This Joy’s Life

It’s Halloween and though baby Sydney is officially due today, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Ah well, we’ve got lots going here for Halloween anyway.

We went this morning with Chad’s parents to visit Clara’s great-great Aunt in the nursing home. Appropriately, Clara dressed as a nurse and handed out candy to residents there. She was pretty cute about it and people seemed to enjoy her.

Nurse Clara

Then, home for lunch and to change into another costume. Nurse Clara meet Clara the Clown!

Clara the Clown & The Great Pumpkin

Dad, the Geisha and the clown all headed into downtown Burien for storefront trick-or-treating and a hayride. It was quite a pleasant afternoon with no rain so far. We are feeling pretty lucky and optomistic that we will have nice evening for neighborhood trick-or-treating after Clara’s nap. Then time to relax and try not to eat all the candy in the house before our own trick-or-treaters arrive!

Dad & daughter hayride

First and foremost, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Mmm...pumkins taste good!

Clara and I carved our pumpkins last night and this little guy will now light our front porch for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

Only time will tell if baby Sydney will be helping us pass out candy at that point or not.  We are counting down the days, hours and, for me especially, the minutes to her arrival. I’m SOOOO ready.

Going to the gym to walk on the treadmill tonight, in fact, and see if that makes her want to “come on down” as the saying goes.  Plus, I have a new playlist on my iPod – Clara’s Playlist – which is pretty great.  It includes songs such as Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden, Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, the Graham BLVD version of Sha-boom (Life Could Be A Dream), Lady Gaga’s Dance and The Black Eyed Pea’s newest Boom Boom Pow. My kid’s got a diverse musical taste and I love it!

Nesting is mostly done in the house at this point, though it did take over the entire house and was not merely isolated to the nursery. In fact, one of my favorite projects was to frame some photographs that my BFF Nicole took at a farmer’s market in France. I saw them on her blog (here) and knew they would look AWESOME blown up, framed and hung in my kitchen. See what you think:

That’s all for this post; I know it ain’t much, but once miss Sydney arrives I can just about guarantee some more regular posting than I have been of late.

As promised, here is video footage of the bottle rockets going off that my friend Maria took. It was pretty spectacular:

22,000 bottle rockets from Maria Simon on Vimeo.

We’ve had a big time the past few days.  Chad’s mom Vonnie had a milestone birthday on Friday and we arranged for a very close friend of hers to fly into town from Toronto to visit with her this weekend. It meant getting together with friends for breakfast and hosting a birthday BBQ for her on Friday night. It was a gorgeous weekend, the kind that reminds you why in the world you ever moved to this grey, rainy corner of the country in the first place.

The birthday girl, Vonnie.

Cynthia

Cynthia's hubby, Rick - our resident electrician.

Dana, who surprised us with the news that she got engaged last weekend - Congrats, Dana and Ned!!!

Gwen, Jane and Sherry (our surprise guest) Jack and Clara.

Josh (Jane's hubby) and Ryan (Jack's daddy).

Susie, Jane's mommy, who became a grandmother for a second time on the 4th when Jane had her baby girl, Payton. Congrats Jane, Josh, Sawyer and Payton!!!

Clara in the pool doing her best impersonation of a duck, i guess.

Saturday, the 4th, was spend in our traditional manner at a friend’s parents’ property with a private beach right on the Puget Sound which allows for the viewing of three different firework shows in nearby cities and neighborhoods. This is not to mention the firework show that happens right in front of us on the beach thanks to our friend Dan who has mastermind a barge that held 22,000 (yes, thousand) bottle rockets this year. Its “meger” beginnings three years ago included only 10,000 bottle rockets. I’ve missed this show the last few years as I’ve always had to get home to put Clara down for bed. This year, I really wanted to see it, so we let her stay up WAY past her bedtime

I made a kick-a** pot of meatballs in a sweet sauce and two batches of hush puppies for the gathering. It was all gone in 15 minutes or less and people were raving. Always makes me proud to be Southerner when I get the opportunity to share our food that way. And, low and behold, Southerners began coming out of the woodwork. There was a woman from Alabama, a Texan, a couple who’d recently moved from Virginia and a woman whose brother currently lives in Marietta, GA (where I grew up)!  Hush puppies just have that effect on people, I guess.

I enjoyed myself so much, that I never even bothered to pull out my camera. Thankfully, a good friend Erik Seo – who is an AMAZING photographer – did that job for me. Please check out the link to his blog below to see how we spent our 4th celebrating the country’s birthday.

