Just Want to Sleep!

I have been waking up really early lately.  I can blame it on many things ranging from Abby making noise in the other room to drinking WAY too much water after dinner and the call of nature.  I don't know why my body will not let me go back to sleep, but it is annoying!

With that, you get a snipped blog post:

Work:
Love where I work.  Love who I work with and work for.  I have been given both responsibility and flexibility to go out and find others that need project work done and stuff like that.  Today I will be doing my first flow chart from notes from the Chief of Human Resources!  Insane, right? 

Next week we have another Admin starting.  I realized yesterday that this will be the first time since my days at Champs that someone has come in at the same level as I am at - someone with about the same role in the organization.  I have had folks over me hired, but this will be new and (hopefully) kind of cool. 

Apartment:
I keep meaning to post pictures of the apartment, but you will just have to trust me at this point that it's nice.  We all have lots of space, and Abby is in a Full sized bed, so it's much more fun to read stories at the end of a day because I can go straight to cuddling.  It is silly, I know, but really fun.  This morning when she woke up I went in and we talked about Christmas and did silly stuff like hide from Anny when she got up. 

I keep thinking I might go out and get some paint.  Anny is a hang-pictures-to-break-the-white-walls person, and I am a paint-it person.  I know she will win out this round, though, because I am too cheap to buy paint and we have TONS of hanging pictures. 

Folks have asked if Abby is okay with the silly TriPod "Tree" for Christmas, and I assure you that she digs it.  She admires real/artificial trees in other places, but she knows that ours is a little silly, but special nonetheless. 

Abby:
Well, on Saturday night she twisted her foot strangely and limped for three days.  Right as it was healing up she jumped out of her bed in not-tied shoes and that was a set back. Another advantage of the Full Sized bed, we found out, is that when she is whimpering through the night because of said foot injury, we don't have to sleep three to a bed.  Anny just went in to Abby's bed for the night.  (I take my turns, you can trust that.) 

Because of the occasional bed sharing in her room, Abby is now requesting that one of us sleep with her each night.  Yeah, going to have to break that habit and quick!

Abby is incredibly helpful around here, especially in the kitchen!  This week alone she has helped with cookies, boxed muffins, made from scratch muffins (YUM!) and is now helping with pancakes.  She is always eager to help, and is getting much better about keeping mixing in the bowls.  She is often mad at us if we don't let her help in the kitchen at dinner time.  Sorry, Abs, but I do not need help with the raw meat today... :o)

Hoping to knock out a post today or tomorrow about Abby and Santa.  Fun stuff.  But now I need to go - I hear blueberry pancakes in process and I want to be sure some are for me!

Abby Tells the "The Story of Baby Jesus"

It is a bit long, but I wanted to post it to share.  As I was trying to convince Abby it was time to go to bed last night, she decided she needed to tell me the Story of Baby Jesus.  She was so meticulous, and told me three times.  Decided to grab the camera to record for posterity. :o)

The sound quality is not great, might have to look at a Flip Video camera sometime in the near future, but not right now. (The sound is cruddy because the camera is trying to auto focus over and over and over again.)


"Baby Jesus" from Anny and Rob on Vimeo.

Text from the video:
"The Story About Baby Jesus"
by Abigail "Abby" Monroe (pen name pending)

(prep time included three videos of just sorting the pieces, then looking for Joseph for another minute and a half!)

Scene 1 - playing with magnetic toys and metal fridge. Be sure to have annoying noise throughtout video because of camera trying to auto-focus every half second, blame camera guy...

Where is Joseph? Where was he? He isn't here? Where is he?
Once upon a time, Mary and Joseph.
They had a Baby Jesus.
Then one time, Joseph, and BABY JESUS is BORN!
Then this Angel goes up to the star...
And then the Kings came with the presents
And the presents were for Mary and Joseph. {Suggestion from Editor, perhaps parents should work on story, gifts are for Baby, not Parents}
(long pause for sorting)
The Kings brought presents, put them right there.
They brought the presents for Jesus's Birthday
One time he was born and then His birthday came up and, then somebody came, and then the whole kingdom!
And then the whole WORLD!
(dramatic pause. again)
Just the whole kingdom, and all of the people and animals came to see him.
And they were all a Factory from the rest. {Suggestion from Editor, Factory? Really?)
A whole factory.
It's Baby Jesus!
And then, that's all!

