It is that time of the year again! Happy Birthday, Anna! Welcome to a quarter of a century.
Anna has always been a critical part of our family, the middle child tying the older and younger two together. I am so grateful for who she is and all she brings.
On to another year of being an incredible world-changer!
As I’ve previously posted, one of my housemates started buying gluten-free a few months back so that she can share her food with me. My other housemate is on-again, off-again gluten free, so from the start we just started sharing food since it made more sense. And because we were sharing meals, we would go grocery shopping together.
Well, our schedules got out of sync over the last few weeks and (unbeknownst to the other) we both ended up grocery shopping at the same time at two separate grocery stores. When Lyd got back and started unpacking, the conversation went something like this:
“I got chicken nuggets!”
“Great! Me too!”
“And a gluten free pizza!”
“Me too!” (I swear we eat more than chicken nuggets and pizza but somehow those two things are always in our house.)
“And breakfast bars!”
“Oh, you went with the oatmeal ones? I went the fig bar ones. Nice.”
“And gluten-free crackers!”
“Me too! And I got goat cheese.”
“Oh, I didn’t get goat cheese. But I did buy your favorite dip!”
* gasp * “I didn’t get my favorite dip but I thought about it!”
“And we have chips.”
“I just threw away the last bag of chips we bought that went stale. Meanwhile, I also bought another bag of lettuce for us to pretend we’re going to eat.”
“Yeah, I don’t eat salad. Not going to happen.”
“Be proud of me, I didn’t buy tea!” (My housemates erroneously claim I have too much tea.)
“Ah! But I did! Because we didn’t have cinnamon tea!”
Slowly, slowly I am just going to have my housemates buying all my groceries.
And I thought baby showers were bad. Why are wedding cards so ugly?
Go to WalMart and look at allllll the clever options for birthdays and baby showers, heck, even bridal showers. Then look at the cards for weddings. They aren’t funny. They usually aren’t cute. And they usually are just ugly.
It isn’t like we’re talking get well or sympathy cards here! I feel like there is so much missed opportunity.
I spent 30 minutes this evening trying to find a good wedding card so right now I’m just a little salty.
My subdivision has a pool but somehow May, June, and July have passed without any of us housemates venturing forth to try it. Until today! I went for a swim and had a very nice time.
It also reminded me how bougie Northern Virginia is.
For a year and a half, I was the only Amy at my job. It worked well. Low stress. I could tell people, “Just say you’re calling for Amy. No need to try and pronounce my last name. They’ll know where to send it.”
But two months ago, another department hired an Amy. And now when someone calls and says: “I am calling for Amy,” reception sends me my calls and her calls.
Unfortunately, she’s one of the Spanish translators. And my two years of college Spanish don’t really hold up.
Sooooo……..I feel like we need to have a grudge match to find out who gets to keep the name.
Just discovered this holiday existed. Was it made up as a marketing stunt for Auntie Anne’s? Probably. But I’m officially going to celebrate!
I’ve always considered myself blessed to grow up with a large extended family. I’ve been spoiled in a variety of ways by the people I get to call uncle and aunt.
And I have to say, I really love being an aunt. It is even better than being a cousin, which is an incredibly high bar. So far not as good as being an older sister. But still pretty cool.
Crazy how time passes. My nephew Devin is now 3, MJ is 2, and Daniel is 3 months. My niece celebrated her birthday on Saturday and my sister-in-law video chatted me on Sunday so I could watch her open my present.
In typical 2-year-old fashion, MJ eyed her present (a baby doll) with distrust because it “wasn’t wearing a hat.” My sister-in-law’s quick thinking supplied a bow and she decided that was fine. Then MJ started running around the house, demanding music, causing chaos, and smacking the doll’s head against the walls a few times while she was at it. I sense the beginnings of a beautiful friendship between them.
My sister-in-law kept saying, “Say thank you to Tante Amy! Say thank you!”
In the background of the call I could hear Devin dutifully chanting: “Thank you! Thank you, Tante Amy!” While MJ continued to run around like her pants were on fire. And Daniel somehow managed to sleep through all the chaos.
So, there you have it folks. Even as toddlers, we see the rule-following oldest child, wild middle child, and disinterested youngest emerge.
Kathy and I really enjoyed this sermon from Pastor Mike Kelsey today. Well worth the listen:
Kathy is in town! Today we explored the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. We had such a good time we didn’t take any pictures. I guess that means you’ll have to take my word for it: this is a destination well worth seeing.
The actual part about the Shenandoah Valley was kind of…meh? But the access to Glen Burnie and the Glen Burnie Gardens are worth the cost of admission. I did not expect to run into an elaborate bamboo forest in Virginia!
Glen Burnie is a gorgeous house with antiques stretching back to the Ming dynasty. There are extensive and varied gardens. And at the moment there is a neat statute exhibit featuring origami style works. Definitely going to have this one to my list of places to bring people when they visit me!
If I told my first legal assistant to go home early, I didn’t need to repeat it twice. She was out of there before I finished speaking. It kind of became one of the defining parts of our work relationship. “I like Amy. She lets me leave early.”
Now, my current legal assistant never asks to go home early. Today I decided that with our low caseload and busy season around the corner, this would be a perfect day to send her home early as a treat. Cheerfully I informed her that I had everything under control. She could leave at 4.
Instead of grabbing her purse and running before I could change my mind, she looked up at me puzzled.
“Why would I do that? Home is boring. Work is fun.”
So I went home early instead.
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