Ushering in 2014...Looking Back Over 2013

 Everyone is doing a "look back" post for the New Year so I figured I'd put on my Lemming shoes and join in on the fun.

2013 was a pretty busy year for us when I sit down to really think about it.

• We celebrated the Youngest Child's 14th birthday in February. As usual, we did so at Joe's Crab Shack. She loves it, the rest of us tolerate it the one time a year we have to go there, lol. This year, she's decided on Flounders in Pensacola Beach. Their food is much better.
• I finished my undergrad in March. It took me an embarrassing amount of years to do it. However, if you consider the fact that we lived in four different states and in six different houses and I transferred schools three different times, it's a miracle that I finished it at all.
• The Mister and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary in May. 
• We moved from San Diego, CA to Navarre, FL in June. I also celebrated my 36th birthday in June at a restaurant that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
• We celebrated the Oldest Child's 17th birthday in July. Talk about a bittersweet birthday for a parent to celebrate.
• I applied for and was admitted to grad school in August and September, respectively. I'm hoping that I can get this degree in a reasonable amount of time.
• My grandmother passed away in October and we made the trip to Ohio for her funeral. We also got our cat, Winnie, in October. She's a sweetheart.
• In November, the Mister and the Oldest Child attended the Marine Corps Ball. It was the Oldest Child's first Marine Corps Ball. We also had our first Thanksgiving in Florida.
• December, of course, was all about the holidays. We had a really great holiday season here in Florida despite what most people think about celebrating Christmas in a warmer climate. We were actually more festive here than we had been since living in Vermont. We celebrated New Years with a bottle of actual champagne and it was pretty good.

For 2014, I'm hoping for a smooth transition into being a graduate student. I'd also like a better paying job that utilizes my skills and at a company that I can have some respect for. I'm also hoping that my kids finish out their first school year in Florida on a high note. I hope for the Oldest Child, that she opens her mind about school while she still has time and enjoys her senior year. I fervently wish that my dad's health improves. I'm not ready to think of my dad as being old and infirm. I wish for the Mister, that his job situation improves. I try to take comfort in the fact that at least it's not recruiting duty but there are too many similarities. ::sigh:: Aside from hopes and wishes...

I'm looking forward to having my second and third bookshelves built. I'm also looking forward to getting furniture for the sitting area in my living room so that it doesn't look so bare. It's going to be a tranquil and peaceful area to read and relax that's apart from the living room. I'm also looking forward to beach weather and flip flops!! Woot! And books and yarn. Lots of reading, knitting, and crocheting for 2014.

August Challenge, Day 20: Three Smells That Bring Back Memories

I realize that I fell off the wagon several days back. I've had some personal stuff going on. Oh wells. I thought about going back and playing catch up but decided not to because it would just be a post dump that I don't think would be all that interesting to read. I'm going with today's prompt and you all can just pretend that you read the previously missed days. So there.

Lakeside, CA 2003

 One smell that brings back memories is the smell of wood smoke. For a while, every time I smelled smoke, I'd run to the window and check the sky for signs of a brush fire. This was due to living through the 2003 California wildfires. When we moved back to California, I was pretty paranoid about fires for probably the first year or so. Then we bought a fire pit for our backyard and started re-associating that smell with good memories of s'mores, wine, and good times instead of bad. Even today, when I smell smoke, my first reaction is to check the skies but I don't immediately panic anymore. Plus, we've gotten so much rain this summer that it'd be pretty impossible for NW Florida to have out of control wild fires. We're much more likely to drown.


Another smell is the corn silk. It was so funny...On our drive from CA to FL, we saw corn fields in either Arizona or New Mexico. I don't remember which. But, it was so out of place. It was entirely weird to see so much corn in the desert. Then, the Mister and I sort of looked at each other and then cracked the windows just to see. And yep, we could smell the corn silk on the freeway. A smell that we both associate with growing up in Ohio. It was kinda neat to smell that familiar smell so far away and in such an alien-type of place. The smell of corn silk and soy beans will always remind me of hot summers in Ohio.

