I gave into Black Friday this year. We just moved into a new house, and in the transition, we’ve discovered we have furniture/housing needs, and it just so happens that Black Friday is a great opportunity for filling those. After today’s purchases, we will be almost completely settled in. Hooray!
We also went back to the old house and cleaned it out. As I walked through the empty rooms, my heart filled up with memories. I am grateful for the time I got to spend there, and even though I am happy to be in my new house, I will always remember 604 G Street and the Avenues with great tenderness. I loved that house.
I took a couple pictures today, but most of my blogging efforts went to revamping yesterday’s posts. Tomorrow I will take down the million iterations of our family photos (I’ll leave the best one up, Mom!), and I will put the photos from the day in order. But today I worked on throwing in some extra pictures Mom sent me, and on recording my notes on all the food we ate so that I can remember them for next year.
Here are today’s pictures:
Abe worked hard to clear a space for the car. This garage was PACKED with boxes right after the move.My new washer and dryer. Mom took this picture and I think wants Grandma to see. Do you like them, Grandma?
I love Thanksgiving. It’s like Christmas, but without all the stress and madness. Instead, on Thanksgiving all you have to focus on 1) people you love 2) things you are grateful for, and 3) food.
Today I am thankful for Mary’s guardian angels. That little child has had a lot of close calls, but today we had a real scare. During dinner, my mom exclaimed, “Oh, look! Mary fell asleep standing up!” We all got up out of our seats to admire the cuteness, and while we were admiring, Mary coughed, screamed, and started crying. We feel pretty sure she wasn’t sleeping. She was choking. We concluded she had probably passed out standing up. Her mouth was full of kale leaves, and her lips were blue. It was really scary.
Thankfully, her guardian angels got her back on track. Tonight I am thankful that all the people I love are alive, well, and close.
Here are some pictures. Sorry for the million iterations of our family photos. I promised Mom that I would share them all with her, and I have no energy for an email in addition to blogging.
Thoughts for next year: I would try the stuffing again with cornbread. For the cranberry sauce, I would add two cans of whole berry sauce so that there would be three total cans of cranberry sauce in the mixture. The recipe as is isn’t cranberry-intensive enough. I would also definitely do the back of the bag cranberry sauce–I missed that! I might also do the mashed potatoes next year, if only as a vehicle for the gravy. I wanted an excuse for a gravy puddle, and so maybe I’ll reinstate the mashed potatoes next year. Also, the salt brine was great for tenderizing the turkey, but next year I will do it 48 hours in advance instead of a mere 10. I would also double the amount of pie filing in the pecan pie, especially if I used the same pie plate again.
Sorry for the short post! Clark, Swathi, Abe and I went to see Mockingjay Part 1 tonight, and that sapped my energy for blogging. But I have some pictures from today!
Mary sleeping with her stuffed animals. Can you find her in there?
Hi Grandma! Thanks for letting us borrow Mom for a bit! She made it in safely, and I am throwing up a couple of pictures before heading to bed. It has been a little hectic trying to unpack and get the house in order so that we can pull of Thanksgiving. I’ll blog more tomorrow.
Hoarding her binkies.Uncle Clark reading books to the girls.
Mary and Nana cuddled extensively this evening.
The girls have new electronic toothbrushes. During my lunch with Rose, she told me of a kid in the ward who is Mary’s age and had cavities. That scared me, especially since Mary is brushing averse. We’re lucky if we get more than ten seconds of brush time a day. These electronic toothbrushes have done the trick!Post brushing, pensive/sleepy stare.
I forgot to tell a Lydia story from a couple days ago. We were driving to the new house with Olivia, Chelsea’s daughter. Lydia was telling Olivia her whole life story, and Olivia listened attentively and asked appropriate conversational questions. I was blown away by Olivia’s interpersonal skills, especially because Lydia’s Life Story lacked any sort of narrative arc and kept coming back to this theme:
“I have a Daddy, and he’s really, really tired when he comes home from work.”
“Is that why your mommy has to drive him in her car?” — Attentive, sweet Olivia. (I was driving.)
“Yes. My Daddy is always really tired.” –Lydia, who then pressed on in her strain of desultory conversation wherein Olivia somehow managed to meet her.
