On Holiday.

The Highlights...
1. The ocean. It never ceases to amaze me in its enormity.
2. The sweet accomodations picked out by the brother in law. Very nice. Very nice indeed.
3. The company: Laid back and loving.
4. Time with Chas and G Rose away from our normal habitat. We don't need to wait 3 more years to do this again.
5. Getting to walk around in a getup some people would condsider, oh...UNDERWEAR? You know, this should really be a whole other post. But whose bright idea was it to suggest when hanging out around bodies of water, women folk must wear items that under normal circumstances only close family might see. I mean really...it's like...Go to the grocery store: Shorts/slacks/t shirt. Out to dinner: See previous ensemble suggestion. Perhaps even a dress. Church: Dress. Slacks if you want. The gym: Shorts and a tank top. The Beach/Pool: Underwear. There are varying degrees of underwear. Bikinis, Tankinis, one-piece suits, but I feel they are all still in the underwear category.

Why am I going on and on? No reason really...I just never get used to wearing bathing suits. Or, maybe I'm just bitter I don't have the whole swimsuit model thing going on. I don't think swimsuit models eat Krispy Kreme donuts on their holiday. Just a hunch. And if I were really pressed, what would I suggest us ladies wear in aquatic situations? I have no clue. I know one time at some camp in junior high I went down a water slide in jeans and a t-shirt. I almost sank from the weight of the denim, so that wouldn't work. Half naked is probably the only option. So...I guess number 5 isn't really a highlight. Just a rant. Because, what's a blog of mine without a rant?

My apologies.

I'm going to get a little sappy. You may want to look away.

One particularly nice night Chas, and G Rose and I walked out to the beach. It was getting dark and a storm was rolling in. G Rose was a classic picture of a child running and laughing and completely and totally enjoying herself. I was thinking a couple of things...

One...I'm hungry. Again. Seriously, what is it about that ocean air that makes you want to eat? Or is it just me?

Two...I'm not worthy to have such a special little person in my life, but WOW I love that kid. I need to remember this moment. There is such a small window of time she'll be this young and carefree. It's like I miss her 3 year old self already...does that make sense?

Love,

E

The Adventures of Farmer Lizzy

Preparing ourselves to be completely self-sustainable:
Blog fan, if you recall, the Mick family is trying to ,"sustain local agriculture and enhance our local economy and rural character". We buy farm fresh eggs from a co-worker/farmer Chas works with and we are going to purchase a 1/4 or 1/2 of a cow from the same this fall. In case anyone is interested, when you are purchasing Mr.Cow, the farmer can provide you with the Steer Carcass breakdown:

Aaah, there are advantages to purchasing your meat from Kroger. One biggie? They don't use the word carcass.

Along the same line, Lynchburg now has an official "good 'ole fashion butcher" (their description) :The Bedford Avenue Meat Shop. Check it out. I believe their main goal is to provide organic meats and support local farmers. Very cool.

Any vegetarians are SO over me right now, aren't you? Well LUCKY you because Farmer Libby is starting a garden. As it stands right now, I have no harvest. My visions of coming out to my little garden gathering bushels of produce have not yet come to fruition. Right now, I can offer you a 1 1/2 inch jalapeno. Just one. Woo hoo! Here are some pics of our bountiful harvest:

Here is the garden. Keep in mind this was a couple of weeks ago.

Here's the jalapeno at 1/2 inch:

My how he's grown.

And finally, our blackberry bushes:

So we are not yet ready to hide off from the world and live off of our farm fresh eggs, beef, and home grown vegetables. Maybe next year.

Grilled Greens:

So Farmer Lizzy, because she is not yet ready to live off her land, gathered up her young 'n and headed off to the local Kroger to purchase some romaine lettuce to grill. I saw grilled romaine prepared on the Food Network (and NO blog fan, we are still weak weak people and cannot rid our sacred home of the devil box: see previous post under RANT) and just HAD to try it. It's now one of my favorite ways to eat salad. Simply cut the romaine in half, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with S/P and garlic powder, and GRILL. You grill for approximately 2 minutes, turning every 30 seconds. Shake a little grated parm over the charred lettuce, and you've got yourself something tasty.

