Thursday 13: Hot, Fun, and Productive

1.    I just want to start off by saying thank you to everyone for your awesome comments on my post about growing up as a JW and leaving the cult.  I appreciate all of your kind words, and you’ve made me feel good about having written it.

2.    I finished with a fairly large project at work.  The deadline got moved up it, so I ended up working late a couple of days, but it’s finished now, and it went well.  The coworker I worked with was very kind and very adamant about making sure my name went on the finished product.  They said I’d worked really hard and deserved credit.  It’s always nice to get good feedback at work.

3.    My sister, Gabby, and her girlfriend, Amy, came to visit.  They arrived Saturday just before lunch and stayed until late Sunday afternoon.

4.    Amy got some good pictures of the cats while they were here.  Here’s one she took of Frankie.

5.    We had a great time.  Gabby and Nick get along well, and Nick and I both get along well with Amy.  Gabby recently referred to me as the founder and CEO of the We Love Amy Club.  She’s not wrong.

6.    We went to an awesome local restaurant for lunch on Saturday.  Gabby had been before and loves it, but this was Amy’s first time eating there.  She says it’s one of her favorites now.  We grilled out for dinner Saturday night and stayed up late talking and playing trivia games.

7.    Gabby and Amy both went out to give the chickens snacks with me.  They didn’t realize that some of the chickens are free-range and thought there had been a chicken escape when they pulled up in the driveway and were greeted by chickens.   Fortunately, no free-range chickens were captured, and Gabby and Amy enjoyed feeding all of the chickens their snacks.

8.    It seems like sometimes, with a long weekend, we end up feeling like we’ve wasted it by not doing anything productive, or we vastly overestimate how much we can do with the extra day, and it feels like the weekend wasn’t at all fun or restful.  This time, though, we actually hit a good balance.  We had a lot of fun visiting with Gabby and Amy on Saturday and Sunday.  We spent Sunday evening reading instead of our usual, getting ready for the week.  On Monday, we went to the gym in the afternoon and spent more time than we usually do, went out for an early dinner, went to the grocery store, and spent some time getting ahead on things for the week.  It was a nice balance. 

9.    Mortimer spent most of the weekend chilling out.  Amy took this picture of him.  He was completely zonked out in this position.  It doesn’t look very comfortable to me, but he was happy.

10. It has been HOT this week.  We’re back in the high 80s and low 90s, with high humidity. 

11. The air conditioning was out at work on Tuesday.  By 10:30, it was 85 degrees in the building, and efforts to fix the air conditioning thus far hadn’t worked.  Since we hadn’t even hit our high temperature yet (and it was hotter in the building than it was outside), my boss sent us all home to work from home for the rest of the day. 

12. It’s supposed to cool down to the mid-70s over the weekend, which everyone is very much looking forward to.

13. The immortal tomatoes (also known as cherry tomatoes) are back.  It has been years since we’ve planted any of these, and we never planted them where they’re currently growing.  Yet, every year, they come back, so I’ve taken to calling them the immortal tomatoes.  

So, how has your week been? 

Come Hell Or High Water

High water, anyway. 

A few weeks ago my aunt and uncle, Diana and Lane , were in town on their way to move several states away.  They’re the one who met online, like Nick and I did, which we owe at least partially to them.  And I have the coolest aunt in the world.   So, of course, we wanted to spend time with them while they were in town.

Unfortunately, Lane is allergic to cats.  He seems to be able to tolerate being at our house for a few hours during the winter.  Our house holds heat like an oven, so during the winter whenever we have a lot of people in the house the heat doesn’t run.  As you might imagine, the air conditioner runs non-stop when we have a lot of people in the house during the hot weather.  The air running seems to blow the cat dander around and really exacerbates Lane’s allergies.

So we opted to have a picnic at a park with them. 

The first plan was a park with grills and picnic tables, but no shelters.  But every time I checked the weather forecast the chance of rain went up.  So we opted for a different park, where we could reserve a covered picnic shelter, with a grill just outside the shelter.

Picnic day arrived overcast, but not rainy.  We took everything to the park, met up with Diana and Lane, and their dog, Ambra.  We set up the food and coolers in the shelter, and all went on a walk to take Ambra to explore the park.  It was windy and cool, but still not raining.

We started to think that it wasn’t going to rain after all, and lit the grill.  About the time we got the grill going a major storm broke loose.  The rain poured down in sheets, there was thunder and lighting, and it was extremely windy.  The basketball courts and part of the parking lot flooded.  At one point we were all huddled together in the middle of the shelter because the wind was blowing the rain into the shelter. 

