Fruit or Vegetable?

When we were eating avocados on Wednesday, Sandor and I started discussing whether it was a fruit or a vegetable. I knew that at some point I knew the difference, but I couldn't remember what it was, other than it had to do with seeds. Randomly, I remembered and searched it this evening. In case you are in the same boat, here is my summary of what I found...

First let's define it from the botanical side. A fruit is the sweet, ripened ovary of a seed-bearing plant. In short, the fruit of a plant contains the seeds of a plant and so if it has seeds it's a fruit. A vegetable, in contrast, is the actual plant (or edible part, thereof). It can be seeds (peas and beans), stems (asparagus), leaves (lettuce and, spinach), flowers (broccoli and cauliflower), and roots (carrots and potatoes). Peas are vegetables. Peas in the pod are fruit.

Next, let's look at it from the culinary side. The term vegetable is traditional, rather than scientific, so it is somewhat arbitrary and subjective depending on the cultural customs of food selection and preparation. Vegetables are used in savory or salted dishes, whereas fruits are usually used in sweet dishes. Most fruits are sweet because they contain the simple sugar, fructose. Vegetables, on the other hand, do not contain as much fructose. Biologically speaking, the sweetness of fruits encourage animals to eat them, which in turn spreads the seeds of the plant.

So, if you stick to the botanical definition tomato, cucumber, squash, zucchini, avocado, pepper, and pumpkin are all fruits because they have seeds. If however, you define them in culinary terms all those are considered vegetables.

Now, let's throw the law in there just for fun. In 1883 the United States Supreme Court decided that a tomato is a vegetable, even though it is a botanical fruit. So, a fruit can become a vegetable, but a vegetable cannot become a fruit. And a tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable, just depends if you ask a botanist, a chef, or a Supreme Court justice.

No wonder we are confused!

Resolution Status

You may remember my semi-resolution resolution of cutting down on the unpaid overtime. As I left today I decided to count up exactly how I did being that it is the last work day of the month. This is not as difficult as one may think becuase I've gotten into the habit of writing down my hours in my planner at the end fo the day. This dates back to my initial months with DNR when I was hired after thinking I wasn't going to have a job until the end of the summer and therefore planning 3 vacations in 3 months. This didn't bode well for someone who has zero annual leave hours, so Phil had me work some extra hours while I was in SC and keep track of my hours. Eventually I would catch up to the hours I should have worked by that point and I would be all set. It took me about 4 months to do that, so by the time I did I was used to writing down my hours at the end of the day and figured I would keep doing it for purposes of justifying leaving early on Fridays if I was going somewhere on the weekend.

As I mentioned in my earlier post that whole 'using extra time to justify taking time off' hasn't really worked out becuase there is no way on earth I can do my job to my satisfaction in the number of hours that I'm technically supposed to work that day. Shut up, I'm an over-achiever and I've made peace with it - just like I made peace with the double digit pants sizes and now I feel much better about myself. But I digress.

So I determined that I succeeded in keeping overtime down to 15 hours over the course of the month, which is quite commendable for an overtime junkie (reference my reasons for being such if you are confused why I don't just stop cold turkey). I have yet to determine whether this is actually cutting down on my stress level - so far I don't believe it is. It is improving my time to do other such things, which was the main reason for doing this. I've restarted the quilt, played ball with Kaylinn multiple times throughout the week, and gotten 5 spreads of my scrapbook done. Overall I think it's been a success. I am a wee-bit concerned about February, however. I have two events, plus I'm facilitating a meeting for fisheries and helping along the process to develop key messages for the section. I just keep reminding myself - baby steps...

the pupster playing ball - I tried for 5 minutes to capture how incredibly happy she is playing ball, and finally settled on this. it still doesn't fully capture it, but it's a start

the quilt restart - I forgot how much I liked the fabric on this

one of the pages - yes I realize it's Christmas pictures...and it's from 2007 - just proof that I need to make more time for doing things I enjoy!

Aguacate

I love avocados! I love them as guacamole, I love them on salads, I love them plain, I love them with green eggs and ham (Sam I am). I just finished eating one, this is what brought on the uber-love of avocados. I can't believe that I didn't even know I liked them until about 3 years ago - so many years I missed of the glorious avocado. Ok - well I need to go prep for LOST to start in 15 minutes. I also love LOST. What a great evening!

