Everything is Unfinished

Back before we moved, I posted a list of New House Resolutions that I wanted to start doing once we moved. Now that we’ve been here for several months and everything is unpacked and I’m actually keeping a decent schedule, let’s see how I’ve done!

* Brush and floss teeth before bed every night.
Ha! I’m lucky to get my teeth brushed in the morning when I get up, because I usually get up to the sound of a very unhappy and hungry baby.
* Eat lunch at home at least 5 days a week.
I’ve been pretty good about this, even if it is out of sheer laziness. Johnny goes into school every morning (usually) and if I’m not ready to leave the house I’ll just find something here.
* Cook dinner at least 4 nights a week.
Er, maybe one night a week. But Thanksgiving dinner should count for, like, 3 weeks right?
* Scrap more often - goal is 2 layouts per week.
2 layouts per week? It’ll take me a week just to get everything organized enough to think about doing a layout!
* Join Weight Watchers again and stick to it!
We did join WW and weighed in twice. We have pledged to get back on it and start weighing in again next week.
* Start teaching Jack sign language.
Not doing too bad here. The signs I seem to use most are kitty and more. Need to work on please and thank you more often.
* Take a walk or go to a park at least once a week.
Riiiiiiight.
* Have picnic lunches with Johnny on campus often.
Go ahead and ask me how often we’ve done this so far. Go ahead.
* Start sewing again - need to make Jack’s Halloween costume and a liner for my picnic basket.
Well I did make this table runner, but that’s it so far. But there’s hope - the crafty mood continues and I found 2 really cute patterns at Joann’s the other day. Love the stroller caddy in this one, and how cute are these overalls? (and what a great way to use all those awesome fleece patterns without having 1500 blankets in your house.)
* Schedule my time. Being at home all day is great, but it’s so easy to sit around and do nothing for days on end.
Oh yeah, it’s SO easy to do nothing all day. I’ve had many a day like that since officially becoming a stay at home mom (SAHM). Well, if your idea of nothing includes changing diapers, preparing bottles, and feeding a baby. And then there are days and weeks where I have so much to do that I feel like I’m never home!

So overall, I’m 3 for 10. That’s pretty bad. But I don’t care. I have goals to work toward and at this point things are running rather smoothly in the Peelio household. And since I posted resolutions already, I’m not going to post any around the first of next year. Instead, I’m working on a list of 50 random facts about myself that I’ll post. You should do this too!

I must be ill. It’s not even December yet and not only do I have some Christmas shopping done, I made some presents tonight.

Yes, made. Told you I was in a crafty mood.

Of course, I can’t post pictures of said gifts until after Christmas because some of the recipients read this blog. And I certainly can’t talk about the gifts I’ve bought already. Especially since some of them have already been removed from a certain someone’s list and will have to be returned.

Which brings me to a soapbox I’ve been meaning to jump up on lately: gift receipts. They’re not just a good idea, people, they’re one of the best inventions EVAR. As you may know, we had a baby about 8 months ago. When you have your first baby, it is customary to build a gift registry. It is understood that people will buy you things, and this way you can steer them in the general direction of the things you want. Not everyone will use the registry, and that’s ok. Sometimes they find something way cooler than you did, or sometimes they’re parents themselves and they know what you’re going to need better than you do. I’m ok with this. But no matter what kind of hints you give people, you will end up with too. much. stuff. This will happen to an even greater degree if you have 4 baby showers. So as you’re sorting through the aftermath, you realize that there is NO way the baby will be able to wear all of these clothes, or have the need for 24 bath towels, or 36 blankets, no matter how cute they all are. It’s not that you don’t like everything, there’s just too much of it. Some of the things you got will just have to be returned. Your feelings should not be hurt by this. And sometimes you’ll even have enough things to go back that you can get something else that you needed that no one bought you, like a car seat and stroller. This is not a problem, if people bought things off your registry.

