I always have to warm up to Christmas. As much as I want it to be the most wonderful time of the year, sometimes it’s hard for me to be very joyful when the roads are icy and everywhere you turn there’s a barrage of commercialism. This year it felt like it took extra effort on my part to really get into the Christmas spirit, but in the end I feel like all the work and soul searching has actually…
I forgot the number one rule of our family. I went grocery shopping with both kids (not my rule violation) and somewhere in between loading people and produce I put my wallet on top of the car. I was completely unaware of my infraction until I received an email five hours later from an unfamiliar address asking me to call them because they’d found my wallet on a highway onramp. The man who’d found it kindly drove out of his way to…
We spent the last couple days of 2012 being incredibly ill with a stomach bug. (Apparently there’s been kind of an epidemic here in Colorado. So glad we could be a part of that. Thank you, Norovirus.) For 48 hours there was always at least one person vomiting at any given moment and those that weren’t were suffering from body aches and/or fevers. It was pretty bad. It’s amazing how much a bout of sicknesses can increase your gratitude for things we typically…
I went to the store yesterday in search of some silly, but festive prizes for our church Turkey Trot and after combing the entire store I only found a tiny selection of paper plates and cheap turkey centerpieces tucked away in a random corner. However, the WHOLE store was decked out for Christmas and all prepped for their “Black Friday” sales. (Technically, the sale now starts Thanksgiving evening, but I guess they thought we wouldn’t recognize this as a threat…
Way back when Noel and I were just dating (Five whole years, people!), we went Christmas shopping together for the first time. It was a fairly awful experience and I’m pretty sure the only reason anyone forgave us for our lame and thoughtless gifts was because we got engaged days before Christmas and everyone was so sickened by our twitterpation happy for us. Since then we’ve greatly improved our holiday planning and I think we may have even shed the…
It’s hard to say whether yesterday’s low was when Cooper cried inconsolably from 12am-2am or when we forgot about the bike on the roof rack and tried to drive into the garage. By the time we swept up the shattered glass and plastic in the driveway and found our chicken dinner half cooked in a dead crockpot, we were feeling pretty defeated. Famished, we threw the chicken in the oven and decided to start dinner with salads, but paused first…
Today I am grateful for many things, but I will only list one: our dishwasher. Noel and I enjoy cooking (although becoming one with our “new” oven is another story), but we limited ourselves to the items Noel was able to realistically schedule into his Google calendar during a four hour period. Ten minute notifications for each step of the meal is what happens when someone obsessed with scheduling and list making marries someone that is obsessed with technology. Needless…
It is wonderful to be able to drive on the interstate and do my shopping in the middle of the day while everyone else is at work, especially at this time of year. I love being in a store when the cashiers are practically begging me to go through their line and they’re still in a pretty good mood since nobody’s been a jerk to them yet. When I lived in Logan and ventured out in the middle of the…
I know we often clump this one with our automatic I-didn’t-even-turn-on-my-brain-to-think-of-this-response answers to what we’re grateful for, but I really am grateful for it. Food is the reason why Cooper no longer screams at us the whole time we try to eat dinner. It’s also the reason why I’ve been getting more sleep. Having to bathe Cooper practically every day is completely worth it. Today, I am feeling especially grateful for soup. Snowy day, sunny day, special occasion, or sick…
people that take good care of their stuff and then decide to sell it at a fraction of the original price. Makes for a happy bank account and a happy baby.