And a very merry Christmas to all...

...and to all an incredibly short Christmas summary in the form of very few phone pictures. We're pretty tired around here. But for all of the best reasons. Except for a lingering cough for our poor sick baby; that is not one of the best reasons. Sigh. Almost there. I'm extremely grateful for all of my helpers over the last week and really miss them. Love you, family.

Presents are pretty cool, Dad

We bought chocolate chips with the intent to bake goodies...but so far they've only served as a toy for the baby.

Story time with Auntie Manda!! Please also observe the proximity of the cat to this situation and chalk it up to a Christmas miracle.

Christmas is exhausting, y'all. Also, I'm totally about to outgrow my space egg swing. Yeeps.

Stranger danger has not yet set in

At least not when Holden has a full tummy and is kinda sleepy. Or possibly as long as he has some hair to tug on. Because our first meeting with Santa went extremely well!

We went to the Santa at Shops of Legacy out of pure convenience since we had a birthday brunch for Craig at Jasper's on Sunday morning with his mom, and this particular Santa was about a three minute walk away. And yes, we're those people who shelled out $50 for a sheet of photos and a digital copy of the image, but it was SO EASY. Minimal wait, happy helpers, and a generally pleasant experience. Yay!!

Holden was just so cute with him - he sat there and gazed at his face, then nuzzled in like he wanted to take a nap in all that fluff. You'll notice Santa kinda has Holden's right arm tucked down - yup, there was some serious thumb sucking going on (sleepy baby!), and we needed to try and get a smile. So out of frame is mom playing peekaboo (currently the hottest game in town) to encourage grins, and it actually worked.

Oh, and rest assured that beard is legit - Holden gave it a mighty tug for us.

Happy holidays, little bug - can wait to create all of these memories and start new traditions with you. This whole holiday season business has me feeling pretty mushy this year.

Auditioning for his nativity role

I give you...the next great shepherd in a local production of the nativity. Also, that lasted WAY longer on his head than I thought it would.

So the "every day" thing didn't work out...

...you know, posting every day? optimism and all?...but we're back on track! I got thrown for a bit of a loop on Monday when I officially became a person not obligated to go to work at around 4:30 PM. Whaaaaaaaaat, you say? Well, after going back from maternity leave right into busy season and getting a true reality check in "nope, this is not for me anymore EVER," I worked on finding a new job where I might actually have a life and DID and put in my notice and then found out that notice = leave pretty much right now, so that's that!  And my new gig doesn't kick off until January 5th, soooo...I'm currently not working but still getting paid and it's basically amazeballs.

Totally productive things I've accomplished in the last five days:
 - Finishing up Christmas shopping...mostly
 - Wrapping a chunk of that Christmas shopping into pretty packages
 - Going to the grocery store and buying things that enabled me to cook a real dinner in the form of chicken pot pie
 - Baking banana muffins
 - Baking milk chocolate-dipped hazelnut sandies for the 2014 Cover-to-Cover Project: Holiday Cookies
 - Excessive loads of laundry
 - Successfully shoved approximately 25 pills down Cleo the kitty cat's throat and kept her alive while Momma Dale was out of town

Totally self-indulgent things I've blissfully enjoyed in the last five days:

 - Took myself to the movies at 10:15 in the morning - Mockingjay and a giant bag of popcorn for the win
 - The aforementioned baking is also because I just like to do it
 - Starbucks grande latte pretty much every day
 - Friday lunch with Carolyn with no care about how long we sat and chatted because there was no job to hustle back to

And the ultimate combination of productive/indulgent = EXTRA HOLDEN TIME.  He's still kicking it at daycare for a chunk of the day so he can maintain some kind of routine while I run around, but I've been picking him up early and enjoying every extra minute I can steal with this sweet baby. They allllll say it, but of course he's growing up too fast.

And the ULTIMATE indulgence that hasn't happened and just won't...sleeping in. I have a baby now, so that's just not in the cards, and for those of you who really know me, you know how I am about sleep.

Ummmm...I could get used to this. Which is dangerous. But I'm also excited about my new work path, and so I'm going to soak up every minute of the next three weeks and then jump into a fresh start. Happy holidays, y'all.

Do you know how excited I am about this?!?

Baby's first Christmas!! It's going to be the utmost of adorableness, even though Holden will probably just be really confused. And while I'm late to the game on getting personalized Etsy awesomeness I was planning on for Christmas gifts ("no longer accepting holiday orders"...oops, I should have started these projects before Thanksgiving), I was totally on the ball with ordering Holden a really cute first Christmas ornament. Now it just needs the perfect spot on the tree.

