::youch & cinnamon rolls::

Yesterday when Max was out adventuring he had an unfortunate incident. He had a brush with death (i.e. a bumblebee). The bumblebee was flying at him as he was riding his bike on the trail behind our house. This bumblebee may or may not have existed, and it may or may not have stung him on the cheek (it didn't.) But this supposed bumblebee startled him enough that he ran into a cactus. YOUCH.
This really isn't surprising because the man NEVER watches where he's going while riding his bike. It drives me crazy. He's talking and swerving and having close calls all the time he's riding.

So anyway, he was out for just a few minutes riding by himself when the horrific event happened. I heard him come in and I said, "How was your ride, Max?" He said, "BAD!" But since he's the little stoic, he couldn't just tell us what had happened. Instead he lay down on the floor and pulled his pants down and there were the spikes.

(Post spike removal.)
He really didn't get spiked too bad--not as many spikes as he could've ended up with. But the big one in the middle must've really hurt. It left a big purple bruise.
Kris got his loupes and tweezers and a headlamp, and I held his head while we pulled them out.
Once they were out he was pretty cool about it. He got a long warm bath and then all was ok.
Would you like to run into one of these?

I don't want to, but I'm sure I'll have my turn at some point. These spikey things are everywhere!! There's even a story involving the Land Rover and cactuses that I'll save for Kris to tell another day. It's just too good to waste.

(Dramatic re-inactment. This one is right on our driveway!)

And the next item here in today's post is cinnamon rolls.
I figure it's always fun to have something yummy to eat during conference, and on conference sunday sometimes I actually have time to do something like make food, which doesn't happen a lot.
So anyway, I decided to make real cinnamon rolls from scratch for the first time in my life. They turned out really good!

I was pretty worried the dough wouldn't rise at first, but after I waited a bit (left the room, took a shower, stopped checking on it) it did fine.

Cute little rolls.


Done!
It took forever, that was the only problem. I started on them at probably about 8AM and they were finally ready to eat at about 11:30. Max almost didn't have enough patience to survive. He was asking me if he could "have one" before I had even finished mixing the yeast into the dough!

And he was very happy when he finally got to eat one. Picture him whispering reverently "From scratch..." as he munched.

And Sandy insisted on heating most of mine, though I tried hard to convinve him that cheerios were a better idea.

And that's all for now. Happy conference sunday. Wish it would come more often that twice a year. How about once a month?

::staycation activity #5--swimming and a huge shake::

On monday we drove up North of Boston so that we could go to an "indoor water park." One of those places attached to a hotel. This one had a bunch of water slides--from little kid ones to ones that were too big for Max, splash park areas, a lazy river and fountain things. Anyway, all kinds of stuff. And it was nice to be someplace warm for a while. I don't have any pictures of us playing in the water, but that's ok. Some things are better imagined anyway.
Max had a blast, and after four hours still wasn't even close to wanting to leave! He told us he wants to move to Massachusetts when he grows up, in order to be close to that place.
We told him that there are other places like that--hopefully a little closer to (our future) home.
Such a silly little boy.

Before our waterpark fun we went and had some delicious burgers. Max had the option of upgrading his drink to a shake, so since were on "vacation" we told him he could. It was HUGE and he was delighted.

Burger places are the best!

And that concludes my staycation report. Fun stuff.

::happy st paddy's::

Happy St. Patrick's day to everybody. St. Paddy's day was always fun at my house growing up. My mom's dad's side of the family is Irish, so we had a little something to celebrate. So we always wore lots of green, pinched people and ate some sort of green treat. Or at least I remember eating green treats from time to time.

So here at our house now, we wear green. Max, in fact wore two green shirts, green socks and green underwear. It's always good to be thorough, right?
Nobody in our family got pinched today. We were all nice and green.

Evidently they did a little St. Patrick's style stuff at Max's school too.


It's true. So true. (And so adorable.) If he had a pot of gold he would definitely use it to buy toys with. No question.

As far as treats go, last year I made cupcakes. They were delicious chocolate cupcakes with green frosting and we loved them. But we're trying to eat healthy right now. Nothing ruins eating healthy faster or more effectively than a big batch of delicious chocolate cupcakes.

So no cupcakes. Plus I wasn't into cooking all afternoon since the sun was out. So instead I spent the afternoon out on the deck watching Max play and being sucked into his strange and crazy pretend games. Then after dinner I threw some ice cream, milk and a few peppermint patties into the blender and we had ourselves some mint shakes. Slightly green and totally yummy.

