Christmas Movie Marathon

There are a few things that my family does every Christmas season regardless of how hectic or behind we are feeling.  1) We bake.  We bake like we are trying to feed a small country.  Usually producing a ridiculous amount of cookies and fudge.  Telling ourselves that we have probably worked off enough calories in the creation of said delectables to consume a fair amount of them.  Over the years this day of baking has been deemed "Cookie Day". Stay tuned for photos and summary of this years Cookie Day festivities.  2) We shop.  Now this one is tricky because holiday shopping should presumably be completed alone in order to be done efficiently, but alas we do not do it alone and because of this my mother is ALWAYS the last one I have to buy for...  3) I shop with my dad.  Only once each year do I shop with my dad.  Our shopping trip is usually on Christmas eve or the day before. He hates to shop, I've told him every year for as long as I can remember that if he would shop a week or two earlier he wouldn't hate it so much, but I'm pretty sure he likes to despise the mall so I know I'm totally out of luck.  Luckily, the only person we have to shop for by that time is, as I already mentioned, my mother.  4) We see Santa.  An expensive and kind of silly tradition in my mind.  5 minutes with the man in red reveals a $37 charge on my debit card...  5)  We watch movies.  Most of the wonderful christmas movies we watch are ones that we don't actually have to watch, we listen to them as we visit or wrap packages or bake.  There have been a few newer movies to have a rapid assent up the holiday movie favorites list but usually the new ones fall short when compared to the real favorites.

Some of my all time favorites, in no particular order:

The Family Man (with the fabulous Mr. Cage)
White Christmas (because it always reminds me of my Grandma)
While you were sleeping (vintage Sandra Bullock is always great)
Love Actually (What's christmas without a bunch of brits?)
Little Women (the newer one with my favorite batman, Christian Bale)
Charlie Brown Christmas (duh)
The Royal Tanenbaums (Not exactly a christmas movie, but tannenbaum means fir tree, and they use the song from the charlie brown christmas, so I call it a gimme.)
The Grinch (Call me a sell out, but I still like the Jim Carey version better than the old animated classic)
Holiday Inn (Again because it reminds me of my Grandma)
A Muppet Christmas Carol (Love love love me some muppets)
Elf (instant classic)
It's a wonderful life (Because it's great. And my mom loves it.)


Did I miss any?  Which ones are at the top of your list?

http://movies.ign.com/articles/670/670493p2.html

Thanksgiving Snow

Ok, forgive me, I'm going to try to get APS up to speed on current events.  I'll start with the Thanksgiving week snowstorm, it was a good one.  Gwennie was pretty stoked to get to miss school on an already short week due to the holiday weekend.  Tula was excited to have something new going on, although she really wasn't that impressed when she was actually playing in the snow.  I initially thought the rain chain icicles were absolutely beautiful, but then after they kept increasing in size as the days progressed, I just ended up losing sleep over the thought of the heavy ice ripping all the gutters off the house at any given minute.  I'll be taking the chains down prior to the next expected cold snap!  Matty earned some street cred with the local adult beverage establishments by hiking around in the snow and delivering his wares.  The white stuff was certainly a great way to bring in the holiday season.

The Beerman's wife

So, something like a month ago Hubby got a job.  He wasn't looking, it just sort of fell into his lap... er, hand perhaps?

An old friend of ours and her husband own a small Seattle brewery and they asked Hubby if he would be their Tacoma beer rep.  After much hesitation and deliberation he said he'd give it a go.  My husband has an engineers brain, an environmentalists conscience, and a politicians gift for gab.  Besides all that, he's frugal... quite frugal.  Salesmen have no hope of hocking their product to him, he's done fine without it thus far, so obviously he just doesn't need it.  Salesman?  Hubby?  I have known him for 15 years and never have I imagined him a salesman, but alas... it's beer, and it's good beer, so I guess the salesman part isn't so much.  In the end... he's out of the house two days a week, and he gets paid to talk about beer and perform "quality control".  How in the world did that happen?  Apparently the stars were aligned perfectly and they were in the shape of a pint glass.

So me?  Well, I'm getting used to having the household tasks be solely mine two days each week, which I must say is more difficult than I remember it.  And I'm getting used to having empty kegs, firkins and coolers on my porch, which I must say is making me feel a bit like a party girl living in a frat house (except for the fact that I didn't get any of the beverages in aforementioned beverage storage units!).

In any case, I'm warming up to the new life of having two working parents.  It's odd, sometimes uncomfortable, and kinda hard to explain, but this working thing is working out.

