Finally!

The title of this post is probably what you're thinking! Finally she posted a blog entry! Sorry - As always it gets a little hectic around the holidays and I don't have any time to post any pictures.

Right now I'm making some soup and doing some laundry. The soup was inspired by Susan's Christmas present to me, which was the book Julie and Julia and the book Volume 2 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don't have volume one, but a gift certificate I received from my sister-in-law will soon remedy that. I am however cooking leek and potato soup from the 1st volume that I found online over here (in case you want to whip some up too). I'll tell you how it comes out tomorrow. I'm cooking it in the pot Harland got me for Christmas (a Le Creuset! Made in France - how appropriate!). I peeled the potatoes (and one fingernail, whoops) with a new peeler my parents got me and am stirring it with some new bamboo spoons... So really this is some serious Christmas present soup. If only I had gotten leeks and potatoes in my stocking! Just kidding! Leeks will smell up a place in about 30 seconds, so they're not good for surprising people. :)

Anyway, we had a great Christmas together and it was amazing to wake up to see Harland. At first I'd forget he was there and I'd wake up so happy to see him. Like Christmas morning every morning for 10 days, really.

We viewed some wildlife on my parent's back porch...


We also had some side trips...

We went to Longwood Gardens (more pictures later this week).

We went to Valley Forge (more pictures later this week).

We also went to Ohio to visit Harland's parents and I learned how to make dumplings (more on that later this week).

So it was a great week and a half. I couldn't really ask for anything more!

Well, maybe for Harland to come home instead of being away, but I can't expect that. :)

We got some news!

It looks like the Army is letting the guys come home for the holidays... from Dec 22 thru Jan 2nd. To me, I feel they should add in the weekend there to make it longer, but I guess they have their reasons.

Since he has those 10 days off, it looks like my plan to go visit relatives in CT will have to be put on hold a bit... Obviously we have to make plans with his family. I'll sure be glad to see him and I'll be happy I get to spend the holidays with him. And now that we got those dates confirmed last night, I feel really happy. I didn't want to get my hopes up too much... just in case.

So that is what is going on with me. I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do and because of a Red Cross meeting last night (for the March Mania event) I still have not worked on any more knitting. This holiday season is fast approaching.

An actual knitting post

Okay so I haven't posted many knitting related items lately. I have knitted some things, but they're for presents and so I haven't wanted to post them yet. I'm really hoping to finish my last two ideas this week. I hope I can anyway. We'll see...

But I was organizing my yarn drawer the other night when I couldn't sleep. I took out some scrapbooking stuff out of two drawers and made more room for yarn.

Here is what my scrap yarn drawer looks like. These are old bits and pieces of yarn skeins that I have made other things with. Some of them are almost whole skeins, the others are tiny pieces. The tiny pieces I often use for bows when I'm present wrapping. And maybe I'll make some kind of striped thing eventually,I dunno. I just know I can't throw it away. :)

Then the 2nd drawer has new yarn.

And just in case you wanted to see where I knit... We only have a small one-bedroom apartment so I don't have a knitting room or anything, but I do have a knitting corner. And here it is in all its glory.


I do have a question for all my yarn-artist friends out there. What can I make with this yarn? I have no idea what to do with it. I got it in a grab bag with other yarns. I have 4 balls of this stuff and no idea what I could use it for.

And in other knitting news... I did knit two little Christmas ornaments. One is a little sweater for my work's Christmas tree... it was requested that I knit something... and the other is a little mini stocking I knit for my Mom's tree.

For the sweater I used the Turtle neck egg cozy sweater pattern in "Weekend Knitting" by Melanie Falick. I stuffed a few shipping peanuts in it to give it a little shape and sewed up the bottom. I think it's pretty cute.

The pattern for the mini stocking is in "Last-Minute Knitted Gifts" by Joelle Hoverson. It took a long time - probably longer than the sweater did. It's knit on tiny size 1 needles. i had a hard time at the end gathering the stitches at the end because my yarn needle wouldn't go through the stitches that is how small they are... so I had to use this tiny crochet hook I have.

100 things to do before I die... a list in progress

Okay, so I have started to create a list of things I would like to do before I die, when the co-author of "100 things to do before you die" passed away the other month. I haven't yet thought of a hundred, but that is okay, I'll work with what I got. I can also always add more to the list. You can see some are crossed off, and that is because I "cheated" by putting things on the list that I had always wanted to do but then actually had the chance to do. I'll keep crossing them off as I go along. I have a lot of stuff I'm trying to pack in the next year. I'm adding this post to my sidebar -----> underneath H's blog list... so that if you want to see what I've crossed off later in the year, you can just click on the link on the side.

1. Visit the Grand Canyon
2. Visit Falling Water
3. Visit Hawaii
4. Visit an island in the Caribbean
5. Visit the Great Barrier Reef
6. Backpack in New Zealand
7. Live in a foreign Country
8. Hike the Appalachian Trail
9. Camp on a beach
10. Camp in Arches National Park
11. See the Northern Lights
12. See a Scandinavain Country
13. Eat a real Chicago style hotdog, in Chicago
14. See a sunrise on a mountain top
15. Go to Clara Barton House
16. Run the Army Ten Miler
17. Visit a country in South America
18. Try rock climbing
19. Take a sewing class
20. Visit Mark Twain's house
21. Visit Ernest Hemingway's house in the FLA Keys
22. Travel somewhere in a helicopter
23. Run a 2nd 1/2 Marathon
24. Jump from an airplane (with a 'chute of course)
25. Hike in the White Mountains
26. See something in all 50 states (aside from an airport layover) - I'm up to 23 - AL, GA, FL, PA, CT, NY, SC, NC, CA, WY, HI, MT, MA, OH, AZ, NV, DE, NJ, MD, VA, TN, IL, ID
27. See the Lion King musical
28. See the Badlands
29. Visit Arcadia NP
30. Camp in the desert to see the stars
31. See Nova Scotia and/ or New Brunswick
32. See a non-dormant Volcano
33. See the Great Wall of China
34. See Crater lake
35. Restore an antique car
36. Learn how to drive stick
37. Learn how to whittle wood
38. learn how to decorate cakes
39. learn to make a souffle
40. get a dog
41. try surfing
42. try kite surfing
43. make ravioli from scratch
44. sleep under the stars (sans tent)
45. try snow boarding
46. try snow tubing
47. learn to make grilled cheese
48. take watercolor painting lessons
49. Have a baby
50. Make macaroni and cheese - not from a box

Army FAQs

Today I decided to answer a few questions friends/family often ask me.

