Happy 2013!

Did you stay up to watch the ball drop last night? Did you get all dolled up and go to a par-tay?

I did - if by "dolled up" you mean "put on my nicest yoga pants" and by "par-tay" you mean "went to Target to return the Christmas lights that cacked out halfway through Christmas."

Oh yes, it was a fairly epic ending to the year.

And now, on to 2013! I've got my usual stack of non-resolutions ("non" because they're on the list year-round and because I never really make actual goals around them so *shockingly* I don't get very far).

Read my Bible more. Lose some of those Christmas pounds so I can fit into ALL of my jeans again. Exercise more. Read more.

But this year I have an *actual* resolution, too. It's pretty crazy:

Go to bed.

I'm a firm believer in getting everything ready the night before. Taking a few minutes to lay out some clothes, get the coffee maker ready, pack a lunch, and make sure I know where my bus card is.

I believe it, but I rarely do it. I turn into my kids at bedtime - balking, procrastinating, refusing to go take my shower, begging my brain to let me read one. more. chapter.

Then I drag my tired butt upstairs to put them to bed, only to snuggle in with them and fall asleep because by that point I'm exhausted.

(I've woken up crinked around a 9-year-old in a twin bed more often than I'd like to admit.)

It doesn't help that my job is flexible. There's a two hour window in which it's acceptable to arrive ("acceptable" in that I haven't been fired yet). With older kids who can latchkey, I don't have a time by which I have to be home, so if I get in later I just leave later.

And when I don't go to bed with all the necessaries ready, I spend the next morning frantically rushing around and end up getting to work later. Which gets me home later. Which makes me all resentful that my evening is cut short so I stay up late. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I read once that Madeleine L'Engle kicks visitors out of her house at 9 pm, no exceptions. It's time to get ready for bed, and she allows for no distractions, no "I'd rathers," no "oh, I'll just do that in the mornings."

It takes a big girl to go to bed on time. An adult - one who acknowledges that tomorrow will come, despite my best endeavours to make tonight 22 minutes longer so I can watch one more episode of 30 Rock. One who plans ahead and thinks about tomorrow's lunch while today's leftovers are still on the counter. One who verifies that there are clean clothes for the next day so the next morning doesn't involve a panicked "swimsuit or bathrobe to work" dilemma.

So as much as it pains me on the last day of holidays, I'm going to turn in early tonight. Especially because it's the last day of holidays and tomorrow is going to kick my cookie-and-chip-enhanced butt.

Read more...

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!

Read more...

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....

Read more...

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.)

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...