Cake

I have finally found an outlet for my "illness*"

This was the cake for April.
Chocolate with dark and white chocolate frosting.

This was the cake I made in May.
Vanilla with cream cheese frosting. Gemini (ergo the stars...)















* When I'm feeling blue, I bake. When it's cloudy and cool, I bake. When there's a clean kitchen, I gotta mess it up with flour. When it's just been awhile since I've had a good oatmeal raisin cookie, I have to try a new recipe.

April. In Photo Collage Format.

My desire to post weekly has been usurped by busyness.

First and foremost was the boy's camping trip. As in, no girls allowed. For a splendid 3 days/2 nights I had the most spectacular time all by myself. I was responsible for only myself, cleaning up (or not) after only one person. No schedule. Whatever I felt like doing. And I felt like going out and eating sushi and watching Hot Tub Time Machine. And I felt like doing a boatload of homework (part of my busy-ness has been taking web design classes. I've succumbed to the dark side.) And then I felt like going to a friend's party, but never got there. Instead I stopped by his house and scared him.  Probably the only time I'll ever be able to say that. We stayed up late talking about horror movies. yippee. it was splendid.

This was what was happening with the boys:

Then came Nbear's dance debut. His class has been learning the fast moving styles of Bollywood dancing, courtesy of another parent, and had been invited to dance at the Dragon Boat Festival.










Then there was Nbear's piano recital.



Goofing off afterwards.



Posing with the maestro(a?)



Baba & Grandpa came up that weekend for all of the nbear festivities and we helped Baba celebrate one of her own: a birthday! We stuffed ourselves silly at brunch and then at the end of our busy day we had cake and the customary candle licking (does everybody do that?) Happy Birthday Baba!

Easter Post. Before summer hits.

It's a busy week but instead of procrastinating on youface I thought I should post the Easter bits before it's summer and no one wants to see my eggs.

See my eggs? In their edible chocolate nest? With the scary off-putting green sugar grass? It couldn't all turn out picture perfect. But the coconut, pistachio and chocolate eggs couldn't have been cuter.

Here are some urchins wandering through our weeds scouting out eggs.

Apparently Jbird realizes that all good holidays center around candy and donned a Halloween costume.



Inspecting the haul.




Finding a brand new thing to do with our brand new "pond." It's not much more than a fancy big bucket sunk into the ground, but it has plans. In the meantime, it floats the Easter Egg Boats.

Hope ya'll had a good one.

Ahem. It's 2010.

Yes. Well Thanksgiving is well behind us now, isn't it? Breezed right through the holidays with nary a post. And I've made a small, teeny tiny, resolution to blog weekly. (I can't really call that a resolution because I think a resolution is meant to improve oneself... okay, well, hmm... but blogging inspires reflection, a moment to study the inner workings of my self and my life around me.) Okay. screw it. It's a bona fide resolution. You'll see it in the sidebar.

So!

The kids are back to school today and I was a little sad to see them go. (I know!) We were all getting into a good groove of getting along and doing groovy stuff. I can't even say that I was tired of the Legos (and believe-you-me, there was a heck of a lot of Lego's happening in my world...)

We spent most of the holiday here, seeing the full cycle of our tree from happy new spruce to needle-dropping fire hazard.





Chritmas morning saw the consumption of the annual Welsh cookies (a family tradition of my Polish & German ancestors...)





Here is Smith about to open the first present that I ever rushed out to buy on Christmas Eve, 10 minutes before the store closed. Can you guess what it is?




Nope! Wasn't these. These socks I had for a good month before Christmas.




Dad said dessert required a torch!




Still guessing? A mandolin.





We did head south to see my folks and my brother and his family and we had a splendid time. Even made some pierogis. (ours were the mashed potato and cheese filled variety. with the usual amounts of butter and onions.)

The boys, in their usual upside down position, at my brother's house.




My mom's splendid mantle piece.



Scenes from our hike, where the signs warned us of alligators. I'm sure they were hibernating, (right?) but I still couldn't let Jaybird out of sight. Reminded me too much of one my favorite bumper stickers: "do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."



What's a hike without a stick?





Baba made them work for their gifts.





I'm pretty sure that was an entire spool of curly ribbon.




This one's all net!





To ring in the new year we hosted a completely impromptu, last minute get together. Only 2 families showed up. (okay. maybe we only managed to call 3 families altogether...) but we had splendid time. My friend vetmomma brought me lemon curd and meyer lemons from her tree! When friends give you lemons, make lemon tarts.