1. I thought your Hubby was out of the Army... What's going on?
As most of you know, H. has been called back into the Army. Every person who signs up to the Army is required to give at least 8 years of service. This can be given in a variety of ways. H. chose to be active Army for a few years and then be a member of the IRR, or Inactive Ready Reserve. The Army saw fit to call him out of that and serve for an additional 400 days of Active Duty, which it can do at any time to any person in the inactive reserve.

2. Where is your husband going? When is he leaving? What will his job be?
I don't know, I don't know and I don't know. hahaha. The Army hasn't told us yet. He hasn't gotten his final orders yet.

3. When he's overseas will you visit/go to live with him? (I have been asked some variation of this question 4 or 5 times now, honest).
NO! no,no,no,no! It's a war, folks! I guess I feel flattered people think I'm this adventurous. Even if I wanted to, there are no commercial flights there. I'd have to fly to Iran and backpack into Iraq. I have no desire to do this, no matter how I'll miss him!

4. I bet you'll miss him, right? Again this is a question I puzzle about when I hear it. Of course I will! He's my love! My dear Husband! He'll be gone for a year!

5. I'd like to send him something, where shall I send it?
See answer to question #2. Once he gets settled I'll know, and I'll e-mail all our friends and family his address. In the meantime, if you want to send something to me, once I can I'll mail it to him.

6. I want to donate to something that helps the troops, what are some good organizations?

There are a ton of great organizations. Here are some of the ones I know what they do.

The VFW is a great organization. There are several programs that you can donate to under them.
Here is the link to their site.

The USO provides entertainment and morale and welfare programs to the troops.
They're the ones that bring in bands and have places for the soldiers to e-mail home.
Here is a link to their site.

The American Redcross is unusual in that it helps to provide messages to soldiers about their families (babies, deaths, financial problems, etc). So that is another great organization.
here is a link to their site.

The Redcross is also collecting Holiday cards to send to troops overseas so if you want to send a general card out to "any soldier" here is the info for that program. Your last chance to send one is December 10th, so get cracking!

The Fisher House - this is an organization that helps provide accommodations for families of soldiers that require extensive medical attention due to severe injury or illness. Here is a link to their site.

Conagree National Park

Good evening! As I said yesterday last Friday we went to Conagree National Park. It was a really super nice day for a walk. Warm, partially sunny, just perfect really. We did a 6.6 mile loop, which starts out on this huge elevated walkway then in the middle is a regular trail and then you're back onto the elevated trail at the end.
We saw that we were not the only ones walking on the elevated boardwalk... I think this is a raccoon.

The reason they have a super high elevated trail, is because this isn't really a swamp, it's a floodplain. You can see on these trees the line from the last flood. It floods sometimes up to 8 feet! The dark line is about 6 or 7 feet off the ground.


There is a huge variety of plant and animal (and bird!) life in this park.
The had some switchback which is related to sugar cane.



They also had swampy areas. What really amazed me was how black the water looked. It was almost pure black.


The trees there were huge. They say they have some that grow 17 stories high. They certainly were impressive. For example take a look at this pine tree. Looks normal, right?


Until you put my hand on it and realize each piece of bark is as big as my hand!!



Harland looks dwarfed by this tree...

And I'm pretty sure when this tree fell, even if no one was around it made a noise. Quite a loud noise in fact.


And even the poison ivy grows large... see that vine next to me? It's all hairy (as the park ranger said at the station, "If it's hairy, then it's scary").


The bootleggers had a hiding spot for their liquor in the middle of the woods...



Here are some more shots...


This tree caught my eye on the drive to the park. It's a little down the way but I had to stop and take a picture. The Spanish moss on a tree that had leaves was really quite striking.

Thanksgiving - the non-traditional way

So most people go home for Thanksgiving and eat some turkey with all the fixin's. But we bucked tradition this year "thanks" to the Army (who might not be allowing Harland to see me again before he leaves the states, we learned today. Which is a whole other story).

Anyway, I drove down to Ft. Jackson (well actually to Camp McCrady) and picked Harland up and we traveled to Columbia.

This was the view from our hotel room.


We had an okay time, Thanksgiving dinner was taken at the local Chinese Buffet. It had a roasted turkey on there, so at least i got a slice of turkey (if not my beloved mashed potatoes and stuffing). And really it didn't matter where we were - I was very thankful for the time we spent together.

I think Harland was thankful for the pie that I made and brought with me.


We also went to Congaree National Park on Friday, continuing my family's tradition of hiking on Black Friday. We did a really nice 6.6 mile loop. I'll share those photos with you tomorrow.

But I want to say that I don't ever want to drive anywhere on the Sunday after Thanksgiving ever ever again. Here is one snapshot of some fog I went though... Luckily it was only foggy for about 1 mile out of the hundreds I traveled. But it was the beginning of about 200 miles of crazy bad traffic. I was ready to scream.