Christmas Time-Crunch!

I am feeling the holiday stress. Too much to do and not enough time to do it in!! Things are piling up on me and Christmas is 11 days away. My Christmas shopping is 88% complete; all the wrapping that I can do, is done. But the 3 biggest obstacles still linger over my head: HOUSE CLEANING, PACKING, & JAMES. James and I are headed to Oklahoma & Washington D.C. for the holidays. While we are gone I have loaned our house out to my neighbor to help her accommodate some of her Christmas guests. This means that my house needs to be spick & span before James and I leave for Oklahoma. I so far have done 0 loads of laundry for my plane ride on Saturday. I have almost packed all of the gifts that I am taking with me, but still not sure how I am to get to the airport. I am leaving on the 16th to spend some quality time with my family; James is joining me on the 21st. James, who planned both my trip & his surgery, just had hernia surgery yesterday and is out of commission for the remainder of my time at home. So, he needs a little TLC and sympathy, while I run around like a mad woman packing, cleaning, preparing meals, and getting everything finished up at work (since I will be gone for 2 weeks!). Sadly, the first steps that I have taken towards cleaning was today when I un-loaded & re-loaded the dishwasher. Did I mention that because James is permanently affixed to our couch, our very good friends from down the street are coming over for dinner & Christmas to our house? So, when I leave work today I have to clean the common areas of our house & prepare dinner. (I must be out of my mind, this is like a .375 hour window!!) I know that everything will fall into place and I know that if it even begins to look like I won’t complete everything I will dig down and get it all taken care of, but right now, I am a little overwhelmed. I am hoping that James will do okay without me so shortly after his surgery and that I can relax a little in Oklahoma. Otherwise, I will need to recover from my pre-vacation & vacation!
See you tomorrow Blog,
Anita

Weekend Continued

Finishing up the Weekend Blog….After Ice Skating we headed to a very nice restaurant to toast Jenny’s Birthday & have some Birthday dessert. The restaurant was very nice & so yummy. Harry (4) was a hoot! He thanked the waitress for his milk in Japanese, and she was actually waiting for a thank you, so when the puzzled look came on her face Jenny had to explain. It was classic. After a round of the old favorite “Happy Birthday” we then parted to go our separate ways for the evening. James and I had my work Christmas party to attend. James and I love my work Christmas parties for the same reason, it isn’t held by the military. James gets to wear a suit, this is a big deal, not his uniform. He has had 2 custom suits made while on deployments and 1 occasion a year to wear them. I like it because I know more people at a party than he does, which is unusual. The Christmas party is always held on Sunday, because it is when the city of San Diego has their “Parade of Lights”. This is something really cool to see, it is tons and tons of boats all entered in a decoration contest. So, they all line up and tour the harbor one by one, yelling Merry Christmas or playing music, covered in Christmas Lights. This year the party was at a hotel that has a huge wrap-around balcony so that we could all watch the parade. A little chilly at times but still a great time! The moment everybody holds their breath for though is the gift exchange, Dirty Santa style. We drew a good solid 12 out of 39. We ended up stealing someone’s bar set that could not be stolen anymore. Yeah us! All in all a very good time & great day!
See you tomorrow Blog,
Anita

The First Weekend Blog!

The First Weekend Blog! Not really sure how these will continue in the future, but after that rotten “Soup” Blog this has got to be better. Friday Night- James and I headed over to our friends the Bowden’s home with dinner as a bribe to spend more time with their newest family addition, of 4 days. He is a really good-looking baby both by photo and in person. Darby’s mom is in town so it was nice to see her again and see her gushing over her 1st grandchild. James enjoys her company because she, like my Mom, realizes that James is just plain ornery, and dishes it back to him. It is very funny to watch. Darby and baby are doing great and it is still amazing to see Steve with this baby. (He has never held a baby until his own. Which is really kinda sweet. But I say practice on other people’s kids first!! LOL) Saturday- A lot of laziness in the morning. In my opinion this is the only way to spend a Saturday with no Sooner football to watch. But in the afternoon we headed off to the North County Fair Mall. I was really surprised when James agreed to go with me, but happy for his company. As we pulled into the parking lot he said “I forgot that there would be all these people here.” Hello??? 2 weeks before Christmas and he didn’t think that there would be people at the Mall. LOL Oh James…this is what happens when the womenfolk take such good care of their husbands. After the game of “stalk the shopper” to find a parking spot, the shopping could commence. We did good, found some good deals and I only had one moment that I felt completely overwhelmed. James was a great help at helping me decide & calling family members to get sizes and gift ideas. We celebrated the good day by heading to Fidel’s for dinner. (We always get the same thing, we don’t even look at the menu anymore!) Sunday- Big Day!! Big Plans!! We started off the day by heading down to San Diego for some Birthday Celebrating for my very close friend Jenny. ( I mean close in 2 ways here, proximity, 4 houses down from ours, & kindred spirit.) She decided that for her birthday she wanted to go ice skating & have a great lunch. We started skating around 12:30 and not really sure if it was the sun or the rain the night before, but there was some water on the ice. It made you really not want to fall. But falling does happen, but it is really funny when it is my husband!! There are very few things that James and I have ran into that he has not dabbled in at some point in his life. Fortunately, for me the last time James had ice skated was in high school. He was bad. I mean not terrible…but bad. Arms flailing about, feet trying to catch up with his body, stopping by getting on all fours…bad. At times it was just fun to watch him make a lap around the rink. LOL Sadly I must report that his concept of the “down on all fours” to stop led to some scrapes and bruises. (His scrapes and my bruises! Yes, we had a tumble together, as we are skating along our last lap before lunch, I looked over to see him and I had no idea where he was until I fell over him milliseconds later. He went sailing through the water and I fell to my knees. The whole front side of his jeans were soaked. Poor guy!) Jenny kept suggesting that we buy James some sweat-pants before lunch so that he would be dry…LOL. James was a trouper and went to lunch with wet pants. I will have to write tomorrow about our fun–filled evening!
See you tomorrow Blog,
Anita

