This little punk is in the thick of the eight-month sleep regression. Basically, her brain and body are in overdrive, learning and perfecting new skills like waving hello,

crawling,

pulling herself up,

and standing.

Not to mention all the teething that’s been going on.

Clementines make good teethers. Also limes.

With a nod to Jen.

Her two top teeth and two more on the bottom are working on poking through her gums, too. They haven’t popped through yet but we’ve been able to feel how swollen her gums have been in those spots.

And then of course there’s the fact that we just got home from three weeks in California and Oregon, which means she’s three time zones off schedule. And we’re back at home with our cats (exciting!) and all the toys that she hasn’t seen for ages (whee!) and all this familiar furniture she’s apparently been dying to pull herself up on for ages because as soon as we set her on the floor that’s what she immediately does every time (ZOMG being vertical is AWESOME!1!!).

There are many, many reasons for her to be having trouble sleeping easily and peacefully right now, is what I’m saying. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to live through.

Last night, after three hours of me and Troy taking turns trying to gently parent Elliora to sleep—rocking, back-patting, nursing, walking, singing, etc.—we gave up and brought her out to the living room to play happily with her toys while we watched TV, exhausted. She went to bed with us an hour later.

Tonight she took a one-hour nap at 8 o’clock, fooling us into thinking maybe she was going to sleep better. Hahahaha, what suckers we are. She woke up at 9. Around 11 we brought her out to the living room to play while we caught up on White Collar. (Do you watch? We love that show. It seems to get better every season, doesn’t it?) She managed to keep herself awake and relatively happy till 1:30am. That would be 10:30pm PDT, which would still be at least two hours later than she ever stayed up when we were on vacation.

Babies, man. They’re so unpredictable. At least my babies are when it comes to sleep. Oh well. It won’t be too much longer and she’ll be sleeping peacefully again, I’m sure. By then I’ll probably be spending my days chasing her around and cursing our lack of child-proofing, wishing she were still trying to figure out how to stand up.

My friend Bonnie decided on her birthday this year that she would take a picture every day of something that made her happy, to remind herself in the midst of a difficult time to Find the Happy. She decided to create a Flickr group so her friends could share the happy too.

Finding a bit of Happy each day.

The rules:

1. Find some Happy and photograph it each day. You could choose to do it less often if that works better for your life but my theory is that the more often you look for the Happy, the more the Happy helps.
2. Do it for a year. Or less. Or more. Or as needed.
3. No Unhappy allowed. That also includes self-abuse if you miss a day or lots of days. Hippie voice: Go with the flow, man. Everything is as it should be.
4. Rules are for breaking. Except Number 3, it’s best not to upset Hippie Voice.

My heart has been heavy lately, thinking about Samantha. So I’m reminding myself of some happy things.

I don’t know about you, but homemade black-and-white cookies make me very happy.

So does the cool way the sun was reflecting off this dotty coffee mug. Like little bubbles of sunlight!

I happened to glance at Annalie’s calendar a day or two before Troy’s birthday and was tickled to realize that she had drawn a miniature portrait of our family on that date, complete with him in a party hat.

I love it when I get a teeny painting of a harried-looking coffee-drinking cat in the mail. Thanks, Brenda!

French toast with powdered sugar on a sunshiny dottery plate.

Keeping a baby alive and homeschooling a 7-year-old are both time-consuming pursuits (duh), but while I barely have time to shower and I don’t seem to have time for housework, I manage to cook dinner almost every night and write emails and blog posts (sort of) and I’ve been crocheting a lot. So I guess it’s true that you do make time for what you love. And crocheting makes me happy.

I’m sure that in a year or so I’ll be hearing many cries of “Mo-ooom, make her stop touching my stuff!” So I try extra hard to enjoy the sweet moments like this, when it’s clear how much Annalie loves her little sister.

On one of Troy’s Navy deployments years ago, he happened to go to a wine festival in Cyprus, and he brought back two of these little glasses. They’re the perfect size for a shot of juice or taking a packet of Emergen-C, and it makes me smile each time I use one. It’s such a random thing to have in my cupboard, small wineglasses from a Cypriot wine festival, yet there they are.

