Celebrating the gifts you don't buy

Little friends

christmas carols by the tree



sharing Mr. Potato Head with Daddy




Elks in Estes Park




Enchanted by Colorado



Lazy cabin days

visiting with Lala

SNOW!!

Ginormous love

Happy snow days

the light of a child

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday week. Happy new year!!

Yes blog, there is a Santa Claus.

I feel it, again.

Each year this quiet, sweet energy creeps its way into our collective consciousness. It brings with it ideas about family, about love, about peace. It brings creativity and the joy of giving. It can also bring stress. It can also bombard you with songs and ads and feelings about money. (But those things are not born of the true essence of Christmas).

You may call me a Christmas idealist. I'm sure that I am.

I feel Christmas most when it's night, when the daylight bustling has stopped and you are safely tucked away home. There's family. The tree.  The flickering lights. The laughter of children. The call from your parents. The looks of love between your partner. The sweet hum of Christmas music. The quiet. The silent night.

In a word, magic.

Sure Christmas manifests itself differently for everyone. Some experiences losses at Christmastime. Some are homeless. Some don't have a family to go home to. Some feel overburdened with the stresses of gift giving. The year my father died I swore I wanted no part of Christmas and made sure to be boarding a plane to Hawaii on Christmas Day. (But that year my heart was overcome with grief.)

But everyone can tap into the magic. If they want to.

I believe that Christmas connects us. It reminds us to reign in the small stuff and focus on that which is most important. Family. Friends. Being present. Being together if at least through the heart.

For me, it fills me with love, it really does. And love, to me, is magical.

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!

Guess what time it is???

Let me give you a couple of clues:

1) All day long I've had this terrible feeling that I'm doing something horribly wrong or supposed to be doing something but don't know what it is. It's been intense. It's hard to describe but it kind of makes me want to get out my address book to try to remember if I've pissed anyone off, or call my credit card companies to see if they've received my checks. I mean, it's bizarre!

2) I ran back into the house FOUR times to retrieve basic, essential items needed for my day. (ie cell phone, wallet...thank God I remembered my PANTS!)

3) Chocolate. Sugar. Gimme gimme gimme

4) I just watched a sappy chick flick (Remember Me) and cried like a little girl. WATERWORKS.

Now, as an adult, I can put 2 and 2 together to know that above symptoms = one very hormonal chick that's about to start the old monthly.

HOW NUTS IS THIS SHIT???? Seriously, it blows my mind how little molecular bitch slappers (aka hormones) can do this to a person. How they can make you feel so...wrong. What's up with this aspect of nature? A little drama to spice up the elegant design that is our bodies? Me not understand the function!

Ok, huge sigh with a hiccup from post-chick-flick-sob-sesh.
I'm calling it quits on this day. Onward to tomorrow!

truckin along...

I recently gave a blogging friend of mine some crap for being out of the loop for awhile. I mean, her blog was a part of my internet circuit which was entirely affected by her sudden blog disinterest. How DARE SHE!! She mentioned that she doesn't have interesting things to blog about right now, and I thought

by God do I know what you mean sister.

I mean how the heck have I even maintained a blog at ALL since I've become a mom? A working mom? In the WINTER?

Guys, I am SO boring right now. I actually bore myself I'm so boring.

We have very practical and unexciting things happening these days. We have tried to sell our house but just took it off the market this week. I started a new position. We have nanny drama. It's unseasonably warm. Blah blah blah...

So we are just trucking along, gearing up for the holidays. Keepin on keepin on.

And so to spice up this otherwise pretty boring blog post, allow to privy you to:

...the moment my husband figured out the remote control for our camera.

The Christmas card where my husband attacked my face



Aww, it's sweet right?





Um, still nice but let's keep it in your mouth sweetie...



No, seriously, TONGUE IN MOUTH!



LICKING!!! ATTACKED!!!



Sigh. This one's not going to Grandma I assure you...

I think she was beautiful.



I feel a mourning for this woman I never knew. This woman who lived a life in the eye of the public. This woman who got cancer. This woman who had an unfaithful husband. This woman who lost a child.