The wind stopped before the rain did, so we were able to sit at one of the picnic tables and play Apples to Apples while we waited for the rain to stop. 

When the rain finally stopped we decided it was time to re-light the grill.  The grill was drenched and had all of the drowned charcoal from our first attempt in it.  Fortunately, though, Nick is a firefighter, and firefighters start the best fires.  We scraped all of the wet charcoal out of the grill, but the grill was still pretty wet.  I had packed an extra disposable baking pan at the last minute, so Nick put the charcoal in that, cut some vents, and got the grill going again.

Once the grill got going for the second time it started raining again.  It wasn’t the torrential downpour from earlier, but we were worried it might be enough to put out the grill.  So we all took turns standing over the grill with umbrellas.

It was definitely a group effort to get the burgers grilled.

I promise I did take a turn holding an umbrella.  I just didn’t take pictures of myself.

The burgers were delicious, and we all had a great time.  Nothing stands in the way when our families plan a picnic.  

We’re pretty sure the picnic is going to become one of those family stories that get told over and over again.  

So what about you?  Have you grilled out in the rain? 

Grandparents

Jeanie, at The Marmelade Gypsy recently became a new grandparent, and wrote a nice post on being a grandparent.  It made me think of my grandparents, and the different types of grandparents there are. So I decided that my G post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge would be Grandparents.

I had the good fortune to start off with more than the usual number of grandparents.  My mom’s parents were divorced and both remarried.  I was also the first grandchild on both sides of the family. That’s kind of like winning the lottery when it comes to being spoiled by grandparents.  They were all different, and I had a very different relationship with each of them.

My mom’s dad and step-mom died in a car accident when I was six, so I have only early childhood memories of them.  For them, being grandparents was a calling, an occupation, and a hobby all rolled into one.  He had missed out on most of my mom’s childhood due to the divorce, and was determined to be there for everything when my sister and I came along.  She adored children, but was never able to have her own, so my mom, and then later my sister and I presented her chance.

They were the kind of grandparents who snuck us cookies after bedtime, and let us do pretty much whatever we wanted.  They played house, dolls, dress-up, pretty much anything we wanted, with us.

They did things like let me drink juice out of a coffee mug and stir it with a spoon because I loved the sound it made.  Even today, there’s something soothing to me about the sound of a spoon clinking against a mug.

They packed a lot of grandparenting into six years.  I honestly don’t know if I would have such vivid memories of them otherwise.

My mom’s mom, Granny, embraced grandparenting with equal fervor.

My mom has always hated gum, and would never allow us to have it when we were kids, so Granny kept us well supplied with gum.  She would send us huge boxes of gum, with every flavor imaginable.  Mom would make us go outside to chew it, but that was fine with us.

Granny wrote the best letters, and she wrote often.  I loved writing letters as a child, and wrote them on a near daily basis for a while.  She always wrote me back.

She loved shopping, and could always sense a good sale.  She taught me how to bargain shop, and the wisdom of stocking up on things when they’re on sale.

She made the best pumpkin pie.  I have her handwritten recipe for it, and it was her contribution to our wedding cookbook.

My dad’s parents, known as Mama Kitty and Dad Dog, lived a little further way, so we didn’t see them as much when we were kids, but they still whole-heartedly embraced being grandparents.

They came to stay with my sister and me during our other grandparents’ funeral.  My parents made the decision for us not to go, and I don’t think there was anyone else we would have willingly stayed with.

He taught me how to ride my bike.  It didn’t go well at all when my parents tried, but Dad Dog’s method was successful.  He went with me for show and tell when I was in kindergarten (no one else had a Dad Dog, so he was a big hit).

He took me out driving when I had my learner’s permit and taught me not to be so terrified of getting in an accident.

Mama Kitty has always been more of a homebody, so she was largely the one who taught me how to cook, and taught me nearly everything I know about baking.  We always cooked and baked together.  Lasagna, shrimp scampi, biscuits and gravy, cake.  Whatever it was, it was always delicious.

She’s the avid reader in the family, and passed on a love of reading and books.  She’s the person who convinced me that the worn, well-read books are the best when you’re at book sales or thrift stores, because they’re clearly the ones people have read and loved.

I think all of my grandparents helped shape the person (the good and the bad parts) that I am today.  I learned different things from all of them, and was able to have a unique relationship with each of them.  I realize that I was very fortunate to have that.

So what about you?  What were/are your grandparents like?  If you’re a grandparent, what are you like?

Birthdays

Yesterday's Surprise Birthday Gift!