That was our day. We were happy to see the sun and to be wearing green. And happy to be Irish, however low the percentage is in the mix.

In conclusion, here's the 1st attempt to take the photo at the top of the post. I count it as a fail since I had to get the creamsicle out of my hair afterwards. But it's funny.

::spooky food::

We had some great food for the party.
I made some delicious homemade oreos. Mmmmm. Using Erica's recipe. I made them last year and loved them. They're killer straight out of the fridge.

My friend Yonah brought an awesome death by chocolate. And I'm a big death by chocolate fan. It's the best. The worms took it over the top I think.

Jess made spider cupcakes. They're pretty spooky. And the kids loved them. They were all running around the house with black mouths lips and teeth.

::yum::

Do you want to eat something delicious and not at all nutritious?
Try whipping up a batch of these brownies.

They're from my favorite foody blog, Baking Bites. I like to read it all the time and daydream about the yummy delicious food. I try to only make treats from it quarterly. They're just too delicious not to eat every crumb of them once they're made.

These brownies have a layer of oatmeal cookie crust at the bottom. The brownie part is really chocolatey in a dark delicious way. (all you dark chocolate lovers out there would love them--mom and dad!!).

Luckily I had a good excuse to make these tonight because I've been dying to! Kris met a kid at church who is applying to a master's program at RISD. He was here for interviews and had taken a cab to church. He was nice and Kris recognized the lost traveller feeling that he's had a lot during interviews. Kris invited him to dinner and gave him a ride home from church.
After we fed him a yummy spaghetti dinner and he left, I started thinking about all the people that were so kind to us when we first went out to Kansas City, that made us feel welcome and at home right when we got there. And the friends who have done the same here. We're just so lucky to have our church, to have a built in support system with great friends no matter where we have to go.

Anyway, we're grateful when we think back on it, and it was nice to share the love a little bit today with somebody who needed it.
And Max liked the brownies of course.



Tomorrow's a new week, and I'm going to blog more, yay! Another week closer to spring. We'll make it there eventually.

::on a wintry day::

On a cold wintry snowy blustery day like today we need something filling, yummy and comforting for dinner.
Like this:

Grilled cheese sandwiches (made as healthy as possible by using wheat bread--my dad's recipe--shredded light cheese and just a touch of butter spread)
and this:

Tomato and roasted red pepper soup (trader joe's). Mmmmm, this stuff is seriously scrumptious. And good for you. It's my alltime favorite soup (behind my mom's broccoli soup).
We like to dip our sandwiches in the soup and feel our bellies with warm deliciousness. I think right now this is one of my favorite meals. Uncomplicated and delicous.
I'm glad we live in this day and age when we're not limited to only eating foods that are in season right where we live. I know it's best to eat what's in season, but I'm sure glad that somebody in California can grow some delicious (pink) oranges and send them out east here for me to eat because I love them!

Max kept me company in the kitchen while I got stuff ready. The way he deals with the fact that I don't let him play video games all day is by reading the little books that come along in the cases. Then he asks me all sorts of strange questions about what they say and why. Anyway that's what he's doing here.

Anybody out there in blogland have a favorite winter dinner?

::happy thanksgiving::

In honor of Thanksgiving today, I'm going to show you some pictures from the "Harvest Feast" at Max's school earlier this week.

It's basically a Thanksgiving party that's held the day before thanksgiving vacation.  But there are a lot of different people here in the city, and nobody wants to offend, so Harvest Feast it is!

The kids and teachers started making food for the feast at the beginning of November, and I think they made at least one different thing every week.

When I arrived at the school all the kids were outside playing on the playground. They were all being fire fighters. Max was up high on one of the slide platforms yelling, "FIRE!! FIRE!!"

The other kids came running and put his fire out. It was pretty cute.

The menu for the feast was pretty extensive:

Pretty impressive, huh?


Here's the butter and pickles. Max's teacher said that Max's class is the first class in 13 years that actually made the butter all by themselves. They made it by putting cream in a jar and shaking it. They took turns all through the day I guess. How cute!

Max was especially proud of the pickles. The kids cut up the cucumbers with those little pumpkin carving knives that aren't very sharp. I was told Max ate at least as many pieces of cucumber as he put into the jar.
The pickles turned out tasting pretty good!



Here's Max getting served some oatmeal bread. I was the helping parent the day they started working on the bread. They talked about yeast and kneading and all sorts of things. It was pretty fun.

Here we have applesauce and apple crisp.

Max had about 17 servings of apple sauce.


