Christmas(ish) Roundup

Hello friends! How were your Christmas breaks? Presentabulous? Foodlicious? Familytastic? I hope so - ours has been, although not in the way we first thought.

December has gone quickly here at the PM house, so much so that I only realized yesterday that since November has only 30 days, the date on my watch has been one day behind all month - and I didn't even notice.

Our holiday season always gets started with The Husband's birthday. As usual, the day begins with cake for breakfast. Only this year it was a bit of a fail:

The only candles in the house were the "3" and the "5" that were forgotten for my cake last year, so I had to go with those. Eh, he's old now. He doesn't even remember how old he is.

Then, the super snowstorm you saw in the last post prevented me from going shopping, so I had to purchase the ingredients for the cake at the grocery co-op. The co-op is pretty much my favourite place in the whole world, but given its granola-ish birkenstock hipster tendencies, boxed angel food cake mix is not something it carries. So I made that baby from scrrrrratch.

(Yes, 12 egg whites. Yes, at 10 pm the night before. Yes, I am a martyr to the birthday breakfast.)

The cake? Good. The icing? Less good. Apparently you cannot make pudding icing with cooked pudding. And hipsters don't do instant. Except for the tofu kind.

Next up in the holiday excitement was the church Christmas pageant - always awesome. This year, our household contributed two out of three wisemen:

What made our Christmas strange this year was the absence of the Great White North. We're stuck Stateside for immigration reasons (good reasons, mind you) so we're unable to go to the Motherland for awhile. So Christmas had to come to us. First, in the form of a gathering in the Grand Forks Canadinns (which is about as close to Canada as we'll get this year).

My momma put on her event planner cap and we had our traditional Chinese food Christmas dinner:

(She's actually quite happy about her consomme, I promise.)

The stockings were perched on the back of the hotelroom couch with care:

And my momma even managed to put together the standard Buche de Noel for dessert:

Christmas Day found us, shockingly, alone with just the four of us - the first time that has ever happened. Since it was a one-off, we made sure to keep it non-traditional. The Boy and I made Ginger-Dead Men:

And then we joined a surprisingly large number of people at the movie theatre for The Hobbit. In 3D (which explains the weird glasses).

Boxing Day brought The Husband's parents for a visit to our house, including the PM tradition of fettucini alfredo for Christmas dinner. And someone totally brought it dessert-style with peppermint cheesecake:

(Someone also declared Christmas dinner hair-and-makeup-optional.)

Grandma and Grandpa brought hugs and kisses as well as the loot Santa dropped off for us at their place:

(The livingroom might still look like this. No judgment please. It's cleaner than the kitchen.)

And to top off all the cozy merrymaking, we had our first fire ever in our little house on the hill:

(According to our chimney sweep guy, this sucker's known as an "Iron Maiden" and he hasn't seen one in a looooong time. He figures it was added to the house in the twenties sometime. Just think of the generations of children that have burned their hands on this entirely-unsafe beauty.)

And now we're just hanging out and whiling away the rest of 2012. I've read three books in 24 hours, The Girl is lounging in pajamas, The Boy is in his skivvies (not an unusual state of affairs, actually), and The Husband is whimpering with anxiety about the impending Vikings game.

Feel free to come and join us if you don't mind picking your way through the boxes and wrapping paper and dirty dishes. You can wear your jammies and there's leftover cheesecake for all!

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The Weather Outside is Frightful...

...finally!!

We're smack dab in the middle of our first snow of the season, and it's a doozy.

We couldn't even get the car up the driveway after church today. The Husband needs to fire up the snowblower, but first he says he has to wait until the Vikings game is over the snow stops.

As much as I love the milder winters, I have to say that global warming definitely cramps my Christmas style. Finally the outside matches the inside.

(I don't remember hippos watching over baby Jesus in the stable. But we'll go with it.)

Like all the best snow days, this one includes no real need to go anywhere, so we can just hunker down and eat soup and read and drink apple cider and watch football and bring dry clothes to soaking children. Since we've no place to go....

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Look Who's Old

This girl!

(This picture is actually from our vacation this summer. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand? Relaxed and happy - my favourite way to feel. On the other?

