December 29th, 2011 by Kateastrophe

I have been sick for ten days.  TEN DAYS.  It hasn’t been bad enough to knock me completely out, it’s just been one of those things where I’ll think I’m getting better so I’ll go on a walk or run some errands and then next thing I know I’m down for 12 hours or so.  I’ve been to the doctor three times.  THREE.

First time:  “Just a common cold, here have some nasal spray!”

Second time:  “Hmm, still probably just a cold.  Maybe some prescription cough syrup?”

Third time:  “Well, probably a virus but just in case we’ll give you a Z-pac to knock it out if it’s not.”

Well, must be a freaking virus because nothing did the trick.  Insert heavy, more obnoxious than it already is whining HERE.

I swear I’m trying not to be a big, complainy baby here (ok that might not be at all true) but I don’t remember being sick for this long.  EVER.  And this is like, the best I’ve ever had it as far as nurturing an environment of healing.  I’ve had the luxury of being able to stay in bed almost all day every day during this whole thing.  That’s the awesome part about working from home.  No one on the computer knows I’m sick and they’re not going to catch it.  As long as I can make it through a few conference calls, I’m good.  So anyway, I’ve gone to bed early, used a vaporizer, downed enough Sprite and juice to sustain an army, taken every drug known to man, and it just won’t.go.away!  It’s like my immune system was sitting on the couch, watching season 1 of Lost when it got the phone call that it was needed and it kind of shrugged it’s shoulders and went “Eh.  This is a really good show.  I’ll show up when this episode is over”  Then it turned out it was LOST and it was watching it on Netflix and then found out that ALL the seasons were available (!!!) and couldn’t handle any of the cliff hangers and had to watch all six seasons, back to back.  No breaks, no sleeping, no helping a sick girl out for Christmas.  I’m just hoping it likes the ending well enough to GET OVER HERE AND MAKE ME BETTER.

I’m finally (cross my fingers) starting to feel like I’m on the upswing, but we’ll see how it goes when I have my annual birthday party/New Year’s Eve bash on Saturday.  I might just kick it back into action and be sick FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

So um, other than that…Christmas was great.  Matt and I were both spoiled rotten.  I got my much wanted enameled cast iron skillet and the Ray Ban sunglasses (woot!), a ton of awesome kitchen gadgets, a bunch of gift certificates to my favorite stores and a lot of other sweet stuff.  Matt got a super nifty hands free video camera he can mount on his ATV helmet or his Jeep and catch the hilarious moments (aka CRASHES) we always miss when we’re out riding, a really nice G-shock watch, a bunch of tool related things that go in the garage that I don’t understand and some shirts and sports stuff and other boy type things.  I seriously couldn’t believe my eyes when we doled out all the presents and I saw the amount that was left under the tree for just us.  Santa was much too kind this year.  I like to think we deserved it.  *wink*

So now all that’s left in 2011 is getting better, cleaning the house (which includes rearranging cupboards in the kitchen to make room for my loot) and putting together the games for the party on Saturday.  My big birthday present is the puppy, who comes home around the middle of January, but I’m still expecting a little somethin’ somethin’ from that husband of mine.  And what I mean by that is some jewelry.  Ha!  The theme of overdoing it might as well continue, right?  Because next year we just might get lucky enough to have a munchkin to spoil, or at the very least a puppy…so we may never get this chance again!  SPOIL ME AWAY, SPOUSE!

I hope you all had fan-freakin-tastic Christmases too, and I also hope you have a wonderful and safe New Year.  I’ll probably be be back before 2011 is over, but just in case I’m not, love and (mask covered) kisses to all!  XOXO

December 25th, 2011 by Kateastrophe

No matter what your beliefs, may we all have the true meaning of the season in our hearts.  As Ebeneezer Scrooge so beautifully says in ‘A Christmas Carol:’

“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

For me, the center of Christmas is the Savior.  I cannot say what I feel for Him and what He has done for my life better than Thomas S. Monson, the prophet of my church did in his Christmas Devotional earlier this month:

“Because He came to earth, we have a perfect example to follow. As we strive to become more like Him, we will have joy and happiness in our lives and peace each day of the year. It is His example which, if followed, stirs within us more kindness and love, more respect and concern for others.

Because He came, there is meaning to our mortal existence.

Because He came, we know how to reach out to those in trouble or distress, wherever they may be.

Because He came, death has lost its sting, the grave its victory. We will live again because He came.

Because He came and paid for our sins, we have the opportunity to gain eternal life…

May His precious Spirit be with us, and may He ever be the center of our celebrations and indeed of our very lives”

Merry Christmas to all of you.  I hope your day is filled with love, family and laughter.

December 17th, 2011 by Kateastrophe

Matt was expressing his irritation at my getting flour all over his iPad the other day while I was using it to cook (happens a lot and it’s covered like Fort Knox so it’s not like I’m going to DO anything to it) and then he said something that for some reason struck me as Hi-larious.