Thankful

Come Thanksgiving you used to find me taking pictures of pies. Now I pretty much just take pictures of my baby (it can't be helped, his adorableness attracts the camera!), so I really don't have any Thanksgiving shots to share with you that don't feature Holden in some form or fashion. Oh, but rest assured there were pies. This time only three for the six (and a half) of us, an extremely reasonable ratio.

As we scarfed down turkey and cornbread dressing and allll the other good stuff last Thursday, I paused for a moment and felt especially thankful for my amazing parents this year. I'm also really thankful for pie, but having a baby is kinda a big deal...and while coconut cream pie would have helped, I don't really know if I would have survived those first couple of weeks without my mom and dad by my side. Maybe more details on the survival of the early days will be provided a little later, and maybe not - I got a little teary just thinking about it now, so apparently six months later the waves of exhaustion and newborn terror are still palpable. So for now I'll continue to pause briefly and say thank to my parents. For everything. Absolutely everything.

Holden enjoying some naptime with Grandpa over Thanksgiving weekend...

...and doing the same thing six months ago when he was almost a week old.

Can you believe how much he's grown and changed?!? Me either.

Wrap it up

I genuinely LOVE wrapping presents.  Using excessive amounts of tape (although I think I've really toned it down in recent years - people were actually able to open their gifts this year without using pocketknives or excessive amounts of force) and folding corners and making all the shiny things go together just gives me great joy.  Most of this wrapping has been destroyed by now, but fortunately I have just a little more wrapping to do tonight for friend festivities tomorrow night - yay!  Shiny shiny shiny...

Yes, I'm insane and ridiculous and who actually enjoys spending hours wrapping presents?  This girl!!

Merry Christmas from the fur-babies

Harrison has historically wished you all a Merry Christmas by playing grumpy Santa...

...but this year his dad decided he needed a new form of torture and brought this into his life, which in Harry's eyes was made infinitely worse by the dog's interest in the stuffed blinking thing attached to his head:

Oh, Harry, I'm sorry, but it is just so adorable.

Now, Zach doesn't really have any holiday attire - there used to be reindeer ears at some point, but I think he destroyed them.  However, he does have a slightly too small garden gnome Halloween costume (we're good parents, I promise), and the pointy gnome hat kinda resembles a Santa hat...so let's go for it.

Close enough, right?  Merry Christmas from the fur kids!

Counting down to Christmas

Before we left for Thanksgiving, a little elf by the name of Trinity stopped by with a very special gift for Craig...a custom-made beer Advent calendar.  How awesome is that?!?  Check out the impressive wrapping for his own version last year, and here's the customized beer crate with a bottle for each day:

Craig didn't want the pregnant lady to feel left out, so he got me this adorableness at Target so I could have an Advent calendar, too.  Which prompted me to actually go learn about Advent, and...we really are just counting down to Christmas, y'all.  Unless there's more to it and I'm just not a very good scholar.  My attention span is a little short these days.  At any rate, let's count down the days, Craig with beer and me with chocolate.  That's not a bad way to do it.

Here's beer #1, which Craig enjoyed last night while we watched death and destruction (well, that's not really keeping with the holiday spirit, is it?  We'll try to get some Christmas movies in the rotation...).  We're already big fans of Shiner Cheer around here, so you know this one was well received.

Trinity, you should go into business and sell these crates on Etsy.  It's brilliant.

Culinary misadventures and batting 0.633

Not quite as successful with NaBloPoMo this year as in years past, but I'm going to call my 0.633 batting average for last month a relative success.  Can I just blame the baby?  That probably won't work until the kiddo is actually here...at any rate, got some catching up in there and will try to knock out more than one post a month going forward.  Maybe...

Turkey Day roundup!  The Bryans were all scattered this year, and Craig and I journeyed out to Virginia Beach to spend a few days with Momma Dale and Wes.  We had chilly days full of a cozy fire, lots o' food, football games galore (watching, not playing - who do you think we are?), movie and shopping outings, and general family good times.  But that "culinary misadventures" leading note?  Yeah...

Let's just say that last year's Thanksgiving, hosted at our house, had a couple of...mishaps along the way.  The things I was really worried about, like Craig deep-frying a turkey, went off without a hitch.  Things I hadn't thought about, like slicing off the end of my thumb with a mandoline and visiting the emergency room and leaving the rest of the Thanksgiving work to the crew at home...yeah, those were the things that happened.  So my mishap led to another mishap, which involved a certain Pendarvii placing the turkey thermometer in the oven...when it's made of plastic and has batteries and really isn't intended to go in the oven...resulting in a bit of a molten electronic mess.  Oopsie.

