sporadic

Goodness gravy friends, I am a blank slate today.

I had a nap this afternoon.  I laid down and set my timer for 30 minutes.  That usually does the trick.  This time I was interrupted 20 minutes in.  Feeling cheated, I ignored the timer when it did go off and then slept fitfully for too long.  I'm going to blame my brain funk on that.

Want to hear a sad story?

Once there was a family with a rockin' awesome trampoline.  Over the course of 5 years in the brutal Arizona sun the pad on the trampoline wore out.  The family was fix'n to replace it but before that happened the trampoline's mat ripped during a family jump fest so now they needed both a pad and a mat.

The family was left with the trampoline frame and a 3 foot deep pit in the yard until they saw fit to buy 2/3rds of a new trampoline.

The End.

By the way, I'll be taking the next few days to practice a bit on my new blog and think up a giveaway for all those who follow me through the switch.

I'll be back Monday with the low down.

Technical struggles Yo!

Me, I'm not to great with the technical what have yous. I ride on the coat tails of my techno savvy husband and that usually gets me by.

However I recently got an iphone.

He chose a windows phone for himself.

What this means is that I have to actually learn how to do stuff myself.  Normally anything I use he already knows everything about so I just ask him how to do everything and all's well.

Not this time.

Tear.

I'm having issues with blogging instagram photos and If I want it sorted out I'll have to do it on my own because his Windows phone doth not instagram.

In other news; GUESS WHAT! I'm moving!

Not physically.  Physically we're still here in the same little house.

My cyber home will be moving at the end of the week.  You'll all be invited to see my pretty new site on Monday.  In the mean time I'll try and learn how to use instagram such that I can share instagramish things with y'all.  If'n you want to follow me over there, my user name is eva_uniquety

peace out.

Thursday Morning

Every year since it began I've thought about running the local Thanksgiving morning 5k. Last year I even went so far as to visit the registration site.

 Thanksgiving eve as I sat seeking motivation to retrieve my phone the lazy guilt gnawed at me until I up and registered.

 I got up Thursday, fed the kids, put on my runnin' things and moseyed on down to the starting line.

 It was the best 5k ever.

 Here's why.

 Most of the serious runners in the area have bigger fish to fry which left me, slowpoke thought I am, passing more than being passed. I'm not going to lie; this was a first for me.

I am not fast but I can knock out 3 miles without stopping no problem. In this race that meant I finished easily within the first half.

 The race was held at my normal running time with road conditions I'm perfectly accustomed too.

I made it through the first 2.5 miles without noticeably becoming anyone else's speed gauge. You know when a nearby runner pegs you as their person to beat.  "As long as I finish before her I'll be doing all right," you can practically hear them thinking it every time they put on a burst of speed and stagger past you.

This time right near the end I started hearing somebody huffing persistently just over my right shoulder. It started a ways back and got louder and closer and louder and closer until I was thinking of stopping for a minute just to get whoever was causing all the racket out of my blind spot.  Finally, he passed me (thank goodness) and I was left in peace.  That is until he took a walking break, I passed him and it all started over again.  Rather than finish out the race annoyed by the noise I went ahead and crossed the street.  It was a good decision.

 

While I was running I didn't think I was actually a pacer for noisy guy. I thought it was just unfortunate running proximity until Mr told me how just before the finish he gunned it to cut ahead of me.  That's right the dude in the forefront of the above action shot was the noisy runner. I suppose maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he was just gunning for the finish without regard to whom he overtook along the way.

This was a low tech sort of event. There were no chips to fasten to shoes.  No sound system, announcements were made with a simple megaphone. I didn't even get a bib number. They were all out. So I had to keep my own time.

33 minutes.

 My best yet.

Take that Huffington Post.

prep

I am sometimes on the lazy side.  

For example now.

I have a picture on my phone that I want to post about but my phone is over there. "ihn!" that was the sound of me reaching in vain.

After dinner tonight I busted out the pies for tomorrow.  Well, one pie and one empty crust.  I need to make the chocolate filling for the empty one still.  Also, I think I need some pie weights.  Blind baking pie crusts almost always brings me unsatisfactory results.  Either the edges fall, the whole thing shrinks or (like this time) once the bottom is done the sides are over brown.

That paragraph was an attempt to undermine the truth telling I did at the top of this post.

Mr is getting the turkey all cozied up in it's brine for the night. His productivity mocks me.

Our menu for tomorrow is: Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stove top (I hate stuffing, Mr must make due) roasted carrots, roasted beets, raspberry jell-o, rolls, sweet potato pie and chocolate pie.

We none of us care for cranberries so we don't bother with them.

