Nobody Home

Ha!  I never expected to see this today!  It's Cyber Monday, I'm home, everyone's at school, I'm all set to do some Chirstmas shopping, and...drumroll...Target's site crashed.  Yikes.  Looks like it's Amazon for everything this year, 'cause I'm not interested to keep checking back.  #targetfail

I did, however, use my new favorite thing for online shopping: Ebates!  Cash back for shopping.  Zero effort.  Win!

Thanksgiving 2015

Instead of staying in this tight rental house for the Thanksgiving holiday, we piled into the minion van and headed to Long Island.  We had a great 4 days with my family.  Here are some pics I took during our travels.  These pics posted the opposite of chronologically, but you get the idea.  A 13 hour ride back (10 + 3 hrs' total stop time).  Not too bad! 😊  

Dinner at some place called "Squisito" in Virginia on the way back home.

Sweet baby with her blankie and Little Friend the Bear.



Checking out the birdfeeder



A fabulous win at this year's White Elephant party.



This boy.  I love him SO much!



Teagan is kinda camouflaged!



Daddy and Tea playing piano



We forgot a bib so a reversed sweatshirt will do.  Ahem.



This grass is ridiculous.  Like carpet!



Beautiful fruit arrangement from the South Boston Burkes.



The weary travelers just arrived and so did the fruit!



Love this.



Someone missed her Nana!



Welcome hugs from Nana



Mr. Henrik the Dog



Kids are so happy to see their Uncle!



James and Henrik.



Back in my hometown.  :D



Sacked out en route to North Carolina.



Hahaha!  A town named Burke.

evening car snooze en route to NY

Teagie playing football!

Taking a brisk walk around the neighborhood on a crisp November day.

Gobble Gobble

KIt's Sunday and I'm back from the near-dead.  Maybe a little dramatic, but I'm glad I got those antibiotics started when I did!  I offered to make extra turkey gravy for The Big Day and it's time to get started.

After 4 stores not having turkey parts, I finally hit the jackpot.  At Walmart of all places, but whatever.  It's Butterball and it's already thawed and there's no other option so we're going with it.

While the parts cook in the oven, I'm simmering 2 turkey necks in 8 cups of chicken broth with carrots, onion, celery, peppercorn and spices.  

I had turkey meat left over, so I asked Joe to grab some puff pastry sheets from the store and assembled a tasty turkey pot pie for dinner.  No leftovers!  Woooo!

Sick of Sickness

It seems like ever since we arrived in North Carolina, someone in this house has been sick.  Or with a runny nose, or an unrelenting cough.

Today it's my turn.  Since I was feeling crappy yesterday, I went to the dr. this afternoon and left with 4 prescriptions including a nebulizer because I wasn't looking or sounding very good.

The biggest kids both have strep, and the littlest kids are holding steady at "well"...or "well enough."  Hopefully Joe can hold off these bugs that seem to like our home.

House update: nothing happening.  :(  The lot has stalled at "pinned."  I ran into the builder earlier in the week at the model home, who told me that when the pipes were laid for the easement drain, some of the black fencing was pulled down.  This caused it to fail inspection so it would delay them a few days.  He seemed doubtful that we'd be underway this Friday...probably early next week, he said.  I

It's now Friday, but frankly, I'm too sick to care about the house today.  And the 500 mg Levaquin I'm taking is making me dizzy, so I'm ending this here.  Zzzzzzz.

Scrumptious family dinner

So I picked up a 3 pound pork tenderloin from the grocery store this morning in an effort to make a nice family dinner tonight.  I usually throw a tenderloin in my slow cooker with a jar of BBQ or teriyaki sauce, a la laziness, but today I felt like doing something different and I especially didn't feel like shredded meat.

These days, with little time for recipe research due to this person:

I select recipes solely based on reviews -- and this method led me directly to Food.com, where I found this ridiculously simple recipe.  It was so easy that I was convinced it would be a flop.  Especially in this rental's cheap oven with a door whose front panel is detaching from the rest of the oven door.  But, running out of time, I gave it a try.

And guess what?

It was AMAZING!!!!!  Preheated 500 degrees, baked 5.5 minutes per pound (so in my case, 17 min total), shut off oven but left in there, untouched, for 1 hour.  Do not open oven door -- that's the key.  

I removed it, covered it with foil and let it rest another 15 min.  

And then....

Perfection!  Completely juicy.  Slightly pink.  Tender.  Could almost cut it with a fork.  And, accompanied by butternut squash and some old school, not-good-for-you Stove Top stuffing, not a bit of it left over, thankyouverymuch.  

Winner, winner, pork dinner.  

Especially since I cooked it in a disposable aluminum oval baker.  Heh heh.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:

Perfect Pork Tenderloin recipe from Food.com

Praying for Paris

There are no words, really.  Over 120 people are dead in and around Paris after ISIS terrorist attacks last night.  My heart aches for the innocent victims and their families, and for all of us trying to comprehend how such violence and anger exists in our world.  Not much else to write.  Violence and mass shootings are everywhere now.

