Tune in next time, when our topic will be... Rice

There's a skit on Saturday Night Live called The Delicious Dish that always cracks me up. The most famous episode, apparently, is the one where Alec Baldwin is playing a character called Pete Schweddy and he makes cheese balls for the holidays. The best line from that particular skit is when one of the lady hosts says, "I can't wait to wrap my lips around your Schweddy Balls." They do such a great job with the double entendre and never once break character. I think the sign-out for that sketch was, "Tune in next time, when our topic will be (they pause, smile, and together say...) Rice."

Which brings me to the topic of the post: Rice. Fellan finally tried and loved some whole grain rice earlier this week. How can you go through 7 and a half years of life without trying and liking rice? Really. Rice. The most important food staple in much of the world? Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Well, that's not to say that Fellan has never been forced to try rice before. It's just that he would eat one grain of rice and refuse to eat the rest.

The stars must have aligned, however, earlier this week. He took a bite and literally gobbled down the rest.

We're going to be having rice again tonight. I'm interested to see if he has finally acquired the taste for rice, or if that was just a strange anomaly.

Halloween

I've been lazy this week and haven't posted a picture of the kids from Halloween yet! Well, here it is:

The kids decided to go with an Asian theme this year, I guess. I sprayed Marxo's hair with black temporary hair paint and put a little bit of makeup on the corners of her eyes and then wondered if this would somehow be considered being politically incorrect for some reason. I'm actually not sure why it would be, but I'm certain someone could come up with a reason. Instead, I just decided I wouldn't worry about it. :)

I was also lazy and didn't post anything about Marxo's birthday party. It was very fun and much less work that last year. My mom was very happy to find out that we wouldn't be making anything in the middle of the night like last year!

Except...

Well, I went to Whole Foods to order the cake on Friday after lunch and they told me it was too late to order something for Sunday. Actually, what they said was, "Well! It's a little late, isn't it?!" Uh, obviously I didn't think so, but I guess you've answered my question.

So! I set about trying to figure out how we were going to make the butterfly cake that Marxo had requested for her birthday. She wanted a cake with a blue butterfly on it. I knew I could make a chocolate cake and put chocolate chips on it, but I wasn't sure how to frost the cake, or make anything that looked like a butterfly.

Luckily, on Saturday, we went to Arne's (I love that place! My mom thinks it's a very strange place, though. She's right, but I still love it.) and found a cake pan with 6 butterfly molds and the husband insisted I get it to make Marxo's cake. I ended up making 3 butterflies and then outlining them with "blue" frosting (all-natural food coloring doesn't make nearly the good colors that artificial coloring does!) and I think it turned out OK. It tasted good and that was the most important part.


I'll try to be a little better about posting more frequently, but I say that all the time... :)

I should have known

Really. I should have known. I can't entitle a post with the word "Glorious" and not start singing that song from Ice Age 2. You don't know the song? It's really a catchy tune - and that's the problem. I now have it running through my head all day long!

Food, glorious food,
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day,
Our favorite diet!

Just picture a mammoth steak,
Fried, roasted, or stewed
Oh, food!
Wonderful food!
Marvelous food!
Glorious food!

Apparently, this song was written for the musical Oliver!, but I guess I've never seen Oliver!, so the only thing I associate it with is Ice Age 2. (Which is OK, because oddly enough, the Ice Age series are movies that I can watch over and over without getting tired of them. I don't know why - I get sick of pretty much all of the other movies we watch/listen to on car trips, but hearing the kids pick out the Ice Age movies in the back of the car always makes me perk up. Strange, huh?)

Anyway, I've had to resort to playing my "office mix" of music that I have on my computer. It's a good easy-listening mix of Lyle Lovett, Jack Johnson, Susie Arioli, and Sting with a little Nine Inch Nails thrown in to keep me awake. I think it will work as long as I don't scroll down on my blog page and read the next title.

Glorious

The weather over the past week here has been absolutely glorious. There's no other way to describe it! The oppressive heat was just suddenly lifted about a week ago. Amazing.

But, have we been able to take advantage of it? Nope.

