A Night on the Town...

We have been saying for weeks and weeks, bordering on months, that we should get a babysitter and have a date night. Well, we finally made it out last night. And it was awesome.

We dropped the boys off with our lovely neighbors and headed out to eat at a Mexican place called Andale. It was yummy. There is a theater near here that plays old movies in this amazing and gorgeous theater. We went and saw Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. It was so awesome. I'm a pretty big fan of Mr. Hitchcock and this did not disappoint. It was a really interesting experience to be sitting in this packed theater watching a movie from 1951 and knowing that many of the people had seen it already. And yet, here we all were, wondering how on earth parallel editing between a tennis match and someone reaching into a sewer drain to pick something up that had fallen between the cracks could possibly be so, so, so suspenseful!? It's that lure of the theater; of being completely apart of the movie experience. It's so awesome.

You should see it. Really. Go. Now.

And bring someone sweet with you.

Some Enchanted Evening

Prepare yourself for a shock. We saw a movie last night. In a theater. With the boys.

Shocked? Amazed? Aghast?

So were we. The student council (or some group or other) here had a movie night last night. And they had free Krispy Kreme donuts before hand. That's what really got us there. As I have said before, I love free stuff. We really held out no hope of seeing more than fifteen minutes of the movie, Enchanted. The boys have not done to well in movies since they learned to move. So, armed with handfuls of sweet pastry, we settled into on of the last rows, fully expecting to make a quick exit. And then the lights when down and the movie came on. And they were hooked.

They sat there completely entranced by it. When songs started, they bobbed there heads from side to side. When the chipmunk did crazy things they pointed and laughed. When they saw the dragon they growled at it. And when the princess had true love's kiss, they clapped and laughed. They loved it!

And the whole walk home they chattered about it. Blabbering a few words and then growling, as if mimicking the dragon. It may just have been the most adorable thing ever!

Oh, and the movie was cute too.

Chez Toddler

I get a lot of help in the kitchen these days. The majority of it is not requested and usually ends with me screaming something along the lines of, "No. No! Stop! No, you put that down! Alright, everybody out of the kitchen! Zach!!"

Sam tests the flour

I've looked that over a couple of times and I don't think I have ever written dialog that accurately before.

The boys are just too curious for their own good. They want to pick everything up and taste everything and touch everything. And they want me to hold them. Have you ever tried to cut a tomato while a squiggly toddler is trying to grab a piece and taste it? It's no walk in the park, I'll tell you that.

Sam observes the flour

So, I'm trying to find some way to keep them away from danger (i.e. burners, knives, pots of boiling water, a frazzled mommy just trying to get a meal on the table before she cracks) but still have them be a part of the cooking experience. I want that for them.

Sam tastes the flour

Zach was home a little later than usual the other day because he had a thing with the President of the Basque country, Lehendakari Ibarretxe. So, the boys and I were on our own for dinner preparation. I decided, that if they weren't going to watch The Wiggles, like good little drones, then they might as well help out.

So, here are the boys assisting me with the calzones.

Sam likes the flour

I managed to get almost everything chopped while Sam was eating the flour. Then they were both too distracted by the green pepper to bother too much with the cutting of the zucchini.

"Sam, this is serious business. Stop fooling around. Those piles aren't going to mess themselves up!"

Ben strips the all the seeds off of the green pepper. He takes his work very seriously.

While I turned to sautée the veggies the boys saw an opportunity. And they took it.

The contents of the cutting bowl, dumped out.

Before

After

In the end, it was a success. There was food all over the place, especially in between the washer/dryer a.k.a. my prep work station, because the boys enjoyed watching things fall down there. But, all in all, it went well... and with minimal screaming.

easy as pie!

A few days ago, I thought I would make everyone really, really hungry and start to regret those dashed New Years resolutions. Sorry, but it needs to be done.

I made a pie.

A delicious, glorious pie. It was scrum-diddly-umptious! Sadly, it was a while ago and the pie is long gone. But the photos of it were safely nestled in our camera, so here ya go, fresh as fresh, what I call my Sonrisa Pie!