(Aguacate is avocado in Spanish by the way)

Convenience

Last year Maia gave me a few issues of the magazine Real Simple which she for some reason was getting but had determined was certainly not her thing. Well, I ended up getting rather hooked on their ideas, which while I will never end up doing all the ones I think are good, are actually rather slick when you remember them. They also have a lot of good recipes in them, which as you would suspect are simple to do. So, when I got a free magazine subscription of my choice this year I went ahead and ordered Real Simple. This week we have been cooking some recipes from the '18 easy upgrades for your favorite convenience foods' article. It has been quite a hit. The recipes take a standard cooking item, like marinara sauce or frozen pizza or chicken noodle soup, and they add a few things to it, cook it about 15-20 minutes and suddenly you have dinner in no time flat. Last night we had the spicy shrimp and pasta - mmm...delicious! There is little more wonderful than a meal that only took 30 minutes too cook, tastes good, and only has one pan and 2 plates to wash up afterwards!

The Headache Update

So, I am feeling much better today. When I woke up I had what I like to refer to as a 5% headache. It's not really there but if I move my head too fast I can feel it start to come back. So I'm still always a little careful about really saying that it's gone because it may in fact come back from the 5% full force. Today, thankfully, it did not.

I actually don't think it moved into migrane territory at all yesterday, which makes me quite impressed because I can't remember the last time that I had a headache on the left side of my head that it didn't end up becoming a migrane (in case you didn't know migranes are one-sided, you can get them on the right or the left, but usually a certain person only gets them on one side - for me it's the left). So, with all my sinus releiving actions last night I managed to pull off a coup on the migrane!

After reading of the neti pot Maia was rather intruiged and wanted me to tell everyone about it, so finally I just searched it on google since some people might recognize what it looks like even though the didn't know what it was called. There were so many ridiculous pictures of people using them! It was actually quite entertaining, though disqusting - it is why I chose NOT to take a picture of myself for the blog entry last night. So, for your viewing pleasure, here is our favorite...

Now if that doesn't make you want to use a neti pot, what does? :) haha!

We Have Had a Pencil Stabbing

I had a bit of a work accident today. While talking about a certain situation I was not happy about and holding a pencil I got a little worked up. When I went to toss the pencil on the table I hit the end and stabbed myself in the hand! Now you may laugh, but I'm a tad concerned that there is lead from the pencil still in there and we are going to need to do a little exacto surgery to get it out...hopefully bactine and neosporin will do the trick. To hold me over Maia did a little alcohol swabbing and bandaged me up. I'll keep you updated on the injury.

the offending pencil

Minor Miscalculation

I have a request of medication and other pain relief item manufactures: you know how you try out your product on people to see if it works and how much they should use and such? Try out your directions and packaging as well. And don't try out directions and packaging on people who are not in pain - that is not really testing it's effectiveness. Pain tends to dull the ability to read and analyze directions and get into annoying packaging.

Take for instance a few months ago when I needed to take some Nyquil. I do not take Nyquil all that often so I don't remember how much you should take. Thus in a semi-focused state I try to find the directions on the packaging. I would say it took me about 5 minutes and I ended up having to read nearly every word on there. Do you think they could maybe write the word Directions bigger or in bold or a different font or something so it would stand out? Might be nice.

Example number 2: Migrane meds. Anyone who has had a migrane knows that it is not an enjoyable experience. The least the pharmaceutical companies could do is throw me a bone and not make me take an IQ test to get to the pills. I'm not kidding either. I take Imitrex, which is a tiny little pill that is located in a cardboard package with 10 other tiny pills each wrapped individually. You have to tear off a little cardboard cover (kinda like opening a window in an advent calendar, but the little knotch that is supposed to make it easy to open isn't as big), usually one piece comes off and then you need to tear at it to get the rest of the piece, and then you have to pop it out of the metally plastic stuff afterwards. Oh, and of course half of the time when you pop it out it goes flying across the bathroom, so you get to search around the floor while trying to keep your dog from eating it. So imagine doing all that when your head is pounding, you are sick in your stomach, oh and just for fun it has to be done while not wanting to turn the light on because the lights hurt your head even more.

