Winter is in the air!!

Tonight we spent a few hours over at Landis Christmas Trees!!! The sign said OPEN but we haven’t been advertising that we were going to be. Jenn and Chris spent a couple of hours unwrapping the trees and getting them stood up. I got there followed shortly by Lyz and we spent a quick 15 minutes pricing the trees. We had a darn good system.

Oddly enough the weather didn’t feel very wintry. It was rainy and dreary all morning and afternoon so when I got home I changed and put on a sweatshirt. Apparently that was a mistake. It was warm out! Here and there I caught a cold breeze, but for the most part it was quite hot!

I am so thankful that today is November 30. I am thankful that tomorrow night at 10:40pm I won’t sit up in bed and scream to Jenn “Hand me the laptop! I forgot to blog!” I have enjoyed being able to write every day and know that people are out there listening!! I am thankful to be able to take a day off and not feel guilty.

love and hugs!!

Mingo Monday 11/29/10

It isn’t just about the Mingos…

Growing up I hated the color pink. My mother reminds me of this often. She could never get me to wear pink, red or flowers. Or belts, I still have an aversion to red, flowers and belts. Lyz and Jenn often tell me how wonderful I look in red. I hate it. I had to go buy a red shirt to wear to Lyz’s dad’s viewing (he passed four years ago today, you are missed Norm).

But pink, I’ve totally changed my opinion on pink. I love it. It is my signature. Lyz texted today and asked “What color balloons should I get for Chris’s birthday party?” My answer, “Pink of course!!”

If given an option of color choices, I will always choose pink. For example:
Doesn’t everyone need a pink deer in their outdoor Christmas display?????

My mom and dad buy me a KitchenAid mixer one year for Christmas, what color do I want????????

(yes, not the best picture, but it is what I have lol)
Colored streaks for my hair????

I always choose pink. If I’m looking at shirts and pink is an option, I choose the pink one. When it is legal and we get married again, PINK will be the color. I joked at the 1st wedding that my bridesmaid(s) were going to walk down the aisle as flamingos and the groomsmen as palm trees..

So, it isn’t just flamingos in PINK that I love, it is PINK in general!!

Dumpster Diving

I am not a proud woman. I have no fear in taking other people’s trash and turning it into my treasure.

I need some shelving in my kitchen. Right now we have one of those cheap-o black metal shelves that you get at Kmart for $10. It is doing the job, but I wouldn’t mind something nicer looking. It holds my PINK Kitchenaid mixer, the blender, the food processor, etc. As well as all the other kitchen odds and ends that don’t really have homes anywhere else.

When Jenn got home from work tonight I asked her to take the trash out. She came back in with a huge smile on her face and said that there was a beautiful hutch out by the dumpster…just what I had been describing for that space in the kitchen. We journeyed out to look at it. I thought it looked pretty darn good. Four shelves and a cupboard at the bottom.

We spent the next 20 minutes getting it into the house. It was very very heavy. I had to stop every 15 feet. We get it into our living room so I could start emptying the shelf in the kitchen. I looked at the hutch and noticed the cat practically making out with it.

Yep, some other cat had decided that the bottom cabinet of the shelf was a kitty litter box. From the looks of it this did not happen out at the dumpster, but in someones house.

Moral of the story: Beware when dumpster diving in the dark!

Movie Night

There are several movies that I watch anytime I catch them on tv. Tonight has been a very good movie night. I’ve watched A League of Their Own, Biodome (my personal favorite crappy movie), Fried Green Tomatoes and now I’m watching Rudy.

I remember the first time I watched two of the movies. A League of Their Own was during a Young Women’s Activity night through church. I sat on my first love’s lap. Yes, a boy at Young Women’s Activity night lol. His older sister was my group leader. I saw Fried Green Tomatoes with Sam and his sister. They were embarrassed by me in the theater! I was balling so so so hard. People were looking at me. It is silly the things we remember sometimes!

My other favorite movie to cry to is Steel Magnolias, but I don’t see it on tonight. Which is good since three of the four movies I have watched have made me cry plenty.

Now I watch movies with my wife, who also laughs at me when I cry. But she makes me feel comfortable and safe while I cry, not embarrassed, and I love her for it.

I’ve spent my evening watching these movies while working on a Christmas project. Jenn is spending the evening with her family, I’ve been fighting a stomach bug and don’t want to get anyone sick. Now I have to find a funnier movie to watch so that I don’t smudge up the Christmas project 🙂

Fabu Freebie Friday

I’m so sad that I forgot to take this to Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. So, I guess we shall be having it for dinner tonight! (Jenn is so gagging as she reads this)

I came home the other day to a box on my front porch:

So I opened it up. Inside I found:

What is it you ask?

A whole roasted duck. How perfectly wonderful is that??? All Jenn said when I sent her the pictures was “Save the bubble wrap.”

This wins hands down for strangest freebie ever.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope every one of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I certainly did. We spent it with CLAD, Joni and Lyz’s sister Danyelle and family! 13 of us. We ate, we had fun, we caught up. There was Just Dance 2ing and Just Dance Kid-ing. It was much fun.

I am thankful for every single person who has touched my life, my family, my friends (which I count anyone reading this as) and people who simply are kind and say hi as you pass them on the street.

I am thankful that I feel thankful this year.

I am thankful for my loving wife and everything she does for me.

I am thankful that for a few short months I was blessed with the world’s most wonderful son.

I am thankful that I will always have him with me as an angel to guide me.

Date Night!

