Monsters

I made it home last night with no problems.  Hubby came and picked me up and it's back to life in CA.  I must be back to reality as I was greeted with a jury summons to welcome me home.  Oh joy.  Today I spent skyping with Double A, The Bean, and the parents, hanging out with the hubby, and working on tomorrow's sermon (which sadly is not good, but I'm not sure how to fix it at this point).

I have a monster headache. Again.  Seriously, it can find somewhere else to take up residence because I have been playing host to it off and on for about 3 weeks now.  It kind of sucks.  Nothing seems to help, which sucks even more.  Blah to headaches!  But, I have been thinking about monsters lately, not simply because of my head.  While I was home, Laughter talked a lot about monsters (she's 3 after all), and so did The Nephew (who is also 3).  The Nephew cracked me up because he kept saying how he can punch monsters.  I tried to tell him our house is monster-free, but he either didn't believe me or didn't want to give up that loophole where he might get to punch something.  I also finally got to see Monsters University.  I watched it with Double A and The Bean on their first sleepover night.  Since monsters appear to be a theme, it seemed appropriate to give them their own post, which means their own shoes.

Who doesn't love Cookie Monster?  Wait...if you don't love Cookie Monster, please don't tell me because I'm afraid we could no longer be friends.

I'm pretty sure these are knit, but I bet I could find a similar pattern for crochet if I ever needed to make my very own pair of baby monster shoes (monster baby shoes?).

 These are just weird.  But colorfully fun.  And at least they're happily weird.

Are these specific monsters that I should recognize or just monster shoes that someone created?  Either way they would be fun for Halloween.  That orange one 4th from the left kind of creeps me out, though.

Awwww...Sully and Mike!

These are hilarious.  I might also need this pattern.  Because clearly I need monster slippers.  Or chicken feet slippers.  But I prefer to think of them as monsters.  Because chicken feet slippers would be a different post.

Airport

I'm sitting in the Salt Lake airport, people watching. Well, shoe watching really. If I could take pictures I would, but that would probably be weird. As usual thereare some really cute, really strange, and really impractical shoes passing by me. Sometimes I want to say, "if you can't walk in them, don't wear them! Especially in the airport. Silly people. I didn't post yesterday yesterday because I didn't think you needed two posts in a row of being being totally sad about leaving Montana and my family.I'm happy to get home to the hubby but it sucks that I can't live closer to the fam. I will spare you all of the whining and crying and basic patheticness I am currently feeling. I suck at this long distance thing. I'm totally a sad shoe girl today.

PS...the hubby told me I wouldn't be an awesome blogger until I did a post on the Kindle Firehe got me for Christmas. Looks like I'm officially cool...

A Day of Drama

I had a sleepover with Flower and Laughter last night.  Those 2 crack me up.  It was a solid hour of showing off and trying to show auntie everything before they could be convinced to go to bed.  We had a lovely nest in their bedroom:

It was very cozy.  Flower slept in her bed (the tall one), I slept in Flower's bed, and Flower slept on the smaller mattress at the end.  Poor thing has a cold so she snuffled and coughed all night.  It didn't sound pleasant for her.

This morning I went out and played with the panoramic feature on my new camera.  This is the view from my sister's house (remember you can click on it if you want to see it bigger).  Yeah, she's pretty lucky in her views, my seester.

This afternoon I drove to visit  DJ.  You can't tell in the small version, but this is the view when you come around the corner and first see Flathead Lake.  It's one of my favorite views.  So of course I had to stop and play with the camera again...

...and again awhile later when the valley opens up.  See?  The mountains have snow, so it really is winter here.  I'll have to say that the lack of snow in the valley definitely made for an easier drive today.

DJ is awesome, and I'm so glad I got to see her.  She had tickets for us to see some student written, directed and acted plays, so that was fun, and I'm glad she asked if I wanted to go with her. (hence the post title.  OK, so it wasn't a whole day of drama, but the alliteration was better this way)  One of her friends from swim team was in a few of the plays.  There were 11 in all, and they were about what you would expect.  Some were funny, some were depressing, and some attempted to be deep and ended up making us say, um...huh?  But it's really great the students have a chance to do that sort of thing.  After the plays we went for coffee and then I dropped  her off at home so she could do homework and I could drive home.  Definitely too short of a visit, but at least I got to see her a little bit and catch up on what's been going on with her.

Sigh...tomorrow is my last full day here.  Should I start crying now, or wait until it's actually time to leave?

Sleepover Socks

The sleepover with Pippi last night was lovely.  She has always cracked me up.  She stayed in the cubby until about 6 this morning when she was cold and climbed in with me.  She said, "aaahh...yes, I can sleep in here!"   Yep, cracks me up.  We even wore fuzzy socks for the event:

The BFF gave these to me for Christmas and they are soooo snuggly.  Knee high fuzzy socks!  Now if only I wasn't so freakin hot all of the time I would wear them lots and lots and lots.  I didn't model them while wearing them because the snowflakes look bad when stretched over my calves.  Don't they go nicely with my turquoise plaid jammies?