You would think everyone had learned their lesson, but I give you...

...molten thermometer, round two, from THIS year's Thanksgiving.  We really have to get the Pendarvii to stop doing these things.  Here's hoping next year is free of both emergency room visits AND molten thermometers...we're getting better!

Jumping the gun

It feels eighteen kinds of wrong to do anything acknowledging Christmas before the sacred day o' turkey passes...but we did it this year.  In the form of going ahead and busting out decorations, addressing a few Christmas cards, and engaging in one of my favorite kinds of shopping along with actual real, in-store shopping for things like extra garland and ornaments.

Pure logistics, people.  Thanksgiving is just late this year, and we'll be out of town, and then next weekend disappears, and then before you know it the tree's not up until December 8 and we only enjoy it for two weeks before it all falls down.  So we went for it.  I think it helped that it was cold and disgusting this weekend and actually felt like we were on the verge of real winter activity - roaring fire (well, as roaring as it gets when the fire starts by flicking a switch on the wall) all weekend long!

Ginormous tree, also an excellent tree fort for Harrison - thank goodness he leaves ornaments alone.  We just have to hang the breakables out of the reach of Zach's tail...

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...oh, wait, do we have a real chimney?  Hmmm...

He of the wonky stocking (it turns!  I think I need to throw a few strategic stitches in there to keep it facing forward) and keeper of the fire

There's also garland and ribbon twirling down the staircase with giant ornaments dangling, a wreath on the front door, and cinnamon pine cones scattered here and there to make the house all Christmasy.  Yay for holiday cheer!  Just not excessive amounts of holiday cheer - please don't ever let me put inflatable things on my lawn.  I just don't think I can go there.

We also gave in to an impulse scentsicles purchase at Home Depot; they were a little overwhelming at first and a touch on the air-freshener-from-a-can scent side, but now they've pleasantly faded into a "oh, is that a real Christmas tree??" kind of scent coming from the corner of the living room.  It's hard to beat the pre-lit tree that's relatively easy to assemble, especially when you can kinda fake it on the real tree scent front.

Happy holidays, y'all!

Pie season is upon us

It's pie season!!  Or what normal people might just call "fall" or "November" or "the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving" - but no, to me it's definitely pie season.  Last year I made four pies for six people at Thanksgiving.  Excessive?  No, not at all!

Apple, pumpkin, coconut cream, and pecan. Dig it. And dig in.

I. love. pie.  Happy pie season, y'all.

Minor victories

Last year I baked a pie at the end of a long day.  This year I waited until the morning after a string of long days so that coffee could factor into the equation and kick-start my brain while I put together some blueberry crumb bars to take to Easter lunch at the Vaughns.  So even with a change in the jobs that's been *mostly* for the better, I still do this crazy tax thing and I'm still incredibly busy in light of this 4/15 situation.  Hmmm.  Guess I'd better look for minor victories where I can find them.

So for this minor victory I baked and didn't work on Easter.  I'll take it.  Especially when Gracie greets me with hugs and smiles and giggles and unabashed joy for all the Easter festivities.  Love this kiddo to bits.  Thanks for having us over, Vaughns!  Now, everyone enjoy the cuteness.

Omg, I am sooooooo excited about finding these eggs!!!  Except the ones I can't see or reach - geez, Dad.

Excuse me, this basket is getting loaded down with eggs - a little help?

Chocolate...chocolate...chocolate...

It's definitely a new year

Oh hi, remember me? Yeah, I barely remember me, too. It's ok, we'll get to know each other again. Maybe. I'll try.

I'm probably not the only one who's happy to have a new year come around.  Fresh-ish start to things.  Not totally fresh, because everything that's ever happened has definitely still happened, but sometimes it's nice to get a new perspective, regain focus...oh, let's not get too philosophical here, New Year's Eve is a great reason to drink champagne!  Pink bubbles AND normal bubbles! Let's party!!

Bubbles in your own home are especially nice, too - no driving, phew. Although Cards Against Humanity - not so nice. At all. But HILARIOUS in a disturbing kind of way. We had a fantastic time with the Vaughns, Keffers, and Nicholseseses* - plenty of food (waaaaay too much food, pretty much the way we always do it), maybe a little too much to drink, excessive gaming, and general merriment all the way around. Bring it, 2013!

Happy new year, ladies!! I wore some sparkles - I just had to. It's also really awesome how the nutcracker appears to be balancing on my head - talented fellow.