I went to high school and college with Rainbow Rowell. (I know, awesome name!) She wasn’t someone I hung out with, but we knew each other. We had mutual friends, and when we went to the same university we occasionally ate lunch together. I’ve been reading Rainbow’s writing for two decades now, mostly in newspaper-column or blog-post form, but now I’ve read something way more exciting: Rainbow’s very first novel, a romantic comedy called Attachments. The night I started reading it, I actually got out of bed at 3:30am, feeling compelled to send Rainbow a message to let her know I was loving her book and was genuninely happy for and proud of her. (I’ll be interviewing Rainbow soon and doing a giveaway of her book in a blog post, so stay tuned for that!)

The sun was shining into Annalie’s room just right one afternoon so that her bright fuchsia sheets were reflecting a pink glow onto everything else in the room. A few days later, Annalie picked this bouquet of wildflowers, leaves of grass, and a wild strawberry from our yard for me and arranged them in an old vanilla bottle.

The first Saturday that Sonja was here, Karyl & her girls came up to spend the day with us, which was super fun. We started with brunch—aebleskiver and home-fried potatoes and bacon and fruit—which made me very happy because I love brunch. Also, I made the aebleskiver with almond milk and coconut oil and maple syrup (in place of cow’s milk and butter and granulated sugar) so Sonja could eat them, and they were totally as delicious as usual. It was a Very Happy Thing indeed: brunch everyone could eat!

Sonja-safe brownies, made with coconut oil instead of butter and honey instead of sugar. And they tasted good! Yay! I had fun meeting the challenge of cooking without ingredients I usually rely on while Sonja was here.

I love it when naps end like this, with Elliora waking up in the Ergo and smiling when she sees me.

If I have to put up with hot and humid summer weather, at least I get to eat perfectly summery meals like this: grilled mini burgers, strawberries, and marinated cucumber salad. Yum.

After seeing Lauren’s Doctor Who necklace on Flickr, I stalked this Etsy shop until she listed more so I could buy one for myself. I like how the high-top sneaker is a reference to the Chucks habitually worn by both the Tenth Doctor and Chuck Bartowski.

We often make popcorn with the very air-popper that I used when I was a kid, and eat it out of the exact stainless-steel bowl I used to eat popcorn from. (My mom was getting rid of the air popper and asked if I wanted it; I basically swiped the bowl because I loved it so much. Both these things are 30+ years old.)

Trader Joe’s dark chocolate bar with caramel bar and black sea salt. Enough said.

We live near a good bakery and stop there on a regular basis for treats. Every time, Annalie carefully surveys the variety of lovely, fancy cookies and pastries…and then requests a plain butter cookie. I love that.

I believe we’ve mentioned before that our neighbors across the street actually own a bounce house? They put it up for birthdays and parties and random weekends just for fun. And they are happy to share it with the neighborhood kids.

Rain always makes me happy.

Neon aquamarine polish, and bare feet outside, and green grass, and bits of sidewalk chalk. Basically, summer’s here!

We gotta go to the crappy town where I’m a hero! (4:29)

If you are a Browncoat and you have not seen this video of Adam Baldwin singing Hero of Canton, do yourself a favor and watch it now. I’ll wait for you to come back.

In case you have not figured it out by now, this mug is part of my Geek Dottery series.

So is this mug I painted for Jen from Following the Road a while back, at her request. The pineapple is a Chuck reference. Big surprise, right? You can watch this video and this video to get in on the joke.

Guys, I know kung fu. Even though there have been a lot of great moments in Seasons 3 and 4, sometimes I think back to the sheer awesomeness of Season 2 ending with that line, and wish that it had all stopped there and any further adventures of Chuck and Team Bartowski had been left up to my imagination.

I tried an experiment, painting that tiny pineapple, and wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I was so happy when it worked just like I wanted it to.

Madge requested that I paint another geeky mug for Fish’s birthday, this one an X-Files/Big Bang Theory mash-up. I tried to make the colors of the mug match the greens and dark blues and purples that I associate with X-Files.