The smell of a ham or turkey roasting will forever remind me of the holidays, no matter what time of year I smell it. I'd say about 90% of my holiday memories are good ones so roasting turkeys and hams are a gooooooood smell. I suppose you could add in the smell of pine from a fresh cut Christmas tree too. And pumpkin pie spices. Man! I'm looking forward to the holidays this year, lol.



If you'd like to jump in and participate in this blogging challenge, please visit Natalie Grueninger's blog for prompts.  

Smokin'

Random picture of Bailey because you're insane if you think I had the presence of mind to take a picture of the flaming smoker.

We're very low-key when it comes to celebrating holidays. We do up Thanksgiving and Christmas but all the others, I really could do without. Seriously, if I didn't have kids I think holidays would be just like any other day. The Mister agrees with me on this.

Still, we did up the 4th of July this year pretty good. We had plans to grill out and then hit the fireworks show in Santee like we do every year. Well, every year that we're in California.

The morning of, the Mister and I needed to run a few errands. We needed some melon, an extension cord, mosquito repellent, and other stuff that I can't remember now. We went to Home Depot first because it's easiest to get to from our house without a lot of traffic. We're going through the store and picking up what we needed and walked down the aisle with the grills. We have a fairly new gas grill but we had been wanting to get a smoker for some time now and what better occasion than the 4th of July? Sadly, the only smokers Home Depot had were in open and damaged boxes. Seriously. How do they expect to sell crap like that? We put down all of the things we picked up and went to Lowes.

Our nearest Lowes is located in a highly populated shopping area. It's in the same strip as the Ikea and we were really trying to avoid going there on a holiday because, as we expected, traffic was maddening. After parking ten years away from the store, we go in and find the extension cord, a few varieties of wood chips to go in the smoker, Off Clip-On fans (which I recommend), and the smoker. We get everything into the car (because we were dumb and didn't bring the SUV to the hardware store) and head home (forgetting the melon).

The Mister, being a man, is totally excited to get the smoker put together and try it out. This is what he's doing while I head to the grocery store for the forgotten melon. I get home and he's all ready to put the meat in the smoker. Living next to an open canyon in Tinderbox Socal makes me leery of having open fires so I ask him if he read the directions and knows what he's doing. Of course he has!! Um yeah. I'm looking at the rather large flamage going on in the smoker out of the corner of my eye while the Mister, the oldest child, and I play some Monopoly Deal on the patio. (No way in hell was I going inside while we had a potential raging inferno on the patio.)

We're playing, flames are growing, smoke is getting thicker, and I'm getting more nervous by the second. I ask the Mister again, at the risk of sounding all naggy, if he's sure that he has everything under control. Of course he does!! But, all three of us are watching the smoker while our cards are forgotten in our hands waiting for the inevitable. Then the Mister points out how the paint on the side of the smoker is bubbling and melting off the side. Huh. Is that normal? Next thing you know, flames are shooting out the door of the smoker and the freaking PAINT (or what's left of it) on the side of the ding dong thing is on fire. This is when I jump up, freaking out, run into the house to get my phone in case I need to call 911 (in my frenzy, I've forgotten that my phone was sitting next to me on the patio table) and the Mister is shouting, "Get the hose! Get the hose!" Nuh uh. I'm not coming back outside. He's on his own to get the garden hose and put the smoker out. Ok. So I'm not so good when it comes to fires. The oldest and I watch from the door while the Mister is soaking the smoker and putting the flames out and we both breathe a sigh of relief. I'm thinking that the smoker is going in the trash on Tuesday but no. The Mister, being a man, is eyeing the smoker with the same look that I'm sure prehistoric man had when he was trying to figure out how to cook his mammoth for the first time. The smoker is now a thing to be conquered.

