The Awesome List

December is the time of year when folks compile Top Ten lists and Years in Review and Most Fascinating People and the like.  Well, I have decided to do my very own such compilation, entitled The Awesome List.  I am breaking it down into subcategories, because it's my blog and that's how I want to do it.  Here goes......



People who are Awesome:


~ My friend J.  A few weeks ago, I mentioned to J that I love December for its mail.  Not just because December brings my birthday around which means the occasional birthday card, but mostly for the holiday card mail.  I love holiday cards.  Photos, letters, the whole nine yards.  LOVE them.  I do a happy dance at the mailbox when I open it to find those sorts of envelopes therein.  (Seriously, pop by my street around 5pm any given day of the week that there's postal service and you will see me out there at the curb, shaking my groove thang.  Assuming, that is, that said groove thang isn't frozen due to our lovely weather - record snowfall, anyone? - in which case the groove thang doesn't get shaken until it is ensconced, once again, indoors, in which case you'll have to peek through the front windows.)  Well, J came up with a Most Awesome Plan, unbeknownst to me at the time.  She filed away this little tidbit of info and when December 1st rolled around, a Christmas card showed up in the mail from J and her family.  It was one of the first cards we received this year, in fact.  Then, December 2nd brought another card from her.  And the 3rd, and the 4th.  A cryptic note on my Facebook wall on Sunday the 5th led me to trek out through the snow to the mailbox where indeed, another card from her was waiting.  She's that good - able to get mail delivered even on the day that the Post Office doesn't do it!  And so it has continued each day of December.  Each card comes with a note in rhyme inside, no less - variations on the Twelve Days of Christmas.  It. Is. AWESOME and so is she!


 ~ I am fortunate enough to regularly rub internet elbows with some very classy blogging type dames.  Two in particular that I'd like to bring to your attention at the moment are Margaret from Nanny Goats in Panties and Anna from Life Just Keeps Getting Weirder.  The reason I'd like to bring these fantabulous broads to your attention isn't because they're sidesplittingly hilarious (which they are) or because they're foxy as all get out (which, obviously - have you seen Anna's moustache?) but because these two are giving away animals on their blogs right now.  For real - they've each partnered with Oxfam America to give away livestock (in Margaret's case, a goat, naturally, and in Anna's case, a sheep) to people who need it most.  Since I'm not nearly as cool, hilarious or foxy as Margaret or Anna, I'm not doing any such giveaway myself here on my little corner o' the blogosphere, but please, please, please stop by their blogs and participate in their giveaways (linked above) and support an organization as awesome as Oxfam America.  Charitable giving, especially of the sheep or goat sort, is AWESOME.


~ Another blogopshere goddess I adore is Aunt Becky of Mommy Wants Vodka fame.  The reason I am listing Aunt Becky now isn't for her full-of-the-awesome MWV blog, but for another blog she founded and runs that is super-duper-full-of-the-awesome.  This blog is called Band Back Together, and in Aunt Becky's words,

"Sometimes, you’re alone in the dark. You stumble around, breaking things, smashing your legs and arms into furniture and walls and crying because just minutes before you could see perfectly dammit! But there you are, alone in the dark.

Soon, though, your eyes adjust, and you begin to see vague outlines. Shapes emerge in the darkness, looming up around you. Everything is closing in around you. The walls have teeth. The darkness is omnipresent and it is terrifying.

Just then, as you feel the darkness overtaking you, a light is flipped on and you are bathed in it. You can feel the light all around you and it is warm and it is good. Your skin warms as you feel the darkness slipping away, inch by inch. Yes, there will always be a piece of that darkness inside you. You cannot go through hell without absorbing some darkness.

But the light will sustain you and carry you through."

Band Back Together is a place to be that light, give that light, soak up that light.  It is open for anyone to share their story or to lend an ear, shoulder or words of support to someone else.  I strongly urge you to check it out, because it is AWESOME.


