I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH

I can't believe it's gotten to this point, but here I am. 

I AM HAVING AN ARGUMENT WITH A TOY. ALOUD. VERY ANGRILY.

Wait, let me preface this by saying two things:

1) We are so lucky to be able to have toys for our children. Many more toys than they would ever realistically need. 

2) I'm sure many (most?) of you have gotten to the point where you want to go all Office Space on one of your kid's toys EVEN IF IT'S ONE OF HIS OR HER FAVORITES because it has pushed you so far over the edge with its level of annoyingness. I know this is not a new phenomenon. I have a few of those toys. 

One day, B. Meowsic Keyboard. One day. 

This is way beyond all that. We have an adorable little pretend vacuum (Aside: Toy companies. Make those tiny vacuums FUNCTIONING VACUUMS. Love, Everyone.) (Second aside: Is that really how you spell vacuum? I've never been able to spell it. Don't you think it needs two Cs in there?) that the girls LOVE. It's very cute. Except for the fact that in between making vacuum noises, it has "funny" little quips. At first I was able to ignore them, but yesterday was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Vacuum: What a pigsty!

Me: Good one. That one gets me every time. Very funny. My housekeeping skills are subpar. HILARIOUS.

Vacuum: *Cough cough* We must clean up the dust!

Me: Right, it's dusty in here because I never clean. I GET IT. SHUT UP ALREADY.

Vacuum: Whoa! Did a tornado blow through here?

Me: You can go STRAIGHT TO HELL, BUDDY. I TRY MY BEST!! *collapses in a puddle of tears*

Vacuum: *dopey laugh*

It's been a long week, you guys.

A Tale of Five Christmases

Okay, not so much a tale as me dumping my favorite pictures from Christmas 2012 in your faces, but you know. You take what you can get, right?

I hope you feel as lucky and happy as I do this holiday season. Love to you all!

UPDATED! Finally -- a Reality Show My Little Sister Might Watch With Me!

OMG OMG OMG.  Y'all -- did you hear who is coming back into our lives?  I'll give you a few hints:


1.  They're twins.
2.  They had a neighbor named Roger.


If you still don't know (which means you were NEVER a true fan), here is the biggest hint:


3.  

I totally had one of those hats.  And if you did too?  Well, then you're awesome.  

YES.  Tia and Tamera Mowry are BACK baby!  They have a reality show on The Style Network, and I don't know about you, but I AM WATCHING IT.  Check out the premise:

  

Uh oh.  Totally unprepared.  And hijinks ensue!  Good for them, too.  I like those girls, so I'm glad they're working.  I mean, it's not NBC or anything, but I'm already tuning in to the Style Network to watch my Jerseylicious (I HIGHLY recommend it), so why not add one more reality show to my schedule, right?

And don't worry.  If your life is too full to watch another TV show (which sounds highly improbable if you ask me), I will be sure to give you a full review after the premiere.  Sister, Sister.  I never knew just how much I missed ya ...

source, source, source

UPDATED:  So, my little sister, who watched Sister Sister with me all the g-d time and LOVED it (to the best of my recollection), wrote THIS comment on this post:

Ouch.

Luckily, my sister-in-law said THIS:

I also asked my sister under which circumstances she would join me in my reality TV viewing.  No word back yet.  Stay tuned.

What a Difference a Year Makes

It's really hard to believe that last Christmas I had only known for two days that I was pregnant for the first time.  It was such an amazing and hopeful time.  It's even harder to believe that I went from this:

to this:

in one short year, and the hope and love and excitement I felt last year was intensified by a billion this Christmas.  

 

 

 

We had a beautiful, wonderful, amazing first Christmas for our little girl, and I truly hope all of yours were just as special.

In Your FACE, 4th of July!

Hey suckers.  What did you all do this 4th of July weekend?  Probably something lameballs like sit in lawn chairs and eat someone else's BBQ that may or may not have made you puke later in the evening (sorry, Brandon), right?  Ha ha ha .. so ordinary.


I am guessing you did NOT do what I did: attend a toga party thrown by YOUR PARENTS.  Boom.  I bet you all feel pretty silly now.


Because I got to dress like THIS (in a bedsheet from my childhood):

And my husband and sister rocked out some wicked cool sheets for their togas and enjoyed multiple free drinks (while I enjoyed multiple free shirley temples):

I got to share a romantic dance with my husband (while he desperately arched his spine and pretended that my massive preggo belly was NOT an issue while slow dancing):

Oh, and did I mention there were PRIESTS there? (identity obscured because I don't want to go to hell):

I also got to witness my parents being schmoopy:

And my dad acting like a whackadoo:

So, all in all ... I WIN!!  But I hope your weekend was lovely nonetheless (I'm not heartless).

I'm Pretty Sure I'd Rather be Fighting Forest Fires. Or Battling Zombies. (Now with Updates)

So, today's kind of a big day.  I'm using the crockpot for the first time.  


The large, lovely crockpot we received for our wedding. The one only my darling husband has used to prepare meals.


And I feel like a little part of me died.


No offense to all those ladies who are actually GOOD at cooking and LIKE it, but I have never been a Becky Home-Ecky and have always known I never would be.  Why is it that being a good wife and mom requires terrible, awful things, like TOUCHING RAW MEAT and SMELLING IT COOK ALL DAY?  I seriously have a headache from the ... odor in my house.


