Third time's a charm.

It took me three separate trips to the library to get a card.

First time, their systems were down.

The next, I didn't have anything with our current address on it.

Today, I had my new driver's license and was NOT denied.  Win.

And I fully admit that one of the books I checked out was a children's book by Michael Ian Black.  I got it not so much because I wanted to read it to Ella, but because I wanted to read it myself.  *labels self 'DORK'*

Aside from library hijinks, a lot has been happening since the last post I made about the Highland Games, and I've been catching a little flack from various people (cough*DAD*cough) about not updating.  So I'll have a major epic post in the next day or so -- or maybe a couple of not-as-epic posts.

The past month and a half.

Well.

It's been a little nuts around here lately.

Here's what's been going on:

• We took Ella on her first trip to Walt Disney World, which was fantastic.  Mom and Dad went with us, too, and we had a great time.  More on that later, plus pictures.  
• I completely fell off the "picture a day" bandwagon.  Boo me.
• We found out that the center where Jon works is closing by the end of the year.  Oh, mercy -- serious panic mode, especially given that Jon got the call from his boss on the first day of our vacation.  
• Since then, though, we've found out that the company is being *extremely* generous with relocating employees to their three other centers (Phoenix, Ft Lauderdale, and Salt Lake City), and are offering home-based positions as well.   We're still exploring the options -- no final decisions have been made yet, but right now, there's a pretty good chance we'll be Utah residents by the end of the year.  More on this later as well, as we find out more information, and decisions are made.

I think that brings us fairly up to speed, and now March is just around the corner.  Sheesh.

Sicky.

Evidently, something Ella had last night at dinner didn't agree with her, and she woke up at 2:30 am, having thrown up all over herself.  It was the first time we'd had this happen, and understandably, she was a little freaked out (as were we).  I felt terrible for her, b/c she just didn't get what was going on and was so upset.

Jon and I made a good team -- he got her bed and room cleaned up, and I got her cleaned up.  She didn't want to go back to sleep right away, so we sat up for about an hour until she felt comfortable enough to lay back down.  She slept through the rest of the night with nary a peep, thankfully.

It seems like it was just a one-off thing...even though she clearly felt a little out of it earlier in the day, she kept everything down that she ate, and by the end of the day, she was pretty much back to 100%.

Bath Time.

TreeGate 2010 - The Saga Continues

This is the situation in our backyard right now.  In case you can't really tell, that's a very dead tree. and it's leaning quite precariously, positioned to fall at any given moment, directly into the power line, the shed, and the fence.

(I should mention here that we have not been negligent in trying to get our property management people to take care of this.  In fact, we let them know about it the week we moved in, which was almost FOUR YEARS ago.  So, yeah.)


Here's another picture...you can see sort of see where it's actually cracked down towards the base.

This is the second tree that will have fallen in the past month or so, although to be fair, the first one was not IN our yard -- just right BEHIND it.  (For the record, it wound up that the first tree was not on the power lines, as we initially thought.  It was on the phone/cable lines....and it's still there.  Not sure what the city is waiting on with that one.)


Needless to say, it's a tad on the disconcerting side to essentially be just sitting and waiting for this tree to come crashing down.

As soon as we noticed how much it was leaning, we put in a call to our property management people to let them know of the pending situation.  As of today, it's still there, although I have been advised that the tree people ARE going to come out. Fingers crossed that it gets taken down before it comes down of its own accord!

House a-fire! Well, almost.

I was going to bake some cookies today, and as standard when baking, I turned on the oven to preheat to 375.

I was getting the dough all mixed up and had just put it in the fridge to chill for a few minutes. I was putting things away, wiping up around the stove, when the oven beeped at me. I glanced up, and it had turned itself off. I thought maybe I had accidentally bumped the buttons when I was wiping, so I turned it back on -- same thing happened again.

I opened the oven -- it was SO FREAKIN HOT. Had to be at least 500+ degrees. The element was glowing super-bright orange, and it was smoking. It was almost like it was on the auto-clean mode.

At this point, I was in a bit of a panic, and I went and retrieved Jon to come have a look. He was as baffled as I was, and despite the fact that the oven was OFF, it really seemed like it was getting hotter and hotter. It certainly wasn't cooling down any at this point.

We weren't sure how we were going to manage this, and I finally remembered -- the breaker! So Jon went out and flipped the breaker to cut the power to the oven, and it finally went off. It took a really long time to cool down and stop smoking, though.

Needless to say, I'm a little freaked out about using the oven now. We're going to get someone out to look at it, but I've got no idea when that might be, and I've got to bake for Ella's b-day party next weekend...UGH.   

Really, Britax?

You recommend NOT machine washing your car-seat covers?  

'Cause, honestly, I don't think dabbing at barf w/a paper towel is gonna cut it.

Luckily, I didn't actually have the barf situation happen -- just some spilled milk. But I still would prefer that the car and car seat don't smell like sour milk.

Jon got the seat out and all disassembled only to find that they "don't recommend" machine washing the thing! Well, too late -- it's washing.  