My plate! I especially liked the corn bread and the pumpkin bread.


The kids had decorated art for each table. I don't know if this is Max's or not, but it could be. He didn't know when I asked him. He said "Maybe I drew that." Silly.

It was so fun to get to see what the kids had been working on. We're thankful to have such a fun school here that Max loves. It's helped us all to feel more at home.

We're lucky.

.::Bummed::.

Today Max and I were supposed to be going to the beach with our friends from church.
Kris started to feel sick with a cold last night, so of course when Max woke up this morning he was sick and floppy. It seems to always happen this way. I really wanted to go to the beach today because we're in the middle of a New England "heat wave" which means that temps are up above 90 degrees.

To all of you folks who live anywhere but here that sounds like normal summer weather, right? Well it is. But youguys probably all have some sort of air conditioning or cooling system.
We don't! And neither do a lot of places here in RI, including a few of the local libraries which closed yesterday and won't open up until things cool down.

So our house gets hot. We've invested in a lot of different kinds of fans. These fans help, but they can't really deal with 95 degree weather.
I was hoping to escape the hot house by hanging out at the beach all day. But it was not to be. Instead I had to stay home in the hot and sweaty cave of our house (we have to keep all the blinds closed so the sun doesn't get things even hotter.)

I was bummed. But I finally took out my little personal sized blender, which I've had for a couple of months but never have gotten a chance to use. I made myself a delicious smoothie in the style of my dad. That made me happy.
Pretend like I made you one too.

mmmmmmm

It was so cold and nice.

Max made himself into a car wash. I'm not sure how the play dough fits into the car wash situation, but it's what inspired him to do it in the first place.

At about 1PM I wished I was in a car wash. I'm not too good in the heat.




We ended up hanging out, holding still (mostly me) and watching movies for most of the day. I made Max take a cool bath which I think helped. He felt prettymuch fine by the end of the day.
Then when Kris was done with work we went and picked him up and drove straight to the movie theater so Kris could see WallE with us. Max and I saw it a few weeks ago. It was great to sit in the cool movie theater for a while.

Hopefully we'll make it back to the beach soon, but even more I hope this heat wave doesn't last very long! I might melt.

::A Jaunt::

I haven't been able to post for the last few days because my friend Carie and I were taking a little vacation in Minnesota!
Here's a fun picture of Carie for you.

Carie is great. Its so nice to have a friend that's close that I have so much fun hanging out with--it's been a long time. And no Carie, I'm not just saying that because I know you read this thing.
We took a quick 3 day jaunt up there because our husbands wanted us to go and have fun! Isn't that nice of them? Well, it was something like that anyway. We went up there with the intention of going to Ikea, a place that we both enjoy, and the trip didn't disappoint!
We were in Minneapolis, and the Ikea was right by the Mall of America. Heard of that place? It's supposedly the largest mall in the US. And boy is it ever huge. It has an amusement park in the middle and basically any (mall) store you can think of. We started out there and had dinner. What's better to eat at the mall than mall food? We had orange chicken from Panda Express (or Stomachache Express as Carie likes to call it.) I have to mention this because I took such a great picture of the food:

and yeah, if it looks tasty to you that's because it was! Yum. It was great until later when our stomachs were sorry we'd eaten it.

Anyway, we shopped at the mall on the first day and the third day (spending plenty of time trying on clothes of course), and then the 2nd day we spend the entire day shopping at Ikea, going through all the things we wanted carefully and slowly. Since there was nobody to rush us it was great! So great in fact that we got there at like 10 in the morning and didn't leave the place until 5. Amazing, huh? We got a lot done though, and no, neither of us spent our life savings--somehow. The picture you see is of a bed I'm hoping to maybe get later on, for our new house, maybe.
We had lunch there and I got to eat the swedish meatballs. They were really good. Oh, to have an Ikea close. Poor Kansas City, it might never happen.

It was a really fun trip. It's the first time I've gotten away by myself in forever, maybe ever actually, and I think it was the same for Carie. We're lucky to have husbands that are so good with our kids, that don't think twice about stepping up and taking care of things!
Max did pretty well while I was gone, but was actually much more upset than when Kris and I went to Providence. He didn't seem to care when we were gone together but he did break down a couple of times this week. He was happy to see me when I got home (and I was happy to see him and Kris--it's nice to be gone, but always so great to come home.)

Now I'm off to do more school work. I have a big project due monday and then hopefully some of the school pressure will be lessened. I have more posts on the way about Grandpas and cute little boys. Stay tuned!