Seanna (n. shaw-nuh)

Let's see, where was I?

I have no idea.  It's only been a few days, right?  I've been busy!  Yesterday I did my part-time thing and I also managed to throw together 11 cards for the monthly card swap.  I actually liked the result better than some of the fussier stuff I've done.  Simple.  Simple is good sometimes.  Next month is a Christmas theme.  I think I already have all the stuff and I know what I want to do for that one.  My husband actually used about 10 of the cards I've received in the swaps today--he gave out Halloween cards and candy to some of his coworkers.  Awww, cute.  It was nice to see them be put to good use.  He went through and evaluated each card and gave his opinion, also cute.

Want to see one of my children competing in a sporting event?  Of course you do!

Yeah, we were proud.  I didn't get shots of the pushups or the pullups part of the competition.  It was held in the weight room and it was really sort of smelly in there.  Gross.

She also finished up pretty darn well in Cross Country, but I am confused about her final stats so I won't post them here yet.  I will probably get them wrong and then she will read this while she's in class and email me to correct it and then get caught and get in trouble.  Here's a photo of her right after she finished a race:

 

That's a good look for her, I think.

So, let's see.  Interesting week.  If this was not a public blog I would have all sorts of things to say about it, but it is public and thus, I must sanitize things.  Suffice it to say that it's been a disappointing week in some ways. One interesting development that I can talk about:  Apparently my brother-in-law is coming to hang out with us for a little while.  He is a musician.  I think he's currently doing stuff out of Nashville but I can never quite keep up with him.  I'm sure I'll find out fairly soon, though. 

I think we are going to Knoxville later, if we can get there and back in time to pick P up after the game tonight.  It's an away game, so she will probably be late.  I think we can do it.  Is this weekend "fall back" weekend?  If so, YAY!  An extra hour of sleep.  I like this upcoming half of the year better than the one we just finished. 

Christmas shopping, how are we doing?  I am just about done, I think.  I may try to get the trees up a little earlier than usual this year.  We've had my brother's family over for Thanksgiving for the past few years but this year they are coming for Christmas instead, so I think I want to get a jump on all that kind of early.  Not like next-week early, but earlier than usual. 

I think I'm out.  Gotta go make the rounds.  Have a good weekend!

It's 39 degrees!

But I have super-fuzzy socks on, so it's OK.  I'm sitting here in my studio checking out all the gorgeous trees.  I think I can report that we are just about at the peak of the fall color--at least in my yard.  There's gold, and brown, lots of orange and some RED.  I think the red is my favorite.  Still lots of green, too (well, pine trees--they're just old green faithfuls, aren't they?).  I'll try to take some photos of it all a little later, when I get out of my PJs and go do my Tuesday errands.  It's the beginning of what I consider my work week, so I try to stay up late on Monday night and then sleep late Tuesday so the 6p to 2:30a thing doesn't present such a shock to my system. It's only like that three nights a week.  Tomorrow, P has a dental appointment and I have a sort-of meeting at work.  They are doing their yearly Christmas Club signups, and for the past two years I've said I will sign up and then I never do.  THIS TIME I am signing up.  We tend to go way overboard at Christmas for the little cherubs, so this will be good, I think.  A defined amount of $$ to spend, and it accrues at the snowball interest rate of 3.9% woohoo!  Anyway, that means two days out and about, that's no fun.  I have to pick up the prophylactic dental antibiotics today so I can give them to P to take at school tomorrow, right before the appointment. 

Speaking of Christmas, I am still working on our Christmas preparations.  Are you done shopping?  I am not.  Almost, though. I would go into more detail, but as you may have noticed from reading the comments, the children read my blog.  Hello, children.  Are you at school reading my blog right now?  You should get back to work before you get caught and have to explain yourselves.