So, we come to today. I am trying to not take Imitrex as often because it works by spiking your serotonin, which I just figure is not something I want to mess with all that often (call me crazy). I've also started getting these combination headaches more often than not, so the Imitrex only helps one part of it, the other part doesn't necessarily go away and then the migrane comes back. So, I've had a slight migrane all day and have been holding it off with excedrin, sudafed and a heating pad on my neck at work (since I'm pretty sure it's a sinus/migrane/possibly tension combo) . When I got home I decided to do a few other pain relief methods to see if I could get it to go away with a less serotonin spiking method. I'm pretty certain that the whole thing was started with sinus pressure so I start with the Neti pot. In case you've not seen these they are wierd, but really do work. You put a saline solution in the pot, pour it in one nostril, it goes through your sinuses and comes out the other one. It's actually quite impressive at how quick it relieves sinus pressure. Directions say put 1/4 teaspoon of the salt they give you and add warm water. I'm in the bathroom so I guess at 1/4 teaspoon and add warm water. Let me give you a word of advise if you'd like to use the Neti pot. Measure the water. Now I don't know how much water you should add because it's not actually on the directions, but it should be more than I added. It felt like I had just put my head underwater in the ocean and inhaled - yeah, not a good feeling. I added some more water and did the other side, which was much better on the not burning the inside of my nostrils meter.

As can be told from the fact I'm blogging it did relieve the headache for a while so I wasn't as irritated as I may have been if I just had a burning sensation with no headache help. The bad thing is I can already feel it coming back. I believe I will go with a nice hot bath and perhaps another swig of saltwater through the sinuses before popping another Excedrin and heading to bed. Hopefully tomorrow it will be gone. If not we are going with the adjustment, headache traction and massage option during lunch, and if that doesn't work I need to go fill my Imitrex prescription and bring in the big guns. Day three of a headache calls for the ends justifying the means. Wish me migrane luck!

The Purpose of Confusion

You know how most everything is grouped with specific types of items in all grocery stores, so in general you can go into a store, find what you need, and leave. However, there are always so few random things in random places in the each store. I have determined their purpose - it is so that you can find almost everything you go there for and then you have to wander around the entire store looking for that one item you can't seem to find because it's location is just a little different than the grocery store down the street. In the process of wandering you inevitably find one or two other items that you didn't 'necessarily need, but would be useful' and then on certain occasions you find those items you really don't need at all but now that you've seen them simply HAVE to buy it.

Today, that was the yellow cake and chocolate icing. I needed 4 things. Soft cat food, lettuce, grated Parmesan cheese and a bottle of coke for Sandor. I had everything but the cheese and I couldn't remember if at the Pig they put it with the pasta or with the condiments, or ... and all of the sudden I remembered in that store it was in the back with the milk and yogurt. I finished walking the aisle I was wandering when what do I find but the cake mixes. I tried very very hard to ignore their enticing little 'please eat me' voice, and I almost succeeded, but in the end I determined that a Friday evening alone at the house with just me and the dog was a perfectly good reason to make myself a yellow cake with chocolate icing and eat one and perhaps two pieces...just because.

And a good decision it was. Way to go grocery store confusion :)

It's Almost Time!

Less than 7 hours until LOST starts!!! Ah, my life will again have meaning...ok, I am seriously kidding there but honestly, it's been painful waiting! I went to the website to get a picture to put on here and found a 'random quote' generator. The first quote that came up made me laugh hysterically...

"Pardon me for not knowing they had a sonic weapon fence." - Locke

See ya on the flip side!

Snow in the South

It snowed today! I know, it's crazy. It was barely enough to even count as a snow, just a few flurries, and very light at that, but in Charleston that counts since it never ever snows here! It's a blizzard here in the South!

Seriously?

So, DNR employees are apparently unable to watch the inauguration of their president unless they would like to take annual leave time to do it. All streaming video - including CNN - is blocked on our computers, and clearly we do not have off work. I guess I'll be heading home shortly and work late tonight. I'm glad that as a state agency we are in tune with the major events in our country!

Mocha Club

I have been trying to figure out what to do for my 31st birthday (I've made a rule for myself that I'm going to choose a 'service' to help with each year of my 30s). Last year I asked people to join me in helping Habitat for Humanity for a day. I don't think I can get my friends and family to do any more manual labor this year, so I've been attempting to find something that people can help me donate to. I have so many charities that I think are doing good work it's been hard to choose one. I did however feel like I needed to choose a charity specific to Africa and specific to children. I'm not sure why, but that's my heart this year. Some of it may be because my Aunt is adopting three children from Ethiopia (ALMOST there!), plus my friend is in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia.

