Archive for June 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Dinnertime Nap

Vaughn fell asleep while eating dinner two nights ago. Bib still on, food all over her face, clutching her sippy cup of milk like a baby doll.

She hasn't been napping and I think it has finally caught up with her.

After school yesterday I was trying to wrangle her up the stairs and she just yelled out, "I so sweepy!"

Yesterday was the first time she napped in awhile.

It was a good day.


Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Brew Thru - Cinci cont'd.

I've never been to a Brew Thru. Never even heard of one before. It's Genius.

Pretty straight forward. A small building with two garage doors and a lot beverages. You don't even have to get out of your car. Just pull on through.


Or you can walk on through, like we did. Vance picked out a root beer. They even give out dog bones to, you guessed it, dogs. (Frannie the dog dove into the treat bag and has been cut off for the next few visits. Poor Fran. She's a hungry girl.)


There's even snacks there! They've thought of everything!




It's the small things that impress me.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Cinci

We took a long weekend trip to see friends in Cincinnati.





More later. Right now, morning routine stuff, getting banana bread into the oven and prepping for a playdate.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

I love you, Internet

My Internet has been down. Finally back up and running, but gotta get the kids to school!



Friday, June 18, 2010

The Beetles. Not to be confused with The Beatles.

It seems that Japanese Beetles are taking over our neighborhood. Wikipedia lists their favorite plants and we have four of them in our front yard alone.

Here's a close-up of our weeping cherry tree. The beetles are "skeletonizing" the leaves at a rather impressive pace. We had them bad last year too, but I think they're even worse this year.


Justin and Vance spent some time last night shaking branches and combing the beetles off into a bucket full of water.

(Vaughn and I watched through the front windows and took pictures because Mommy is a typical girl when it comes to bugs. Especially these. You can't shoo them away. If they land on you you have to literally take them off of you. One has gotten stuck in my hair and it was a horrible experience. I nearly hyperventilated just downloading the pictures from last night. I'm not proud of this at all.)

A neighbor from a couple streets over stopped and said they have them bad too and that there's some kind of Grub-ex that can be put down into the soil during the spring to kill the larvae of the beetles. We'll be looking into that next spring and in the meantime I guess we'll be hanging out with them.

Bastards.

The beetles. Not you. Have a great Friday!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Food Dreams

Every morning, when I get the kids out of bed, I ask them what they dreamt about. For the past two mornings Vaughn has told me the same thing.

"Chickens. And sausage."

She's one in a million.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Mid Summer Rut

I'm out of all good ideas of things to do with the kids. Is anyone else?


Vance is old enough to know all my tricks and cannot be entertained with measuring cups and a blow-up pool anymore. Everyday, after putting Vaughn down for her afternoon nap, Vance just looks at me with a "What now?" expression.

I'll tell you what, he's never up for watching the Housewives that I've been trying to catch up on. Horrible, horrible TV, and I frequently ask myself, "Why am I watching this?!?" But that's a whole nother post!

He's bored with me and whatever I suggest. Even if he does the suggesting, by the time I get everything ready he's already done with it.
Maybe this Kindergarten thing is coming at a good time. Hmmm....

We're in a rut. If anyone has any great ideas please pass them along.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Worm

Dear Internet,


Sadly, it has become clearly evident that I am not capable of doing what I once was able. I've known this for awhile but I always forget. I'm getting old and my body is failing me.

Celebrating Thursday night's episode of So You Can Think You Can Dance, I showed Vance how to do The Worm. For those who don't know The Worm is a dance move. I used to be able to do it with great ease.

Turns out I should never do it again.

I didn't know it that night. My body took it upon itself to delay the soreness until the following afternoon. I hurt from my waist up. And Vance never learned howto do The Worm properly. A lose, lose. We're a mess over here.

(A typical night, around 5:00. Kids in costumes, dancing.)



Friday, June 11, 2010

Garden Update & First Harvest

Here's how our garden is growing:


The tomatoes are doing great so far. The only pest yet is the neighbor's golden retriever who likes to stick his paws though the fence. He can reach the cages and give them a good rattle. This may be become a problem.

Everything else has been growing a bit slow. The cucumbers finally jumped this week and we now have 3 growing. The red pepper had had two blooms, but they've fallen off.

We picked the first tomato today.

Nothing like farming in your PJ's! Great way to start the day!


Have a great Friday!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Cruising


No big falls. No scrapes. Nothing. Yet.

We took him to an open area to practice and to our surprise, he just took off!

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Vance is done training

This wasn't our intended conclusion to the evening. After dinner we headed out for a walk and towards the end Vance's bike chain broke. To fix the chain one training wheel must come off.

Lately we've been talking a lot about taking his training wheels off. Vance seemed to think that when he turned 5 he could automatically ride without training wheels, kind of like drinking when you're 21. Or voting when you're 18. We were waiting to take him to a large flat area to learn and not our hilly subdivision, but oh well. We already had the one off, so here goes.

Of course, Vaughn had to help.

And the wheels came off.






He did great! No crashes (yet!) and was able to ride by himself for a bit. I wish I had video of his best run. I'm still laughing to myself about what we must have looked like. Vance is riding by himself but is going in a sharp zig zags. Left! Right! Left! Right! Justin is running behind him laughing, Vaughn is next in our dysfunctional parade and is crying because she wants to ride the bike too. I was bringing up the rear, just soaking it all in. (And cursing age 5 yet again. Baby stealer!) We're so proud of him. Hope tomorrow's practice goes well!

