Eating massive amounts of cheesy potatoes and tofu chocolate peanut butter pie

 Mom making us big kids popcorn and hot toddies + secret undies from Santa

Loud, silly photo sessions with my cousins

Christmas poppers and goofy hats + my brother laughing so hard he spit water all over the table at Christmas dinner

Getting a little JamBox and a big Hello Kitty for Christmas

Waking up to breakfast in bed + finishing two site designs

Christmas cartoons + floors completely covered in paper

Meeting Pants’ parents at the casino where everyone lost money except me…the non-gambler + drinking too much & downing Taco Bell…a bad combo

Watching Pants get his hair cut at a cool little ’50s style barber shop +  seeing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (SO GOOD) & getting started on The Girl Who Played With Fire + walking the piglet through big, wet snowflakes

Sunday was the third annual gingerbread house building party at my parent’s.

My sister and I decided we were really only interested in building things to eat…like sandwiches.

So we played with all the kids instead, chasing them around the house, over furniture and under tables.

My mom dug the Lego town out of the basement and we launched little plastic people off a sinking Lego boat.

Slayer made a friend, but only liked her while she had a sticky, slobbery Dorito in her hand.

And he got an early Christmas present, which he wasn’t terribly interested in, so my mom helped him climb inside.

Saturday afternoon was for meetings, but I managed to squeeze in a mini date for a trip to the fancy beer store and vegan chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a waffle cone. After site designs and rigging for our black Friday show was squared away I met Mandy and Mae downtown for dinner. Finally got to see Mandy’s cute little apartment complete with a wall of windows, a tiny stove and tons of security guards. I’d move down there in a second if I didn’t have this whole mortgage thing going on.

For dinner we hopped  over to Le Petit Zinc, a tiny French cafe in Corktown. I had a mushroom crepe, which I made disappear in an instant, and when the server came back to ask about dessert I couldn’t resist a Nutella crepe too. They served water in wine bottles and canning jars and tea in big bowls.

Sunday I loaded piglet into the car, picked up Pants and headed to my parents for a pierogi party. It’s family tradition passed down from my great grandmother to her granddaughters and then to me and my cousins. We let Pants in on the family secret and he helped us roll dough and fill the pierogi before promptly passing out on the couch. The rest of my very loud and rambunctious family showed up around three and by the time everyone arrived we had seven dishes of potato/cheese & sauerkraut/cottage cheese pierogi. There is always a good amount of shit talking over whose dough is most tender and filling is most flavorful. My cousin got an earfull for using instant potatoes, but his blend of four cheese made them pretty damn good.

Next up in competitive family traditions…gingerbread houses!

My sister and I ordered thai for dinner and when my parents came home we hopped in the car and headed to Culvers, which my sister insists on calling Q-bers on account of their curly, difficult to read font. I ate a double peanut butter cup concrete mixer and we grabbed a couple hula hoops and got to workin’ off those calories.

My mom picked up my iPhone and after several questions about how to take a picture, I ended up with three short videos instead…

This weekend was my sister’s graduation party at Dave & Busters, which if you’ve never been there, it’s like Chuck E. Cheese for adults. We had dinner with my big, crazy family, ordered giant margaritas and talked about making a family business of growing pot in my grandma’s garden and selling brownies. She’s totally down for it!

Sufficiently stuffed, everyone ran off to play arcade games. It reminded me of being a kid at Major Magic’s birthday parties (my uncle even had his bday there once!), diving into the ball pit (major EW now haha) and watching my grandparents play skee ball.

Pants showed of his secret skills at the claw game and won me a teddy bear on the first try (aw barf)

And he was all about this Star Wars game where you sit inside a big bubble and shoot things.

My sister, cousin and I played a skee ball/horse racing game. See that kid in the background? He totally kicked our butts!

We ended up with a ton of tickets from playing all the games and ran over to trade them in for prizes, being more obnoxious then every other kid in there and playing with all the toys. We ended up loading a basket with anything that shot or sprayed candy, gummies and ring pops!

Spending the day at my parent’s house: My dad made eggs and mimosas for mother’s day breakfast. It was awesome to have all three of us back at home while my brother was still in town and I know my mom really appreciated it too. We’d hung out on the deck all day and I even got myself a nice little sunburn…

Pants and I had a little date on Saturday and walked to the new cupcake shop that opened near my house. We didn’t end up getting cupcakes at all. I opted for a chocolate peanut butter bar and Pants got a chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. Holyamazeballs was that good! The weather was a little chilly, but I wore a hoodie and my leather jacket and we stopped for coffee too. Can’t wait until it’s warm enough for shorts and dresses!