Food that is Awesome:


~ December is the time of year when Perry's Ice Cream puts out their limited edition flavor, Peppermint Stick.  Peppermint Stick ice cream, drizzled with a generous amount of chocolate syrup, is heaven in a bowl.  I've tried other peppermint ice creams and none can compare to Perry's.  I even have been known to pay full price for a carton of Perry's Peppermint Stick, and full price Perry's is ridonkulously expensive. That is how awesome it is.  (And the fact that, per their website, Perry's Ice Cream is supporting The Make-A-Wish® Season of Wishes™ campaign by donating a portion of the proceeds from each package sold of popular Limited Edition Peppermint Stick ice cream to fund a child’s wish just makes it that much more awesome and makes paying the ridonkulously pricey price a little easier to swallow.  Especially when drizzled with a generous amount of chocolate sauce....)

~ A month or two ago, a Boy Scout rang my doorbell with his popcorn sales materials in hand.  Now, I am a fool for popcorn and a sucker for kids, so I said I'd buy something and scanned the offerings.  Well, my eyebrows kept creeping higher and higher up my forehead as I perused the items for sale - I am used to the Girl Scout cookies at a (relatively) measly $3.50 a box, and MAN everything on the Boy Scouts' sheet was a LOT pricier!  I finally found the cheapest thing on there, ordered it and forked over the $10.  (Hey, don't judge - that'd be almost THREE boxes of Thin Mints, y'all.)  I then found myself the proud owner of one three pound bag of popcorn kernels.  I usually spend a dollar and change for a bag o' kernels.  This was more than three times that.

Now, I love popcorn.  I mean, love popcorn.  Popcorn is to snacks what December is to months for getting mail.  I bust out my air popper and make up a nice salty, buttery batch of freshly popped corn deliciousness several times a week.  So, I knew I'd use this popcorn eventually.  I will admit, though, that I was bitter.  Resentful of this popcorn.  "Gourmet popcorn?" I sneered to myself, the bag and to Hubby.  "How flipping gourmet can a bunch of corn kernels be, for Pete's sake?"  I refused to open up the new bag until I'd used up the bag I'd already had, and then the day came. Grudgingly, I got the bag out of the cabinet and opened it up, pouring the kernels into my popper.

I didn't want it to be good.  I wanted to be able to scoff at and mock the overpriced popcorn, even if it meant calling myself out for the sucker that I was for buying it in the first place.  I eyeballed my popper skeptically as it began to heat the kernels up.  They began to rise up through the chamber of the popper and tumble fragrantly out into the bowl.  They looked..... fluffy.  Large.  Fancy.  Still dubious, I buttered and salted the bowl as usual and took a bite.

It. Was.  AWESOME. Dagnabit.

Hubby asked me, a few days and bowls later, whether the fancy popcorn was in fact all that and a bag of chips (or whatever the hip-n-groovy youngsters are saying instead these days. The whippersnappers!  Also: Hubby did not actually use the phrase all that and a bag of chips.  That is merely my paraphrasing of his question.  Hubby would not want me putting such, ahem, hip-n-groovy words in his mouth).  I had to confess that YES, in fact this was the BEST popcorn I'd ever popped.

You can, therefore, imagine my great chagrin a few weeks later, when I wandered upstairs on a Saturday afternoon to take a little snooze while Hubby and Kiddo curled up on the couch to watch one of the Star Wars movies.  (Yes, Hubby has created a pint sized Star Wars buff in his own image - Kiddo loves Star Wars.  LOVES loves Star Wars.  Kiddo wants to be addressed only as Teebo the Ewok now.  The other day, she unironically quoted Yoda to me at the breakfast table.  But I digress...)  Well, I woke up a few hours later and came back downstairs to see the remnants of a popcorn snack in the sink.  Hubby passed through the kitchen moments later and broke the news: he and Kiddo had finished off the Boy Scout Popcorn.  That?  SO NOT AWESOME.  I was sad and resentful of my lot, stuck as I was now with the pitiful, lame, unfluffy, small, unfancy popcorn.  I figured I'd reacclimate eventually to my usual popcorn, but I didn't, not for weeks now.  

