Hodgepodge

* My car has been repaired and is home again. I'm very happy about this. We had a few issues with the other driver's insurance company (and I was surprised because I've always heard good things about USAA) but in the end, the car DID get repaired and it looks great. 

* The Princess and her BFF, Corky, had a get-together and made cookies. From scratch. It was...entertaining.

Honestly, I didn't think that baking cookies from scratch was all that complicated. But to two 16 year olds, apparently it was!

I popped in to the kitchen when The Princess informed me that we didn't have enough baking soda. I was confused because I thought we had almost an entire box. It turns out that the recipe called for 3/4 of a teaspoon not 1 and 3/4 of a cup. 

Of course. Anyone could make that mistake, right? 

Actually, The Princess has done this exact same thing before. And THIS is why these two girls have been best friends since they were in pre-school.

There may or may not have been a teeny tiny flour fight.

I'll never tell.

* We finally finished hanging curtains and pictures in The Princess's bedroom. It looks great and she is very happy with the results!

* On Christmas Day, opening day, we went to see Les Miserables. I was a bit worried because I had such high expectations - I was afraid I would be disappointed. I wasn't. I LOVED it. 

To be fair, I love the musical...I've seen it four times, three of them in London. I've heard some complaints about the singing not being up to par, and it's true that some of the actors are not exactly Broadway or West End caliber in the singing. But, this wasn't on stage. It was a movie. And the acting was amazing. Hugh Jackman (Jean Valjean) and Anne Hathaway (Fantine) were incredible. Oscar caliber acting. 

One of the best things about the movie was seeing Colm Wilkinson cast as the bishop. When we saw the play in London, he was Jean Valjean - and he will always be in my mind.

I had tears in my eyes at the end. The theatre broke into spontaneous applause. And I want to see it again. And again. And again....

* Christmas was great. It was a wonderful day filled with family and food (and Les Mis!). 

The kids had a lot of fun trying to dress Jack up like the jolly old elf. Jack didn't have quite as much fun.

However, he loved all the wrapping paper and empty boxes. He's a bit perturbed that we took all his new fun "toys" away.

Now I am busily taking decorations down and packing things away. Life has been so crazy around here the past few months - from our impromptu trip to south Florida to pack up my MIL's condo when it sold, to me being sick and the death of our cat, followed by the death of my stepfather and being rear-ended - it's been one thing after another. We are trying to take care of a few projects around the house before this spring when we will try once again to sell our house. I know it's early to take decorations down, but I just want to get the house back to normal and get some cleaning and de-cluttering done.

* These alternating school breaks are killing me - The Princess got out a week before The Boy. Now she goes back to school next Wednesday and he has another week off. I'm ready to get back on a bit of a schedule...

What's new, pussycat? (woah woah)

This past week has been crazy. My step-father's death threw us all for a loop. Then I was rear-ended while driving carpool (everyone is ok), and have been getting estimates on the repair of my car and trying to deal with insurance companies.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo. It was taken with my cell phone in the pouring rain. 

The good news about the accident is that although I was hit by a larger vehicle and knocked into a much larger vehicle, the only damage to my little car (that we know of) was some scraping and a few bent clips on the bumper. 

Then a couple of days later a big moving van drove down our (private) driveway - the one past a dead end sign and with numerous address signs posted - and then, once he finally realized he had the wrong address, attempted to back down the driveway. He managed to take out several of the landscape timbers in the process. So we've also been dealing with the moving company trying to get them to come out and repair the damage.

There have been some positive moments this past week as well. (Thank goodness!) The Boy was accepted at two more colleges this week...

I took some time out to cover up some gray, get a few highlights, and a much needed haircut...

We had some good news regarding Mr. Wonderful's job...

And we got to catch up with my nephew when he flew down for the funeral...

And, of course, the news out of Newtown, Connecticut has broken our hearts. I can barely watch the news coverage and the stories about those sweet babies makes my heart ache for the families. I cannot fathom the pain they must be feeling.

The past week has been filled with both happiness and sadness, elation and despair. Time flies, and life is short. Be kind.

Yesterday is gone.

Tomorrow has not yet come.

We have only today. Let us begin.

What can you do to promote world peace?

Go home and love your family.

Mother Teresa

Sad

In loving memory of Robert L. Kramer

(AKA G-Dad/Skipper)

7/27/40 - 12/7/12

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still.

Call me by my own familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way you always used.

Put no difference in your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it.

Life means all that it ever was.

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

What is death but a negligible accident?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

(Canon Henry Scott-Holland, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral 1847-1918)

I'm back, I think!

Thank you all for the great tips on how to work around being unable to
post photos on the blog. I plan on trying all of your suggestions and am
still looking into switching to Wordpress or Typepad as well. 

I just need for things to slow down here a bit so I can spend a day on
 the computer trying things out!

We are still working on our projects. The new carpet is installed in the 
kid's rooms and I am slowly putting things away and hanging pictures 
on the walls, etc. Slowly because I am going through EVERYTHING 
with a fine tooth comb and a lot of stuff is being thrown away or donated. 
I cannot believe the amount of "stuff" those two kids have managed to 
accumulate. It's disgusting.

Also, I've been distracted by getting Christmas decorations up. And by 
wrapping gifts and getting Christmas cards addressed and packages 
ready to be mailed. You know how it is...so hopefully we'll manage to 
get those rooms completed soon and then I'll get to start painting our 
bedroom.