“Shouldn’t we have won an extra iPad by now?  I mean, COME ON.  We haven’t won anything or had any great news in a long time.  This year has been crappy with a capital S-H and I THINK WE DESERVE TO WIN AN IPAD.”

I just started laughing and couldn’t stop for about ten minutes.  It was funny for so many reasons, the first being we haven’t entered to win an iPad so unless someone is delivering them door to door, it’s not happening.  Second, we HAVE an iPad and I’m absolutely certain we don’t need two.  I mean, I wouldn’t say NO to one but it’s not like I have this great urge to go out and drop the cash on a second one.  Third, Matt having a burst of emotion such as that is just plain funny.  I think, however, that I was laughing mostly out of 2011 exhaustion.  It’s that slap happiness that hits you at 3 am at a sleepover and you know you’ve passed the point of no return and all you can do is laugh.  That’s where I’m at with 2011.  It’s the 3am of the year, two weeks left, and I can’t do anything but laugh until I pass out from exhaustion and wake up in 2012.

I remember so vividly writing this post on the eve of my 30th birthday last year.  I was so very certain that 2011 was going to be the greatest year ever.  And frankly, it started off that way.  I got a new job, I spent an amazing few days with awesome friends in Disneyworld, I found out we were pregnant again and carried that little baby past 12 weeks and into what seemed like the safe zone…then around April everything just sort of fell apart.  The baby didn’t make it, the new job wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, I was a huge ball of stress and I had a good three months of invasive poking and prodding only to find out there wasn’t much wrong and we had no idea why my babies weren’t making it.  Then, in September it all sort of culminated in the official loss of my job, still not being pregnant and having a lot of spare anger and emotions to top it all off.  We are all very lucky I had proactively started on anti-depressants in April because BOY HOWDY was September rough.  Now, complete in fairness to 2011, the last three months haven’t been bad at all with two trips home to Utah, a wonderful Thanksgiving with my brothers and sister and a contract job that seems to be working out really well.  So all things told, five months of the year were the crappiest in memory, three months were not so bad and three were some of the best of my life.  It’s been a roller coaster for sure.

As always, the love and support I’ve had through all of this has been greater than I could ever explain.  In general, people have been SO kind and SO understanding.  There have been the random letters and statements telling me to “suck it up” but I think the people saying those things really hadn’t taken the time to hear and understand the entire story, and I know they were just trying - in their weird way - to be helpful.    I try not to hold it against anyone just as I hope that they won’t hold my recent strange behavior and attitude issues against me.  As I said, almost everyone has been fantastic.  Supportive, thoughtful, kind and willing to be there for me in whatever way I need.  I am so unbelievably grateful to have the friends and family I do and I wish that I could do more for them.

I’m still not quite to that point that people claim you get to where you can look back on your troubles and say you were grateful for what you learned.  I still struggle every day with trying to figure out how to be OK with some of the things that happened.  I’m struggling with finding happiness for others who have the things I’ve been denied.  I’m struggling with some feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy due to the job failure.   I’m struggling to find peace with the things that happened and move on.  In some cases the painful things were absolutely no fault of my own and in others, there are lots of things I need to think on to determine what I may have done to contribute and make sure I prevent that behavior in the future.   It’s a daily battle but I’m working so hard and I really think I’m almost there.

I’m looking forward to turning the page on this year.  I’m counting on a fantastic 2012, whatever it brings.  That might mean a baby, a new job, a promotion for Matt, a new house, a big vacation (Australia, anyone?!?!) or just a happier outlook.  At the very least I’m aiming for that last one.  I’m going to be happy in 2012…even if it means upping my medication dose.  Ha!  Just kidding.  Maybe.

December 15th, 2011 by Kateastrophe

I’m feeling all festive lately so watch out for another Christmas post.  This time I want to talk about traditions.

I mentioned that my family tree is sort of all over the place, with divorces and extra parents and all that jazz.  This meant that my siblings and I were in a different location for Christmas every year.  We rotated between my Dad’s current home (wherever that happened to be at the time until he got married then it was Pennsylvania), his family home in Ohio, our home in Utah and my Grandparent’s home in California.  We had a total blast but traditions were not so easy to keep.

All of our set and attempted traditions come from my Mom or her side of the family.  Dad’s side is a little more focused on Thanksgiving so Christmas traditions were never much of a big deal to them.  As for our little clan, my mom sure tried to introduce new traditions to make the holiday somewhat consistent for us.  One year she decided that we were going to collect pieces of a Christmas village, one each year.  My Grandma, who is OBSESSED with Christmas,  got wind of this and the next year our present from her was an ENTIRE VILLAGE.  Hmmm.  Next she tried a nutcracker theme, with a new fancy nutcracker every year.  This one lasted about two years and then Mom forgot.  No more nutcrackers!