Each kid is the helper for a dish.  Ziz made the jell-o this afternoon. (individual ramekins=fancy) Moo helped peel the carrots and Enzo is all psyched up to help mash the potatoes.  Duke's job is not to sneak out and ride his bike down the middle of the street all by his eighteen month old lonesome.

I guess we're all set for tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving yo!

pinkified

After two long years I finally got around to painting my piano.    

Zizza has completed Suzuki book one on her cello and so we hosted her book recital on Sunday evening. That recital was just the kick in the pants I needed to finally get on with that project. We needed the piano to be in tune for the recital and I wasn't about to have it tuned before we hauled it out to the garage for painting and then back again.

As often happens in procrastinating circumstances such as this, I finished the painting but not in time to have tuning scheduled. Ziz was accompanied by a ravishingly pink but out of tune piano. Priorities, you know?

 

We topped the new loveliness with a forest of autumnal trees. I did this project with Enzo's class for the harvest party and had extra paper bags all prepped and ready to adorn the pinkness when she came back from the garage.

 

It was a great project, I recommend it. The trees and the piano both.

Baptized

My beautiful baby girl was baptized on Saturday.

 

One of the ways the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka-Mormons) differ from other Christian churches is that we don't practice infant baptism.

 

We believe that young children are perfect and unspotted. At the age of eight they are mature enough to be accountable for their actions and thus ready for baptism.

 

My girl was ready. She read The Book of Mormon (all 531 pages) for herself this past summer. The seed of faith is growing in her heart and I couldn't be more proud.

 

List making

It's that time of year.

 People are making lists.

 Even Enzo got in on the list making action. He wrote two grocery lists tonight.

The first list reads "Goldfish, apples, bananas, lettuce, cucumbers." The second list says "fishies, celery, broccoli, peas, beans, oranges."

This is the first time I've seen him do this kind of thing, and by "this kind of thing,"  I mean attempt to spell things on his own.  In the past he's dictated all his list making to me. He likes nothing better than to make a good grocery list if he's got a notebook handy.

I used to have a little book with his name on it filled with lists he whispered to me during church.  I suppose I should get him a new one.  He had to borrow pages out of his sister's notebook for the lists tonight.

hectic

Friends, this week is going to be a doozy.  I'm hoping to keep up, but I might not.

 I have a pretty darn fancy dress to tell you about (also make) and Duke has been so darn adorable this past week(ish) spouting off new words left and right I'll be needing to effuse over that at some point but I don't know if that point will be a part of this week.  

What I'm saying is, I'm gonna try friends but I can't promise anything too spectacular.

See you tomorrow. (maybe) 

Fit

Duke has spent most of his life on clothes too big. He is a spring baby with a winter baby for an older brother. All of my baby boy clothes are a season off in size. We're really getting into trouble now because while Enz was a tiny boy to start out with, he beefed up quite a bit right after his first birthday.

Duke is only weeks away from eighteen months and I'm still waiting for the beef up there.

 In other words: Dukes winter clothes are extra huge. Even huger than we've become used to. He's rocking rolled waist bands and bunched sleeves like they're going out of style.

 At the beginning if the summer after I got out all the too large clothes I had for him to wear in through the months of stifling heat I decided to get him a thing or two in his actual size. This ensemble became my favorite.

 

It's so refreshing to see him proportioned correctly, without his drawers slipping down and sleeves to his elbows. This outfit gets extra points for the shorts being short enough to show off his squishy little knees. Dear me I'll miss those shorts in a few weeks when things get too chilly for them.

 

I sorted through the 2T box today. I couldn't keep the smile off my face unfolding the T-shirts that swathed my Enzo through his second year. Passing down clothed is so much more than economical. I'm so looking forward to dressing Duke in all those dear clothes. I mean, if he ever gets big enough to fit a 2T

 

wheat

I've mentioned a time or two my effort to eschew processed foods from my family's diet/my kitchen. It's a hard thing to do. I've taken the first few steps, I'm looking around trying to figure out what the next one is.

 Since we all start out differently in this food dance I thought I'd share what my first step was in case someone else has paused on the dance floor, keeping time while surveying the other dancers trying to figure out what to do next.

 I wanted to start cooking with whole wheat. Specifically freshly ground whole wheat. I tried in the past to make the switch using whole wheat flour from the store and that was a dismal failure. Everything I made came out awful and brick-like.

 I had since acquired a wheat grinder and I knew freshly ground flour would make all the difference but it was such a lot of work. I'd have to get out the grinder, dig out the wheat from whatever dark hidey hole I had it stored in, grind the wheat, put it back in it's hidey hole, do my baking (hopefully I'd ground enough or I'd have to get that wheat out again) empty any left over flour out of the grinder, decide where to store that flour and then clean, pack up and put away the grinder.