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate birthdays. My parents adhere to a religion that strictly forbids the celebrating of birthdays. My first experience with a birthday party was at my first job after technical school when there was a birthday party every month for anyone whose birthday fell in that month. Each month had a committee to plan the birthday party. It was great fun, and the beginning of my love of all things birthday. It’s where I learned that birthdays are fun.

Eleven years later a lot has changed; I’ve moved to a different state, gotten married (to a man who’s a Christmas Eve baby), and have a different job. However, I still love all things birthday, and have the fortune to be around people who really get into celebrating birthdays.

Yesterday at work I walked into a lovely early birthday surprise from some of my co-workers. They took the time to choose my favorite flowers and candy. One of the things I love about my job is the fact that we celebrate co-worker’s birthdays. I always bake a cake of the birthday person’s choosing, we all go out to lunch together, and sometimes small gifts are given. It’s really nice because, let’s face it, a lot of us spend more time with our co-workers on a daily basis than we do our families. It’s nice to know that the people you spend 40 plus hours per week with are glad you were born.

Of course, co-worker birthday celebrations don’t replace birthday celebrations with family and friends. I love the traditions and fun that go along with birthday celebrations for my friends and family by marriage.

Since Nick is a Christmas Eve baby I always make sure he has a birthday party that has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s usually chili and a cake that in no way resembles anything Christmas-related. The cake has been everything from Star Trek to frogs.

My best friend Crystal almost always chooses grilling out for her birthday celebration. Her birthday is in early May, so the weather is usually perfect for being outside and grilling. We usually try new marinades or grilling something new.

Because I dislike the cold weather so much and my birthday is in early April, we almost always drive down to South Carolina to go to Riverbanks Zoo. It’s always warm there by then, and the garden is in bloom. I love it.

There’s always cake, too. This year Nicks’ mom and step-dad, Alan, (whose birthday is late March) were in town close enough to celebrate our birthdays together with a chocolate cake with an antique truck for Alan and an adorable white cake with pastel flowers and butterflies for me. I don’t like chocolate at all, so it means a lot that they go out of their way to get white cake for me.

So what about you? Do you love birthday celebrations? What are your traditions for celebrating birthdays with family and friends?

Thanksgiving Comes First & It Looks Like I Got My Wish

It’s definitely time for a new blog post since Thanksgiving is practically upon us and my last post is entitled “Happy Halloween”.  I’m not even going to try to figure out where all of the time has gone.  I’ve been meaning to share my Thanksgiving post for a while, and it just so happens to tie in (with only a little bit of stretch) Carrie’s awesome vacation giveaway.  Excellent!  Two posts in one! 

First, this week’s question from Carrie: 

“How do you feel about the holidays this time of the year,particularly the ever-melding of ThanksChristgivmasing that is continually being ‘pushed’ more and more each year?”

I love the holidays.  I didn’t get to celebrate them as child, so I have totally embraced them now.  In some ways I’m like a child when it comes to the holidays.  Granted, a child with a bank account and the ability to make Christmas goodies, but I think I have that level of enthusiasm.  I get truly excited over planning Thanksgiving Dinner, sending Christmas cards, shopping for gifts, and making goodies for everyone.  But for me Thanksgiving does come first.  I don’t get especially upset to see Christmas decorations out early, and I can never resist running to look at shiny ornaments in stores.  But I do think it’s sad that Thanksgiving is almost skipped over, or treated as an afterthought. 

I love Thanksgiving.  It’s possibly my favorite holiday.  I love cooking, and I love spending time at home with the people I love.  Thanksgiving gives me both of those things. 

I also see Thanksgiving as the beginning of the holiday season; not the beginning in the sense that it needs to be rushed through, but the beginning like in a great book you don’t want to put down.  It’s the first of the holiday gatherings, sometimes the first day you see some friends or family since last year.  It’s a time to look for the good things in your life that maybe you forget about sometimes.

Now, on to this year’s Thanksgiving and how I got my wish.  I have always wanted to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for a big crowd.  I truly love cooking, and I love having people over for meals.  It has never worked out for me to cook for much of a crowd on Thanksgiving before, largely because schedules conflict and people have so many different places to be on one day. 

Have you ever seen the movie Under The Tuscan Sun, with Diane Lane?  It is a truly wonderful movie, it’s happy, sweet, and has beautiful scenery.  Watch it, you won’t be sorry.  In the movie, she moves to Tuscany and buys a villa on a whim.  She later laments the fact that she bought a house for a life she doesn’t have, and goes on to say how she wants there to be family and a wedding in the house, and she wants people to cook for.  At the end she manages to get all of these things, though not in the way she meant/hoped/expected, and therefore doesn’t even realize she has gotten her wish, until one of the other characters says that it looks like she got her wish.