For food, our big meal has always been on Christmas Eve.  Apparently when my Grandma was growing up the big dinner was always on Christmas day and she said she always felt bad for her Mom and the other women (eventually I’m sure herself included) who had to spend all day cooking instead of enjoying their gifts on Christmas.   So, when she got married she decided the big meal was always going to be on Christmas Eve.  She also gets some breakfast casserole ready to be warmed up so that on Christmas morning, the only cooking you do is breakfast (which is already mostly prepared) and then spend the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying family.    As for the actual meal, we are pretty weird and picky about our our holiday recipes.  It has to be just the right stuffing, creamed corn and sweet potatoes.  Sometimes we mix it up with the meat and have ham or prime rib, and we are allowed to try new mashed potato recipes, but so help you if you mess with the stuffing, creamed corn or sweet potatoes.  Well, it’s not like we DO something to the person who introduces a new recipe, we just feel like the holiday wasn’t complete and make the dishes that were missing within the next day or so.  So basically either way we always get our favorites whether it’s on Christmas or not.

One tradition (at least when we were with Mom) was that on Christmas Eve, we read her favorite Christmas story, This is the Christmas. My mom spent a good chunk of her childhood living in Belgrade, Yugoslavia - now Serbia, and has a deep love for the Serbian culture.  This story comes out of that area and involves a Serbian family and a small Gypsy boy.  I’ve posted before so if you’d like to read it, you can find it here.   It really is an amazing  story and I’m glad that this is one tradition that stuck.

Another awesome thing our family did that I haven’t seen much was that my Mom somehow convinced Santa to put our stockings on our beds.  And our stockings were AWESOME.  They were always filled with games and small toys, markers and coloring books.  We had HUGE handmade felt stockings that fit a bazillion things and they were still overflowing with stuff.  The genius in all of this is that when we woke up at the butt crack of dawn - which we almost always did - we had tons of stuff to keep us busy and allow the adults to sleep in until at least seven when we were finally allowed out into present land.

So, now that I have my own little family and home, I’ve been trying to figure out which traditions we want to keep from my family, which we like from Matt’s family and which ones I want to introduce as new.

We try very hard to set aside at least a few hundred dollars every year to donate to a charity of some sort.  We usually do it through our ward (aka local branch of our church) as there are always families who need a little help.  I think as we grow our family I’d like to do something that’s a little more obvious than writing a check, so in the future I’m thinking the Twelve Days of Christmas or spending time volunteering at a food bank or something will be in order.  My Mom was great about making sure that no matter how poor we were, we always did or gave something to a family who was worse off than us and it’s important to me that we do the same thing.

Matt’s family and mine have a little “conflict” in that their big tradition is to do appetizers and shrimp cocktail on Christmas Eve and then watch a movie together.  While I love this, I feel torn because I tend to agree with my Grandma that the last thing I want to do on Christmas Day is spend all day in the kitchen.  So we’ve gone back and forth on this.  I am pretty sure we’ll end up with our tradition being a big dinner on Christmas Eve and the Murphy Appetizer Party on Christmas night, but that one is still being decided.  I love the Christmas breakfast tradition so I’ll keep that, but I think I’ll try different recipes for a few years until we find THE ONE.  It will probably have something to do with french toast.

Matt’s Mom introduced an awesome tradition to us.  Every year she gives us a few Christmas children’s books.  The point is to get 25 and before December 1st, wrap them all up and then open one each evening before bed to read as a family.  I love love love this and I can’t wait to start doing it whenever the babies decide to grace us with their presence.

I’ll still read the special story on Christmas Eve, and I’d like to also read the story of Christ’s birth from the bible.

I’ve been hearing a lot about The Elf on the Shelf lately and I’m undecided on that one.  I think it’s a really cool idea and a good way to help your kids focus on being good in December, but it seems like a lot of work for the parent (if the things I’m seeing on Pinterest are any indication.)  Also?  That thing is kind of creepy in a clown-like way and I’m not sure I’d feel safe in my own home.

At some point in my life I’m going to be better about Christmas Cards.  I spent HOURS making one this year that’s clever and cute but now I feel like I don’t want to spend hours printing, addressing and mailing it.  I’m such a lazy bum.  I’ll still probably end up doing it but right now it just seems like more effort than I want to put into it.  I’m sure when we have kids I’ll be better about family pictures which make cards a lot easier, says me.

What traditions do you have that you’d be willing to share?  I’m keeping a list of ideas to try out over the next few years and I’d love to know what works for your family.

Just writing about this stuff got me all excited for Christmas again!  I love it!

December 9th, 2011 by Kateastrophe

Christmas lists.  Such a joy.  Such a pain.