Elizabeth Edwards experienced things I fear most in life. Yet even after burying a child, even after discovering that her 30 decades long partner secretly fathered another child, she kept going. She got up each day. She got dressed. She faced the world. And she did it while her body was losing a long fought war with cancer.  But yet her gracefulness, her ability to keep on going, made her a beacon of strength to many. To me. She was truly a brave warrior.

Yet even the bravest of warriors meet their end.

I'm sad right now. I didn't know her. She's not a part of my life. And yet she is every woman.

(Hidden inside the grief I feel for this perfect stranger is fear that I see as my own.)

Life is fragile. Ever changing. BEAUTIFUL. Full of goodbyes. You hope you have it in you to be the brave warrior when life calls upon you to be. You wonder.

Elizabeth Edwards, rest in peace. Thank you for shining your light in this world. 

Simple

Do you remember when life was this easy? 

Where the hardest decision was what to do next?

Where the mere act of running down the street could elicit pure joy?

As adults,

we get bogged down with life,

tied to our technology,

worried about money,

I want to remember

Playing.

Laughing.

Learning.

Friendship.

Feeling oh so loved.

Love is in the air.....

Enjoying great food. Laughing with family. Knitting. Watching football. Christmas shopping. Thanksgiving leftovers. Christmas music. Putting up the tree. A long weekend together as a family. Christmas crafts. Ellie smiles. The three of us sleeping in bed. Christmas photos. Friends over for dinner. Snow!

True joy at the simple things.

(Love is in the air.)



Eleanor with her newest cousin, Adeleigh. I think these two are going to be good friends.

Ellie absolutely loves her cousin Maya!

Another wonderful Thanksgiving with Mike's side of the family

Loving having her daddy home all day for so many days in a row!!

Don't let this picture fool you. She's not adding TO the tree. She takes the ornaments OFF the tree and then piles them all in her baby toilet. Yes. Like it's her job.

Rides with daddy.

All dolled up and no where to go but home. Perfect.

Happy Christmas season everyone!

Being thankful

At work, I've been very busy with sick patients, and Thanksgiving is a busy time of year. Hospitals want their patients to be home for the holidays, so they call hospice, and that's where I come in.

Cancer doesn't care about holidays. Today I admitted the most complex patient, with so many skilled nursing needs, and so much cancer. She was my mom's age and she had 2 grown children. She just wanted to go home. So I spent the day at the hospital making sure she could do just that, and be as comfortable as possible. At the end of the day she did go home. And tomorrow her and her family will sit down and be together for Thanksgiving. Though she's not able to actually eat and digest food anymore, I know it will be an incredibly meaningful Thanksgiving for her. For her family.

No one wants to say it, but most likely it will be her last.

Being thankful.

I came home tonight and I felt my thankfulness. I really felt it in my core.

I think of all the Thankgivings in my life, each special face around the table. Each year the scene around the table changes. People get sick and die. People move away. Babies are born. People get married. But whatever the scene, there is something so magical about stopping the routine, gathering together, and eating Thanksgiving dinner. Love is present. There's a lingering sort of holiday magic in the air. People that are gone are missed. People that are present are appreciated.

Being thankful.

Of all holidays Thanksgiving is my favorite. There are no expectations from each other. You simply come. You are.
And you eat.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

My blessings are coming in the form of whoopie. Or, be careful what you wish for.

The power of social media is pretty significant. I guess I should realize this when I beckon my facebook friends to please help a Maine girl living in Colorado out by hooking me up with a sweet Maine treasure that is the whoopie pie. In this case, be careful what you wish for, as whoopie pies are calorie laden cake loaves of sweet sugary bliss. And my resistance to anything sugary is weak.

I wrote about my friends, the Cox Family, who hooked me up over the weekend, much to my delight and true surprise. Those whoopie pies had about a 12 hour life span in this house, now working their way through my metabolism and on their way to storage.

