Who Hid Mom's Chocolate?

No escape from the Heartland of America this week, but that's not to say I'm no longer considering a permanent visit to San Diego, Portland and/or Cocoa Beach. Instead, celebrating our youngest peep's birthday ensued, complete with eating out at Famous Dave's (saucey amazingness!) and partying it up at home with friends (pizza, cake, ice cream, Wii games, Nerf darts & tackle football). Even I must admit that this year's birthday was most definitely a birthday to remember, at least until we outdo ourselves next year. Or try, anyway. Let's be optimistic here.

Behind the scenes of all this celebration madness, our oldest peep, the cellist, found herself in search of a full size cello to replace the ¾ cello she has outgrown, something that seems so odd when I can vividly remember when the ½ size one was taller than HER. Anyway, to do this, she recruited Mom (yes, me) to make a litany of phone calls in search of said replacement and to schedule actual cello viewings with her private cello teacher at local music stores. Who would've thought we'd be running all over tarnation in search of a simple cello replacement? Yeah well, unfortunately our search came up short, so that particular item remains on the 'To Do' list for yet another week, month, *insert random time frame here*.

Calendar check time - hey, cool! Another school day off for the peeps so that they might take some quality time to properly celebrate Martin Luther King Day by playing video games in their pajamas and building snow creatures outside for me to photograph from the window, mostly because I don't own long underwear or snow pants and would much rather stay inside where it's not FREEZING COLD. Makes total sense to me, but there I go digressing again.

Uh oh... wait, here's the not-so-cool thing on our calendar for the week: CCD Retreats. Will be getting back to you on that one. Lordy.

And now here's a birthday blooper just for fun:

Escape from Snow Mountain

So it's 2010 and we're just now returning back to life as we knew it before the Snowstorm of the Century smacked us into the new year. And yet lo and behold, several snow days and a holiday break later, here I sit back in my Orchestra Mom Chair on Principle Stand Audition Day. So what does that mean exactly? It means parents get reacquainted with one another and our electronics while string players interested in having a “star by their names on the program” try out for that TOP CHAIR in performances, also known as the famous Seat Closest to the Conductor. (As I send a thumbs up sign to cellist peep as she heads off to her audition – Break a leg, girlie!)

The week ahead... wow, flashback to 11 years ago when I was 41 weeks pregnant with our youngest who had absolutely NO intention of arriving on time. But then Dr. M induced labor on January 11^th and our feisty-spark-plug-of-a-son blessed us with his presence the very next day. That son of ours hit the ground running from the get-go and hasn't stopped since. So what to do? Throw a smashingly ginormous birthday party to celebrate the occasion, complete with Wii games, Nerf darts, air hockey, snow football, pizza, cake, ice cream, presents – all shared with a few of his favorite dude friends.

The party is so ON.
(more on that during my next blog installment)

In the meantime on a personal note (as if this blog isn't all about personal notes, right?), I am now accepting nominations for relocation ideas. After all of this cold/snow/BLIZZARD activity that we've been experiencing over the past couple of months, I've completely had it with this weather that is so not for me. It stifles my creativity and ices me over like some sort of human skating rink. I crawl into bed and never want to get out. It sucks the spunk right out of me, morphing me into this zombie-like creature that I don't even recognize. For these reasons, I need a new place to hang. If anything, a spot for daydreaming purposes to yank me out of this cold weather funk.

Although some potential winners already come to mind, I'd seriously consider any others in addition to these:

Portland, Oregon
Southern California - SAN DIEGO
New Bern, North Carolina
Fort Walton Beach, Florida
Cocoa Beach, Florida
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Rome, Italy
Venice, Italy
French Riviera
Hawaii
Atlantis
... your nomination here.

2 Days Left

With only 2 days left of peeps home for Christmas break, yes, I'm getting antsy. Or how about anxious-to-reclaim-what-was-once-organized-chaos? Now that's more like it! So what's a mom to do while waiting for that blessed day of sending peeps back to school? Here's what - get an online signature:



or this:



or maybe:



Decisions, decisions... I'm going with the last one.

UPDATE - We have a winner, as voted by the Peepstead:

From Our Family to Yours

Happy New Year!