• Well, hello there!  Long time no speak…type…see…whatever.
• I combined busy-ness with a bloggity break and now…I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!
• Did you miss me?  :)
• I missed you.
• Where do I begin?
• S is now in a dance class.  She loves it.  She wears her leotard all the time – even to bed.
• We’re in the midst of deciding on G’s future Kindergarten plans.
• He turned the FIVE a couple of weeks ago.
• “When I was four, I couldn’t swing.  I’m five now and I can swing.”
• On G’s birthday, S and I took some cookies in to his class.  We got to spend a couple of hours with the class as well.
• I’m in awe of preschool teachers.
• S, my social butterfly, jumped right in like she was a member of the class.
• Circle time?  Oh yes.  She was there.  In the middle of the circle.
• Line up?  Yup, there, too.
• Now she wants her own backpack and lunchbox and to go to school.
• I’m looking into 3-year-old preschool now for her next year, too.
• Chris bought me a late Christmas present, it was on back order.  I now am a proud owner of the Barnes & Noble nook.
• We chose that over Amazon’s Kindle because you can add memory cards to it, it has a touch-screen interface on the bottom.
• I’m in love with my nook.
• Having all those books at my fingertips – way fun.
• Chris’s goal was to start saving bookshelf space in the house.
• S and I are having a battle of wills this morning.
• We both think we’re winning.
• I AM the adult here.  Shush now.

Going Nowhere

• Wowzers, it’s been awhile since I have blogged!!  So sorry about that…December was just a whirlwind of activity and I could hardly keep up.
• Today is my mom’s birthday – Happy Birthday, Mom!  We love you!  We’ll call and harass you shortly.
• Christmas was great…nice and quiet.  We missed seeing family, but we had just seen everyone over Thanksgiving or shortly thereafter.
• S got her first major haircut yesterday – such a little girl.  She looks cute as a button.
• I gave up on growing her bangs out.  I’d rather see her pretty face.
• I’m looking forward to 2010 as a year to get more organized.
• I have fallen in love with this site:  ListPlanIt.com.
• It’s a beautiful thing.  Over 400 lists to help you organize your home, family, meals, business, anything and everything.
• You pay a nominal fee to have year-long access.
• Worth every penny, I’m telling you.
• I combine that with my favorite house-cleaning to-do list at MotivatedMoms.com – only $8 for a daily to-do list.  LOVE it!  I’ve used it for three or four years now.
• I love lists.  Can you tell?
• The piano-teaching business is picking-up and I’m enjoying it.  Adults, teens, junior high, little ones – even a 5-year old.  I’m having a ball!
• Chris and I are looking forward to a major trip overseas this spring – sort of an anniversary trip.  We’re really, really excited for it.
• It’s a cruise.  Foooooooooooooood….
• Kids are screaming for attention…must run.
• 2010…ready or not…here we come!

Going Nowhere

• This time of year is crazy for us!  Birthdays, Thanksgiving, more birthdays, Christmas, more birthdays.  Hard to keep up!
• That includes not keeping up with the blog, too, of course.
• My parents and aunt and brother and his family came down for S’s birthday.
• THREE!!  Our little girl is THREE!!
• Then came Thanksgiving.  Whew.
• The next day we (my family plus my parents and aunt) joined Mike and his family in Orlando at DisneyWorld.
• Magic Kingdom, more specifically.
• Of ALL the days we have outside activities, it was cold in Florida on that day.
• By cold, I mean mid 50s.
• It’s ok to laugh.
• S’s entire goal was to see the princess’ castle and ride a carousel.
• Check and check.
• She loved it!
• G got to ride so many more rides now that he is older and he had a blast!
• Being there with family made it that much more fun.  Can’t wait to do it again – when the temp is, you know, low 70s.
• Yes, that would be perfect.
• Nana and ‘Pa and Judy were like kids again, riding everything G did.
• If Cinderella’s Castle is this amazingly gorgeous, can you just imagine how incredible Heaven is going to be?  If human hands can create this, God’s handiwork is going to knock our socks off.

Going Nowhere, Growing Up

One of my favorite Christmas CD’s growing up (or was it a cassette?  I think it was a cassette actually…wow.) was A Very Special Christmas.  It included songs from artists including U2, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Madonna among others.  Stevie Nix performed Silent Night for this collection and I must say that it is one of my favorite (if not THE favorite) version of Silent Night I have ever heard.

I hope you enjoy it, too.

Uncategorized

Yes, we did.

We ate Thanksgiving dinner in our pajamas.

No need to loosen the proverbial belts.  They’re elastic.  Sweet.

This was the first year I have ever prepared the entire Thanksgiving meal by myself.  Chris gets credit though for washing dishes as we went.

The menu included turkey (no picture – it was sad looking coming out of the roasting oven but it was SO yummy, very juicy!)…

…sweet potato stuffing…zucchini au gratin…

…these yummy bacon bundles – a recipe from our worship pastor’s wife, Monica…(I didn’t get the recipe exactly right but even still, they were SO good!)…

…and these are supposed to be cloverleaf rolls but I ran out of muffin pans (must invest in more) so improvised on the pizza stone…then they looked ore like shamrock rolls or something…but even so, yummy!  Making them from scratch wasn’t too terribly hard either.

We also had baked macaroni and cheese, pecan pie and pumpkin pie (store-bought).

My mom and dad and Aunt Judy were in town for the festivities as well!

I highly recommend PJ’s for Thanksgiving Day.

Gone Cookin'