This year my husband ended up moving to a different work schedule, which includes working nights the week of Thanksgiving.  We’ve always been able to work around his work schedule on Thanksgiving when he has worked days because he gets a long lunch break.  I just got up really early and made sure everything was ready when he came home for lunch.  With the  fairly long lunch break it worked.  It wasn’t ideal, but it worked.  Nights are a totally different story.  Trying to have Thanksgiving Dinner before he goes into work would be the equivalent of trying to have it for breakfast for most of us.  We can’t really have it during the day because that’s pretty much the middle of the night for him. 

I will admit I was really upset.  Like I said, I love Thanksgiving, and the thought of missing out on it didn’t make me very happy.  Then we decided that instead of complaining about it, we’d just have Thanksgiving Dinner another day.  It’s not so much the day as it is spending time with loved ones, and the food of course. 

So we chose November 3^rd as the day for our Thanksgiving celebration.  I know it was really early, but it’s what worked out with scheduling.  We decided to have all of the usual Thanksgiving foods, invite lots of people, and hope for the best. 

We ended up with a total of 15 people at our house.  It was, by far, the biggest holiday turnout we have ever had.  Most people seemed to like the idea of an early Thanksgiving, and a lot of people who will be out of town on Thanksgiving were able to come.  I finally got my wish, even if it wasn’t how I expected, and had a crowd to cook Thanksgiving Dinner for.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures.  I was so caught up in everything that was going on that I totally forgot about taking any pictures. 

Here’s our menu (in case you’re still looking for ideas):

Turkey (stuffed w/ chopped onions, slathered with butter, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and parsley and cooked in white wine and cognac)

Gravy (I’m from the South; it’s it own separate dish!)

Meatloaf (the traditional beef kind) I know it’s a little odd, but my husband doesn’t love turkey.  It’s a surprisingly big hit with everyone.

Macaroni & Cheese

Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potato Casserole

Dressing

Rolls

Cranberry Sauce

Green Beans

Rice (cooked with some of the juice/onions from the turkey in place of part of the water and a packet of vegetable soup mix)

Corn Casserole (brought by Grandmother-In-Law; I have no idea how to make it)

Apple Cake w/ Browned Butter Frosting (You don’t need quite as many apples as the recipe says.)

Pumpkin Pie

Banana Pound Cake

Hershey’s Chocolate Cake (Do NOT use a standing mixer for this one.  I have no idea why, but if you do, you will end up with a chocolate volcano in your oven.  It’s not fun or pretty.  I have made this cake for years, and only ended up with the chocolate volcano twice; both times I used the standing mixer.  That’s enough proof for me not to try it again.)

Obviously, we had tons of food.  We tried to make sure that everyone had at least one favorite dish and/or dessert.  We also had a great time, and got to see almost everyone we had hoped to.  It was very informal, which is mostly how we do things.  We had the food buffet style, we borrowed folding chairs from a friend, and we all perched around the living room talking and eating off of paper plates (because we don’t have dishes for 15 people). 

We had a lot of leftovers to send home with everyone.  It’s easier to get people to take leftovers when you have Thanksgiving early, since they don’t have their own leftovers or anyone else’s.

There was also talk of passing the torch to the next generation.  Most of our friends are older than us.  Some are older than our parents, so some of them are beginning to slow down just a little bit.  My family doesn’t celebrate the holidays, my husband’s grandparents (who live locally) are no longer doing big holiday dinners, and many of our close friends aren’t as up for hosting a crowd as they used to be.  I am fine with picking it up. 

We will have to wait and see what next year holds, but so far we are liking the idea of picking a weekend and hosting an early Thanksgiving.  I do know that we’re not skipping over it in favor of Christmas!

Insanity Runs In My Family

Today is Day Seven of the 30-Day Photo Challenge, which is "Something Funny".  After perusing my photos, this is the funniest one I could find.  It's my dad and my cousin at my wedding rehearsal.  We found the candy boogers at Target, and just couldn't resist sticking them in with my dad's gift.  As you can see, he really enjoyed them.  And, no, they did not make an appearance the next day at the wedding.

My family is a little insane (mostly in a fun, entertaining way I think), and my dad has an odd sense of humor.  So it's only natural that this is my favorite movie line of all time.  It's from Arsenic And Old Lace, which is one of the best movies ever made.  It's also a perfect Halloween movie, so if you haven't seen it, this is great time of year to watch it.