We normally head off for the holiday, like a ton of you do, and spend about three or four days out of town with family for the holiday. This year, that didn’t really work out for us, so we stayed at home and created our own Thanksgiving holiday as best we could. We had the turkey, the dressing which was MADE FROM SCRATCH, like, I made the cornbread that went into the cornbread stuffing FROM SCRATCH, appreciate it NOW, the green bean casserole, and the pumpkin pie. We went to a lot of trouble for a meal that lasted about thirty minutes and required a lot of cajoling on the part of two very small people to just try the dressing for heavens’ sake before you start howling about how you don’t like it. Next year – frozen pizza. I’ll make the pie again, though.

While everything was roasting and baking and cooling, we managed to get some Christmas decorating started.

That is our brand new, frabjulous Christmas tree. It has a billion tips and a four hundred thousand lights or something, and I love it. I mainly love it because it does not look like a large version of a Charlie Brown christmas tree. While he was doing that, I turned into Martha Stewart and slapped up some garland and poinsettias around the house.

I can’t just, you know, bake and cook the entire holiday. I have some leftover fabric from the Half Squares quilt top that I put together, and with the help of a tutorial, I’m attempting my first applique. So far, I think it’s okay, but we’ll see when I give them away as gifts. I’m on the watch for Present Face. Giving handmade gifts is always a tricky thing, because while there are folks out there that appreciate the time and effort, there are other people that thing that handmade = cheap or dumb. You have to be careful and choose your recipients wisely.

The worst part of the whole thing was figuring out a way to get all of the little leaves cut out without losing my mind, but one Lifetime sappy movie later, I managed to get it knocked out. I’ve sewn some of them onto the canvas I’m using for backing, and I’m happy to report that I only have to pick out the stitches on one of them and redo it. I plan on making two of these suckers.

We finished everything up with a trip to a nearby zoo; the kids had never been, and were appropriately excited. Especially when this dude slipped into the water and came up close for a little heart stopping fun:

He was inches from us, just kinda…I don’t know, trying to decide if we’d taste good if he could get to the other side of the glass. I’m sure I’d be pretty damn tasty, Mr. Crocodile, but I think I’ll skip the taste testing portion of the visit.

The house, that is – the house that we’ve been going bonkers over for the past six months is finally ours. We made it through the final walk through, the repairs from that walk through, the check on the final walk through list, and the closing, which I thought should have taken days for the hassle that the loan was, right up to the very end. They handed us the keys and we almost ran from the building in case they decided to ask us for one more piece of documentation or some of our DNA to confirm our credit scores. All of that happened a week ago, and I sit here typing this on my brand new couch in my brand new family room, watching the rain fall outside through the seven windows that show me the glorious back yard of our home. It is starting to sink in that this is real, and I get to live here.

I thought that this move would be glorious, and that every box that was unpacked would be accompanied by the sounds of angels singing from up high. Or hell, that the boxes would unpack themselves. We postponed our actual move for two days after closing so that we could get some stuff done around the house before the furniture arrived; pendant lights installed in the kitchen, a ceiling fan on the back patio, and a ton of other small things that have to be configured and messed with when it is just easier to do it with nothing in the way. Sunday arrived, bright and shiny, and after a friend popped over to the house to watch the kids (Christina, I owe you BIG TIME), I took off back to our old apartment to box up the odds and ends.

Did I mention that I had the flu the entire week before we moved? Not the SWINE FLU! but the normal flu? 103 fever? No energy? Yeah. We literally had nothing in boxes on Sunday morning because of that damn flu. Mike and I flew around boxing things up as quickly as we could before the movers showed up, and we still had a ton of stuff in closets and cabinets when they moved our furniture out that we had to come back and get on our own. Let me be a PSA for the lot of you and tell you , right now: GO GET A FLU SHOT. If you can save yourself TEN DAYS of fevers, exhaustion, and all the other joys of being sick, then GO DO IT. I have never been as sick as I was the week before we moved, and it did not completely clear up until Tuesday after we were in the house. You don’t want to jack with this, folks. Trust me on this.