I have been assigned with the task of setting up a family blog.  I don't know if I want to do it here on Typepad, although I've grown pretty accustomed to how it all works here.  I think maybe wordpress or blogspot might be a better choice for a family blog.  It will be for my fabulous husband's fabulous extended family.  So far, I've done a big fat nothing on it, of course.

Let's see, other than the dentist and various annoying errands, what's on tap for me this week?  Well, I have a card swap due on Thursday that I need to get going on.  We've also been invited to a Halloween/housewarming party on Saturday night--even the Mustang Boys were invited, wow!  The next-door neighbor bought a house in a neighboring county and invited us to come hang out.  The house she was living in is her aunt's house, so the aunt will still be next door to us, meaning no new neighbors. 

In other news, I finally did all the irritating hand wash/delicate/totally odious laundry that was lurking in my laundry sorter.  Do you ever do that?  Let it pile up for ages because it's such a big pain to do, as if you literally have to drag it down to the river and beat it gently with rocks and then lug the wet clothes back up to your clothes line?  It's kind of silly when you think about it, but just about everyone I know admits to letting that kind of laundry live in filth for as long as humanly possible.  This time it was mostly sweaters.  But it's obviously sweater time around here (it's 39 degrees!).  In my defense, at least half of them were lurking not in my laundry sorter, but in various hampers in children's rooms for...geez, I guess six months?  CHILDREN!  I actually have been regularly washing my own sweaters so far this season--now that I've done the over-50-pound weight loss thing, a lot of them are too big but still wearable and I would like to get one more season out of them before they are hopefully just way too big to even consider wearing. 

Yeah, that's not really exciting other news, is it?  I suppose that's my cue to get outta here and make my day count. You do the same!

Thanks for the prayers for Peggy!

And the emails, too.  You guys are so nice.  I think my fabulous husband and I are going to pay her a visit today.

Right now we have a house full of six girls, ranging in age from 8 to 19.  We kept my friend's girls overnight so she could have her annual Halloween Bash.  They completely transform their house, turn their living room into a dance floor, have all kinds of food and alcohol--it's pretty cool.  This year we went for the first time but we only stayed about a half-hour.  It was really quite spectacular but we were apparently not in drinking/party mode.  There were some interesting costumes.  I believe one involved a merkin.  Google it.  I am not even going to link you to help you out.  Gahhhhhhhhh.

Before the party, though, we prepared 15 Boo packages.  This involved having the girls stamp little toppers with this stamp set:

and then putting candy in a bag and stapling the toppers on.  I think I actually got a few shots of the finished toppers (but not the finished package).   I wish I had gotten some photos of the BOOing itself because it was SO much fun.  SOO much fun.  We did people we knew and also total strangers.  Of course, we had to do my favorite house. 

Aren't they so cute?  You can see the arm of their big sister in the background.  It was so much fun.  I miss my girlies being this age.  These girls are a lot of fun, too.  They were amazed and horrified at the state of the 19-year-old's room and marveled at how much trouble they would be in if they let their room get that bad ("A belt would be involved," said one of the little ones, hahahahahaha.)  The girl in pink was so impressed with it that when one of the 16-year-olds came home, she took her upstairs to show her and said "B sleeps here."  P said, "Yup, every night."  "How can she sleep in this disgusting mess?"  Hahahaha.  Dissed by the under-10 set.  Anyway, we BOOed people all over town.  You should see my poor stamps.  They are b-l-a-c-k.  I had forgotten how vigorous little kids are with stamps and ink.  It's nice to see my stamps so well used, though.  Yay!!  I think prior to this project, only the spiderweb and spider had seen ink.