New year, new start - I'm not even going to pretend that I'll play catch-up with my life on here - we're just going to move forward with new adventures and maybe throw in some older adventures here and there for fun. For instance...did you know that Craig & I went to Philadelphia for a really awesome wedding? In October? Of 2011? That's right. I might tell you about it sometime.

* Last names that end in "s" really threw me for a loop as a kid. I never knew if it was supposed to be an apostrophe situation for plural or possessive or when to add the -es or if there should maybe just be a way to work around it entirely, which is why I use "s" last names as a descriptor when possible rather than dealing with it (i.e., the Christmas card was totally addressed to "The Nichols Family" rather than "The Nicholses" - help me...). And NOW I am one of those "s" people!! Why do you think I jokingly (but maybe kinda half-seriously...) use Pendarvii instead of Pendarvises? Yup.

At the end of a long day...

...I baked a pie.

Lemon meringue, to be specific.  And while a normal person might come home from a a full day at the office on a Saturday and fall into bed (wait...do normal people work full days at an office on Saturday?  Oh, busy season, you are about to be the end of me...and I haven't even finished doing our taxes yet...hmmmm), I baked a pie.  And it was awesome.  I took a deep breath and relaxed and did something I love to do.


I did have a reason for baking the pie - it's a little dangerous to just BAKE A PIE and leave it in this house.  Because I would eat the whole thing.  But this thing is going to Easter lunch.  Vaughn home.  I hope the filling sets up - I experimented with a new recipe.  And if it doesn't, then we suddenly have lemon pudding with a meringue topping and bits o' crust sprinkled about.  Which works just fine for me.

Chocolate + beer = awesome

Not the most timely blog post ever (you might even call it un-timely or completely irrelevant given that some of my upcoming exclamations are seasonally inappropriate), but how do I, of all people, get away WITHOUT telling you about something that intentionally pairs one of my most favorite things ever (chocolate!!) with one of Craig's most favorite things ever (beer!!).  Yes.  You just had to know.  Beer and Chocolate Tasting at the Ginger Man.  YES.  Good times with Carolyn and Justin and assorted other friendly faces.

Untimely item #1 - this relates to Valentine's Day.  Today is April 10th.  You do the math.  But really, is there any other day of the year that lends itself to pairing chocolate and beer?  I'm sure we could come up with one, but Valentine's Day just screams YES to this.


We won glassware!!  Temporarily filled with chocolates wrapped in cheery Valentine's Day wrapping, now residing in our freezer awaiting a frosty brew.

Untimely item #2 - I'm going to refer to Craig "being in town" when Craig now...lives here.  But it was really nice that he was here so we could have a low-key Valentine's Day together and actually see each other during that whole living-in-different-parts-of-the-country bit.  Besides, could anyone else have modeled the paper accompaniment to our event with such pizazz?  Oh, wait...this is how he usually operates when I ask for a picture.  Covers his face.  I'll put together a collage of those shots one day.

We worked our way through seven-ish beers of varying strengths and chocolatey-ness, paired with the likes of chocolate-covered strawberries and straight-up milk and dark chocolate.  And while I didn't necessarily think that beer and chocolate would really go together at the start of the thing...some of them surprised me.  In a good, tasty way.  Fun!  Please see the aftermath below.

Go to the Ginger Man and  some love - a lot of people find it awesome.  Especially when you can enjoy an amazing patio in the middle of February.  And maybe even the middle of April.

Holidayapalooza 2010, A-town style

...and now, landing in DFW the night of the 23rd.  And not going to A-town until the next morning.  Why is this, you ask?  Well, you try booking a flight from Norfolk to Amarillo within a day or two of Christmas and see what all you come up with.  That doesn't cost a bajillion dollars.  Hence a late arrival in the state of Texas, one night at the Hyatt Regency DFW (which was actually rather lovely and quite reasonably priced), and an early Christmas Eve flight into Amarillo...where I learned, in addition to the fact that baking adventures are generally always awesome, the following things...

Mexican food is, without a doubt, always delicious and guaranteed to produce a smile.  Love you, Abuelo's.

I love homemade Christmas ornaments, especially the bug-eyed gingerbread man.  He holds a special place in my heart.

I'm in need of some "keep calm" advice these days, for sure, as evidenced by the presence of this cute baby book in my stocking AND a "keep calm and carry on" coffee mug gift from my sister.  Deep, calming breaths...

Festive holiday socks are the BEST.  Thanks, Mom!

Nothing makes a man happier than beer, really.  Especially Shiner Holiday Cheer.  Doubly especially when it's cradled by a Seahawks koozie as gifted to my parents by Craig as semi-retaliation for their efforts encouraging him to become a Cowboys fan.  Oh dear.

