Hey, Y'all!

Treasure and Trash

We've been cleaning out my grandparents' attic this week.  We had no idea what we'd find.  We found some very sentimental things, like a giant cross-stitch magnoia my grandma made, countless boxes of photos and letters, and the ceramic lambs that decorated my nursery.  Among the things that surprised us were:

4 stadium seasts

A 40-year-old ice cream maker

2 rusted handsaws

6 baskets of silk flowers

2 boxes of love notes from my high school boyfriend, complete with bad poems (why, yes, we read them aloud!)

A box of toys none of us remembers

Some personalized storybooks from my childhood, which Dean has been enjoying

And my personal favorite...

A paint scraper masking-taped to a stick. (???????)

 

We spent yesterday afternoon combing through boxes of letters, photos and mementos.  I found several shots of my grandma on her honeymoon, lots of pics of my grandpa's retirement party and even some family photos I'd never seen.  I also came across a whole pile of letters congratulating my grandpa for passing the Bar in 1971.  So many of these things are important to our family's history.  Since Dean never knew my grandfather and may not remember Mim, I hope to go through these things with him some day to help him piece together who we are and where we got our start.

 

Have you ever found any unique family treasures?

Mim

My grandma, Mim, passed away on March 22.  My husband, of course, has been the one with the right words during this time.  He told me a few days ago, "I keep feeling like I need to explain to people what it is you're going through. You didn't "just" lose your grandmother, you lost your MIM."  He couldn't be more right.

Mim and I had a special bond from the start.  She had 2 boys, so I was the little girl she'd always wanted to spoil and dress in cute clothes.  She was one of my first playmates and best friends.  I spent countless hours at her house when I was little, especially since we only lived a mile from her house until I turned 6.  After we moved away, we still visited all the time on weekends and I spent at least a week (usually longer) at her house in the summertime.  We had secrets that we promised never to share with anyone else, secrets I'm now the sole bearer of.  We had a blast together, talking about everything from pop culture (she was an avid Hard Copy and National Enquirer fan) to boys to fashion to food.

She cheated at gin rummy. She was a brittle diabetic, she knew I worried about her blood sugar. I remember being about 15 and playing a long game with her, a game at which she was kicking my tail.  Suddenly she screamed, "OH, help me! I need a Coke! "  So I jumped up and grabbed one for her, then, once she'd had a few sips, we returned to our game.  While I was up, she'd stacked the deck.  She laughed and laughed.  I swore never to play with her again.  We played for hours the very next day.

When I was very young, she was my real-life imaginary friend, Sue.  We went on grand adventure to the park, chased the ice cream man down the street, ate our weight in McDonald's hashbrowns and swam in her neighbor's pool.  Mim was in her early 40s at the time and sported a bikini.  I am 35 and think twice about leaving the house in capri pants.

She loved "flashy" clothes with bright colors, cute shoes and jewelry. Oh, my, did she love her jewelry.  Whenever she'd see me, particularly during the college years when my wardrobe consisted of sweat pants and flannel shirts, she'd scoff and say, "Jennifer, you need to wear your jewelry."  She reminded me many, many times over the years of the need to accessorize.  When I turned 25, she gave me a gorgeous black diamond necklace that she'd received for her own 25th birthday.  I wear it as much as I possibly can now.

She adored the color yellow and instilled in me the belief that every house should have at least one yellow room because it will make you happy.  Above all material things, she adored butterflies and collected them throughout her life.  We buried her in a brand new yellow sweater and a butterfly necklace I'd bought her at EPCOT Center on a high school dance team trip to Disney World.

She was in the hospital for a problem with her eyes when she had a massive heart attack.  She spent her last few days in the Cardiac ICU, where she received excellent care and where we were treated like royalty.  We were allowed to stay with her for as long as we wanted.  Two days before she died, the last day I was able to be with her, I brought in my iPad and filled it with music she loved.  We listened to Rod Stewart and Engelbert Humperdink.  We reminisced, I told her stories about Dean, we laughed, we held hands, we looked each other in the eye.  She gave me explicit instructions about a few things she wanted me and only me to take from her house.  She went over exactly how she wanted her graveside service to go.

On Thursday, March 22 with my dad by her side, she quietly slipped away. 

And now she's gone.

So much doesn't make sense.  I've never lived in a world without her in it, so I've felt adrift over the past four weeks.  I've picked up the phone to call her several times.  I bought a card with butterflies on it today, just because it made me think of her.

I know I'll see her again someday, but it's so hard not having her here now.  I'm pressing on because I have to.  It's what you do.  Life doesn't stop. Everything is heightened, though.  Right after she died, I felt the lines between Heaven and Earth were very, very blurred, like I could almost reach out and touch the hereafter.  Those lines are becoming more clear every day, though, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. 