He drags the thing out into the yard so that the sun can dry it out a bit saying how he's glad we bought so much wood chips so that he can try again. And lo and behold!! He reads the directions (the same ones he claims to have read already) and sees that the thing has a fill line for the heat source. He had WAAAY overfilled it, obviously. The second attempt goes much more smoothly considering that the flamage was much more under control and we were able to actually put the meat on the thing this time. So we're smokin' and playing our game waiting for dinner to be done. By this time, we had been at it for HOURS trying to cook some chicken. The youngest rolls home (she had been out playing with her friends up to this point) asking when dinner was going to be ready. She was STARVED. We tell her that it won't be much longer (really having no idea if we were right or wrong).

It's starting to get late. We need to eat, get ready to go, and drive to Santee early enough to get parking before they close the streets down. The girls and I get the side dishes ready while the Mister checks the chicken which is nowhere near done so he gives up on the smoker and tosses the bird parts on the gas grill, lmao. Still, having had the benefit of being on the smoker for as long as it was, the chicken tasted fantastic.

The Mister has since attempted to smoke meat once more with much better results (he had done some research on the web). We had a beef roast that tasted amazing but it took all freaking day to cook because he couldn't keep the temperature high enough on the smoker. The smoker is still a thing to be conquered.

First Post of the Year

We have had a very quiet holiday season. Quiet but good. As I’ve said in the past, we don’t go out of our way to celebrate New Years Eve. We’re up just because we’re up at midnight when we don’t have to work the next day anyway. We do let the girls stay up until midnight which is something they don’t get to do on a normal night. I turned off my phone though because I didn’t want any drunken midnight calls from family and friends. I actually haven’t talked to anyone outside of my house since 12/29, lmao. That’s so funny.

We got all of our holiday decorations down and packed up. For the first time since we have lived in this house, I finally have my living room the way that I want it. All my stuff is hanging on the walls and the furniture is placed where I want it too. I love it. It’s cozy and homey while still be spacious and uncluttered.

Anyway, we’ve been busy. We’ve made some soap and have come up with an awesome new recipe. We love it and I think our potential customers will too. In other soap news, I spent two whole days trying to develop our website. It’s a lot of freaking work especially when web development is not your specialty and you don’t know what you want. I mean, I have spent HOURS working on this and haven’t come up with anything spectacular yet. Our February 1st deadline is fast approaching and I’m starting to sweat. Eventually, this sort of thing will go on Coastal Natural Soap’s blog. It’s one more thing on my soap “to do” list.

I’d like to take this time to acknowledge my top Entrecard droppers for December. They are as follows:

Please click on any of their cards to check out their blogs should you be interested. I would like to make this a monthly feature but I have a feeling I’ll forget from time to time. ;)

The Last Day

We had a great Memorial Day weekend. Well, once we got past our kid drama on Friday night, heheh.

Saturday we decided to buy a new grill. We've had ours for five or six years and between moving it to Vermont and then N.C., it was on it's last leg. Literally. This last move, the movers broke one of the legs off and it we had to prop it up on the deck railing, lmao. Enough was enough and is there a better time of the year to buy a new one? Lowes was having a 10% off sale for the military so we got us a nifty, brand new, shiny grill. It is AWESOME. The Mister is in grilling heaven. Saturday night we grilled burgers, Sunday night, chicken kabobs (which were out of this world) and a variety of sausages, and tonight we're grilling the rest of the sausages. It's all great for me because I don't have to cook, heheh.

Today, my plans are to finish cleaning out our utility room. It was being used for temporary storage. I'm also going to give my dad a call because it's his birthday. It's the Mister's last day off of work but his semester starts today and he has to mow the lawn. Did I mention that we're not having a lawn service come out this year? We're trying to be more frugal. We'll see how it goes. ;) Lastly, I have to put in some time with my job. Fun, fun.

I hope everyone had a good holiday.