Okay, he isn’t too bad either I guess. Awhile back I put a couple of engagement photos of my baby brother Jesse and his bride-to-be Linden but we got the real deal for Christmas! Yay! And, here they are scanned in. The last one isn’t the clearest but it is really cool as they chose what they call a “metallic” type finish to it so it is kind of shiny and glows almost. Hard to describe but real nice, Clark. It was taken in the dark. All of them were taken in Glacier National Park.
When we were married I carried a bouquet with two dozen red roses and ivy. As a gift, the florist gave us the ivy plant that she took the ivy from for my bouquet. It lasted for a couple of years. It got down to one pathetic strand of ivy about five feet long that I just wrapped all around itself to make it look like a real plant. It was sad. Real sad. It died. Adam was crushed. I think he truly thought it was symbolic of our marriage or something. I threw it away and didn’t think twice about the silly thing. I cannot keep plants alive. Not. At. All. I do not know why but I just cannot! At any rate a couple of years later we go to move and are loading the U-haul and I am helping pack the garage and come across this plant pot with this dead scraggly lookin’ thing….the ivy!!! Adam dug the darn thing out of the garbage and kept it all those years in the garage. He says he didn’t feel right throwing it away!
Okay, so now you know that I really cannot keep anything alive and that Adam really wants to help me keep things alive and this will help you understand the point of this silly post. When my Nana passed Adam’s parents sent me this awesome plant. They even called our florist to specifically ask for a plant that would be safe if my cats ate it, etc and that would be easy for me to still care for….ie: I hopefully will not kill the thing. I got a lipstick plant. When I got this plant it was gorgeous. Soooo full and it bloomed within a couple of weeks and the flowers were red and literally looked like little tubes of lipstick. When I got it I printed instructions out on how to take care of it, went and got fertilizer, you name it. We’ve taken to calling her Nana…silly, I know. Especially since I have a (ahem, how shall I put this) horrendous time taking care of living things. Anyhow, she never ever bloomed again and everything we read says she should be. She keeps dropping her leaves and is sooooo thinned out. I’ve got her hanging in the window by the sun.
Adam wakes up this morning and I hear him in the dining room where she is hanging talking to her and he says, “don’t worry, we’re gonna get you somewhere warmer”. NOT KIDDING!!! He tells me, “I just read online that she is native from the rain forest. It is too cold in here for her and way too dry. We have to move her!”. At this point I am giggling beyond giggles at the situation. He goes to the basement for a hook and comes back and says he thinks we should put her in the laundry room. Our laundry room is also in the mud room which has a doggy door so it gets chilly. Because of this there is a space heater in there so it is actually verrrrry toasty.
At this point I am frustrated because she looked soooo pretty in the dining room, especially when she was blooming…..SEVEN MONTHS AGO!!! Here she was this morning before her move:
Now, I know to you she probably looks good but trust me…she doesn’t. She looks real bad compared to what she used to. Oooohh, I forgot…see that round thing up there by the one chain? That is the end of a meat thermometer that Adam stuck to her to monitor her temperature. This is why he decided she should be moved. She was only 60 degrees here by the window. NOT KIDDING.
Here she is in her rain forest-like atmosphere:
I especially like the hook Adam chose. A freaking bike hook. Lovely, dear. As you can see he left the meat thermometer there and has been checking on her periodically throughout the day and has it at a balmy 90 degrees in there. And, has told me to leave the lights on too because “she’ll like that”. Ha ha. It is sad, though because that darn ivy from almost 14 years ago obviously traumatized the poor guy. I don’t care, though…especially if this plant blooms again!
Zhu zhus. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Geesh..they were THE thing for kids to get for Christmas this year. Uncle Adam and I were totally out of the loop of course because we never heard of the freaking things. Well, Calissa got one and they are pretty cute. They are hamsters that scoot all around on their own and you can get accessories that are obviously made in some strange country because they don’t work very well (like a ball and a car that the hamster can drive…duh, all hamsters drive cars). The other thing that we didn’t understand is why zhu zhu kept mooing and cockadoodling and making other strange noises…
Santa didn’t bring Madison a python. Phew. Enter big *sigh* of relief. What he did bring her was an albino corn snake that she named slyther. “Aunt Shana, he’ll only get three or four feet long.”. We’ve asked for periodic growth updates for any future visits that we may make to their home.
For some reason Calissa, aka #6, took to calling Adam just plain Uncle this weekend. Not sure why this is but it was pretty comical. Before we left yesterday she did refer to him as Uncle Adam. Ahhh, his sense of security restored.
My brother-in-law had a little mishap on his bike last week. He is an avid bike rider. He has a trainer that he usually rides inside in inclement weather but one evening last week decided to ride one of the bike trails in Kearney. Somehow he wrecked. I’m sure it had NOTHING to do with ice. He swears the trail was just wet, no ice…even though it is December…just kidding, Rick. In his defense….he HAS to get some form of exercise. He is way better at this than ANY one that I know. He’ll ride his trainer in the basement for miles and miles and miles. Anyways…his accident is proof of why you should wear a helmet because he’d probably still be in a snow pile somewhere. His helmet was dented and cracked. He fractured his hand and also dislocated one of his fingers. When it dislocated it popped through the skin. Lovely it was. He had surgery and goes back this week and may need another surgery. He’s kind of a gimp right now and I mean that with all of the kindness in my heart, honestly. Here is a picture of him enjoying a new pair of biking gloves his kids got him for Christmas….with his one hand.
Finally, a lot of times when we leave my sister’s home she’ll send us with a bag or two of baby things that she is done with. Sometimes, big things. Like a crib even. This time it was the crib mattress. The kids always ask “are you having kids, Aunt Shana and Uncle Adam”. Our oldest niece, Jordan who is 20 has declared that she might as well be an aunt to any children we have because lets face it…that is kind of old for a cousin. I guess she is right. Adam and I went through everything we have baby-wise that is not too long ago because we wanted to sort through to see what we might have for a boy as we knew pretty much everything I’ve gotten from my sister is girl stuff (she does have five girls, one boy). We put out some totes and declared this one tote for “boy” stuff. At the end of it all…all that was in that one tote was one itty bitty blue receiving blanket. So the question is…would it be cheaper to chose the gender of our child so we don’t have to purchase really anything (seriously) versus having to start over with everything if it is a boy???? Deep stuff. Just kidding.
Enter my sister’s kitchen on Christmas morn to get yourself a nice warm cinnamon roll and find this…
The funny thing is that no one fesses up. She has six kids, you see so someone did it. Things like this happen all the time at their house. Hilarious! Kind of like who used up the last of the toilet paper and didn’t change the roll, etc.
My sister and her husband say that someday when the kids are all grown they are going to go visit all of them and empty all of their toilet paper rolls (and leave them empty of course) and hide all of their tv remotes (I guess that is an issue too).
Santa brought my nieces both tool sets~one is in college and the other will be going. As us girls were looking at the tools Christmas day my niece tried to open hers and this is what we found:
Note the two black screws that you have to unscrew to even remove the packaging to get into the tool kit. Just plain mean, it is. A man obviously made this kit. Way to start a young girl off wrong. She has to find someone with a screwdriver, like her dad or brother to help her unscrew the cover on her toolkit so she can even get into the thing. I mean come on! We did pretty good, us girls that is. We knew the name of everything except the allen wrenches (we’ll have to remember that next time).