Monday, December 26, 2011
Time, at last, to slow down.
‘Twas the day after Christmas, and all through my house, I was the only one up early - not my kids or my spouse. The children were home for a full week out of school, and I was racking my brain trying to find things for them to do. But the week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite time of year; as the gifts have been bought and we’ve spread all our cheer. The stressful month leading up to it, all the merriment abound - now it’s time to relax and slow down…. Well, you get the point – and I apologize for getting carried away. I blame it on being in total holiday overload for the past several weeks! Every year I tell myself that I’m not going to over-do-it with spending too much, trying to do too much and stressing myself out …
38.79812
-77.317919
Kohl's
5793 Burke Centre Pkwy, Burke, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
259745
/locations/6072724
38.798851
-77.29983
Target
10301 New Guinea Rd, Fairfax, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
2006774
/locations/6072725
38.79
-77.298929
Walmart
6000 Burke Commons Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
260131
/locations/6072726
38.777426
-77.266226
Subway Restaurant - Rolling Valley Mall
6415 Shiplett Blvd, Burke, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
259802
/locations/6072727
38.79849
-77.319349
Subway Restaurant
5765 Burke Centre Pkwy, Burke, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
259848
/locations/6072728
38.788625
-77.299039
Villa Bella
6050 Burke Commons Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/twas-the-day-after-christmas-38ec5fb8
259710
/locations/6072729
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
A family’s final countdown to Christmas
We were at a holiday party last weekend and someone asked my husband if we were ready for the holidays. Since I’ve been dubbed the “CEO of Holidays” at our house, he immediately turned to me and said, “Are we?” At that point in time unfortunately my answer was, “Not yet”. But now with the holidays right on our doorstep and as we head into the final stretch, I’m confident that we’re now as ready as we’ll ever be. This is because by now, we’ve listened to just about every holiday song ever sung and watched just about every holiday movie ever written including “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “The Santa Clause” (1, 2 and 3), “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” (cartoon and Jim Carrey version), “Home Alone” (…
38.789149
-77.298883
Blockbuster Video
6030 Burke Commons Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/tis-the-season-75e22a1b
259943
/locations/6041905
Monday, November 28, 2011
A different approach to Black Friday may make a difference all Holiday season.
By the time we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade stroll into Herald Square and our turkey was cooked and served, the 2011 holiday shopping season at our house was already in full swing. As for my gift lists, for the first time in many years, I was already in pretty good shape. They say the early bird gets the worm, but that was kind of hard to determine this year because the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, morphed into Black Thursday, with pre-Black Friday deals running all last week. The best thing about it all in our house were the hilarious Black Friday commercials on TV – my kids and I couldn’t get enough of them! While I've succumbed to the Black Friday insanity on more than one occasion in the past, …
38.798851
-77.29983
Target
10301 New Guinea Rd, Fairfax, VA
/articles/casual-black-friday
2006774
/locations/5887505
38.79812
-77.317919
Kohl's
5793 Burke Centre Pkwy, Burke, VA
/articles/casual-black-friday
259745
/locations/5887506
38.79
-77.298929
Walmart
6000 Burke Commons Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/casual-black-friday
260131
/locations/5887507
Monday, November 21, 2011
For the first time ever, I'm hosting a full house and tackling the complete Thanksgiving feast.
Cooking has never been my forte, and I’m certainly no Martha Stewart when it comes to entertaining. I can handle a simple dinner fare each night for my husband and kids, but the thought of hosting a large number of people and tackling a full Thanksgiving dinner is enough to give me nightmares. Over the years, I’ve always been lucky to garner an invite to a family member’s house for the big meal, but I figured my days of always the guest and never the hostess were coming to an end soon. That time has finally arrived. This year I threw caution to the wind. We’re going all out by having 13 people over for Thanksgiving dinner. That may not seem like a lot, but to someone who’s never had more than two guests over for a meal at any one time…
38.798702
-77.320879
Safeway
5727 Burke Centre Pkwy, Burke, VA
/articles/thanksgiving-dinner-angst
260190
/locations/5850764
38.776946
-77.275258
Safeway Stores
9596 Old Keene Mill Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/thanksgiving-dinner-angst
260041
/locations/5850765
38.794836
-77.272833
Giant
9550 Burke Rd, Burke, VA
/articles/thanksgiving-dinner-angst
259950
/locations/5850766
38.78628
-77.297721
GIANT Food
6011 Burke Centre Pkwy, Burke, VA
/articles/thanksgiving-dinner-angst
259673
/locations/5850767
Monday, November 14, 2011
A first visit home from my college freshman son.