What's that you say? Hot dogs with a gourmet grilled green? I can only do so many fabulous things at once.

Wonder what part of the steer carcass those links of goodness came from?

Love,

E

Church Chicken...and other topics of interest.

Blog fans fan, it's been a while since my last posting, so instead of trying to jam a couple month's worth of mind-numbing minutiae into a post, I'll just post some highlights. A sort of "Best of The Mick Family".

School:

I have completed semester #1. I truly love nursing school so far and it's nice to have the feeling I'm on the right track. I'll have the summer off (I've got to say having the summer off is quite luxurious. I recall thinking when I was working in the REAL WORLD how good I had it when I used to be in school) and I'm looking forward to hanging out with G Baby. I do believe we have some "adjusting" to do moving into this new schedule of ours. Because G is really mastering putting on her own clothes, this is starting ALL OVER AGAIN her obsession with multiple ensemble changes. Oh, and she's gotten a little bossier lately too. And a touch more dramatic I did not know this was possible. This could be a long summer. But nice....seriously. This will probably be the last summer I'll get to play "Stay at Home Mama" as I'll hopefully be doing some sort of part time nursing work next summer.

Family Photo Highlights:

Easter

Mother's Day "Tea" at Gracie's Preschool. This was quite precious.

(Gracie Before the Mother's Day Tea...I just thought it was a good picture with her buddy Blue Dog)

Food and Food Related Items:

Barefoot Contessa's Roast Chicken: I have renamed this "Church Chicken". Church chicken because the first Sunday I made it was Palm Sunday and it was all kinds of slow getting out of the parking lot. The recipe said to roast the bird at 425 for one and a half hours. This turned out to be an hour and fourty five minutes...perfection. Perhaps I should rename it "Palm Sunday Poultry". You stuff the lovely bird with a bunch of thyme, a whole head of garlic (sliced in half) and a lemon, halved as well. Salt, pepper, brush with butter, then salt and pepper again. I cut up some onions to lay around and this made for a tasty gravy. OH, and the chicken was .49c a pound. Aaaahhh...new name: "Cheap Church Chicken".

Cupcake wrappers: Laser cut card-stock wrappers for cupcakes. These are the ones I used for Easter.
Bunnies are only the beginning. You can get palm trees, poinsettias, trains,...The possibilities are ENDLESS! The company of inspiration is FancyFlours (oh my goodness this site is a time sucker if you are into cookies and cakes!!!!) . However, I did find them on another site (NanaLuLus Linen Closet) as well for a bit of a better price. What I like about the wrappers is the fact they make such a simple cupcake look so pretty...and special.

Rant:

From time to time Chas and I get all kinds of hippy dippy and say to ourselves, "We are SO getting rid of that mind melting, time sucking, trash spewing piece of garbage we call a television". Then we get weak. Chas starts to think of the Steelers and football season and I get all misty thinking about living without the Food Network. Sometimes when I turn the Food Network on I feel as though I have a friend over. A friend who looks right at me and talks to me while he or she sautes garlic. But lately my friends on the Food Network have gotten a little competitive. Are you lost? I mean, is IT NOT ENOUGH that there are competitions on every other daggone network? We compete with dancing, dog grooming, house decorating, and redneck trashy dating. Must we compete with our food? The occassional BBQ cookoff I can handle, but I watch the FN for their original intent: Cooking shows. Ok, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Oops, I mentioned at the beginning there would be no mind-numbing minutiae.

My apologies.

E

Did you ever...

Have a dream so real you woke up and thought it actually happened?


Yeah, me too.

Bet he had a headache.

Confessions of a slacker blogger...

