Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

A Summers Hootenanny.

Just sitting around in the yard, enjoying the weather. 

Lucy, is....concerned.

She's over it.

All my babies, including my fur baby. (Not talking about Max.)

We bought Max a guitar this weekend, a birthday gift. It's been attached to his shoulder ever since. He needs a haircut, but don't all rock stars?

Pre Half Marathon Sunday Relaxation.

Maddie's signature hair move.

Signature Rock Move

Her regular face move.

Lucy does all their vocals and manages the band. They like green m&m's in their dressing room, Lucy makes sure you don't forget it.

Merry Christmas!

Snow Globes

I spent about 9 hours Sunday night looking for attractive snow globes. I told a friend about my quest and he said, "What? How hard can it be?" Then he saw the one billion atrocious snow globes that exist in the world and apologized. I mean, really.

We've collected snow globes for Maddie since she was a baby and what I've learned from collecting snow globes is two-fold. When people hear you collect anything you get about a billion of that thing. And some of them, are terrifying.

I've also learned that when you see a snow globe that is even remotely modern or attractive you should snatch that baby up because you'll never see it again.

Keeping in mind we've been collecting snow globes for about 11 years, please note our collection has just 6 globes. Here's our, I mean, Maddie's collection.

I can't remember what year Nordstrom featured Olive The Other Reindeer for their holiday theme, but that year we decided to start a little collection for Madison. Right after we took her to Santa for the first and last time.

Now get ready because this one is going to blow your mind. It's a snow man in a snow globe, holding a snow man in a snow globe. Ideally that snow man would be holding a snow man in a snow globe too but maybe that's just too much if you're not on any controlled substances. This one came from Eddie Bauer Home.

Here's a cute little penguin I found by chance at Target while roaming the aisles pretending to buy things we absolutely needed for the house.

I picked this one up at Pottery Barn Kids and in Madison's dreams this is the what Christmas morning always looks like. (That's a puppy, not a pig.)

This one is my least favorite, it's a little Kountry Kute. But Maddie likes it and I am fond of the striking red base so I keep it out. (It's from Crate and Barrel)

This is another of my favorites, it's so sweet and simple. It came from the Martha Stewart Holiday collection at Kmart. I went there this year hoping she had another in this year's collection, but no.

I found a couple of decent ones while browsing this year I thought I'd share in case you don't feel like looking at 50,000 snow globes featuring bears in football jerseys.

A smorgasbord with only a little whining.

Pro Tip: Make sure your kid doesn't still have a tube in his ear drum before you decide to pour peroxide in his ear canal to clean out wax. I hope only the "Whining" part of Max's brain was eradicated when I doused it with hydrogen peroxide. While my son openly wept in pain, I felt pretty good. A big shiny ball of Shitty.

We've got an ear infection. Again.

I'm thinking Max and I should just hole up in my bedroom chronicling the ways our bodies continue to fail us.

Although Max is no fun because you give him a shot of ibuprofen and he's no longer mad at the world. Unlike me, who, as you might imagine, is pretty fed up with my body and all this crap. I'm 36 body, let's keep it together.

*****

Aside from sitting around asking my body why the yoga isn't making it happy? And the mostly vegetarian dinners and the broccoli and breakfast shakes packed with nutrients? We need therapy my body and me.

When I'm not doing that I've been doing things like making homemade vanilla extract. I was going to take pictures of the process but then I remembered that everybody did this project last year. I mean I did mine naked only wearing a mustache and a flower brooch, so it wasn't totally Last Year. But I couldn't exactly share those pictures. But listen if you're making vanilla extract as holiday gifts this year? You have to do it naked wearing a mustache.

I made 24 four-ounce bottles and that's a lot of vodka. I had to make another trip to Costco for a giant bottle to finish the project. However, since I'd already done my Costco shopping, I ended up buying bread, deli turkey, cheese, to make the giant bottle of vodka less noticeable. No one really batted an eye. The turkey must have distracted them.

I also didn't have a funnel on hand so I may have used one of the kid's water bottles filled with vodka to get the vodka where it needed to go. Don't worry, I used almost all of it before putting it back on Max's nightstand. He's got an ear infection, a little vodka won't hurt. 

*****.

I thought one or two of these might be our Christmas card photo, but Logan said* "No one wants to see us."  (*didn't say but kind of meant.)

