Addresses and Dates

87 Days to Christmas and I have my card address list mostly updated. Today was gather all the addresses day.

I deeply regret that I did not have my act together enough to get this card in the mail last year

I have a kind of convoluted address keeping system.

ON PAPER - I look here first
-For immediate family I tore a page out of an old planner and wrote out (in pencil) all the parents, grandparents, and sibling addresses, birthdays, anniversaries, Phone numbers and e-mails. I keep this in my Control Binder (Micah hates that I call it that).
-Also in the Control Binder are addresses (and some additional contact info) for (most) of our Aunts, Uncles & Cousins (I lack all of the Mottin, Blough, and Smith cousins). I don't have any birthdays or anniversaries.

DIGITAL
-Addresses for Henry and Lane Aunts, Uncles & Cousins also exist in word files on my computer. (Uncle Skip sent me his Havener address list via snail mail and I have not taken time to type them in.)
-Also on the computer is a Henry Important dates file with full names, birthdays and anniversaries back to Micah's grandma.
-I started a Havener Important Dates file, but it only goes back to my parents.

Dear Haveners and Lanes, if you send me your birthdays and anniversaries, I will send you a copy of my file. Or, you know, if you HAVE such a file maybe you would share?

When something happens (new baby, wedding, new address) I usually make a note of it somewhere (usually the paper copy for addresses and immediate family dates). Once or twice a year I go thorough and sync them all. And every now and then rather than looking I am lazy and just call and ask someone.

But anyway. That's all. This year maybe we will send a card or even a letter. I hope to have someone take a good photo this weekend at E's Wedding. Or maybe we'll be those people and include our cats and puppy. I promise no matching santa hats.

Bucket List

Budgets are Sexy will give you a chance to win $500 All you have to do is post YOUR bucket list.  (you can see Abi's List here.)

I love lists so i figured i'd enter. Turns out I'm pretty dull, I don't have a lot of big dreams. My lists are all more along the lines of what I have to do to get through today.

And I'm not even very good at that. There are still some things on THIS list from January 13th that remain undone. Let's not even talk about my List of 2011 Goals (I still have like 95 days left).

But there are some longer term things, I want to do
- Take my hypothetical children to Slovakia.
- Actually HAVE those hypothetical children (and be a good mom)
- Short term mission trip to Africa.
- Find my purpose
- Learn to Play the Piano
- Memorize entire books of the Bible.

In 50 years we'll see how I did.

This is an entry for the $500 Budgets are Sexy giveaway, sponsored by Life Insurance Finder.

Home.

How do you know you're home?

Here is the list that inspired my thoughts. The smell of baking. laying in my own bed. the first cup of tea.

I wanted to think and come up with my own list. I wanted my list to be meaningful and beautiful. exclusively mine. but then it got hard. I went another direction. I know i've posted about this before but i keep coming back to it. to know that you're home, don't you need to know where home is.

For me now home is not just one place. How do you know when you are home. So, I googled it (hence the random links below), and i thought some more about it.

here's what i came up with:
Home is where Micah is. Home is nowhere without you. Home is in Wyoming? Home is where the heart is. Home is anywhere I get together with my sisters. Home is where the tent is. Home is my grandma's front porch swing or railing eating apple peels. Home is where your story begins. Home is where the healthy meal is. Home is where you hang your hat. Home is Grove City. Home is Knox. Home happens over the phone with my mom. Home is baking. Home is honeymoon enough. Home is Ohio. Home is Slovakia. Home is PA Home is where the wind blows. Home is the Heeter House. Home is where you start from. home home home.

pigeon.

90 Days to Christmas

You know how I love a good to-do list? I have found the ultimate list. It is 100 things long, but I'm 10% done with it and you only have to do one thing a day. My kind of list.


100daystochristmas.com

The past few years I feel like Christmas has lost a lot of the specialness it had when I was growing up. It has turned into one more thing to get through. A lot of that is moving away from home and getting busy, losing sight of the thing we're really celebrating, trying to find the balance between Micah's family traditions and mine.