I got such a sweet note from Brandi the other day! Thanks lady! I love getting mail that’s not a bill :)

Also loving…having tons of produce in my fridge and cooking every night + finally updating my operating system & therefore being able to load music on my iPhone + getting excited for Vegas + my brother flying in to surprise my sister for her graduation + camera apps on my phone (Diptic, Plastic Bullet, Instagram) + surfing for new blogs + wearing mini skirts and maxi dresses + piling all my hair on top of my head instead of washing it + budgeting (don’t know why I love this, but I do!) + an overflowing Google Reader + watching the Wings WIN & hearing the crowd sing along to Journey “Born and raised in Sooouth Detroooit!” + walking to get Thai food + crossing off #21 on our Ben & Jerry’s Favor Domination + thunderstorms in the middle of the night + Dunkin’ Munchkins + the speediness of Zappos shipping + mid-day love letters from Mandy & Mae +

She totally cried :)

All the way to Lansing my mom told us about the lies she’d spun to keep my sister from figuring it out. How she’d cleaned the guest room and then said the cat had gotten into a plant to keep my sister from going in there.

I may or may not have played Words while the commencement speakers were delivering their riveting words of wisdom and my brother may or may not have fallen asleep. (He’d been up since 10 the night before, so who can blame him??) But we were wide awake and woo-hooing while my sister walked across the stage to receive her fake diploma.

Post-gradation we stopped for pizza and bloody marys. My sister and I took far too long to decide which veggies and on what half of the pizza we wanted them. Once we were sufficiently stuffed we all passed out in the car (except dad!) for the long ride home. It was the perfect surprise and completely worth waking up before the buttcrack of dawn.

[ Putting on my most pathetic sad face ]

Pants and I met my parents at the hospital just after 5am and sat in the waiting room for almost an hour before they took me back. As they got ready to put in the IV I totally cried and made them get my mom because I am not a fan of needles – totally got teased for having a giant tattoo and still being scared.

It was incredibly strange to be wheeled into the operating room, knocked out almost immediately and wake up having no clue what happened. When I woke up in recovery I was in a lot of pain and just wanted to see my family and go home. My mom helped me get dressed for the first time in probably 20 years and then wheeled me out to where Pants was waiting with the car.

My mom cleaned my kitchen while my dad took a super spazzy Slayer for a walk. Pants put me in bed, went and bought my parents lunch, checked on me every hour as I slept off the anesthesia, made me food when I finally woke up, fed me my meds, took Slayer with him when he went to get dinner, stayed with me all night and in the morning made me breakfast.

After all of this I feel so lucky to have such wonderful, caring parents and to have stumbled upon a really, really good guy at just the right time. This is not something anyone wants to deal with so early on in a relationship and Pants has been beyond amazing right from the start.

And also Mae and Mandy who came over on Saturday to keep me company while Pants was at soccer. Mae brought homemade soup and hung out until I got all sleepy again.

I’m not going to write about my specific health issues, I just wanted to let you all in on what’s going on with me as I’ll be laying low for the next week so there won’t be too many posts. I’m feeling almost back to normal today and not in pain anymore, so hopefully the string of doctor appointments will be coming to an end very soon.

Sunday was the third annual gingerbread house making party at my parent’s. I probably ate more candy than I actually put on my house and after an hour or two was coated in sugar, inside and out.

My three-year-old cousin made a dog house + giant marshmallow monsters

RAWR!

My sister made a teepee – complete with corn and a fish on a bonfire.

Grandma made a church

My aunt and cousin went a little nuts and made the Detroit Zoo

Another cousin made some sort of spacey post-modern house

And I made a sky scraper!

]]> http://sillygrrl.com/2010/12/07/gingerbread-house-party/feed/ 6 http://sillygrrl.com/2010/11/28/tofurkey-day/ http://sillygrrl.com/2010/11/28/tofurkey-day/#comments Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:20:36 +0000 sillygrrl http://sillygrrl.com/?p=3950

I spent two and a half days offline while camping out at my parents with Slayer. I was feeling well enough on Thurs to go to Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house where I ate all the regular Tofurkey Day foods plus four pieces of pie. What can I say, my family makes good pie! My Aunt Sue did her Pee Wee Herman impression, we watched Elf, and there was lots of laughing and yelling over each other, per usual.

I spent Friday in my pjs, watching re-runs of old school 90210 and Iron Man and then made enchiladas with my mom. Saturday I actually left the house and we went on a little shopping spree for makeup and Christmas decorations. Ended the night with Chinese food and the DIY network. Now I’m inspired to work on all the half-finished projects in my house.

If you came by on Friday you may have noticed my hosting company was hacked into by the Turkish. No clue how or why, but it has since been fixed.

Roll call, who else watched Elf this weekend?