We're still picking lemons and I'm still making lemon marinades and 
lemon vinaigrettes and so on and so forth. We're kinda like Bubba 
Gump, except with lemons instead of shrimp!

I also wanted to share a bit of sad news with you. Two days before Thanksgiving we had to say goodbye to our sweet kitty, Roxy. We rescued her when she was about 2 years old and had had her for almost 14 years. She was our own Grizzabella and the sweetest cat ever. In her heyday, she was constantly gifting us with dead snakes, mice, rats, and moles. She definitely earned her keep!

We miss her a lot.

And finally, here is The Boy's senior picture...

I am in complete denial that my little boy will be graduating in about 6 months.

This. Is. Killing. Me.

Ugh.

Anyway. 

Right now I am fighting a migraine and we have roofers up on our roof pounding away as they repair a bad spot on the roof. You can imagine what fun that is. My head in pounding away in synchronization with the pounding on the roof. So, because I can't think straight and because I don't have anything else to say and am probably repeating myself, I am signing off.

Now that I've finally, hopefully, figured out a short term solution to the blog problem, I hope to be posting more often...

Too Much Sugar for a Nickel. Indeed.

Wow! What happened to the month of November? How can it possibly already be the end of the month (and almost Christmas!)? 

Well, time does seem to go faster when you are busy...and we have certainly been busy this month.

We've had lots of projects going on around the house - from the unplanned (a plumbing leak in The Princess's bathroom, which flooded her bedroom carpet) to the planned (cleaning and organizing drawers and closets). We are hoping to try to sell the house again in the spring and the unplanned plumbing emergency forced us to move up some of our planned projects on the house - such as re-carpeting and painting The Princess's bedroom. And since her bedroom was already torn apart, she decided to repaint her furniture as well.

In the midst of all of our house projects, Mr. Wonderful and I made an unexpected 24 hour trip down to clean and pack up my mother-in-law's condo in South Florida which was just sold. 

We've also been busy harvesting lemons. Our lemon tree is practically falling over with the overabundance of lemons we've been graced with this year. I've been frantically searching on Pinterest for all lemon recipes - we've been eating lemon pasta, lemon chicken and salads with lemon vinaigrette. 

This is the point where I WOULD normally insert a photo or three of the aforementioned lemon tree literally dripping with lemons and of the elf labor (aka the kids) picking the lemons. I would also normally insert a photo of The Boy's first college acceptance letter and of The Princess painting her furniture and of our Thanksgiving feast.

But.

Stupid Blogger or stupid Google has done it again. Apparently, I have once again gone over my alloted photo space and I cannot use any more photos unless I pay. Which I was going to do, grudgingly. Except that I can no longer just pay a flat fee like I did before. Now Blogger/Google wants me to pay monthly. As in, my credit card will be charged every single month until the end of time for the dubious honor of being allowed to post my own photos on my own blog. 

Well, I've been planing for a while to switch the blog over to Wordpress - I set everything up a couple of months ago while I was sick in bed - I even came up with a new name for the blog. I wrote everything down in a notebook - my username and passwords and a new email address to correspond to the new blog.

And now? Guess what? I've lost my notebook with the new username and password. Somehow, in the midst of all my organizing (stop laughing!) and cleaning and whatnot, I've misplaced it.

And so now I'm incredibly annoyed and frustrated. The PMS isn't helping, either. So, for today, I am giving up. But not for long...tomorrow I'll be back searching for all of my information so I can make the switch and move on with "Too Much Sugar for a Nickel." (Possible new blog name? Or maybe I'll leave it Mommie Dearest. What do you think?) 

I'll keep y'all posted and let you know when I get things back on track. 

The Blog is Half-Empty. Or Half-Full.

It's been rather quiet around here lately. I've been busy trying to get caught up on stuff and trying to ignore the disgusting mess that my house is. I keep thinking that eventually someone else besides me will decide that the dustballs and pet hair tumbleweeds the size of Kansas are so awful that they will take care of them for me. Thus far, my devious plan is not working. I suspect that I will cave before anyone else in this house even notices.

The kids have been busy with school and dance and college application type stuff and have been hanging with their BFFs ad Mr. Wonderful has been working a lot...

The weather here has been fabulous. We had a bit of a cool down - the high temperatures have been in the mid-70's and it has been delightful. I've had the windows open and have been enjoying the sounds of all the birds (there have been tons of birds hanging around lately!), especially the eagles - who really seem to be enjoying the cool, breezy weather!

In other news, I am SO excited about a couple of movies coming out soon. I don't usually get excited about movies - we usually just wait for them to come out in video. But...

I am really excited to see The Hobbit. And if the trailer isn't quite enough to enthuse Tolkien fans, how about this safety briefing from Air New Zealand?

How cool is that?

But I am really, really, really super excited about a movie coming out Christmas Day. I'm not usually a fan of this type of thing, but because I am a humongous Les Miserables geek, having seen it umpteen times, this one caught my attention...

Seriously. I can't wait.

Can. Not. Wait.

And finally, today is a sad day for our family and our community. It is a day for remembering two very special people whom we were lucky enough to know and love. Three years ago today, Kevin and Katie Whitelaw became angels. 

Kevin and Katie, we love you and we miss you.