We had hoped that we would be able to go mountain biking sometime this past weekend, but Marxo had some minor surgery on Friday (oral surgery), so we didn't want her to do anything really strenuous for the rest of the weekend for fear of causing bleeding.

On Sunday, we did walk over to the Black Lab for brunch, though, and played some chess with the kids at the outdoor chess board.

This coming weekend is Marxo's birthday party and I'm hoping that the weather stays pleasant for the weekend. My family is coming to town and it would be extra-nice for them to experience Houston in October when it's not beastly hot and humid! Wouldn't that be something?

This year, we're going fairly low-key for the party. Nothing like the butterfly extravaganza from last year. We're just having her party at a paint-your-own-pottery place and inviting the girls from her class. (See? I'm learning in my old age!)

Hmmm... but that reminds me - I need to order the cake and get some plates and napkins for the party. Marxo requested a butterfly on the cake again. I guess I'd better figure out what she has in mind.

Getting our lifes back

There's a commercial out there where the guy who invented *whatever it is he invented* talks about how it has helped people get their "lifes" back. Every time that commercial came on, it would absolutely drive me crazy! It's "lives", you idiot!!!

(My husband would like to get me a shirt that says, "I'm the grammarian about whom your mother warned you.")

But this commercial now serves as an internal joke between the husband and I when we talk about getting the house back in order. "Ahhhh, it feels so good to be getting our lifes back, doesn't it?"

It's still like we're on vacation. And it's really nice. Last weekend, we finished dumping out all the accumulated boxes and containers full of parts of toys that had been separated from the main toy and put everything back together and organized the kids' room. We expected that we would have to get rid of lots and lots of toys in order to make room for everything, but guess what? When you put all the bits and parts of toys together and put them where they belong? It doesn't take up nearly as much space! Imagine that. We ended up with only one small trash bag full of broken toys to throw away. Well, that, and a clean room!!!

I think next on my agenda is my side of the closet. It's gotten a little cluttered in there lately, but I think I can knock it out in probably three 15-minute increments.

Why 15 minutes? Well, in our quest to get our lifes back, I decided I would finally join FlyLady. I'm not really doing everything that she suggests since I'm spoiled and have a cleaning lady, but I am trying to use her timer idea in order to break things down into small, manageable increments. The whole idea is that "you can do anything for 15 minutes". Very true. And it's amazing what you can actually accomplish in 15 minutes when you're focused on your task. So, little by little, the house is getting back under control. I'm hoping that by Christmas, we'll be "fly"-ing on autopilot. Har, har, har. :)

Henna Hands

About 10 years ago, a woman with whom I worked showed up one day with orangish brown swirly patterns all over her hands. She told me that she had just gotten it done for fun over the weekend - I think she said something like it was a good excuse to have a cup of tea and relax while she was having it done - but that it's typically done for brides of Indian heritage right before their wedding.

I thought it was really pretty, and that's when my desire to have my hands henna'd started.

Finally, this past weekend, at our Fantasy Football draft, a friend of ours brought her henna. I had mentioned to her that I really wanted to have that done sometime, so she spent the entire afternoon giving almost all the women and little girls henna tattoos.

Here are my hands. I thanked my friend profusely and she said that I should have gotten it done by her sister - apparently her sister does this for brides and is very skilled. Here are some pictures of some really fancy ones. But I still think mine turned out beautifully!


Lucky for me, I work in a very international industry and nobody has really thought it was too strange. Everyone at work just keeps asking me if I was in a wedding over the weekend. I have to admit to them that I had it done just for fun at our Fantasy Football draft. That gets some strange looks.

They've already faded quite a bit. And by next week, I'm sure it will all be gone. But it was good while it lasted and I can finally say that I've had it done. :)

Freedom

Since I last posted, we pretty much went through summer and the school year started. Wow. That's pretty bad.

Well, I'll just fill in with the highlights. We went on a trip up to Nebraska to visit my parents, we went on a trip to Chicago to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and to celebrate our niece's second birthday, and we went on a trip to Colorado to visit the cool weather. It was a great summer.