"How long have I had those lines beside my eyes?!"

"Um....I didn't want to mention them."

"You mean you KNEW?!")

Aside:  I just now noticed that I'm sitting in front of a garbage can. Awesome.

Nonetheless, 36 is thus far quite awesome indeed. As per household tradition, we woke up at the crrrrrack of dawn to eat cake.

This is why I'm cackling:

A semicolon cake? Made with about a pound of butter and real chocolate and cream? Be still my grammar gourmet heart.

In other "I am old" news (but perhaps that's not news), we had Hallowe'en last week. The kids went as "old people":

(I asked The Girl whether she needed a trip to the thrift store to get her costume. "No problem, Mom - I found everything I need in your closet." She totally did, too. Pretty sure I've worn that outfit to work. What can I say? I enjoy a good cardigan.)

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Ahhhhhhhh

That sound right there? That's the sound of a mama getting her life back.

As it does every year, Autumn hit our house hard. As I do every year, I underestimate the nutso-ness.

Of course, this year had some new elements to add to the nutso. Particularly this one:

It's been the all-football-all-the-time channel at our house since September. Three practices a week plus a game on Saturday. Which is already a lot when you have two drivers.

When The Husband travels every other week through the entire season? It's a whole lotta lot.

But The Boy loved it. And it looks like they did real football-ish stuff, too:

(Don't bother trying to figure out which one he is. It's impossible. He begged me to stay and watch one of his practices once, so I dutifully did. There were about ten #88s in a field of about 100 fourth graders all wearing the same uniform plus helmets, so the chances of me figuring out which was him were zero.)

We've been full with other stuff here, too. Most notably, hanging out with our intern from France. She is so super fun and amazing. Hilarious, helpful around the house, and oh-my-word-she-can-cook. She makes desserts. With chocolate. Or apples. Or caramel. Basically as long as I keep my fridge full of butter, cream, and cheese, we're in good shape.

In other news, remember how I promised you a mid-life crisis this year? Well it's totally here.

And how come no one told me how much fun they were?

Seriously, I've spent the last month all "what's the meaning of life" and "why am I here" and "why do I have so many clothes in my closet" and "I need to start composting so I can save the earth for my children." It's as though all the stuff that's important - family, relationships, food, health, love, grace - is rising to the surface and the rest of it is all being forgotten and buried.

The house is a mess, but it's okay because I'm eating French chocolate and learning about a different culture. Work is crazy, but no worries because we're all in it together and helping each other out. Football took over my life, but I'm smiling all the way through it because my kid is happy and healthy and loving it. My daughter's in tears (again), but is it totally amazing to watch her negotiate the craziness of puberty and see glimpses of the young woman she is becoming? Yes, yes it is.

Of course, the downside (for you) about all these golden days I'm having is that I don't feel guilty about not blogging. But I do miss it. So now that football is over and we're all gussied up in our fall best, PMT might just get a bit more attention.

But if not, you'll have to forgive me. Because I've long forgiven myself.

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Once More, With Feeling

Look what we did this week!

Yep, back to school. Always a bit of a tough week in the PM house since the littles come home each day mentally exhausted and emotionally spent by all the newness of it, and they do tend to fall apart a bit when they hit the safety of home. Lots of love and lots of limits, I keep reminding myself.

You'll notice that they are not standing together. It's a big year for us, as we are in two different schools for the first time. It means a different start time (a whole hour earlier, have mercy) for The Girl. And a different bus stop.

And this whole middle school thing is quite the brave new world. I had to go school supply shopping for the first time (in elementary, we just pay 25 bucks and the school buys supplies to share). Oh my word - a red composition notebook wide-ruled 180 pages and a black folder with three dividers and a yellow three-subject notebook 100 pages and dry erase markers and erasable colour pencils and and and....

Oh, and a calculator that is a spaceship that costs almost $150. Apparently she can use it all through high school. (But honestly, it's not going to get lost sometime over the next seven years?)

(Thinking...maybe I can get away with buying only one and she and The Boy can share it, Laura and Mary Ingalls-style. They could plan their meeting times in the hallway to make the drop.)

