my birthday surprise!

So far this has been a really great birthday week. Alfred and I went out for dinner last Friday; I enjoyed a spa day on Sunday; we put up our Christmas lights and bought a Christmas tree; yesterday I had a birthday lunch with one of my friends at work and then a dual birthday dinner with Gara and Kevin (her birthday is tomorrow, happy early birthday Gara!) and then today came a bunch of surprises: first the flowers that Alfred sent (which I had told him to send), then another bouquet and a sister!


Yes, Katie flew down to surprise me for my birthday! I'm so excited, it's such a fun surprise. I walked into my office after a lunch meeting and there she was just sitting there. I was so shocked, she and Alfred and everyone else who knew have kept this a complete surprise. It's awesome. What I was afraid was going to be a hard/stressful/unfun birthday is turning out to be so, so great so far. I'm feeling very loved and mushy and sappy now. :)

oh, my liver

(FYI, I started this post Saturday morning. It's now Monday night.)

Actually, I haven't really had any beer since Tuesday after work, but I drank enough Saturday and Monday to last awhile. I'd say our booze fest was a success. Alfred and Mike both finished their cases on Monday, and I finished my half case. I think Katie was within a couple of beers, I'm not sure about Maureene. Lucy, Ilya, and Mercedes all joined in for part of the day too. We played a whole bunch of flip cup. Only a couple of puking incidents. Not bad at all. The rest of the week was fun, even though I had to work a lot and couldn't join in in all of the festivities. I could make pizza, though! We had it 5 times total, twice for breakfast. Katie left on Tuesday, and Mike and Maureene left on Thursday. Now it's just us again. But we have pictures!

energizer bunnies!

So yeah, another busy weekend and week. Last Saturday was Ellie's first birthday party, as you may have guessed by the picture. They had a keg of beer and a bunch of Easter eggs hidden around the yard with lots of candy inside. So yeah, a good party. Sunday we spent most of the day with Alfred's family. Robyn wasn't feeling well, so we got to learn how to make their traditional Easter ham loaf and tomato pudding. It came out ok. Not quite as good as when she makes it, but ok.

Every night this week has been full, too. Monday night we went over to Lucy and Phil's for leftover beer and barbecue from their party. Tuesday and Wednesday we scrambled to get various chores and cleaning done for this weekend. We did laundry, ironed, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, washed dishes, and cleaned the whole house. We have a big weekend coming up: Mike's on leave, so we're having a big get together! He, Maureene, and Katie are coming for a long weekend, and Tony and Cathy are meeting us in Orlando for the weekend. It's going to be quite a boozy weekend. Expect some drunk posts. We'll be in Epcot for Around the World on Saturday, then a Case Day on Monday, and who knows what else. My liver is trembling in fear!

time flies

I didn't realize just how long it had been since I posted last. This week was the official start of our busy season at work. I worked 58.75 hours, if you pretend that I took half an hour for lunch every day, which I certainly did not. I spent one night at one of my employee's houses, just to save the almost 2 hours of driving. Wednesday we actually set a record in the store, which is pretty neat. But, in case you couldn't tell, it also means I have a lot less time for posting. So, sorry about that.

This weekend we've done a whole lot of not much. Well, Alfred did a bunch of stuff for work yesterday, but I did not. I did a load of laundry, cleaned the bathroom, and we hung up some pictures. Other than that, I've been sitting on the couch, watching TV. And I slept in both mornings. It's been fantastic.

Last of all, this past Thursday was a really big day: it was Katie's 21st birthday! Happy birthday, Katie!

back in the dirty south

Ah, the warm, non-snowy, dirty south. Actually right now it's much cleaner than the north with all its salt and crap all over the roads. Alfred's car needed a bath when we got back, it was pretty disgusting. We got back Tuesday night just before midnight, it took us exactly 18 hours. That included stops for gas/food/restrooms, traffic in Charlotte and Jacksonville, an attempted beer run at 5:45am, and horrible weather in Pennsylvania. That's what this picture is from. This was a major highway, it hadn't been plowed at all so we couldn't see the road, and snow was blowing everywhere. Traffic was going about 30 mph. It was ridiculous.

