Monday, December 31, 2012

We are so adventurous sometimes

Gary picked up this latte in a can at the Vandalia grocery store on our snowy drive home just now. He handed it to me and I'm in charge of following the instructions so here it goes.

1. Turn can upside down, remove seal, and push heat activation button 1.5 cm. (1.5 cm?! I couldn't get it to depress at all, so I handed it to Gary and I steered while he showed it who was 1.5 cm boss)
2. Shake for 20 seconds after it begins to steam. (It never began to steam but I still shook it for a minute and it got so hot I had to set it down)
3. Turn can back upright and let it sit for 3 minutes. (The temperature indicator registered "perfect" at the end of 3 mins. Looking promising!)
4. Pop the top opening and enjoy your delectable latte. (Except Gary found it to only be delectable if you like the bitter lemon aftertaste. And then we noticed the label said nothing about the flavor or taste, it just promoted the idea of a "hot" beverage)

He said the other option available in the hot can was mushroom soup. I am so glad he wasn't that adventurous!

Friday, December 28, 2012

And if you prefer your glasses

to not only frame your eyes but also your ears...

At the eye doctor this morning

Jack is being so helpful today in helping Grant pick out his new frames.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas Eve

Cookie time!

Friday, December 21, 2012

It's 7:30 am, 23 degrees, with 25 mph winds

and this boy is wearing shorts and a hoodie. ?!!! And is happy as a clam. ??!

Did you know this? If you look up the word "stubborn," it says: See Grant Gill.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Is this girl gorgeous or what?

My date at the Madrigal Dinner tonight

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Monday, December 10, 2012

Have a Lice Day!

 

Ok, so this week I have a better attitude.  Maybe it has something to do with actually getting some sleep and reconnecting with my scarcely home hubby and having a Sunday of not that much to do.  And getting past the pms?

Yes, I feel much better.

So, what I forgot to throw in about my whinings of last week was that we were on constant look out for little critters that we did not want in our house. 

I got a call from school that Caroline was in the nurse’s office which I took to mean that she was sick.  Except the secretary hesitantly said, “Well, not really.  We have something of a mice outbreak.”  And I felt sick to my stomach immediately because, yes, I hate mice.  I despise mice.  I imagined one running up Caroline’s leg right there in class, yikes.  I thought I was gonna throw up right into my phone.  But then I realized, no, the secretary had said lice outbreak.  Oh, well, that’s a relief!  Until I realized she had said lice outbreak.   

We’d dodged that bullet through all those years of preschool for all the kids but I’d heard enough to know the horror stories of getting rid of lice.  Oh Lord!

Well, it probably helped that there were a total of seven girls sent home from her class so for C, it was kinda more like getting to be in a special club of 4th grade girls than the shameful branding stigma I had in mind.  “What kind of treatment did you use?  We bagged up our stuffed animals, too!  Cool!  Let’s all wear ponytails everyday now!  We should be school nurses when we grow up!”     

So it really wasn’t that huge of a traumatic deal other than so time consuming to go through her hair after the special (expensive!) shampoo.  I washed and dried all the bedding in hot-hot and sent the stuffed animals into confinement for a month as recommended. So far we have gone over every strand of hair five times and did the follow-up special shampoo.  She didn’t have actual creepy crawlies, but we did find a few nits, which are the eggs.  And those were creepy enough. 

I even sat in the nurse’s chair for a check since C and I are in the same bathroom, hair brushes all together in the same drawer.   Nothing was found on me, luckily.  The nurse asked if I wear hairspray because they don’t really like “product.”  Thank you for once, flyaway slick hair, because yes, I hair spray nearly daily. 

A funny in the whole not-really-funny event was when we left school that day of the outbreak and headed straight to Walgreen’s, Caroline told me she’d been told to look for the brand Raid. I think she meant

      (haha!)

 

Well, that Raid-Rid should take care of it and I hope that’s the last mice-lice outbreak for us ever again.

Crab Season Opens Today

 

-crab- - Copy

[This was written last week but then I couldn’t get an Internet connection for me to publish my complaints.  And if I would have known while I was typing that I had no Internet, I also would have added complaints about that along with complaints of having no TV due to yet continued receiver problems which put Verizon and Dish Network right up there with Delta on my : ( crab list.]

 

So, yes, today crab session is in session…

Today would have been the day I was packing for a few days in sunny California, except I’m not.  And to make the cancelled trip even more bittery, as I sit here today in dreary Illinois, I still have to pay for the flights that I am not going to be on to sunny California.  Southwest was reasonable on giving me credit on a future flight; Delta was not.  Nothing.  Boooo, and don’t you think I will ever forget it, Delta.

[The trip was going to be me joining Gary for his work in San Diego/LA , that is until his program manager last Friday cancelled his Monday trip so there went my mini-vacay.  : (   I’m making it all about me, I know, but technically it’s allowed during a crab session. It was gonna be my mom-get-away.]

Plus, I am having no interest in gearing up for the upcoming holidays.  I think when it’s so non-wintry, it makes me feel like it’s not really coming up.  Here’s the kids on Saturday and yep, it’s been 70 degrees ish in December which was lovely but so not Christmas-y.

c & s warm december

I will say we have an elf that appeared on a shelf for the first time and he’s been having some fun around here.  His name is Buddy, but I think of him as Little Rebel.  Day 2 he was found eating a sticky sucker in Gary’s chair and left not only the wrapper lying there but had left the remote in the chair (!).  Buddy Rebel ElfIt’s funny how the kids notice him doing the bad things that they don’t seem to see when they’re the ones doing them. Buddy/Rebel hasn’t met the Barbie Girls living in the basement yet, but I have a feeling they’re all soon gonna get wind of a new boy in the house and they might be hanging out together soon. 

I suspect there may be trouble beyond playing in the Qtips.

I am glad goofy stuff gets me out of my bad mood. 

So, what else? 

photo (2) 

Well, this past weekend I staked out some future rooms out in the back yard using the little orange flags to represent the walls and that’s about it for progress on the new addition.  But at least it’s still in the talks.  It brought to light that our projected great room was not quite great enough, too narrow, and my kitchen sink window was exactly where it ought to be for maximum pasture view.  This shows the corner of the kitchen, the dining room, and the screen porch.  Remove the gas barrel and fence and that’s our new backyard.  Well, add the pool in and there you have it. 

Did you hear? “Break ground this spring or we’re moving out” is the new motto.  That kinda gets a fire going under ya and that’s just what we needed.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Here's to being a kid

And getting your mom to park way far out of the way just so you can skip through the tunnel.