Fortunately, Kiddo's grandmother had the same exact situation at her house, as it turns out.  A neighborhood Boy Scout rang her bell and she, being an equal sucker for kids, bought the cheapest thing she could find on his sheet..... the popcorn kernels!  Better yet, Kiddo's grandparents don't eat popcorn!  They don't even own a popper!  So it was with great glee that I received their 3lb bag of awesome popcorn from them the other day and carried it home singing hosannas in four part harmony (no mean feat when there's just one of me, but I was that happy).  I was briefly tempted to parcel out the popcorn, to make it last, but I just can't do it.  No, I will enjoy bowlful after bowlful and then one day, a howl of misery shall ring out across the frozen, snowy tundra that is western, upstate New York for I will have finished off this second 3lb bag, too.

 

~ Cheesy Eddie's Carrot Cake.  Amazing morsels of delicious awesomeness that I hope to be cramming down my rapidly aging gullet come Tuesday, after blowing out enough candles to be visible from outer space.

 

Media Things That Are Awesome:

(I will confess in this section that I am in fact a day or three late and at least a dollar fifty short when it comes to the Latest and Greatest happenings on Ye Olde Interwebz.  Bear with me on that point, mmmkay?)

~ This one is in honor of my friend Andy, aka The Creative Junkie.  Andy shares a dream with me, you see.  No, not the Anderson Cooper covered in Nutella dream, that's hers alone as (a) I don't think Anderson plays for the correct team for this scenario and (b) I'm not really a Nutella fan.  No, she shares the dream with me of some day being involved in a flash mob.  She's blogged about it more than once, most recently right here.

Well, my dear Andy, this is for you: Improv Everywhere.  Check out their missions - the musical in the grocery store or at the mall food court.  The high fiving on the subway.  The dude who got "lost" at the Knicks game.  The Ghostbusters reenactment at the NY Public Library.  I have never wanted to live in NYC more than I do now, so that I could be an Agent in one of their missions.  A flash mob of one singing in the bulk foods aisle of Wegmans just doesn't have the same......... cachet.  Panache.  Verve.  Sense.

~ Speaking of flash mobs, didja see the one Mitchell participated in on Modern Family?  Because Modern Family is absolutely chock-full of AWESOME.  It is as hilarious as it is full of heart.  If you haven't watched Modern Family, or even if you have, take yourself over here to Hulu and watch the awesomeness.  Just make sure you have a comfy chair because you won't want to get up until you've watched every last minute of every episode! 

~ Since we can't spend our entire lives with our eyes glued to a screen, I'm also calling "AWESOME" on Pandora radio, specifically the holiday stations.  I made my own holiday station by plugging in my favorite artists and have thus been spared having to hear the utter dreck known as The Christmas Shoes or the insidious earworm of Feliz Navidad ever again.  Well, at least when my iPod is in range of the wifi.  It has made for a very happy aural holiday season this year.

Well, that concludes The Awesome List right now.  If I think of any more Things that are Awesome, I may do a Part Deux.  In the meantime, anyone care to chime in with something Awesome from your world?  How about holiday cards - love 'em, hate 'em, never send 'em, always send 'em?  Ever seen a flash mob live?  Ever been in one?

Holidays thus far...

Whew, hope everyone is having a good holiday break thus far! We've had rather a whirlwind past few days, ourselves. For the first time in my 37 years of life, I did not spend Christmas Eve and/or Christmas morning with my parents. I was the last of the children to break the tradition; every year up until this year, we'd drive down a day or three before Christmas and stay at my parents' house until at least the day or three afterwards. This year, Hubby, Kiddo and I spent our very first Christmas alone, just the three of us, at least for Christmas morning. After Kiddo (who was beginning to think Santa would only bring her presents to Grandma and Grandpa's) opened her presents Christmas morning, we had breakfast, loaded up the car and drove on down to the motherland (aka New Jersey). Our only snafu was not being able to find a single, solitary fast food establishment between our house and my parents' house that was open and serving food. We were a little surprised that no one was open, even with it being Christmas day - we just figured somebody would be cashing in on all the travelers with appetites who hadn't thought to pack a lunch. (Well, The Waffle House in Clarks Summit PA was open but they don't have a drive-thru...) Hubby wound up buying us a bag of pretzels and a box of Pop Tarts at a gas station minimart and that plus the candy and bananas we had in the car already tided us over, mostly, until we made it to NJ. We arrived just when all the rest of the family arrived midafternoon, thanks to decent roads, decent weather and light traffic. (Total count at my parents' house for Christmas dinner: 17 adults, 6 kids ranging in age from Kiddo at 5 and a half right on down to the youngest nephew who is 13 months old, not counting the two more babies yet in utero.) As is customary, there was lots of food, then gift exchanging and opening, then even more food, then games, then dessert (yes, more food!) and more games and then collapsing.