However, TODAY, I received another package, this time from my very loveable and fun cousin, Morgan. She is just the type of person to take my whoopie deprived requests seriously, and when the package marked "perishable" arrived, I knew.

I'd been blessed with another dose of whoopie.

Mike just said to me "Too bad your whoopie pie friends don't know your cycle". True dat, husband. True dat.


Am I surprised to be experiencing such an outpouring of whoopie? A little. But that's how people are in Maine, at least the people I know and love. They are good and generous, and they know a delictable piece of sugar when they see one.


I guess it's a good thing I just bought a series of spin classes. And I better make damn sure I get my at-risk-for-being-fat ass there.

Love you cuz!!!!

my happy place, and the treats I miss when I leave

If you're a good friend, an old boyfriend, or just someone that I happened to have gone on a long road trip with, then you KNOW that my favorite band in the whole, whole wide world, is the INDIGO GIRLS. I grew up singing their songs with my mom, who could pick out even the hardest guitar parts on the guitar. They represent really happy times in my life and truly, certain IG songs can turn a sour mood into a good one just like that. I love to play loud and sing proud. To me, they are classic, and I've been right there with them through each new album, and when they come to town, each local concert.

That said, I didn't see them this year, and I really try to see them every year. They were scheduled to play an E-town recording in Boulder, CO, and surely they sold out in no time at all. So I posted an ad on craigslist and some woman contacted me asking me about my IG history. I told her and apparently passed her screening process. She called me to congratulate me, as she would sell me one of her tickets to the front row center recording in Boulder. She just had one ticket for me, and I don't make a habit of going out alone to concerts, but this felt worth it. So last night I made the solo trek to Boulder, met some great people, and folks, I had a shit eating grin on my face for the entire show. I was SO close, and I just loved every second of it. Every second.



No cameras allowed so I had to sneak this pic on my phone.

Now I can count on one hand the number of bedtimes that I've missed with Ellie. I hate missing out on anything, and that may or may not be the healthiest approach to parenting, but it's the culture that the three of us as a family have created. That said, when I came home from the concert Mike informed me that a milestone had occured while I was gone but fortunately, he was able to capture it on camera. My heart aflutter I hurried over to the camera and here is what I found:

You SOOOOO have to be a mom to appreciate that!

Whoopie!

Being from Maine, there are lots of things that I miss. The ocean. Lobsters. Steamers. Endless forests. Microbrews. And when my monthly sweet tooth kicks in...whoopie pies.

Whoopie pies are tasty treats. Good for you? I should think not. But if you can allow yourself a momentary lapse into the world of partially hydrogenated fats then you will be greeted by the sweetest little chocolate cake with gooey white insides. Sugary! Baked! The perfect fix for "that" time of the month cravings.

That said, last week I had a craving so fierce that it reduced me to posting on my facebook page a pleading request for someone from Maine to send me a whoopie pie. Now surely I did this in jest, though it did spark quite a bit of commentary. One facebook friend sent me a recipe while another friend sent me a link to a whoopie pie sending company. All great information, but ultimately too much work for something I know isn't too good for me. (read: there is no way in hell I can handle a whole batch of home cooked whoopie pies with a sugar craving so acute).

So, moving forward. Today I went to a spin class, an early morning butt kicker set to hip hop music that was so loud and full of f bombs that I was frankly a little surprised that the cops weren't peeking in to assess gang related crime. But it was great, and I came home, ready to kick off my day with some yogurt and granola, post workout, when I see this.

Oh dear, is it? Could it be?

Whoopie pies!!!

Ellie didn't quite know what to think, she just knew that her mom was VERY excited.

Yes, I am a terrible mother.



The newest generation of sugar fiendery. Sorry Ellie.

 I would like to give a HUMONGOUS shout out to my friends, the Cox family. There are real ways of knowing who your friends are in life. Some give you a shoulder to cry on. Some hold your hair back when you're sick. And some send you whoopie pies. From far far away.

Thanks, friends!

So, so long calorie deficit day....hello whoopie!

treasure

Nature is so pretty.