Sam and Ben Strike Again!

Behind the TV

They may not have as catchy a signature as Zorro, but I have found pencil and crayon scribbles everywhere! Besides the more interesting sketches that we've photographed, they have also left their "art" on the fridge, cupboards, floors and in Zach's library books.

On Couch Pillows

Even on me! I thought the pen cap was on so I wasn't even paying attention. Ben thought that this was awesome.

When they first started to draw it was exciting, I thought, Ya! Look at my little Picasso's! Now, unfortunately, they are little Picassos. Darn that avant garde Spanish spirit!

Food, Glorious Food!

Because we are poor, college-type people and because we like to cook, we have made several meals in the last lil' while. I've been taking pictures of all of them, because I keep thinking, "oh, I'll put this on the blog! That'll be fun!" This usually happens right before Zach is about to dish himself up some food and then has to wait for me to take a picture, usually several to get okay-ish lighting, before he can eat.

Unfortunately, the down side to all this cooking is that it takes a lot of time and because it takes so much time, I haven't been putting in the food entries. So, I thought, I'll just do one big food entry. Sounds good, right? I thought so. So, here you go my friends, some yummy things that I made.

Skillet Lasagna

Have I mentioned that we don't have cable? We don't. And because we don't have an antenna either, we only get three PBS channels, two Spanish channels, and one Asian languages channel. One of the PBS channels has a cooking shows morning, that I happened to catch a few Saturdays ago. I saw the good people at America's Test Kitchen make this Skillet Lasagna, and thought it looked like a yummy alternative to layering all that pasta and sauce and such. On the show they said they kept making jokes about the recipe. I guess you have to be a cook to get it.

Meat Pie with Cheesy Potato Topping

This turned out quite well, though it was pretty time consuming to make. I really liked it. It came from Classic Home Cooking, which is full of deliciousness. I've made several recipes from that book. Of course, for this one we changed several of the ingredients, for the sake of convenience and finances, but it was still great. I don't remember ever having something quite like this, so I thought it was especially good. Very hardy. Zach says he grew up on food like this, so it was more of the norm for him.

Pumpkin Seeds

These are the pumpkin seeds that Zach baked from the innards of our Halloween pumpkin. They turned out quite well, especially with a little salt scattered over the top. Yum.

I think my next culinary venture will be a split pea soup and some Thanksgiving-ish pies. I'll let you know how it goes!

P.S. If anyone is interested in actually getting the recipes let me know. I'm not sure I want to commit to another food only blog like the glorious Meg or fabulous Jodi, but if it comes to that, I'll bite the bullet. But only if I really, really have to.

Popcorn Popping

Sam & Ben

It looks like the boys have inherited our love of popcorn. Or rather my love and Zach's obsession. They run into the kitchen when they hear us start our lovely popcorn popper, though it is usually not on the floor like this, just for the record. I was just too tired to hold them both up to the counter to let them watch it all pop. They really, really love to eat popcorn and request it regularly. In fact, I think they use the same word for popcorn, "pop" for all food. In the morning when I ask if they are ready to go down and eat some food, they'll say, "Pop! Pop!" Of course, they could just be requesting popcorn for breakfast.

Also, speaking of Popcorn popping - or rather a metaphorical musical interpretation of apricot blossoms - I've been called to be the Primary Secretary. I really am not sure what this calling entails, since I haven't been in Primary since I was in Primary as a valiant or whatever they are called now, but this does mean that the boys will be going into nursery early. Which is amazing and a little bit scary. Where did my tiny little babies go!?!

Sam & Ben - First Day of Life

halloween: the way it was meant to be...

*WARNING*
There are about a gazillion adorable photos in this here Halloween post. If you can't handle this kind of cuteness go find yourself something a little more mundane.

A couple of weeks ago we went and picked out a pumpkin. Ben thought that this one would be the best and we all agreed. He tested out several others before and this was the only one that felt right to him.