Since we're using another shot for our xmas shot I thought I'd share a few of the other shots from our fun (unedited, ignore dust on the disc) photo shoot last week with Joe Vaughn.

Here's our Christmas Miracle. No one's eyes are closed and I don't look morbidly obese. Maybe Tiny Tim will live after all.

Max loves her no matter how insane she acts towards him.

I can't believe she's 11.

Here's our very own gap ad.

(If you can read Max's shirt, make him a sandwich.)

Hong Hua Authentic Chinese Dinner

Our friends Joe and Cari invited us to dinner at their studio the other night.

Tip: If you get invited to dinner at Joe and Cari's house...say yes. Joe is a photographer who works with lots of people but is especially well known for his food photography work. Chefs appreciate him making their restaurants and their food look so good, and sometimes they offer to come over and make dinner for 10 or 20 of their closest friends.

Hong Hua was Hour Detroit's Restaurant of the Year and Joe photographed the spread for that review. The owners of the restaurant wanted to share their food with some of Joe and Cari's friends.

Sometimes I'd like to trade services or products, you know I'll give you this thing of value in exchange for this thing of value, but my dramatic lack of marketable skills makes this difficult. Good thing I have friends with lots of marketable skills.

As a special surprise the guest list was kept secret leaving me to debate if they'd invited my in laws, or our ex landlord.

Luckily they didn't invite them, but WOW that would have been a really fun party!

If Joe would have invited my in-laws, he'd have been laughing at the choking tension in the air. Instead he was laughing at funny witticisms. Phew.

While I was taking pictures, Logan said, "Oh thank goodness someone's here to take pictures." Sarcasm, it's what makes our marriage go around.

Overall a lovely night. Maybe if I offer up a bushel of apples I can get a restaurant to come to my house and make dinner for a bunch of my friends.

Vacation In Pictures

Here are my pictures from my long weekend away with friends. You can read the notes in the browser to see my sometimes witty or irreverent comments, or you can go to the Flickr Set to read them that way.

We found the perfect house at Seaside the six of us can go in on. It's even under a million dollars. I figure if I return cans and bottles after our party Friday I can come up with the down payment in NO TIME AT ALL!

Noted Without Comment

Maddie brought this pen home.

I saw it and thought, "Hey! Whoa!"

Logan saw it and said, "Hey! Where'd that come from?"

Maddie said, "China.....they make everything in China."

Logan said, "Huh, maybe they're re-purposing the moulds in China."

When we adopted him, his name was Boss

Max, Logan and Maddie are all crowded onto half the sofa. And Gary is all comfortable on the other half. 

Maddie is making that face because I've suggested maybe we move the cat so I can sit down too.

A few pictures from the day I tried to keep fiats from flinging out of my mouth.

Goofy Glasses as Ice Breaker

Yesterday I took a shower, put on clothes and makeup, drove to the doctor, bought myself a Taco Bell dinner, ate it all (without crying), cleaned out a junk drawer and finally pulled down the party decorations from Maddie's big sleepover bash 2 weeks ago.

This was a banner day. Right now, I'm thinking about what to eat for lunch and the possibilities are so overwhelming and awesome I can barely stand it.

I think I may have turned the corner on this stupid thing and might be back to reasonably normal (though my throat won't be totally healed until next week). I am beyond happy about this. I even get to go on a little overnight trip with my friends (my real life friends who are always so busy with their 5 billion children they never get to do anything fun with me ever) on Saturday night.

God I am relieved. (Knocking on wood).

But this post isn't about that. This post is about being a good guest at a party. Advice about parties from the woman who gave birth to my husband that still holds true: "The host did all the work to give you this great party, your job as a guest is to make sure it's fun." (Other parenting advice she gave that is still true: "Nothing lasts forever." True, but somethings like to pop back in for a visit. Like constipation!)

Ryan and Kristen's wedding was held on the same night other friends were having a Halloween party and since we wanted to make it to both we took a few mustaches with us (you don't have a drawer of fake mustaches in your house? Lame.) and some nerdy glasses to wear in case we had time to make it to the Halloween bash.

We brought them into the (incredibly lovely) wedding reception and guess what? Making people wear fake glasses is an excellent ice breaker.

See?