A-town pictures here.  Enjoy.  Also, we spent a LOT of time playing with the Wii and generally chilling.  Also, I got to see some highly wonderful Sullivan gals who totally made my night.  Also, it's always, always nice to be home.  Really, really nice, actually.  Dallas time is coming...

Holidayapalooza 2010, Virginia Beach-style

Christmas season 2010 was a little all over the place.  Craig and I drove down to Virginia Beach on the 21st to spend some time with his parents, where I learned the following things...

The beach is always beautiful, even when it's freeeeeeeezing outside.

The city of Norfolk has mermaids everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.

Large, imposing battleships are much less scary when adorned with a wreath.

Water is alllllll around.  And it can come get you.  I'm still not totally comfortable with water.

I also learned that my future father-in-law is an exceptional board game player (especially one particular game involving military strategy), my future mother-in-law is a rather wonderful hostess, and some kitty cats actually do like Craig (ahem, Harrison).  Check out the pictures from the Virginia Beach adventures here.  More holidayapalooza to come...pretend I'm flying from Norfolk to DFW at this very moment...

Here we come a-caroling

Still playing catch-up on the blog, so hope you guys enjoy all of these holiday-themed posts.  At least they're making an appearance in January instead of May or something.  Phew.

My D.C. time is coming to a close rather rapidly, and did you know that while I have done A LOT over the last couple of years, there are still plenty of things that just aren't going to happen?  The week before Christmas, though, I got to check one more thing off the list - a visit to Ford's Theatre.  Now, while I missed the "live historic interpretations by professional actors and National Park Service Rangers" that go on during the day (here's hoping the actors do the acting while the Park Rangers provide info and not the other way around), I did get to do something pretty cool - see "A Christmas Carol" in all of its Christmas wonder. 

Craig and I braved the freeeeeezing temperatures and brutal wind for the short walk from my place to our wonderful pre-theater dinner at Poste, a nifty restaurant located in the original 1841 General Post Office.  We warmed up with some ridiculous French onion soup and other tasty things, then took a quick stroll through the lobby of Hotel Monaco to soak up a little Christmas cheer.

Christmas cheer in place!  Also, bundled up to face the elements

We froze our way over to Ford's Theater a couple of blocks away, where I managed to take my gloves off long enough to snap just a couple of pictures before my fingers froze and crumbled to the sidewalk in a pile of frozen finger dust.  Ok, I still have my fingers, or else these incredible robotic fingers that are fairly nimble when it comes to typing.

One of the randomly cool things you come across in D.C. - old call boxes all over the city that have been painted to reflect something of historical significance in the neighborhood.  It's a pretty cool project!  Obviously, Mr. Lincoln and his untimely end pretty much dominate this block of 10th Street NW.

We got there just in time to sneak in and unbundle ourselves before the show started, so I snapped a few pictures at intermission - the stage all decked out all 1840s London-style and the box where Lincoln was shot:

Just another night at the theater!  Oh, in a theater of great historical significance while being filled with Christmas spirit.  Pretty cool night.  Actually, it was very cold.  But you know what I mean.

Snuggie power!

I think the whole thing was intended for laughs.  But little did Dad know that he was actually planning one of the greatest Christmas presents ever...I mean, an impulse purchase at CVS doesn't usually yield this kind of enthusiastic result. 

I think I've even laughed at other people for declaring their Snuggie love.  I believe a certain Vaughn might have a pink one...but at any rate, I'm now a Snuggie believer.  See below for proof.

Thanks to my fellow Snuggie believer and model for demonstrating its awesomeness.  It's a BLANKET with SLEEVES.  Why didn't I think of this?!?

Double Snuggie-enjoyment by both sis and I (and yes, those are crazy-delightful Santa socks, courtesy of Mom) while I'm attempting to figure out how to actually focus shots with my WONDERFUL new camera lens that the parents gave me for Christmas.  Must learn to not depend on auto-focus...

Getting all geared up for the Tech bowl game the night before - and yeah, I realize I look really tired.  Woke up at 5:15 on New Year's Eve morning to fly back to the D of C, but also determined to make it past midnight.  I'm not THAT old yet.

Zach LOVES the Snuggie.  A LOT.

SOMEONE decided they were tired during the Tech-Northwestern bowl game and wanted to take a nap...which was just perfect for a sneak Snuggie attack.  Oh yeah, and Tech definitely won that game.
Goooooooooo Raiders!  Snuggie power!!