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Hi, LJ!
Once again, I've let way too much time go between updates. I'm sorry about that. As always, I've been reading but not commenting. But hi to all of you who are still here!
Life has been very busy the past few weeks. Last weekend was crazy-busy, but great. On Friday after work I zoomed home, picked up VEE from her grandma's house, and then came home to get the Scientist. Then the three of us drove over to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yakgirl and her boys at their hotel. They were on a two-week vacation across the country, first to Hershey, PA with some friends to do Hershey Park, then up to my parents' house to visit with them, then on to Chicagoland to see us and their very good friends who live about a mile from us. That Friday my brother-in-law went to a concert with his friend, which left just yakgirl and the boys with us. We went out to eat and then back to their hotel to go swimming. VEE was absolutely delighted to see her cousins and they were great with her. They're wonderful boys -- I wish we lived closer so that we could visit more than twice a year.
The next day we all got together (with my brother-in-law this time) and headed down to the Brookfield Zoo. Since they buy us our membership every year as a family Christmas gift, we felt it was only appropriate to take them and treat them to all the zoo has to offer. So the boys got to go to their first dolphin show, we all pet stingrays in the pool, they saw all the monkeys and apes at Tropic World, the bears at the wilderness exhibit, the penguins, etc., etc. I think the kids really enjoyed it. At least, I hope they did. Afterwards we came back to our house and let the kids watch movies while the adults sat around the kitchen table and talked. Then we went out to dinner and soon after that they all headed home.
The next day yakgirl and the boys came by again, as they were in the neighborhood for their friends' children's joint birthday party. (My brother-in-law is godfather to at least one of their kids, and I believe his friend is godfather to one of yakgirl's boys as well, so the families are pretty tight.) Anyway, they hung out at our place for a little while as my brother-in-law did some last-minute birthday shopping. It was good to spend even an extra 45 minutes with them, and once again VEE was over the moon to see her cousins. Just as they were all leaving, the next set of house guests arrived. First was my BFF D and her husband T, thenfava_bean with her husband G and baby Lilypad (not her real name, obviously), and then our friend Ty. D, fava, Ty and I were all really tight in high school, so it was great to have us all together again. Ty currently lives in Ohio but will be moving back to Chicagoland later this year, which is awesome. He's been married for eons, it seems, but none of us have met his wife. I'm really excited to be able to meet her and their three kids one of these days. So we all sat around chatting and catching up on things. This was the first time we've all met Lilypad, who was only born back in May. VEE was so excited to see a baby. She kept petting her hair and trying to give her toys. fava let her hold Lilypad for a bit (supervised, of course) and VEE was just all smiles. So here's hoping that's a good sign that she'll be this excited when her baby brother comes along in a few months.
Later that week we did a trip over to fava's parents' house to see them again before they left to return to Jersey. It seems as if visits with fava and her family will be on a similar schedule to visits with my sister and her family: once a summer and then Christmas. Though this year she'll be home in Illinois for Christmas probably around the same time that we'll be headed to Michigan for my family Christmas, so I don't even know if we'll get to see them again. I guess time will tell...
On Wednesday the Scientist and I had Date Night for the first time in what felt like weeks. We went to see Lucy, which was just spastic and weird. But it's a Luc Besson film, so what can you expect? I read somewhere that it's a future stoner classic, and all I could think while watching it was "Yeah, my pothead friends from college would have thought this movie was AWESOME." But oddly it did remind me that Scarlett Johannson can actually act, because outside of Winter Soldier I don't find her very interesting to watch. I thought she played the scared party girl turned super-powered elevated being pretty well.
On Thursday I went to work early so that I could leave work early so that after work we could all head up to Medieval Times. It was my sister-in-law S's birthday, and that's what she wanted to do. I've been several times in the past decade (the Scientist took me for our first Valentine's Day together, just as something different to do since I'd never been there before). Honestly, the show doesn't change all that much and the food leaves me feeling queasy (too greasy, I think). But since VEE was still free to go, we figured it was a good time to attend. Taking her when she's old enough to enjoy the horses and think she's in a real castle but young enough that we don't have to pay is ALWAYS a good thing. The show didn't start till 7:30, so by the time the big knight battles were happening she was getting squirrely. We ended up bailing before the show finished, but she passed out in the car about five minutes into the ride home and we missed all the traffic leaving the place, so I count that as a win. Overall she seemed to enjoy it, as did S, so that's really what matters.
