Drops of Awesome

We have a problem.

We have a van.

The van has no name. Okay, the van has a name. Right now we are calling it the Mighty Muffin. This name is unsatisfactory.

This week I would like tips on what to name the van. The person who chooses the winning name for the Muffin will receive, fame, glory, a web banner similar to the one seen on the right, and all their wildest dreams will come true.

Some hints to help you come up with a good name, a winning name, a name the Daring Family will adopt as their own:

1. Past Daring vehicle names –

The Flying Smurf

Howie (inspired by Howie of the Backstreet Boys, determined to be chic but gutless)
As a random sidenote, I will republish a poem written by a 13-year-old girl in a teen magazine, dedicated to the aforementioned boy band member. This poem has been recited many many times in the most serious tone imaginable while driving that vehicle:

Howie, Howie, he’s our man
If he can’t do it, no one can
Howie, Howie, he’s our man
If he can’t do it, no one can
Howie, Howie, he’s our man
If he can’t do it, who can?
Nobody, nobody, nobody, that’s who.
Howie, I love you.

2. Van Facts – The Muffin is a gold 2000’s Toyota Sienna LE with dual sliding doors (one power), a decent stereo system, and tan interior. It’s a sweet ride with a powerful engine that drives like a car but turns like a bus. I am the primary driver, with Laylee and Magoo as first mate and chief petty officer. The van is currently gender-neutral.

3. Family facts – We travel consistently at 4 miles over the speed limit. We plan to fill the van with small people eventually. We like boats, mountains, jazz music, the color puce and wireless internet. We live in the Northwest where it rains all the time. We eat spaghetti at least once per month. Our KitchenAid is red and our garage is gigantic. We bake foods that are meant to be fried. We speak Chinese, French, English, and Pig-Latin.

Good luck coming up with names. The contest will remain open until midnight Pacific Standard Time on Monday, January 9th. (If this goes well, maybe we’ll name our next child this way.)

This contest is open to all legal residents of planet earth, regardless of hair color, favorite vegetable or preferred boy band. No purchase necessary. No limitations or exclusions apply. Must be 5 or older to play or have parental consent. Void where prohibited. Multiple entries are encouraged.

I do have resolutions every year. I try not to go overboard. I always do. I never hold myself accountable for what I resolved. This year I think I’m gonna make a star chart or something. How’s that for iron clad accountability? If I do the star chart electronically and have it load first thing every time I turn on my computer……

Here are a few of mine:

1. Vegetation – At least one quality veggie at each meal – pathetic, I know.
2. Primpage – take more care to look like….not the way I look most days.
3. Readerly-ness – Read one book club book plus at least one more each month.
4. Religiosity – this one’s just for me and Somebody else to discuss.
5. De-pudgification – No poundage goals here, just eat like a normal person and find a reasonable way to exercise more than my current twice per week.
6. Blogdom – Schedule my blogging time after higher priorities have been accomplished. What? This isn’t my first priority? It shouldn’t be. Remember the old “no video games until your chores are finished” rule? That’s how it’s gonna go down.
7. Think/Speak in tandem – The goal here is to actually think before I speak. With the amount of time I spend talking, if I would stop to think before I spoke, that would be a ton of thinking. I surmise it will turn me into a wise, kind genius afore 2007 shows its little noggin.
8. The kindness and the patience – More, please.

Here are a few of meme (via Liz):

Here are the fill-in-the-blank sentences:
1. Stop buying things on sale just because they’re on sale.
2. Use more of the weird things in my food storage to make yummy meals like boiled wheat goo and dried unknown legume/veggie stew.
3. Get rid of my little post-partum helpers.
4. Change my hair style from the nappy mommy-tail to something a little more hip and attractive-o.
5. Concentrate on the sweetness of motherhood rather than the poop.
6. Try to be a better listener, even to three-year-olds. Let’s face it – nodding and saying uh-huh to your kids while you type away on your blog is not exactly award-winning human interaction.

12.27.05 Ringing in the New Year

12.20.05 Driving With Kids

12.13.05 Holiday Traditions

12.06.05 Christmas Gifts-For People Who Have Everything

My family has come down with the plague. It starts with body aches, primarily in the forearm region and spreading throughout the body. Next is chest congestion, complete lack of energy and strength, followed by nasal congestion and a strong desire to leave this mortal body.