The day after Christmas isn't known as Boxing Day in our family, but rather "Game Night" day. Everyone who is still in town gathers again at Mom and Dad's for leftovers (we're talking turkey *and* ham here, people - way too much food) and board games. Over the past several years, those games have come to include a poker tournament, which I am proud to say I won this year, including beating Hubby who finished second. (Mwah-ha-ha!) If anyone wants to stake me for the WSOP, I'm ready to go..... This year, we weren't expecting any of Kiddo's cousins to be attending Game Night besides the youngest (who, while ridiculously adorable, isn't really of an age yet where he is able to be much of a playmate for Kiddo) but then my sister and brother-in-law wound up coming, so Kiddo had her favorite cousin - only because he is closest in age to her and therefore a perfect playmate - to run around the farm with all day. Bonus!! Also a bonus: our new Wii. We brought it down to NJ with us and Hubby hooked it up on Mom and Dad's humongous TV, and many games of Wii this and Wii that and Wii the other thing commenced. I probably should mention here: I suck at Wii Sports. Seriously. Well, Wii Bowling, anyhow. I'm not kidding: both Kiddo and my 4 year old nephew kicked my butt at Wii Bowling. (As did my 25 year old brother, but you know, somehow that is a tiny bit less humiliating, especially considering that was the first day I'd ever played Wii anything and he's been Wiitastic for a couple of years now.)

Yesterday, Hubby and I took Kiddo into New York City (henceforth referred to merely as "the city" because seriously, it is the city, is it not?) for the day. She's been in the city before, but the last time was two years ago, and she didn't really get it. This time, however, she got it all. She loved every second, from riding the train in (standing room only - she was the only member of the family who enjoyed that particular part) to taking the subway and buses to get around the city to the tall buildings and crowds and everything. We didn't have a highly ambitious itinerary: The Museum of Natural History, FAO Schwarz and Rockefeller Center to see the tree and skaters. (I harbored a secret hope of taking Kiddo skating, but the plaza - actually all of Manhattan! - was insanely crowded, so we couldn't even make it to the line, much less the ice. Oh well, something to do next time!) Kiddo loved the museum this time around (we took her there a few years ago, too, but she was a bit too young then), especially the dinosaurs, ocean and African animal exhibits. She loved FAO Schwarz, for obvious reasons (and despite the moratorium we imposed a year or so ago on new stuffed animals, Rory the Tiger came home from FAO with us). She loved the tree and the policemen on horses at Rockefeller Center, and all the other lights and decorations, too. She thought St. Patrick's Cathedral looked like a castle and proclaimed Trump Tower the biggest building she'd ever seen. All in all, a successful, if rather exhausting, trip. I have so many fond memories of taking trips into the city at Christmastime when I was growing up that I am extra glad that I was able to share that experience with Kiddo. I regret not having the same proximity to NYC now that I did as a child, but with relatives still within an hour of the city, at least we have proximity by relation...

Today was pack 'em up and drive 'em home day, which is exactly what we did. Along with the memories and overloaded photo memory card (and a few extra pounds I picked up from ALL THAT FOOOOOOOOD), I managed to bring home some New Jersey Germies. That is a souvenir I would've been happy to leave behind, alas. Now, I'm just looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and lounging about in jammies tomorrow, not to mention doing some serious blog-surfing! Hubby has to work at some point this week but probably won't go in to the office until Tuesday, and we've got several Wii games we haven't even tried yet. (He's downstairs playing Wii right now - I'm totally turning into a Wiidow!!) Still not sure what we're doing for New Year's, though I doubt we'll be going out.