We registered at Babies R Us and Target. If we had things to return that were on our registry, no problem. Even if the people who bought them didn’t tell the cashier they were on our registry. And we had other things to return where people had given us the gift receipt. It’s a breeze to return such things! Then there’s the third category of stuff: gift that we can’t use with no receipt that wasn’t even on our registry. At BRU, as long as the item is still in their inventory they’ll take it back, but they’ll only give you whatever the current price is. I’m not against clearance merchandise - I buy it a lot. But if someone spent $20 on an outfit, it’s a rip if I only get $4.66 back on it. At Target, it’s pretty much the same deal, with one caveat: a person can only return 2 things without receipts in a calendar year. They have to use your driver’s license to do the return, so between me and Johnny that’s a grand total of 4 things. Even though we drove our friends’ business to them by having a gift registry there. We still have a few things left that we can’t return yet but have no use for. At this point they may just be (gasp!) regifted. So what’s the moral of the story? GIVE GIFT RECEIPTS.

I’ve had dinner and the requisite Thanksgiving Day nap, in our brand new cushy recliner even. And now, some pictures!

Jack couldn’t wait to eat with us, but he did have turkey with sweet potatoes, plus some banans and oatmeal.

The spread! Since I was working the camera timer, I didn’t *quite* make it into the shot.

My brothers and my dad. Sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted. Or if they are.

This was actually before dinner.

Tryptophan strikes again!

…and I only have 2 injuries so far. I scraped my knuckle on a broken glass and have a few small cuts (nothing an Incredibles bandaid couldn’t handle), and last night I bruised my thumb on a sweet potato. Yes that’s right, a sweet potato. Don’t ask.

Edited 30 minutes later to add the third injury: brushed another knuckle against the rack in the oven. Ouchy burny.

All in all, things are going well! Cornbread and sweet potato casserole are made, Jello’s in the fridge, turkey’s in the oven, pies are done, relish trays are out. All that’s left is the green bean casserole and the mashed potatoes.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year: Johnny’s parents and brother are here celebrating with us, everyone’s in good health, and I have the sweetest baby in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Old Man Woody gains another year today. Go visit his blog and leave a happy birthday comment to get a Sock Point! Yes that’s right, I’m giving out Sock Points today. Now enjoy some fun pictures of Woody from the past!

Oh yeah, check out the cheese in that grin. (That mark next to the cheesy grin must have been something on the photo - my fault)

Look, someone got this moment of celebration on video!

Cheers shirt, Marvin hat. That pretty much sums up HighSchool!Woody.

That sweater! And who’s the dork next to him?

It’s true, our Wood used to be quite the athelete. Too bad I didn’t have his swim team photo! All that hair couldn’t have been very aerodynamic though.

Edited to add: Whoops! I forgot the pics the first time. I get sidetracked very easily.

I don’t know when I lost my craft groove. I used to do little things all the time. I think when I started scrapping that just consumed me and I was blinded to everything else. Well, no more! Kerry turned me on to Craftster a while back, and that’s when I really started thinking about doing some projects again. Not that I did, but I thought about it. Then I found Threadbared, also thanks to Kerry, and through that hilarious site found LJC, Not Martha, LoobyLu and eventually Greeting Arts. These are all newly posted over in the left column here, under People To Read. What I love about all of these people is that, not only do they whip out a lot of cool crafty things, they usually pretty darn easy! I know I’ve mentioned before that I tend to make things much harder than they need to be. So when I decided to make a table runner last night, I kept it simple.

I had the Indian Corn (Native American Corn?) material in with my Thanksgiving decorations. At first, I just put the whole piece over the table, but it was really too big and hung over the edge so far that we couldn’t get to the little alcoves which are one of the reasons we bought that table. (By the way, that’s the newly-put-together coffee table that we bought before we moved in here. I’ve been very productive lately!) So I measured and cut the material, then plugged in the sewing machine and ran a seam on all four edges. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes, and I’m very happy with it. I’d like to say I embroidered the turkey thing, but that’s a dishtowel that I bought. I did make the coasters though, at one of those paint your own pottery places.

