Spring Break: Home Alone….

As the More is More Mom®, I’m all about……more suspiciously quiet weekends! Spring break is quite the phenomenon. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone that went away for spring break. It was merely a week off of school where we enjoyed sleepovers with our friends and had the luxury of sleeping late in the mornings. For as long as Chuck and I have had a family of our own, we have not been avid vacationers (I’m rather a homebody). For the past 12 years, while our kids have been busy with athletics, we’ve had the pleasure of hitting all of the hot spots; Peoria, Kalamazoo, Milwaukee, Detroit, Fort Wayne, the Dells……are you jealous yet?  

Life has been so crazy busy lately. Chuck does Commercial Real Estate and Land Development with a partner, and they are up to their eyeballs in building a fabulous, brand new Harley Davidson dealership in Palatine, while I have several design projects in various stages of development. This is definitely not a time for us to get away. My mom is awesome though, and saw this is a great opportunity to whisk Nick and Amanda away to visit with my brother and sister-in-law in Hot-lanta!

The kids couldn’t pack their bags fast enough, leaving the cold behind (and who could possibly blame them?). After Wrigley and I returned from dropping them all off at the airport, our house suddenly felt extremely quiet. We are accustomed to a free for all; activities, friends, laughter, arguing, Nick and Amanda wrestling, exercising contests, music, the blaring television…… The silence was deafening, and it was only one o’clock in the afternoon. What were Chuck and I going to do for the rest of the day much less the rest of the week?  

Because we sure do know how to live, I warmed up some left over taco meat and we feasted on a huge and delicious mound of nachos. I closed my eyes for a few blissful moments in-the-middle-of-the-day! We scrolled through our DVR and watched three hours of American Idol (which is really about 90 minutes of actual viewing time once you take out all of the commercials and the boring parts). We watched the movie Morning Glory, with Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford. It was delightful and charming. Afterwards, flipping through our cable channels, we settled upon 1982’s Tootsie, with Chicago’s very own, Bill Murray. We rotated around our television viewing positions, from our family room, to our basement, to our bedroom to avoid developing bed sores.

While the peace and quiet was really very restful, I’m thankful that we won’t have to become accustomed to it any time soon. I live for the hustle and bustle of family life, even the noise, the arguing and the wrestling. This is seriously going to be the weirdest week ever.

More eerie quiet, more catching up on favorite TV shows, more being bored together…..

Sugar, Pumpkin Spice, and Everything Nice…

As the More is More Mom®, I’m all about….more pumpkin bread! Nothing says cuddle up and sit by the fire with cozy autumnal comfort better than nibbling on homemade pumpkin bread. My people would eat it everywhere, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, on a log, with our dog…..

Pumpkin Bread:

Pre-heat oven to 350°

In a medium size mix bowl, combine;

2 ¾ cups of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

2 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

 

In a large mixing bowl, combine;

1 cup of butter softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

Add 4 eggs, one at a time

Blend in 1- 29 oz can of Libby’s solid, packed pumpkin

 

Add dry ingredients, being careful not to over stir

 

Grease and flour two loaf pans

Split batter in half

Cook for one hour

 

 

Cool, remove, slice and serve

I like to store the pumpkin bread in the refrigerator; it seems like the pumpkin flavors absolutely intensify. Delicious!

More autumnal traditions, more tasty morsels, more family memories…

Once Upon a Time…..Two People Fell In Love

Do you know what 10,519,200 minutes, 175,320 hours and 7,305 days have in common? They all represent 20 years (including five leap years!). Today, that is exactly how long Chuck and I have been married. 20 years may certainly seem like a very long time, and it is, but I can attest, from experience that 20 years can absolutely fly by in the blink of an eye….

Chuck and I met the month before I entered my sophomore year in college. The following summer, when I was a mere 19 ½ years old (only two very short years older than my Nick is now…..) we got engaged. There isn’t all that much we don’t plan for; over the six months before we were engaged we researched and learned about diamonds, so that Chuck could make a good investment; we always consult consumer reports before we purchase anything, and then comparison shop; when we were ready to start a family we interviewed doctors in advance so we were confident in the person that would be delivering our children (and we were); before we took the plunge in purchasing the house in which we have raised our family, we rented in the area for a year, just to be sure that we really liked Winsome, IL…..where winning is a way of life (we did!). So, as planners, it should come as no surprise that we were engaged for three years before we were married!

When we wed, we were merely children; I was 22 and Chuck was 25. We were young and dumb! In this day and age it is a small miracle that it has all worked out, but I would attribute a good deal of that to our commitment to each other and our children, and a little bit of good luck. That’s not to say that over the past 20 years we haven’t experienced both joy and heartache…we have, but that’s a life that has been lived……..

 

 

 

How do you summarize 20 years of your life, wrap it up in a neat little package and tie it with a bow? When I really think about it, it’s actually pretty easy and rather extraordinary; what began as a pair of two very young and inexperienced people full of love, devotion, optimism, trust, faith and hope, has turned in to a very happy, successful and genuinely loving family of five…..Chuck, Vanessa, Nicholas, Amanda and Wrigley (I can’t even begin to fathom what our lives would have been like without him!) and I see that we are the luckiest people in the world. My only wish is that we might have the chance to revisit these past 20 years, just one more time, because they have gone by far too quickly for my liking.
Without my little family I would never have had the opportunity and learned to become the person that I am today…..the More is More Mom®. Because of these wonderful, tolerant, patient and amazing people I have had the good fortune to experience; more love, more fun, more trouble and aggravation (!), more pride, more giving, more support, more acceptance, more patience, more heartache, more compassion, more satisfaction, more good and happy memories, more closeness, more worry, more loyalty, more devotion, more laughs, more entertainment, a more fulfilling and complete existence…… In a life time, what more could a person ask?