Right now I should be:

packing
cleaning
wrapping

Three little words, and yet they're big, seemingly insurmountable jobs, especially when it's 10:11 at night and you're leaving first(ish) thing in the AM.

Today was a big day full of excitement and baking and oil changes and manic ends-weaving (which I still haven't finished). It was so much that my battery completely died at 5:30 (that metaphor was for you, Jocelyn) and while I crawled up the stairs and into bed to catch a second wind, Dave wrangled the kids into the car and took them out to eat. He even brought me dinner. I didn't think I slept but I missed two calls and three texts and my phone was right next to me on my nightstand.

Tomorrow morning we point the car in a southerly direction and head to Virginia for Christmas where I will probably be doing the above-mentioned wrapping. My dear friend's parents are going to make use of our house while we're gone, which is great. I often feel sad that we deck the house and the tree out for Christmas, but we've never actually had a chance to plug the lights in on the big day itself. It'll be nice to know our new pad won't be lonesome on the big day. Silly, isn't it?

Meanwhile, I hope you have a very cozy, and very Merry Christmas, wherever you are...

Posted by Jenn at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Henry's Thanksgiving break started last week on Wednesday. Tomorrow he heads back to school. The kids around these here parts get the Monday after Thanksgiving off because that's the first day of hunting season. I *always* forget that there's a specific reason for having today off, and then when someone reminds me why, it never fails to amaze me. It's been a nice break. Last year Henry got sick his first day off from school, threw up Thanksgiving night, and didn't truly feel better until the day before school started. This year he was operating at 100% health, as was Holly, which I'm very thankful for. Dave's parents came up for a few days and helped wear out the kids. Dave and I went on a double-date with good friends to see "Breaking Dawn", and also managed to sneak out another day to do some window shopping downtown. We all had a great time and Dave and I managed to pack on some pounds so you know the food was good.

Meanwhile, I've been wrestling with a cough for the last two weeks and finally decided to go see a doctor about it this morning. I left his office with a prescription for antibiotics. I later told Dave that once I had the validation that I am actually sick, I finally admitted to myself that for the past two weeks I really haven't been feeling all that great, that in fact, I've been maybe feeling sort of lousy but have been powering through it. Denial is my gift. I have a better understanding of what Dave does to survive the semester and why he gets sick as soon as classes end. Oh, and, he's crazy. I'm not though, I'm hopped up on antibiotics! Woohoo!

Would someone like to come over and give my dog a bath? She stinks.

Posted by Jenn at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have been profoundly delinquent in updating the blog. The past four weeks have been extremely busy. The day after my last post we spent a week madly packing up all of our belongings into a trailer truck and a U-Haul and brought them all to our new house where we spent the next two weeks unloading all of it while proclaiming with great vehemence that we would never move again, at least not for another thirty years. We were without internet for the first two weeks, which was actually kind of nice. I did all of my emailing via my phone, which meant I checked my email regularly, but didn't really send any out, because what a drag trying to type on a relatively small keyboard with my big sausage fingers.

The kids handled the upheaval pretty well. Holly seemingly couldn't have cared less. Henry was a bit concerned about the whole venture, sometimes asking why, if we liked our old house so much, we were bothering to move in the first place. The Friday of the closing, we dropped our keys off at the old house before bringing Henry to school and when I happened to look in the rearview mirror at him, he was silently crying. It made Dave and I pause for a moment to really realize the momentousness of the occasion for all of us. We'd been running the whole week on adrenalin and we managed to forget we were leaving behind a house we really loved and that was perfect for us for a certain time in our lives. We said a more proper good-bye and headed off to our future.

So, fast forward a few weeks and here we are, settled in for the most part. Dave's parents are coming tonight to celebrate Thanksgiving with us, and next Monday we'll be moving everything on the second floor into storage so that an old carpet can be removed and all of the floors can be refinished. We're looking forward to that because then we can really set up our bedrooms and be done with the "moving in" process.

Meanwhile, I can say with great certainty that this is the perfect house for us. I love the way we live in it. It feels really good.

