Fall in Florida

Fall in Florida...  for now the days are still in the 80s, but at night it gets down to the 60s and sometimes even the 50s.  I have the windows open in the house most of the time.  The sun is not quite as blazing as it was in August.  It's beautiful here, but the Facebook feeds of my friends back North are full of the trees in fall color right now and I miss that so much.

Faith and Holly at Thea's school

Last weekend we went to Thea's school for her first orchestra concert in four years.  Unlike when she was in elementary school and was, for a while, the only cellist, she is now one of nine cellists in the high school orchestra.

Thea strolling like Big Man On Campus

The unfortunate thing about being the only freshman out of the nine cellists was that she was seated in the back, and I couldn't get any pictures of her while she was playing.  I got plenty of lovely pictures of the senior girl who was sitting in front of her.

That's Thea on the top right;  you can see she is actually holding a cello and I am not making all this up.

We finally acquired a television.  We still don't have cable (seven years now!) but now there is something on which to play the Wii, the PS3, and the Nintendo64 (vintage!), and watch DVDs and Netflix.  So you can see that if I seem to sound pompous about not having cable, that's really meaningless.

Holly likes to watch Dan play Little Big Planet

In other news, Emily the cat has a serious sweet tooth.

Sneaky cat going after the butter/honey mixture I was dipping a soft pretzel in.

Mmmmm.

Back in Baltimore Emily eradicated the spricket population in my basement.  Here in Florida, we have other issues.  We have those huge nasty cockroaches.

Notice this dark shadow inside the kitchen light.  Yes, you guessed it.

I would say I see two or three a week.  Out of those two or three, one is usually dead -- presumably killed by Emily or Benny during the night.  If the cats can work their magic on the cockroaches and make it so I don't have to look at live ones, I would be forever grateful.

In other bug news we have been watching a spider rebuild a web every day outside on the back patio.  It's a very disturbing looking spider called a Spiny Orb Weaver.

I looked it up online and Holly and I read about it -- that it is not venomous, and is considered beneficial -- and, as often happens, something that was scary became much less so thanks to the power of information.  Next thing you know, that spider had been named "Mrs Spiny," and several times a day she was checked on and reported excitedly on.

Days later I was puttering around with my morning coffee and came face to many-eyed face with Mrs Spiny's sister, sitting in a web that stretched across my dining room.  Thanks again to information and familiarity, I did not freak out, and instead watched the spider for an hour or so before relocating her outside.

But don't let you cockroaches get any ideas.

Family Times

On Friday evening we drove up the road to Mount Dora, an old town on the shore of Lake Dora.  The downtown area consisted of a few streets with little antique shops, boutiques, art galleries, and cafes.  I imagine it would be really nice to stroll around in the evening, maybe without kids next time.

We ate at PizzAmore in downtown Mount Dora.  The pizza was OK, the garlic knots were yummy and swimming in olive oil, but nicest of all was just sitting outside and enjoying the falling of the evening.  They decorated their patio area with cobwebs, orange lights, and a few surprises -- such as a zombie foot -- that Holly enjoyed finding.

Dan is probably checking us in on Facebook in this picture.  Surprisingly enough Thea is not texting anyone... or is she?  What is she holding on her lap, hmmm?

Today we took the boat out onto the nearby lakes again.  As we were standing on the boat ramp, I saw two bald eagles flying overhead.  There's something about watching eagles that just gives you goose bumps.

Here I am tubing on Lake Dora.  None of the three kids wanted to go on the tube, so Mom was forced to step up to the plate.  I had a good time -- the water was not too cold, and Dan did as I asked and didn't try to throw me off.  Near the end of my ride, though, the wind picked up and the water got choppier.  The spray in my face made it impossible to keep my eyes open.  It's kind of no fun to tube with your eyes shut.

This is likely one of the reasons that Holly didn't want to ride the tube.  She had a fever most of the day Saturday, and although today her temperature was mostly normal, she said her throat hurt.  Faith was home sick from school on Thursday and Friday.  I wonder if these germs will make the rounds of the house.

Packing

Seven years of filling up a large house, undone in two weeks.

Poor bewildered Spot.

Dan and Jeff carefully packing the Pod

The first of two Pods in which we had to put everything

Holly looking out over the city for one of the last times.

Forced smile.

The Wedding, Part Two

In Which Everyone Gets Dressed Up
And I Get All Sentimental Over $30 Worth Of Satin

(read part one)

Even as I was standing in David's Bridal admiring myself in the dress I was about to buy, I was thinking about how my girls would be dressed for the wedding.

