fat tuesday

Eat those pancakes while you can: Lent is starting tomorrow!

We're a household of lapsed Catholics- both the Dearest and I were raised in the religion, but neither of us are currently part of a church. However, the Catholic guilt is strong and long-lasting and tends to make itself known during the big Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter. After 10+ years of Catholic school (back in the day when real nuns ruled the classrooms with iron fists) there's no way I'd forget that Lent is starting soon.

Since today was Fat Tuesday (also known as Shrove Tuesday), I decided we should have the traditional pancakes for dinner. When I told Little Man my plan, he was shocked: "Pancakes? For dinner?"

I used a simple recipe & made the pancakes from scratch...after resting in the fridge for 20 minutes they were ready for the griddle.

And of course you can't sully from-scratch pancakes with store-bought syrup. So I found a recipe for homemade syrup and gave it a try. It turned out quite yummy- not too sweet and a little thicker than real maple syrup.

day 50 of 365

Now we're ready to face Lent!

have a happy Valentine's Day!

day 44 of 365

Red roses from the Dearest for V-Day. Chocos were included, but they are currently being eaten.

A sweet and happy Valentine's Day to you all!

birth day

-Saturday night dinner with the Dearest, followed by a massage at the local chi-chi day spa (heavenly)

-not having to do the dishes AT ALL- for one whole day

-uninterrupted craft time so I could cut and arrange this:

-wearing my new Noro Silk Garden Light socks while knitting with good friends at LPK:

-smooches and tickles from Monkey Boy (who is finally feeling much better).

-"birthday gift flowers" picked by Little Man himself:

All in all, a nice way to spend a birthday!

how to cause and cure a migraine

Little Man is nearly five and somehow we have managed to prevent him from visiting Hell On Earth (aka Chuck E. Cheese). He's occasionally seen commercials about HOE/CEC, and now that he's in preschool some of his friends have told him about it. In the past few months he has asked several times if we could go to HOE/CEC for lunch so he can play games. I've always told him no, mostly because my one visit to HOE/CEC many years ago gave me an almost instant headache. I remember the place as being very dark, dingy, loud and dirty. So my motivation to go inside the local HOE/CEC was minimal.

But then we received a couple of birthday invites from some children in Little Man's preschool class. Both of them were for parties at HOE/CEC...one on Saturday (today) and one on Monday. Luckily my neighbor's daughter is in the same class so she was also invited, making it easy for us to swap watching the kids at the party. I took Little Man and Blondie to the party today, and my neighbor will take them on Monday.

I had braced myself for a repeat of my last HOE/CEC experience (this time including the fun of running after Monkey Boy, Little Man and Blondie). However, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The local HOE/CEC is actually very clean, well lit and has a huge bank of windows to let in lots of natural light. They had all kind of arcade games, including skee ball (remember that?):

And of course Monkey Boy loooooved the train/trolley (he probably spent 25 tokens just on this ride):

While Little Man greatly enjoyed this contraption:

All in all, the experience wasn't as bad I thought it was going to be. Unfortunately after about half an hour I started getting a nasty headache. By the time we left, I had a nice little souvenir: a migraine. ugh

Luckily the boys crashed when we got home and I was able to take a short nap. When the Dearest arrived home from his workout, we decided to head to our favorite Shabu Shabu restaurant for dinner so I wouldn't have to cook.

Shabu Shabu is a lot of fun: they give you a big plate of very thinly sliced meat, another big plate of raw veggies and a pot of hot water. You swish the veggies and meat around in the water to cook them, dip them in ponzu sauce and eat up.

day 27 of 365

The small men always love Shabu Shabu- even if they don't get to do any swishing themselves. Tonight Little Man was putting pieces of carrot on his chopsticks and "warming" them over the pot like he was roasting marshmallows.

Monkey Boy's favorite part of the meal is the 'ndoodless' or noodles. He's gotten pretty good at slurping them up:



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The Shabu Shabu was good enough to cure my migraine and I'm feeling ever so much better now. :) Off to bed, because tomorrow I'm doing a yarn crawl with the lovely Ms. Chelle. Maybe I'll even take some photos (ya think?).

more from NYE 2006

For NYE, we attended the annual neighborhood progressive party and ate waaaay too much delicious food. There were three stops: appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. By the time I got to main dishes, I was already full from all the scrumptious appetizers. I managed to shovel in a bit more yummy tortellini....and of course I was able to find a bit more room for the desserts.