And now, the school year has already started. Here are the kids on their first day of school. It's the second week of school now and they're still excited about it.


The husband and I are still excited about it, too. We feel this sense of freedom that we haven't had for the last 7 years - and it's not because both the kids are out of the house. It's because we've reclaimed our house to be our own!

I should explain. For the past 7 years, we've had a nanny/babysitter that came to our house every weekday to take care of the kids. She's wonderful with the kids, but, as I think I've talked about before, she's not as detail-oriented about putting things away as we might have hoped.

However, since both the kids are now in elementary school, we decided that we don't need her babysitting services on a daily basis. We're still going to have her come and babysit every other week so that the husband and I can have a "date night", but other than that, there will no longer be someone at our house every day.

And so we have this overwhelming sense of freedom suddenly. I don't have to worry that my cleaning up and organizing will go to waste. I have cleaned up a few containers in the kids' room so far, and they haven't filled up with miscellaneous stuff again. I can't describe the sense of peace that I get from thinking about getting our house back in order again. I'm taking it in baby steps, but at least those baby steps are not going to get wiped out every day again. *sigh*

Marxo's new bike

Last weekend we partook in the REI sale and bought Marxo a bike! She had only gotten hand-me-down bikes before, so she was extremely excited about getting a bike specifically for her!

We knew that it was going to be a little too big for her, but took her to the park with it that afternoon anyway. Well, we had nothing to worry about. She took off and never looked back. We're now dreaming about the day that we'll head to our favorite mountain-biking ranch with the kids riding their own bikes. Can't wait! :)

Fellan's Sick Day

Fellan got sick on Sunday evening. He ended up with a fever that lasted almost all day on Monday and since you're supposed to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school, that meant he had to stay home from school on Tuesday, too.

By the afternoon, he was apparently desperate for some sort of mental stimulation. He and the babysitter went out to "catalog plant species" and he apparently spent some time writing on the driveway and creating recipes in the kitchen. I always cringe when I see that the kids have been making "soup" with my spices because I know that I have some things in there that cost and arm and a leg, but I can't remember which ones! Anyway, here are some pictures of the evidence that he was bored yesterday:

If you look closely you can see the Start and the Finish. And apparently, "if you win you get 100$". I was home before the family got home last night from Marxo's gymnastics class, so I asked him for my $100. It didn't work.

This is a recipe he was creating. He must have gotten interrupted because next to this paper was a bowl full of water, paprika, smoked paprika, some empty pea pods that he must have stolen from the organic garden, and I don't remember what else. I cleaned that up before I thought about documenting his creativity in the kitchen. I'm not sure what you can make with "black barys, flouers, bazle, and res..." but I'm sure it must be good!

Bat Project

The end-of-the-year project for the first grade at our elementary school is to choose an animal and do a research project on that animal. Each child must choose at least three sources (can not include Wikipedia) and must include information from each source in the report. The written report may be either be in the form of a five-paragraph document or in the form of a book with a table of contents included. Additionally, an art/craft project is to be completed for the project. It can be either a picture or a diorama of the chosen animal in its natural habitat.

Are they nuts?! Don't they realize they're giving this project to a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds? And yet... Fellan loved it!

His chosen animal was the bat. This happened to be quite an easy animal for him to do - we have a "Magic Schoolbus" book about bats (Source #1), we found a website about bats (Source #2), and we visited the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony (Source #3).

The husband was in charge of helping Fellan write his report and he, of course, chose the "book" form of the report. (ugh!) Fellan finally completed it at about 8:30 last night, but we still had to do the craft project.

We had originally thought that we would just have Fellan draw some pictures and write some bat facts and put them on a presentation board. However, over the weekend, we heard several parents talking about making their animal out of clay or making some other kind of craft project, so we figured we'd better step it up a notch.

Enter the build-it-yourself bat house kit! The husband went out yesterday morning and found one of these so we could build it last night. Luckily, it was a very quick and easy project. We taped an "actual size" bat to it and called it good.

Man, if this was a first-grade project, I'm dreading what the coming years are going to hold...