So I'm starting early this year in hopes that I will not be scrambling around for gifts and decorations and peace at the last minute.

It's not Like I'll be all Christmas all the time though, It's really about moving through fall and the holiday season with purpose - which i could always use more of.

"This is a good day to experience the beating heart of fall."

Now if you'll excuse me, today's thing is enjoying fall apples and making a crisp. but first i have to clean my kitchen entire house. (and then see if the apples on our backyard tree are any good.) It's nice to have something to look forward to.

Also, Here is a random and totally unrelated photo of some stuff I got for my mom at a yard sale.

Yes, I CAN!

So on Wednesday I canned tomatoes. I was a little scared but I pressed on. With a little help from the internet and what Elizabeth had told me and some handouts gathered at Penn State's Ag Progress Days.

I'll Just say that Peeling and coring tomatoes is not my new favorite thing to do. (Is there a better way than dunking them on boiling water ONE AT A TIME?) The rude noises they made when mashed with a potato masher may have made up for it!

I was grateful to have this really neat lid picker upper tool. I have no clue how I would have retrieved metal lids from boiling water otherwise. I also have some awesome hot can tongs and a tool that not only tells me exactly how much headspace is 1/2 inch it is also useful for releasing air pockets...(why is it important to release air pockets?)

Here are my first 4 quarts of tomatoes processing like champs!!! I did 4 because i thought I only had 4 quart jars. (After I was finished i found 3 more..... :/ ) So I decided to put the rest in pint jars of which I had 12 but only needed 6.

I thought I could use the 45 minutes that the quarts were boiling to prep the pints. That was when i heard an odd sound in the basement. Something like water running. Since I had previously decided not to attempt to do laundry while canning tomatoes I knew there was no reason for water to be running in the basement.

So I went (frantically panicked-ly ran) down stairs and discovered water dripping from the ceiling onto the floor and washing machine.

As it turned out, part of the sink drain pipe came apart. (This may or may not have been related to the few quarts of boiling water I poured down the drain after sterilizing the jars....) So water was filling the cupboard pouring through the hole in the cupboard onto the floor under the sink and running through the hole in the floor into the basement.

After a quick panicked call to Micah at work, I emptied the cupboard, and got lots of towels to dry up the mess. (Yes, the dead plants were in the cupboard. The basket just happened to be sitting there.) I pushed the pipes back together and when Micah got home he tightened and screwed whatever it was that had come loose.

In the end I have four beautiful quarts and six lovely (un-photographed) pints of canned tomatoes.

Time marches on

Well Fall is here, the leaves are changing colors and we have to run the furnace some evenings. We've added another blanket to the bed, but before we get any further i wanted to share some pictures from the Summer of 2011.

If you click on the collage you can view it bigger. *edited:or not. no clue why. **edited:haha! fixed it.

Dog Blogging

Grandma Henry bought us a puppy. We did not ask for a puppy. In fact just that Sunday we discussed getting a puppy and decided to wait. But then we went and looked at him. He's 50% German Shepherd and 50% Mostly Lab/Mutt

He is cute and remains nameless. I was calling him Hezky, Slovak for "handsome" but Micah did not like it. So we're in negotiations. It has to be two syllables (something about that being easier for dogs to hear). Sabre has been vetoed. Micah likes Harvey, but I am not convinced. I am pulling for Havoc, Micah is not convinced.

Yesterday morning he put a hole in my jeans that was after he flattened the kid's ball and chewed on my bible. The bible was up on that card table. In the morning it looked like this. Really all he did was chew up some old bulletins, those maps in the back that I never look at and my bible reading schedule. I may or may not have suggested Heathen as a possible name.

He tires me out.

borring accidental video

Last blogged May 16th. oh well. I'm out of practice at this.

I feel like I should return but have little to nothing to say.

So I'm just going to post this borring video i accidentally made.