This last mug isn’t geek dottery, except in that I painted it as a gift for my friend Elaine, whose blog’s brilliant tagline is “where geek meets granola.” She wrote this heartfelt post for her daughters about how she wants them to know that they owe kindness to everyone, first and foremost, but that it’s not okay for anyone to take advantage of that kindness to abuse or hurt them or treat them with disrespect. Hence, the inside of the mug:

Ahem. I’d like to point out that this is a direct quote from Elaine’s blog, which I used on a mug with her permission. (Man, I’m such a square. I can’t even cuss in a photo covered with asterisks on my own blog without feeling totally embarrassed about it.)

I didn’t make it to the monthly Ladies’ Night at my usual pottery studio this month, and I really missed it. I’ve been feeling fairly stressed out lately thanks to Troy working long hours leading up to a deadline and a pulled muscle in my neck and blah blah family blah homeschooling blah blah life in general. Nothing is wrong, exactly; it’s just one of those times when life is a little extra challenging, you know? On Saturday Troy told me to get out of the house for a couple of hours, so I went to paint at a local studio. I sat all by myself with paint and a Coke Zero and dotted to my heart’s content for 90 minutes. When I went home I felt much calmer.

Thank you to all of you who keep supporting my painting habit by asking me to paint you mugs and bowls and things! It helps keep me sane.

p.s. The Firefly mug at the top of this post is up for grabs! If anyone out there wants to buy it, let me know and I can stick it in my Etsy shop as a reserved order.

Well, crud. I knew we were forgetting something.

Just kidding. We knew it was Thanksgiving today. We weren’t sure what would be going on today, though. Would I be having a baby? Recovering from having a baby? Still very pregnant and not in the mood to cook a big turkey dinner with all the trimmings?

We decided to have ham instead of turkey. We figured whatever was going on, a ham would be easier to manage than turkey.

As it turned out, we didn’t even have the ham today, but not for any of the reasons we thought. I came down with a cold a couple of days ago and never got around to making pies early. Then this morning I woke up feeling groggy despite 11 hours of sleep, and with no voice. So I wasn’t in the mood to cook a big turkey dinner, but it had nothing to do with any of the reasons we expected. Also, Brenda and Bug were both sick with a 24-hour stomach bug the day before, and although they were recovered by this afternoon, Brenda wasn’t really operating at full strength today either.

On top of that, the contractors who’ve been slllooowwwlllyyy fixing the water damage in the downstairs bedroom were supposed to come yesterday to shampoo the carpets, but they never showed up. This did not surprise us, as they have a history of not showing up till several days after they said they would. Troy tried calling the head contractor all day long, but his phone’s voicemail box is full or broken or something, and if the guy doesn’t answer his phone we can’t leave a message. Troy eventually decided he didn’t want to wait till Monday to get it done, he just wanted the carpets cleaned. Last night he rented a steam vacuum from a grocery store, and this morning he had big plans to steam-vac the heck out of that carpet, so we could get moving on making that bedroom into the office and making the old office into the baby’s room…

ANYWAY. Long story short, we decided to postpone our Thanksgiving Ham Dinner till tomorrow. We had leftover mac & cheese (homemade!) for lunch, went to see Tangled (entertaining! Chuck sings!) this afternoon, and had Brenda’s famous stir-fry (Annalie likes it better than mine!) for dinner. I took it easy most of the day, Troy got the carpets cleaned and some furniture moved downstairs, Brenda got some cleaning and organizing done, which she swears she actually enjoys and I’m taking her at her word.

Tomorrow, Troy has the day off again. We’ll all presumably be feeling better. We’ll be making pie and ham and roasted potatoes and green beans and eating it all, and then picking my mom up at the airport. It’ll be a good day for giving thanks, even though it’s not the actual Thanksgiving.

God knows we have plenty to be thankful for, no matter the day. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

(In case anyone’s curious, the thankfulness turkey craft is from preschool daze, via Crafty Crow.)

Halloween seems like it was so long ago. But I feel I should blog about it for the grandmas. So!