Loss is something I've certainly experienced before, but this  one is hitting me harder than anything else ever has.  I'm going to take it day to day, the only thing you can do, and think of her as often as I can. 

And I'm painting my guest room yellow.

Merry. Also Bright.

Christmas was downright perfect this year.  We hosted my grandmother and my parents and Dean got everything on his list. I realize Christmas is not about material things, but it sure was nice to see his face light up when he saw that Santa had delivered the two toys he's been talking about for MONTHS.

I'm not sure I could think of 2 more opposite requests than the ever-manly Optimus Prime and the very pink LaLaLoopsy Ferris Wheel.  Both have been played with for HOURS already, along with the slew of other prizes from Santa, us and the grandparents. 

This is the coveted Samurai castle. It has a million parts, all of which move, a dragon wagon (bottom left) and a whole bunch of Ninjas who can change their "costumes" as Dean calls them.  It's pretty rad.

Dean had a blast jumping on playing with my grandma.  Lucky for us, she's got more energy than the rest of the family combined. 

We loved hosting Christmas at our house. We gave the place a deep-cleaning in the days before company arrived, decorated the yard, even broke out the festive Christmasy kitchenware.  We abandoned the traditional turkey meal in favor of Marcus's killer flank steak, served with my own roasted brussels sprouts (with bacon, of course), baked sweet potatoes, huge salad, lima beans (my family's favorite), awesome bread and approximately 6000 desserts made by my grandma.

We opened presents all day long, enjoying every package, playing with toys, laughing at this and that.  It was a perfectly relaxing Christmas and Dean had the time of his life.

Hope yours was just as merry.

Chutney

Casey has good ideas a lot of the time.  She just rescued two sweet kitties. (Go look at her pictures. Your heart will melt.)  She keeps talking about them. It makes me want to pet them.

Every time Marcus takes Benadryl, we somehow end up talking about getting a cat. He's been talking about it a lot lately while NOT on Benadryl, so I finally figured out that OH. He's serious.  Dean's getting to the age where he is perfectly capable of helping care for a pet.  It seemed like just the thing our home might be missing.

Today we swung by Pet Smart, like ya do, where they house shelter kitties for adoption.  There were two gorgeous 7 month old torties, Tasha and Tisha. While we were standing there, Tisha got adopted. We talked to Tasha through the glass and she was responsive to us.  Marcus got very quiet. We looked at some other stuff, then left the store. 

We thought about her all afternoon.  Finally, after about 2 hours, Marcus said, "Her name is Chutney." And with that, she was ours. We loaded Dean into the car, drove back to the store and adopted ourselves a kitty.

This sort of crummy phone picture does not do her justice. She has the most gorgeous red highlights in her coat and one adorable khaki-colored paw.  She's a little nervous right now--she's had a big day, after all.  But we're all giving her space and taking our time getting to know her.  I think after a while she'll fit right in.

I'll Fiddle Your Rooster

Dean, Grammy, Papa and I spent yesterday at the Fiddlin' Rooster Farm Fall Festival (say that three times fast!).  It was FUN.

Dean learned how to rope cattle and we rode a cow-themed train.  There were chickens to see and pig races, corn cobs to shoot at targets and a huge corn maze.  We climbed a haystack and slid down a really fast slide.

The weather was perfect, the refreshments tasty.  

We had ourselves a big ol' time.

What did you do this weekend?

Disney...On Ice!

Last night was a very worthwhile splurge for our little family.  A couple of weeks ago, Marcus heard a radio ad for Disney On Ice and decided we should take Dean.  Never one to turn down a night out or anything with the word DISNEY in the title, I wholeheartedly agreed.  He poked around online a bit and found that there was a 20% opening night discount.  Then he bought front row tickets, declaring, "If we're gonna do it, let's do it right." And boy howdy, did we.

"Mama, what's gonna HAPPEN?"

(Also, LOOK! Actual photographic evidence that I go places with my family! Who knew you could just hand the camera to your husband and make that happen?)

Dean really didn't understand what we were going to see prior to the event.  He just knew he was wearing special clothes, big boy shoes and getting to eat dinner in a restaurant.  He enjoyed his cheesey pizza, declaring it "kinda good."  In true Disney form, you were immediately bombarded with souvenier options, most of which were astronomical in price.  We settled for the least expensive, but definitely the cutest, option:

Flounder hat and cotton candy combo for the win!

