flashbacks and baked goods

i guess the o-house girls really took that last blog post to heart. look at our trash can now:

it's march! what better way to celebrate than with a blog post? i absolutely love march for the following reasons:

1. march madness.

*i'm fully aware that i'll get crap from everyone but abby about this. i don't care. rock chalk.

2. my half-birthday is the 17th. (just in case you're the type of person who gives half- birthday gifts.)

3. sprrrrrrriiiiiinnnnngggg break! here's a flashback to yesteryear:

*jayne, SB will not be the same this year. but please come visit the o-house soon!

*o-house and friends in chi-town. good one, becca.

4. it's not february.

not that february wasn't great for the o-house girls. it was just very cold. inside and outside... (ahem, sydney.) but the chilly weather gave us an excuse to stay indoors and practice our baking skills (a.k.a. man-catching skills):

*blackberry cobbler. recipe courtesy of pioneer woman. mmmmm.

*mocha pie. also courtesy of pioneer woman. super rich and delicious. thank you to kelsey fink for making sure we mixed it for the full 20 + minutes.

*that's right. we're foxy and we make pie.

i don't think i saw jennie hull at all in the month of february. i was about to send out an amber alert, but luckily she appeared the other day. apparently she's been spending all of her time boiling eggs and running.

speaking of jennie hull, here’s a little o-house flashback to last semester. this is a new blog segment i like to call classic moments in o-house history:

now back in the golden era of the o-house, when toby lived here, syd was going out of town for the weekend. she was positively freaking out that we were going feel burdened by toby, or worse, forget to take care of him. in typical sydney fashion, she brought it up at least a dozen times and jennie and i assured her that we didn’t mind at all and that toby would be in mint condition when she got back.

so she left.

about five hours later it occurred to me that i hadn’t seen toby. i did a quick search, couldn’t find him, and concluded that jennie must have taken him somewhere.

a couple hours later, they still weren’t back. and keira and i got a little worried and went downstairs, where we found jennie, but no sign of our canine friend. it quickly became clear that jennie did not have toby, had never had toby, and that toby was long-gone from the o-house premises.

we hypothesized that he had somehow gotten untied in the backyard. by our calculations, he had been gone for up to seven hours, and was probably halfway back to Wichita. we frantically called syd, who had turned off her phone. naturally.

the obvious next course of action was to get in jennie’s convertible, put the top down and drive all over manhattan yelling:

“toby! toby! toby! toby!” and

“toby, come back to the o-house. we love you!” and

“toby, we have a delicious treat for you!” and

“TTTTTTOOOOOOBBBBBYYYYYYY!”

*clearly a post- search party reenactment on the porch.

no response. no sign of him. we finally had to concede defeat and head back to the o-house, where keira had a cake burning in the oven.

i started bracing myself for syd's reaction when she found out that toby was, in all likelihood, deceased. and then i thought about all the other millers and how they weren’t going to be too happy either. after all, syd’s dad once had one of their other dogs AIR-LIFTED to save its life.

so we sat around for awhile, eating burnt cake and reminiscing about toby’s life, and trying not to imagine him dead in a ditch somewhere, or lured into a stranger’s van.

and then my phone rang. it was bethany brabec, who was with syd. here’s a transcript of the conversation:

“bethany! ohmygosh. aaaaahhhh!”

“did you think you lost toby?”

“huh? what? no, WE DID LOSE TOBY!”

“no, you didn’t. syd left him with ashley for the weekend.”

“what?”

“yeah, she forgot to tell you.”

“that little-“ end of transcript.

and there you have it, the first of many classic o-house moments in history .

oh speaking of ashley, as an o-house BFF, she deserves a shout-out. we love her not only because she makes waffles in the shape of barnyard animals, but also because she took the o-house family pictures this year. and she is loud/hilarious/superhot:

ashley: come to the o-house more often. and bring your waffle iron and camera!