Are there presents??

My poor literal minded child Anna was so disappointed this morning to find no presents under the tree. I put it up last night, I told her that Christmas is after Thanksgiving, and it was snowing a bit. That must mean it is Christmas, right? I think we need an Advent calendar. Or two, one for each of them. I don't even want to think about how many times they are going to ask me how many more days.

Pronunciation Tip O' The Day

Gearing up for the big game tonight and just want to make sure the announcers who read my blog are ready. Okay, when you say, "Notre Dame fumbled the ball again", don't get all fancy on us. It is pronounced "noo-tur" dame. It is not a cathedral in France, it is a school in the midwest. Of course if the phrase you are looking for is "huge upset by Notre Dame" feel free to say it any way you want.

Mining for Gold

I don't know which is more embarrassing, the fact that I haven't organized the storage room in the 2 years we've lived here or that Sean forgot we had an extra DVD player. When I was getting the xmas chaos out of the storage room tonight I decided to move stuff around since there was extra room to shuffle. So nice having the elephant of a fridge out of there, not to mention the xmas trees. Anyway, in the piles of electronics boxes that Sean hordes I found one that was surprisingly heavy. I figured it just had old cords and such in it (have about 5 of those boxes) but was quite mystified to open it up and find what appeared to be a never-used DVD player. I dragged it out to show Sean and he had vague flashbacks of getting it with the sound system, some package deal, was waiting until our other DVD player died. Huh, very convenient memory loss there as one did in fact just croak and he decided it was time to Blu-ray it. So we tried it out and it works, perhaps is a little outdated but I think I know someone who won't say no to a free DVD player. Merry Christmas Stephanie!! We'll throw in some DVDs too, unless you are ready for Netflix?

Also, the winner of the 1st xmas card contest is the Corum family, friends of mine from the Indy days. They actually tied with Conroe Medical Center but since I don't even know what state that is in, it doesn't count.

Back from the club

And then home to a sparkling clean kitchen, how delightful. Anna and Patrick barely ate anything and I'm so glad that it wasn't my hard work cooking that went to waste. Here is a picture of everyone showered and clean before we left. And again, where am I in this photo? This is why I splurge on a real portrait of us once in a while.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To ME! Oh man, I had no idea how excited I would be to NOT cook this year. I obviously enjoy cooking (due to my love of eating) and I make the Barefoot Contessa's "Not Thanksgiving" menu a few times a year, mostly so we can enjoy real turkey sandwiches, but I am just too tired this year to deal with it all just for the 4 of us, oh wait, I guess we are 5 now. Whoops. I reminded Sean that he wouldn't get to scrub the roasting rack today and he didn't exactly weep. Now I have more time to organize some of the closets and baskets of toys so we know just how much Santa does NOT need to bring. Actually, maybe Sean should do this since he is opposed to my idea for a minimalist approach to gifts this year, i.e. one thing they really really want from Santa and then stockings and gifts from the many relatives. He usually cracks and runs out on xmas eve to beef up the tree with more toys.

Once the house is really clean I can think about getting out xmas decor. I refuse to decorate for one holiday before another one is past, so I guess I can start tomorrow. I heard Denis asking why we had 3 trees in our storage room when he came over to help Sean remove the dead fridge the other day (many thanks Denis and Nancy for getting rid of that for us!!), so clearly decorating for xmas is no small task around here. And it will be lots of fun with Patrick, the un-decorator around this year... and here is a photo of him from the park yesterday, using my new filter.

Oh hey Mom, just hanging out...

I find Patrick in the toy basket far too often considering he hasn't yet figured out how to get out of it...

Eating Habits of the Catered to Children

I mentioned before how addicted the girls are to homemade bread (and butter too of course, wait until they find out about European butter, I need to keep that expensive treat a secret from them). Well, Patrick's morning routine involves taking him as quickly as possible to the kitchen when he wakes up (yelling) and then listening to him whine and yell some more as I thaw a pancake for him in the microwave. The longest 25 seconds of the day. Then I tear it up for him and he shovels it in with both hands, happy as can be. I usually make a double batch of pancakes and freeze them for this exact purpose. You cannot imagine how the day goes when I am out of pancakes and he has to wait for me to make one for real. I have stopped giving Megan them from the freezer so they will last longer, so now she is on to cinnamon toast, which means we go through bread even faster.

Now, while Anna is a huge huge fan of bread and butter, she is by trade a carnivore. We asked her last night what her ideal meal would be and she told us what would go in the 5 sections of her dinner tray: salmon, bacon, hotdog, craisins, and apple slices. Notice that all those meats are pink and easy to chew. Megan loves anything that is cheese and starch and the only meats she will eat are some chicken and salmon. I didn't have salmon until my late 20s and I'm glad I figured out early that the girls like it. Those little frozen packets of it are rather cheap and rather easy to cook (actually, easiest to grill them, at least for me since Sean does the grilling, haha).

Patrick is at that annoying stage where he can't eat a lot of stuff yet and throws all new items on the floor. So he lives on turkey sandwich meat, colby jack cheese, whole wheat crackers, bread, freeze dried apples, some cereals, pancakes of course, and some baby food, mostly fruit sauces. Notice the lack of vegetables, I am tired of scrapping those off the floor. He has started eating mashed potatoes which the girls continue to be suspicious of.

So, this explains why we are going out for Thanksgiving dinner this year. I am tired of doing all that cooking and cleaning up afterwards to make a huge meal that the majority of the family won't enjoy. I'll do a turkey later for sandwiches or maybe just wait until Howdy's has their hot turkey sandwich special and go there for some "grocery shopping", haha.