Little Turkey

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance...A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away.."
-Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

This is one of my favorite times of the year. It's a time to take inventory of the past twelve months that are slowly coming to a close and a time to give thanks for blessings past and future. It's a time to get together with friends and family and celebrate the good things in our life, even if the past year has been filled with hardship. We have so many things to be thankful for: most of all for Miller, who has a magical way of making people instantly forget their problems. Here are some pictures from Miller's first Thanksgiving!

Santa Claus is coming.....

Over Thanksgiving, the family made a trek out to the Opryland Hotel to have dinner and see the Christmas decorations and lights. It was M's first visit to Opryland with all of the lights up, and the family's first visit in a long, long time. Here are some pics:


Old Hickory Steakhouse...our favorite!


Lights in the Atrium


Mom looking cute in a Santa Hat!


Stopping for M's dinner...


In front of the Grand Christmas Tree.


Walking through the Atrium


Pictures with Santa! (Had no idea he would be there or we would have dressed up more for the occasion....now we know!)

Confession

It has been brought to my attention that I am really slacking when it comes to taking and posting pictures of M. And I will admit, I have NO excuse. I could lie and say "I have to SLEEP when the baby SLEEPS" and I have no free time for computers or scanning or writing. This is, by the way, the most annoying piece of advice to a new mom that you could ever give and I promise to never dole it out myself.

In truth, I should have all the time in the world. ***knock on wood*** M sleeps on and off from about 11PM to 11AM and is in a semi-wakeful state for the rest of the day. (For those of you who know me, it seems as though she has taken after her mother and can fall deep into a REM cycle at the drop of a hat). So the lack of posting is simply laziness (or obsessive constant cleanliness) on my part. (Now that Nellie is back, I spend a lot of my free time picking up dog hairs, ugh!)

I apologize. And I promise that more updates will be in store.

Things that annoy me in the news...

Since I don't often have the time (or mental energy) to blog lately, it takes a LOT to make me pull the "Things that annoy me" out of the closet and dust it off. This irritates the crap out of me:

Pinhead

So you're a starting linebacker for a football team that is not only expected to win the SEC Championship this weekend, but also a shoe-in for a National title and you can't make a better decision than this? Police said they had to risk their lives just to jimmy open the car window to put the car in PARK after this kid drunkenly fell asleep at the wheel with his car stopped at a stop light! Have the foresight to take a taxi and not throw away a bright future: whether it be yours or an innocent's. It's called "tolerance" for a reason!

Miller gets a B+

Today we went for Miller's 1 month check-up at the pediatrician's office. I was a little worried about her being fussy, seeing as our appointment fell between meals and I was sure she would start getting hungry. But alas, amongst the doors and doors of wailing children, M was quiet as could be. I even think I saw her scoff when one especially noisy child started screaming his head off. I know that today was just a good day and I'm sure there are bad to be had, but I couldn't help feeling so proud as our pedi poked and prodded her and she just laid there smiling. Even after her Hep B vaccination she just turned red, shed a few tears, then perked up like a coffeemaker and gave Dr. Mehrotra a big giggle.

Like we thought, she has grown considerably. It's only been 3 weeks since our last visit and she has grown over an inch and put on about 2 1/2 pounds. No wonder those dipes are starting to get a little bit tight. This puts her at about the 89th percentile of females, which I consider a solid B+.

Serendipatiousness

There are two things that got my mind rolling this weekend about all of the strange coincidences that have occurred in my life.

First, I happened to catch one of my favorite movies: Serendipity with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsdale. I love this movie even though watching it now (and not in HD) makes me remember exactly how old I am. Over the years I've become a total believer in "fortunate accidents."


Second, D's longtime friend Tony came to visit for the weekend. As I listened to them swap stories about their glory days playing for the Thundercats in Knoxville, I realized another strange parallel in our lives. If I had happened to hang out with a few younger, more catty group of "kittens" in my sorority in college I might have met him or his friends years ago. And this isn't even the start of it! The following are some more of the "serendipitous" parts of our lives that ended in our eventual meeting:

1) D was swimming for a country club in Knoxville when I was swimming for a country club in Nashville. His Dad and my Mom were both meet officials. Though D eventually quit swimming to play football, I continued on. When I moved to East Tennessee I swam in meets at Oak Ridge High School, where his Dad was the swim coach.