I have always had an aversion to cooking.  Always.  I take no pleasure in it AT ALL.  And if it were any other task in the world, like, pole vaulting, and I was terrible at it and hated it, no one would care if I stopped doing it.  They would likely encourage me to quit.  But cooking?  Wives and mothers are supposed to care enough about their loved ones to put healthy delicious foods on their plates. So why don't I?


I got this horrible feeling the other day that I better start caring, what with this little baby baking away inside of me and taunting me with the reality that it will pop out in a few months and once it is sick of milk it will demand FOOD, and I realized that the "food lifestyle" Jeremy and I currently entertain is not conducive to children.  And I panicked.  Jeremy likes meat and I like vegetables. Some nights I come home from work at 7 and and make myself a bowl of asparagus and suggest he heat himself up a chicken pot pie.  I am pretty sure children will not benefit from this menu.


So I found a recipe for a crockpot pork roast and went and bought all the ingredients.  Then ... I had to actually USE the pork ... and look at it.  Have you ever really LOOKED at raw meat?  If you haven't, I suggest you do.  It isn't pretty.

Seriously?  People touch and cook and eat this every day??
{source}

I used to work as a cashier, and there was NOTHING worse than when people would just drop their barely-wrapped chunks of raw meat on my belt.  Like they really didn't notice that it was oozing blood and juices full of food-borne-illness-causing monsters all over the counter and their other groceries and my HANDS? My LOVELY hands??  Or, if they don't care about strangers, can't they at least imagine those little bloody particles traveling from their hands to their MOUTHS and EYES and CHILDREN'S FOOD AND FACES???  GAH!!!!!  


And now, here I am.  One of them.  And even though the damn pork loin has been in the damn crockpot for 4 hours already, it still looks terrifying.  

Does that look like a corpse that the flesh is rotting off of to anyone else?  

Because that's what it looks like to me. 

I know, there is an option of being a vegetarian.  That is all lovely in theory, but I am LAZY when it comes to food.  I hate cooking.  I think TOAST takes a long time to make.  And vegetarian cooking takes WAY more thought and planning and shopping and kitchen time.  I've tried it.  And then, of course, Jeremy would die of starvation and that would be on my conscience for the rest of my life, and that would be a dreadful burden.


So how the bloody heck am I supposed to start liking this crap?  Is there a secret?  And is it possible to re-program Jeremy's brain so he thinks he likes to cook and wants to take over the job?  Any ideas?


UPDATE:  Now I can smell the carrots cooking, so my headache is easing up. But I'm still mad at the crockpot.


UPDATE 2:  The meat-eater said it was "AWESOME!  Really, really good!"

I think it was the smell of the mustard that gave me a headache all day.  I was not a fan of the mustard "coating."  If I do it again, I will just rub the spices on without the mustard.


UPDATE 3:  Due to requests (probably because the first picture looked so weird), here is the recipe I used:

Crockpot Pork Roast Dinner

You can use any kind of mustard in this delicious, homey recipe. You can also thicken the juices if you wish after removing the roast and vegetables. Just pour the juice into a saucepan and add 2 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup water, then bring to a boil.

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Cook Time: 8 hours, 0 minute

Ingredients:

1 lb. small red potatoes, cut in half

16 oz. pkg. baby cut carrots

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 lb. boneless pork loin roast, trimmed of fat

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

1 tsp. dried tarragon leaves or 1 tablespoon fresh chopped tarragon

1 tsp. dried thyme leaves or 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1-1/2 cups beef broth

Preparation:

Place potatoes and baby carrots around bottom edge of 4-6 quart crockpot. Place onion and garlic in bottom of crockpot. In small bowl, combine mustard, tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper and spread over pork roast. Place roast in crockpot and pour beef broth over all. Cover crockpot and cook on low for 8-9 hours until pork is 150 degrees F and vegetables are tender.

Now THIS is Christmas

A photo essay:  Christmas with the cousins.

Every year we must begin by commemorating the twin aprons on the twinsies (purchased by myself and Kayla.  We really know how to give a gift.)

Rule #1:  When a camera is fixed upon you, tell your boyfriend to make a crazy face.  This will divert attention from yourself in said picture.

Poor Fleabag was so disgusted with our antics she felt the need to express it visually

Take another one ...

Yes, this one is much better.  My eyes are open, so I don't even bother looking at anyone else in the picture.  I'm sure they look lovely.

Cat wrangling: 2009 edition

Grumpy Old Man Table

The cousins-in-law and ex-roomies serve up some of their winning poses

Classy

Very natural

These are the best sibling photos we got

Oh, aren't they special?!?!  They can take a good sibling picture.  Well la-dee-frickin'-da!

Uncle John and Dorothy.  They look like a Christmas card!

They really are a lovely couple

I love these boys!

One of seventeen photos taken of people sleeping throughout the day

We love prezzies!

She's a math teacher.  It's a pie pan with a Pi symbol on it.  Get it?

A nerd's favorite presents!!

My darling husband

Awww

Kayla: please don't kill me.  I love this picture.

The Weimaraner who thinks she's a lapdog.  Gotta love it.

We were watching The Best of Chris Farley.

"Maybe I don't "wear deodorant" or "let my scabs heal""

We are so hip it hurts

And, of course, the pie ...

Happy Holidays to you and yours! <3