Party Hats at the Nursing Home, Huge Snowballs and Little Blue Snowmen.....

I'm sure you are all just dying to know, what have I been up to lately? So glad you asked. Here's a run down in photos.....




This is me and my grandpa looking as dapper as ever at his birthday party. My grandpa and I share a natural-born melancholy personality that most often goes unappreciated by the world at large. Apparently the sanguines and cholerics are much more fun at parties. On that note, I just recalled the funniest memory of the first time somebody called me a melancholic personality, probably more than 10 years ago now, and I was like, "What in the heck is she talking about calling me a melancholy personality?" I had just never heard that term before. I looked it up way back when and here's how we melancholies are defined: "Those with melancholic dispositions are thoughtful ponderers and while they are often very kind, considerate and highly creative in poetry and art, they can become occupied with the tragedy and cruelty in the world. A melancholic is also a perfectionist, self-reliant and independent."

Add "extremely dry sense of humor," and that about covers my entire existence on this earth.

Anyway, back to grandpa and the birthday party, I kind of fell in a little bit of a rabbit hole there...

My grandpa celebrated his (89th??) by reminiscing with another couple he and my grandma have been friends with for years. They recalled an extremely random (extremely, random) story about a trip, I think to sell cattle maybe, in which they all ended up staying in a motel room together. Apparently it became too late to drive all the way home and the only motel in the town only had one room with two double beds available that night.

My grandpa and his buddy ended up leaving the motel early that morning to do something, leaving my grandma and Rosie in the hotel until the guys came back to pick them up. On their way out the desk clerk must have been inquiring about their "wives" still up in the hotel room. My grandpa and Allan then took it upon themselves to explain that the ladies weren't their wives, they were just some girls they had picked up on their way into town. Unbeknownest to my grandma and Rosie, when they ended up leaving the motel room that day, everyone thought they were prostitutes my grandpa and Allan had picked up and spent the night with. Not sure how I feel about that story, considering the word "prostitute" is not something I'd like to associate with my grandma. But I guess there was a time when my grandparents weren't my grandparents.....

Then, on Saturday I had to kick everyone out of the house. There always eventually comes a time when I'm just not interested in seeing the face of another human being for at least a couple of hours, maybe even a whole afternoon, and Saturday just happened to be my day. I finished painting my dining room, only after scrapping the bottom of the bucket to get the final coat done, and Kaydn Rye and hubby spent their time out in the snow constructing an enormous snow ball.





You can tell Kaydn Rye is in a deep thought cause his tongue is hanging out.

When they came back in I was ready for human interaction again and all was well.

Yesterday we made blue playdough snow men while being completely snowed in.



Hubby didn't even make it to work yesterday, which somehow just made the house seem very crowded. It always makes for an interesting day when he's trying to work from home and I'm trying to work from home. I'm not used to any more than little people in the house with me during the weekday afternoons, so when I went upstairs to go into the bathroom, I must have been coming up the stairs in a little bit of a hurry because I turned the corner and rammed right into the bathroom door. I completely forgot that hubby was home and therefore could possibly be in the bathroom.

Today, I was able to pawn the kid off on the neighbors, so I have the entire day to ponder.....it's going to be a good day.

So We Can Blame It All On Adam and Eve

Ever wonder if all that random stuff that floats around in a four-year-old's brain all day will ever translate into something that might come in handy in the world outside of the land of food-covered preschoolers?

Well I have confirmed that it will, and it does.

I think Kaydn Rye may someday travel the world with a cape and leotards all while trying to save the world from people with names like Dr. Doom, Magneto and Lex Luther, oh and don't forget Megatron.

With that wonderful little tidbit of knowledge you will know why I felt obliged to ask about his latest superhero man's supposed aggregation of enemies.

It all began as I'm trying to finish up a case summary for my editor by the end of week on my latest medical malpractice-liposuction gone awry-with a perforated bowel case (if I had a nickel for every malpractice case I've written on that began with liposuction and ended with a snip to the stomach, the intestine, etc, I'd be a millionaire - let's just say I wouldn't be working as a legal writer, I'd be laying on the beach in Tahiti).

Kaydn Rye comes down with his latest character from some good vs evil story and he begins to tell me about how his man implodes his enemies.