On Halloween morning, we made pumpkin-shaped pancakes with chocolate chips for eyes. No actual pumpkin was in the pancakes, though. I should have used this recipe from Zakka Life but I was lazy and just used the store-brand pancake mix and food coloring.

But they were still mighty tasty.

Pumpkin-carving time! Annalie designed her own pumpkin, as she has done every year since she was 3 1/2.

This year, she asked if she could help carve it too. So she did! She carved the eyes and nose, with a little help from Troy, and she did a great job.

Gumball supervised.

Pumpkin braaaaaaaiiiiins!

Um, Troy? Perhaps it’s time for a short break from the pumpkin-carving.

After a refreshing Twizzler and a rest in the sun, we got back to work.

Troy and I worked at carving our pumpkins. I even carved a little one for the baby, at Annalie’s request.

Kristen commented on Flickr that she loved that the baby got a punkin too. I replied that to Annalie, this baby has been a real member of the family, included in all plans and stories and holiday traditions, since way back in May when we told her that she’d be getting a baby brother or sister around Thanksgiving. She’s got big plans for them to have sisters-only secret handshakes, sleepovers, and makeover parties.

Trick-or-treating time! Annalie was a Sock Hop Sweetie this year for Halloween.

She fell in love with this costume the minute she saw it at Target, which kind of surprised me. She oohed and aahed over the various princess ones, and seriously considered a Daphne (from Scooby Doo) costume, but the minute she saw the bobby soxer pictured on the label of this one with her hair in a high ponytail and a scarf tied jauntily around her neck, she forgot them all.

She went with the one high ponytail on Friday, when we went trunk-or-treating, but for some reason on Halloween she decided she wanted two low ponytails instead. After I finished curling her hair, she surveyed herself in the full-length mirror and declared, “I look CUTE!”

I sort of dressed up as Juno for Halloween. I found an orange-and-white striped shirt on clearance a few weeks before Halloween, and I had bought myself a cheap black hoodie jacket at Old Navy, hoping it would get me through whatever cold weather we had before I had the baby so I wouldn’t have to buy an expensive maternity coat, and the costume just sort of fell into place. I really should have been wearing a short skirt over my jeans and carrying around a blue Slushie. But eh. I’m eight months pregnant and I don’t even really like Halloween all that much. Half a costume was enough.

On the way home, we saw that one of our neighbors had set all this stuff out labeled “Purple Heart donations”. I so badly wanted to sneak off with the KitchenAid mixer for a friend who had just been talking about wanting one, but Troy wouldn’t let me, even after I told him I’d make a cash donation to the veterans. He’s an upstanding citizen like that. And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have really done it. I’m an upstanding citizen too, even when people leave expensive kitchen appliances sitting out on the curb. Sigh.

We didn’t really do a whole lot of trick-or-treating. Annalie was done after going up and down two streets, so we headed back home. We lit our jack-o-lanterns and a fire in the fireplace. We ate roasted pumpkin seeds and played a board game. Occasionally some trick-or-treaters would come to the door, and Annalie would hop up to answer it, offering them the bowl with a cheerful, “Take a few, there’s plenty!” Even with her generosity, we still had a ton of candy left over. Oh darn.

From Juno, the Sock Hop Sweetie, and Captain Awesome, a belated Happy Halloween! Hope yours was as good as ours.

Outside my window It’s raining hard. We have a tarp spread out on the deck because the window right under the deck was leaking when it rained hard the other day, and…to make a long story short, it was our stopgap solution to keep the window from leaking again before it gets fixed. So far it’s working, and as a bonus the rain sounds lovely hitting the tarp.

I am thinking about Veronica Mars. Troy and I have been working our way through all three seasons on Netflix Instant for the past few weeks, and we both find that when we watch a couple of episodes in an evening we spend the next day or two thinking about the characters and whatever the current mystery is. We’ve both even dreamed about the show a couple of times. I’ve developed a whole new respect for Kristen Bell, have fallen more in love with Enrico Colantoni (whom I already loved forever for his role as Mathesar in Galaxy Quest), and have decided I might watch the cancelled series Moonlight, even though it’s about vampires, just so I can see Jason Dohring act some more.