Now I’m all in a crafty spirit! I’m knitting Johnny a new Seahawks scarf (multicolored this time, rather than striped), I’m looking for something to do for some friends for Christmas, and I’m even in a scrapping mood lately. Maybe that’s because I’m NOT making Christmas cards this year, so I’m not dreading that.

Some of the coolest things I found in my recent craft blog binges are:

• a fabric “Memory” game

• trimming party tables with candy necklaces
• I Spy quilts. Here’s another one, and a cool rainbow one.
• Not really crafty, but these light-up ice cubes are awesome!

I forgot to tell you the story of when I went to the OSU-Michigan game.
Remember, if you will, the fall of 2000. Family Guy had been cancelled for the first time, How Jim Carrey, er, The Grinch Stole Christmas was tops at the box office, and a nation of democrats had just gotten their first taste of utter disenfranchisement. But I was going to see OSU smoke their bitter rivals.

Well, maybe not.

It was SO cold and windy, 30 degrees with 15mph winds and snow flurries. Johnny and I had a good time though, getting into the spirit of things even though OSU lost. And we didn’t even have to mess with parking - Johnny was still living on campus at that point, so I stayed over in his room the night before. And what fun THAT was, with the tiny rollaway cot in the tiny room. Anyway, after the game we went back to his room, decompressed, warmed up and took a nap. Around 10pm we finally ventured out to get some dinner, thinking that all the rioters would be back at their houses drinking and burning their couches by then. On the way to the car, I tripped in the parking lot. I landed on my outstretched hand, and fractured a bone in my elbow. Ouch! We immediately went to the closest ER, which happened to be at the OSU Medical Center.

Like I said, it was about 10pm. ONLY 10pm. And the ER was already full of people with game-related injuries. We were in the waiting room for about 2 hours before I even got to see a doctor. While there, we witnessed one poor guy in a cast from wrist to shoulder call no less than 3 friends trying to find one sober enough to pick him up. Once I went back for x-rays, we had to take a detour because someone had puked in the main hallway. And we went past one curtained area where a guy was sitting up, blood covering his face and shirt.

Fortunately I didn’t have to be in a cast, and since it was my right arm that was broken it didn’t affect my day-to-day activities that much. But everyone at work on Monday thought I was involved in some sort of riot and wouldn’t believe that I was just clumsy. :)

This year, as I said in the last post, we’re just staying home for the game. Anyone is welcome to join us - I’ll still be making gameday goodies! And Jack will be here too, rooting the Bucks to victory. Bo would have wanted it that way, right?

Here it is, the week before Thanksgiving. The time of year that means only one thing:

Since I grew up in Ohio, you might automatically assume that I’ve been groomed to be an OSU fan since birth. And in this case you’d be right.

Yep, that’s me and my dad in the fall of 1975.

But since I lived 20 minutes from the Michigan border, I was raised in a very split atmosphere. In Toledo there are actually Buckeye/Wolverine shops where merchandise for both teams is sold under the same roof! (There’s a pretty funny, albeit cheesy and locally produced, commercial for one of the stores where an OSU fan accidentally steps into the Michigan half of the store and an alarm sounds.) My family is pretty evenly split into OSU and UM fans. This is what happened when my parents let my Michigan-loving uncle babysit me.

At the annual family OSU-Michigan party there’s always a lot of trash talking along with a lot of food. My family doesn’t bother getting together unless there’s a lot of food. This year though. we’re skipping out on the festivities. We’ve been on the go so much lately that we just want to have a nice weekend at home where we’ll watch the game and have red and gray goodies. Not to mention we’re hosting Thanksgiving next week, and I need time to prepare.

Yes that’s right, Thanksgiving is at my house this year. I’m less nervous than I thought I would be. Really the biggest thing I’m worried about is the turkey fitting into the oven! It’s an old gas monstrosity from the 50’s and it cooks wonderfully but it’s rather small. For instance, the door won’t close if I put my cookie sheets in it. But before we even get to the cooking I need to do that which I loathe: clean. Dusting. Vacuuming. Cleaning the toilet. Bah. I’m sure I will put it off until Tuesday night, or maybe even Wednesday morning before everyone gets here. That’s ok though, I’ve got plenty to keep my busy until then. Like building the rest of the furniture we bought before we moved in. Yeah, I know it’s been 3 months.