I ask, "So why does your super hero man have so many enemies."

He explains, "Well, Eve took the apple from the snake and then Adam and Eve ate the apple and then all the good people turned into bad people. That's why there are so many enemies in the world."



I guess he set me straight on that.

In other "Kate's world" news, on a completely unrelated note, hubby and I seem to have stepped into some personal growth as well this past week.

You know how before bed you may say something like, "Honey, can you please remember to [insert task that absolutely must be done, cannot be put off until the next day and which does not fit into your own schedule of working all day, conversating with a four-year-old, cooking, cleaning, enjoying an active social life and of course, blogging)? And can you make sure to do it on your way to work, or after work, or on your lunch break, or at least sometime tomorrow?"

Hubby may say something like, "Yep, I'll make sure I get er done, honey."

Well, let's just say that around here that same conversation occurs almost nightly as part of some sort of really annoying eternal recurrence. And as part of that eternal recurrence, he'll for sure get the job done the next day only after a phone call, a text message and an email, all with "reminders" about the previous night's "get er done" philosophy.

I think most often the problem we have is that while I'm explaining to him what exactly needs to be tomorrow, and he's nodding in agreeance and reciting things like, "Yep, I'll do it at lunch tomorrow, honey," he's really not even awake. I can honestly say that almost every night I have a conversation with someone who is completely unconscious.

So the other night I decided to attempt at a new strategy. I told him what I needed him to do for tomorrow and then gave him a little pop quiz to determine his degree of consciousness.

"So what's today's date?"

"Who won the Superbowl 1987?"

"What color are my eyes?"

"Who's the president of the United States?"

"Who's the president of Iran?" (You can't say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and not be awake.)

Only after answering each question correctly is he cleared for consciousness, and with this quick little pop quiz, our problems appear to be solved.

Eight Crazy Nights....

As you have probably gathered, I have had a long few weeks, and blogging has not been a priority on the list of obligations that must be taken care of before I put myself to bed.

First, there was Hanukah, which as the song goes, "while you have one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights."

But let me tell you, eight days of specialness can take its toll on any good housewife. With tons of baking, cooking and a candle lighting ceremony every night, these partygoers were pooped, well atleast I was anyway. And of course, there are the Hanukah haters - those who think, especially because we are not technically Jewish, that we're not allowed to celebrate the holiday and that our celebration of Hanukah tilts the universe to the point of us all falling off the planet someday.

I'm here to set the record straight, Hanukah will not make the world blow up, and while people think it messes with all the world's Christmas celebrations, believe me, it doesn't. Hanukah has nothing to do with Christmas. Hanukah began as the rededication of the temple after a small group of Israelites rose up against Syrian oppression and took back their temple which had been defiled by the Syrians. It is also a celebration of the provision of G-d through inconceivably difficult times. Many Israelites saw their entire families and their children slaughtered because they did not renounce their belief in G-d during the years of oppresion leading up to the rededication of the temple. The reality of the world we live in now, thousands of years later, is that there may very well come a time in our lifetime when we may witness the same atrocities. It makes the celebration of Hanukah so gosh darned real and tangible.

Anyway, another aspect of Hanukah is that at its core it is the rededication of the temple. Now that Jesus has come to earth, died and ascended into heaven, those who believe in Jesus are now the individual temples of the Holy Spirit. We, our bodies, are now the temple, and therefore for Messianics the celebration of Hanukah becomes the rededication of our lives to Jesus for another coming year.

So because we kind of celebrate the coming of Jesus and his dwelling on earth during the Feast of Tabernacles in October (when Jesus was actually born), in December we celebrate the rededication of our lives to Jesus.

Here are the highlights.










(Please disregard my volleyball duds in this picture. I had just returned home from my volleyball match and we hurried to begin the Hanukah celebration.)



In this picture we are praying the Hanukah blessings. Please disregard the pink dining room that I am still working on painting over. In a couple weeks, I should have a totally new outlook on eating - namely we will not be dining in the psychotic-inducing pink room any longer. We've come into the homestretch in the last few days.


Here we are reading the story of Hanukah.


Here Kaydn Rye is giving hubby a Hanukah book of paintings he created.