Our trip was nice, except for the 3 cats that now live in my parents' house. Our allergies just love going there more and more every year. The new cat is cute, my nose and lungs just hate it. We saw lots of family, got some great gifts (including a bound book of our road trip blog, which includes all of our posts, pictures, and comments, it's really nice.) Most importantly, we played the new Mario Brothers game for the Wii. Alfred, Katie and I were the main players, though Dad and Uncle Ken helped out at times as well. We basically played for 4 days straight. And we beat the game! It was awesome. It's fun to play because when you play with multiple players you're all on the screen at once, so you can be nice and use teamwork or shove each other into pits and stuff. We also ate a lot of food. Like, a lot of food. But what else is new.

happy birthday Lindsay!

First, I want to say happy birthday to Lindsay! I've been intending to email her for months, but she beat me to it the other day with a super cute picture of her daughter. I think the only picture I have of her is the one I posted last year, so I guess I won't post it again. Happy birthday though! :)

Next, I want to say hi to Meghan! Meghan lives in Kapolei, Hawaii, and apparently just found out about my blog from Mike. I met Meghan when I went out to visit Mike a couple of years ago when he first got back from Iraq. In fact, you can see Mike sitting with his leg propped up in the reflection in the glass door at the right side of this picture. I bet Meghan loves that I'm posting this picture. Hi Meghan!

I considered posting a picture of Mike's bullet wound here, just for fun, but decided against it. Maybe later. Instead, here are some pictures of another wound of sorts. Mama Kitty is still living at the old museum (we're going to try to bring her over to the new place this coming week) and apparently had an accident of some kind. I think her tail is broken. She isn't moving it at all, but doesn't seem to be in much pain. It had some fur on the end of it last week, but now it's gone from about the halfway point down. It looks like a rat's tail. See?

Gross, huh? In person you can see the individual vertebrae that make up her tail. It's kind of cool in a gross way.

Friday was Kara's last day, so I also took a picture of the cake I made for her. Unfortunately the cake was baked over a fault line, and an earthquake struck before we could eat or photograph it.

Really, I frosted it that morning and it didn't have enough time in the fridge for the frosting to set, so it slid in the car. I did all the piping myself. Not bad, huh? Katie taught me all I know. Which isn't much, but it's more than I knew before. It tasted damn good, that's all that matters. And I have a little tupperware container of frosting left in the fridge that I've been sampling over the past couple of days. Mmm, butter and sugar.

All right, I'm going to go back to watching Alf now. I mean, go make granola. One of the two.

happy birthday Katie!

I couldn't let the day end without a quick post about my favorite sister's birthday! Katie's 20 today! Only 1 more year until she can finally have her first alcoholic drink.

I think she was just smelling it here. Because she clearly would not have been drinking way back in Christmas of 2006 when she was only 17. Anyway, way to make me feel old, Katie. I remember the day she was born, getting the call at my grandparents' house and all 3 of us kids getting on a separate extension to hear the news. And the next day was Easter, Dad took us out to breakfast and I got "Fancy Pants," aka waffles with fruit and whipped cream, instead of my usual chocolate chip pancakes. Huge mistake. Then we went to the hospital and got to see our new baby sister. And now she's 20. Holy hell. Ok, quick, need a distraction from feeling old.

Ah, this works nicely.

last Christmas post

After all, it's New Years Eve! Today's also Jeff's (Lindsay's husband) birthday. He's pretty old, I think 32 maybe. Happy birthday! Anyway, it's about time I stopped writing about Christmas. I left work early today, partially to finish cleaning and getting ready for tonight, but mostly just because I wanted to. I'm also taking tomorrow off, but have to go back Friday. I was expecting the other girl to be back at work today, but she called this morning and asked if it was ok if she took a couple extra days off because she and her fiance just broke up. I said sure. Anyway, Mercedes and Ilya are coming over tonight, we're going to have some good food, a bunch of alcohol, and a bonfire. Then we're making french onion soup for tomorrow, using our beef bones to make the stock. I'm excited.

Back to Christmas. I never got my mom's pictures before they left, which sucks, because I didn't take any pictures on Christmas Eve and I know there were a few good ones. Mom, please email me those. Or send a cd or something. Anyway, here's a good one of the cookies that Katie decorated:

I like this one, it's how we spent several evenings: in front of a bonfire.

