Sunday, December 30

Dear Judge Parker

Enough with the brownies already!!!!




We get it, they were delicious, and now suddenly you want to eat a whole chicken. Just bash us over the head with the freakng HASH BROWNIES already!!!

Tuesday, December 25

Merry Christmas to all...

Here's to sugar plums and wishes come true.

Friday, December 21

The Hair Affair is Over

I am officially no longer in love with my haircut.
This is pretty much the best I can do with it, without breaking out a bazillion hair care items.

And well, since the likelihood of anyone but the mailman seeing me is pretty slim. This is what I'm going with.

I suppose I can comfort myself with the fact that this is a very famous, iconic hairstyle, known across the land.

Unfortunately this is the icon.

Her Royalness

Lady Piko deGallo.

Every month Sarge has to attend Airman Leadership School Graduation dinners for his Airman who are graduating. Some time ago he decided to take Piko along with him to these very boring semi-formal dinners. "That's crazy!" you might be thinking. A 5 year old at a very boring semi-formal dinner?!! It actually works out to a win, win, win situation for all of us. Sarge gets props for being a good father, as well as for having a well behaved child, AND most importantly has a great excuse for cutting out early. Piko gets to get dressed up all fancy, and have a special night out with daddy. And I get to have a night off, and eat a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, and take a 20 minute uninterrupted shower.

Everyone's happy, everyone wins.

Here she is with Sarge doing their "Prom Pose".

Thursday, December 20

Spoiled


What other sane dog owner would let their black dog sleep on their white couch?
Or, it could just be that I'm *not* sane.
She's sleeping on MY side of the couch as well.

Tuesday, December 18

Get Your Bake On!


So the other day I mentioned that I didn't start baking yet. Well, today is "BAKE DAY!!"
I thought that Piko was in school for a full week, but it turns out that they are off on Friday. Whoops, gotta get those cookies done for the teachers and staff!

Now, there is a lady here who's husband used to work with Sarge. Every year she organizes a "cookie swap" with some of the other wives and girlfriends. Back in the day when I used to think I had to be nice I went to the crappycookie swap. I always made my Mom's "secret family recipe" Christmas Kisses, which are basically meringue cookies with mint extract, green food coloring, and mini chocolate chips. I think I have heard this called "divinity" or something like that. Well, they're easy to make, but they take a long time, and I would have to make something redonkulous like 10 dozen.

Anyway, I guess the point of this crappycookie swap is that you'll get lots of different kinds of cookies, and not have to bake a billion kinds yourself. Unfortunately, and you might be able to guess, most of the cookies were pretty crappy. I'm sorry, but if I wanted cookies made from frozen cookie dough I'd go and by some freaking frozen cookie dough!! I would always end up throwing away more than half of the cookies. Even Sarge would refuse to eat them. What the hell do I want with 10 dozen crappy ass cookies in exchange for my awesome yummy cookies?!?

So these days when she asks me if I want to come, I just flat out say no.

This year I made:
Chocolate Chip. Both semi sweet, and white chocolate chip. Here Doge deGallo gets in on some of the crumb action.

Mom's Christmas Kisses

Almond cookies

Sugary ginger cookies


And something new. Sweet Wafers! I really just wanted to try out my new snowflake cookie cutters. These actually turned out very yummy. Not really cookies at all. They're like puffed pastry, I could eat about 20 of them in one sitting.


I also decided to bribe make nice with the secretaries and office staff at Piko's school. I bet they get the short end of the stick there in the office, so I made them a pan of brownies. One half is regular, and the other is white chocolate drizzled with crushed candy cane sprinkles. Sarge gave those a thumbs down, but he's not much for mint chocolaty chip anything.

I love baking. But I have say that it's terribly difficult to bake when every time you turn around you see this:

Monday, December 17

EVERY time!!!

I think sometime in late October I mentioned I was getting started on Christmas. Weeeeellll, yeah, No.

It's been a heck-a-busy-crafty-rush-race-to-the-finish month.

"What?!?" you say.

Well, it all started out with some crafty mittens. 24 sets of crafty mitten ornaments decorations for Piko's kindergarten class. I really feel for kids these days. Budget cuts and pushing for high test scores means little or no art time in class, even at the Kindergarten level. I volunteered on morning to make these ornaments decorations with the class.
Prepping the mittens.

The finished product!! I was so proud of these children. They all were very excited to be creating something of their very own. Mrs. Potts (Piko's teacher) incorporated it into her lesson plan for the day. They talked about winter weather, and their letter of the day was "M".

