Visit with Santa

Tomorrow is Stella's lunch visit with Santa at Sweetwater.  She's pretty excited about it.  The battery in my camera is completely dead (and apparently unable to recharge) so I'll have to make do with camera phone photos and I'll upload them as soon as possible.  We're going to bed so that we can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the visit  : )

Snow

It snowed like crazy today!  I don't even think it was in the forecast, or maybe I still have some missing gene that absorbs weather reports.  It is beautiful, and the whole world seems quiet and peaceful.  I love it. 

We bought a tiny little Xmas tree - 3 feet tall - just the right size for Ben (completely allergic to xmas trees, by the way) to dispose of by himself while Stella and I are gone after Xmas.  We're heading down south to pack up the rest of our belongings and visit with family. 

I am not looking forward to the packing of boxes once again, but it must be done.  We'll probably have to give the house a thorough cleaning as well - three boys living there for a year with at least three animals probably leaves the house a little dirty if I had to guess.

I am loving looking at the snowy field. . . enough so, that I'm done blogging about it & I'm just going to enjoy it.  I wish it snowed like this in GA at least once a year.  Right at Christmas would be perfect.

I made a turkey

Yup. I roasted a turkey, and I have to say it was not as hard as it seems from the kid perspective. Maybe it was because this one was relatively small, but really we just washed it and put it in to cook. That was it. I always thought making turkeys for Thanksgiving was a huge ordeal. Now I know. Well, I suppose the ordeal is in the aftermath of dishes for days on end (we don't have a dishwasher - well, we do: us).

Sylvia, Ben's mom, taught me how to make her fancy chocolate pie and we made a pumpkin pie after we put the turkey in to roast. Then I made a ton of mashed potatoes, some green bean casserole, and we cooked some of the super-wonderful-delicious corn we'd frozen from the summer. Once the turkey was done Syl made the gravy and we got everything on the table. Mmm, mmmm, mmmm. One of the best Xgiving dinners ever, if I do say so myself.

I have since used the carcass to make what the cookbook calls "turkey frame soup" - I wonder why they don't call it "turkey carcass soup". . . sounds totally appetizing, don't you think?

Today it is snowing and snowing and snowing. Some day I'll get used to it, but today I'm wondering if I'll go to my appointment tomorrow afternoon - I'm such a chicken about driving in the snow. : )

House for Rent in GA

So, we need a renter. Preferably a good one. Someone we can trust. Maybe I'll make a list like the kids in Mary Poppins.

Must be kind, must be witty, very smart and very pretty...

The renters are moving out at the end of December and I'm scared scared scared. We've got to have someone in there or I'm gonna have to move down there just so the house isn't vacant. : ( I don't want to be gone from Ben for that long. Not one bit.

So. Spread the word please.

So Excited!!!

I'm currently quite exhausted.  

Stella and I spent two very long days working at the Obama Campaign for Change here in Fort Wayne, Indiana and those days are so much longer when one of the attendees is 3 years old.  Even a wonderfully behaved 3 year old still takes a lot out of a person.  And Stella is most definitely one of those well behaved kiddos.  

I got a call requesting help from the campaign manager a month or so ago & said I'd have to arrange child care to come.  It didn't happen and didn't happen, so I asked them if it was okay if I brought her with me since we were in the final week.  I made calls (by the way, I hate making phone calls, so this was a huge thing for me) for the Get Out To Vote campaign and worked some data entry for the phone info and canvassing records.  I stayed twice as long as I planned that day and told a friend I'd go with her to canvass the next day.  

Only, I had to work the next day so we didn't make it out, but that's okay because it gave Stella a day off.  Monday got all snargelly (but Stella and I managed to have a wonderful day just the same), so I didn't get to go back until yesterday.  Ben had to work at 7am then go vote at 9:30 and we dropped him off at work and went straight to the campaign spot on the north side of town.  Rose, a fabulous lady who took her vacation time from work to volunteer for the campaign, was so glad to see us and so obviously exhausted from this push-week of insanity.  She told us to stay to do data entry rather than go out to canvass, since they had gotten volunteers from Chicago and even California to come work here.  

Stella and I entered data from calls and data from polls and ate cheese and veggies and managed to stay there entering data even through all the party prep and craziness.  There were a couple of cranky moments (she didn't get a nap or even a rest-time), but really we both behaved really well and helped out however we could.  

I love that Indiana counted as a vote for Senator Obama.  It's the first time the state's gone blue since 1964 & I'm so glad I was able to do something to help.  

It's weird though.  I never ever thought I'd volunteer for any political campaign - never.  Really. It's interesting what we'll do when something is important - even things we never thought we'd do.

When Stella and I got home around 8:30 (nope, we didn't stay for the party - we were already cranky) we basically went straight to bed.  I didn't know the results until I got up this morning and it is just going to be the best day ever now.  Yippee!!

Halloween

Stella informed me that she wants to be a tiger

then a rainbow tiger

then a fairy

and finally (for now)

a stripe-y rainbow tiger fairy

I love her imagination!  

We'll post pictures once we get the costume worked out.  

Should be fancy!

Garden update

Nothing in September - ah, I'm such a slacker!!

The bunnies did leave the carrots and they were yummy.  Stella was so excited when she pulled them up and said with a shocked face, "Carrots!"

We've gotten 40-50 tomatoes off the vines here and still have at least that many green that we might just have to fry up since it's getting colder and I'd rather eat them than have them be rotten in a frost.  I'm looking into dehydrators to use up some of these tomatoes since I don't really need 100 frozen tomatoes eating up my freezer space.  The beans were yummy and the broccoli never produced anything except "broccoli dudes" (that's what Stella called the little bugs that seemed to always be on the leaves) -- we planted the seeds too late in the year to get veggies from them.  

It was so much fun having a garden with Stella.  We'll be doing it again next year - maybe with even better results!