Soup Talk

I realize now I have turned another hard “True-ism of Anita” into dust. I like soup. This is really hard for me to admit, but I do, I like soup. I even at times, crave soup. I have never cared for the taste of soup. My quick reply when presented the option of soup has always been “There will be plenty of time when I am old to have liquid food.” It all started with potato soup, because they always have big chunks of potato in it. Then it went to chicken enchilada soup, thick creamy soup with still chunks of chicken. On from there to little tastings of Tortilla, Broccoli & Cheddar, and Cuban Black Bean soups. A big turning point was Tom Ka Kai, a Thai soup, which I literally had to grow to like by trying it every time I ate Thai food. (Now, I feel cheated if my Thai dining experience does not have this great coconut soup.) So that proves it…I like soup. I have actually had a chicken & wild rice soup 2 days in a row this week. **Pause for a shout-out to Croutons in Carlsbad** I am still not a huge tomato soup fan but I have found a nice tomato basil soup every now and then. And Chicken Noodle is only for when I am very sick. I also don’t think I am anywhere close to Gazpacho, cold soup…too far, too fast. Anyway, I have declared it, and world write it down Anita= Soup eater.

I am starting to think that for my 3rd Blog entry, I kinda missed it with the whole soup thing…oh well; at least my Mom will still keep reading my Blog!!!
See you tomorrow Blog,
Anita

Christmas Spirit

Trying to get in the Christmas Spirit in 70 degree weather is always a challenge!!
So last night James and I took off after work to head to Temecula to our favorite winery The Ponte (the bridge in Italian). We are wine club members, this means wine shipped to our door, and they are having special “Member Nights” during the holidays. (We usually take all our out of town guests here for lunch & wine tasting, it is such a great way to spend a Southern California afternoon!) With that said a “Holiday Night” sounds like a great kick-off for the holiday. James didn’t get home on Tuesday night until after midnight (night flight), so I am sure an early night was more his speed, but we headed North because that is the kind of guy he is. It was so Nice! They had carolers at the door dressed in traditional attire, hot h’ordorves every where you looked, & 25% off anything you bought!!! We started with a little wine and then got down to business, shopping for those who have everything. We walked around and gathered our gifts and then dropped them off at the FREE gift wrapping, (another of my favorite words at Christmas, along with FREE Shipping). We spent the rest of our time there just looking at all gorgeous table displays & hunting down the h’ordorves folks. They also had the best peanut butter cookies! This was a really great night, as James pointed out, even on a School night!!

When I got home there was a gift on my front porch from my very dear friend, Jody. We had spoken on the phone the other day and she noticed that I was not in the best spirits so she sent me a pick-me-up gift! I love her for that (and so much more) and miss her dearly now that she is in NC!!!

See you tomorrow Blog,
Anita

The Name

Hello Blog World!!!
I have been reading my friend Natalie's blog for some time now, hearing all about what she and her cute little family are up to.So last night as I was lying in my bed staring at the ceiling, I decided to go ahead and jump into the world of blogging! This could kinda be my record of what is going on in my life, a diary of sorts. But what to name my Blog...Natalie has a really cute name and my friend Scott's blog totally fits his personality....what should I name mine??? I thought, Anita's Point of View- not enough FLARE. Anita's POV- an acronym, really James has totally rubbed off on me. Anita Out Loud- I like it, but....And of course there is a story. James and I had this conversation about a week ago regarding the word Aloud and Out Loud. He caught me using the word "outloud" and pointed it out that the word was "aloud". And how funny that growing up people never correct us to use the proper word of "aloud". I of course argued that outloud was a word. And then as always the bet was set, the winner gets to pick all the movies for the next month. (This is a HUGE BET, by the way!!) So the dictionary was pulled from it's shelf and to my surprise "outloud" is not a word. (Did I mention Spellcheck is my very dear friend?) Aloud of course was found and it's definition clear. But in my opinion this is really a tie, due to the fact that outloud is not 1 word, in the context that I used it but actually 2. I really think I win here on the technicality that I used the word properly, I was just mistaken on the fact that it had a space in between. So, while James and I are watching every scary, sci-fi & full action movies for the next month I can be jotting items down for my blog.
See you tomorrow Blog!
Anita