I am thankful for how well homeschooling is going. I didn’t expect it to go badly, but I was a bit apprehensive about our first year of sitting down and actually doing lessons from a curriculum. I wasn’t sure how Annalie would do with her first taste of formal schooling…which is really hilarious because if you were to watch us during a typical school day, we are anything but formal. Anyway, things have been going great. Of course there have been bumps in the road and some moments of frustration, but I can deal with those, no problem. I’ve found myself very thankful for my years of experience as a classroom aide, tutor, camp counselor, etc. And Annalie has told me almost every day how much she loves homeschooling.

I am wearing cropped jeans, because I have temporarily misplaced my regular maternity jeans, a turquoise t-shirt, and black flip-flops. I am not wearing my wedding ring these days, which makes me kind of sad. But only a couple more months and I’ll be able to wear it again.

I am remembering that today is my nephew Leo’s 5th birthday! Happy birthday, Leo!

I am going to the post office later today, to mail some thank-you notes and a couple of surprise packages. Also to the grocery store because we’re almost entirely out of cereal.

I am currently reading Naked Heat, which is a book ostensibly authored by a fictional character from the TV show Castle. So far it’s just as good as the first Nikki Heat book, Heat Wave. And both books are as good as or better than an episode of Castle. Love it.

I am hoping that this baby will be born between November 26th and December 3rd.

On my mind: uh…sudoku? I’ve been doing lots of sudokus lately.

Noticing that I seem to be incapable of drinking a whole cup of coffee without reheating it at least twice.

In the kitchen there is a full cookie jar and leftover homemade pizza in the fridge.

Around the house are lots of things that need cleaning up, organizing, straightening, or put away. I’ve sort of fallen off the housework bandwagon lately. I think it’s at least partly due to my newfound hobby of figuring out ways to pick things up off the floor without bending over. Mostly I just ask Annalie help me.

One of my favorite things is how recently, Annalie declares that almost every day is a pajama day. Right now she’s wearing flannel PJ pants with rainbows and monkeys on them.

From my photo archive: this photo of Annalie was taken in January 2007, when she was a little more than 2 1/2 years old. I love the look of concentration on her face.

“There’s a secret door in my room. I use it for getting away from the bad guys, and from ninjas.”
Jun 28 00:58:00 2010

“The good news about having a baby brother or sister is that I will get to give it hugs and kisses!”
Jun 24 18:27:23 2010

“Peace out, yo!…What does that even MEAN, anyway?”
Jun 23 15:31:07 2010

“Dog paw? Fascinating!”
Jun 22 09:22:44 2010

“Oh, today is Father’s Day? Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!”
Jun 20 18:20:08 2010

“I want a Scooby-Doo party on my next birthday. Then I can give out little dolls of monsters, zombies, ghosts, and aliens as party prizes!”
Jun 18 15:13:23 2010

“Miss Brenda’s stir-fry pork, I LOVE YOU!!!”
Jun 15 19:37:36 2010

“Men, I’m Annalie of the USS Gourmet. I’m here to tell you, this whole ship is one big security camera!”
Jun 14 14:56:53 2010

“I’m pretending to be an Earthbender!”
Jun 13 12:57:05 2010

“I stand corrected. I’d better stick to martial arts.”
Jun 9 16:41:05 2010

“Mom, tell Miss Brenda and all your friends that have kids that it’s kinda easy to suck yogurt through a straw. They need to know that.”
Jun 7 03:45:58 2010

@OutofmyMind It is! Did you know you can also eat applesauce with a straw? It’s true, I do it all the time.
Jun 9 16:40:27 2010 in reply to OutofmyMind

“You’re my darrrrrlin’, you’re my darrrrlin’, you’re my DARRRR-ling Clementine…”
Jun 5 14:52:16 2010

“I’m going to put this picture from @babybug in the place of honor…right next to the best picture I drew.”
6:27 PM Jun 4th