A couple friends also got video footage of the bottle rocket barge in action and I will try to put the video or a link to it up on my blog once they start publishing them. It was a really awesome sight (as you can see from Erik’s photos).

Click here to check out Erik’s blog!

Another holiday video for your enjoyment. This is Clara and Jack doing their best “Chubby Checker” to a VERY ’70s version of Jingle Bells a couple days before Christmas:

Just some pictures for the family (and whomever else is interested) of Clara in her Christmas dress:

Have I mentioned I’m not really a fan of the snow? Which is a shame because I used to love it as a kid, especially since we rarely saw any in Georgia. But, as an adult, you realize snow = lots of work; Lot’s of wet clothes to be washed, floors to be mopped up, effort to layer everything on, shoveling to get yourself and the cars out of the driveway, etc. Ba-Humbug to Snow!

Still, it does make everything, even garbage cans on the curb, look prettier. Here’s the ice sculpture the Snow made for me with my hanging flower pot out on the front porch:

And our new split rail fence took on a real photographic quality blanketed in snow:

I took those as Chad, Clara and I walked over to JackGwen’s house just to get out in the fresh air and for a change of pace after being couped up for so many days. Got a couple fun pictures of Jack doing his best “Shiloh Jolie-Pitt” and Chad doing his best “Jolly Ol’ Elf”:

Uncle Brett is here for a visit that is almost over. Until today he had seen only the numerous malls that the greater Seattle area had to offer for Xmas shopping and taking Clara and JackGwen to see Santa Claus at the University Village for pictures.

Jack was a little anxious at first about meeting Santa. According to Gwen, all morning he was saying, “Santa. No Santa. Santa. No Santa . . .” But, as you can see here, shortly after giving the jolly ol’ elf a high five, Jack was no longer loosing sleep over his big red buddy:

Alas, Santa’s elves were having technical difficulty with their printer, so we got to hang out a bit longer than some and Santa even read them the story of Rudolph:

That was yesterday. Today Clara and I took advantage of the unusually nice Seattle weather – in the 40s, windy, but NOT RAINING! – to take Brett on a ferry ride to the quaint little Maine-like town of Port Gamble. Here’s us enjoying our day:

Suzanne turned me on to this little bit of comedic genius. It’s made me smile more than once, and got me in the Christmas spirit, so I’m sharing:

Good stuff! Here is a picture of a yard in our neighborhood:

I think it is safe to say they’ve gone overboard for Jesus.

So thanks, Suzanne. Here are the answers to the questions you’ve been dying to know:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? A little bit of both.

2. Real tree or Artificial? Fake. Why sugar-coat it with the word “artificial?” I haven’t got time for the pain of chopping, watering, sweeping needles, disposing, etc. Maybe one year we’ll get crazy and have a real one, but not this time

3. When do you put up the tree? When I get around to it. This year it was the week after Thanksgiving in preparation for my brother’s visit.

4. When do you take the tree down? Before January 1st. It’s bad luck not to.

5. Do you like eggnog? Nope.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Rainbow Bright Doll. I wanted her soooooo bad. That was about the time I learned that I like the chase, because once I had her, I remember thinking how she wasn’t as much fun to have as I thought she would be.

7. Hardest person to buy for? My husband and parents.

8. Easiest person to buy for? Clara.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? No.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? A fireproof box. It might have been a birthday gift and Brett swears I asked for it, but . . .

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Favorite scene is when the attic stairs hit Chevy in the head. I heart that movie!

13. When do you start shopping? December

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Probably.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cynthia’s little wafer cookies with the yummy pink center and homemade sugar cookies.

16. Lights on the tree? Of course! Red and white.

17. Favorite Christmas song? “Last Christmas” by George Michael.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home, but I’d like to start a Christmas tradition of going to GA the day after and staying until after New Year’s.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s? Yep. There’s Donner and Blitzen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. No wait, anger leads to hate and hate leads to anger and Donner leads to the Dark Side? Next question.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Neither, ribbon or bow.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Open gifts with extended family on Xmas Eve, gift from Santa on Xmas morning, and spend the day at Grandma and Grandpa Fisher’s house, where we open the rest of the gifts.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? I agree with Suzanne: Christmas starting in October!

23. Ornament theme or color? Red and white, but also have numerous ornaments from “back in the day” that don’t fit the theme.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? We do Xmas brunch – french toast!

25. Favorite Christmas tradition? We are making new ones with Clara around, but plan to incorporate baking cookies for Santa and reading “Twas The Night Before Xmas.” Also, when she’s old enough, we’ll go and see The Nutcracker every year.

26. What do you want for Christmas this year? A Macbook.