5/29/12

Pizza Party

I'm the 'head'' chef of this house, but only out of necessity.  If I could figure out how to photosynthesize, I would be in heaven.  I have learned that fresh, made from scratch food tastes SO much better than the other stuff, but that also means more preparation.  There are days that I wish I could be satisfied, and my family, with a box of kraft mac and cheese and some frozen chicken nuggets, but that just doesn't cut it.  So I cook, the stuff we like, not because I enjoy cooking but because I don't like the way we all melt down when we are starving.  Which leads me to my love of Monday nights.  We shared dinner duty on Monday nights with the Allison's, some Mondays we cooked and the other Monday's they cooked, but we always had each other's company and that makes cooking much more entertaining.

A while ago Mary, Jason's maternal grandmother, gave us some individual pizza pans and I finally got the chance to try them out.  This was one of the best meals because I made the dough and the sauce, the Allison's brought the toppings and then everyone, including the kiddos, made their own pizza to their liking so there was no "I don't like this, I don't want that."  Thanks Mary, we all had fun making our pizza and they were all really tasty!

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5/20/12

Sunday Phone Dump

For those of you who haven't heard, I have finally joined the 21st century and ditched (actually Jason lost it) my super cool vintage 2006 flip phone and traded it in for a fancy 'smart' phone.  You know me I always want the best deal so since I am paying to have all these features I have to get my money's worth....  Without further ado I am introducing Sunday Phone Dump.

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p.s. I have a new number so if you don't have it send me an e-mail

5/19/12

Tiny Dancer

All first great performers must put on stage make-up before entering the stage...and Blythe is a GREAT performer...in case you didn't know.

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I was allowed to do her lips and her mascara...Mamo was assigned the rest

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The Great Backstage

To be or not to be, that was a difficult question.  Part of me yearned to be backstage to encourage and pep up the tiny dancers, but the other part of me wanted to see my littler performer do her first performance in the audience where I could take a gazillion pictures, like my life depended on it.  Seeing as I am not able to be two places at once I found the next best thing...My mom was backstage and I was front and center in the audience!

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The Performance

We're gonna call it a performance instead of a dance because the dance part kinda fell by the way-side.  At practice Ms. Constance had always stood in front of them and talked them through the dance.  Somehow that didn't happen at the performance so the tiny dancers did their own thing, which pretty much consisted of circling around  each other for the butterfly dance and then diving in the pond (except for Blythe) for the duck dance.  I posted the performance yesterday, but today I will post the actual dance that I taped during Monday's practice so you can see them dance :)

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At the end of the day, whether they remembered to circle, point their toes, turn around, lift their arms, not play with their duck bills, or just stood there it wouldn't really matter.  They're tiny dancers and just seeing them on the stage dressed up as mini ballerina's is plenty cute and plenty entertaining.

Someone was very excited about her flowers!

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A Sneak Peek of The Tiny Dancer

It's late and I don't have the energy to keep my eyelids open long enough to go through the pictures so here is the video of Blythe at her first ballet performance.  You will see during the 'duck' dance that she decided she needed a solo!  As my mom said "if you didn't get one, take one."  Much more on this tomorrow.  Blythe's second dance starts at 3 minutes 5 seconds.

5/15/12

Mother's Day

What exactly is the expectation for Mother's Day and where did that expectation come from?  As we dined with friends for Mother's Day we found ourselves discussing the difference in expectations (meaning culturally perceived expectations) for Mother's Day versus Father's Day.  It seems the custom for Mother's Day is that it's a day for Mom to lay back and not do a whole lot while the family fills in the gaps, perhaps a day at the spa, breakfast in bed, whichever of those fits the Mom in honor.  But in contrast, Father's Day seems to be a day when the Father is supposed to spend quality time with his kiddos.  Is the difference because the Mom's are perceived as spending all day everyday with their kids so they deserve a break where as Father's are off hard at work and need that dedicated day to spend quality time with their kids?  We didn't come up with the answer, but it was an interesting comparison. 

I really wanted to give Jason credit for actually remembering Mother's Day all on his own this year (3rd times the charm right?) but I just managed to gently remind him several days before so he had time to do something if he felt moved to do so.  [I asked him if he knew it was Mother's Day before I happened to mention it on Wednesday and he said "no, probably not."]

He had Blythe and Jericho put together a masterpiece for me, which I can't wait to fully dry so I can decide where in the yard I want to put them.

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I woke up to these wonderful things:

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I'm not the pamper me up and take my kids away kind of Mother so we spend Mother's day together, as a family, just the way I wanted it to be :)  And that includes some of the daily chores like hanging clothes on the clothes line.

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I've worked hard for those smile lines and I'm proud of them!

I wouldn't be celebrating Mother's Day in the same way if it wasn't for these two cuties

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You know when you are really excited about a present or just any surprise in general and you think you want the person you are surprising to try to guess because you are just so sure that it is SOOO good they won't ever guess...yet it seems like 90% of the time this person knows you well enough that they guess  it fairly quickly, of course you keep giving them hints until they come up with it and then you don't know what to do because you don't want to admit their right before they open it or before you arrive...  Jason gambled on that game and I guessed where we were going to eat, BUT although his face said "DANG IT YOUR RIGHT" he wouldn't admit it, he just denied it, but his expression was more telling than his words.

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We had a skiptastic Mother's Day....Hope you did too or that you created one for that special Momma in your life!

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