“I’m coming home this weekend, and I need quarters.” The text came in and I was overjoyed. I hadn’t seen my oldest son since he left for his freshman year in college a little over two months ago. I thought I wasn’t going to see him until Thanksgiving, so this surprise was a welcome treat! I imagined what the weekend ahead would bring, and in my mind it played out something like this: He arrives home and we sit down together at the kitchen table while he devours a full feast that I prepared just for him; he tells me all about college life; and then we spend the rest of the weekend watching movies and shopping at the mall. Ok, remember that was my vision. Since I hadn’t seen him in a while, I couldn’t help but revert back to when he was…
Monday, November 7, 2011
An early dusting excites the kids and motivates mom for holiday shopping.
“Hooray! No school on Monday,” my kids yelled when they saw the snow falling last weekend. “Not likely,” I told them based on weather reports that we were only supposed to get a light dusting in our neck of the woods (and hoping they were right). Earthquakes, floods, a hurricane and now snow in October? This is Virginia after all! Just when we thought it was time to rake the leaves, we nearly had to drag out our snow shovels and ice scrapers. But it appeared that we dodged a bullet this time, as many of our neighbors up north had power outages due to snowfalls measured in feet, not inches. I reminded my kids they already used up one snow day when we got the flooding rain. That only leaves two remaining, and we still have a long …
Monday, October 31, 2011
A family prepares for a fun and festive Halloween night
I have to admit that I’ve never been a really big Halloween person. Except for my college years when it always meant some really cool parties, the only thing I’ve ever really loved about it is that after it’s over, my favorite holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) are just around the corner. My kids on the other hand love it. About a month prior they’ll get excited and start contemplating their costumes. They’ll dig through our downstairs closet where past costumes are stored, hoping to put together this year’s look. When I was a kid, I used to design my own costume and remember how much fun it was. My mom saved all of her old prom dresses, so I usually ended up being some type of princess or gypsy. My brother made his own costumes …
Monday, October 24, 2011
A mom finds her kitchen table and takes back the family room.
I don’t understand why everything in the free world seems to end up on my kitchen table. On any given day it’s a total and complete disaster. It never ceases to amaze me just how much a family of five can accumulate. How much “stuff” do two adults, three children, a dog and a goldfish need? Everything we bring into our house (I confess this includes me) seems to land on the kitchen table. There it stays, in an endless holding pattern. I can clear it off one day, and then a few days later it’s filled again with school papers, magazines, newspapers, toys, books, mail and a number of other miscellaneous items. It got so bad I bought a bigger table to provide us more space, but we then just accumulated twice as much stuff! The other …
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
A mom finds her kitchen calendar a necessary crutch.
It’s the central nerve center for our family and the only way I can keep it all together. It logs all events, practices, games, business trips, birthday parties, vacations, school holidays, and play dates. And it has saved this forgetful mom on more than one occasion. What’s this miracle tool? It’s our family calendar that hangs inside a cabinet door in our kitchen. Basically, if it’s not on the calendar, I don’t consider it happening. The hard part has been getting my family on board! I’ve spent the past 12 years trying to train my husband to put stuff on the calendar so that we can plan ahead. He’s famous for not telling me things he’s doing until the last minute. “I told you about it last week,” he always says. Yeah right. My …
Monday, October 10, 2011
Making an effort to gather everyone together for dinner.
I’ve been warning my family for months and I finally followed through. I had everyone sit down together for a family dinner. “Noooooo," my younger two kids said in unison when I called them into the kitchen at mealtime. I honestly didn’t realize it was such a big deal to share a meal together, but evidently it felt like punishment to my kids. I actually found myself telling them if they didn’t engage, we would make it two nights instead of just one to start. Before my oldest son went off to college, the seating arrangements during a normal dinnertime in our house would entail me, my husband and my oldest son eating the same meal at our kitchen table, and my younger two children eating a separate meal at the coffee table in our family …
xiaolinzi
2:37 am on Wednesday, December 26, 2012
http://www.coachoutletonlinebfd.com/ Coach Outlet Online http://www.guccibeltstb.com/ Gucci Belt http://www.coachoutletonlineyds.net/ Coach Outlet Store Online dsg http://www.coachoutletonlinetsy.net/ Coach Online Outlet more ›