It’s always a conundrum for me because Matt and I are at that D.I.N.K. (dual income, no kids) point in our lives where if we want something, for the most part, we just buy it.  Obviously that doesn’t apply to big ticket items and ridiculousness but in general, it’s pretty true.  It is great to have the things we need and want but then the holidays come around and it gets a touch difficult to come up with things that fit the Christmas budget.  Meaning, I’d LIKE  a new car (who wouldn’t!?) but that’s not happening for a list of reasons a mile long.  Matt would LIKE a Polaris Razr, but again, not happening for oh so many reasons.

We have a lot of people to get lists to.  I come from a family tree with lots of branches so I have two Moms, one Dad, one set of grandparents and a sibling exchange to come up with a list for just on that side.  Then Matt’s parents and brother always need a list as well.   That’s a lot of lists.  And if you’re like me, you want to provide several options so that you can be surprised.  You also don’t want to provide the same list to different people because then you’ll end up with multiples and the chore of returning.  Sheesh.  So complicated!  Then I have the added challenge of ANOTHER list for my birthday.  Yet another time when I really wish someone could have made sure I was born in June.

This year I tried (wasn’t easy!) to come up with a variety of things in different categories.  Things I need (the hardest one), bigger ticket items that I wanted, medium ticket items that I wanted, and a few things I REALLY WANTED (this list usually goes to Matt).  I thought in case any of you were looking for ideas, I’d share some of the items on my list.  Some of them are frivolous.  Don’t judge.  That’s what Christmas/my birthday is for!

First things first, the practical.  I cook.  A lot.  And I  love love love me some enameled cast iron skillets.  Now, I’m not hoity toity enough to assume ANYONE is going to lay down the cash to get me the Le Crueset brand, so I found an awesome alternative.  Costco, y’all.  This baby is decently priced at $59.99 and looks just as good as the fancy pants brands.  Done and dizzle.

 Next up we have my newest workout obsession, Lululemon.  Their stuff is speeeeennndddyyy and probably not something I’d be able to throw down for on my own, so why not ask for it for Christmas!!  I specifically love this awesome Yoga tank.  It’s long enough that you won’t spend your whole practice yanking it down, it’s got a built in bra so you’re not wearing a gazillion layers AND it’s so freaking cute!  Spendy, as I mentioned, at $64.00 but I think it’s a good, Christmassy kind of splurge.  My only question is if it’s going to be unflattering on my not so small hips.  If I get it, I’ll let you know!

 Next up, lately I’ve been really loving small, understated necklaces with one charm.  I have a knock-off Tiffany cursive “k” and a neat feather I’ve been wearing a lot.  I found a few others I’d like to add to my collection.

RedEnvelope has this really cool horseshoe that I’d love to own.  It’s not somuch cheap so I’m not planning on getting it but I’ve been looking for a knock-off or similar necklace elsewhere.  Sorry for the horrid picture.

Next up, Nordstrom carries a really cool line of jewelry called Dogeared and their jewelry is all really sweet and simple and inspirational.  There are quite a few things from the line I’d really like but I honed in on two this year.

First, the New Beginnings Necklace, which I’m hoping to find in silver.  It’s a tiny lotus flower and the quote on the card says “make a wish and put on your necklace.  the lotus flower grows up through the dark and out into the light of the sun.  let your necklace be a reminder of the incredible beauty that can come from change.  grow and believe!”  I like this for SO many reasons.  This one is $54.00.

The second Dogeared necklace I love is the Happy.  It’s a small smiling Buddha and I love it so much!  With my time spent in China and some studying I’ve done I have a great love of the Buddhist philosophies and I love the message on this card “make a wish and put on your necklace.  the happy buddha symbolizes the good life…happiness, health and longevity.  whenever you see his smiling face, good luck will follow.  wear your necklace as a reminder to keep him close!”

There are several others I love including Luck, Karma and Memories.  I could probably have a collection of all of their necklaces and be happy, honestly.

Next up we have one of my guilty pleasure requests, these aviator Ray-ban sunglasses.  Ever since I had my eye surgery and I can actually WEAR sunglasses, I’m obsessed.  This is the first pair of aviators that don’t make me look like I’m a cop who’s trying to hard.  They’re $129 which is pretty steep but I do love them so.  I asked for them in silver but a mysterious text message from my husband last night seems to indicate that despite my showing him these two months ago, he waited too long and they might not have the color anymore.  We’ll see if he can figure it out.

My biggest splurge request this year is some Tiffany jewelry.  They have a line called Diamonds by the Yard and I LOVE how simple and pretty it is.  Ideally I’d like the sterling silver single diamond necklace and bracelet but I’m not so sure that’s going to happen.  I’ll cross my fingers and hope!

 So there’s part of my Christmas list!  Now tell me what you want Santa to bring you!!  Ready?  Go!