Our Non-Traditional Christmas "Tree"

Best Christmas Tree - potted and in the house for a few weeks, planted in the yard following the holidays
Great Christmas Tree A- Fresh, locally cut pine
Great Christmas Tree B- Fake tree, bells and whistles, kept for many years to balance out environmental impacts and such
Good Christmas Tree - Real tree, imported across hundreds of miles - but at least it gets composted.


Yes, that is a camera tripod decked out with tree lights!  We thought long and hard, but here are realities in our house:
1 - We don't have a yard to plant a potted Christmas tree
2 - We had three fake trees that we gave away this summer, buying a new one now sounds really awful
3 - Anny is allergic to cut pines - not occasional contact, but the last time we had a cut tree she had hives. When we have a real wreath, she had issues again.  (Worry not, Sarahlynn, she's only had issues when it is in our living quarters!)
4 - We wanted to do something a little... different.  This year has been all about creativity and, well, different.

Ladies (are there any guys that read my blog? Is this thing on?) I present to you our Tripod Christmas "Tree"

One neat thing is that we have a ball in the dead-center of the thing, so it kind of pushes the light around:

Abby is completely nonplussed about the whole thing - she takes pretty much everything in stride these days! 

Now to figure out those last few boxes from the move - might just put them in storage and ignore them!

Caps/Blues Game!

(So - no BS about why I have not blogged. Been busy, still adjusting, blah blah blah.  All true, but doesn't matter.)

A friend from church was given a pair of tickets to the Blues game last night - when my team from DC was visiting!  She is a hockey fan, so clearly we had talked about my love of the sport and how I would love to get tickets to the game.  Wow am I glad I have a big mouth - she invited ME!

I had to debate - and included folks on Facebook who were clearly one sided - whether to wear my Blues shirt or my Caps jersey.  Well before we moved I realized that there would be a dilemma - clearly I have been a fan of the Caps since just after birth, but I am a firm believer that you should root for your home team.  (That is why I could never live in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia)  I decided that I can root for two teams for 82 games a year, but for the two times they play each other I would root for the Caps.

Good news for me is that I am a fan of the sport in general, so I ended up in hockey heaven last night as the two teams played a great, clean game with lots of action, lots of hitting and no fights. (Sorry fight-fans, time and a place, and a hockey game is neither.)  The Caps won 4-1 even though St Louis looked to have played a better game and just didn't get the shots to go in. 

So - I've been to a thousand hockey games, and why blog about this one? Well, for the embarrassment factor!

During TV timeouts they do silly things to pass the time - which I guess is better than watching ads!  They did not do a kiss cam, but they had several fun ones that include dancing for the camera and such. There was a camera operator on the opposite side of the ice that clearly liked the folks in the seats right around ours.  They got a shot of the guy sitting RIGHT in front of us (for celebrity look-alike), then later of a woman a row back and over by about two seats. 

Well, they did a segment to the classic ballad Dream Weaver!  They showed one girl with a dream bubble about an engagement ring - funny! Then the guy beside her, clearly trying to run away from being associated with that, had a "dream" about a Bud Light - funnier!  Was skeeved out when they put up a young boy - maybe 8? - with a picture of a skimpily clothed lady.  Mom and dad were clearly uncomfortable, too.

Then they showed me and Barb!  Then I realized they were showing me because of my Capitals jersey...  I had the thought to pull it up to show my Blues shirt underneath, but I was worried about flashing folks. Nobody wants to see that!  So I sat there and laughed, anticipating "my" dream.  How about this one, my friends.... (picture in a dream bubble)

Oh yes, my friends, it seems that I Dream of Hasselhoff! 

Since it took a moment between put up my ugly mug and coming up with the "dream" picture, I was literally booed and subsequently laughed at by about 15,000 people! In public! At a hockey game!

In other words, my friends, last night was a perfectly awesome night!  GO CAPS! GO BLUES!  GO HOFF!