Day Seven - G is for...

Good grief and gross were my two initial reactions

David and Holly definitely live life in their own way, and every now and again I find something that just makes me scratch my head and wonder what the heck they do when I am not around.

Sunday night afforded another opportunity to wonder what was going on.  No one was home when I walked in the door, so I decided to do a few chores while I waited for everyone to show up.

I looked on the clean side of the sink and saw this perplexing scenario - a bowl of something cream colored in a bowl with cold water, sitting next to a clean plate in the drainer.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck was sitting in the sink!  To figure it out, I had to back my way into things...the panini press was still out and it was Sunday...Holly must have made bacon on the panini press for breakfast on Saturday (I saw her posting on Facebook) and saved the grease for David to feed to the dogs.  I suspect that he started to warm it up for the pups morning dry food, but forgot about it.

When David and the dogs arrived home, I casually asked what was in the bowl...yep...I was right.  I didn't let on that the mystery substance made it to the G is for GROSS entry, I don't think that David or Holly would have understood why!

Kazakhstan Bound!

There has been talk of this happening for quite some time now, but it has happened...Brittany (aka Little Britty) has left for her Peace Corps assignment in Kazakhstan. 

It is a bittersweet milestone, because we are naturally proud and excited for Little Britty to be selected for the Peace Corps (it is no easy task to get accepted, believe you me!) and her assignment is impressive (teaching English...the first step is going to be learning either Kazakh or Russian!), but sending her off means that she is gone for 27 months! (A 2-year commitment plus 3-months of training)

The farewell at the airport was hard, yet still a very exciting thing.  Brittany looked a bit like the celebrity, between her entourage, pictures and big sunglasses...it is safe to say that she is our own little celeb and as such received an appropriate send-off.

Brittany had a full day of orientation in Washington DC, then got right onto a plane for something like 12 hours to land in Kazakhstan slightly after midnight on March 11th (it was still the 10th for us back home, as we get our news of Little Britty from the future, clocking in 14 hours behind her while we are here on the west coast).  Safe, sound and ready to get on with the adventures, Brittany has arrived and will be chronicling her adventures soon.

We are seriously proud!

Love Knows no Holiday

Monday was of course Valentine's Day and while it is indeed the day to celebrate the one(s) you love, I must confess to being a bit inundated with work for the two weeks leading up and then of course the day of. We had a big promotion at work that was ideated in the 2nd week of January (right before I left for vacation) and through a herculean effort on the part of everyone in the organization, we pulled it off and executed it in the stores.

I have lived in the workspace where a holiday completely consumes once before - the cinnamon roll place killed any element of free time that I might have thought about using between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While it is energizing to be a part of something that makes our customers happy, it doesn't leave a lot of free time to celebrate with one's own family, so by my admission, I really didn't do anything for David or Holly this Valentine's Day.

Sure, I sent Holly one of the packages that we were making and included a gift card (which I will almost guarantee she has already used), but that doesn't rank up there with the cool things of years past, like the Wii of Valentine's 2010 (or was it 2009??). David gave me a very funny card and while I did make a nice dinner (as I do most nights) and got a little teary eyed as I told him how much I appreciate him and our family, no gift-giving or card-signing happened on my end.

Luckily, we have a good track record for him to know that I love him!