Posted by Jenn at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's my birthday. I'm older than I was yesterday, but then that's true every day isn't it? The last couple of years, my birthday's been a bit sad. This year it was truly amazing. After making me breakfast, Dave had to leave for a day-long conference. My friend Katie and her daughter came over early this morning just as he was walking out the door and hung out through lunch, making what would have been a fairly long drawn out morning fly right by. Soon after they left my dear friend Jocelyn surprised me with the most amazing home-made pretzels. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement. Later on, Katie and family came back over and made dinner, around the start of which Dave got back home with a birthday cake to accompany the amazing birthday apple pies he made for me. Meanwhile, Henry's birthday present to me was giving me kisses and hugs whenever I asked for them, which was the best present a girl could ask for from a kid who loathes showing any kind of affection whatsoever unless he's asleep in which case he'll snuggle you right off the side of the bed. In summary, it's a glorious thing to sit back at the end of the day and feel very well taken care of, and today I do feel *very* well-taken care of, and loved. I'm looking forward to paying that feeling forward.

This week is an exciting week involving lots of packing and loading and eventually culminating in a big move to a new house on Friday (unless everything falls apart over the next five or so days which is always a worry because I'm a bit of a fatalist). As if that wasn't exciting enough, Friday also heralds in the arrival of a long-awaited addition to a good friend's family. To sum up, as far as days go, Friday is a big one, so while I can't wait for it to get here, I'm also planning on enjoying the anticipation as much as I can.

Posted by Jenn at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This has nothing to do with anything, really, but I just checked my junk comments folder for the first time in a few months and there are over 16000 of them. Sigh. Let the deleting begin.

Yesterday I baked bread again for the first time since the end of school last June. Summer quickly developed a rhythm all its own, and bread baking was not a part of it at all. Looking back (and down at my waistline) I can see that pie took its place. Pie is summer, bread is fall, winter, and spring.

My pulling out the container that holds our yeast packets was precipitated by a few things. The first is that we decided we really wanted to have grilled cheese for dinner last night and we didn't have a lot of bread left. The second is that it was three days before payday and we're even more broke than usual because in two and a half weeks we're moving to a new house. The endless flow of cash that occurs during the house-buying/selling process is not for the faint of heart, and Dave and I are very faint-hearted when it comes to cash. At least when it's flowing away from us. If it's coming *to* us, well, that's a different story. So out came the flour, and the salt, and the other bits and pieces that go into a good loaf of bread. The day had turned gloomy by the time the two loaves were in the oven and the scent was exactly what was needed to cheer up this cynical girl's heart.

Henry got off the bus, I pulled the loaves out of the oven and onto a cooling rack, then we headed off to have the young man's hair trimmed in preparation for school pictures on Friday. While we were there, a friend texted and invited us over for apple dumplings, which eventually turned into an invite to just come over for dinner. We ran home so I could grab a loaf of still-warm bread. It pleased me greatly that not only were we having an impromptu evening spent with friends, but that we could contribute something to the table as well. It's not often that everything comes together so easily, so I really appreciate it when it does.

I've probably posted a link to it before, but here's the bread recipe I use. It's a great sandwich bread and makes even better toast. Next time I make it, I'm going to try making cinnamon raisin bread with one of the loaves.

Posted by Jenn at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Especially for my mom, who has been requesting the "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" for the last few weeks:

