Dead People Moving

Some of you may know that my only fear is moving dead people. Yes, I know. An irrational fear because dead people shouldn't be moving. This fear stems from an ill fated trip to Gettysburg when I was 7.

AMC has a show out called "The Walking Dead". It premiered on Halloween and the season finale is next Sunday. In a nutshell, there has been an apocalypse and now there are dead zombie-like creatures roaming  - "Walkers" - and then the remaining humans who somehow survived and are trying to evade the Walkers and find safety. If you get bit by a Walker (they eat flesh to survive) you die and then soon there after come back to life as a Walker yourself. Walkers can only be stopped by shooting them in the head (or damaging their head in some way).

 Everything about this screams to me "Sara you hate this show! Don't watch it!", but alas I sit and have watched it the past two weekends with Marc. Honestly, minus the moving dead people it's not that bad of a show. After watching it I'm always a little creeped out.

Last Sunday night I was back in the bathroom getting ready for bed and I hear the bathroom door knob wiggle. I say "What?" knowing it was Marc, but thinking it was weird he was wiggling the door knob. The door knob wiggles again. I open the door and a zombiesque version of Marc was standing outside the bathroom door. He had smeared ketchup all over his face and neck to really help the gross half-decayed zombie point be driven home. After a mild heart attack I laughed and laughed and laughed!

Here is what happened after watching the show last night:
Sara: Will you come outside with me to turn off the Christmas lights?
Marc: No.
Sara: What if Walkers attack me? How would that make you feel?
Marc: Sara, there are no such things as Walkers. It's just a show.
(author's note: In my head he rolls his eyes right here, but I can't say for sure if he did in real life)
Sara: Ok, ok

Sara heads outside to unplug the Christmas lights, before heading outside she turned on every light between her and the front door. She dashes outside, unplugs the master cord for the outside lights and rests it on the outlet cover. It falls down. Marc, being hilarious, turns off the outside light so now Sara is outside in the dark, she yells "Marc! Don't you...oooh (trails off)". She picks up the cord again - glances around for Walkers - and puts it back on the outlet cover. It falls again. "Blast!" she yells and decides that her life is more important than her OCD desire to have the cord on top of the outlet cover. Sara sprints across the garden to the front door and bursts through slamming it behind her. She hardly has time to revel in her victory of not getting attacked by Walkers when Marc leaps out from the corner behind the front door and screams. Sara screams. Everyone is screaming. Arms are flailing (Sara's). Arms are getting punched (Marc's). There was a lot of "That's not funny!" "Why would you do that" sprinkled in amongst Marc's uproariously laughter. I think my heart slowed to a normal rhythm 40 minutes later.

Secretly, I think both events were really funny, but since I don't want to encourage this torture to my heart I won't ever tell Marc that I think it was funny...

Clean

Marc and I like a clean house. We like tidy. We like organized.

I may have gone a tad overboard. Marc thinks I vacuumed entirely too many times while I was home for Thanksgiving break. He's probably right. I'll retype that. He's right.

I lost count of how many times I vacuumed, but in my defense setting up the Christmas tree was quite an ordeal and required multiple vacuumings.

On Friday morning I organized all the cupboards in the kitchen. Dang they look nice. I bought a little organizer unit thing to hold the saran wrap, aluminum foil, etc. Marc was nice enough to hang it up as soon as he got home from work. Most normal people would have been ok to wait until the next day, but Marc knows that I can't fully relax until everything is "done" - whether that be cleaned, put away, started, etc. He knew I'd be a mess all evening if I didn't get the aluminum foil and wax paper properly organized right then. These are the little ways that Marc shows his love to me and it reminds me how much he cares. No big showy gestures needed here, seeing that he will postpone his own relaxing to hang up my organizing unit says it all!

Took a big trip to Goodwill on Friday as well. We had gone through our closets a few weeks ago and had two big bags of clothes to donate and we also donated kitchen items - we may finally be rid of all the doubles of things from when we moved in together.