My parents came down with it first, followed by my brother and sister-in-law. Dan has had it for a few days and now my forearms hurt and the energy is gone. I’m hoping I’ll get some mild, supermom-can-kick-this-plague’s-hiney version of the disease. We’ll see. The Ibuprofen I took this evening sure were nice.

The kids are waiting to get sick until it’s time to make the long trip home. This could be very bad or very good. They may sleep the whole way or they may just scream their brains out. Grey matter all over the new van. Not pretty. Oh, and we’ve already had the van professionally cleaned once this trip due to my lovely spill-record on the way down here. Nice!

On Sunday we’re supposed to visit Dan’s aunt, one of my favorite people. She is currently battling cancer and can’t tolerate any germs. So we’re working on getting better before then.

I love being with family, both mine and Dan’s. I can be myself in a way that’s not quite possible without them. I’m not sure I even like this “me” better, but I just feel safe. There is no pretense.

I am jealous of the relationship my siblings have with my Sister‘s daughter. They know her intimately, her likes, her dislikes, her habits, the translations for her adorable baby babble. They are closer. It hurts a little.

They love my kids and are excited to see them. They can’t get enough of them. They just don’t know them the same way they know Bean.

Sometimes I wish I lived in a country where family stayed together indefinitely and took care of each other, no one moved to Washington, they just all lived together in some kind of commune (minus the stock-piled weapons, inter-marriage and nasty food. Don’t all communes have nasty food? If you are from a commune, feel free to dispute this.).

We go to the store almost constantly on vacation. We bring all kinds of things we will never use and forget tons of things we “need.”

Yesterday we took our daily trip to –Mart for an air mattress pump. We decided to go for the quality and get the $20 Coleman model. Yowza!

So, our cashier offered us a one-year extended warranty to protect our investment. For the cost of only $2.50, we could rest easy at night for a full year, knowing that if our pump burst into incendiary destruction, we could have it replaced free of charge.

Why not offer me a deal where I pay 50 cents extra for my pack of chewing gum? Then if it loses its flavor after 30 minutes of chewing, I can bring it back in for a refund.

So, crazy as it seems, 2005’s getting its butt kicked out the door and we’re welcoming in 2006 in a few short days.

The year has just flown by. I can’t believe it. Oh – My – Word. I am in such shock. I may fall over dead from the astonishment right here in front of this very Christmas tree, blah blah blah and all that stuff where I act like I’m gonna faint dead away that another year’s gone and left me – like a cheatin’ husband in a cheesy country song. Oh WHY!?

Wait!

I’ve started to notice a trend and I’m going to go check the data.

Please hold.

Yep, my theory holds true. Every year, at about this time, it happens. I’ll write down these findings and maybe next year it won’t come as such a surprise. Now we’ve just got to find a way to deal with this year’s shock and awe the best we can and move on to live happy and productive lives in 2006.

A couple of fun things I’ve done to ring in New Year’s past (after scraping myself off the floor, dousing my head in a bucket of ice water, and taking a nice stiff drink of Caffeine-free Diet Dr. Pepper):

1. I had a boyfriend once (I know, hard to believe) who took me up a high mountain somewhere outside Denver eeearrrrly in the morning on New Year’s Day to watch the sun rise on the New Year. He said he’d done it every year and wanted to share it with me. It was beautiful and a good chance to think about what we wanted to do with our lives over the next 12 months.

I broke up with him 2 days later.

2. I still stick with the old standby – at 12:00, you need to find someone to smooch. I’ve got my eye on a certain person… sitting next to me… in flannel pj pants… with a matching lap-top…. writing code for fun.

I plan to stick very close to him the evening of the 31st.

What will you do to ring in the New Year? Are you a resolutions person? Do you stick to them? How do you make it special?

From my sister’s blue couch, Utah, I’m Kathryn Daring reporting.

Merry Christmas everybody!

As promised, here is the actual Christmas card photo we sent out. I hope you all are having fun hanging out with real people, people who do not live only on the internet (People who live on the internet AND in real life are acceptable for holiday fun.).