She has to switch classes a hundred times a day. She gets no recess (boo). She only gets half of her classes in French. Although I'm grateful for even that; this is the only post-elementary immersion that we know of in the state.

Still, I think she will love it. Her BFF from her private school days transferred into this school, so they can finally see each other every day. The teachers seem to really get middle schoolers (oh my - it is a special age group and teaching them is not for the faint of heart, i.e. me). All the things that seem so scary now are the ones that will actually be her favourite once she gets into the rhythm and flourishes.

And The Boy? He doesn't even care. We've been getting shrugs and "it was fine" since our very first day of "how was school??"

A special mention of our back-to-school finery. This year we swapped fancy for funny:

They're definitely growing up.

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A Facelift for Hotel PM

So you know how the Super 8 Motel is ALWAYS under renovation? And how the sign ALWAYS says "Your inn for a super stay" (which always makes me hope that it's an intentional pun and not just a comment on the inadequacy of today's education system when it comes to homonyms).

Well, Hotel PM beat the Super 8 - we're updated and ready set for a super stay! Wanna see some pics?

(Note:  A design blogger I am not. A blurry-picture-poor-lighting-totally-not-the-same-angles blogger I definitely am.)

Here is the quasi-before of the quest room. It's actually after a fair bit of work, but I am also of the forget-to-take-proper-before-pictures variety of bloggers. That window? Used to be teeny weeny and definitely not ok if you were any larger than The Boy and needed to get out in a hurry. Also, you can kind of see on the right that the column of shelves continued further down the wall and they've been removed and patched.

And now look how pretty! 

Here you can see exactly where those shelves were. We took them out because there was already a lot of storage space and having them there definitely made the room seem smaller since you couldn't walk there.

Why is there a "bulletin board" made of the backside of a sheet of plywood that is framed for some reason? And a little closet door that leads to the water meter (even though you can totally get to it from the other side)? Good questions! The answer is that this house is 100 years old and we've learned not to ask "why" anymore.

(For example - why is the button to open the garage door located not by the door to the garage but instead tucked beneath the shelf in the closet in the laundry room so it took us two weeks to even find it? Again...we don't ask.)

But there's no "why" that can't be solved by a bit of paint:

Now I must ask you to oooh and aaah with me in surprise at The Husband's mad DIY skillz. I knew he would do amazing things with metal (RIP, sweet, sweet Jetta), but wood? This I did not know. And yet, who whipped out a built-in desk in a couple of hours? Yeah, I pretty much have that Carson the carpenter guy from that HGTV show living at my house. Who knew?

And now onto the room that would totally win all the votes if we were playing "what is the strangest room in PM's house" - the downstairs bathroom.

AKA - holy how-many-trees-died-to-make-this Batman?

AKA - huh - who knew that you could cover an ENTIRE bathroom in wood panelling.

AKA - this bathroom is bigger than most bedrooms but features an airplane-sized sink and squishes ALL the fixtures up onto one wall.

THIS bathroom:

Seriously. Every time I used it I would shake my head and say, why??

But now I go in there and I smile:

Is it still kind of crazy? Yes. I mean - what is this?? Some kind of dry sauna sans doors? Some kind of grow-op? (You know I'm totally starting my seedlings in here next spring.)

But add a bit of white paint and suddenly it's much more worthy of pretty new towels than of greenhouse comparisons.

So. Much. Paneling.

Still a crazy amount of paneling. But now prettier! And brighter!

You'll notice I went with classic white. I am NEVER painting this room again, so I didn't dare take a risk with any colour that might go out of style in the next 50 years. See those grooves? All those little corners? Ack - it took me so unbelievably long to paint. And so much oil-based primer to cover the wood. I lost a lot of brain cells. But so worth it!

Now you're possibly wondering why Hotel PM downgraded to a single bed guest room as there typically aren't many reservations for that type of room. I'm pleased to announce that we are at 100% occupancy from now until after Christmas - we have the sweetest, most wonderful young woman from France living with us who will be working as a teacher intern at The Boy's school. We're loving getting to know her and practicing our French while she is being very patient with us and working on her own English skillz. And hopefully she's feeling cozy and homey down in her new super stay digs!

