Valentine's Day Efforts

Happy Valentine’s Day.  We aren’t big romantics around here, but we do appreciate love so the kids are starting their day with Valentine’s chocolates and tonight for dinner we’ll be having heart shaped pizza and a special dessert.

Rich surprised me this morning with this.

It’s perfect.  He knows that no matter how much I might say otherwise, chocolate is always going to be a hit and those dumb little cherry pies are one of my favorites.

He gets me.

He also knows that if he dropped $75 on a bouquet of roses I’d kill him.

Elementary schools are a great place to spend Valentine’s Day.  It’s all about cute outfits, parties and sweets here.  Romance is at the bottom of the list of reasons to celebrate.  And I have the best job in the school today because I get to see all of the fun things that get delivered to the teachers from their sweethearts.

Although, after the delivery the art teacher got yesterday, the other husbands should just give up.  Check out this bouquet:

The picture doesn’t do this bouquet justice.  The vase was nearly six inches in diameter and from top to bottom the arrangement was well over two feet with every kind of lily, iris and … I don’t know what all but they smelled like an exotic summer garden.

I made her take it to her room right away because it’s just going to make every bouquet that comes after it look bad. 

I’m pretty sure my favorite delivery of the day has already come though.  Before school even started this morning, a group of well dressed young men showed up looking for one of the resource teachers.  I had her called out of a meeting and to the front hall where they serenaded her.

What you can’t see is that standing behind me are about 75 kids who were here early for breakfast and a large handful of teachers who wandered out to see where the music was coming from.  It was quite a crowd, but Mrs. H handled it beautifully.

For the record:

Rich? If you ever do this to me I will die.

And then I will kill you.

I love you honey.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

Merry Christmas! I Made A Vlog! In Fact I Made Two Vlogs!

I did it!  I made a vlog!  And then YouTube said it was too long!

Who know YouTube had insane time limits?

Not me.

But they do and my vlog, at 20 minutes, was over the limit.

So now it is two vlogs!

Here is part 1:

I have only watched part of it.

It is torture to watch oneself on video.  My voice sounds weird.  It's true - as soon as we finished filming my kids told me so.

"Why did you have such a weird voice? That was your phone voice!"

Does everyone have a phone voice or is it just me?  I worry because in everyday life people are always telling me that they didn't hear what I just said which means either:

a) I mumble

b) the entire world is hard of hearing

Odds are that it's B so whenever I'm being recorded or on the phone, I try to over enunciate and I sound weird.  In any case, if I ever do this again, I'm getting an actual mike because you have to turn the volume way up to hear this video.

Sorry about that.

If you can make it through Part 1 and still care, here is Part II

About half way through this one my kids try to trick my into telling them The Wedding Ring story.  A few years back my original wedding ring went missing and when we found it again there was a story with it.

A story my kids can't hear until 10 years have passed and there are still three years to go.

When I tell them, I'll tell you too.

Of course, I'm assuming that after people watch this that they'll even want to come back.

In any case, we had fun doing this.  Thanks to those who submitted questions and thanks to all of you who visit Our Front Door.  Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and Happy . . . Sunday? if you don't.

Love you guys!

Mindee

This Could End Badly

Last night as we were all sitting around the table finishing dinner, my Christmas present was delivered.  We all knew what was in the box, which did not lessen the excitement at all.

"Okay you guys, this is my only Christmas present so right this moment is my Christmas morning.  Let me enjoy it."

They started in immediately.

"Mom! Can I open one more present?"

"I already have this! Can we go return it tomorrow?"

"He already opened a present! It's my turn!"

I paused in my box opening to glare at my giggling children.  Hayden, acting as spokesman, gave me a wide eyed look.  "If it's your Christmas morning, we want it to be realistic for you Mom."

Aren't they thoughtful?

Deciding to ignore the peanut gallery, I returned to opening my new iPhone 4S.  Source

It is bee-you-tiful.  Beautiful, but a bit over my head for the moment.  My tech guru husband was eager for me to figure out all the capabilities so he called me from across the room for a face time chat.

When my face popped up on my own phone, I gasped in horror and hit "dismiss" immediately.

"Ew! I do NOT like the way my face looks on that app.  Don't do that!"

So of course he called right back.  I sighed and answered and was relieved to see that Rich's face looked just as unsettling.

It's not me.  It's the app.

Which makes my next proposal scare me just a bit:

I want to try a video blog for Christmas. Or vlog for the cool kids.

