Jeramy leaves for the rig tomorrow...already...*sigh*. I wish he had about another week before he had to leave. I have some light bulbs I would like changed...and it would be good to have a few more evening to hang out on the couch together. This hitch home Jeramy spent the first week in the office covering for a coworker and the second week and then some out in West Texas for the holidays. This is our third night home from our trip and it's just gone by too fast. So tonight I thought I would make an extra nice meal for his last night home.

So, how exactly is a beef tenderloin supposed to look after it's cooked? I read a friend's blog last week and for Christmas dinner they had a beef tenderloin which sounded amazing. So I found a recipe and followed it exactly and it still turned out as basically a big hunk of raw meat with a cooked exterior. I was able to salvage it by slicing and then cooking the slices in a pan, but I'm pretty sure that's not the point. So, off to research and figure out what I did wrong. Maybe I should just stick to casseroles and stir-fry.

The house feels a little vacant tonight, we already put all of our Christmas stuff up. It was either do it today, or it would have to wait until Jeramy got back. I don't think I could take another 3 weeks of stockings hanging from the fireplace.

Until the New Year, Peace be with you and your family.

The Day Mom Missed Christmas...or at least the part where she has to cook and do dishes.

The children, even 33 year old ones, were all nestled and snug in their beds when 8am rolled around and Grandpa started banging on the door. What five year old isn't up at the crack of dawn to open presents? Our five year old of course....she was tired.

We invited my grandparents over to watch the kids open presents and I figured that Ryleigh would definitely be up by 7:30 or 8 at the latest, but since we all stayed up so late on Christmas Eve we were all snoozing away well after the sun had peeked above the horizon. It was all good though, we needed to get up and get after it, it would be a long day ahead!

Everyone received more than enough in gifts, especially the girls. We may have to rent a U-Haul to get all this crap, I mean gifts back to Katy. Ryleigh was delighted to find that she had indeed been good enough to get her DSLite from Santa. The same dumb Santa had a DSLite back in Katy but left it in the top of the closet and therefore had to procure a second DSLite and sincerely hopes that the first DSLite can be returned without hassle. Along with the duplicate Sleepy Time Dora that Avery received. Dumb Santa.

After gifts come lunch and my Mom is in charge of lunch for about 30 family members from both sides of the family. Becca and I usually help and I was glad to be able to help more this year because for the first time in 6 years I was neither pregnant nor did I have an under two year old to care for. Freedom is good. But brownies that carry bad pecans are not and apparently that's what got served on Christmas Eve and those of us that ate them paid the price. First Jeramy who went to bed at 9pm on Christmas Eve, then me who was up in the middle of the night and finally mom. Two hours before everyone was due to arrive and about the time all final preparations needed to be made for lunch she was down for the count. In bed with a bad tummy ache. Fortunately for everyone my mom raised a couple of girls that aren't scared of the kitchen. Becca and I furiously started whipping up pies and deviled eggs, we got the tableware all out and set, brewed the tea, made grandma do the gravy and we were all good to go. Poor mom missed the whole dinner, she didn't get to say hi to a single guest. By the time she emerged from her room at 9pm, everyone was gone and the kitchen was clean.

Mom did make it out for our annual tradition of watching the VHS tape of Christmas from 20 years ago. Christmas 1989 was a special year filled with gifts of sweat suits, Scattergories, a pool table and godzilla. It was the year that Curtis got a mini pool table which my sister and I discovered at 3am and decided to play with until my parents heard us and sent us back to bed at around 3:30am. I got a race track and declared that I shall open no other gift so that I could just play with my race track. The best part was when my 8 year old sister opened a gift that was not marked for anyone. Inside was a nice ring which she declared as her own. Steve promptly scolded her for opening to her mother's gift to which she was deeply sorry because the Beckanomics 2nd principle of "finders keepers" had be thwarted. She then went back to the pile of gifts and found one clearly marked as hers, read the lable to all so that all would know and then went about her business of opening gifts.

Without a doubt this has been an eventful year. Some really awesome events and some not so awesome. There were many moments during the last few days that I just had to thank god for my family. Of course my fantastic husband and beautiful girls, but the extended group as well. I'm glad that we all have each other and that the sane can balance out the insane.