Speaking of doubles, while organizing the spice cupboard we had doubles of a variety of spices. Now that it's nice and neat and organized by spice type, finding what you need in a flash should be no problem! Marc also discovered we owned a pepper grinder - he was quite ecstatic about this! I also cleaned out the fridge and freezer. After all of this it's safe to say we have a lot of garbage for garbage day this week.

Yesterday I swept out the garage and did some minor tidying up. Luckily I had to go back to work on Monday because I think I ran out of places to clean.

I'm going to try to slow it down in the cleaning department though. I don't want Marc to think I'm weird or anything...

Would You Still Love Me If...

Just so you know Marc says and does funny stuff all the time, but sometimes you literally can't put it into words so I can't get a good blog post out of it. Nonetheless some stuff does translate well such as this recent conversation in the Pensyl household:

Scene: getting ready to head out to get our Christmas tree
Background fact: Sara's right foot gets ridiculously cold

Sara (sitting in mudroom putting on sneakers): I have on two pairs of socks
Marc: Two pairs of socks?!
Sara: Yeah - you know, so my foot wouldn't get cold and fall off.
Marc: Ohhhh ok. Well, I'd still love you even if you had one foot!

My heart fluttered. :)

Never Too Late To Be Thankful

Things the Pensyls are Thankful for:

Marriage

Tucker and his fuzzy snuggliness

Lily and her suctioned-to-the-side-of-your-body snuggliness

Our family

Bart

Our friends (near and far)

Hugs that comfort

Yankee Candles that make the house smell so good

Late nights and an opportunity to sleep in

Cheesy Christmas movies on TV

Twinkly Christmas lights

Laughter

Mistletoe (even if Tucker is the one who gets the most kisses)

New cars with great gas mileage

Jeeps that gave us good memories

Knowing that God is here

Full moons

A warm house

Cabernet Merlot

Real Simple

Funny memories

Still learning things about each other after 15 years

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

Marc's band, Risky Coalition, is auditioning for new lead singers. I'll let that hang in the air for a moment.

As some of you may know I'm probably the best singer since Rosemary Clooney (minus the minor drug problem in the sixties) and I really like to test out the 'ol pipes around the house. Marc really enjoys this. He especially likes it when I sing in the shower as he's trying to fall asleep. I believe he said it's like having God's angels sing him to sleep. (some of what you just read isn't true)

Anyway, I'm waiting for Marc to provide me with the song list and I'm trying to find a local studio so I can lay down some tracks and provide a CD of my material to the band members. Luckily I'm talented enough to be able to sing genres ranging from opera to rock to easy listening oldies, I also like to develop my own materials - real "from the heart" songs, so I'm not worried about what the song list will contain.

If you know of a local studio where I could record these velvety melodies or want to create "Vote for Sara" t-shirts and wear them around I'd appreciate it. I hope I beat out the competition...

(if you guessed "minus the minor drug problem in the sixties" you were right on)

Weekend Rewind

I know, I know - it's Tuesday and I'm just doing a Weekend Rewind right now!

Friday and Saturday I was in Lancaster with my mom, sister, nephew, cousin, and aunt - we had such a blast! Friday we shopped around Kitchen Kettle Village and I officially started Christmas shopping. The place we ate dinner had an all-you-can-eat dessert bar you could add to your meal for $3.65. Heck yes I will! Honestly, who wouldn't add that to their meal? I had peanut butter mousse pie - yum.

I heard David (our nephew) laugh for the first time - what an amazing sound! A big 'ol laugh straight from the belly! He also smiles constantly - you can't help but have this big goofy grin on your face when you're with him! I got woken up on Saturday morning by David "jumping" on me - I'll wake up like that any morning! I still smile when I think back to how the first thing I saw Saturday morning were tiny blue footed pajama feet coming toward me and a big 'ol smile!

