“i love youm amma vereemash.” -Anja’s first ever IM to me

A year or so ago, I hypothesized that glitter would, perhaps, bring peace to the middle east.  Flying in last night, another possible solution to the tension in the middle east occurred to me:  too much sand, not enough grass.

Instead of brown ground, brown air, brown paint on the walls, if instead there was tons of lush, green grass, they’d be too busy mowing their lawns to have time to be terrorists.

Getting our daughter to do chores is harder, literally, than pulling teeth.

See those 4 missing teeth? Yeah, they weren’t wiggly. Well, that’s not entirely true. One was at the very beginning of wiggliness. It went from barely wiggly to tooth out in 0 to 60. The first time, she came to me after losing both of her top teeth and asked if any of her teeth were wiggly. Wanting to give her hope, I declared one was just starting to be wiggly, even though in reality it wasn’t but she clearly wanted another answer than “Sorry, no.” An hour later, she came out of her room with blood all over her fingers and her teeth and said, “Mamma! Look! It’s going to come out!” And sure enough, it was hanging by a thread.She freaked out and refused to allow B to help her, and went back into her room. I heard her start freaking out, all by herself, going, “Eh! Ehh! Ow!” and then the thump-thump-thump of her running to the living room shouting, “It fell out! My tooth fell out!”

Right.

So the Tooth Fairy came that night and gave her the standard $2 donation for the tooth registry, and then? She was hooked.

After she wiggled the 2nd non-wiggly tooth out of her mouth, my neighbor asked her why she did that. She said, “Because the Tooth Fairy gives me $2!” My neighbor said, “Couldn’t you just…um…do some chores?” The look Anja gave her translated to “What planet are you from?”and she said, “Nooo, I can just pull out my teeth!”

So now we’re up to 4 teeth. The first that she pulled out over a month ago still hasn’t even so much as come to the gumline yet. I’m not sure what she’s going to do for money next - I wouldn’t be surprised if the hospital called to see if she was allowed to donate her plasma.

The last time - what, 2 weeks ago? - I went to Italy, I was told that was the last time this year I would be traveling.

3 days later I got a phone call asking if I “had plans” for the end of this month.

Knowing “Yes, I’m going to be getting ready for the holidays with my family!” isn’t a legitimate reason for the military to not send you somewhere, I reluctantly said, “Nooo…”

Which meant Great! You just won a round-trip ticket to Bahrain!

Last night was yet another late night; I always have a hard time falling asleep the night before an early flight because I’m always worried I’ll sleep in.  But I finally fell asleep at about 2 and woke up at 5:15 and made it to the airport on time.  I flew to Madrid, and then on to Amsterdam. 

In Amsterdam, I had to pick up my luggage and re-check my luggage and get my new boarding pass, because it was a separate flight.  I wasn’t very keen on that plan, especially since I have never been to the airport in Amsterdam and had no idea what kind of timeI needed to expect to plan on for doing everything that needed to be done.

But! I figured: The Navy will have made all the arrangements with a safe amount of time in between flights.  After all, I usually sit in Madrid for 3½ hours waiting for a connecting flight.  Surely I would have enough…

WRONG.

And that, my friends, is why I am writing from A HOTEL, one that I did not plan on staying in, one that I had to book after running through the airport realizing with dread that I was severely short on time despite my flights being on time for once after having to run a long ways through the airport to get to the luggage, then wait for my luggage, then run a very long way with my luggage to the departures area, then wait in a long line to get a boarding pass, then wait in another long line to check in my luggage, then find myself at the counter with a very friendly Dutch woman who looked like the subject of a Rembrandt painting who very friendlily told me that the flight was closed.

And they only fly once a day to Bahrain.

So here I am, in Amsterdam.  Stuck in a hotel with a fabulous view of a highway.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love traveling?

Oh, this is GOOD.

Anja wrote her wish list last night to take to Santa when he comes to the store. I told her to write everything she wants and maybe he would bring her a couple of things off of it.

For the translation, I recommend visiting the flickr page where you can mouse over and see what everything is.  Click on the picture and you’ll go to the page.

We decorated today for Christmas, and I’ve never been so excited to decorate before. Maybe it’s because for the first time in a long time, we actually have enough disposable income to be able to afford decorations. We’ve had a few things accumulate over the years, but we finally were able to fill in all the emptiness we had in between the few things we accumulated.

So here is the living room, ready for Christmas (all the pictures are linked to Flickr where you can see them larger):

The sticks remain, with new sticks purchased for Christmas. I told B I’m helping clean up the forests of all the twigs that have fallen…or something…

Happy Holidays! Next up, Christmas cookies! Those won’t be for a few weeks, though, as I’m leaving for yet another work trip this weekend.

From all of us Sigs, we wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.

Our plans so far today have involved breaking up fights, video games, and a lot of pre-dinner preparation. I’m making sausage-apple-cranberry stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, and B is making Icelandic caramel potatoes. We’re having dinner across the street with our neighbors and half the neighborhood and a few other neighborhoods, too. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t cooperating today so we’re going to have to figure out how to fit 25 or so people into a 1000 sq. ft. house.

It’ll be a great day, though, because Thanksgiving is always great. Any day involving massive amounts of gravy and multiple choices of pie is a great day.