I've been feeling pretty anxious about trying to get the house ready for Baby 2, and unfortunately the Scientist has been getting the brunt of my anxiety. Thankfully I think this weekend has put a lot of that to rest. Yesterday we dropped by IKEA to check their as-is room, which is all full of either returned or damaged furniture. We were looking for an 8-compartment shelving unit, the kind you can put boxes inside to hold things. Lo and behold, one was there in the right color and marked down $30 off the normal price. Fully assembled and cheap? Yes, please. Just as we were asking a salesperson how to put it on hold, the price got marked down again. So in the end, we ended up paying for the unit plus four storage boxes about half the price of a brand new, to-be-assembled unit. SCORE! The Scientist's dad watched VEE for us while we moved it into the house. We have it sideways, and it fits just perfectly under the giant 6x4½ foot world map hanging on one wall. Hooray! Later while VEE was napping I moved a ton of her toys into it from our living room and her bedroom. This morning she woke up and saw that our former "geek room" had been converted into a playroom. She stood at the top of the stairs yelling "Mama, come see! Look at my toys! Come see!" Heh. So she's pleased with the change, I think.
Before she woke up this morning the Scientist was a peach and went out to the garage to get storage boxes from the rafters. He lugged them all inside and then helped me box up all of my Nightmare Before Christmas snowglobes from the bookshelf in the playroom. Then he went into the crawlspace under the stairs, took out all of my Christmas houses, put my snowglobes away, and packed the houses back in. The crawlspace is now more organized than ever and we have a half-empty bookshelf ready to be filled. So I took two boxes of books that had been stacked in VEE's bedroom for weeks and unloaded those into the bookshelf. What a relief to get all that done!
Now the only huge things that need to be done are for the Scientist to strip and repaint the "new" dresser for VEE, to move a bookshelf and some toys from her room into the playroom, and to get her a new bed. But honestly, until the new bed is purchased and delivered, there's no point in doing the rest of that. But it makes me feel so much better to have all that done.
Anyway, that's been life around these parts.
Life has been very busy the past few weeks. Last weekend was crazy-busy, but great. On Friday after work I zoomed home, picked up VEE from her grandma's house, and then came home to get the Scientist. Then the three of us drove over to meet
yakgirl and her boys at their hotel. They were on a two-week vacation across the country, first to Hershey, PA with some friends to do Hershey Park, then up to my parents' house to visit with them, then on to Chicagoland to see us and their very good friends who live about a mile from us. That Friday my brother-in-law went to a concert with his friend, which left just yakgirl and the boys with us. We went out to eat and then back to their hotel to go swimming. VEE was absolutely delighted to see her cousins and they were great with her. They're wonderful boys -- I wish we lived closer so that we could visit more than twice a year. The next day we all got together (with my brother-in-law this time) and headed down to the Brookfield Zoo. Since they buy us our membership every year as a family Christmas gift, we felt it was only appropriate to take them and treat them to all the zoo has to offer. So the boys got to go to their first dolphin show, we all pet stingrays in the pool, they saw all the monkeys and apes at Tropic World, the bears at the wilderness exhibit, the penguins, etc., etc. I think the kids really enjoyed it. At least, I hope they did. Afterwards we came back to our house and let the kids watch movies while the adults sat around the kitchen table and talked. Then we went out to dinner and soon after that they all headed home.