We’ve had something delivered or adjusted or painted or connected every damn day since we moved in; strange people flitter in and out of here like a train station. Painters turned my dining room into a shade of delicate, soft blue and our media room into a deep slate blue; furniture delivery men dropped off new couches and punctured a hole in the door to the same media room with a couch. (I kid you not – I thought Mike was going to explode in a shower of fury when he saw it, but he managed to stay calm long enough to tell the delivery folks that he would not be signing the “no damage” sheet when they offered it to him. I probably would have punched him in the nuts for even suggesting it.) Rooms are starting to take shape, slowly but surely. And we’re getting to know the staff at IKEA rather well, as their furniture graces many of the rooms of our home.

I’m going to get pictures next week, when everything is more organized, but for now I’m just glad to be here. In my own home, on my couch, watching the rain.

I haven’t posted a lot about the house lately; there hasn’t been much to say, other than OH LOOK, MORE BEAMS or HOLY CRAP, AN ELECTRICAL OUTLET! which only my husband an myself are excited about. But in the past week, things have really starting moving along; this is the part where I bore you with pictures and details that you really don’t care about. But since it’s my blog, I’m allowed.

Kitchen Cabinets, or alternately: Where We Decided to Invest The Children's College Funds

These are the cabinets that we picked out, after hours of dickering back and forth. That giant white thing in front there is going to be the bar facing into our family room. It will invariably be covered with mail, keys, gadgets, toys, crayons, cups, paper, and the various other things that we’re just too lazy to put away. It is amazing how something as simple as a kitchen cabinet can completely define a room, and I love these more than when we saw them in the design center. And as of a few hours ago, our walls are painted, our banister is in, and our house officially has doors that my children will become well acquainted with slamming.

In the mean time, I’m spending my time with this:

Cassidy, by Bonnie Marie Burns

This looks complex, I’ll give you that. Don’t trust your eyeballs. There isn’t really any crazy difficulty here, and once I got into the rhythm of the cables, it is basically knitting itself. This is another one of those difficult, eye-catching type patterns that I love. Big bang for my buck (especially considering that I am knitting it in Valley Yarns Northhampton, excellent yardage for the price).  And there has been sewing, of both the hand and machine variety.

Look! I made a dress!

Hexagon Wreath

All in all, I’d say things are clicking along nicely.

So, how's that shawl coming along?

It's good! I mean, I know it was getting a little long, but I really want to use all of the yarn. See? Here's a picture.

Whoa! What the…don't you think it's long enough? I mean, at some point, you have to stop! Put down the yarn! BACK AWAY!

Yeah, maybe you're right. 

Maybe?

All right! I'm finishing this repeat and I'll kitchner in the other end. I didn't think there would be any harm…

You're scared of kitchnering that many stitches. 

Not scared, exactly…

Chicken. 

What?

You heard me. 

Uh, okay. Didn't realize this was going to turn all third grade. 

How many times did you knock over that cup of beads while you were knitting?

Twice. 

*crickets*

Okay! Eight times! EIGHT TIMES! Is that better? 

Anyway, how are the kids?

Doing great! I mean, don't you see the joy on their faces?

Not really.

Seriously. They are doing great. That is just ONE picture, I've got tons more where they are totally jazzed.

I see. Let's move on…are you going to be doing anything crafty anytime soon, or are you just going to continue to bore us with pictures of your kids and blahblahblah house junk?

I've been busy! School, work, house - 

Yeah, we know. I wasn't asking for justification, Captain Defensive. Just if you were going to, oh, I don't know, get more INTERESTING any time soon.

Yeah, I'm going to start a quilt for my daughter's room. I'm just dithering over the color scheme. I'm going to start it when we get into the apartment and school is over, so give me two weeks. 

We'll see. You'll update? With pictures?

I promise!

That remains to be seen.

This site would have been updated waaay before now.