2) My swim team used to work the Vanderbilt football games to raise money for our booster club. I was probably filling drinks and counting change in the concession stands when D was out on the field playing ball.

3)When I was a senior in college, I interviewed for 2 jobs for after I graduated. One was a position with Gallo where I had the chance to go to either Oklahoma, Texas, or South Florida. I chose South Florida and accepted their offer. The other job was working in Knoxville...for D's Dad's company. Just weird.

4) Little known fact: I actually met D at a bar in Deerfield Beach the week I moved to Florida...a week before we started working for the same company, in the same division. (Little-er known fact: we both caught each other's eyes because we were the only two people in our office that could see each other over the cubicle walls!)

5) And the most "fortunate" accident of all...Hurricane Frances. If our company hadn't had a late meeting the night Broward/Palm Beach counties were evacuated, D and I may not have become so close. You see, I had no gas and by the time we got out, there was none to be had. So I was forced to hitch a ride with whomever I could. 24 hours later we were still in the car evacuating. Needless to say, we then became quite good friends.

So as you can see, I feel like the stars aligned after several missed encounters. It's funny how life goes sometimes, isn't it?

Catching up...

So there have been so many things that I've had the urge to blog about lately, all of which are lost on the way to actually sitting down at the computer. Between bottles, visitors, changing my and baby's clothes 10 times a day from all the spit up (and consequently doing a bazillion loads of laundry a day) it seems my brain has become accustomed to thinking about the same 5 things over and over. It's turning into Jell-O. I need to blog like a senior citizen needs to do his crossword puzzles. So I'm going to cram all the random things I've thought about this week into one Blog O' Mini-Blogs. Here goes:

1. Banana Bread. I made it with chocolate chips this week. Simple but brilliant addition that I recommend you try next time you have bananas lying brown and stinking on your counter because you don't have time to eat anymore. Thanks D for holding our child for ten seconds while I could bake.

2. Champagne. (Excuse me, rather "California Sparkling")
I don't get to indulge as often as I used to, but when I do I make sure it counts. My lovely friend Hector with Freixenet sent me a bottle of their new sparkling from Gloria Ferrer called 'Va de Vi'. In one word: REFRESHING! Probably one of the most satisfying sparklers I've had in a while. It tasted like a fuzzy navel sno-cone from BeachHut smelled, bringing back great memories from high school. (Kingsport ladies give a holla!)

3. Speaking of High School. Found my old scrapbook from Mr. Eggleston's 12th grade AP English class. Laughed like hell when I turned to the "Likes and Dislikes" portion of the project. I liked "Black Mercury Cougars" and disliked "Paying $1.50 for Gas." My how times have changed. I think at some point I will have to scan some of those pages and write a whole post about how fat I thought I was back then. Jesus.

4. Fall. Both as the season and the verb. I love this time of year. I hate when D leaves the swing in the middle of the bedroom floor when I have to get up in the middle of the night. Let's just say I'm glad I didn't use many of my post-partum painkillers when Miller was born because I'm needing them for my jacked up knee now.

5. My friend Heather. I could kiss her for all the comic relief she brought to my life this week. (Not to mention all the diaper changes I didn't have to do because she was so excited to 'take care' of Millie.) Here's just a tid-bit: "Hey, isn't that the guy from the Red Stripes?" she shouts loudly as Jack White sits down at the table next to us for dinner. Good thing Chrissy was light on her feet and started talking about Jamaican beers. I'm still laughing about it now.

Ok, so I think that's all I have time for today. Hopefully I can be a little better in the future about finding a few minutes to blog-as-I-go during the week. (And so my brain doesn't turn to mush like those bananas on my counter.)

**she says as she stuffs her face with chocolate banana bread, yum**