Last week Hubby's new work had a potluck for the employees and their families.  Every employee picked an ingredient and the group made a small batch brew.  The fam-damily et al got  a mini lesson in micro brews and in 10 days time we can throw back a pint of the new brew.  Good times had by all and the girls got to try out their new role as brewery rats.  I think they liked it.

Top 10

We are constantly learning new things.  Sometimes we fight it, sometimes we welcome it.  Some lessons are worth sharing.   In the spirit of this, I will give you the top 10 things that I have learned this year.

10) Overstock.com is like Toys'R'Us for grown ups.  Only better.  And cheaper.  Overstock may rival Etsy as my resource for awesome.  But nothing really will ever surpass Etsy.

9) Nothing beats doing crafts with my kids.  The look of accomplishment on their sweet little faces is priceless.  The way they show projects off to anyone who comes over to visit...  However, being the perfectionist that I am, I find crafts with children one of the most stressful things I could do with my time.  I'm glad that I do it.  I know the girls will appreciate it later in life.  But it really is a pain in the ass.  I hate glitter.  I loathe dried glue on counter tops.  And in the end,  where in the heck am I supposed to put this crap that we've made?  When you get *beautiful handmade artwork* for christmas this year, you will know why.

8) The Nintendo Wii may be the best thing that I've purchased in many years.  It wins hands down in all categories.  Cost per use, ease of use, versatility... you name it.  And it's allegiance to Netflix, well, that was just genius.

7) Human lactation is perhaps the most amazing thing that humans can do.  The more I learn about it the more I am awed.  Not only can a woman grow a small human inside her own body, but she can then continue to grow that human giving it everything it can possibly need.  And perhaps more amazingly, she still wants to feed and nurture this creature after it's made its brutal way out of her body.  Just amazing.

6) Cougar Gold is the best thing to come out of Pullman, Wa.  Perhaps that's cheating.  I've known that for years.  It was just reinforced this year when my 2 year old decided that it's the best cheese ever.  

5) I start more projects than I can possibly finish.  Currently, my front porch floor is half stripped of 85 years of paint.  My guest room trim boards are half stripped of paint and stain.  The basement crap has been sorted, re-organized and abandoned multiple times over.  Truth is, home projects are my therapy.  Perhaps the fact that it's unfinished simply means that I found closure in what ever was troubling me...  perhaps.  Or maybe my arms were just too tired to finish and the fumes got a little too thick. 

4) My husband is a domestic God.

3) I'm pretty sure that my dogs cost me more money this year than my kids.  Yep, pretty sure.

2) Having both of my sisters live on the East Coast sucks.  A lot.

1) Kids are hard.  They make my heart burst. They make my blood boil.  Loving someone so much, even when they wake you up every day hours before your alarm... Teaching a person to be an independent thinker while in the same breath you are telling them to do what you tell them to do... it becomes so challenging that most days I think my head might explode!  But miraculously, it doesn't.  

Gray Inspiration

Washington is home.  I have lived here all my life.  I love it.  It is a large part of who I am.  And here comes the but...  Gray ugh, seriously gray.  Usually I am somewhat immune to the gray nastiness that invades the lives of us northwesterners.  But today, perhaps with the catalysts of unruly little girls and mild self inflicted "dehydration", I find myself inspired by the gray to become a catatonic slug.


After multiple cups of coffee and a cheese omelette (my usual cure for *dehydration*), I still find myself drab at best.  Flipping through Netflix instant cue proved to be just too challenging and I set down the remote for a quick nap.  Mildly refreshed, and prodded off the couch by my 5 year old, I set off to attack APS blog post #2.  Here goes:


Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

-Douglas Adams

And I think that's about all for today.  

Apple Pepper Soup

I'm not the world's best cook.  I think I can say that I'm not the worst either.  I can make a pretty kick ass quiche.  I can bake a beautiful batch of cupcakes.  And oh man, I can make scones.  But occasionally, with the best of intentions and the best of instructions, my recipes go awry.

One such recipe was that for a butternut squash soup.  It was a lovely recipe and sounded fabulous.  It was fairly easy to make.  It was beautiful in the bowl.  However... It called for the addition of apples, and an ungodly amount of pepper.

I remember my kind sister-in-law saying after her first bite, "Oh, what was it you said was in this?" There was a lot of laughter at the table and the dish was renamed "Apple Pepper Soup".  In the end, all the soup ended up down the drain and it wasn't anything a bottle of wine and some grilled cheese sandwiches couldn't fix.  

Occasionally, life hands you a big bowl of Apple Pepper Soup and says "eat up".  I'm just glad that there's usually someone there with me cracking jokes.