The past month has been full of activity: new job, new house on contract, picking out crap for the new house, getting sick, working out details on selling old house, finding apartment, getting insurance in case we burn down new apartment (seriously, we are required to have renters' insurance; it's a good idea anyway, but I've never been required to have it before), yada yada yada. My stress levels are UP TO HERE :gestures to neck region: and I haven't had time to knit. Well, I've had some time to knit, but not enough time.

The design options we chose for the house are AWESOME, if I do say so myself.

The lot is being scraped and leveled today, and there are rumors that our foundation will be poured next week. And in two weeks, we move out of our tiny little house and into a tinier apartment for four months while we wait for the house to be built. School will be over for the year, as I am not taking any more classes until the spring semester, so the summer will be spent constantly checking on the progress of our new home. And driving the builder crazy. Here's hoping that we don't drive him to peeing in our foundation before the concrete hardens (not that, you know, we're that bad. Ahem.).

Eight days.

That's all I have left in the semester, eight days. Two tests, a homework assignment, a lab and the third (and final) part of a class project, and I'm done with this summer semester. I cannot tell you what has made this semester, these particular classes, so difficult and ridiculous; but trust me when I say that this has most likely been the worst semester I've ever had.

I'm fortunate in the fact that my family has worked rather well to ensure that I've got the time that I need to get things done. As an adult, with a full time job, two kids and a husband, it is not easy to carve out time to study and do homework, but the children have obligingly agreed to sleep on a mostly regular schedule, and they have grudgingly agreed to take naps on the weekends. Mike takes them whenever I really need him to, and in doing all of this, I have managed to worm my way through the past 11 weeks.

Pray for me. The first final is tomorrow.

It's late on a Monday, and my husband is working late (rather unexpectedly), leaving me home alone with the kids. Neither of whom are cooperating; my son is chunking toys at his sister's head, and my daughter is unhappy that I won't let her play with a plastic bag. I've got a 7 am meeting tomorrow that I'm presenting at, I need to prepare, and yet, I just can't bring myself to do it after wrangling these kids this evening.

Over the weekend, we made our first trip as a family: we drove to Houston to visit a friend of mine from the first time around in college. She has three children of her own, so we let the kids have the run of the house, along with some other families that were over, and it was relaxing. I can't believe a trip with my kids can be termed "relaxing", but so be it. We had a good time – everyone slept when they were supposed to sleep, played when they were supposed to play, and ate when they were directed to. We returned feeling happy and grateful that this is a possiblity in our lives; we can leave the city and not end up hating life by the time we return.

So right now, sitting here typing this, is a hard return to reality. Bryan did not nap at all at school today, so we're dealing with an overly tired preschooler and an almost-toddler (yay for standing up all by yourself!) who is constantly frustrated by her brother, who yanks toys out of her hand, tries to pull her away from things that she's interested in, and basically tries his best to boss her around as much as he can.  But this is the day to day stuff that you push through, that you deal with, in order to have the fun times. This is normal, even if it is hard to handle when I'm still tired from the traveling and from a day of work myself.  This is the true test of being Mom. 

I survived my birthday – the world did not stop spinning, I did not explode into a pile of aging goo, and no one is pointing and laughing at the artifact that is walking among them. So no different than before. This birthday did make me realize how many fantastic friends I've got, though; birthday cards and email arrived from all over the place. I stood back Monday night and took a good look at all of the people that I've surrounded myself with, and I have to say, they all kick ass. So thanks, y'all, for doing such a great job of making me feel like a million dollars. Age IS just a number.

And according to the Wii Fit, I'm 28 anyway, so suck it, Father Time.

Life: 1 
Blog Updates: 0

Sarah's party went really, really well. We bought too much food, which is pretty normal for us (I seem to be in constant fear that we're going to run out of food for some reason, like everyone will swoop in and demolish the food and then be all, HEY, WE ARE LEAVING NOW, YOU LOSERS) which means that we ate hot dogs for two days afterwards. No matter. Sarah was gifted with mounds of clothes and plenty of toys, and everyone had a blast. The Wii Fit was put to good use in entertaining some of the older kids at the party.