On Saturday we took a tour of different little Amish places and learned a bit about the culture - it was pretty neat (you know, besides "Kath" the loud lady from Baltimore who had crass comments for everything throughout the entire tour)! Then we headed over to the outlets to do some shopping. Nothing too exciting to report here - bought some more Christmas presents and found small dessert plates to match our dishes (hey Corelle, start selling matching dessert plates for your square plate collections - people will buy them).

Here is a picture of David and I out shopping (actually we were resting on a couch at Pottery Barn-the store wasn't designed with strollers in mind, so we waited while everyone else looked around).

On Sunday I grabbed breakfast at Mom's with Auntie Jo and Emily before heading to church. After Marc and I got home from church I started a whirlwind house cleaning and Marc headed out to Wegman's to go food shopping. A weary, battle scarred Marc returned, declaring he'll never go food shopping on a Sunday again. He's bounced back, no worries. Sunday was moving full steam ahead and I had to sprint out the door to head to a congregational meeting at church and then to HSM small group at Alyssa's house.

I worked from home on Monday and was able to finish up a few tasks (ironing, laundry, etc). We also may have hung up the Christmas lights outside. And when I say "may have" I mean we did. It was warm and sunny out, I'm not stupid nor am I ashamed that it's mid-November and the Pensyls have their Christmas lights up.

Tucker jumped from the front porch to the where the front sidewalks curves in one single leap yesterday. Marc estimates that's about 15 feet. He's definitely made of springs.

In Lancaster I bought a big barn star for us to hang on the front of the house - we've wanted one since we moved in and have looked around, but couldn't never find exactly what we needed. We finally found the one we want! Tonight we're going to paint it and hopefully we'll hang it up this weekend! Ooooh I'm excited!

Other than that I'm about to launch into full Christmas shopping/Christmas party planning mode! I have a few good present ideas up my sleeve this year...

Happy Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day to all of those men and women who have and are serving and protecting our country. We are grateful for you in ways we can't even express and appreciate you more than you know. We think of you often and pray for you as we marvel at your bravery.

A picture of Marc and his Military Working Dog (MWD) Brit Delta 059 when they were deployed together in 2006

Thinking about Christmas

I was looking the kitchen window sill last night and realized that I had a pumpkin decoration up. "Eeegads!" I thought to myself, "I need to take down this pumpkin decoration!" As I continued to think about it we still had ALL of our pumpkin decorations up. I blushed a little. Then I realized that in a mere TWO WEEKS that we'd be decorating for Christmas. I made an executive decision to leave all pumpkin decorations up for two more weeks instead of making multiple trips to the "seasonal decoration" bins in the basement. We're so "life on the edge".

Marc and I have been humming Christmas tunes for several weeks now. When the girls came over to carve pumpkins on Halloween we listened to Christmas music (it was all Krista, I swear!). I did mention to them that my brain was all confused - I was pulling slimy pumpkin innards out but listening to Christmas carols.

I'm chomping at the bit to hang up the Christmas decorations! I want to put up the outside lights, but now that it is dark out when I get home from work we haven't had the chance to do that yet. I might settle for putting the candles in the windows. I hesitate to do this though because one of Tucker's favorite things to do is to look out the window - this will keep him occupied for great lengths of time. Anyway, each year we have several light/nose accidents during the first few days the lights are in the window because he's not used to them being there. It's actually mildly hilarious to watch.

When Megan, Desiree, and I were out running errands last week we walked into JoAnn Fabrics and the smell was so immediately wonderful I can't even describe it! After we found what we went there for we followed our noses to identify what it was that smelled so wonderful! Well, wouldn't you know it was cinnamon scented pine cones. Oh gloriousness. We each bought a bag (my car ride home smelled delicious by the way). I'm excited to decorate with them in TWO WEEKS!

Then we get to thinking about others - Malea will be in Guatemala for Christmas - we wonder how they will celebrate Christmas? We think about Bart who is deployed - there will be lots of sand involved in his Christmas. How will he celebrate Christmas?

A good reminder that we are blessed and need to be turning that around to bless others - how can we give a little bit of our Christmas to them?