So, if you want to join in my 31st birthday service this year I have two options for you. The first is the adoption agency that my aunt is adopting from - Adoption Advocates International. You can donate at their website whatever you might be interested in giving.

The second is this group called Mocha Club. I saw a video about them on my aunt's site (the video is below) and was touched by it because I often think of just what they talk about in the video. We consider the fact that Africa has so little as something they should be unhappy about, and yet they are probably happier than most Americans because they are not so focused on circumstances defining how they feel. Mocha Club is set up on the idea that you give $7 a month (or two mochas a month) to a project of your choice.


Join my Mocha Club team!



So, if you are feeling up to it donate to this or another charity for that matter - just give to something outside yourself, that is going to benefit someone beyond you. It's not much, but it's something, and a lot of people giving something adds up.

Feline Friends

The cats have been quite cordial to each other ever since being forced to hang out with each other over the Christmas holidays while the rest of the family was in Pennsylvania. It makes me wonder what kind of mischief they are up to...

A Dinner Date

Maia and I embarked yesterday morning on making Julia's transition back to life in Charleston a little bit easier. She has been in Winston for the past week helping her brother and sister-in-law through a very horrible dose of cancer. Her sister-in-law was diagnosed just before Christmas and they are already on their last treatment option - in short it's awful. Julia has been there helping with the hospital room duties, watching of the dogs, emotional/mental support and attempting to get some work done all through it all. There is not much you can do to help in a situation such as that except be there for the person, so when we found out she was definitely coming home today we brainstormed a few ways to make her homecoming a bit more welcome. We were going to clean the house for her, because how wonderful is it to walk into a clean house! But Joe said he had that under control, so we decided instead to prep a meal for them to simplify the first meal or so back.

So, Saturday morning we met at Harris Teeter and gathered our grocery list of items before beginning the process at my house. It was a tad bit chilly in Charleston (and the rest of the east coast apparently), and my house offered a fireplace, which I have to say significantly improves the chill factor in the air. We had decided on vegetable lasagna, some homemade bread and a salad - it had a good mix of comfort food and healthiness, plus Maia and I had good recipes for the lasagna and bread respectively. We began with the bread...which, however, turned out to be the wrong way to begin (I'll get to that later). This dough was a bit stickier than the whole wheat dough I made last week and I had a bit of a 'sucking up in the mixer' issue, but it was resolved with the help of the spatula and some q-tips. The bread being mixed just needed to sit in it's bowl and rise so we moved on to lasagna making.

This involved a LOT of vegetable cutting, which Maia was actually enjoying compliments of our new Christmas knives that were extraordinarily sharp (if you've never cut with extremely sharp knives before, you should, it makes you understand why real chefs with 'real' utensils love to cook).

While Maia was cooking the lasagna vegetables, I took over cutting and made up a salad.

Kaylinn sat sulkily on the floor, unhappy that no food was coming her way.

Lasagna assembly was next.

Resulting in a B-E-A-utiful lasagna. After consideration of both options we decided to hold off on baking it since many times Julia comes home with food, we thought it would be better to provide the option of freezing the lasagna if needed.

After some dishes and wiping down the counter we were finished with this installment of the meal making process and Maia headed home, just in time to keep from having a major allergy attack thanks to the feline members of the family. All that was left was for me to finish up the bread. Unfortunatley herein lied the problem.

The bread recipes I've been using are a no-knead variety, which use 12-18 hours of rising time rather than the physical act of kneading to get the yeast doing its thing. Not paying attention to this we started the bread a 10:00, having it mixed and in the bowl for the first rise at 10:30am. If you count out 12-18 hours from this you land yourself between the hours of 10:30pm and 4:30am... Yep, not the best bread baking time to choose. Once you mix it at the 12-18 hour mark you then let it rise for 2 hours again before baking it, which this one took 30 minutes. So if I did the 10:30 option that would be putting me to bed at a sweet 1:30-2:00am. I had been at church Friday night for an all night prayer vigil, which meant I was not feeling another late night. Since I didn't know if it would impact the bread to let it rise longer, I set my alarm for a sweet 4:30 am and headed to bed. At 4:30 I stumbled into the kitchen, stirred the dough, put some herbs in the pan, spread the dough out in it, washed my hands, and stumbled back into the bedroom to sleep for 2 hours while it did it's second rise. Then at 6:45 I stumbled back out to the kitchen, did some more herb adding, put the oven on to preheat, and laid on the couch until I heard the beep. Once the oven was hot, I got up and put the bread in and laid back down on the couch to sleep for the 30 minutes while it cooked. By 7:30 the bread was finished, and after wake-up number 4 I was still a little tired, but not really feeling like going to sleep just to wake up in another 30-40 minutes to prep before teaching Sunday school this morning. So, lesson #1 - do not start no-knead bread at 10:30 in the morning. But, lesson #2 - if you don't have problems falling back asleep after waking up and doing stuff for 10 minutes it does get you moving nice and early. AND - here is my first foccasia bread...