I’ll be back on the blogosphere in a few days.

I apologize if you live south of Seattle and we’ve passed through your town on our Christmas road-extravaganza. We’ve brought the rain with us. Seriously. It’s been pouring the whole way. Better than ice and snow, better than skating all over the freeway. Besides, we have that sweet rear window wiper now.

I’ve been using your travel tips and many have worked. Karli tipped me off and we’ve made great use of some Cinderella magnetic paper dolls. The DVD player has also earned its keep.

In the hotel, Laylee slept in her own queen-sized bed, spread out like a starfish. When she heard people making noise upstairs, she said, “That’s rich. I’m gonna get rid of all the noise.” We stayed in a hotel that Karen had marked as “questionable” on her list of possibilities near her home. We chose it for the free wireless internet. Internet was good. Broken glass found under Laylee’s bed, not so much of good.

Fun things we’ve seen along the freeway:

A grounded helicopter covered in Christmas lights and left it by the side of the road to excite small girls named Laylee and big boys named Dan.

A Christmas tree hanging from a crane, suspended 10 feet above the ground next to a pink Cadillac with fins, and a pink flamingo.

Magoo’s first tooth.

Laylee’s two-year-old molars’ appearance.

A 100% perfect spill record for the DYM. Every fluid or food item I touched the entire trip has now exploded all over my van, my clothes or my kids.

A man walking along the top of a semi-truck. Dan suggested that maybe this was not a trucker. Maybe it was Tom Hanks’s hobo-ghost-alter-ego chillin’ down state-side with some trucker friends before his busy weekend terrorizing children on the Polar Express.

First, I would like to say for the record that when I left Karen’s home last night we both said it was too late and we wouldn’t post until today. Of course, I couldn’t wait to post something. So I put my post up and then hopped over to The Big Trade-Off to see if she could wait. Alas, we even had similar titles on our late night posts…

Planning for my “blind date” with Karen and her family, I had packed some of our cutest clothes, my makeup and a hair brush, in anticipation of getting primped out to make a good impression. She would never know how nappy we could be at our worst, the kids in their pajamas and I in my stretch yoga pants.

Driving for 11 hours through the rain had slowed our trip just enough that we didn’t have time to stop at the hotel first. So, with un-brushed teeth and hair, wearing our rattiest clothes, we arrived to meet our new friends.

Cool was adorably fun and Laylee was immediately smitten with him, referring to him by his first and last name and following him around, learning about trains and Bionnicals.

He had things to teach me as well.

From Cool, I learned that all kinds of people like all different kinds of drinks. Karen brought him some water and Laylee some juice. “This is good water. Some people like water and some people like juice. People like to drink all kinds of things. Some people like soda or Pepsi or Dr Pepper or coffee. Some people like just water.” So cute.

The toddler girl spoke so much like Boo from Monster’s Inc. that I think I will call her that from now on. She wore her hair in an adorable pigtail, tied with a pink gingham bow and her beautiful eyes laughed when she played with Magoo. He loved her. We all did.

Karen and the Brownie had made the cutest flannel PJ pants for the kids. I am so excited to show them off to the fam.

I got to wear the green sweater AND hold the wisemen.

Oops! That was close!

We had a wonderful meal, with nary an awkward pause in conversation. Mr. and Mrs. Trade-Off were such fun hosts that we had a hard time dragging ourselves away. I think when we finally left, it was close to midnight, they had slaughtered us at Rook and Karen had rocked Magoo to sleep (a task that seemed beyond mine and Dan’s ability).

When I first started blogging, I had many motives, free therapy, an outlet for my writing bug, an audience to practice on. The last thing I expected to come of this was friendship. What a lovely surprise. It makes me want to move to WakaWaka, MiddleState and move in next door.

The blog world and the real world can co-exist peacefully.

Karen and I had a great evening in the real world, our families meeting in person for the first time.

They were lovely, the kind of family you want to stalk after playgroup and hope they will want to be friends with you. Dinner was awesome. The kids were gorgeous. The house was beautiful and sparkling clean.

The Daring Family was nappy, travel weary and in need of a shower or two.

More on this tomorrow.