We will air-dry it, of course, so it doesn't shrink, but it just seems ridiculous to me that ANY product manufactured for the wee ones wouldn't automatically be machine washable by default.

Well, I *did* need to reorganize the pantry.

I especially like the idea of keeping the idea of keeping the canned goods on top of the trash can :)

Also, that same night, we had a unexpected guest in our salad:

It was alive -- although, I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

Plant progress.

Along with our attempt at healthier eating,  I decided I was going to try my hand at growing some produce this year.  Nothing major, just tomatoes and strawberries.  I'm about 2 weeks in, and everything's still alive -- trust me when I say this is quite the victory for me.  A gardener by nature I am not.

Here's one of my tomato plants after I first planted it:

And here's the same plant as of yesterday:

It's coming right along!  I'm trying my best not to be a plant murderer. 

One of my strawberry plants is starting to get a few berries on it as well.  Exciting!  I don't know how many berries I should expect to get, but I hope enough to put up a little jam...or at least have some strawberry shortcake.

And just 'cause I can....

My sweetie-pie :)

Cooking 101

So, it's been a little over a week since my grand cooking-at-home experiment started.

I haven't given anyone food poisoning yet, so I'd say it's going well.  We're not going hungry, anyway.

Aside from over-cooking some steak, and having some chicken come out a bit on the dry side, my stuff has turned out pretty reasonable. 

What have I been cooking, you ask?   Well, to name a few...

-tomato chicken parmesan
-lemon pepper cod
-the aforementioned (overdone) steaks
-baked chicken with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes
-spicy lime grilled shrimp
-homemade pizza (I even made the dough!)

I'm finding I actually look forward to cooking dinner -- how strange!  A foreign concept to be sure, but one I'm learning to enjoy. 

I also feel good about the fact that I'm actually cooking from scratch, and making things that are relatively healthy for us.  I can't remember if I'd blogged about it, but I'm making a big effort to stop buying foods with high fructose corn syrup  -- and believe me, that's harder than it sounds.  That junk is in EVERYTHING.   Cutting out HFCS cuts out a lot of super-processed foods, which in the long run, is better for us anyway.
 
We are cheating a bit tomorrow night, though.  Ella will be spending the night with Grandma and Pop, and Jon and I will be enjoying dinner at 1618 West.  Yum.

SO not what I was expecting.

Lately, there's been another neighbor dog that comes around outside our fence (we have woods on two sides of us) and Cosmo and Lukin will bark at him, but will come right in when I call them. Well, last night, I thought the other dog was out there again, since I heard a ruckus, but I couldn't get the dogs to come in, even when tempting them with a treat. Pretty unusual, and I thought maybe one or both of them had gotten on the other side of the fence somehow. They were behind the shed, so I couldn't see what was going on.

I got a flashlight, put on my flip flops, and traipsed back out across the yard, expecting just to see the neighbor dog -- instead, they had a nasty, hissing, yellow-toothed opossum cornered just on the other side of the fence!! Lukin was UNDER the shed, and Cosmo was about halfway under the fence, trying his damnedest to get in a rabies-filled tussle.  

I finally managed to haul the dogs out of the way a bit, and the opossum ran off. I hope he learned his lesson and stays away from our yard.

*shudder*

I've decided I don't like exfoliating body wash.

It seems counterproductive to me to smear grit all over my body when I'm trying to get clean.  Unfortunately for me, I have a whole bottle of this mess to go through :P

Odds and Ends.

Ever wondered what dishwashing liquid looks like when it freezes? Yeah, me neither, but I recently found out. It's kind of cool, actually.




And no, I didn't freeze it myself. It's been so cold recently that it arrived at my house in my most recent order from alice.com just like that. Alice.com, by the way -- best website I've discovered recently (I hesitate to say "best website ever"...that covers a lot of ground, really).

What else? Well, brace yourself, buster -- I've been baking! Bread, of all things. I'd been wanting to play with the Kitchenaid (woo, that thing is a beast!), and I finally went out and got a couple of loaf pans yesterday. It was a quick-rise recipe that I got right of the book that came with the mixer. For my first attempt, I was pretty pleased! It was a little denser than I'd like, but had a good flavor. I think if I just let it rise more next time, it'll be lighter.



One of the loaves was shaped a little wonky, but that was my fault for rushing through when I was making them.



It made the house smell GREAT too. Jon and I both had a piece right of of the oven with butter. Yum.

And to show you that I really can get excited about the little things in life -- we got a new mailbox yesterday, and I am just ticked to death about it. Since we moved to this house, the mailbox had been just hanging on by a thread -- no latch, rusted out, big dent in the side. Finally, it got to the point a few weeks ago where the door wouldn't shut anymore, and so if it rained, our mail would get soaked. So yesterday, we got a new one! It's white and shiny and not rusted and has a DOOR with a LATCH that SHUTS. Yeah!

Back among the living.

We've been living in a house of pestilence and disease, but finally (about 10 days later), there's light at the end of the tunnel, and we're all on the mend. Thank goodness. It was nasty head colds and coughs all around. Ella's been a trooper through the whole thing...probably more of one that I was at times.

