Pretty, but cold.

As I type this, my hubby (Steve the great white hunter) is out braving the frigid temps in one last attempt to fill his deer tags for the season. As much as I love venison, I'd rather have my left arm sawed off than sit outside in the cold. Not for me. I'll stick to cuddling inside with Finn, eating hot toast and cocoa with marshmallows, thanks. Brrrrrrr.

This little monkey is growing and learning in leaps and bounds lately.  His vocabulary is exploding and he's getting better at putting said words together and making small sentences. Lately everything has been "BIG!". Big truck, big ball, big butt, big tree...you get the picture. And he's learned to kick so we hear a lot of "Hey! I kick it!" and "Mommy! Kick it!" Such a little boy these days.  The only time I see the baby side of him anymore is at bedtime, which had been pretty darn good for awhile. But lately, he's backslid a little, and always says "Mommy! Stay here! Stay here!" when I try to tuck him in and leave.  I don't know if he's getting afraid of the dark or having bad dreams or what.  He has a heck of a vocabulary, but still can't always tell us what's wrong (not that I'm expecting him to be able to or anything. That's just ridiculous).

He's finally un-afraid of Grammy Zarnick (my maternal grandma). I think the fact that she treated us to a wonderful day at the Science Center helped her cause a good bit. I don't know who was more in awe of the exhibits, Finn or Grammy. They were both pretty blown away by the underwater Omnimax film. I was just shocked that Finn sat through teh whole 45 minutes of it. Of course seeing a lot of the Nemo critters probably helped ("Mommy! Tu-ttle! Ssssark!") and the fact that he passed during the last 10 minutes didn't hurt either. Grammy couln't stop talking about teh trip for a week. And of course before leaving she loaded the boy up with every souvenier from the gift shop. Such a fun day. I think we'll go back for his birthday (which is rapidly approaching. Holy cow. 22 months already?) when the miniature train village is back up and running (we missed the re-opening by a week). He's got a love of trains and big trucks, this one does. He will not be disappointed on Christmas since there are at least 3 gigantic dumtrucks, a big backhoe and a plethora of tractors waiting to go under his tree from various sources. Santa has some very busy elves apparently.

I've been working pretty steadily, which is both great (we can definitely use the money) and stressful (shuffling Finn around is making me want to rip my hair out). Finn's been staying with Grammy Z. the past couple of weeks while I've worked and he's done really well with her. Unfortunatley I just got a call this morning that she's back in the hospital with her Crohn's acting up. Obviously I want her to be alright and get better, first and foremost. But now I'll have to find somewhere else for him to stay this week, which is going to be none too easy given my crazy schedule. I found one daycare with openings, and I'll have to give them a call bright and early on monday. Fingers crossed that they don't charge an arm and leg fo just a couple days a week. Sigh. I really wish I knew more people around here that were good with kids and had free time.

Oh! Two gunshots from the back property!!! Go Steve, GO!

Work and possible dead deer aside, Finn and I have been keeping busy around teh house as well. We've put up the Christams tree and hung all my grandma's old ornaments. Finn, unfortunately, think that they're huge candy globes and has tried to eat three of them so far, and pulled countless others off the branches. He's also been a big help in the winter baking. We've made bread, pasta, pretzels and numerous cookies in the past few weeks. He makes for a great sous chef/official taste tester.  I think we'll make some egg noodles today for dinner next week. And we have plans for Guinness cupcakes and Guinness cheese fondue for Christmas eve. This will be our first time hosting the Christmas eve get together, and I thought it'd be nice to throw in a few new things along with our traditional grub. We always have meatball and hot sausage subs, pasta salad, macaroni salad, some form of potato and a dessert of some sort. Kind of a picnic meal. We'll open our presents from mom and dad and eat til we're ready to pass out. Sounds like an excellent time.

More shots! What the heck? Either he missed the first two times, or this is an indestructable deer. The pressure is really on today, since this is the last day Steve will be able to go out and since my little brother got one yesterday...well, I think Steve's feeling a bit competetive. He has three tags to fill, and judging by the amount of handwarmers he purchased last night, I think he means to stay out until he has them all filled (one buck and two doe.) Three would be way more than we would eat in a year (two would be too much, really.), but we plan on donating any extra meat we end up with.  He hasn't texted me back yet...hopefully this means he's on the chase! I had a dream last night that I woke up at 9:30 (yeah I know...sleeping in to 9:30 would be a dream indeed) and Steve was in the living room playing with a fully dressed and breakfasted Finn (again, a dream). I was confounded as to why he was back so soon and he said "I got two by 8, so I decided to call it a day!". I woke up from the dream before I could badger him about why he couldn't feed Finn breakfast every morning.  Go figure. But I'm hoping this means good luck for his hunting today.

Okay, off to shower and make noodles. Think good deer thoughts for Steve today!