I dropped our dinner present off with Joe after church today, and we'll find out on Tuesday how it was. Joe was going to try really hard not to eat the bread before Julia got home :)

The Aftermath

So, the reason I work so much unpaid overtime is because it pays off. Take for instance my meetings today. I stayed up working until 10 last night and then got back up to be in at work at 7:30 this morning. I got everything organized and prepped for the meeting, and as I was finishing up the last of my data checking, I asked Anna to make some copies for me. She came back with my copies and a folder, so we had all my stuff organized in a folder, where I could say 'so the first page on the left hand side is such and such, and that relates to the third page on the right side... I won't bore you with the details because there are few freaks in life that actually enjoy goals and objectives and outcomes and performance measures (I sadly being one of them...well let me qualify that, I enjoy them to a point). But suffice to say I had all my ducks in a row and the evaluation contractor was impressed. I was so excited about how it went that instead of going to my other meeting, which I had missed the portion that I really wanted to go to anyway, I took a nice long lunch trip with Maia, shared a leisurely lunch in the conference room and then headed back in to my office to answer e-mails, eat chocolate with Anna and Phil, and attempt to continue dealing with this week. All in all it was actually a very productive and successful day.

And, I left at 5:00, came home, got dinner started to simmer, played some fetch with the dog, and am now sitting down to work on my quilt until the soup is ready. Superb day indeed!

Overtime

One of my goals for 2009 was to spend less of my time working unpaid overtime. There is this lovely little aspect of my employer where we are not actually allowed to be paid for overtime. I mean in the official/legal sense we are, but in the reality sense we are not. Thus, while overtime is kinda general status at the DNR you can't actually get paid for it, or even take comp time unless you are law enforcement (who do far more comp time than me, so don't take this as complaining against them).

Point being that as I was looking at what I wanted to do with my year I determined that I have plenty of things that I could use my evenings and weekends for that does not involve work. I've got scrapbooking to do, a quilt I've been working on for 3 years that really should be finished at some point, books to read, cooking to do (and actually enjoy if I have the time to devote to it), a family I'd like to spend time with... you get my point.

Last year on average I'd say I did a good 5-10 hours overtime. That is a lot of time each week that I could devote to something non-work related. So, I decided the only way to deal with that was to limit the amount of unpaid overtime I worked each week. I realized this would cause a bit of stress in the beginning, but in the end would be a good thing. I decided that I would start by making myself leave on time (by the way, biking to work when it gets dark at 5:30 is a good way to accomplish this) and not bring work home on weekend.

I did very well last week. Came right in at 39 hours (37.5 is what is required of a state employee). Although I didn't really take lunch at any point during the week, I did leave on time and did not do work on the weekend (instead I had an allergy attack due to cleaning..whether I fared better or worse is up for debate).

This week...not starting off well. I just finished up working and counted up my hours. As of Tuesday night I am at 20.5...yeah, pretty likely that I'm going WAY over this week. Based on the fact that tomorrow I have two all day meetings (how, you may ask does one go to two all day meetings? good question, I'll let you know), Thursday I have a major conference call, and Friday I have three separate meetings. That does not bode well for me only putting in another 17 hours, thus I think I'm just calling this week a wash and trying again next week.

I've determined the problem is between actually doing my job and justifying my job you really have two more than part time jobs. Take tomorrow for instance. One of the all day meetings is about a topic which I should learn more about to do my job better. The other is a meeting I need to attend in which I have to justify the goals and objectives of my program to someone so that I don't get put on the 'maybe consider cutting' section of the state budget. Which is more important - doing my job, or making sure I have a job to do next year? Right. So, instead what I did was stay up late tonight to write up all the papers for the justifying meeting tomorrow so that hopefully my portion of it would be nice and quick and then I can get over to the learning about things I need to know for my job meeting and hopefully learn some things before I need to go back to the office and respond to the likely 60 e-mails and 5 voicemails (not to mention the 40 e-mails and 5 voicemails I have from today that I missed during an all day meeting...which followed up yesterday's 2 meetings and a conference call).

