Thursday

Hello, Internets! (I stole that from Jana's blog because I thought it was funny.)

Only 2 seconds to post so it's list time!

1. Getting back in touch with old friends on Facebook is super fun and also kind of emotional (in a good way!). I did not expect that!

2. We're having our Thanksgiving dinner this Sunday, and we're having Jamie's parents and Jason and Leah over. I'm very pleased with our menu which I'll post later. The girlies and I are going to decorate with Mexican fiesta colors and it will be Fun (do you hear that, Claudia?!?) instead of traditional autumn colors because that's what I'm in the mood for at the moment. I will, as usual, try to get the girls to dress as pilgrims or turkeys and they will probably shoot me down as usual. So rude!

3. Claudia retained her first chair position in band.

4. Sammy's having fun writing her nanowrimo novel again this month.

5. Jordan's trying out for The Sound of Music soon.

6. Jamie and I are going crazy with church committee stuff but in a good way.

7. Amy and Marinda are safe from the fires this time.

8. I'm afraid that chocolate AND cinnamon are migraine triggers so my life is over AND I HOPE YOU'RE ALL HAPPY! (sorry, I have to blame someone and it looks like it's going to be you. Yes, you.)

9. This morning as I was chatting with one of my suburban acquaintenances, one of Sammy's friends' mom, I found out she and her husband are liberals. And seriously, I have tons of friends of every opinion, religion, orientation, etc. and etc., but it's nice to find like-mindedness in the Indianapolis burbs, if only so we can whine about the abstinence-only sex ed in our district.

Halloween II

Big Mixed Bag of a Halloween this year. Tuesday night was just one of those perfect nights were everything went well. The kids got their homework done on time, we ate dinner pretty early and then we just had a great time carving pumpkins. Halloween itself was probably the funnest the kids have had maybe ever, but the holiday was definitely colored by the fact that we didn't have Sam with us this year (she was traveling with her mom).

Claudia dressed up as a Zombie and went trick or treating with four of her friends (her first year sans parents--wah! I'm ok!!!) and then they all went to one of the friends' house to watch the Soup and last week's SNL.


My friend, Julie, mother of Jordan's best friend, S., picked Jordan up at school on Friday, did the kid version of wined and dined (they did Happy Meals at McDonald's) and then they went to meet two of their other BFF's and went trick or treating. These kids, OMG, had the biggest haul of candy I've ever seen. They knocked on doors for three solid hours. After I got off work and took Claudia to her friend's house, Jamie and I grabbed a snack and met up with them. After trick or treating we hung out with Julie and some other parents and then came home.

Halloween I

Sammy watching Jamie carve out the pumpkin guts.

Jordan listening to Jamie Tell Her Things about Using Permanent Markers Near the Furniture.


Sammy and Jordan looking through the pumpkin carving patterns.

Carving pumpkins.

Sammy's pumpkin.

Jordan's pumpkin.

Claudia's pumpkin.

Spring Break Part III

Ok, so generally speaking, really the only reason to make your own soft pretzels is if you have a whole lot of extra hours on your hands or for some reason you can't get to the mall. However, we did have a lot of time on our hands today and I'm in the process of teaching the girls to cook so pretzels it was.

We started on the pretzels this morning and by 3pm, we had some. We made dough, the girls played outside, we did more stuff to the dough, we ate lunch, the girls went outside, we did more dough stuff, the girls went outside, more dough stuff, more dough stuff, then we boiled them, decorated them with course salt or cinnamon sugar or grated parmesan and then baked them and then I made frosting and that got drizzled on. All this work resulted in a supremely *OK* baked....thing.

Sammy and Jordan kneading the dough.


Making the dough into pretzel shapes.



Claudia decorating her pretzels.


Boiled and decorated and ready to bake.


The finished product.

Spring Break Part II

This morning we had Baked Alaska for breakfast. Hey, it's better than donuts!! Yesterday I made a pound cake (I need to find a better recipe because the texture of this one was weird) for it and then the girls made a very nice meringue this morning and we baked it. We put it on the top rack so the peaks burned but the ice cream survived and the kids all liked it. Success!!






Magic Rocks are growing like crazy.


Day one of playing with homemade gooze. This has been a big hit and played with a lot. It's also, apparently, something Bo doesn't like to eat, so that makes one thing!

Day two of playing with the gooze.


Sammy and Jordan cutting out homemade dog biscuits to bake. They mixed up the dough out of whole wheat flour, powdered milk, egg, chicken broth, and oil. Bo loves them! (The girls and the biscuits)

Spring Break Part I

Yesterday we went online, found photos of animals, printed them on transfer paper, I ironed the photos onto unbleached muslin and then we made pillows.


Sammy did the running baby elephant, Claudia did the baby tapir and Jordan did the baby ostrich.


I did emperor penguins.


Today we harvested moss out of the back yard and made terrariums. We threw some slag glass in for color. Claudia made one out of a big water bottle so she can use it for a habitat for her turtle.

The only people not going to Florida.

It's us. We're not going to Florida for spring break. The children tell me that Everyone is going to Florida.

Whatever.

Anyway, I'm on vacation Wednesday through Friday this week and I'm super excited about it. I have a tons of things planned and it will just be so nice to be able to spend time with the girls just having fun.