Yard work. Yawn.

I'm a little too excited about the hydrangea's growing in my yard. I can't help it. Here's a plant that I don't do anything to. I don't feed it, don't water it, and it just grows. And makes beautiful flowers from the whitest white to the bluest blue and every color in between.


My Ethel's got a workout over the weekend. We worked on all sides of the house trying to de-clutter the plants. We trimmed bushes. We trimmed trees. We pulled a lot out. Now everything has a bit more room to breathe. Now we just need to re-mulch the front and possibly plant a few more small perennials in the front for color.
(Ethel took a spin in the washing machine before the picture.)

We replanted 4 of the boxwoods in planters on the deck. Hopefully they'll live because I like what they're doing out there.



There's 15 or so yard bags that are outside on the curb waiting to be picked up. I'll be happy when they're gone.

I'm aware that this is incredibly boring. I just needed to get it out of my system.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Ice Box

Vaughn hasn't mentioned princesses since I last mentioned it here, which has been at least a month ago. They're back now.

"I need a pwincess.", is how she asks for her costume. Vance wears costumes about 75% of the time we spend at home, so I'm thinking this is why she wants to wear a costume too. She only has one princess dress and she has wore the hell out of it these past two days.

It's a head scratcher because she's not your typical "princess". She's more of a tomboy, so it's funny to see her in a pink, shiny dress.

Think Refrigerator Perry in a dress. Princess Ice Box we shall call her.

She puts it on and says, "ooohhh...dancey, dancey" and twirls around. Then she'll ask you to "move" with her. If you're sitting she'll even uncross your legs and pull at your hands to get you up onto your feet for some good, old fashioned hand holding circle dancing.

It's a hoot.


Here's Ice Box getting ready for the park in her tulle skirt. She wanted to wear the princess dress. This was our compromise.

A belt would have so completed this look. It's Tuesday, which means the kids have school, so I get to hang my Mommy Hat up for a few hours.

Hot Dog. Enjoy your day.

Vance's 5 year checkup

Vance had his 5 year old doctor appointment last Friday. He's weighing in at 45 lbs. (77%) and is 44 inches tall (72%). He also got the "Kindergarten Special" as the nurses refer to all the shots. He tried to be so brave but burst into tears and reached for me when they were all done. It broke my heart. He could've asked for a pony at that point and I would have given in.


Vaughn got two shots on that day also, since she wasn't feeling well on her real 2 year old check-up I decided to hold them off. Vance went first and after Vaughn witnessed everything it was a bit tricky getting her up on the table.

Tears! Both of them! Good thing I had suckers in my purse. That stopped all the crying. On with the rest of our day...

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Our Daisy Fuentes

I woke up knowing what today was.

I didn't remind Vance.

We decided to take breakfast outside today which was a first for us. When we were done we checked out the flowers that he had grown from seeds.

"Aren't they beautiful Vance?"

"Yeah, but I still miss Daisy."

"Me too Sweetie."

We still talk about her all the time. And we all still miss her very much. I can't believe it's already been one year without her.






Friday, June 04, 2010

Can I make good pizza sauce?

Why, yes I can!

I stumbled upon a new blog, Make It Do, and had to try this pizza sauce. I couldn't believe that something so easy could be so good. My pizza was a bit different than hers (I didn't make dough and didn't use all the toppings that she did) but it was really good. Check her site out for much better pictures and an exact recipe!

Get Sauced:
Olive oil and chopped onions in a pan. After a couple of minutes, add in chopped garlic and tomatoes. I used 2 Romas and 1 medium sized normal tomato. I quartered them, added them to the pan and squished them a bit with my spoon. Let them cook until they're soft, add in salt, pepper, whatever else you want. (I added a little sugar to help with the acidity.) When they're really soft mash them with a potato masher. I also added a little San Marzano tomato juice that I had leftover from a previous salsa flop. This helped thin it a bit. Water or olive oil can be used too. I think the whole thing took maybe 15 minutes.
Here's my sauce when it was all done.

In the meantime I had the kids work on their pizzas.

Vance took this of Vaughn. I've found it best to keep both my hands free when Vaughn has access to open containers of anything.

Here's our finished pizza:


Sauce, chunks of goat cheese, onions, mushrooms, mix of pizza cheeses and monterey jack, and basil on top. I used a Boboli pizza shell. (I've had horrible luck with real dough. I've tried making my own and using box mixes, but nothing has worked out for me. The best so far that I've tried is Trader Joe's pre-made pizza dough, but honestly I don't mind Boboli. It's fast and there's no clean-up involved, which is a huge plus.

Happy Friday!


Thursday, June 03, 2010

For New Mommies


This is Daphne from coolmom. She hosts her own TV show, is married to chef Mark Peel, and lost a lot in the whole Bernie Madoff scandal. Here she talks about what it's really like being a new mom.

It's all so true.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Eight

Eight is the number of the day!

Vaughn had her first day of school today. Vance is still also in school, so this means I will have
eight glorious hours of kid-free time per week now.

Here's the obligatory before school pic:

Eight is also the number of years we've been married as of today. We celebrated with a kid-free lunch today. No picture of us, but here's one of the beautiful hydrangea's that Vance and I clipped from our yard today. (Hydrangea's were one of our wedding flowers.)


Happy eight to us!

 

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