I hope that 2010 will be a year of no moving, a year of growing and a year of understanding. But most of all I hope that 2010 will bring us all more love and happiness than we ever thought possible.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Out West

Friday Ryleigh got out of school at noon since it was the last day of the 3rd six weeks. We are now officially halfway through Kindergarten. Yeah, I'm totally stunned. I can not believe how fast it's all going. First grade, here we come!

So on Friday since Ryleigh got out of school early we loaded up and headed to Austin to see our friends Karen and Jeremy and their adorable little 12 month old, Autumn. Karen and Jeremy met at our wedding, they actualy walked down the aisle together as bride's maid and groom's man. Hmmmm, wonder who made that happen...:) It was so awesome to see them and little Autumn. All three girls took a bath together Saturday morning and it was just unmeasurable cuteness to see them playing together in the bath.

Saturday we made it the rest of the way to West Texas just in time for the Wood family Christmas event at my Uncle Wayne and Aunt Kelly's new house. I love having to walk around a big ol' pile of horse crap on my way to the front door of a house. And of course, the evening wouldn't have been complete without the dog getting sprayed by porcupine quills. But hey, the food was awesome and the company even better. It's always nice to see all the cousins that I grew up with, especially now that we all have our own little families.

So we've already eaten at Habanero's and had the midnight munchies chimichanga from the gas station, so that's pretty much it for decent non-hamburger type food in this town. Jeramy ventured out to the new Chinese place today for lunch, but I'll stick to my sandwiches thank you very much.

Tomorrow Santa has to make a trip to Odessa for some last minute gift buying because Santa is an idiot and left the Santa gifts in the top of the closet back in Katy. Santa is really hoping there will be no problems trying to return the DSI sitting in Katy since a second DSI has been purchased to take it's place Christmas morning. Stupid Santa.

Today is Jeramy's birthday and I'm glad we still have friends in this town because I'm laid up on the couch with a sore throat and slight fever. He just headed out to go hang out and I think I will be heading to bed shortly after the girls. Cheers NyQuil!

Thanksgiving Pics

Some pictures from our time with Papa Dale and Nana Wood...we love you guys and miss you soooo much!

Gobble Gobble

Jeramy is offshore again and has been for almost a week now. That's one down, two more to go. The only thing that is harder than having Jeramy leave to go offshore for weeks at a time is having Jeramy leave to go offshore after three fabulous weeks home. It is definitely much easier to deal with him being gone when I am racing to get him to the airport because he is annoying the shit out of me. Lesson for Jeramy, please work harder to throw more pairs of underwear on the floor and don't eat the last pickle a few days before you leave next time...you should make things easy on the ones you love when you can.

We did so much and nothing at all his last hitch home. He got to take Ryleigh to school, go eat lunch with her and pick her up off the bus any day he chose. He got to help with homework and give me a reason to make real meals. And, we went camping. In college there was a group of us that liked to make an annual November camping trip to New Braunfels for a little time next to the river. Those trips involved much more beer and ham than our little family trip. I also remember the college trips being a bit more relaxing, but maybe that's because I was only responsible for one meal during the trip. So things change. And now it's a family trip and it was fantastic. The girls really had a blast and have never been so filthy in their lives. They are now expert duck scarer awayers and now know that smores are not meant to be made in a microwave. Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow the girls and I head to Brownwood to meet up with my grandparents for a little turkey, stuffing and hanging out watching the deer walk by time. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I can't even begin to list all things that I am thankful for in my life. But more than anything, my wonderful husband and my fabulous girls.

Here are the best pics from the camping trip:

Jobby Job

Because my life has been way too blissfully simple, unstressful and non-scheduled I have taken on a part-time job. It's something I can do at home and I'm basically the personal assistant for some friends of ours in Canada trying to expand their business into Texas. One of the things I have been doing is posting job descriptions on various websites in the hopes of finding them some employees.

Parents of 22-30 year olds, did you not think your child would need to know how to write a resume??? The Chinese are definately going to take over the world if what I've seen roll in so far from degreed candidates is any indication of the next generation of American workers. And it pains me to say this, but the worst have been from the Hire Aggies website. See for yourself. These are taken from actual resumes submitted by adults that claim to want to be hired. Enjoy.

