Or Squee! Or Yee-haw! Pick an exclamation, or feel free to use one of your own.
Some people have accused me of "baiting" by writing
this post and then not writing a follow-up. To which I can only respond to that person,
AS IF! And also, next time I'm in town? Lunch! :)
Seriously though folks, here's what I was "squee"-ing about the other day....
1) Trip to England at Easter
Sometimes a girl just needs to see her family. And sometimes that results in her buying a transatlantic plane ticket to do just that. And sometimes even, when the stars are aligned, her lovely mother-in-law will agree to fly half-way across the country to watch her children for her while she is off gallivanting around the British Isles.
I will get to meet my new little niece, Ellie, that my sister Beth so effortlessly gave birth to last month. I will get to meet my not-so-new-niece, my brother Seth's little girl, who I haven't seen yet. I will get to take a girls' trip to Edinburgh with
Esther and hopefully (fingers crossed!) stalk Alexander McCall Smith. I will get to eat fish and chips and all other manner of fattening and delicious food stuffs. I will get to delight in the company of the whole fam damily on Easter Sunday. Yay!
2. Summer plans
I love planning ahead and my summer is shaping up to be busy and entertaining.
A week in a lakefront house with these
lovely ladies and their delightful offspring, this
178-mile relay race with Todd's family, and various other plans that are in the works and shaping up nicely.
3. Lunch Buddies
Two months ago I started picking Jesse and Libby up at school lunch time one day a week and taking them out for lunch at the restaurant of their choice. They alternate weeks so that I get to have one-on-one time with them. They converse much more openly when it is just the two of us and there are no distractions. I've learned more about their schooling and lessons, teachers and classmates, from these lunch dates than I ever do when they come home from school worn-out and hungry and answer, "How was your day?" with "Good", and "What did you get up to?" with, "Nothing much."
Jesse likes to pick restaurants we've never tried before and is proud of how adventurous (for him) he is being. Libby tends to pick whichever eating establishment Jesse picked the week before!
4. The Good Life
A friend told me that
The Good Life was her favourite English TV show. I told her I had never heard of it. She lent me every season on DVD. I thought it might be a little awkward if I watched it and thought it was a load of old rubbish, but figured the experience would at least give me an insight into her sense of humour. I am loving it. It is so quintessentially seventies, so quintessentially English. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
5. Brownies
My brother Seth gave me a recipe for chocolate chip brownies with fudge sauce that I had requested. He gave it to me in January 2005, (so says my trusty e-mail). I got around to making them yesterday. (There I go with that procrastination thing again. Although I think a more apt word to describe myself might be lazy.)
Anyway, the brownies! Best. brownies. ever.
The best part of the recipe was Seth's tip, "NOTE: If you're on a diet, you can replace the white chocolate chips with shredded lettuce", followed by this advice, "At this point you may wish to try and forget about the detrimental effects these brownies will have on your health, and instead think salady thoughts. They are dee-licious, but very rich. You don't need more than one at a time. I find that a 2-minute wait between each one helps the body to recover."
6. The Real HUMDINGER!!!!
As much as I am loathe to do it, I will have to write a neighbourhood only entry about the real thing that made me nearly explode with excitement on Monday. I know I have friends and family that read this (or at least pretend to, when I ask) that aren't on Vox. And to them I say, well, you should just sign up, shouldn't you?
Seriously, some things you can't risk certain people seeing, can you? So, come into my parlour, I mean, my neighbourhood, said the spider...er, the Hannah -- yeah, that's not working is it.