Speaking of spiders, I can report a most excellent development.  Apparently my fabulous husband has encountered someone at work who was bitten by a brown recluse recently.  They rushed her to the ER but I think the damage was still fairly bad.  [Edited to add:  Obviously that part is not the excellent development, oops.]  He is now making a particular point to stomp on and kill every spider he sees in the fear that it might be a brown recluse.  Yes, I know.  Spiders eat bugs, spiders are good, we need spiders, spiders are God's creatures.  WHATEVER.  I hate the nasty things and I will just have the quarterly pest control guys kill all the other bugs, thanks very much.  I think hating/fearing spiders is a healthy, positive thing.  That's why I've passed the hate/fear on to my girls.  I consider it a good survival skill.  Now I have another devoted follower in my anti-spider cult.  And he is big and fierce.  The spiders don't stand a chance now.  We came home from BOOing last night to see him stomping something into oblivion, and then he explained his new mission.  "I'm killing every dadgum spider I see now; they might be a brown recluse." 

Happy Halloween!  Unless you're a spider.

Hey, do you pray?

That's my mother-in-law on the left.  Can't you just tell how great she is from the photo?  A more put-together woman you will not find in these parts.  She's always got the jewelry to match the outfit, always fixes her hair and makeup even to run to the store.   Don't mind my daughter there on the right, reading a CosmoGirl or whatever. 

Anyway, so if you pray, could you say a prayer for Peggy?  She's pretty much the best mother-in-law on the planet (much like her husband, Bill, is the best father-in-law on the planet).  Something's going on, might be serious, might not be. Let's pray for the "not," OK?  Thank you very much. 

Gorgeous Tuesday

I don't even like Tuesdays but this one is growing on me.  It's 65 degrees during the noon hour.  I had to go out to run some errands and my hair is telling me that the humidity must be low--I am having a glorious, shampoo commercial quality hair day.  Yay!  You don't get many of those when you pretty much have the world's most obnoxiously curly hair.

I found out today that my part-time gig will be ending in about a month, but hopefully will pick back up after that.  If not, my regular job has certainly picked up, so it's OK either way. 

I also found out that some of my Christmas gift plans have hit a snag, so I am going to have to go back to researching alternatives.  Hate when that happens but it will all work out.  I have faith.

Today was a good mail day.  I received this:

from one of those used Amazon bookseller people.  I think the book was 50 cents and then it was 3.99 to mail it.  Weird.  I am expecting this:

sometime this week.  I have decided we are going to be instituting family movie nights, so since it's October and I love Stephen King, this was the choice.  I think the girls will relate to it better than the Nicholson version, plus I love Rebecca DeMornay and I am not a fan of Shelley Duvall.  She's OK.  I'm just not a fan.  Obviously Nicholson trumps the dude in the photo above, though.  Nicholson trumps everyone, let's face it.  Anyway, so that's the first installment in the Family Movie Series.  I think I also ordered this:

because I kept hearing how good it is.  It's young adult, so the girls can read it when I'm done with it.

I also got the stuff I need to make my little Christmas gifties for coworkers and the like.  I'll show you one when I have one done.  It's going to be the easiest gift ever and actually useful.  And economical.  It's a little out of the box for me since it involves digital stuff, but I think it will work out great.  Probably $2.00 per gift but really neat.  Since I'm on a diet, it's better than baking a bunch of food.  Although I will probably do that, too. 

This is the beginning of my work week (it's how I think of it, anyway), so I should be off to take a nap or run another errand or something.  Anything but loafing on the computer.  I have the entire weekend off unless we have overtime, so that's a good thing.  I think we are having overnight guests on Saturday night.  They are of the under-10 persuasion, so I think we might go do some BOO-ing if they want to.  I'm guessing they will want to.  We are invited to their parents' Halloween party and that sounds fun, too, but honestly the BOO-ing sounds more fun to me.  Hmmm. What to do...

At least the carpets are clean upstairs.  I did that yesterday.  They were gross.  I actually have a little more to do up there in the laundry room but I might just call it a day.  This is a good time of year to do that--the carpets dried pretty darn quick.  Don't you hate emptying the dirty carpet shampoo water?  Blech.  Really, blech.  On the other hand, now they're clean, right?  Or at least, cleaner than they were. 