Rewind to two weeks ago. Abe and I were in the temple, and Abe sidled up to me in the last part of the endowment session and whispered to me to pray about moving by January first. I was totally blind sided because, bad wife that I am, I thought he loved his commute and was managing to do it all: Doubling his work quota! Elder’s quorum president! 100% engaged father (changes all diapers when home, plays more with the kids when he’s home than I do during the entire day I have with them, etc.)! Unfailingly patient and kind husband! AND A THREE + HOUR COMMUTE FIVE DAYS A WEEK!!!
Somehow, I failed to look outside of myself for the two seconds it would take anyone else to realize no one could do the above list, which Abe has been doing without complaint since January, and not feel exhausted and broken. So there I was, realizing that all this time Abe had been holding in the pain of bearing so many burdens while I traipsed along obliviously. I felt so bad.
So we talked about it, and we decided then and there to move. On Saturday we thought we would find another rental. On Sunday we decided to buy a house. On Monday I found our house (in three hours). Two days later we put in an offer in, a day later it was accepted, and today our financing was approved. Our closing date is Thursday (Abe is going to try to push it to Wednesday), and I have movers and appliances scheduled for delivery on Friday.
I guess in my attempt to make up for the fact that I let Abe suffer so long, I pushed this process into turbo-speed mode, and it has been a little bit of a whirlwind.
Add to that the fact that I have gotten only a couple hours of sleep a night ever since the process started because I am kept awake by vivid daydreams about our new yard. I imagine putting a hobbit hole, a trellis swing, a bounteous English cottage garden, a small orchard–espaliered fences included!–, and a thousand individual plants that I can’t wait to get in that ground. Many of the plants have a lot of sentimental value and are related to you and my memories of your garden, Grandma! Because of you I want gooseberry bushes, hollyhocks, and zinnias. Because of what Mom’s gardens I want peonies, wisteria, clematis, grape vines, lilacs, cosmos, day lilies. I also have a million other plants that I want but won’t list here for fear of boring the bejeebers out of my posterity, should they ever encounter this post. But needless to say, I can not sleep at night because I can actually see the flowers and vegetables in my head, and I get so excited that sleep becomes impossible.
Anyway, all those sleepless nights caught up with me today, and I crashed. I literally did nothing except feed my children and entertain them–from bed. I put on exercise pants at 7 pm when Abe came home and didn’t even bother to change anything else. But I did come to life at Abe’s arrival! I got some more boxes packed, and we both played a bunch with the kids.
Here are some pictures of the girls I took. I took one from bed, as you can probably discern from the weird angle and lighting.
Lydia played dress up with my sewing scraps and embroidery hoop. This is the picture I took from bed. Sad, I know.Lydia lit the way downstairs for Mary with her night light.Mary was apparently happy to be shown the way.
This morning I took Mary to a baptism while Abe took Lydia to ballet. She was really good until after the actual baptism. While Peter’s dad was conferring the gift of the Holy Ghost on him, Mary lost it and I had to rush out of the room. She spent the next half hour literally running the halls and jumping up and down the flights of stairs in the church. When we got home, she took a four and a half hour nap. Guess that baptism wore her out!
Then I packed a bunch more. Our living room and dining room bookshelves are almost empty, a bunch of kitchen ware is packed, the dining room hutch is empty, and a couple paintings are bubble wrapped and ready to move. I only have to repeat this feat seven or eight more times, and we’ll be all set to move.
We had a minor scare trying to find a babysitter for this evening. I called every single babysitter I knew and even Abe’s parents, but it wasn’t until one of the people I called gave me a lead on a young woman in our ward that I’d never met before that I finally got someone lined up. That freed Abe and me up for a wedding reception.
We went to Cynthia Barlow’s wedding reception at La Caille (and you really need to click on the link to see what that means) and it was the first time Abe and I had ever been there. It was gorgeous. We should have taken pictures, but for most of the time I was enjoying visiting with my friend, Maria. She is so fun to be around, and some of her stories had Abe and me literally crying from laughter. One of my mission acquaintances happened to also be sitting at our table, and it’s always fun to bump into people like that. Overall, the reception was the highlight of our day.
Flowers from the reception.
While I packed, Lydia was outside with Abe collecting petals from all of the dying flowers in the garden. She meticulously collected each petal in this box…and then proceeded to accidentally spill them all. She carefully put them back in, one by one. This picture represents a good hour of her day.
Grandma, I specifically cleared my camera this morning so I could take pictures of the Halloween parade at Lydia’s preschool, but when I got there, my card was still full! My friend Paige took pictures for me, but she’s moving into a new house today and hasn’t had time to send them over yet. I will post them when I get them.
Got them!