Even though I refuse to acknowledge that Christmas is coming until after Thanksgiving, it’s been difficult this year. I will admit that we’ve already bought Jack some presents, and I’ve even started a wish list already. I found this really cool site, WhatToGive.com where you can keep a list online. You can link to items online, write your own descriptions, or even link to other wish lists. I have one for me and one for Jack, both of which can be accessed via my email which is amy AT peelio DOT com. I think I’m going to keep it updated year round, and as I think of things that I’d like I’ll add them. Then when any gift-giving holiday rolls around, people can take a look. I believe Johnny will be setting one of his own up soon too.

A full 2 weeks after Halloween is a great time to post pictures, right? Yeesh, you’d think we were living in the dark ages and had to wait for film to be sent off and processed the way I’m on top of things sometimes.

Here’s Jack in his costume. Johnny saw the chili pepper costume at Target and decided we HAD to get it for Jack. Don’t understand why? Read this post from when I was first pregnant. Anyway, he was smiling and laughing as I was dressing him in the costume, then as soon as I pulled out the camera he got all stone-faced.

Trick or treat night for our neighborhood was on Sunday the 29th. Which I think is really stupid - what’s the big deal about going trick or treating say, ON Halloween? The kids were only out from 5-7pm anyway, so it’s not like they were up way past bedtime. And Sunday is a school night anyway. And don’t give me that crap about less pranks because Johnny’s car still got egged on the 31st. But I digress, as usual. Here we are getting ready to pass out some candy.

Jack lasted about 45 minutes before going back inside with Daddy. That was pretty good, I thought, considering he couldn’t move his legs! We got quite a few trick or treaters in the first hour, then a few in the next half hour, then in the last half hour only 2. There were some cute costumes, but a lot of really half-assed costumes too.

So I guess one good thing about having trick or treat night early in Wooster was that Jack and I could go to my parents’ house on the 31st for a second candy-passing-out session. I even got to wear my mom’s Frankenstein head. (Mom loves Frankies, but only cute ones. She’s got a decent collection, and now I seem to be finding them for her too.)

Jack once again lasted about 45 minutes, then went inside with Grampa. My brother and I did most of the passing of candy, forcing everyone to actually say trick or treat, especially the teenagers. The costumes were way better this time around. Some of my favorites were Brutus Buckeye, a kid with a huge inflatable shark on his back getting ready to eat him, and a 4-year-old Mario!

After the allotted trick or treat time was over, we went inside and turned off the porch light. Now, everyone knows that if a house doesn’t have their porch light on, it means they’re not giving anything out. Not to mention that when it’s 8pm, you head home with your loot. Apparently the group of kids who rang the doorbell at 8:05 were not aware of the rules. We had to turn them away empty-handed because we actually gave out all our candy.

Everyone knows about the leaves changing colors, the temperature dropping, Halloween, wearing your warm and cozy sweaters again, and pumpkin-flavored foods. But one of my favoritest Autumn treats is at Starbucks.

Caramel. Apple. Cider.

I love it for a lot of reasons. It’s got cider, so there’s a big plus. There’s a shot of cinnamon syrup. And best of all, it’s got whipped cream and caramel on top! Plus, it’s served warm. That’s a big deal for me, because I do not drink coffee. Blech! And although I love iced tea, hot tea has never been my, er, cup of tea. Hot chocolate I’ll drink, but a lot of places like to add mocha to it (blech!) or use a really dark chocolate and I vastly prefer milk chocolate. There are some good mixes out there for home consumption, but I’m usually wary of on-the-go choices. Although I did just see that Starbucks has a White Hot Chocolate. Ooh, and what’s this Pumpkin Spice Creme? Damn you Starbucks! It’s a good thing there isn’t one of you in Wooster.