I have mentioned before how much Jenn and I love going to the grocery store. Last night we went to the newly remodeled on in our area, and we had WAYYYYY too much fun!!

First off, we were introduced to these newfangled thingies for you to just scan and bag your items as you go!?! And then you just turn in your scanner and pay! Some of you (like my mother) may not be impressed by this as it has been in your area for years. But we like in Amish Country folks. It was just a year or two ago that we got the scan yourself lines!!

Jenn had a bit of a hard time accepting some things while we were there. She loves herself some Rice Krispies and banana. She stood looking at the bunches of bananas and pouting. “We never get through a bunch before the go bad,” she whined. So I took three semi-yellow bananas off one bunch and three mostly green bananas off another bunch and handed them to her. The look of shock on her face cracked me up! She is convinced that we have broken banana laws. She said “Next thing you’re going to tell me is that we don’t have to buy all of the grapes in the bag!” Yes dear, that is true. I thought she might pass out.

Then she found the fruit produce scale. Up until now the only produce scales our grocery stores had was the hanging kind with the clock like face. Jenn had way too much fun with this.

She enjoyed pushing buttons to find the kind of fruit she was weighing

And she loved printing stickers:


Who needs kids when you have Jenn’s personality around??

I was being misbehaved and kept laughing at the nuts in Santa’s pants they had displayed everywhere.

And then I came across the egg nog section and had to send Lyz a picture. She loves her some eggnog, so I had to send her a picture too:

We had fun, then came home and made dinner and watched Glee!!

I love my wife and I love our life. Tonight we are heading over to CLAD’s for game night! We need a game night every so often and since Just Dance 2 was delivered from HouseParty, we have a reason to celebrate!!!!!!

While She Was Sleeping

There are few things in this world that comfort me as much as knowing I am not alone in bed. The ever so few nights that Jenn has spent away from me I basically force Minne and Igan to sleep in the bed. Lately, Jenn has been not only a comfort, but a form of entertainment.

I grew up with a dog named Chelsea. She was the world’s most well-behaved dog (unless you count her love for all things trash and her hatred of being tied up next to rental mini-vans). She would always sleep in my bean bag and would often sleep with one paw straight up in the air. We would laugh at her and my dad would say “Yes, Chelsea, do you have a question?” It seems that Chelsea has been possessing Jenn at night:

Or maybe Scrooge has been possessing Jenn:

My other favorite is this one. Poor Igan looks like “Help me. She is squashing my insides out.” And Jenn looks like “I shall love him and squeeze him and call him George.”

Mingo Monday 11/22/10

Mingos in Hollywood

I have only seen it on television once.  And I have asked everyone I know if they have seen it.  No one has.  Maybe I am just the only person who sees mingos from a million miles away?

So…Harry Potter

**********Warning, Spoilers**********

 

I’ll start by saying that since I knew where it was going to end, as that scene faded I said “Well, that’s that.”  Jenn and Lyz looked at me and said What?  It’s over.

I left the theater with a feeling of Meh.  It wasn’t awful.  It wasn’t even bad.  In fact, as a movie, it was quite good!  But, as the movie shrew (my brother’s name for my problem) it wasn’t all that great.  And it is all because of how they ended it, in my opinion.  Sure, I had picked up on a ton of errors throughout the movie, but I do understand that the movie cannot be the book.  Some things won’t work on-screen like they work in the book.  Some things they screwed up in previous movies so that can’t really fix them in this movie without looking stupid.

But to me, the whole point of the book is Harry growing up and making the choice between boyhood fantasies and being a man and “protecting the world”.  Hallows vs. Horcruxes.  None of that was mentioned in the movie.  They find out about the Hallows and drop the subject.  They don’t even discuss the fact that Harry may very well have one of the Hallows in his possession.

Sure, they could fix this in the next movie, but it won’t be the same.  In the book Harry chooses Horcruxes over Hallows by choosing to interview Griphook before Ollivander.  By making this choice he makes it possible for Voldemort to go and get the Elder Wand.  The movie ends with Voldemort taking the Elder Wand from Dumbledore’s hands.  Gripbook and Ollivander were never interviewed.

12 hours after the movie ended I was still debating in my mind if I loved the movie, or just liked it.  Again, I understand that the movie cannot copy the book.  I do understand that some details must be removed.  I do not understand why things must be added, or why some things must be changed.  I am okay with the change in the way Hedwig dies.  I understand that change.  It is some of the little things that really bother me.

Then Danielle came to work.  We looked at each other and I knew instantly that I did not love the movie.  We managed to spend the next three hours discussing everything that was done wrong and how they could have changed it.  Would it really have been too hard to put white peacocks in the Malfoy’s yard???????????  We went on and on and on and on about it.  Coworkers stayed away from us.  One made the mistake of asking us how we felt…and then ran away.

Danielle has now made it her goal to outline the things that were wrong.  Yes, not all of them can be fixed, but MOST of them would have been easy additions/changes to make me feel like the movie was how I dreamed it could be.

For your enjoyment, Danielle’s notes on the minor things that could have been fixed to make the movie feel more like “home”:

1. Snape and Yaxley do not meet when entering Malfoy Manor.
2. No peacocks
3. Charity Burbage is not having above the table
4. Draco is not looking at it
5. Snape does not take the seat directly next to Voldemort (another thing that I think is crucial later on)
6. Malfoy’s do not show any displeasure with having Voldemort in their home.
7. In the book Bellatrix does not say she will kill HP for him. There is no discussion about their Tonks marrying a werewolf