When the show started, Dean was very quiet.  He didn't really react at first, unless you count the fact that his eyes grew to the size of saucers when Mickey and Minnie entered the rink.  However, even Mr. Cool couldn't resist a squeal of delight when these guys appeared:

TIMON AND PUMBA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dean said, "Daddy, you see that?"  We enjoyed the Lion King portion of the show, except for the fact that adult Simba looked more like a Jellicle Cat than a lion.  We loved The Little Mermaid and Lilo and Stitch.  I realized around 3pm the day of the show that Dean had no idea who Lilo and Stitch were, so we watched some YouTube clips so he would recognize him.  Their rendition of "Burning Love" brought the house down. 

At intermission, we watched the zamboni:

I'm a sucker for a zamboni.  When I was in college, we hosted a Russian production of Swan Lake on ice, for which our students served as crew.  One thing they asked for were volunteers to stay overnight and make the ice stage.  I was ALL OVER that, mostly because I thought the job would involve driving a zamboni in the wee hours of the morning. Imagine my surprise when I was handed a pair of rubber boots and a garden hose and told to "walk the ice" every half hour. LAME. But I digress.

The second act was all Peter Pan.  Dean absolutely loves Captain Hook and Mr. Smee, so it was nice that they happened to spend a lot of their time addressing our side of the arena.

Overall, it was an awesome night and certainly money well-spent. I hope he remembers it forever.

Comfort Food Saturday: Blueberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese and Lime Frosting

 

BLUEBERRY CUPCAKES

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup milk

 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

LIME CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

8 oz. cream cheese
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon lime juice
Zest of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix dry ingredients for cupcakes together in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs, milk, vanilla and softened butter.  Mix with hand or stand mixer on low for 30 seconds, then increase speed to medium.  Mix for approximately 2 minutes, until well-blended and smooth.  Fold in blueberries with wooden spoon.  Drop batter into lined muffin tin, using an ice cream scoop.  Bake 18-22 minutes, until toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool completely.

For frosting, allow cream cheese to soften on counter for about 10 minutes.  Combine butter and cream cheese with mixer until well-blended, about 3 minutes.  Add lime juice and zest and mix.  Add confectioners' sugar 1/2 cup at a time and mix well.  Spread or pipe onto cupcakes.



Enjoy!

 

DC in a Nutshell

 
We were there for three weeks. We did a LOT. The boys had a blast.

 
My nephews are huge.

 
This water park? Was the bomb!

 
The water park was the ultimate place for Dean.  He could climb things AND get sprayed by hoses. SCORE.

 
Dean, Adam, Uncle Mike, Marcus and I went to the movies twice, on rainy days. We saw RIO and Kung Fu Panda 2 (again). It was great, great fun.

 
This little cutie pie is Lukas. Here, he seems to be doing his best Elvis impersonation.  It took him a bit to warm up, but by the end of our trip, he loved his Aunt Jen, especially when we'd sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" together.  Dean and I babysat him one morning and Dean kept asking, "Baby Lukey, you okaaaaaaaay?  Are you okaaaaaaaay?  He's okay, Mama."

 
Marcus turned 41 while we were there. We celebrated with ice cream cake, complete with blue icing.  He and I also went on a real! live! date! to see INXS.  Marcus was very bent out of shape because Berlin was opening for them.  I was actually excited because my inner-seventh-grader wanted to geek out when they sang "Take My Breath Away."  Marcus actually enjoyed them a lot in spite of himself.  He walked all the way over to the aisle when Terri Nunn walked through the audience so he could hi-5 her and get some phone pics.  INXS was great.  We are not huge fans of the new lead singer, but I mean, no one is going to replace Michael Hutchence, you know?  The highlight of the evening for me was watching the Farris brothers sing a beautiful accoustic version of "Don't Change." It was a blast to be out with my husband listening to some great music.

 
Pop Pop made bamboo cane poles for the boys. Neither was very good at fishing, but I think they appreciated the sentiment. They also had a really good time playing in all the mud on the bank.

 
My favorite thing we did was the Potomac Pirate Adventure. They load you up on a boat and sail you around the Potomac for 40 minutes while a mildly scary man teaches you to be a pirate. Dean The Dangerous was REALLY into it. We all had a blast being pirates and seeing the sites from the River.

 
The photo above was taken on what definitely qualifies as one of the top five hottest days of my life. So what did we do? Took the little fair-skinned children to the park!  They were pretty much done within an hour of our arrival. We did get them to hold out long enough to ride the carousel, which Lukas HATED because he had to ride with me instead of his daddy. But the park was pretty awesome, complete with tons of bridges, things to climb on and a really nice maze.

 
When it was time to come back home, Dean was a great travel buddy, doing a little light reading at the airport and taking a good nap on the plane.  We just barely made our connection in ATL and had our plane not landed at the next gate over from where we needed to catch our connection, we would have been stuck in ATL for SIX HOURS. Thank God for small favors.