Sammy's Birthday Sleepover

Friday night we had a sleepover for Sammy's birthday at which the number of girls in attendance equalled the US deficit. Well, ok, not really--but the screaming did sound like we had trillions of girls here instead of just 9. We had a pinata and Sam and Jordan's very adorable Unitarian friend came to me to so earnestly share with me that an injustice had been perpetrated--not everyone got to hit the pinata!!!. To which I just had to reply, well, that's part of the pinata experience. Go get some candy! I think Sammy had a good time, so that was the main thing. I think Jordan and the guests did, too, so that was good, too. And they pretty much left Claudia alone so Claudia was a happy camper. They all seem to be very nice friends. There was some mild trouble with one because she's pretty hyper but she's a nice kid. They stayed up until 3 or 4 or 5, depending on which girl you asked.

Here's some of the food. Sammy picked out kabobs--fruit and chicken nugget--and lime sherbet punch. Not pictured: The requisite cheese pizza and potato chips.


The lame-looking cake that was only ordered several hours before the party, which I feel *bad* about and that I had to sort of bully the cake person into picking out the cake and writing on it for me. Guess what? No you *don't* need 24 hours notice on a cake! So annoying. But hey! Disappointing results, anyway!


Here's Sammy getting ready to blow out the candles. Isn't she adorable?!?!!


This is Sammy attempting to open gifts. She started out on the couch with just Jordan, who was writing everything down for her so she could do thankyou notes) and then it devolved into this. And then Sammy tried to move off the couch and away from everyone and they followed her.


Here are the treat "bags". They decorated flower pots and made shrinky dinks.

Easter

Easter was so much fun! The night before we dyed eggs. We used food coloring instead of the egg kits and ended up mixing 20-something colors from instructions we found online. After church the next day, we made a really delicious/low key meal of roasted salmon, basil/shallot new potatoes and steamed broccoli. And I made a strawberry italian cream cake with strawberry cream cheese icing inspired by my friend, Jana's holiday cake. And we ate on Grandma Esther's Dessert Rose china.

Then we had the most raucous, free-for-all easter egg hunt I've ever been a party to. Claudia, who, when younger used to only get a few eggs every year because she was too shy to assert herself when she spied the same egg as another litle child, apparently found her Assertive Voice this year. She set the tone from the very first second by running through the house, tossing eggs in her basket as fast as she could go, yelling, "I AM WINNING! I AM WINNING!" so the little girls followed suit and started competing with her big time. The hunt was a full contact sport complete with much laughter, dirty tricks (stealing out of others' baskets) and tackles and at one point, Jordan was completely pinned in the coat closet. Oh, My God. They found the 156 eggs that were hidden, the dog was in complete shock, and then Claudia insisted they count their eggs to determine, once and for all, who was the champion, and the loser had to be sacrificed to Jesus (sorry, she's a Unitarian Child and she's embracing it). I was looking through her basket afterwards and found one of the little girls' hubba bubba eggs they got from the easter bunny. When I told Claudia she had to give it back she opened it and got a piece of gum out, and slowly raised it to her mouth, sort of laughingly looking me in the eye, daring me to tell her no. She nibbled it mock savoringly and said breathlessly, "Victory tastes sweet." And then she hopped up, skipped over to the little girls and gave the gum back.

The only bad thing of the day was I completely didn't have the energy to make cascarones this year. Kids were disappointed. Oh, well, there's always next year.

Egg dyes. Everything from jungle green to maize.


Claudia decorated some of hers with drawings done in sharpy.


The finished product.


The baskets.


Determining the "winner". It's like raising the Geller children.

Happy 10th Birthday to Sammy!!

Yesterday was Sammy's 10th Birthday. We had a small family celebration last night with boiled shrimp (which she loves), a cake made by Jamie and decorated by Claudia and presents. Next Friday night she's having a sleepover so we're working on getting that together this weekend. Kind of late, but we'll pull it off!

The Birthday Altar!


I love these two photos that were taken right after Sammy was born. And look at the snapshot of cute little Baby Sammy in tbe highchair! I also love that Annie is in that photo because Annie is still very much a part of the family.

Stuff Lately

This is Jamie making my birthday cake. Sweet, no? He's using a mix, which, fine, it was delicious. I, however, rarely, if ever use a mix. So when we were gettting ready for bed he mentioned that earlier Claudia told him it was the best cake she had ever eaten. >:(


This is the delicious cake. Jamie made homemade chocolate cream cheese icing.

This is Claudia and her band getting ready to perform for the contest judges. They were AWESOME! and they won a Gold!

Claudia had a great time at her youth convention in Dayton. It was super foggy round trip so that was kind of sucky and tiring, but it was worth it listening to how much fun she had when she got back home.


Sammy was in her stepsister's wedding this weekend and we went to that on Saturday afternoon.


Yesterday the Leprechaun left everyone chocolate coins and the girlies wore green so there was no pinching reported.

And Sunday afternoon Jamie and I went to the Indianapolis Opera's performance of Tosca and that was an interesting experience. And by interesting, I mean boring. We're going to try another opera sometime--probably Madame Butterfly or La Boheme. We had excellent seats, though, so that was nice.

Happy Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was Susanne's birthday. Happy birthday, honey!

The main birthday celebration is tonight, but we did it up a little bit last night with a mexican feast. Susanne has always been a recognized potato-savant, but last night we discovered she was also quite the frijole master. She made the best refried beans ever, like ever. (I helped by mashing. I helped!)

Anyway, I hope they made the midwest a little more tolerable.

Here's the birthday girl ready to start her new life as a neopet bean chef. (Susanne-as-neopet art by Claudia.)



In other news, Claudia has been working very hard on a speech she has to give at school. She chose the Iraq War as her topic. (Opposed.) We're proud of her--the speech is very solid, and she practiced it over and over last night. Wish her luck!