A slacker for the VERY big reason of not posting about my daughter's 3rd birthday! (This PRECIOUS crown is thanks to my Dear Aunt Patty and her buddy, cricut)

(This is the centerpiece used for the birthday part compliments of Hogwash Designs aka my Cousin Nikki )

And yes, I realize it is now March. I DO have an excuse:

Our desktop computer has been infected with a very evil virus and that is the 'puter with most of the pictures (The pictures posted are stolen from various family members). I am afraid to turn it on out of fear if I hit the wrong button the monitor will explode wasn't there a movie like this? And, when I ask my husband who for a living designs super spectacular secret software systems for the military what we should do he says, "turn it off". Ummm...shouldn't I at least hit control alt delete first? Nope. Just turn it off. Ok. We don't want it infecting the other helpless laptops in the house. I'm giving the hubby a hard time...we are in fact going to move all of our important files to DVDs and re-install the whole operating system.

THAT, along with the fact I'M IN SCHOOL FULL TIME and can't remember whether to "scratch my watch or wind my butt", friend, is why I have not blogged. So, I will blog, but there will be no actual photos of the actual event which leads me to the confession that I somehow managed to not get ANY pictures of my child's birthday cake. AND, for that matter, NO I DID NOT MAKE MY OWN CHILD'S BIRTHDAY CAKE. Ok? Back off...

Ok, no more excuses.

G Baby is now entering her fourth year of life.

Wow...

Give me a moment to do the classic looking back questions of:

• Weren't we just hanging out in a hospital room looking out at an amazing sunset talking about the new adventure we were about to embark upon?
• Weren't we wondering that first night in the hospital with Gracie that maybe having "the baby sleep in the room with us" wasn't such a hot idea after all?
• Wasn't I just thinking sleep was probably a luxury of the past and I better just get used to parties with a newborn at 2 and 4am?
• Weren't we just in awe of precious newborn feet?
• Wasn't I just in panic mode about taking her to WalMart for the first time Nikki, are you laughing?
• Didn't she used to be bald?

Ok...done with that.

But really, WOW! What an amazingly FAST, fun, frustrating, heartwarming, and humbling time this has been. I can't put into words how much Gracie Rose has changed our world for the better. I can't begin to list all the ways she makes me smile.

My hope for the upcoming years is to remember that she is her OWN person. When I try to put this precious girl "into a box" I have to remind myself she is a tiny human being "fearfully and wonderfully made" and all I need to do is love her.

Happy belated Birthday Baby G!

Love,

Mama

Updates and a Rant...

I was chastised by a certain family member for not updating the blog so I will, again, piece together random happenings and attempt to make my life appear exciting.

School:

I completed my third week and I can now do the following:

• Restrain you. After, of course, I have tried to reason with you. AS A SIDE NOTE-As I was looking for photos to give you a "visual" for restraints, I came across some rather alarming non-medical supply online stores. Turns out some people actually enjoy being restrained.


• Give you a bath...in bed.


• Make your bed with you in it.


• Assess your basic vital signs.


• Brush your teeth.



• As a disclaimer for the aforementioned bath and bedmaking: I practiced on a mannequin. And, incidentally, the manniquen's leg came off as I was washing behind his thigh. He must have had recent hip surgery.

I have to say, the professors are great and I really am enjoying every second.

I am well on my way...

Rant:

On our way to the Dicken's of a Christmas on a very cold night I ran into WalMart for yet another pair of gloves and perhaps a hat. In the toddler section all I came up with were little redneck boy ones so I ventured over to the LITTLE GIRL section (I have a reason for the big font). I quickly grabbed a cute tinkerbell hat/glove combo. I ended up using the redneck gloves as the tinkerbell ones were a bit large.

I busted the set out recently as they now fit a little better. The hat was lying on the kitchen table and one morning over coffee, Chas took a closer look at the hat and then asked me to throw it away. Why?

See tinkerbell? What's it say beside her?

FLIRT.

