Adios, 2010

My recipe for a proper send off to 2010 goes a little something like this:

1. big slab o meat
2. house full of friends
3. stocked bar

Hope your 2011 is the best ever, peeps!

Happy New Year!

It's An Actual Sickness.

Damn the luck.

We went to visit my parents for our family Christmas this weekend.  My family has had a population explosion here in the past 4 years, and there are now 6 grandchildren ranging in age from 4 years to 6 months old. It was a lovely time, the cousins all played together, loved on eachother, and were very good at sharing everything.

Very good at sharing. Everything.

Four out of those 6 are now sick. Super sick. Gross sick. Two of them are mine.  I imagine the only reason the other 2 aren't sick yet is because the baby is too young, and perhaps, just maybe, the older one has already had it. The Trojan Horse. :)

So here it is, Christmas week. I am set to make dinner for 30 people Friday and Saturday. THIRTY PEOPLE.  There are things to be made, and my house currently looks like an episode of Cops. All we need is a dirty mattress in the corner and some drug paraphernalia, and we're set.

In my control freak world, this illness will be gone by Wednesday, so that I have 2 days to bleach bomb my house and get treats and things prepped for Friday.  I'm sure God is laughing at me right now. I'm pretty hilarious.  Because I'm sure that after caring for puking children for 2 days by myself, I am going to be SO EXCITED to clean my house and make pie.

Pray for me.

PS- Why the hell does Pedialyte make colored electrolyte solution? That is JUST WHAT I WANT, is rainbow colored vomit all over everything. Oooh!! Orange!!! PRETTY!!

It's A Sickness.

I've mentioned a few times that I kind of like grocery shopping. A lot.

Today was a big shopping day. When I run out of basic things to make other things from--like flour, garlic, and baking soda--it is time to go to the store. I had been trying my darndest to stay out of the store, quite successfully, but today I HAD to go.

And go, I went.

I got Christmas food stuffs, but the shining gem of the day was my New Year's Eve gift: A prime rib to cook. *cue angels singing*  I love beef. I love prime rib beef the bestest.  It makes my heart aflutter.  I sort of feel guilty, because I am so much more excited about New Years Eve dinner than I am Christmas dinner, mainly because I am so so tired of turkey and ham. SO tired. But, cooking for 30 means things that feed a crowd, and turkey and ham are 2 of those things. One of these years I am going to surprise the Taylors with Chinese food for Christmas. One of these years...

Back to my awesome prime rib. I am already dreaming of how delicious it will be. I have a recipe perfected for it that encases it in salt, and cooks it low and slow in the oven.  Served with a potato, asparagus, and maybe some mushroom red wine reduction? Closest thing to heaven I can get.  I think while he's here, I will name him...Bo. Bo Vine. Yum.

Ho Ho Ho-liday Rush.

Greetings everyone,

This is the time of year that I get into my "I'm too busy to even think, let alone write a blog" groove.  There have been birthday parties (including my own), holiday parties, baking, getting together with friends, school, Santa, and general holiday cheer.  I will have a month's worth of blogs to write in January, because there have been so many activities.  For now, I will give you the picture version of December for the kids. Surprisingly, there aren't pictures of most of the adult activities, but nobody wants to see my mug pasted all over this blog anyways.  More to come, so stay tuned.  Happy Holidays to you and yours! <3 The Hot Mess Express

 I cannot resist a picture of a sleeping baby...

 ...or a sleeping toddler.

 There have been naked baby dance parties with the cousins...

 The Hot Mess Christmas tree, 2010

 This picture doesn't really get the true excitement my kids had over the tree. It was so fun watching them take it all in. It is going to be a sad day when the tree goes bye bye again for the year.

 Sloane got to stay up late and help mama and her friends eat birthday ice cream pie. This picture says "I am adorable, and totally getting away with something by being up."

 Sam's first day of school was December 10th. He's growing too fast!

 A visit from Santa Claus. Notice my son is basically attacking his sister. Another Christmas card thwarted. Happy Holidays, I suppose. :)

No toddler get together is complete without jumping on the bed.



She Comes By It Honestly...

To say that my baby daughter likes food is an understatement.  The girl loves food.  Her life revolves around what is for each meal and snack. She would carry around a bag of treats all day if you let her. You should see her carseat.

So it comes as no surprise to me that she managed a way to get into the Thanksgiving day desserts.  Everyone else had gone to the annual Thanksgiving Day movie, and it was just my family and a few other people lazing around after our gorge-fest.  Sloane walks into the kitchen with her mouth stuffed full of food. I was curious as to what she was feasting on, so I followed her around to the formal dining room, where the buffet table always holds all of the desserts.  And there she was, in her cute little dress, on top of a cooler, chowing down.

That's my girl.



The LeBron James of Spelling...

As you may well have seen, I have completely abandoned the concept of writing a blog everyday for a month. Like most things, I'm in it to win it for like 2 weeks, and then cooler, more fun things take the place of my blog-writing goal.  Blame it on my ADD, which is also the reason that my poor husband hasn't seen a movie in the almost 9 years we have been together. Sorry Johnny.

Anyways, this weekend was a hilarious one. I do not party like a rockstar too much anymore (and even then, it's about half-assed rockstar these days), but this weekend was an exception.  John and I were in a charity spelling bee this weekend, and so Friday night we had 3/4 of our team over to "practice" for the spelling bee, which really means we sat around and drank too much wine with a Webster's dictionary in front of us.  It was hilarious.  I tend to be competitive in nature, so I was a trash talking fool the entire night. I even lamented to my friend Megan, via Facebook chat, that I was "the LeBron James of spelling." Hence, our team name was born. :)

Saturday rolls around, and the spelling bee was a total blast. There are 2 kinds of teams that show up to these charity spelling or trivia or "game-related" events: 1. The kind that are there for the kids regardless of outcome, so they are all about having a good time, or 2. The kind that are competitive ass-hats, who complain about things "not being fair", and drink Diet Pepsi even though beer is free and included in your entry fee.  My team is, and always will be the #1's of the crowd.  Some of the #2's kept rolling their eyes and laughing at us as we drank beers, spelled words right, and jabbed and cracked jokes with the other teams. We even gave away one of our mulligans to a struggling team that night. BECAUSE IT IS FOR CHARITY. And it is fun.

Needless to say, we showed all those other teams. The LeBron James of spelling not only had the most of fun of the entire event, we WON the spelling bee. Take that, boring people. :)  Then we went out celebrating, drinking our beers out of our tiny trophies, and all around having a great time.  There was even a pseudo car theft involved, which turned out to be hilarious after it was all said and done.

So, two days of great friends and cocktails meant that John and I went to bed at like 8 last night.  It's fun to be a rockstar for a weekend, but I am completely content most of the time to be a boring old housewife who has dinner parties.  A boring old housewife who is the LeBron James of spelling.

I *heart* Grocery Shopping

A lot. I love scanning the grocery ads, planning the meals, writing and organizing the lists (by aisle), and going to the store. I live for Thursdays, when JT gets paid and I can plan my course of action.

Tonight, with the few coupons that I do clip, my Dillons card, and my cunning ability to save money, I got $200 bucks worth of groceries for $120.  That's $80 left over for boxed wine. Maybe even the fancy boxed wine. Oh, the possibilities.

One more step on the road to being geriatric. Pretty soon, I'll be drinking coffee at 8pm. Oh wait.  Nevermind.