Pippi asked if I had a pair she could wear, so she got these.  If you look, you'll see that the one on the left is on inside out.  She refused to believe me when I told her.  She also had adorable cupcake jammies.  It was a totally stylin' slumber party.

Tonight I'm headed to sleep over with Laughter and Flower.  It's tough being this popular, but someone has to do it....

A Boots Kind of Day

I would have posted yesterday, but after hanging out with the BFF and nephew before they had to leave (and...ahem...skipping church), "working" the matinee for Mom (and by work I mean crochet as not one person came up to the counter during the movie), I spent EIGHT HOURS making a photo book from the Holidays pictures.  This should not have taken that long, but Shutterfly and I were NOT agreeing.  I finally had to concede defeat and order a sub-par (by my OCD perfectionist standards) book.  So.  Very.  Rude.

Oh well, today is a new day.  This morning Tink and I hung out until she went to preschool.  Then Laughter and I hung out with our friend who has twin boys who are 16 1/2 months old.  I know their ages, because they were born the day after the hubby and I got married, and we are still counting our marriage in months. They are so cute and so serious.  They just watch everything.  And they were boys on a mission because there was something in the dining room they were both bound and determined to get to if their mean mommy hadn't kept stopping them before they could discover whatever it was.  The whole fam had dinner together (except for the 2 sons-in-laws--apparently it was a no in-law event), and then Double A, The Bean, and Pippi and I watched Monsters University with the brother, Mom and Dad.  Now Pippi is having a sleepover.  She currently snoozing away quite contentedly in the cubby, but has informed me that she plans to join me in my bed sometime during the night.  So noted.

Apparently it was a boots kind of day:

Laughter was wearing these and got very upset when they got mud on them.  Ohhhh, the heartache of muddy winter in MT.

The Bean  didn't actually wear these today, but they are her new snowboots and I kept forgetting to get a picture.  Double A has a green pair, but I haven't see them yet.

The twins' boots.  How stinking adorable are these?  Thankfully their mommy reads the blog, so only thinks I'm slightly weird when I photograph her children's footwear.  One of the boys caught me while I was taking the picture and was less than impressed.

Tink has been wearing them this year.  You might remember them from last year when Pippi was wearing them.  Oh, also, you should click on that link because it also talks about the twins!

I wore my boots yesterday.  Clearly I did not get the memo.  I also wore black shoes today when clearly the theme was brown.  Sigh.

The Nephew and the BFF

One of the most awesome things about the BFF is that if she is available and the roads and weather aren't too terrible, she will drive the 4 hours from her house to my parents' house when I come to MT.  Because she's the bestest best friend ever.  Unfortunately, due to one thing and another, we haven't seen each other since the hubby and I got married, almost a year and a half ago.  She and the nephew drove over yesterday, though, and are spending the weekend.  The nephew is now 4 and is hilarious, busy and LOUD.  Man, that kid has energy for days.  It makes me tired just looking at him.  He is totally into cars and planes (and the movies with those names).  Hence his slippers:

Today it warmed up into the 40s and poured rain all day.  Definitely not a winter wonderland this visit.  We stayed in and made pizza and hung out.  Laughter was here for awhile and she and the nephew played for a few hours, which was fun to watch.

I didn't post yesterday because I was exhausted from holidays.  I think everyone had a good time.  There were no major meltdowns, which is always good.  We did Easter, Halloween, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Birthdays St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.  As soon as one thing is almost over the kids ask, "what's next?"  And have a habit of saying, "is that it?"  Jeez, kiddos, we did 8 holidays in 1 day, how much more do you want?  Are you trying to kill the adults or what?  Oh well, this is the 13th time we've done it, and I'm pretty sure we're not stopping any time soon.

Shopping With The Seester

The seester, Laughter and I drove into town today for a bit of shopping and errand running.  It was a quick trip, but fun.  We drove in and had lunch, then went to Target, Barnes & Noble, and Michael's.  We were home by 5:00.  (I should probably tell you that "town" is the city of a decent size about 75 miles from my hometown) Anyhoo, it was a nice day, and we had fun talking and giggling and shopping.  I also had fun playing with my new camera and taking pictures while we drove.  Here are some samples of the journey.

It's dry here...not much snow, which is a bummer.  But I still firmly I believe I come from one of the most beautiful places ever.

When I got home I started getting ready for tomorrow's Holidays festivities.  This is our annual tradition of doing a whole bunch of holidays in one day since I'm not usually home for them.  It started out somewhat simply enough and has since gotten more complicated.  Still fun, though.  So, above we have the Easter eggs  boiling, the Halloween candy and St. Patrick leprechaun gold, birthday cupcakes (which Double A frosted and The Bean be-sprinkled), and the turkey thawing for Thanksgiving dinner.  We'll also do 4th of July, Valentine's Day, and Christmas.  Good times!