When we got home, this had happened:

 
The good news is that it didn't fall on the house.  Dean is very concerned and keeps suggesting we attach the tree to Marcus's truck and pull.  Marcus cut a lot of the small branches off with his chainsaw today, but said he needs a bigger chainsaw to get the larger ones. He is seriously contemplating renting a chainsaw from Home Depot. (Raise your hand if you think THAT is a bad idea!) But we'll get it handled.  More than anything right now, we're happy to be home in our own beds with our own toys.  Chainsaws and all.

Preparing to Peace Out

We're gearing up for our annual trip to the DC area to visit Marcus's side of the family.  This year, we've decided to fly and Dean is beside himself with excitement.  Every morning he tells me, "We got to go to the airport, get some juice (I love his priorities), take off our shoes (security), get on the airplane, buckle the seat belt and take off!"  Whenever we ask who we're going to see he yells "Uncle Mikey!!!!!!!!" (That's Marcus's brother. He's a lot of fun.) This will be the  first time since last August that we've seen our nephews, Adam and Lukas.  We're looking forward to trips to the park and nature reserve, riding the merry go round at the lake and playing in G-Mama's basement, which is absolutely packed with cool toys. 

I feel like the boys are finally old enough to go and see some of the sights of DC this year.  Dean, of course, would be happy to spend every day in a museum looking at dinosaur fossils.  Adam is obsessed with camping, so there might be a front yard campout with sons and dads.  (I"ll be inside eating pie with my mother in law.)  Pop Pop is making the boys cane poles out of bamboo from their backyard, so there will definitely be fishing. (As if there were any doubt about that.)  Marcus and I have a few new dishes in our repertoire that we want to make for everyone.

Mostly this visit will be just that--a visit, a time for us all to get reacquainted, to see how much the boys have grown, and to play. Oh, my mercy, will we play.

 

Easter

 Admit it.  It's my catchy titles that keep you coming back.

It's been a while since my little family of three had (more or less) an entire weekend with just the three of us.  We had originally planned to go out of town for Easter, but those plans fell through, so I got to work filling our Saturday and Sunday with fun activities to do as a famiy.

Saturday morning, we headed to our favorite park for our town's Easter Egg Hunt.  Dean had a great time hunting eggs, seeing the extremely creepy life-sized Easter Bunny and playing on the playground.

 

 
After the egg hunt, we stopped by Panera to grab a quick lunch.  Dean was in kids' meal Heaven. He ordered macaroni and cheese (which is GREAT there), a fruit cup and juice and they threw in a yogurt as part of his meal. He ate and ate and ate.  After lunch, we headed to the movies to see HOP. This was only Dean's second time at the movies and he did pretty well.

 
Our movie theatre provides these dreamy booster seats. Dean tolerated it during the previews while he was enjoying his gummi bears, then stood up (on my foot) the second the movie started. He only tried to escape once, which I counted as Success!  The movie was cute, but had a bit too much live action and not enough bunny rabbit for Dean's liking.

Saturday night, Marcus grilled some amazingly good ribs and we played outside until the sun went down.

Sunday morning, Dean woke up and we went down to check out his loot from the Easter Bunny.

 
Kid racked up!  Not all that is from the bunny, though.  Some of it was sent by his Nana and Pop Pop, some by his GG. He also got a pre-Easter basket from my mom and dad last weekend when we visited them.  (Forgive the clutter behind the table.  It's our old pack n play and a Huggies box full of baby stuff for a friend who's having a little boy next month.)

Dean LOVED everything in his basket, with the dinosaurs taking a slight edge for first place in his heart.  We read all the books, stuck stickers all over ourselves and sorted through the edible things.  Then this happened:

 
This child done decided he LOVES the chocolate bunnies.  In fact, he talked about this one (which he devoured before breakfast) so much that Marcus bought him another one on Tuesday.

The rest of Easter Sunday was spent around the house painting, playing outside and eating a tasty brunch.  That evening, we went out on the boat. This was Dean's first trip out and he had an absolute blast!  He grabbed the little emergency paddle that you use if your motor gives out, declared it his Diego paddle and proceeded to sing the "rescue pack" song from Go Diego Go. Then he let the paddle go in the water and that was pretty much the end of that.

 
Marcus caught a couple of small bass while we were out and, as usual, Dean was stoked. He held the fish and told them they were cute.

 

All was dandy until we had to let the fish go back to his watery home.

 
Tears. GIANT SAD TEARS.  Marcus tried to gently explain how the fish couldn't breathe if he was out of the water and that he probably needed to get home for dinner anyway or his fish mom would worry about him, but still. Tears.  We had to go home shortly after this picture was taken.

Once everyone got home and calmed down, we spread out on the hood of my car, looked at the stars and talked about our favorite things we'd done over the weekend.  If it wasn't a perfect weekend, it was pretty darn close.