I think I will close by saying. I vote for less meetings. And stop making my justify my program to 18 different people in different ways with different forms when you are all asking the same question - do I do my job. If you weren't having me justify it, perhaps I could.

Thank you, and good night :)

Checking In

It's been a busy week already, but I figured I would check in with a quick synopsis of the weekend:

Things I hate:
- cleaning the house (specifically when dust is involved, which leads to mass allergy attacks)
- doing dishes

Thing I love:
- fresh made bread! (I made my first loaf this weekend)
- venison chili
Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Calling All Danskos

Will all Danskos please report to Becky's office...

Yeah, how crazy is that - 7 pairs worn on the same day unplanned. Such is life when they are so comfortable!

Wow

Thgp the sky as I am leaving work. Suddenly I'm glad I stayed a little late.

Mobile post sent by walkerszivak using Utterli.  Replies.

Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Kaylinn's 2nd birthday. In the world of no children, a dog's birthday is quite the event, so I don't want to hear your condescending remarks - just deal with my sheltered life. So, as I was saying, in celebration I went to the fancy dog store and bought her some new treats and a can of high end soft dog food. Specifically Buffalo dog food. Yes a) they sell dog food made out of buffalo, and b) I purchased it. The ingredients read: Buffalo, water enough for processing. Pretty sweet. This is a major treat for the Kaylinn pup because the cats have been getting soft food in the mornings ever since Mishu had to have her antibiotics, and Kaylinn sits just outside thier room looking longingly at the plate of deliciousness that she is unable to enjoy.

Thus, after dinner I opened up the can an she was instantly interested. When she realized that I was going to be giving this to her and not the cats she could barely handle the excitement. Which resulted in her eating the food in approximately 3.2 seconds...well maybe more like 30 seconds, but it was mighty fast.

preparations being watched intently

Kaylinn doing her best circus dog act

30 seconds later...

After she ate the food we gave her the can because she likes licking out all the remnants of can. Apparently the buffalo is mighty tasty becuase she carried the can around like it was a special toy and cuddled with it on the floor. It was actually kind of sad when I took it from her, but she seemed to be trying to chew on it because there was no buffalo left to lick out.


All in all, it seemed like a successful pup birthday. That morning she got to eat one of her Christmas presents from Dudley (via Brandy). They were these iced dog treats that were cut and iced like snowflakes and snowmen. In contrast to her buffalo experience, she took them daintily from me and licked at the icing and then bit by bit ate the cookie. It was actually quite entertaining to watch. So between buffalo and iced treats, Kaylinn had all she needed to be happy with life. Well that and a little playing with the ball.

Notice Kaylinn is not taking her eyes off the ball on the dresser

still not taking eyes off the prize!

Pause for a Moment

Can we please pause for a moment and discuss how adorable my god-child is? Seriously, I realize that I'm probably a bit biased, but Emily is hilarious. Andrea and I meet for coffee every week to chat while Emily plays and it's been fun seeing the weekly 'what she's learned now' in person. Recently 'what she's learned' has been a plethora of words!

This week Andrea said she was say 'Becky, Becky, Becky' all the way to Barnes and Noble. Of course once she saw me she was acting embarrassed, but soon she warmed right up and started saying my name again. Then as we were waiting for our coffees to be made she kept saying 'go', apparently we were not making out way to the children's area quickly enough. Once we go the coffee and said we were going she yelled 'OK!' very excitedly. Then once we got back to the children's section she said 'up' to indicate she would like the tray in front of her moved so she could get down, and then while Andrea was pulling her hair back she kept saying 'pretty' - apparently Andrea tells her that if she hold still while she puts her hairtie in she will be pretty and so this is Emily's way of reminding herself :) She also is quite good at 'snack' 'please' and 'thank-you' which were all required for her cherrio eating, and when she opened one of the books (which of course she brought over for us to see) she exclaimed 'ohhhh'. It was great.

So, now that you have humored me I will show you some of the cute pictures Andrea sent out this morning and you can go on with your day :)

not sure what she and Jack are doing here, but whatever it is I love it!