I had to keep in mind their individuality.  Thea and Faith, especially, have very different styles.  I wanted each girl to be dressed in her own way, in something that made her feel happy, but still have all three of them complement each other and me.  My green sash planted the seed that grew into the idea we went with -- each girl would pick her own white dress, and then would wear a colored sash with it in her favorite color:  Blue for Thea, pink for Faith, and purple for Holly.

I figured it would not be easy to find dresses to each of their likings, but actually it did not prove too difficult for Faith.  At Burlington Coat Factory she tried on a total of four dresses, and the fourth was the winner.

This was not the dress we picked (it is hanging on the wall behind her),
but doesn't Faith look adorable in this one?

Thea, however, was every bit as difficult as I expected.  We traversed the entire mall (and Arundel Mills is pretty big) and she didn't even find anything worthy of trying on.

In the meantime, Dan searched online for a shirt to wear (smart guy).  He already owned a pair of white linen pants which were perfectly beachy and yet dressy.  He wanted a similarly classy looking Hawaiian shirt.  Originally he thought he might get a blue one, but as the idea of the girls' colored sashes fleshed out, he didn't want to take the chance of clashing with one of them or of this whole thing ending up a mish-mash of color.  Eventually he found a black shirt with a white flower print down one side at HulaOut.com that was perfect.

Here we are on Valentine's Day, still smiling.  Look what a good sport Dan was as I obsessed over every detail of our attire, and he finished his part after an hour or so browsing the internet on his laptop while in bed.
Wait.... who is the good sport here?

Thea's dress search took us to Marley Station Mall one Sunday afternoon where we spent what seemed like four hours in Vivace Bridal while Thea tried on what seemed to be fifty prom-type dresses.  Most were too fancy, too sexy/trashy (in my mom opinion), or too expensive, but we finally came to an agreement on one.  It had detachable spaghetti straps, which Thea did not want to wear, but I was adamant she would not go strapless.  It also had black piping along the folds of the skirt, but I gave in on that since Dan was wearing black.

Modeling the dress at home.  Notice how Thea has strategically arranged her hair
to give the illusion that her dress is indeed strapless.

Luckily Holly was just excited to wear a fancy white dress and couldn't care less where it came from, so a friend from church gave us a flower girl dress her daughter had worn in a wedding years ago.  It was slightly large on Holly, but I fixed that by shortening and re-sewing the straps.

Off to Joann Fabric to get the material for the girls' sashes.  Dan and I picked vividly colored satin and got about three times the amount of each that I actually ended up needing.  Then I spent the next couple of weeks measuring, sewing, ironing, and cursing.  Each sash needed to be a different length and width.  I foolishly decided Thea's and Faith's should be pleated to really look like they went with their dresses.  Keep in mind that I had not done any real sewing in approximately twenty years.  Not going to lie -- there was cursing.

But the result... just as I had imagined.

I mean, look!  I bought the green sash from David's Bridal, but I made the other three.  You can tell they were done by an amateur when you see the way the satin puckered under my needle, and how the pleat sizes are uneven, but I'm still pretty darn proud of them.  They were custom made to be perfect for each girl in each dress.

Sorry, not done bragging about these sashes yet.  :)  The piece de resistance comes next.  This idea was born while I stood there on the platform at David's admiring myself in the mirror and thinking the preliminary thoughts of each girl somehow having her own color.  What I really wanted was a way to tie it all together -- a way to symbolize that in this new marriage, along with me would come a little bit of each of them.

So, with some of the leftover satin from each of the three sashes, I made flowers.  This was time-consuming but not very difficult at all, after I looked over a few tutorials on the internet.  For each flower I cut out 12 to 15 circles of varying sizes.  Using a candle, I just barely melted the circumference of each circle.  This would keep the satin from fraying, and also curled the fabric just enough to give it a very petal-like texture.  Then I held the center of each circle over the candle just until it puckered.

I assembled each flower by hot gluing the circles together, with a dab of glue in each center.  To the top and final circle or two I gave an extra pinch to give it a little more shape.

Beautiful!

I pinned these three flowers, representing my three girls, to my green sash.  It turned out just as lovely as I had imagined, and the meaning behind it was priceless to me, no matter who else noticed.

OK, I think I'm done bragging about the sashes now.  But never fear, there is more nuttiness to come, because wanting to be all unique and sh** AND being a cheapskate always equals going overboard in, yes, a Martha Stewart way.