Flirt? With who? Now granted, this WAS NOT in the toddler/preschool section. No. Because that would just be INSANE to label widdle baby girl stuff with FLIRT. But apparently it's NOT insane to label the 5-11 year old crowd's clothing with this word. And, if I may ask, FLIRT WITH WHO? Other 5-11 year old boys who still pick their noses, live with their mamas and maybe even still wet the bed? I realize there are some 25+ year olds who still do the above and that also makes me nervous but I'll cross that road later.

At my core I am a bit of a "women's libber". Not necessarily the burn my bra and scream "Anything you can do I can better" type. because like it or not people there are SOME things we can't do better and vice versa...wake up and smell the hormones. Sheesh. But I'm definitely a believer that women have worked hard throughout history and have made some HUGE differences in this world. I believe women are more than "man catchers". In our time even with all the talk about women's rights and how far we've come, one could argue we've taken a few steps BACK.

Yes, I'm a touch hyper. Maybe it has something to do with the curly haired blue eyed sweet girl I'm raising. Maybe I don't want her to think about flirting just yet. Maybe I don't want her to look at the INSANE shows like "Gossip Girl" and "The Hills" and any other similar God-awful show and think that's how girls are supposed to act. I know G Rose has no idea what Tinkerbell was telling her to do, but knowing what she's up against makes me a little sad sometimes.

Now, I'm not going to dress Gracie up like a Duggar however, that family does HAVE THEIR ACT TOGETHER. And I'm not going to shelter her from the world. And I know someday Gracie will probably flirt. Hopefully when she's 30 and only with Tristan because his parents will raise him right. Thanks Jenny and Mark! But WOW it makes my blood boil to see the way society wants my sweet baby G to grow up too soon.

Ok. Rant over.

Food:

I attempted one of our favorite Indian dishes, Chicken Tikka Masala, in the crockpot today. It was ok but certainly not as fabulous as our favorite restaurant's, Nawab. However, I made Naan, the traditional Indian flatbread and it was pretty good! Here's a pic...

Yum!

Have a great week!

E

How 2009 is Shaping up...

Some of the highlights...

New Years with the in laws:

• We headed up to Northern Virginia to spend time with Chas's sister and family. They always make us feel so welcome and we TRULY relaxed. Gracie and Chas discovered the craziness that is the Wii..

And this is Chas and Elizabeth amazed and bewildered another year has passed...

You gotta love the fact I can talk Chas into taking these ridiculous pictures with me.

Corneal abrasion:

• On the second day of this new year, a tiny finger with a jagged lethal weapon (i.e. fingernail) connected with my eyeball. If you'd like to know how this feels, take a serrated knife and just kind of graze it across your cornea. See? Smarts a bit, doesn't it? Thankfully, the beautifully created eyeball is a very vascular organ making for VERY quick healing (1-2 Days). After a little trip to the Urgent Care, some numbing eyedrops, a pirate patch, and a prescription for crack lortab, this is all a distant memory.

Double Rainbow:

• You don't see this every day...

Books for School:

• Holy mountain of books Batman! This makes me a touch nervous.

Haircut:

• See above books. Time for personal grooming will be seriously diminished.

Chas says the new "do" looks very "Nurse-y". Is that a compliment? I'm sure it is...

This is me asking everyone, "So, whatcha think?"

My hair really needs to be shorter anyway. Go up to a horse, walk to his/her backside and grab its tail. That's the texture and thickness of my hair.

(Note the necklace courtesy of my dear cousin Nikki's Hogwash Designs)

And finally...

You might be a redneck if:

• You let your kid chew on your cigarette lighter to keep her occupied. Some people let their kids play with their keys, wallets, etc., but nothing like a fuel filled fire starter to really keep 'em quiet. Yes, I witnessed this disturbing scene in the cell phone store yesterday. That's not really a highlight of 2009...just thought I'd share. Yikes...

Have a great weekend!

E