Happy New Year Ya'll!
see you next week.

Summer of '09 Roundup

Since a few days of rain has transformed us into a spring/fall feeling (green grass out all of a sudden/cool temps and windows open) it is the perfect time to reflect on our summer, aka our "Minnesota winter" (we hole up inside because it is TOO HOT outside.) Who would have thought I'd be HAPPY to see 90 degrees?! Bring out the courderoy!

[Pour yourself a Pimm's Cup, this is a long one.]

Just as my momentous triathlon was complete, thus began my next adventure of having company! Yeah! My cousin D is one of my first cousins (I only have 2) amidst the array of significantly older second and third and once removed cousins that I am blessed with. Sadly, I have no good pictures of D to slide in here for good measure, but know that we swam in Barton Springs, ate bbq, went to our most famous state attraction.



Some were impressed with this:


notice the proud arm draped on the cold metal.

After we sent D back to his moderate-temperature locale, which is utterly lacking in BBQ, we got ready for the Cool House Tour. There was one project that Smith and I wanted to have done before the tour, but it just so happened to be the one thing that we could never agree on. We had been back and forth for the last year about the backsplash for our kitchen. I don't know how we ever agreed on this:



But we did.


Midway through the installation, I realized why the tile looked so familiar: it is the exact same pattern and color from the kitchen backsplash at my grandma's house. Ours is glass tile, while hers was ceramic.


And so we are cruising along to tour day and I think I have everything under control when Smith drops a comment while we are brushing our teeth:
"By the way, I think John Dromgoole will be here tomorrow morning around 8 or so to shoot a segment in our garden for some tour promotion."

spit.

gasp.

choke.

John?

yes.

Dromgoole?

yes.

tomorrow at our house?

yes. he liked the look of our raised beds.


For all of ya'll not from around here, John Dromgoole has what I fondly refer to as garden mecca. He is the go-to guy for organic gardening know-how, products, and all things growing. It's HIS dirt in my beds. It's HIS mulch all over my house. Most of the landscaping plants were from HIS store. And he was going to be at my house. And I hadn't weeded yet (today), because I've been dealing with this weed:

[From my "Texas Gardening The Natural Way," by Howard Garrett:
Nutgrass... There's only one guaranteed way to control nutgrass: Remove all the plants and nutlets by sifting the soil through wire mesh. Put this material in the driveway, soak with kerosene and burn to ash. Put the ash in a sealed concrete container, take it to the coast, ship 200 miles offshore, and dump in the ocean. No other techniques I know will work...]

It's as if Martha was at my house for dinner and I hadn't bothered to vacuum.
He was very nice. And he didn't know what else to do with the nutgrass either.


The tour itself was fine, if not exhausting. I think we had over 700 people in our house, and they were all very very nice. They were curious and asked lots of questions. It's like a pop quiz at times...
Why is there a window here?
How many eggs do you get from your chickens?
How does the solar affect your electric bills?
So how many square feet of bookshelves do you have?


I had to refer him to Smith for that, and he had an answer.



So with it being so unbearably outside, what did we do inside?
We tried to grow tadpoles into toads. Our creek had an abundance of tadpoles and the boys gathered them for rearing. Out of 10, only 1 was released into the wild.


we had fancy sandwiches



a tape project



playmobil! pirates! arrr! sushi?


- let's find some saltier salmon eggs!

- yeah, and crunchy seaweed to wrap around them!

- we have plenty of seaweed, now let's suck up those eggs!

- can you hear me captain?!








piano in pajamas



another instrument...



Smith worked.



made martianmallows



they were wonderfully fun to make! and beautiful! and tasted like. well. Nbear just had one. We built things with the rest before we tossed them.



Took apart a rotary dial telephone




Hey - we made it OUT of the house, all the way to Houston for my 20th high school reunion. which rocked. Here's me avoiding the camera for the "prom-style" photo.




And summer also sees a birthday or two.
Here's the cake of my 4 year old.







And the 40 year old. We even got to reuse the 4. The "0" we had to be a little more creative with.





the greatest show on earth! in glorious black. and white.


It was the boys first circus and they LOVED it. Also the first taste of cotton candy. They had seen it for sale in the grocery store (how wrong is that!) I told them it had to be eaten either a) at a circus b) outside at a fair.



And ah. the First Day of School.


and so far, they are still smiling.