Also, the offer on our house was accepted! Yay!! Hopefully we can be moved in a month and Abe can relearn what sleep feels like!
I do have pictures from class tonight.
I made the lemon meringue tart in the foreground and one of the berry lattice pies in the background.I made the chocolate cream in the foreground, but I ran out of time for chocolate curls, so it just looks like a whipped cream pie.
Needless to say, I made myself sick on pie tonight.
Today was one of those marathon days. First, Lydia’s dance class had a Halloween celebration. Lydia invited Sophia, who came as the cutest Miss Piggy I have ever seen!
I took Mary to the park during Lydia’s dance class.
Then it was farmer’s market time:
Then Abe went to the church to set up for the Trunk or Treat while I came home and house hunted. I found a house! It was very exciting, but we can’t walk through until Monday.
Anyway, Abe did a great job organizing the Trunk or Treat, which was a success. We spent a couple hours at the church setting up and cleaning up afterward.
Then we went down to Provo to look at houses. We toured one and looked at the outside of one I really like.
And now the day is finally winding down! The prospect of sleep just might be the most exciting thing about this day so far.
This morning we went with Lalitha and Eden to Red Butte Gardens. It was a beautiful day. In fact, Abe and I keep having conversations about how amazing the weather this year has been. I wish this year would just repeat over and over for the rest of my life weather wise, but since I can’t count on that, I just have to try to make the most out of every gorgeous day.
Then we went grocery shopping with Lalitha and came home. I was the only one who napped, and when I woke up, Lydia informed me that she and Mary climbed onto the piano. I guess that means no more naps for me, or at least no naps while my children are awake.
I spent the rest of the day cooking. We had FHE with our friends, the Pe’as. Since we’ve been reading a lot of books about Halloween, Lydia has become very confused about what ghosts are. We decided to brush up on the doctrine of resurrection and our beliefs about how the spirit and the body are related to each other. Afterward, the kids pictured colors of ghosts.
Abe and I have been trying to get around to folding four giant baskets of laundry for almost a week. We are going to try to fold some tonight while watching Stardust. We have a new habit to squeeze in movies: ten minutes a day! I wish I were kidding, but that’s actually what we’ve resorted to.
P.S. Mom and Grandma, Paige sent me some cute pictures from our hike Wednesday. If you want to see them, I added them to that post (link here).
Just a real quick plug for coconut oil, since it’s 12:47 a.m. I have been drinking it and applying it regularly ever since the lice debacle, and I have noticed a HUGE difference in my skin/internal functions…um, TMI? But seriously, that stuff is amazing. Grandma, I hope you and mom find a way to acquire some. You need to buy the cold-pressed unrefined virgin coconut oil. It should look white and smell like coconuts. Here is the article that converted me to coconut oil.
Anyway, my hair is practically ruined from my lice treatments, so today I soaked my hair in coconut oil all day. I also used it as an all-over moisturizer and even took the brave step of using it in replacement of deodorant! It was risky, but I took the leap. I thought it was working, but to make sure, I had Abe smell my arm pits when he got home from work. All sorts of risks taken today…but guess what? The coconut oil works! It is a total natural deodorant!! I am now considering purchasing a 5 gallon vat wholesale, but in the meantime, Mom and Grandma, you really need to try it!
The rest of the day revolved around cooking dinner for Karin’s birthday dinner. And Jere’s in town, so we got to visit with him after dinner. That was so nice. It was very sweet to hear him and Abe discuss how much they love their jobs, especially since they both transitioned to their jobs from working situations that were extremely taxing.
Karin brought Mary a whole bunch of birthday gifts, and both girls looooved that.
I should have taken a picture of the dinner, but just so I can have the recipe on file, I stuffed each person a pumpkin with this. Things done differently: I cooked the rices separately in the rice cooker. I cooked the wild rice in chicken broth and the basmati in a combo of water and apple cider. I added 3/4 lb (!) of Irish cheddar, a kind that was practically wet and very crumbly. I moistened the individual stuffed pumpkins with a couple tablespoons of heavy cream and more cider before baking. This was the best variation I’ve had on this idea to date. Again, should have taken a picture. Drat!
My cake was a total flop, but Karin was so nice about it. I asked Abe to buy a replacement cake on his way home from work, but he convinced me that it’s the thought that counts. I sort of agree, but when it comes to chocolate cake, I kind of prefer that it’s done right. Thankfully, no one spit it out in disgust. I need to write down recipe corrections in my cookbook so those same mistakes don’t happen again!