A couple more snaps from the party...

my little party goer


this photo cracks me up because R is holding both sippies AND booze


desserts YUM


watching the ball drop in NYC at 9pm local time (perfect for the kiddos)


more 'snow'!

more pics here if you're interested.

And what did we do on the first day of 2007?

cleaned the kitchen


took down the lights


played

I think this evening will involve dinner, playtime with the kiddos and maybe even some knitting. Hope your first day of 2007 is wonderful, too.

happy new year!

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Snow on New Years Eve? in Southern California? Yup!

all the fam-damily

We visited with the Dearest's side of the family today....he comes from a rather large Irish Catholic clan (he's #9 of 10 kids). When they get together, it is always a loud, fun and exhausting day. There were easily 30 adults at the party, at least six or seven teens and a whole passel of little kids.

Little Man and Monkey Boy loved playing with all their cousins. It's interesting to watch the older kids showing the young ones how to play....

Also fun to see the teenager who is 'too cool' take the time to blow bubbles for the littles....

There were cupcakes, gifts for the birthday girl, and lots of running around. I'm sure SIL's house is a sticky mess, but it was worth it to see everyone having so much fun. Thanks, A, for having us all over!

Finally, a photo of Little Man and Monkey Boy on their favorite toy of the day, a red plastic slide...

Some more photos here.

happy birthday to the monkey

newborn monkey:

2yr old monkey:

happy happy day to my littlest monkey man!!!

the madness descends (an epic post)

As the child of divorced parents, I spent most of my teen and early adult years celebrating two Christmases: my mom would do Christmas Eve and we'd have Christmas day with my dad. Things got hecka more complicated when the Dearest and I got married- I remember one year we were at my Mom's on C.Eve till midnight, then up at 9am to go to my Dad's, then we hit the In-Law's house at 2pm. It was all a bit much.

Once we had kids, we tried scaling things back. We still did C. Eve at my mom's and at least one Christmas Day celebration with family. One year we did my Dad's house, the next year we went to the In-Laws'. But as Little Man got older (and we added Monkey Boy to the mix), it got harder and harder for us to make it out of the house on Christmas Day. The kids really didn't want to leave their new toys behind to be dragged to someone else's house for a turkey dinner.

So we decided that we'd still to Christmas Eve with my mom and we'd spend Christmas Day at our home, making our own traditions as a family. The Dearest's parents are very understanding of this and don't expect us to make it on Christmas Day (tho we will be attending a huge family gathering later this week involving all the out-laws....probably 30-40 people).

My Dad, on the other hand, is another matter. His health is getting progressively worse and he hasn't had a driver's license in at least 5 yrs. We always make the effort to include him in our Christmas Day, but he often pulls his passive-aggressive act and refuses to play along. Some years we can talk him into attending and some years he begs off. When he does attend, it involves the Dearest going to pick him up & drop him off....a trip of nearly an hour each way. Bless the Dearest- he never complains about my crazy relatives!

All of this is a long-winded explanation of why I have so many photos to share. So here goes:

Christmas Eve:
We had a visit from "Santa" (aka our neighbor Frank). All of the neighborhood kids were gathered at one home and Santa rang the doorbell....

yummy cupcakes and Christmas decor


little man enjoys a cupcake


monkey boy meets Santa (photo courtesy of Jen)

Then it was off to Grandma P's house for a traditional turkey dinner and much gifting:

"it was a hit and we didn't even take it out of the box"


monkey boy's favorite gift

Back home for a late night....boys wanted to play with their new toys! So they were up till 10:30pm. Monkey Boy did NOT want to go to bed without his train & ended up falling asleep with the train in his arms.

Christmas morning was filled with fun surprises, including seeing Santa's footprints in front of the fireplace. Little Man said we should be very careful that we didn't get any of the magic powder on our feet because it would make us fly like Santa's reindeer.

And this:

was very quickly reduced to a pile of torn paper and empty boxes. (more Christmas photos here) Monkey Boy's favorite gift involves his trainset:

While Little Man is really enjoying his new Leapster games:

The small men were quite spoiled but loved every minute of it and so did I! Christmas is ever so much more fun with little ones.

ETA: I will be posting a FO report on Monkey Boy's sweater tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get to it).