DC or Bust

We were almost a bust, but instead ended up spending a fun Thanksgiving in Washington DC with Andy's family. That was our original plan, but spending 14 hours in the car coupled with the prospect of driving through the mountains of West Virginia in winter weather didn't sound too appealing, so we decided not to go. But thanks to some very masterful persuasion from Betsy (Andy's twin), we flip flopped again and within the hour were on the road to DC. We left at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night and arrived around 3:30 a.m. The drive through WV was pretty snowy, but Ben slept for most of the drive, so that was our saving grace. We crashed at Betsy's pad in Dupont Circle that night and Ben actually stayed over with her for the rest of the trip (thank you Betsy!!!!) while Andy, his parents, and I slept at a nearby hotel. It was like a mini-vacation to sleep in past 7 a.m.

The weather was sunny and clear in the 50s, a welcome change from our overcast Ohio skies. We had a great time riding Metro (Ben's favorite train), going to Mt. Vernon, seeing the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of American History (newly remodeled), jogging around DC (sore legs and a chiding from Capitol guards for going too close to the Inaguration set-up), taking a walking tour of a beautiful area of the city, playing a very competitive Scrabble game, reconnecting with some good friends from our Boston days, watching a few episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica, and eating a scruptious meal.

Betsy was a fabulous host and planned a traditional meal with some surprisingly yummy additions: An appetizer featuring crackers with perrano cheese and fig jelly, roasted brussel sprouts (seriously delicious), and an apple pie with streusel topping. She and I also scouted out a little gourmet chocolate shop around the corner from her apartment and not only got yummy samples from around the world, but a lesson in the finer points of chocolate connoseiur-ship from the co-owner of the store. My faves: Tahitian Vanilla Bean and Fleur de Sel Caramel chocolates.Ben had a wonderful time with Auntie Betsy and his grandparents and we spent most evenings laughing while Ben jumped onto the couches and wrestled with everyone. One of his funniest moments was after he drank a huge glass of milk and then said to Andy's dad, "Grandpa, listen to the milk in my tummy!" and then proceeded to wiggle around so we could hear it sloshing around. He is also a true Haws and has already acquired a taste for Diet Coke. He kept asking for "a little zip" from everyone's sodas.

We spent today driving back in a perpetual rainstorm all the way from DC, but I'm just glad it wasn't snow. I turned off the heat while we were gone and we returned to a house at a frigid 46 degrees. Hopefully we'll have warmed up by tomorrow.

Wish I Were Here

Now that we've been socked with winter frigidity in full force, my thoughts keep turning back to the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, where Andy and I spent our honeymoon almost eight years ago. We got married at the end of December, but the weather was balmy and beautiful. Oh, to dip my toes in the ocean, eat breakfast overlooking the beach, to see sunny skies! Here is the happy place in my head for Ohio's dreary winter. Where is yours?

If you're looking for a good movie, Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis was filmed at The Del. A funny old flick about two men who accidentally witness a mob murder and have to dress up and join a women's band to escape.

Monster Munchies

News Flash: Ben announced that a monster lives in our house. Thankfully, he is a nice monster. Today at lunch Ben decided that our monster was hungry and proceeded to set out a meal for him. It consisted of a banana that Ben peeled himself, some spinach, and a tiny bit of ham. Apparently our monster is a very healthy eater as well. He wanted to give him a mushroom but I'd just eaten the last one. He kept the food on the floor for quite a while and chided me each time I stepped over it because the monster was still eating it. A while later I turned a movie on for him and cleaned up the food, but Ben thought the monster ate it. Looks like our grocery bill will be rising now that we have another mouth to feed.

Carefully laying out the feast.

Pimp My Mixer

During my online perusings today, I discovered that there is a cottage industry devoted to personalizing your trusty old KitchenAid mixer. You can buy decals to create a lovely vintage Victorial floral motif or some wicked flames. Who knew? So if you're needing some inspiration in the kitchen, look no futher than amazon.com. People really will buy anything.