Anyway, while we were all wallowing in sickness and piling the tissues up on the floor, Ella turned 16 months! Last Thursday, to be exact. I didn't get around to snapping a few pictures until yesterday...I didn't feel like doing it before then, and I'm pretty sure she didn't feel like having her beauty struck before then either :)



-I have to keep her hair pulled up in a topknot like this most of the time, because otherwise, she pulls it down in front of her face and puts it in her mouth, which makes me insane.
-She is REALLY into books...she loves for both Jon and me to read to her. Current favorites include Jamberry, Moo Baa La La La, and the book we got at Kindermusik.
-She walks everywhere all the time now.
-She thinks petting the animals is such a hoot -- she gets so tickled when she pets them, just squeals and laughs. She's really good about being gentle with them, too.
-She's always toting her stuffed animals around with her. She gives them hugs and kisses, and likes to give them to Jon and me for hugs as well.

What's that saying again...

...about good intentions? And the road to hell? Something like that.

We had such nice plans this weekend -- Renaissance Faire one day and Duke Gardens and dinner with the Robersons on another.

So guess who woke up sick this morning? Me, baby. Me.

I could feel it coming on last night, and I knew there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. That's the worst, I think. When it's in the mail -- and you know it.

So instead of fun, today consisted of me sleeping and resting a lot, and Jon taking care of the baby.

I feel okay, not great -- mostly just run-down. Hopefully, it will be short-lived. Sadly, though, I think Ella is already getting whatever it is. She was starting to get sniffly before bed tonight, and acted like she just didn't feel that great this evening.

Random stuffs.

I was just busy getting myself all ramped up over a great deal on hockey tickets -- 3 games for the price of one. Considering they're charging $70-80 for lower level seats this season, the 3-for-1 seemed like a really good deal.

Then I get to the fine print. Well, I guess it wasn't THAT fine. It was pretty much staring me in the face the whole time. "Minimum purchase of 10 tickets." Well, dang. So much for that idea.

Anyway. What else?

I've got a bunch of Ella's teensy clothes from last fall on the kitchen table ready to go to consignment. Only I'm not sure if I'm ready for them to go to consignment. It's hard getting rid of those itty-bitty things. And I mean, they don't take up THAT much space, right? But I know it's like a 99.95% chance that we're not having another one, so I guess I really should take them.... *sigh*

We went on a walk yesterday over at Guilford-Battleground Park, and we saw 3 deer on the trail! Really cool. Of course, it was the one day I forgot to take my camera with me...go figure. They stared us down, and then bounded off into the woods. I didn't realize their tails were so long.

Oh, I found a new Internet radio thing. I'd been using Pandora, but it was getting really terrible, always playing a bunch of crap that I don't like. So I switched to jango.com...MUCH better, so far anyway. I've only been using it a couple of days, so the crap-factor may increase as I use it more.

At least it stayed off the fan...

Things started off good this morning. Jon took the morning shift and let me sleep in, 'til almost 11am! Woo! He'd come back to bed when Ella laid down for her morning nap, and both of them were still snoozing when I got up. I took the monitor and went into the living room to check email and wait for the baby to get up.

Soon enough, I heard Ella stirring around in her crib. She'd actually turned back on her Sleepy Sheep, which she's done a few times lately...this amuses me for some reason. Anyway, she wasn't making much noise herself, so I though maybe she'd laid back down, but I figured I'd go peer in on her anyway.

As I opened the door, I could see that she was awake, standing by the side of her crib, smiling sweetly. Her diaper, however, was outside the crib, crumpled on the floor.

And my dear, sweet, darling, angelic daughter, was covered in poop.

It was so not good.

You guess correctly if you guess that her crib, mattress, and the walls were also covered (although not as much as Madam herself). Even poor Sleepy Sheep wasn't spared.

It really was one of the less favorable situations I've walked into in my life.

Needless to say, I got Jon in there in short order to help with the clean-up detail. I took the girl, and he took the room.

The new rule is: no naptime without pants.

Obligatory update

I guess it's pretty bad when my own husband is telling me I haven't updated my blog in awhile.

I'm not meaning to be neglectful, it's just that there's not been anything to report. I've been working, Jon's been working, Ella's been crawling and pulling up on any and everything, and has even started cruising a tiny bit! So she's probably been the busiest of us all.

More teeth are starting to make their way in. This time, she's definitely noticing it, and is not particularly happy about it. Evenings tend to be rough, and last night, she woke up screaming about 45 minutes or so after we put her to bed (that *never* happens). I was working, so Jon sat in with her until she settled back again, which took about an hour and some Baby Tylenol.

I think I forgot to post about the 2nd trial cake I did the week after the first disaster. 100% improvement! I did sort of cheat and bought a shaped pan, but I made up for that by making my own fondant and buttercream icing! Looked good and tasted great! If I can pull it off again next weekend, I'll be in good shape!

This is as clean as it gets these days.

This is actually pretty good for me, really.

Special delivery

So, this is what I found in the mailbox today.


Yikes. Certainly not what I was expecting.

I shudder to think how long she's probably be in there, and how often I just stick my hand into the mailbox without looking.

And yes, that is an egg sac.

*shiver*