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Garden Update: A Tale of Two Sides

It's that time of year - are you all successfully ducking your coworkers/neighbours/church friends/family who are trying to gift you with zucchini and tomatoes and cucumbers and all the rest of their garden plenty?

Alas,there is no ducking required on my part. Apparently I know no one with garden plenty.

Including me, more's the pity.

Since we last left our garden, we've had some successes and failures. The basil on the porch is looking pretty good (especially since it hasn't had much rain and its pot doesn't hold a whole lot of water):

Ditto on the mint. Although apparently this stuff is pretty hard to kill.

Behold my overflowing patch of lettuce and spinach:

My voluminous kale on the left and my cornucopia of zucchini on the right:

The Girl's proliferating green onions, towering dill, and bountiful peas:

The Boy's sky-high stalks of corn and bean poles groaning with the weight of their largesse:

Okay, so it hasn't been a year of plenty for us. I think the biggest issue is that I completely underestimated how quickly raised beds dry out. I've been watering them, but it's been so unbelievably hot this summer. Days and days of 30 degrees, sunny, no rain.

*Awesome* if you're the girl who has to do the mowing (I think I've done it twice since the end of June), but less awesome on the produce front.

I'd say that this picture captures the state of the garden at the back of the house - a bit green, mostly brown, bedraggled. Even the dwarf has capitulated.

But! Check out the other side of the house:

Red and rosy and juicy and soooo delicious. My tomatoes are doing quite well, if I do say so myself:

Not to be outdone by the peppers - not many of them, but they're lookin' good:

Now I know most gardeners will demur and say, "oh, Mother Nature did the hard work - all I did was help them along a bit."

Not I - what you are beholding is the work of that mighty goddess of fertility, Peitricia "Tomato Whisperer" Mae. My tomatoes weren't coming, nor my green peppers, and my hair stylist (that deep repository of green thumb wisdom) suggested that maybe the bees weren't doing their thang.

You know - that thing. Ferrying pollen. You know - flower S-E-X.

I realized I hadn't seen many bees around. Partly because I have zero flowers this year.

So I took matters into my own hands, and me and my Q-tip and my tomato buds had ourselves a little IVF party.

And, as witnessed above, it TOTALLY worked.

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How I Spent My Family Vacation

Once again, The Husband wins the prize. If "Trip Planning" were an Olympic sport (and seriously, if motorboating used to be in the Olympics, I feel quite positive that coming up with a family vacation that pleases most of the family most of the time should be on that list as well), he would win the gold medal.

And since he does this every year, he's pretty much the Michael Phelps of The Lonely Planet.

Let's watch the highlight reel from this year's performance, shall we?

The Family PM headed northeast this year - to an area called the Upper Peninsula. It involves Wisconsin and Michigan. And Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Kind of in that order.

(I have to say that the downside of the ol' GPS is that you never get the same sense of where you've been as you do with an atlas. Plus, ours is an unnecessarily vague one. Her favourite instruction is "follow the road." Um, thanks. Will do.)

The first weekend was spent in a little resort town. Know what's more awesome than owning a cabin? Having a friend who owns a cabin and lets you stay there! It was fabulous.

While there, we took a boat tour of the Apostle Islands. (Wisconsin somewhere. I'm pretty sure. You'll have to look it up.) It was too rough to kayak, but we still got close-ups of the caves.

It was a seven-hour tour, so we definitely needed some time to stretch our legs on one of the islands.

I'm kind of getting the appeal of The Cabin. I used to not understand it - why have two houses when I can barely keep up with one? But when one of the houses is a short nature trail away from Lake Superior, I could maybe see myself being willing to do a bit of extra cleaning.

Plus who needs to do any cooking in that kitchen when you've got restaurants nearby that serve huge plates of nachos and overlook the marina?

Having explored cabin country, we hopped back into our trusty covered wagon. Here she is in the early days of the trip - still kinda shiny. (The Husband whimpered every time he heard someone open a chip bag in the back and his shoulders slumped a little more each day when he looked at the mess in the back.)

