Sunday Movie

We have the late church schedule, 1-4. I was just getting ready upstairs all morning and the children were playing upstairs, after being nice and quiet and calm all morning. So I just came downstairs for the first time today and the first thing I hear, is the line "...and Runaway Girls!" from Pioneers in Petticoats.

Classic!! LOVE that show!

Seth Rules Pretty Hard

Seth got me this for Christmas. I have wanted it for several years. We got a set of RevereWare for our wedding that was destroyed by crappy rental-unit stoves, which is retiring now that I got this new set. It is so pretty. So Pretty. Shiny, well-designed. I am LOVING this Christmas gift. I didn't even have the gumption to put it on my list this year, but Seth is so awesome that he snuck it in there. I was shocked when I opened it. I was just crying and crying. I love this. I also love not having to wonder how crappy my next rental-unit stove is going to be because I own my own dang stove now. I don't RENT.

Hung For the Holidays

My sister Laurel gave us this CD for Christmas a couple years ago and we finally opened it and listened to it this year. It turns out, I really like it. I like that William Hung, because he has a really good attitude. I hope he made some bucks off being embarrassed. Maybe it's not embarrassing for him. That would work out real well. William sings all the Christmas classics on this disc, and it's good because it's not the same old beautiful Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Bing Crosby or whatever. It's just a regular guy with a fun Asian accent singing like a regular guy. And when I sing along, he makes me sound good. So if you're open-minded and like a novelty, like me, this may be something to check into.

I also got a disc called Bluegrass Christmas at the Dollar Tree several weeks ago but then I misplaced it and haven't been able to listen to it. I still will, though, whenever I find it. Another novelty Christmas disc! I love it!

I Had A Baby

And his name is Scott. Enough already with the carrots, right? I have real news. After causing us trouble all summer and trying to get out early, Scottie finally arrived right on time, Monday December first. It was a super-quick delivery, where we made it to the hospital within 20 or 30 minutes of delivering the baby, and if we had hesitated any more, we could have had a Bad Night. He came whether we liked it or not. I did it without an epidural. So now I've had one of every kind of birth: induced labor, preemie, c-section, vbac with epidural, "natural" delivery. Did I miss anything?

The funny part is that the whole time I was praying for Scott to be born the SUNDAY after Thanksgiving. I need to work on my enunciation or something, because Heavenly Father must have thought I was saying MONDAY that whole time. No sweat, though, because I couldn't have asked for a better birth. I was afraid to ask for a better birth, in fact, because just the timing was blessing enough. But I did sneak in a couple prayers where you're like, So if you want to bless me with such and such a fabulous birth with this baby, that would be great and I would be so grateful.

Everyone's always bloggin' it up about their babies and putting pictures and stuff, and it's not my intention to let Scott take over and dominate my blog. But he is super cute and super cuddly and super sweet. This last saturday night, at age 12 days, Scott slept from 10:30 pm until 7 in the morning. DANG!!! He's a really good blessing and I am super ultra grateful for him.

It's weird, too, because I'm grateful he caused so much trouble. Without it, I wouldn't have been diagnosed with cancer and I would be ignorant or it and it would go on growing and getting nastier and nastier. I had the last pre-surgery ultrasound this morning on my lymph nodes and it looked good, with no obvious signs of contamination. A few more fun tests and we are GO for surgery!

We Grew Carrots...But Not Good Ones

The title pretty much says what happened. On a bit of a whim I planted some carrot seeds and when nothing came up I replanted the row with cucumbers. So halfway through the summer, in between all the cucumber vines, here come these carrot greens growing strong and healthy. My mother-in-law gave me the seeds and told me that when she went to harvest her carrots, they were tiny stumpy nubs, so to leave mine in the ground, which I did. I finally brought them in after Halloween. Here's the entire carrot harvest, from largest to smallest. I was just pleased something grew at all. We...didn't eat the little guys.

Oh, and that IS my big fat old belly there, at the bottom of the picture. Sometimes I think I'm not that huge-looking, and then something will happen like this picture, and I'll know for sure that, yep, I'm tremendous in size. Anyway, here's to a better carrot harvest next year! Cheers!

Tomato Harvest After All

I was really disappointed when it got all frosty one night many weeks ago, so I had Seth go on out to the garden and just retrieve all the tomatoes that were on the bushes, green though they were. He brought them in all in a big bucket and just left the bucket on the kitchen floor. Not too much faith they would actually do much, eh? A couple days later I had a party in here, so I had to clean up stuff. There's not a real good way to make a big old bucket of green tomatoes look party-ish, so I used my Design Sense and lined them all up on the windowsills in the kitchen, living room, and my room. They looked pretty cute, I thought.

So but they sat there, very green and very hard for many many days. And then a couple of them began to blush, just a wee bit. And then the blushers got red. And then MORE started to blush! And it went from there, to where we had some getting actually ripe. My idea in planting five tomato bushes was that we would have an abundant harvest and process them into canning jars or whatnot. But obviously, with that plan dashed, we were still able to have an abundant harvest! I am still pretty pleased with this. Some went the way of all the earth before we were able to consume them, may they rest in pieces out by the tree where Seth chucks bad fruit. Some I made into a colossal batch of homemade tomato soup, which took me SO LONG that I had to put it away for several days before I got up the gumption to get it out and finish making it. Eric actually dug it pretty well and asked for seconds and asked to have it again. Seth said it was really strong, which it was.

Some we were able to use in salad or tacos. And the last of them I ingeniously used to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which when mixed with a can of regular sauce, was not too strong. Pretty good, actually. There was a ton of it and we had it for dinner two times in four days.

So Tomato Bounty after all that worry! It wasn't a nine-dollar salad tomato after all! With all these other brothers and sisters going ripe long after the fact, the average price-per tomato actually went down to where I would consider it a tomato bargain! And, sorry Seth, next year I'm planning to plant the same number of tomato plants, but suck it up and go get them MUCH earlier in the season, and coddle them and poultry-manure them and reap an even more abundant harvest!!!

Sometimes I Make Stuff that's Ugly

The idea was that it would be a football. It's the third or fourth cake I baked in my P-Chef batter bowl. It came out far, far uglier than the others. It stuck to the bowl and turned into a stupid pile of crumbs when I took it out. And then, to make it even doofier, when I cut it in half, I missed the line of symmetry and ended up with a very lumpy , terrible, lopsided footballish-type thing. After that I was all, Seth I love you, but I am not loving this cake, so Sorry! I just slapped on some homegrown brownish frosting and this is the end result. I even forgot to bring candles to Dorothy's for the party so that's a tealight up top. Delightful smell, though! I believe we were all calling it The Turd Cake. Me especially. Next year, Seth, you'll get a decent, respectable cake. Next year.