Another side note, on the way to the reception we drove through a little part of Bloomfield Hills I hadn't been to before. On the drive we were discussing cutting our budget, maybe downsizing the house and being a one car family for a year. As we talked we passed by all these huge lakefront estates and suddenly it felt like we'd already downsized. Jesus, time for some perspective.

Swimming Dogs

On Saturday we snuck* our way into the End of Season Dog Swim at the local city pool.

*By snuck I mean we walked up to the gate said, "We're forcing our poor daughter to live a dog-less life, but can we torture her by watching the dogs swim?" And they said, "Sure, you assholes!"

A few of the dogs got off leash and instead of staying in the water, where they were allowed off leash, they ran around like I imagine all the kids would have run around the pool all summer if there weren't any rules about that sort of thing.

Watching all the dogs play and dive and chase each other was excruciating and hilarious.

Someday we'll get a dog.

If you have a dog, or like watching them swim, there are a couple more similar events coming up as other local pools are drained for the season.

You can see the other pictures here.

Forbidden Photo #5

This is the no photography warning outside the Super Secret Frozen Yogurt Shop.

I took it to mean don't take pictures of stick figures in wheelchairs.

Oops.

Forbidden Photo #4

Exotic toppings at the Frozen Yogurt place.

Gummy Bears?
Crushed Oreos?
THE TRADE SECRETS ARE MINE!

I've said it before, I enjoy beating dead horses. I'm almost done.

Forbidden Photo #3

oooh! A white table, with white cushions.....I NEVER WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT!

Forbidden Photo #2

   

The amusing thing about this series of photos is the part where I could have been advertising their nice establishment. But instead, I'm stealing their trade secrets: Beautiful light + White on white + Frozen yogurt

I miss wearing a scarf.

I took this picture and a few others I'm going to share at a frozen yogurt place. The manager asked me to stop taking pictures because they have problems with designers stealing their ideas.

Their radical white on white decor and frozen yogurt with various toppings ideas.

Hmmmmm.....

Hank and Esme

This year our Blogher festivities included Antonia from Whoopee. She is from London and on Sunday Antonia's husband Ian flew in with their little girl Esme to join her for an extended holiday in the states.

We all met up for breakfast and Hank and Esme hit it off being so ridiculously cute and toddler-like I suddenly forgot I hate baby-hood and enjoy this part of my life as a parent a lot more. Since then I have had a dream each night I'm pregnant and happy about it.

Thanks a lot Hank and Esme.

The babies sat next to each other sharing toys and bits of toast. They also talked to each other and babbled back and forth. But sometimes it seems they had trouble understanding one another.

"I can't understand your accent..."

When the the little ones got out of their chairs they toddled around the table and gave each other hugs and kisses I died. I'm dead right now. I hope they're happy.

Update: Oh My God. They brought me back to life just to do this to me.

Rainbows

On Monday before I took the red eye home we walked around North Beach. These were leather samples for custom made shoes. I'd like something in a puce.

Aloe Vera

This plant is gone. It survived a lot of abuse, but the cats rubbing against it and knocking it out of the container spilling dirt all over. This finally proved too much for me to bear.

Corn Hole

Number 3 on the list of things I'm really bad at and like anyway.

Rocks

A lot of Michigan beaches are full of rocks. I think this is why Crocs were invented. I apologize.

Maddie

Open Bottle Here

Logan's favorite thing about living here is going using this bottle opener he installed on the corner of the garage.

Thank You Detroit.

This is me, totally kicking everyone's ass at Guitar Hero.

Boating in the gutter.

Rain Gutter Regatta. Yes, there is such a thing.

Quiver.

A quiver of arrows. Also, here's another Quiver you should check out if you like crime fiction.

Vegetables On The Grill.

We had friends over for dinner the other night. Laura is a chef and made a big batch of grilled vegetables. I'm going to recommend you make yourself a friend who's a chef.

Neighborhood BBQ

This is Evan. He also goes by Little Dale because he looks remarkably like our neighbor, Dale.

It takes a village.

Caroline knows every state. Here I am pointing out the state two states above where Obama comes from. Since her mom is a Republican.

Bottles for capping

I'm trying to remain enthusiastic about this hobby. Some days are harder than others.

Family Rules

Three simple steps to not losing your God Damned Computer Time. Logan and I are especially good at following the rules since our jobs require computer time.

Buzz Buzz

This is Max chatting with his buddies at T-Ball. These kids are both Max's age and this is "novel" because I'm that parent.