As you might imagine, I ended up using white flour most of the time. The whole grinding ordeal was just too much. Until...

 I had one of those mad strokes of genius one day. "Why am I keeping all this white flour on the counter in this easily accessible jar if I don't even want to use it?"I asked myself, "And why is my wheat packed away for long-term storage if the goal is to make it a part of my everyday baking?"

 These were the thoughts that led me reform the contents of my counter top storage jars. Before I had white flour, sugar and white rice in the jars. Now I have Wheat, rolled oats(need a refill on that one) and brown rice.

 

Behind the jars is my wheat grinder. I decided that if I was planning to use it daily (and I was) emptying, dusting and boxing for storage between uses would be ridiculous. I'd have to give it a home on the counter If I ever wanted to make it happen.

After making that storage change I find that when occasionally I decide to use some white flour I end up talking myself out of it because getting it out of long term storage is such a lot of work.  Meanwhile, I grind my wheat cup for cup as needed when making cookies, crackers, biscuits, muffins, pancakes and so on and so forth.  I substitute freshly ground whole wheat flour into all my old standby white flour recipes without a problem.  

Squash

Was anybody wondering how that harvest party went?

Well I'l just go ahead and tell you it was lovely and not Halloweeny at all.

 The only possibly Halloween related thing was that I had the Pinata filled with glow sticks. Glow Sticks aren't really a Halloween thing per se, it's just that when I planned the party it was going to be a few days before Halloween and I thought the glow sticks might come in handy for trick or treating. They wouldn't have though, those kids cracked 'em as soon as they laid hands on 'em they'd have been all burnt out long before trick or treating happened.

I went back and forth a bit on harvesty pinata ideas and finally settled on a squash. It turned out to be a cute fat little crook-necked thing. I rather liked it.

 

I wanted to do a pinata from the start. I have a hazy memory of going with my mother to help in the class party of one of my older siblings. I also remember that she made a pinata for a party at some point. I don't know if the noisy classroom scene I have in my head is the party the pinata went to but the two live side by side in my psyche so, it might have been.

 Anyway, that memory jumble suggested to me that a pinata was the thing to do. That being said. I wasn't about to bring a bat and a blindfold into the kindergarten classroom and turn folks loose. I drew on this memory and we tossed that squash around the circle in a game of hot potato.

 The pinata made it around the circle a whole bunch of times. It was almost time for the kids to line up for the end of the day and I was getting worried that I'd put on one too many layers of paper mache so I told them that they were certainly welcome to take a minute to abuse the pinata when it was their turn. Of course the longer you spend with it in your hands the more likely you'll be to get out when the music stops. It went about half way around the circle with each kid giving it a whap on the floor before passing it. Then it got to the aggressive little princess of the group. She bashed that thing without stopping until it cracked. Then every one got their glow sticks and all was well.

All was well except for how I wanted to get that girl out but she was so busy pounding the squash that she didn't notice when the strains of "Hoedown" ceased so she just carried on with the task at hand in spite of being "out." I should've targeted her earlier.

Live and learn.

Political

The kindergarten program at out school seems to be sending political messages.

 

Sure, it's missing a "t" but that really just makes it more subtle. The question is, which side are they on?

On one hand they've included a regular character named Mit(t) but nobody in the whole series is called Barack. On the other hand, Mit(t) is a monkey.

Something to think about.

 Anyway, whichever side you fall on, I hope you remembered to vote today.

Runnin shoes

The other morning I set out with my stroller. Moo was on her bike pedaling happily down the street ahead of me. "Hmm," I thought. "My foot feels cold, but only in that one little spot." Can you guess what the problem was?

I guess I now know the life expectancy of a pair of vibram five fingers. I guess I'm also in the market for a new pair of shoes.

 I have loved running in my vibrams. It took some time, a lot of short runs and some majorly sore calves to get used to them but I'll never go back to a conventional shoe.

 All the sore feet, aching ankles, shins, knees etc that I used to experience in conjunction with running are no more. In the past it would take me a mile of jogging tentatively on touchy legs before I could settle in and enjoy my run. I haven't had a single running related joint ache since I changed shoes.

 That said, vibrams tend to be a bit on the chilly side, and since I run with a stroller I can't scan ahead for rocks in my path as well as I otherwise could. I stepped on a doozy during the run before I discovered the hole. That hurt a lot and I'm pretty sure it's responsible for the puncture wound to my shoe.  All the crushed granite used in landscaping around here is killer when it gets strewn onto the pavement.

 I'm looking at Altra's this time. Hoping that the zero drop and wider toe box will let me keep my barefoot form while being a little warmer for the winter months plus giving me some extra protection against rocks.

Punkephant

Zizza's orthodontist's office had a pumpkin decorating contest. It went without saying that she wanted to enter.