I'm a Believer

A few months ago we had a workshop at church about how to save money. One woman taught us her tricks for grocery shopping and a major component of it was using coupons. I've never been a big believer in coupons up to this point because we don't use lots of the name brand products or eat much of the processed food that offer coupons. But then she told us that she spends a jaw-dropping $80/month on groceries for a family of four. I am still a bit skeptical about her $80 figure - does the woman not buy milk or eat any type of fresh fruit or vegetable? Milk alone costs $8 every week or so. But even if I never get to be quite as thrifty as our speaker, I thought there had to be something I could learn.

I tried to find a few coupons online, but didn't have much luck and was begining to think it was a all waste of time. Then a friend who has cut her grocery bill by at least a third as a result of scouring the sales and compounding the savings with her coupons gave me some website links and good tips. B, thank you for showing me the ways of the Jedi Master.

I spent an hour or so online this week, and found some great deals and here are the result of this week's shopping:

Meijer-

Spent: $37.13

Saved: $ 42.19

Kroger -

Spent: $4.19

Saved: $17.80

I think I might be hooked. Are you a coupon user, why or why not? Any good tips to share?

The Illustrated Man

Ben is very into coloring, painting, and writing letters lately. He loves creating pictures and putting them in envelopes that we then stick in our mailbox and he retrieves so he has mail. (Note: He loves getting mail, for any auntie or uncle out there who has a hankering to write your favorite 3-year-old a letter).

He soon realized that markers and paint didn't just work on paper, they also work on fingers, hands, and other body parts. Thankfully his markers and paints are washable, but he knows coloring is supposed to stay on paper. So usually he just acts quickly before I can turn around. I can tell he's either already colored on himself or is about to do it because he shoots a furtive glance my way and hides his hands. Here's some of his handiwork for you to enjoy.

I call this one the Maori war paint look.

Caught in action, working intently. He didn't know I was lurking with the camera. I love the tongue out in deep concentration.

Dessert Hangover

It had to happen sometime. My insatiable sweet tooth finally got the better of me. Last night I attended a baby shower featuring loads of delicious goodies and I decided to try one of each. This resulted in a ridiculous amount of treats in a short period of time, I'm talking 10+. All I can say is that the idea sounded (and tasted) good at the time.

Bad idea. This morning I woke up with a splitting headache and have been lethargic and irritable all day. I'm guessing it's a major crash due to my body trying to cope with all the sugar I ingested. I am sure that my dietitican friends out there are appalled. I promise, I have learned my lesson and am a changed woman. Well, at least until I meet another gooey chocolate confection...

Six Quirky Things...

Thanks to a tag from Laurie A.

Six Quirky Things About Me:

1. I love breakfast. Whenever I wake up in the morning the first thing I always do is eat breakfast, otherwise I can't function. I could eat it for every meal of the day, but in the morning it has to be sweet breakfast foods, not savory. I do love a good omelet, but that would have to be a lunch or dinner breakfast.

In the same vein, I also adore cold cereal and am a big fan of mixing my cereals. But there are very definite rules about mixing cereals (sweetened with non-sweetened, etc.) I'd go into it here, but it's pretty ridiculous.

2. I have an unhealthy fear of needles and cannot bear to see skin being pierced. In college, I saw my friend's arm with a needle in it while she was giving blood and I amost passed out. Before travleing abroad, I had to get some vaccinations and my mom had to resort to bribing me to get them because I kep putting it off (I was 19 at the time). She finally went with me to get them and now has scars on her hand from where I dug into it with my nails while they administered the shots. When having Ben, the worst part was getting my I.V. and the epidural. I teared up over the I.V. and flat-out bawled once my epidural was finally in because of my needle anxiety.

3. I can curl my earl inside itself and intertwine my toes like fingers. I didn't think it was that wierd until multiple people commented on it.

4. I hate to wear socks. My younger sister instituted a "Sockless Summer" one year and we tried to see how long into the winter we could continue before succumbing to the cold and finally being forced to cover our feet or hazard frostbite. I think I made it to December or January. Living in Arizona truly was perfect because you could go all year in sandals or flats. Note: Exercising is the exception to the sock rule.

