Father's Day.

This is one of my favorite wedding photos of my dad. Of course, it was one of those photos that 'just happened.' But it was completely perfect. Just like my dad. Aww.

I realized today that I don't get to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my dad. Usually when I see him we're with other members of the family and we don't get an opportunity to talk or catch up. Today started out just like most family gatherings. Bickering. Usually about nothing that matters, but we bicker and nit pick at each other. Usually my dad and I make jokes to try to diffuse the situation, usually unsuccessfully, but we try. I went out to my parents house since Shawn had back surgery on Friday, he's spending his recovery time there. So, it made sense to go to them. Heidi's in NY and Adam went to see his dad, so it was just the four of us. Like most of our family gatherings we just sat in the kitchen cooking and eating. I've always like cooking with my dad. When I was little I would just sit in the kitchen with him, when I was old enough to handle a knife, he put me to work. Yesterday we just sat in the kitchen talking just the two of us. It made me realize how long its been since he and I have spent time together just us. I went camping with him last fall over Labor Day, but I think that was the last time we spent more than a couple hours together. I miss spending time with him and am going to make it a point to do it more often.

Spending the day with my dad inspired my 30 days of creativity entry for today. Enjoy.


http://themoreyouknow.posterous.com/day-20-the-listener

Wandering Mind.

I'm having a horrible time focusing right now. Anything and everything is distracting to me right now. I think it stems from two things- 1. I haven't worked out much this week, so I haven't had a chance to clear my mind and 2. I keep thinking how busy the next 5+ days will be...

To do list

Today: work, meet a friend for HH, then probably some more work, clean house, laundry
Friday: work 1/2 day, try to meet my sister when she gets into town, department holiday party, meet out of town friends for a drink around 9
Saturday: Hair cut, donate blood, family bowling, family lunch (all before 2pm)
Sunday: Maternal In-laws Christmas
Monday: No work but meet out of town friends for lunch and other friends for Happy hour.
Tuesday: No work and no plans, so probably grocery store and finish Christmas shopping.
Wednesday: No work, but we're having another set of out of town friends over for dinner so I'll probably spend most of the day cooking and cleaning. I'm going to attempt some new and complicated recipes for this...
Thursday: My family Christmas
Friday: Paternal in-laws Christmas
Saturday- Sunday: No work, so relax and recover. Actually, Adam and I have some house projects we want to attempt- we'll see what happens. We've had a list going for about 4 years of things we want to do and have done very little of it.

I have about 24 hours left to work before I'm off for two weeks. I'm realizing that my time off won't be as relaxing as I originally anticipated, but I'm looking forward to a couple days to myself to get things done as well as challenging myself with some new recipes. My dad (the cook in my family) always makes sweet and sour chicken for our Christmas dinner. This year, he was going to try something else, so I thought I should try to make it for when our friends come over. It's one thing to watch/help someone make something, its certainly going to be different for me to do it all myself. Of course, I'm not going to stop there, I also want to make cream cheese wontons, egg rolls and spring rolls (all from scratch, not pre-made varieties). The only thing I've made before are the wontons and spring rolls. This is an excessive amount of food for 4 people, but I intend to bring the left overs to my parents house the next day for our Asian themed Christmas potluck.

I'm pretty sure I have the only Scandinavian/western European descended family that opts for a home-cooked, Asian-food family meal. You won't see any jello salad at our family gatherings...

The other thing on my mind- I'm thinking about cutting my hair. I've had it fairly long for about 3 years, which is a very long time for me. I don't know what I want to do, but I just might let my stylist go to town and do whatever she wants. I'm open to suggestions if any of the 3 people who read this have any. :)

Happy Thursday.