The Pie Crust. This is so easy. I just use the Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe.

Blueberries and Strawberries. Perfect and delicious. See how they glisten? That's a little bit of heaven right there.

This is the crumb topping. It adds a great crunch to the soft fruit. Or, in other words, it turns an ok pie into something you would want to tell all your friends, family, and a bunch of people you don't know in Asia and Europe, about.

Fresh out of the oven! Thank goodness that I put that pan there. I don't particularly care about the state of my oven, as long as it doesn't catch on fire (again...), but if that fruit goo had dripped down there, I may have had to. And that would have stunk. Possibly literally.

a piece o' pie.

I sprinkled a little vanilla sugar over the top before I baked it. Vanilla sugar is awesome and easy and smells incredible. All you have to do is add a split vanilla bean to a couple cups of sugar. You put them in a jar, let them sit for a few weeks and then sprinkle the resulting sugar on anything that you feel should be taken from good to divine.

The last piece of pie. This was a few days later, just for the record. We didn't eat the whole pie in one sitting. Again...

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy New Year! That's what the title says. At least that is what the Internet told me. Tai? We had a little celebration in our neighborhood to commemorate the coming in of the Year of the Rat. This is my year, by the by. I am a rat. And proud.

Ben and Sam are big fans of Chinese food. Or at least Chinese take out. I hear there is a big, big difference.

Sam - the Noodle King

Ben was a big fan of the chopsticks. And the food. Big fan of the food.

Sam ate two whole pieces of the flounder! That is Zach coming through there.

Then they broke out the Karaoke and that was it. Sam ran right over and started getting his groove on. The boys love to dance. Ben loves to dance too, and did later, but his love of food won over at this point.

Sam - Singing and Dancing his own special version of "YMCA"

Y! M! C! A! Here he is turning around and "singing" into the microphone.

It was a whole lot of fun. The boys ran around and played with the other kids. I sang some too. "You're So Vain," my old standby. I rocked.

Did I mention that people born in the year of the rat are charming and inventive?

And the winner is...

No one. Sadly, they tied. Three for blue, three for red. I appreciate the input though. Thanks everyone. Though there were some really good arguments for red. And Theresa really through her weight behind lime green (Thanks, Theresa!). I think I may just have to grab some acrylic paint and paint a little section on each of the chairs. That'll be fun. I'll let you know what I end up going with. Thanks!

New Nickname?

Ben has accumulated a lot of nicknames throughout his short life. Lil' Bear. Hollow Leg. Pirate Ben. There are more but I can't think of them at them moment. Sam hasn't really. If I'm not calling him Sam, Samuel, Sammy, Sams or one of the many other cute motherly names I give the boys interchangeably, he is Sam, Sam the Monkey Man. Because he looked like a little monkey to me when he was born. Same reason that Ben is called Bear. But today I think I may have come up with a good one: STICKERS!


I found him like this after changing Ben's diaper. He was really, really excited about them. He was jumping around and pointing at all the little stickers he had put on all by himself. I broke into my fairly big stash of stickers from elementary school and junior high the other day (can anyone say Pack Rat) and let the boys play with them. They are madly in love with stickers. Madly.

In case you're wondering, Sam is standing on our kitchen stool. That is why he is up at counter level. They've learned that if they push something (i.e. chair, stool, diaper packages) up to counters and tables be able to reach and break things. Or spill things - like the salt (like this morning) or the sugar (last Sunday). This is a terrible, terrible development. You Grandmas out there are laughing aren't you? You are just lovin' this aren't you? Well, laugh it up. The amount of "safe space" in our house is getting smaller and smaller! I won't have any space left that they can't climb up to! I'm going to have to rent a separate house for all my breakables.

I was trying to get a picture using natural light, but the combination of my camera and Sam's speed make this almost impossible.

Oh, ya. This makes me remember another nickname for them: Diablitos.



P.S. Don't forget to vote on what color we should paint our chairs. It's neck and neck right now! You could be the deciding vote! Oh, the awesome responsibility!