I can only assume she is saying 'ohhhh'

apparently she wants more of something becuase she is doing the sign - more pictures of her in front of the Christmas tree is probably not what she is feeling

the one day we had tea at 'Starbucks de Daniels' becuase she was going down for a late nap and I got to see the daddy gets home routine (which was superb by the way - you can't possibly be sad about coming home when there is a little Emily standing at the door yelling daddy, daddy, daddy) - I can only assume that she said 'up' to get herself into this position, as she did so she could watch Jack making their post work cheese and cracker snack

Thanks for that. You may now go on with swooning over the cute children in your life - I will continue swooning over this one :)

Nap Time

I have become very fond of weekend naps. The problem is my weekend list of things to do never seems to be reasonable enough to add in a nap. Apparently my body knew this and took things into it's own hands on Saturday morning. I slept until 10am! I don't think I've slept that late for years.

Today after church it was officially time to retire the Christmas decorations. Kaylinn just couldn't help herself when it came to eating ornaments, so she has been crated every day since the week after the tree went up (and shortly after ornament number 5 bit the dust). I'm sure she will be very excited to get free range of the house again...and ample time to torture the kittens without pesky humans interrupting.

Speaking of which, the kittens got a new toy, compliments of my mom. They are rather obsessed with it. Both Mishu and Leia love scratching it (which is it's purpose), but they also completely enjoy just sitting on top of it. Apparently it's much more fun than sitting on the boring floor. Leia thinks that she is Ms. Sneaky hiding underneath - it's quite entertaining.

All in all it was a nice weekend - lack of naptime included.

Happy 2009!

Another year has gone by. It's amazing how fast years go! I got back in town last night shortly before 10:00pm. I had just enough time to partially unpack the car, eat some pizza that my husband lovingly waited to eat with me, and then head over to Kim's house for the last few minutes of 2008. Shortly afterwards we headed back and to bed - yep, we are party animals! :) Such is life when an 11 hour drive consumed your day!

The trip up north was fun - cold, but fun. The day I arrived they got some kind of crazy cold front so I went from about 65 degrees in Charleston to 13 degrees in DC - it was rather intense! Thankfully my parents put in a wood pellet stove and I pretty much lived in front of that for the first 24 hours. My dad brought my jacket from Rainier down for me to wear, which allowed me to venture out a bit farther from the safety and warmth of the bedroom :) Actually, after the first two days the cold front moved on and it got to be a normal temperature that humans are supposed to exist in, so it wasn't that bad. We had a great time, ate lots of cookies, told lots of stories, and generally just hung out for a week.

So, some pictures...

Sandor and I the night before I left to drive to PA - notice I'm wearing short sleeves...

Nikole and I wrapping presents...notice the proximity of the wood pellet stove - very important!

Brandy wrapped in an electric blanket in the kitchen - I'm not kidding you when I say it was freezing!

our favorite house while out looking at Christmas lights

imagination cookies! mom let us go wild with the chocolate roll cookies this year

the pup dogs on Christmas Eve - they helped Santa for a little while :)

I love the tree all lit up on Christmas Eve

Christmas morning - Brandy and I bought each other the same necklace...while purchasing it in different states at different times, yeah how crazy is that!

mom and I making cookies

my dad and Sandor helping Nikole with her puzzle - they had the Christmas morning puzzle done before lunch!

the Walker family getting ready for presents

While looking through the pictures I took I realized that most of them were of the dogs, which may be due in part to we had a small dog pack in the house. Between Belle, Kaylinn, Dudley and Dina, there were bones and beds and dogs everywhere!

they were all very interested in what their stocking had in store for them

they were also interested in eating each other's food - my dog decided to be very picky about what food she ate, who could eat with her and where she would eat...yeah, absurd

we has the obligatory animal outfits

and they loved their new beds compliments of grandma and grandpa

however, going out in the yard may have topped it all

and then coming back in

and then going back out

and then coming back in...I swear it was like a revolving door with 4 dogs running past you every time you headed in or out

Christmas morning was very exciting!

moozles for everyone (pig snouts in human terms..sounds disgusting, they loved it)

Kaylinn and Dudley had fun with their stuffed animals (purchased from the dollar store because we knew this is what they do with them)

we referred to it as the penguin drive by shooting because there were penguin parts and stuffing laying all over the floor

and even Dina knew where the best spot in the house was!

Well, I guess that at some point this year I'm going to need to get out of my pajamas...that however, may be held off just a little longer. :) Happy New Year!