!  i say "poor guy", but honestly, i think he kind of liked it.  in a slightly overwhelmed sort of way, but he did like it - which is good, because it's his career, and i want him to be happy in it.  speaking of busy at work ...

i, on the other hand, am more or less alone in the office all week - one coworker is here, but all the executives are out at meetings this week.  thus, i have a few things to do, but in the 1.5 work days i've had thus far, i've caught myself up on the last 5 episodes of grey's anatomy on hulu.  i don't love the show enough to tivo it, but i do love it enough to make it my go-to show for watching at the office when it's just me here.

things to get excited about

1.  scott started a new job on monday!  he had been toying with the idea of moving on to a new job for the past few years (mostly because a larger company would provide more room to move up), of which i was generally unsupportive primarily because i don't like change.  (great wife i am!)  he was also toying with the idea of going back to school for an mba, of which i was more supportive because it involved less change, but it just wasn't happening at his old company.  anyway, this fall came and we realized that while the job market isn't amazing, overall it's a good time to move on, so he started putting his resume out there, looking online for job postings, and got set up with a recruiter.  he ended up finding this job through the recruiter - it's another financial analyst position, at a company that does i.t. infrastructure consulting.  i think both of us recognize the highs and lows of the job, but we're also both excited about the opportunities that it'll provide.  and yes, they do have a further education reimbursement plan, so hopefully he'll be settled in enough by next fall to start taking a class or two!  oh, and also - their current office is like 5 minutes from our house!

2.  i found my white scarf in the closet this morning.  i misplaced it probably two weeks ago, so i was very excited when i found it in there - it's the little things.

3.  we put up outside christmas lights for the first time ever this weekend.  (first we spent about two hours shopping around for lights - we wanted the big bulbed multicolor led lights: target had them but we wanted to get a price comparison, so we tried walmart, home depot, lowe's, and sam's to no avail ... then we found out they were on sale at target after all, whoops.  oh, and when we got home and i got out the box o' christmas decorations from the basement, i realized that i had purchased white icicle lights on clearance at walmart last year.  whoops again.  we put up the multicolor ones.)  i took pictures but have neglected to upload them so far - it's nothing too amazing, just your basic single strand along the gutter/peak all along the front of the house, plus a string of smaller multicolor bulbs looped around the iron rail along the front porch.  i think it's a good start, though.  we can worry about the pretty light nets for the bushes once we actually have bushes we want to show off.  i will say that having outlets on the front of our house would make this whole christmas light thing a lot easier, by the way.  also, i'm very thankful for having a husband who's not afraid of heights and thus is not afraid to climb up on the roof to string lights.  i climbed to the top of our 6 foot ladder to peek into a gutter to see if i could figure out why it was leaking and i got dizzy.

4.  we leave to drive back to illinois for christmas in two and a half weeks!  so exciting.  we'll be able to stop and see our friends matt and alison from college for a night along the way - not to mention the fact that she's pregnant and will be about 21 weeks by that point, so i'll get to see her with a cute baby bump!  i think we'll be back in springfield for 5 or so days before we have to drive back.  i'm looking forward to it as i haven't been back to my parents' house since christmas '07, plus they've been doing a bunch of fun renovations and redecorating.  (and it means that actual christmas is only three and a half weeks away!)

5.  we got a new tv on friday!  it's a jvc 42" lcd tv with a built in ipod dock.  ooh la la.  scott had been wanting a new tv for basically the past year and i finally told him this summer that we could save up for one for ourselves for christmas.  with my handy dandy consumer reports online membership, i looked through the ratings, this one got great reviews, and sam's club had it on a smokin deal.  we didn't upgrade to hd cable, but even without that, you can tell that it has a way better picture.  as in, when scott's watching a football game, you can see that the score in fact ends in a 6 rather than an 8.

6.  we got up at 4:30am on friday (yikes, right?) to get to sam's to see if they had our tv on an extra sale.  they didn't, of course, but we figured we were up, so we may as well hit up the black friday sales ... and got probably 75% of our christmas shopping done with, most of it on great sales.  yay!  i think we came up with some good ideas of gifts for people.

sorry so remiss

wow, this is not a month of inspired postings on my part, is it?  let's see, things going on here:

1.  this last saturday, we got to drive down to c. springs with mike and maura and kinley to see our old friends lori and aaron and their daughter (now 8 months old!  this is the third time we've seen them since they moved back in july) and their new house down there.  the visit was a lot of fun, as usual, but it started snowing early in the evening, so the roads coming back to denver were not fun.  we made it home alive and in one piece, though.

2.  thanksgiving is a week from tomorrow and i'm trememdously excited.  in part for the food (mike and maura are having us over for dinner - her parents are in town for the holiday this year), but also for the 4 day weekend.  love it.  plus, thanksgiving means the start of christmas music season, and that i can put my pretty red berry wreath (from the martha stewart collection at kmart a few years ago) on my front door.  also, and i guess this goes back to the food, i get to make green bean casserole, and that's never a bad thing.  i'm debating making an extra green bean casserole for my fridge since i'm not sure if we'll have any leftovers from dinner, but i think that might be considered glutonous.

3.  on saturday, one of the girls in our sunday school class is having a craft and cookie afternoon at her house, and i'm a little bit excited for that, too.  i can't precisely decide what to bring - on the one hand, i started a little knit scarf for kinley like two years ago that i paused on because i realized that kids shouldn't wear scarves until they're two, so i need to get that finished if i want to get it to her for christmas.  on the other hand, i'd really like to start cutting my quilt squares for my picnic quilt and that might be a good motivation to work on that.  knitting might be more portable.  (the scarf is cute - it's a pale yellow, because i started it before kinley was born and they didn't find out the gender beforehand, and ribbed.  each row is something like 3 knit, 3 perl, etc, which makes a nice fat ribbing when you do it right.  i'm going to see if i can get some bright yarns and make brightly colored pompom tassels on the ends.)

4.  in a stroke of dinner genius last week, i made spicy honey-brushed chicken thighs for dinner on wednesday, then chopped up the leftover thighs on thursday, added rice, black beans, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream - and voila, chicken burrito bowls!  (spicy honey brushed chicken thighs are basically the easiest thing to make - especially if you use my generous sprinkling method of seasoning, rather than measuring out spices and rubbing them on.  so what, like 10 minutes of effort for two dinners?  sweet.)  unfortunately i decided at the grocery store last time that i would give dried beans a try, and despite soaking for about 10 hours during the day and then simmering on the stove for close to an hour while we were at the gym pre-dinner, the beans were pretty tough.  i've heard that slow cooking dried beans all day works well, though, so we'll give that a try next time.  i saved the leftover beans for slow cooked chili this next weekend, i'll call that my trial run.