The next day yakgirl and the boys came by again, as they were in the neighborhood for their friends' children's joint birthday party. (My brother-in-law is godfather to at least one of their kids, and I believe his friend is godfather to one of yakgirl's boys as well, so the families are pretty tight.) Anyway, they hung out at our place for a little while as my brother-in-law did some last-minute birthday shopping. It was good to spend even an extra 45 minutes with them, and once again VEE was over the moon to see her cousins. Just as they were all leaving, the next set of house guests arrived. First was my BFF D and her husband T, then
fava_bean with her husband G and baby Lilypad (not her real name, obviously), and then our friend Ty. D, fava, Ty and I were all really tight in high school, so it was great to have us all together again. Ty currently lives in Ohio but will be moving back to Chicagoland later this year, which is awesome. He's been married for eons, it seems, but none of us have met his wife. I'm really excited to be able to meet her and their three kids one of these days. So we all sat around chatting and catching up on things. This was the first time we've all met Lilypad, who was only born back in May. VEE was so excited to see a baby. She kept petting her hair and trying to give her toys. fava let her hold Lilypad for a bit (supervised, of course) and VEE was just all smiles. So here's hoping that's a good sign that she'll be this excited when her baby brother comes along in a few months.Later that week we did a trip over to fava's parents' house to see them again before they left to return to Jersey. It seems as if visits with fava and her family will be on a similar schedule to visits with my sister and her family: once a summer and then Christmas. Though this year she'll be home in Illinois for Christmas probably around the same time that we'll be headed to Michigan for my family Christmas, so I don't even know if we'll get to see them again. I guess time will tell...
On Wednesday the Scientist and I had Date Night for the first time in what felt like weeks. We went to see Lucy, which was just spastic and weird. But it's a Luc Besson film, so what can you expect? I read somewhere that it's a future stoner classic, and all I could think while watching it was "Yeah, my pothead friends from college would have thought this movie was AWESOME." But oddly it did remind me that Scarlett Johannson can actually act, because outside of Winter Soldier I don't find her very interesting to watch. I thought she played the scared party girl turned super-powered elevated being pretty well.
On Thursday I went to work early so that I could leave work early so that after work we could all head up to Medieval Times. It was my sister-in-law S's birthday, and that's what she wanted to do. I've been several times in the past decade (the Scientist took me for our first Valentine's Day together, just as something different to do since I'd never been there before). Honestly, the show doesn't change all that much and the food leaves me feeling queasy (too greasy, I think). But since VEE was still free to go, we figured it was a good time to attend. Taking her when she's old enough to enjoy the horses and think she's in a real castle but young enough that we don't have to pay is ALWAYS a good thing. The show didn't start till 7:30, so by the time the big knight battles were happening she was getting squirrely. We ended up bailing before the show finished, but she passed out in the car about five minutes into the ride home and we missed all the traffic leaving the place, so I count that as a win. Overall she seemed to enjoy it, as did S, so that's really what matters.
I've been feeling pretty anxious about trying to get the house ready for Baby 2, and unfortunately the Scientist has been getting the brunt of my anxiety. Thankfully I think this weekend has put a lot of that to rest. Yesterday we dropped by IKEA to check their as-is room, which is all full of either returned or damaged furniture. We were looking for an 8-compartment shelving unit, the kind you can put boxes inside to hold things. Lo and behold, one was there in the right color and marked down $30 off the normal price. Fully assembled and cheap? Yes, please. Just as we were asking a salesperson how to put it on hold, the price got marked down again. So in the end, we ended up paying for the unit plus four storage boxes about half the price of a brand new, to-be-assembled unit. SCORE! The Scientist's dad watched VEE for us while we moved it into the house. We have it sideways, and it fits just perfectly under the giant 6x4½ foot world map hanging on one wall. Hooray! Later while VEE was napping I moved a ton of her toys into it from our living room and her bedroom. This morning she woke up and saw that our former "geek room" had been converted into a playroom. She stood at the top of the stairs yelling "Mama, come see! Look at my toys! Come see!" Heh. So she's pleased with the change, I think.
Before she woke up this morning the Scientist was a peach and went out to the garage to get storage boxes from the rafters. He lugged them all inside and then helped me box up all of my Nightmare Before Christmas snowglobes from the bookshelf in the playroom. Then he went into the crawlspace under the stairs, took out all of my Christmas houses, put my snowglobes away, and packed the houses back in. The crawlspace is now more organized than ever and we have a half-empty bookshelf ready to be filled. So I took two boxes of books that had been stacked in VEE's bedroom for weeks and unloaded those into the bookshelf. What a relief to get all that done!
Now the only huge things that need to be done are for the Scientist to strip and repaint the "new" dresser for VEE, to move a bookshelf and some toys from her room into the playroom, and to get her a new bed. But honestly, until the new bed is purchased and delivered, there's no point in doing the rest of that. But it makes me feel so much better to have all that done.
Anyway, that's been life around these parts.