5. I love bargain hunting and saving money. I come from a frugal family and finding deals is sort of a game to me. Whenever I score something for a great price (groceries, clothes, airplane tickets, new tires, a pedicure at the beauty school, etc.) I feel like I've won and beat the capitalist system. Sometimes I'm cheap almost to a fault. I'd rather wear two sweaters or my coat inside or sweat during the summer rather than pay extra in heating/cooling bills. Needless to say, this drives Andy crazy. So we keep it hot or cold during the day and I adjust the temp right before he comes home. So you've been forewarned: If you come over during the winter months, dress warm!

Andy likes to joke that I act like I lived through the Depression, but that hopefully it will make us rich someday. A few years ago I read The Millionaire Next Door and the researchers found that one of the common factors in the millionaire's profiles was wives who were thrifty and managed the household budgets well. It didn't matter how much the family made, it was how they used what they had. So hopefully reuisng all those ziploc bags will pay off in the long run!

6. I love to watch choreographed dancing. Anything from classic musicals to Broadway shows to old-school music videos, I eat it all up. I can't dance very well, but I used to joke that in my former life I was a backup dancer for Britney Spears (before she turned skanky). During college we had access to cable TV for the first time in my life and I rushed home to watch TRL every day at 3:30 p.m. to see the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync and their cool moves.

Family Pictures

For all of our friends who live far away, here's a little peek at what will be arriving in your mailbox with our Christmas card this year. Yes, we finally managed to get family pictures taken since our last photo session two years ago. All it took was a large measure of humoring, pleading, cajoling, bribing, adhering to a strict time limit, and the promise of goodies at the end. All this to get Ben to cooperate, you may wonder? No, it was for Andy, the man who hates pictures. On our wedding day, I was told that we had one hour for photos. That's it. Fortuitously, it was 30 degrees on our wedding and we couldn't handle being outside for much longer than that so his wish was granted. Andy almost blew a gasket at my mom's wedding two years ago where the photographer worked at a glacial pace and after each pose said, "Okay, only seven more!" That is not an exaggeration.

All of the credit for this year's pictures goes to Ross Storey, our good friend and talented photographer. He worked his magic and managed to coax some smiles out of Andy. I would post more, but the files are on a DVD and for some reason our computer grinds to a halt trying to load them since they are so ginormous. Anyway, you get the picture. (Sorry, I am my father's child and couldn't resist the bad pun).

Happy Halloweeny!

Ben and his friend Cohen (a.k.a. Bob the Builder) at a church Halloween party.

We got to spread the festivities out over a whole week so Ben got good use out of his costume. I'd planned for him to be a cowboy last year and found some great boots on Craigslist, but he received a Thomas the Train costume, which obviously trumped the cowboy ensemble. I wanted to use the boots before they were too small for him, so we shoved them on and this year he was Sheriff Woody from Toy Story.

For some reason Blogger won't post our pictures in the order I've uploaded them, so here are our Halloween pics in no particular order. Above: Cowboy Ben trick-or-treating at our neighbor's house. We just went around out little neighborhood and got plenty of candy. My sister Bekka taught Ben the "Trick or treat, smell my feet" rhyme and he proceeded to say it at every house, no matter how many times we reminded him just to say "trick or treat." Hopefully we won't be ostracized because of it. :)

The most important part of the evening: Checking out the loot. Ben asks to count his candy every day.

Getting ready to head on out.

The costume parade at Ben's preschool

Preschool again, showcasing everyone's costumes.

Down for the Count

If you're wondering why I've been such a slacker at posting lately, it's because our desktop crashed last week (the one with all our pictures), thanks to a botched attempt to download a new Internet filter. We've used the same filter for the last three years and it had a few annoying quirks, so we decided to try a new one that came highly recommended. Everything seemed to be running smoothly as I downloaded the updated software, but then I restarted the computer to complete the installation process, our computer came up totally blank. The desktop background appears, but no icons. I spent an hour with the filter tech people on Thursday trying to find a solution, but no dice. They said they'd try to figure out the problem and call back, but I'm still waiting for the call. So tomorrow my task will be to get the problem fixed. Until them, we're using Andy's slow laptop and I'll do my best to do some new posts.

If you happen to be a closet computer genius and have any suggestions on how to resurrect a crashed computer, let me know.

Otherwise, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Internet filters. Do you use one? If so, which one? Have you been happy with it? Content Protect/Net Nanny was our old one and Integrity Online was the one we tried, but we might be needing a different one altogether.