OK, I'm out.  Except for one thing:  Hi, Bill!  You are the greatest father-in-law in the history of the world--hope your back is better!  XOXOX

Are these teens playing a board game?

My favorite part about this shot is all the video game controllers and wires in the background.  Granted, they are to video game systems that are no longer state of the art, but they are still used quite a bit up here in the Teen Cave.  Missing from the photo is P, who was downstairs doing her homework.  Her boyfriend would run downstairs and ask her, "Do you want to buy Marvin Gardens?" and other assorted questions.  Then she landed on the jail space, so he got a break for quite a few turns.  I believe in the end, it was as I predicted--the person who owned and controlled Boardwalk and Park Place dominated the game. That would be the boy in the brown shirt, by the way. 

Hey, I took some better shots of my favorite house.  I think I mentioned that.  These are from the front:

I wonder how much work they had to do to get it to be this incredibly great.  It has to be an old house, don't you think?

They sure do have a lot of pumpkins, huh?  Look at the two itty bitty windows up in the gable on the second floor.  Those are just cool.   I had thought the garage was detached, but apparently not.  Even better.  Yeah, it's pretty much just great.  Right in the center of the city, too.  Love it. 

Ooh, and I got better photos of Obama Street.  It still doesn't really capture it but it does a better job than the other ones I posted:

And here's where we parked so we could trespass on people's lawns to get the Obama Street photos.  This is the nearest cross street.  I was struck by how cute it was as we walked back to the car.  That might have been the last convertible day for a while--for me, anyway.

So, it's Monday.  The glory of Monday.  Everyone is back to school or back to work.  I did my normal half day of work and now I'm free until tomorrow night.  I have some deep cleaning to do upstairs and then some vacuuming and kitchen stuff (just regular stuff) but after that I'm footloose.  I was thinking about steam cleaning the carpets upstairs but gosh.  That doesn't sound like fun, does it?  They really need it, though.  I would just do my bedroom and the laundry room.  I dunno.  We do have one of those Bissell steam cleaners and plenty of the goo you use to shampoo carpets, but what if my feet get wet?  Then they might get cold and I just got out of a nice, hot steamy shower.  Right now I am in the studio with my little ceramic space heater, even though it's in the 60s outside.  I need to turn it off; that's kind of ridiculous.  It was in the 30s here this morning, though.

I guess I should get on with it.  I hope you have a fun, productive, autumnal Monday!!

It's a chilly Saturday!

Yay!  I hear football on in the kitchen (yes, we have a TV in the kitchen; it lives on the shelf above the microwave and is the flat kind but not the big-screen kind) and there is a pot of homemade chicken broth/soup bubbling on the stove, so it smells good, too.  It is 59 degrees at just before 4:00 p.m.

I was assigned some overtime this weekend but I need a steady internet connection to work, and my internet has been kind of spazzing out on me lately.  The internet guy is due to come over in a little while to fix it/check it/do SOMEthing. If it's not better by tomorrow (when I'm scheduled to just do a regular workday), then I will have to go on site.  Ewww.  I was just up in the office trying to get some of the OT knocked out but I could only do one thing before it wigged out on me.  That's so frustrating.

I think I am off in a few minutes to get some surge protector power strips and some bathroom cleaning supplies, as well as some school snacks.  The high-school children have been out of school for two weeks and it's time to get back in the groove.  I have some laundry started, the 19-year-old is cleaning her room, and things are overall chugging along nicely today. 

I am on the hunt for 5-6 stools but I have to get them on super-clearance or I won't be happy.  I want one or two for here in the studio in a white or green (hopefully) and then four off-white or wooden ones for upstairs in the Teen Cave.  I found some cute white ones but the clearance was not super enough, so I am holding out . They were originally $150 each (sheesh) and they are on clearance for $49.95.  I think when they get to $35 I'm going to grab one or two. There are also some green ones, believe it or not, but again, not a super enough clearance.  I actually have more hope for the green ones, since come on, there has to be a limited market for green counter stools.  It's now become a matter of principle to get to super-clearance status on these stools. 