OBJECTIVE To receive a well paying position.

Server: Performed server duties .....tipped $100 on numerous occasions for outstanding service.

OBJECTIVE Seeking an entry level position as ________ in research at __________.

Major GPR: ___, Overall GPR: 2.849


Seriously, glad you let me know that you are looking for a well paying position, otherwise I might have thought you want to work for free. Thanks for the heads up on the $100 tips. When we want to order in for a working lunch I'll know who to ask to set the table. And really, if you can't bother to remember to properly fill in the blanks on your resume template how the hell did you manage to remember to put on underwear this morning.

Ahhhh, it sure feels good to work again.

As Told By Melissa

My sister-in-law's sister wrote this on Facebook and I thought it was so funny I just had to repost here for my friends to read. Enjoy.

*Note: Dear Grandma, I did not write the F word, my friend did. I am praying for her as I repost this and laughing my ass of.



Ok, so here in Austin there is ample opportunity to be annoyed by bumper stickers, so you basically have to turn off your analytical mind while driving, or else you'll give yourself an ulcer. But today, I saw one that really drove me crazy. It said, "The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth." Why does this make my head explode a little bit? It makes no fucking sense AND the conclusions you can draw from its propositions are actually harmful.

Let's examine this. Proposition 1: The earth does not belong to us. Ok. Fine. The person is trying to express that we should stop trashing it. There are a couple problems here. A. People tend to take better care of their own property than they do of community property, so I'm more likely to litter on someone else's land than my own land. Maybe if the earth did belong to "us" we'd be more careful with it. B. Available empirical evidence DOES seem to suggest that the earth belongs to many of us. I know my parents have property titles. They also don't pour used motor oil on their own ground. (You should see them dumping barrels of crude on our neighbors' land though! Hilarious.) Now the ocean on the other hand, that doesn't really belong to anyone, so who is supposed to be keeping it clean? Community property is almost always a victim of free riders if it's not properly regulated. If I owned the ocean, I'd make damn sure that no one was overfishing it, so as to preserve its value.

Proposition 2: We belong to the earth. Now this is certainly the most obnoxious part, because it makes zero sense. A. Prove it. B. Ok, you're trying to say that when we die we all eventually return to the earth in some way, like as ashes or in the form of our blood running through the streets... Yeah, but this doesn't disprove that we own the earth, because when you die you relinquish your property rights anyway. So we can in fact die, having owned the earth, and then pass on our ownership to someone else. C. Let's say the earth DOES own us. The earth is a shitty property manager. If I were the earth and I owned all the humans, I'd evict about half of them. Now you may say, yees yees, that is what the earth is trying to do with hurricanes and shit. But then the earth is just stupid, because its really not targeting its enemies very well. People who tend to die from natural disasters are often people who are pretty darn poor and lacking in transportation away from said disaster, and you know what else poor people often do? (When possible) They conserve their scarce resources.

Now if I were to go find this lovely Whole Foods patron who so naively displays this illogical car art, and explain to her that her reasoning is flawed and actually counterproductive, I'm guessing she might employ some sort of interpretive dance hand motions to express to me that I'm missing the point because there is some sort of spiritual, communal vibe to it. Ok, whatever. So maybe I'm "reading too much into it." Well you know what? You're the one who posted this crap on your car for ALL to see, whether they want to or not, with some sort of childish hope that maybe one person would refuse that plastic bag at the grocery store or donate to Green Peace. Let's not dumb down these conversations. Let's admit that pragmatic solutions to problems, like well-defined property rights and regulatory bodies who actually have some sort of bite to them, are a good way to preserve the value of the earth's resources. Don't even get me started on all the terrible environmental destruction that has occurred in Africa (oil and water), the Phillipines (forests), and Brazil (forests) as a result of a few temporary politicians raping the resources that belong to "the state" and then retiring to the Bahamas or wherever. Oh also, take a look at the Iraq constitution where it says that "the oil belongs to the Iraqi people." Right.

So in conclusion, fuck bumper stickers.