“Yeah, yeah. I’m SIX now, you know.”
9:46 AM May 10th

“It’s lunchtime already? Huh, the day goes by.”
1:24 PM May 30th

“Wow, it looks SO three-dimensional!”
2:30 PM May 26th

“This is so sweet and sour, I can’t get enough of it!”
4:50 PM May 24th

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t sing that song for you again. It’s a one-hit wonder.”
12:20 AM May 22nd

“Kiki’s Delivery Service is a little movie pronounced by the same company that made Totoro.”
11:13 PM May 7th

(talking on her cousin’s phone rattle) “Hello? Talk to me. Oh, BILLY! How are ya? I haven’t talked to you since kindergarten. SO crazy…”
8:04 PM Apr 28th

“Can I have some more cram bangoons?”
4:21 PM Apr 21st

“I’ll do it, but first you have to threaten me with candy.”
12:53 PM Apr 21st

“Aliens never surprise me, because you can ALWAYS expect aliens on Doctor Who.”
1:46 PM Apr 18th

“I think I have allergicness to pussy willow pollen.”
5:22 PM Apr 15th

“This is @babybug. I drew her mouth open because you know how she just talks, talks, talks all the time.”
2:03 AM Apr 11th

“You know how people just LOVE apples, and I’m one of them.”
3:07 PM Apr 8th

(trying on Easter dresses) “This one passes the jump test, and it’s SO zero minutes ago!”
4:48 PM Apr 1st

This is the look Troy usually gives me when I tell him how late I stayed up the night before, crocheting and watching movies or TV. I’ve been doing that a lot recently. I can’t give you details or show you pictures of the finished projects because they are gifts for people who might be reading this. Right now I’m working my way through Bones from the beginning (the first four seasons are conveniently available on Netflix Instant) and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed it. Also, I’ve decided once and for all that the best way to watch a TV series is in large chunks—say, one whole season in a week. Since I have a show to watch, I’ve been crocheting more than usual.

All this crocheting and TV-watching has been happening at the expense of the time I might normally spend editing photos and writing blog posts. But there hasn’t been much to write about lately anyway.

What exactly have we been up to? Well, I think I mentioned that I’ve been crocheting a lot. I’ve also been working on our container garden, and three months after moving I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of cooking most meals at home instead of eating out every other night. Troy’s been working hard; it’s a busy time of year for his job, and when he’s at home he’s been catching up on yard work and projects around the house. Annalie has been getting a huge kick out of observing the recently-emerged-from-their-chrysalides butterflies in the butterfly garden that Unky Ben and Angie got her for her birthday. And almost every day this week there has been an restaurant set up in the living room including a little table & chairs, dishes, silverware, and “walls” built from footstools and pillows, where Annalie grandly serves us apples and water and goldfish crackers.

Okay, I guess I could have been writing about all those things I mentioned. But I haven’t been. I’ve just been living them. I go through stages sometimes where I get annoyed at how I always have a camera in front of my face, attempting to capture all the moments instead of just enjoying the moments. I suppose I’ve been in one of those stages lately. It’ll pass eventually and I’ll be back to capturing every little thing for posterity.

Meanwhile, life’s just chugging along. Summer is coming. We’re all good.

Our flight from Omaha to DC on Saturday was at 6am. When I woke Annalie up at 4:15 Saturday morning, she sat up and immediately started crying and saying it was too early. My mom and I knew exactly how she felt. We’re both night-before-travel insomniacs, and we had to wake up at 3:30am to leave for the airport by 4:30. My mom and I were pretty much zombies all day Saturday, and Annalie was ten times crazier than usual, which is how she gets when she’s really tired. We all went to bed by 8pm Saturday and slept peacefully for 12 lovely hours.

Except that meant I went to bed at 11pm tonight and couldn’t get to sleep. After a while I got tired of tossing and turning so I got up and watched bits of the last six or seven episodes of Chuck on iTunes.