Dang

I'm embarrassed this much time has elapsed between posts. Shame on me. Malea called me all the way from Guatemala to tell me to update my blog. That's how you know it's been too long. A ramble of thoughts today:

Got a new phone a month ago. Glad I finally made the leap, I'm really enjoying it!

Last weekend we had the Jr. Week 2010 Wrap Up Meeting - what a blast! We laughed a ton (Quathii) and (somehow) always manage to get a lot accomplished. We met from 9:30am - 7:30pm. Dang. Tuscarora is so good to us too - they feed us and give us rooms to sleep and rooms to meet. Melissa and I were talking Friday night and I was finally able to put into words that Tuscarora is my happy place. Good things always happen there. So many memories, so many laughs, and so many good friends. Erik always said that Jr. Week is a little glimpse of heaven (minus the poop in the pool and the kids barfing on Wednesday night after too much cotton candy I hope) and I have to whole heartily agree!

Just got back from Michigan for Girls Weekend - we had an absolute blast and ate like Queens (thanks Abe!). After giving Marc a rehash of the weekend he says "Um, so it sounds like you guys just ate and talked?" My response, "Well yes, that is what makes it a girls weekend!". We already locked in the dates for Girls Weekend 2011 and plan to add "get massages" to the list of things to do for the weekend!

This weekend I'm headed to Lancaster with my Mom - we'll meet Erin and David and Auntie Jo and Emily there where we'll laugh and talk and shop for two days! I'm really looking forward to a Family Girls Weekend. Once we get back we'll have to fall into Thanksgiving and Christmas and shopping and wrapping and traveling...having one last little get away will be wonderful!

The senior girls have started turning 18...three in one month! I don't remember much of my 18th birthday - I had to go to school and then work (boooo). I'm sure my mom made me dinner and a cake when I got home. I know I made anyone I knew who walked into the mini-mart that afternoon buy me a lottery ticket - I didn't win. Not a once. The 18th birthday is kind of this weird limbo - all this hype, but if you don't smoke there's not much exciting about it. Oooh I can sign my own field trip forms for school! Guys get to register with the Selective Service. I mean that's something. Leaving for college is WAY more exciting than turning 18...I hope the girls are looking forward to that next! Anyway...three down, eleven more to turn 18...that's a lot of cake to eat...

The boys in the DR have been on my mind a lot lately. We sent Jalin's present down so hopefully he's happily flying his kite as I type. This is assuming, of course, that he figured out how to reassemble it. I had to do some minor disassembling of the kite to get it to fit in the envelope and subsequently Sharon's suitcase. He's a smart cookie, I'm sure he'll figure it out!

I've listened to three audio books (lots of driving) and read two books in the past week and a half. My brain is swirling with too many different story lines! I should stick to one at a time! I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving when I'll have some time to relax and read (and be generally useless).

The Pensyls are going to begin planning for their holiday plans/travels (Yikes, Marc doesn't know this yet, hopefully we'll have this talk before he reads this!). So many people to see, places to go...we need more time off from work! :)

I looked at myself in the mirror in the other day and was shocked. I truly believe my hair grew like four inches in as many days. I swear it was a lot shorter last week. I have to remember to call my hair lady...can someone remind me to do that? I'm torn though - I want it short so I'm hip and stylish, but I want it long enough to be able to throw it in a ponytail next summer (I'm NOT doing the DR and Jr. Week without being able to throw my hair in the a pony tail again...guh.). When I get to my hair lady she always asks lots of questions and I barely manage to stammer "Uh...shorter?" in response to her question about how I want my hair. She is NEVER happy with that answer.

We're dog sitting...well actually Marc is doing a board and train for an 8 month old golden retriever named Kenna. She's stinkin' cute. Lily and her have become friends and Tucker is choosing to not acknowledge her presence. We'll see how that changes during her two week stay. He was muttering something about too many girls dogs.

Anyway that's a summary of my life for the past few weeks. I'll try to stay on top of blogging so Malea doesn't have to waste precious minutes calling to casually mention (read: yell) that I need to update the blog!