All this and more in The Wedding, Part Three!

(How many of these egotistical "parts" will there be, you ask?
AS MANY AS I DECIDE THERE WILL BE.)

February In Pictures

You don't want to read pages about the boring stuff we've been doing since the last time I posted., so here are a lot of pictures to make the boring stories a little easier to bear.

Here is Holly on the way back from a trip to Urgent Care to have two stitches put in her forehead.  While jumping on a mattress at a friend's house, she ran her head into the corner of a bunk bed.  The cleaning and stitching was a traumatic experience for her AND for Mom... but a lollipop and the promise of ice cream helped to put this slightly forced smile onto her face.

We used a really cool idea I saw on Pinterest to make these Valentines for Holly to give out.  I took a picture of her holding out her fist toward the camera, then added some text and graphics to it using Picnik, an online photo editor that can do techy editing as well as fun editing.  (It was my first time using Picnik, and I thought it was cool, but I hear the site is closing down in April.  So then I heard of iPiccy, and it's really cool too.)   We uploaded the finished photo to Walgreens and printed out 40 or so, then used a razor to make a slice at the top and bottom of her fist.  We slid in a Dum-dum, and, voila!  So cute!

It turned out so good, Faith wanted to do it, too.  Hers turned out just as awesome!

A week after the stitches went in, they came out.  The removal was a little painful too, but Holly was brave, and a popsicle and then lunch with Mom made everything better.  Then she got to go to school and show off her war wound to her friends.

I planted the first seeds of the year, broccoli.  I am using SproutRobot to tell me when to plant each of my crops.  It tells when to start seeds indoors, when to expect them to sprout, and when to transplant outside, all based on my zip code.  I'm putting a lot of faith in this thing so I hope it works.  You can't tell real well from this picture, but I made the seedling pots out of some newspaper and masking tape.  Then I stuck them into this handy greenhouse (formerly a zippered bag that a sheet set came in).  It worked excellently.

Emily continues to act spoiled and be spoiled.

Check out my cute baby broccoli plants!  They sprouted over a week earlier than they were "supposed" to. The most difficult thing was choosing which of the three sprouts in each pot to keep, and which to thin out.  It felt like planticide.

The girls went to an awesome birthday party at Pump It Up.  Two rooms full of inflatable bouncy play equipment, and to make it even more fun, most of the time the lights were off and only some black lights and disco lights were on.  Add glow necklaces and bracelets and some loud pop music, and it was a blast, even for grownups.  Here, you can see that Holly came down the inflatable slide so fast that she bounced right off the bottom of it.

An hour of bouncing + getting sugared up with birthday cake + past bedtime = goofy fun.

I hope I don't lose all gardening cred for this, but I could not resist this potato growing pot I found at Walmart.  It even came with the three seed potatoes.  I saw (again on Pinterest) a DIY potato growing tower made of wire fencing, straw and compost, and I thought it looked really cool, but I am already extending myself a bit far with all these other things I'm trying to grow this year.  I have gotten overly ambitious and then failed in a grandiose manner in past years, so I don't want to go TOO far.  So I'll grow potatoes this year (hopefully) in this handy pot and then try the hippier way another year.

Dan was digging a trench in which to lay a pipe for my repaired gutter, and behind some weeds he found this fellow.  Possibly due to the chill in the air, or possibly due to the lump in his body that suggested he had just eaten something, this snake didn't try to escape from Dan's hand.  He did flick his tongue many times in displeasure.  At least I assume it was displeasure.  Really I have no way at all of knowing what this snake likes and doesn't like.  Hopefully he likes his new home in the even weedier alleyway behind my house.

Last but not least:  Thea and Faith each won a ribbon and a trophy today at the Pathfinder Pinewood Derby.  Thea's racecar came in second for her church's group in the Teen level, and Faith's car came in second in the Junior level.  Then, Thea's show car, which was decorated like a banana split, took third place Best In Show for the whole conference.  Faith's show car, a forest, took third place Most Unusual for the conference.

Thursday thinking

I still miss Augie a lot.  I thought I heard him meow the other day, and I keep expecting to see him laying on the dog's bed or to come climb in my lap while I'm sitting on the floor.  Our other elderly cat, Spot, is turning 18 in April.  For now he is in decent health.  He notices Augie's absence, though.  The first night Augie was gone, Spot wandered through the house all night meowing.  They used to sleep together on the dog's bed.