Christmas night, Maureene made lumpia, which were like eggrolls, using the leftover pork from dinner. She had a bit of help rolling them, while everyone else was in the picture above.

Then she fried them the next morning, and we had a delicious breakfast. We took the rest with us shooting and had a delicious lunch as well.

I wanted to post a video of us shooting, but I can't seem to get them to work on my computer, so I can't find a good one. So instead here's a picture of my dad, covered in cabbages:

And that's all I have the patience for. Have a happy new year!

good clean Christmas fun

First things first: a Christmas day post! We started out nice and early (well, most of us did, anyway) to get cracking on some food. I also made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast, which we had with mimosas. Then we hit the presents! I played Santa, but look too hideous in all the pictures to post them. We made a mess. We were careful to cover as much of the floor as possible.

Some Wii was played, since Katie had just received Mario Kart. Then we had to get started on the hard core cooking. Here's Alfred working on the chicken. The smoker with the pork shoulders is in the background.

We also had macaroni and cheese, baked beans, buttermilk biscuits, turnip and mustard greens, and cole slaw. All from scratch, of course. With apple pie, cookies, and chocolate birthday cake for dessert. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

While we were working on food, everyone else took part in a gingerbread house competition. I made it extra challenging by making the gingerbread pieces while drunk, so they didn't quite fit together. Surprise! But that made it fun. I think.

Ilya and Mercedes won for most decorated house (unfortunately all the M&M's caved one side of the roof in at first, but they rebuilt):


My parents and Katie won for most creative use of materials (theirs collapsed, so they remade it as a FEMA shelter after a hurricane):


Max, Robyn, and Ellery won for best plan (they cut their pieces to fit together better before construction):


And Mike and Maureene won for best overall. Theirs didn't collapse at all, even though they did use a few toothpicks to help it stay together until all the frosting dried. They also did a lot of decoration. Check out their gingerbread people in the second picture:



Then we ate, opened more presents, and sang to Emily. Then we drank again. All in all, a pretty great Christmas.

cookies galore

My parents are here! They got in yesterday afternoon, we went out to eat and then headed to a shopping center and played some chess. Because that's what you assume you would do at a shopping center: play chess. My dad won.

Today we spent aaaaaaalll day making cookies! To be more specific, my mom and I made cookies while Alfred watched and drank and my dad played a hunting game on their Wii. We made those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss in the middle, almond cookies with almond frosting, peanut butter oatmeal M&M cookies, peppermint sugar cookies (I started making them in the shape of candy canes but didn't like how they were turning out, so I made the rest as pinwheels and didn't like those either, oh well), cut out sugar cookies, and cut out anise cookies.

We frosted all of the cut outs and decorated the anise ones.

Katie's going to decorate the sugar cut outs when she gets down here. As we learned when making our Easter cookies last year, she's much better at piping than I am.

Now we're *watching* (thank you, mom and Ro) Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Interesting choice of movies to watch with my parents, yes. It's good so far. They're dropping quite a few f-bombs.

Thanksgiving reloaded

And we're back with more Thanksgiving pictures! First let's enjoy a picture of my mom and I eating wings. Alfred doesn't like the picture of him eating wings I put up yesterday, so this one of me looking like a goon should make up for it.

Next up, a picture of a car that was broken down in the middle of the bridge to Canada. Those flagpoles next to the car are the flags of the US and Canada, which means they broke down right at the border. Kind of cool, if your car has to break down.

We had some random guy take a picture of all of us at the falls. It didn't exactly turn out.

Alfred's standard arms out pose. We have lots and lots of pictures with him standing like this. Hell, I could do a whole post full of them. Maybe I will...

There were all these light displays set up on the Canadian side of the falls. Most of them were Disney movies, but they threw in the obligatory Jewish display too. So Ilya got in front of it and acted Jewish.

There was also a building with a light display set to music. So we danced.

Then of course comes power hour. Mike was cleaning a couple of guns while doing the shots, which is always a good idea.

And last but not least: Wii. Witness the many faces of Guitar Hero. I was pretty drunk when I was playing it, and kept varying between totally serious

and totally rocking out.

Some of us stayed cool

And others really, really enjoyed themselves