Ah, the family road trip. Such a time of togetherness. Of playing games. Of fighting over who has more space. Of being forced to listen to the #1 Hits station yet again (guess who knows all the words to Call Me Maybe? Oh yeah...this girl).

Plus the annoyance luxury of being forced to getting to pull over every half hour because someone has to pee stop and smell the roses anytime the fancy takes you.

Or, in our case, finding a hidden waterfall.

And putting our own stamp on it.

Our next stop was Pictured Rocks. (Michigan-ish?) I think it was still Lake Superior. Although you wouldn't know it - that's some pretty blue water.... Looks more like the Caribbean yes? Except replace pine trees with palm trees, I guess.

Blue water, a beautiful beach...everyone had a great time.

Including one chillaxing Mama who did this for two hours.

After the beach day, it was hiking day! We dragged those kids on a 10 mile hike and they did AMAZING! I was honestly shocked. We fueled them up with frequent granola bar and applesauce breaks, but otherwise they just kept trekking for almost six hours.

This might have been my favourite day, actually. Walking around the lakeshore, chatting with my kids, and enjoying the scenery.

And snuggling.

And what's this? More Mama chillaxing. (That's right. Bringing the Can Con. CBC Represent.)

Mosquito Beach. Inappropriately named, since we got zero bites. (Okay by me.) Instead, just rocks and sand and waves.

A happy hike family:

Probably because of this (The Husband totally pegs it):

From the wilderness to civilization...ish. Our next adventure required a ferry ride. A fast and apparently very fun one.

We spent a couple of days on Mackinac Island. (Do not be fooled by the "ac" at the end. It is pronounced "Mackinaw." Apparently it is French. We can't come up with one another word that works that way. Oh well.)

No cars allowed on MackinacAW Island. Just horse taxis.

And bikes!

(You just know I was singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true..." on this one!)

And chillaxing. Just takin' a bike break.

Best thing about traveling with older kids? You don't actually have to be with them 100% of the time. Weary of a day of biking and touring and desperate for the hotel room TV (we got begged several times over the course of the trip to renew our cable subscription), the kids were deliriously happy when we picked up take-out pizza for them and plopped them in front of SpongeBob with a phone to receive texts about putting on pajamas while we popped down the street for a Grown Up Date.

Complete with crazy drinks with pickles in them.

(This picture is slightly out of focus. Someone has had too many pickles, methinks.)

There's an old fort on the island to visit, and the kids were absolutely taken by a game called Graces involving sticks and hoops and tossing them back and forth. The Boy cares not that it is an 18th century game for girls so they can play without becoming unladylike.

Looks ladylike to me:

After the island came Sleeping Bear Dunes. Apparently this is the most beautiful place in America per Good Morning America. Not sure about that, but it was definitely a looooooong climb to the top. (The kids are in green and red. I'm the girl slogging in the black at the bottom.)

A lovebird picture. (Heh heh, The Husband forgot his shaver on the trip, so I got the unexpected treat of beard season in the summer. Rowr!)

What's this - more beach? Bigger waves? Bring it on, they say!

While Mama...you know.... (I don't do water.)

I do do cherry pie. And cherry iced tea. And playing games with cherries.

Our last night was preceded by a ferry ride across Lake Michigan. It looks like it will be fun:

However, a 1:00 AM docking after four hours of 15 foot swells and constant rocking (and a mama who forgot Gravol) looked more like this:

Fortunately for you all, I do NOT have a picture of the hotel bathroom two minutes after someone (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent but who very happily returned for seconds at the all-you-can-eat buffet we hit prior to the ferry ride) said, "oh...I don't feel so good...."

(Guess who drew the short straw? Hint:  I can tell you with good authority that Bill the night cleaning man at the Holiday Inn Express in Manitowac is very helpful at procuring paper towels at 2:00 AM.)

But explosions of other sorts aside, the trip was definitely an explosion of fun. We loved each other up good and didn't even hate each other when we got back. We were happy to explore Wisconsin and Michigan and beaches and fudge shops and forts...and even happier to get home.

So to the top of the podium with you, The Husband! Once again, you earned it, Mr. Phelps!

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