Last weekend our courtyard had a mini pumpkin decorating activity. Very fun. The boys thought the little pumpkins were absolutely wonderful and alternated between holding them, decorating them, and throwing them. It was a good time.

Ben and Daddy decorate a lil' pumpkin

Today, Halloween, we finally set about to the task of carving our carefully selected pumpkin. Ben made sure that it was the one that he had picked out by picking it up and making sure the feel was right. Sam kicked it a lot.

The boys and I started to get at the innards, but then the boys started hurling pumpkin entrails and I remembered what a messy job emptying a pumpkin was, so Zach took over the emptying and I handled the camera for a while.

Sam was quite a lot of help-sticking his ice cream spade in between handfuls of orange goop. Ben helped for a while too...


But then he decided that his talents would be best put to use by running in circles around the pumpkin as fast as he could.

After some input from Zach and I, and a few blunt knife jabs from Sam, the Jack-O-Lantern is complete! I liked it.

Then it was time to get our Diablitos ready for trick-or-treating. That's been Zach's nickname for them for a while now, and we thought, how appropriate. So, we whipped these capes and horns together last weekend and...

Voila!
Our little Devils!

I was worried that they wouldn't keep the capes on through the whole trick-or-treating experience, but they ran around and twirled in them all over the place.

Devil Ben

Devil Sam

We started off with a quick trip over to Todd and Betty's house, to get them warmed up to the whole process.

They started off slow, probably suspicious of why people were just handing out this candy just for walking up to their door.

But they picked it up really quickly. They even started putting their candy into the pillowcase after they picked it out. Well, most of it. Some of it got...lost.

Sam goes in for the kill.

They really got into it, especially Sam. He was running up to the doors! And all in all we made out very well. That's right folks! Two whole Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Good times.

It was a great Halloween. We got to be out with the boys, who looked adorable and behaved wonderfully. We got to see our neighbors and chat, and get free candy. We were surrounded by other cute kids having fun and dressed up like pirates and fairies and ninjas. It was wonderful, really how Halloween was meant to be.

Earthquake!

We just had an earthquake! Seriously! at 8:04 PM.

Before you get worried, we are all completely fine and so is all of our stuff. And from the sound of it, no one was hurt at the epicenter, either. Good news. It was a 5.6 earthquake, which is "moderate." We were about 20 miles or so from San Jose so we had it pretty easy here.

So, this is how it went down, everything started slowly shaking and then got stronger and then just stopped. It only lasted about 5 seconds or so. We weren't even sure that it was an earthquake at first. We just thought that a big garbage truck was going by or something, but then as it got a little more intense and we thought, "hmm... this is odd." We actually asked each other, "Is this an earthquake?" A little scary for me but Zach was excited. I guess there are supposed to be several aftershocks in the next week or so, but they'll probably be smaller.

So, there you have it, our first earthquake! Craziness.

Sit Back and Enjoy the Show...

Sorry, but you'll have to pop your own popcorn.

The Great Pansy Massacre

It was really my fault. I thought that if I put the big planter box full of pansies on the ground in the sun for a while, there wouldn't be a problem. I just had to use the bathroom afterall. So, I ran upstairs, did my business, and came back down. I heard the boys laughing as I walked down the stairs and thought they were so sweet.

Then I saw the dirt.

The long trail of dirt leading all the way to the front door. From what I can gather, they had been throwing the dirt on each other and then Ben had come in and shaken it all off of himself.

Exhibit A - Sam pulling more dirt out of the container

Just in case some people are wondering if the boys really were involve, and maybe those pansies committed suicide, I give you People's exhibit A.

Exhibit B - Ben flees the scene of the crime

Does that look like the face of a repentant transgressor? No, it doesn't to me either. Though it is a very cute face, to be sure.

In the end I forgave them because I believe it was a mercy killing. The pansies were not doing well. Of course, part of the reason they were not doing well is because the boys had been pulling bits of dirt out of the pot since I got them planted. This is what had originally prompted me to get them up high.

I wonder if they've been planning this all along? Hmm...