I’ll be honest; it’s been hard to love Chuck this season. The characters have to change for the show to not be completely boring, conflict is necessary for good story-telling, darkest before the dawn, blah blah blah. Even knowing those things, though, I still just didn’t feel as interested in it. I’ve decided there were three main reasons:

1. I’ve been keeping up on the Chuck news and reading the episode reviews. I think it’s been a bit of overkill for me.
2. Because of the addition of a new character (Daniel Shaw) to Team Bartowski, the team was often split up or working at cross-purposes. One of the things I love best about Chuck is the chemistry between the three leads. Take that away and the show just isn’t as much fun to watch.
3. I managed to watch the first two seasons of Chuck, all 35 episodes, in the span of one week. Maybe if I’d had to watch them one episode at a time, waiting a week or more between times, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much.

I’ve been theorizing for a while that once Season 3 is over, if I were to have a marathon and watch the whole season in a day, I’d probably enjoy it much more. And after fast-forwarding through the last half of the season, I was happy and relieved that I was right, and I enjoyed the bits I watched much more than I expected to, both because I knew what was going to happen (I hate suspense, remember?) and because it was like watching a long movie instead of a serialized TV show. Also, I had forgotten how many great moments this season has had…

*SPOILER ALERT*

Morgan’s stunned and joyful reaction to finding out Chuck is a spy…Morgan and Awesome learning that they both know Chuck’s secret…Casey realizing he has a daughter, and later telling Chuck he has to decide between love and love of country, and that Walker is a good woman—who’d have ever thought in Season 1 we would get Casey encouraging Chuck to go after the woman he loves, in Casey’s own inimitable style!?…Chuck’s straightforward declaration of his love for Sarah…Chuck at a low point, drunk in his boxers and holding a plastic guitar, while Sarah sweetly admitted she fell for him before he even defused that bomb with a computer virus…Sarah and Chuck, in handcuffs, kung-fu-ing the bad guys in the bakery together so awesomely that it was like dancing (and Casey and Morgan pitching in with a re-enactment of a previous fight scene with Casey & Chuck).

*End spoilers*

Yeah, I find that I’m still liking Chuck quite a bit, rough patches and all. I will say, I loved episode 3.14 and have high hopes for the remaining five episodes. Now let’s hope they get renewed for Season 4 so we can have a whole season of Morgan annoying Casey and Chuck and Sarah fighting awesomely. And maybe a few more performances from JEFFSTER!

(All that said, Castle is still my new favorite show. And it already got renewed for next season, so I can watch its last few episodes without worrying about its chances for renewal!)

Okay, now that I’ve let my geek flag fly again (all over my blog, at 3am), I think I can go to sleep now and dream about the list of things I need to get done week before Annalie’s birthday party this weekend.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, B.

Probably none of you reading this have any clue that I like the TV show Chuck, right? I’m pretty quiet about it.

Lauren had the idea for one of the days of 7 Days to be a Chuck day, just for fun. Here you can see me very obviously speaking into my spy watch, without anyone around me even noticing. Also, I’m wearing my orange Chucks, a mustache from our Chuck party in January (also seen in Sonja’s Flickr stream), and my Orange Orange t-shirt. (Appearances to the contrary, I’m not obsessed. Chuck isn’t even my favorite TV show. I’d have to say my favorite show right now is probably Castle. Nathan Fillion is only one of many awesome things about it.)

Brenda and I had to go to IKEA for the 37th time in two weeks yesterday, and mamalang couldn’t make it to the meet-up yesterday so she drove all the way to meet us at IKEA instead. We shopped, we chatted, we ate meatballs. It would almost be boring how all these internet meet-ups go so well if they weren’t so much fun.

I’m getting a bit behind in my 7 Days blogging because we’ve been scrambling to fit in all the things we want to do before Brenda & Bug go home. Tomorrow (Wednesday) is their last full day here; they fly back home Thursday morning. Brenda was worried that two weeks would be too long, that we’d start to get sick of them, but it seems like they just got here! They could stay another two weeks and we’d probably still be finding things to work on in the house, or fun touristy things to do. But they miss Toby, and he misses them. And the house is almost completely done, which it wouldn’t have been for another six months if it weren’t for Brenda.

We’ll be sad to see them go, but we’re so very glad they came!

Brenda has written about what we’ve been up to in a bit more detail, if you’re interested.