Aside from Spotty we have two other cats, Emily and Benny, who are about 2.5 and 3 years old, respectively. Then there's good old Chester, the dog, who we guess to be about 9.  I do love a house full of pets, despite the cost, the mess, the work, and the inevitable heartache that comes along with it.

Augie and Spotty enjoying a sunny spot at the back door.  Nov 2011

Thea and Faith are going skiing for the first time this weekend.  I've never really had an interest in skiing, but I'm happy they're going to have the opportunity to try it.  They are excited.  Holly and I are staying home by ourselves.  I told her it was going to be a special Holly-and-Mommy night.  Her eyes got wide and she said, "Let's have a movie night!  With EATING!"  So, movies and eating it will be.

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow.  This is only news because I don't get my hair cut often, and when I do, it's usually just a trim.  This time I really am looking for a new style (if you can call the shapeless mess I have now a "style").  It remains to be seen whether I can communicate my wishes to the stylist, whether she can cut it that way, whether my hair will actually do what the girl's hair in the picture is doing, and then whether I can actually pull it off myself at home.

Close of the Year

Some randomnity...

A few days before her birthday, I told Holly about the night she was born.  When I got to the part about giving her her name, she frowned and said, "But I didn't want my name to be Holly!  I wanted it to be Rapunzel."

I gave Thea the Hunger Games trilogy for Christmas.  She read the first book in 24 hours.  Then she read the second book in the next 24 hours.  I'm so happy to have her reading and being excited about a book, but it seems like kind of a waste if she's going to "use up" this Christmas present in three days.

Tonight I had to deal with a puking incident and a disgustingly clogged sink (not related) at the same time.  Kind of an overload of Ick.

My great-grandmother taught me to crochet when I was a kid.  I haven't done it in years, but in just the past couple of weeks I've picked it back up again.  It is so satisfying to sit with the needle and yarn and a mug of coffee and some music playing.  It feels very grounding and at the same time brings back fond memories.  So far I've made a bunch of coasters/potholders, and one head wrap with a flower on it that is not very attractive.  The coasters are kind of rough but I'm still enjoying using things I made.  And I think with the right yarn, the head wrap could be really pretty.

Today there was only one radio station left, that I could find, still playing all Christmas music.  (101.9 FM)  As much as I wanted to avoid that grating music all of December... today I found myself listening to that station, and actually singing along.

I'm glad that Christmas is over, and look forward to a brand new year, but boy do I dislike the winter.  I don't like January or February and thinking of all those gray days stretching ahead of me makes me want to hunker down in bed (in my new flannel sheets -- Christmas presents!)

Pez candy:  Nasty.  Did I actually like that stuff, as a kid, or was it just fun playing with the dispensers?

New Pictures

For dinner last night I ate over half of a pineapple and then washed it down with a cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly I have a belly-ache this morning.

I put up new pictures from the summer in our photo section: start with July and August here, including our trip to Rehoboth, and be sure to click through to see our summer boating trip to Lake Moomaw in Virginia. Here's a little preview:

Happy Sabbath

At my little church it is tradition near the beginning of the service for the congregation (as they are able) to get up out of the pews, move around the sanctuary and greet fellow members and visitors alike with a smile and handshake or often a hug. The phrase you will hear repeated is "Happy Sabbath!"

It was a happy Sabbath for me indeed this week as both Thea and Faith were baptized. What a feeling of pride and joy for me to see my daughters declare their faith in Jesus! Their grandparents (my parents) and their dad were able to make it to the service. The pastor asked their family to stand up, so we did, and then he asked their friends in the church to stand in support of them, and I felt so blessed and loved to see basically the entire church come to its feet. I can only imagine that Thea and Faith felt the same.

The baptism was originally scheduled for later in the year, but with some other family goings-on we needed to move the date forward quickly. Because of this we weren't able to get the word out to everybody that we would have liked to have invited to the service, or plan a party for later in the day that I would have liked to have had. But I think the church members who were there really came through in making it a very Happy Sabbath.

Chickadee

Here's a picture Thea took at school last week. :)

Hair

Thea actually let me curl her hair on Valentine's Day. I did it with a thick iron and then pinned each curl with bobby pins and hair-sprayed the heck out of it. A few hours later we took it down and her hair floated in bouncy waves around her head.



Despite a lot more hairspray, the waves didn't survive more than a couple of hours. Thea's hair is bound and determined to be straight.