And that is the brief (well, brief for me, anyhow!) recap. I shall now unload a few of the pictures off that memory card and leave you with the slightly more exciting photo recap of Heather's Holidays Thus Far!

Kiddo's most wanted gift from Santa (as written to and told to Santa many, many times) was a scooter. Tada!


Cousins having fun! Kiddo is 11 months older than her cousin, though he is a good 2.5-3 inches taller than she is (my sister and brother-in-law are both really, really tall!):


I went outside with Kiddo and my nephew to play with Grandma's new puppy on Game Night afternoon. (It's a 13 week old standard poodle who is too freaking cute and energetic.) When we were out back, there was a deafening noise. We looked up to see an absolute horde of Canada geese flying overhead. They landed in the fields back behind my parents' farm, and were the reason it sounded like a war had broken out in central NJ early the next morning. Apparently hunting the geese has been not only sanctioned but encouraged as there are so dang many of them.


Kids + ball + puppy + lots of room to run around outside = Exhaustion all around.


Which then leads to more uninterrupted time playing Wii for the grown-ups....


On to NYC.... a kindly passer-by offered to take a picture of us in front of the ginormous whale in the oceans exhibit at the museum. No, no, no, the whale is behind me. Yep, that's the whale, honest. I ate a lot over the past few days, but not that much, I swear.....


On to the dinosaurs! Kiddo loved learning about them,

hanging out with them,



and especially touching them! This is an actual, 140 million year old Stegosaurus plate. Yes, Hubby and I touched it too. No, we didn't jam our hands underneath the approved opening the way Kiddo did....


Rockefeller Center with the tree. Hubby: "Do you HAVE to take a picture right here, right now? There are ninety million people trying to get by us, here.........." Me: "Yes. Yes, I do."


Kiddo was literally oooohing and aaaaahing over the size of the buildings, the holiday decorations and the lights.


Kiddo hasn't yet seen the movie Big, but that didn't stop her from waiting forever in line ("I'll be really, really patient if we can wait, please, please, Mommy and Daddy??") and dancing on top of the Big Piano:



Even the subway is an adventure..........


Now, I'm off to play the Harry Potter game Santa brought me on the Wii. I promise I'll make the rounds of everyone's blogs tomorrow!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!

xoxo,
Heather

What I think I'll get for all my nieces and nephews for Christmas this year...

This seems like the perfect gift for the under-five crowd, dontcha think? I mean, what kid wouldn't want their very own set of Junior Bagpipes? (Complete with instructional finger chart and songbook, so I'm sure they'll be making beautiful music in no time!) And with five nieces and nephews (and a sixth on the way), they'll practically make a complete Pipe and Drum Corps... Oh, that would mean getting at least one of them a drum, though... Maybe it could even be like a new century Partridge Family, except with bagpipes and without David Cassidy, and they could someday possibly compete here......... A girl can dream, right?

This would, by the way, be a gift in honor of my aunt. You see, one year at Christmas my aunt (who always gave us the coolest Christmas presents) gave my youngest brother, who was around 3 at the time, a fireman's helmet complete with flashing light and siren, that he then proceeded to put immediately upon his head and turn on before running circles around the living room and later, the dining room while we were eating our Christmas dinner. Someone eventually made the brilliant suggestion that he take it outside - all the better to see the cool lights out in the darkness - and thankfully he did, but not before we all were seeing spots in front of our eyes from the strobe-y light and ears had begun ringing from the incessant siren. (Oh, and note to the brother in question: just because the baby isn't due until the spring, don't think I won't get a set of bagpipes for your family, too - they'll keep!)

Besides, as I live over five hours away from all of my siblings, I won't be around to hear their rehearsals.... Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I wonder if the website will give me a volume discount?