Posted by Jenn at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This has been a truly astonishing day. Mostly for Dave. He's been burning the candle at both ends, as he is wont to do during the semester. He's so tired his eyes are all puffed up. This morning he came along for moral support for Henry's 6 year check-up, knowing that there'd probably be a flu shot involved. What we didn't bargain for was that the whole appointment would take as long as it did. Over an hour. Not necessarily a problem except Henry's appt was scheduled for 9:20, and Dave, in his endless optimism for the speed of the health care system, scheduled an appointment at work for 10. He missed it. He didn't, however, miss the complete melt down Henry had over getting his shot. He was handling it well until the actual needle surfaced, after which it was every man for himself. I had to pick him up, lay him on the table, and physically restrain him, both of his flailing legs, and both of his hands which were trying to protect his exposed thigh area from the needle. It was completely unexpected. It was also very loud because he was screaming at the top of his lungs, his uvula visibly vibrating at the back of his throat. Holly was crying. Dave was astonished. I was laughing, because what else could I do? I understood Henry's reaction, but I also understand his ability to take things from zero to five thousand in under three seconds on the drama scale. As soon as the needle came out, he stopped, said in a totally normal voice "Oh! It doesn't hurt anymore!", then proceeded to sob big tears that splatted on the floor all around him. Meanwhile, he soothed his pain with a doctor-sanctioned lollipop, then got dropped off at school. Dave screeched out of the school parking lot (figuratively, not literally) and high-tailed it to work, where, upon arrival, he asked me to hand him his stack of tests that he needed to grade. Thus was born the realization that they had never made it into the car, that in fact they'd never made it past the roof of the car which is where Dave put them so he could buckle Holly into her car seat when we were leaving the house earlier in the morning. Holly and I then spent the next forty-five minutes retracing our steps with no luck. With all of this going on, Dave had to submit a brochure for printing and finish up a talk he's giving this afternoon at Susquehanna University, all before 12:20, which is when he needed to hit the road. Fortunately, when he got home, he checked his email and saw that a teacher at the local high school had written to say a former student had found the stack and had given them to her. Talk about great!

Dave's having a very rough day. I'm worried for him. If ever a guy needed a beer...

Posted by Jenn at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Jenn at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Poor Holly. I don't know if it's all of the fresh fruit she's been eating, or if there's been an uptick in how many juice boxes she has access to, but the end result has been a couple of bouts with diaper rash. A couple of weeks ago she was curious about why I was putting cream on her (frighteningly cute) tush. I told her it's to help her boo-boo feel better. At her next diaper change, when I pulled out the tube of cream she said "No like-a boo-boo butt." Fast forward a few weeks and yet another bout with diaper rash and she'd pretty much reached the end of her rope. At the end of a long, active, exhausting day, I was getting her ready for bed. I laid Holly down on her changing pad and proceeded to get down to business:

Holly: "No like-a diaper change...no like-a diaper change...no like-a boo-boo butt...no like-a boo-boo butt...no like-a powder...no like-a powder...no like-a powder! No like-a diaper...no like-a diaper...*sniffle*...NO LIKE-A RAINBOW PANTS! NO LIKE-A MINNIE MOUSE GOWN! NO LIKE-A MINNIE MOUSE GOWN!!!!"

By the end I was trying so hard not to laugh because it was super-cute. Of course, despite the endless stream of complaints, as soon as she popped up from her changing pad, she was thrilled as can be with her bedtime couture and was prancing around the room with glee. She's all girl.

Posted by Jenn at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

...Henry: "Phineas and Ferb", the backyard hose, Music in the Park
...Jenn: Fruit pie and sewing
...Holly: POOL!
...Dave: BEES!

Holly turned two while we were in Boston last week. Two! She got lots of cool presents and a delicious cake, but the thing that has spoken most to her heart is the doll stroller my Aunt got her. She fusses with it all the time, walks Baby to the park, and now knows (far before her time) how frustrating it is to push a stroller on our town's uneven sidewalks. She's a happy little momma.

We're gearing up for Henry's birthday next. On Saturday Dave and his mom will be taking Henry to NYC to go up the Empire State Building, followed by a matinee of Stomp!. Dave's just as excited about it as Henry is. Meanwhile, Henry's actual birthday is the day before school starts, something he tells everyone, but fortunately the import of it doesn't yet bum him out. I expect lots of complaining about it one day, but hopefully we're good for a few more years.

We've had an excellent summer. It's sad to see playgroup talk go from trips to the pool and vacations to dread of the quiet (and for a surprising number of us, depression-inducing) 'burg winters. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to making the most of the rest of the summer and my personal favorite: apple season!

Posted by Jenn at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)