Author: Doris

I’m sitting on the stairs waiting for Edda’s bus. The kids have a 2 hour delay this morning because of the 1.5 inches of snow that fell last night. We have a case of the grumps this morning – Ruby puked up a pencil (she’s relearning her puppy antics from Maxi, it has been YEARS since she’s chewed anything), Maxi may have peed on top of the puke, Maxi chewed up my Xmas slippers right in front of Vince who did nothing to stop it (I count him as an accomplice), Edda spit up her seizure meds, Jeremy shoveled the walk and changed out the car’s snow tires. And I tried to work through all this chaos.

Here’s a pic of Maxi pooping in the snow and the subsequent poop bags.

Vince, at the urging of his grandfather, insisted that the Christmas tree not be taken down until the Three King’s Day – which is something I kind of sort of had heard of before and when I researched it, I started understanding the connection of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Twelfth Night, etc. etc. I know, I know, I’m a little religiously-impaired, but I’m making up for it now.

Anyways, Three King’s Day, or Epiphany (which is a name that I love) marks the beginning of Carnival season and to celebrate, I make a King’s Cake in which I hid a baby Jesus. (OK, it wasn’t really baby Jesus, it was a quarter, but next year, it will be a baby Jesus when I have a little more prep time). If you get the slice with the baby Jesus, you will be king for a day! Unfortunately, I made the cake out of bread flour instead of all-purpose, so it turned out a little chewer than expected, but I’ll fix it for next year.

I went a little crazy this Christmas and bought myself a bulk roll of silver wrapping paper. I did not realize it would be very heavy. I did not realize that it would be made even heavier by my husband making me a wooden silver wrapping paper dispenser with a scotch tape dispenser screwed into the base (so you never have to go looking for the tape!). I am questioning if this was a wise move because I think I’m saving money per square foot of wrapping paper, but now it no longer fits into any sort of reasonable size storage area. I am hoping to never buy wrapping paper again.

Last Friday, we took the CRH (China Railway Harmony at 250 miles/hr, but not high speed train) train from Hong Kong to QuangZhou, China where Rena spent 6 months as senior consultant there. The city just finished hosting Asian Games. Its dramatic transformation is everywhere.

Waiting to see if Maxine has a UTI. Turns out she doesn’t.

I do most of my non-grocery shopping online. I just find it less frustrating, more time efficient and a great way to comparison shop. For most of our clothing and household textiles, from underwear to business suits – backpacks to towels, we shop the overstock pile at Land’s End. Because I’m always buying stuff on sale, none of the sheets match each other and Jeremy owns ten pairs of white boxer shorts with a totally hilarious ant print on them. We also tend to buy swimsuits in January and snowpants in June. Most of the time, the kids don’t even register that I’ve exchanged out old, worn, too small clothes with new ones, but the last shipment they saw these great fuzzy sweatshirts and both the kids loved and put them on right away and rolled around the floor with them on! They are both getting so big, I can almost wear the sweatshirts myself, the sleeves are just a few inches too short!

Vince got to learn about spray paint while home on school break.