The bakery did a fanastic job with the cake; I was very impressed that they were able to do all of that from the napkin that I handed them. She did the dantiest cake smash ever; I gave her a corner peice, and she picked the little pink edging parts off and stuck them in her mouth one at a time. She had a little icing on her mouth and her hands, and that's about it; it's like she knew we were giving her permission to be a total mess, and she decided to do the exact opposite. And she refused to eat any of the actual cake; she would only eat the icing.

The combination of school and work and kids and husband and…well, LIFE, is kicking my ass right now. Time is at a premium. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow I'm scheduled solid from the time I wake up until the time I collapse in bed at night. I just keep telling myself that I can get through these two classes; but there are days when I stop and think about how stupid I was to take them at the same time in a shortened semester. There is nothing I can do about it now but muddle through as best as I can, but next time I come up with some hairbrained scheme to "knock out those two classes", please pick up the nearest heavy object and wail on me thoroughly. With gusto.

I was a part of a fantastic stitch marker swap on Ravelry, and somehow I ended up with the greatest assortment of stitch markers ever. My girls did a FABULOUS job; each set was made by hand, and will be put to good use if I ever get out from under my life. 

There is one additional set that I can't show you here, because y'all, this is a FAMILY SHOW, and two of the stitch markers may be shaped like a part of the male anatomy that rhymes with SCHMENIS. And others are a little more gross than that. I had a picture of it up on Flickr, but I took it down for fear that it would violate their terms, as well it should. Dirty, dirty stitch markers that I'm not sure should ever see the light of day.

Next up: the BIG BIRTHDAY. Of which we do not speak. But I think I did just speak of it. Crap.

One year ago today, I was in the hospital at the unGodly hour of 5:30 am, bribing the nursing staff with bagels and cream cheese. Other patients told us that the nursing staff in any hospital can be bought, and buy them we did with fresh bagels. I definitely got top notch care, but I think that's just how that particular hospital rolls anyway.

One year ago today, I watched the weather in a pre-op gown while hooked up to an IV.  They had TVs in there, to distract you from all of the rest of the things that they were doing at the time. I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything after 10 pm the night before, so when they started the IV, all of that fluid went straight to my bladder, and I had to manuver myself into the bathroom while still hooked up to it. I told the nurse they would have been better off just emptying the IV bag directly into the toilet. She didn't get my joke, and proceeded to explain all of the Good Stuff In The IV to me. I forget that not everyone understands my humor.

One year ago today, I cried as they walked me down the hall to the operating room; I was so scared of what was about to happen that I couldn't stop shaking.  When they got me up on the operating room table, after they had located a step stool (how could you expect me to CLIMB UP THERE, you dolts?), my anesthesiologist leaned over my shoulder from behind to make sure I was doing okay. I told him that I was fine, just terrified out of my freakin' mind, but ready for the spinal block. I hardly felt it. Next thing I knew, there was a rush to get me flat on my back before the drugs took full effect and I couldn't move at all. What I do remember is praying that they would wait to put the catheter in when I couldn't feel it. Thankfully, they did. 

One year ago today, Mike sat and wiped my tears as they started the surgery that would change our lives and our family forever.  Not to mention my reproductive status, as we got that FIXED while they were in there. They started the surgery, and I had a fabulous nurse anasthesiologist helping out; when I mentioned that I felt like I was going to puke, he worked his magic in my IV, and I immediately felt better. I remember my doctor commenting on how large I looked, and then saying that they needed a vacuum to get the baby's head out. Dr. Orth exclaimed over her size compared to my height when she finally got her out of there. 9 lbs even, 21 inches long. 

One year ago today, the nurses smacked my bed into a wall while they were rolling me back to my room; they felt horrible about it, but I was so hopped up on morphine that I didn't feel a thing and actually giggled at them for doing it. Once I was in my room, the urge to heave up my guts just wouldn't stop; they had me try a bit of jello, and the second it touched the back of my throat, my body started convulsing. Not such a great thing right after abdominal surgery. I tried the holistic things that they recommend, but finally I gave in and they shot me up with some anti-nausea drug that made me very, very sleepy.

One year ago today, I held my daughter for the first time.