Hello excitement!

The ball is rolling!  It's Thursday and I've just been to Lot 68 and sure enough, the site has been pinned.  Check it out!  Later today is our builder-buyer meeting.  I'm so excited to review plans one final time and get our TIMELINE!  Bring it on.  More tomorrow.

It's happening!

I'm ready to turn cartwheels!  Mind you, I can't do a single cartwheel.  Never could.  That was Emily's department when we were growing up.  But if I could, I would do a hundred of them!  We drove by the new house site last evening and lo and behold, someone had been by earlier in the day to flag the outermost corners of the house, and to establish the water main.  Our future across-the-street neighbor was outside so we introduced ourselves, and as we were chatting, our new friend/sales rep for the builder who also lives on the street drove by with news for us: the more detailed pinning of the lot would happen next Wednesday, and then the magic words, "and excavation will start on Thursday." 

Woo hoo!!!!!!  Happy dance!!!!

It seemed to take FOR-EHHHHH-VERRRRRRR for permitting to get done.  We got the heads-up that it was all set and permits would be picked up at Town Hall on Tuesday.  So of course when Wednesday rolled around I expected to see tons of machinery on my lot, 20 workers and the house half built.  Right?

Well, okay, maybe not.  But I thought there'd be something happening.  Instead, crickets.  And patience is NOT a virtue of mine.  I am really impatient.  It's so bad.  I can't help it.  But I bit my tongue and sat on my hands and drove by the next day to find nothing.

So when Joe came home from work and said, "Hey, did you see they pinned the lot?" I almost fell over.  We threw the kids in the minivan and went straight there so I could see with my own eyes.

This terrible-quality panoramic photo was the best I could get on an overcast evening with darkness settling in, but who cares!  I'm beyond happy.  

And here's a pic of the water main.  Exciting, right?  Hey, it's something.

Coasting.

I'm finding myself back on the gentle river of motherhood again.  Figuratively speaking, I'm coasting.  Coasting down the river, coasting through life.  I'm a little overwhelmed with what I've got on my plate (an expression I've never liked, yet here I am, using it), but I'm getting by.  Am I out of shape?  Check.  Am I sleep deprived?  Check.  Am I alternating jeans and yoga pants and what feels like the same 5 shirts every day?  Check.  Am I feeling like an okay mom vs. a great mom, most days?  Check.  Am I managing to cook a real dinner only a few nights a week?  Check.

Is all of this okay?  YES.

Because it doesn't last forever, and before I know it, Teagan will be in school every day, the house will be quiet and I can accomplish real things.  Like doing laundry.  Like exercising at a gym without being called to the baby room for a diaper change or meltdown.  Like applying makeup.  And preparing a meal without a child clinging to my leg, or pulling things out of the pantry, or wailing.  Right now those wishful things happen a little too infrequently, some of them not at all.  And that's okay.  

A few kids ago, it would stress me out a lot.  Now, it stresses me out less.  Either I'm too old to care or I've learned that time flies and this challenging phase of 15-to-36-month-olds will only last another, well, 21 months.  Hopefully it's the latter.  This baby is my last and I'm trying to slow things down and just be in the moment with her.  Take more stroller walks.  Read more books.  Give more kisses.  Be more silly.  It's not easy when there are 3 other kids with lots of kid needs, and a small rental house that gets messy in what feels like a split second.  Stress can come creeping in so quickly.  It's a challenge to beat it back, and say, "It's okay!!!"  But I have to keep at it, you know?      

FYI: The sleep deprivation is somewhat (okay, almost entirely) self imposed.  I still can't come to terms that I should go to bed before midnight.  The inner twenty-something girl won't have it.  Yet, the baby inevitably wakes up at least once during midnight and 7 am, and I jump up like it's a fire drill.  And I pay for it the next morning, but alas, I have no one to blame but myself.  

Halloween + Weekend in Pictures

Happy Halloween!

A fun weekend of goodies from Nana, exploring Wake Forest and then trick or treating on Saturday, a little wreath crafting and a lazy day on Sunday, and a family pasta night.  And a very messy baby in the bathtub!  😂

A couple of end-notes.  1.) There's no homemade chocolate as amazingly scrumptious as that from Bon-Bons Chocolatier in Huntington, NY.  2.) If you don't have time for baths, don't give a baby pasta sauce.  Because they will bathe in the sauce first, and that's just how it goes.  And 3.) This was Teagan's first experience trick-or-treating.  The very first doorbell I walked her to, I mean the VERY FIRST ONE. brought an older lady to the door, who took one look at Teagan in her Boston College cheerleader costume, smiled and said, "My husband went to Boston College!" she said.  I told her I did as well and we had a chuckle and her hubby came to the door.  Kind of uncanny since we're in Raleigh, NC and there aren't too many Eagle Alumni in these here parts.  Fate!  So awesome.