If you leave a comment on this post asking me a question, I will attempt to answer it in video format and post it this weekend.  It can be a Christmas related question, or a general question.  You can try to leave a question for Rich or the kids but I haven't run this idea by them so I can't promise I'll get them on camera.

Just don't ask me what size pants I'm in right now.  The number is big.  That's all I'm saying.  

Christmas Lightbulb Moment

Is anyone ever truly done Christmas shopping?  Is there ever not just "one more little thing" to pick up? Is is possible to not have one person you forgot to shop for?  Another stocking stuffer you must get?

Do we ever get done or do we just get tired and cry "Enough!" and make do?

As of last night I cried "enough." 

If anything isn't purchased, it's not gonna be.

I was lying on the floor moaning after wrapping six more gifts.  Rich suggested I should blog about how I hate Christmas shopping.  I rolled over, "No, because everyone hates Christmas shopping."

"I don't!" he chirped.  Annoyingly.

That earned a glare.  "Are you kidding me?  Of course you don't hate it.  You don't do it!"

"I do too," he argued "I bought your iphone and Reagan's iphone and that present for Hayden."

Folks, these three purchases required two trips into one store, which I pointed out.

"So?" he countered, "You just went to Target."

Mmmmm hmmmmm. 

Oh yes he did say that. 

Every woman reading this just gasped because y'all know that the Christmas trip to Target takes a minimum of two hours - and that was just the first time I went.  And I didn't just go to Target.  Off the top of my head I can think of purchases in at least five other locations and that doesn't count the stores I went in to and didn't find anything.

But here's the thing:  if I am worn out at Christmas, I have no one to blame but myself and my Control Freak ways.  Rich is right - he does not mind shopping but there is no way I'm going to send him out without me because I want it done my way.  Same goes for the baking - the girls would be happy to help but I think it's easier to do it myself.

Reagan was watching me wrap gifts last night.  I stretched and sighed and she asked, "Does Christmas make you crabby mom?"

"No, I like Christmas.  There's just a lot of wrapping and I'm dumb and haven't taught any of you to do it because I like the way I do it and so now I have to do it all."

So if last year's Christmas epiphany was to plan ahead and take it all a bit a time (which has helped tremendously by the way - my irritability and stress level are down by half) then this year's is to let go of the control.

And that, my friends, sounds darned near impossible.  I have eleven months to work on it though . . . we'll see.

Painting Cookies

When we lived in Denver, I looked forward each year to receiving Christmas cookies from my friend Hunter.  She had married into a large family who got together each fall to make thousands of these beautifully painted little sugar cookies to give out to friends.  They were beautiful and delicious.  Before I moved I made sure to get the recipe from her so I could make them myself.  This week my family sat down for our 12th annual cookie painting night.  It's our most treasured Christmas time tradition.

I make the cookies myself during the day because rolling and cutting cookies is time-consuming enough without involving the children.  Not that they don't want to help - they do and one of these days I'll kick myself for not teaching them but patience is in short supply in December.  I save it for the painting.

When we're ready to paint, I cover the table with sheets of waxed paper and we mix up the glaze.  It's a simple mixture of meringue powder, water and powdered sugar.  You could use egg whites if you wish but raw eggs freak me out man - especially with food I'm giving as a gift.  Food poisoning doesn't really say "Merry Christmas" to me.

Then we pass out the brushes and get to painting.  The girls go for pretty and creative with fine details.

I tend to be more efficiency oriented.  The recipe makes 100 cookies and some years I've doubled that or more.  If we all got artsy and intricate we'd be sitting there for days.  So I go in with a "git 'er done" mind set. I paint a bunch of reindeer and teddy bears brown and trees and wreaths green, wait for the first layer to dry and then throw on a few decorations.

Rich is the true cookie artist.  He generally only gets 10 or so cookies painted, but each one is absolutely lovely.

Well . . . maybe not each and every one.  Along with his artistry, Rich tends to use his twisted sense of humor in the painting.  Every year he paints a wreath or two brown.  Dead wreaths have become his trademark.  

This year a poor snowman fell victim too.

Sigh.

I don't think we'll be putting Frosty the Incontinent Snowman on any of the plates we give away.

And as for Hayden's cookies . . . well, he doesn't quite have Rich's steady hand and attention to detail but he definitely shares his sense of humor.

If you'd like to try your hand at cookie painting, the recipe and directions are In The Fridge.