I hate to interrupt the 19-year-old while she is cleaning her room (cue the We May Never Pass This Way Again music) but I think it's time to get going on procuring the rest of the stuff she will need to set up her room.  And I have hardly been out of the house in the last 3 days, and I am getting antsy.  I did get some photos of the front of D's and my favorite house, though!  I think I also got better photos of Obama Street as well, but I'm not sure.  We parked the car and got out and got some, and when we did that, we went into this driveway and then a car turned into the driveway briefly.  The man was very nice to us and it turned out he was a newspaper delivery guy or something, so he backed right back out.  I wondered what he thought of us taking the photos of all the Obama  signs when I saw the McCain sticker on his rear window.  I would show you the photos, but the camera is somewhere else.  I should keep better track of that thing.

I still have to make that sympathy card, and I have a swap coming up (I'm thinking about a card like this:  Cool card using a SU set I have) but I haven't decided yet.  The theme is animals. I'm pretty sure I'm using that set, though. Then after that I think it is at least a month of Christmas.  That should be fun.  THEN I am taking a break.  I keep saying that and then not doing it.  It's kind of nice to get all the positive reinforcement from people who like the cards I make, so basically I am now doing it for ego purposes.  Yay, go me!

OK, I'm out before she gets trapped in the mess on her bedroom floor and can't get out. 

As I get ready to make my commute upstairs to work

I find myself sitting here on the computer, reading about fun things like The Great Depression and the slightly smug, 'told ya so' Glenn Beck with his eerily accurate predictions and somehow comforting advice on "How We Should Prepare"  and I find myself both apprehensive and hopeful.  Apprehensive because common sense is screaming at me, and the screams are bouncing around in my head that we're in for a rough ride.  Hopeful because I think in some ways, the rough ride is exactly what we need, as Americans.  I think we sort of need a stern talking-to, a trip back to the basics and away from living beyond our means.

It's rainy and 66 degrees outside, and the smoky-old leaves autumn smell is streaming in through the opened slider.  My toes are a little cold and I can hear the rain more than most, since our roof is made of metal.  I'm feeling like home is the best place to be.

So off I go to work.  Upstairs.  But still at home, which I think is really the best place to be.

Wedding Photos

The beautiful, beautiful bride...

Blowing her aunt (that's me, silly) a kiss..

What a beautiful gown.  Very vintage and the color is unexpected and perfect with her pale complexion.

This setting doesn't even look like Pennsylvania to me.  I grew up there, but I sure don't remember it looking like this! If you've seen Six Feet Under, don't you think it sorta looks like the wedding scene (in California)?

Absolutely gorgeous.

Here's a photo of the back of the groom (and the back of some other dude's head).  One day I may even get to see what he looks like.  He's older than me. HA!

Here's my favorite house in town

This is not even the front of the house.  It's just the side.  The front has a big old porch and a detached garage.  Very craftsman (or craftsman revival? Not sure).

You can see part of the fence and then part of the front porch in the second shot.  I can't believe how much I love this house.  If it ever goes on the market, I am going to freak out.  I'm pretty sure it's reasonably within our price range, although it's a lot smaller than the house we're in now.  Totally unsuitable for our family, I'm sure.  But boy do I love it.  It looks like the leaves were put there by a set designer.  It must have taken a lot of work to remodel it and get it to this level of greatness.  Even my 19-year-old said it was "freaking gorgeous."  You wouldn't think vinyl siding in that shade of green would add up to such fabulousness, but somehow it all works. 

Sometimes I go out of my way just to drive by the house and gaze at it.  If I'm not careful, I'm going to end up in a fender bender.  I cannot imagine trying to explain that one..."But that house.  That house is so beautiful.  How can you not be distracted?  What is WRONG with you?"