The mittens displayed in class. Thank you Liesl for the pattern and inspiration for this project!!


Next came a birthday for Piko's best friend from Preschool. Guess what her favorite color is!
She got:
A sweet little kitty made with a pattern from Sew Pretty Homestyle.

A Sube Sac to carry her around in.

And a Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt in her favorite color. Can you guess what that color might be? Any clues??

And finally a Pinata!! I had a hard time making the wings myself, and then had a brain fart and realized that if I bought some cute wings the Birthday girl would have them to wear later! Bonus!! And then I was at Target, and the antenna headband was in the $1.00 section! Double bonus!
I love me some Pinatas!

And then another Disappearing Nine Patch quilt for my good friend AJ in Hawaii. This had to be done and ready to mail by the 15th!

I put the last stitch into it at 9:45 PM on the 14th. Whew! The backing of the quilt is a thrifted flannel duvet cover, how awesome are those cherries?!

Wow, I must say again that my camera is crap!

And this is why I can never have more babies (click on the picture to enlarge). Inevitably while quilting on the couch, the couch arm ends up looking like this, and will stay this way for days. Luckily Piko is old enough to know to stay away, though she will steal my thread scraps and make little bird nests with them. Our house is filled with poking, scratching, swallowing, burning hazards like that on a daily basis.


Add to all this fun, our first real snow of the year.

And a trip to see Santa, standing in line at the post office, PTA meetings, Sarge's staff Holiday party, non-Christmas Card sending guilt, and about 4 power outages at the house.

Fun times, and I have not even started baking yet.

Wednesday, December 12

I just sent an e-mail to Sarge at work to tell him he's taking his daughter to the

HANNAH MONTANA 3-D MOVIE CONCERT!!!!!!!!

WOOHOO!!! ROCK ON!!!

I think I'll wait awhile before I tell him that I'm going along too.

Monday, December 10

So.

Today I got my first fundraising donation call in a very long time.

That in itself is not the annoying.

The caller first asked for "MR. deGallo". He's not here I say, can I take a message?
"Is this MRS. deGallo?" Yeeeesss......

Blah...blah...blah...donate...blah...blah...suport...blah...blah....

Sure, I'm totally going to use my credit card to make a donation over the phone....Riiiiight. Ok, but even this is not the annoyance.

Throughout the rest of the call, the "operator" kept referring to me as "MISS. deGallo".

I kept wanting to ask him if he wanted me to get my daughter, who I'm sure would be most unwilling to part with the $4.00 in her wallet as she is saving up to go to hell on earth Build a Bear.

I do realize that it is not uncommon to no longer make the distinction between Mrs. and Miss., but COME ON!!!!

I guess I'm just a codgerty old fart.

Sunday, December 2

Now The Hard Part

So now that the excitement of new orders (YAY GERMANY!) has worn off, we are left to consider the difficult-ness(?!?) of the impending move.

Sarge's orders have him reporting to the new base by early May. Well, Piko does not get out of school until early June. Does he go on ahead early and get settled, find a house, hook up the internets, etc, etc. I follow later after Piko gets out of school? That being so, I would have to be in charge of packing, cleaning, and clearing the house with the housing office, shipping the car, shipping myself, my child, a cat and a dog overseas. We have alot of things that we have to get rid of, washer and dryer, tons of small things that we've amassed throughout the years we've been here. And I don't really see the point of taking all of our 180 lamps, and other small electronics with us. Garage sale....meeehhh...Salvation Army...eeeeh....
How about do we pull the kid early from school??? Eeehhhhh....it's kindergarten....how much school can she miss before having to repeat? It'll probably end up being the last month and a half. That's just not acceptable to me.

GAH!!

See, one of the disadvantages of not moving in so long is that I have never actually been involved in a military transfer move. I have no idea what I would have to do, and Sarge, well, he's not all that forthcoming with the information. Well, he would have not other choice but to be if he leaves me here to do it all by myself. I guess other families have done it before, so I'm sure I can too.

Then there's the whole going to visit the in-laws trip we have to make time for as well.

I guess what's really bothering me is that there are no decisions that can be made immediately. It all depends on something, which depends on something else, depending on who you ask, and when. And of course, since Sarge works nights, who knows when he'll be able to go in during regular business hours to finally talk to someone. In my own perfect world of deGallotopia I would have had all of these questions answered the minute we found out we were leaving Maryland. But of course, I fail to remember that I don't live in deGallotopia, I live in Militariantia.