February 28, 2018

Resolutions...um well Monday is not going to be the best day for me to find time to blog anyway.

This week is the deadline to turn in our Youth Fair entries. Calling it a deadline gives the wrong picture of it - there are two days the entries are accepted - Thursday from 4 to 8 and most of the day Saturday. A friend of mine who is a veteran Youth Fair entrant, recommended taking the entries on Thursday, but the thought of purposely going out during that time of day makes me feel like banging my head on the wall. We will go Saturday.

My parents were here last week.  We went to the zoo and had cinnamon rolls at Knaus Berry Farm and fed the tarpon at Robbie's marina.  We also went to a Chinese New Year festival.  Despite all that, my dad and Caleb got in A LOT of fishing.  

We're growing some marigolds:

And harvesting tomatoes:

Although this is near the end of the growing season here, I may try to grow some more vegetables during the summer. 

Lewis and Clark is moving along.  We have 4 more filming classes left and the 5th is to view the movie.  It is a lot of work to organize all the costumes and props and move them back and forth every week.  It is hard to fit everything into an hour.  But, I think they already understand basically where they went and why they went there.  It is a fun class.  The other day, we were filming a scene where they were amazed at the huge fish they caught along the way.  The last kid to speak held up his fish and said "Look at the size of this fish!"  and a kid off scene exclaimed "Holy Mackerel!"  It was hilarious.  You better believe I am going to leave that in the final product!

Happy Valentine's Day

Our Punny Valentine from 2017

2nd Week of February

A little while ago I was looking at dresses online and noticed a line that said the model was 5'10" and a size 5.  I know models are tall.  I know models are thin.  I know dresses won't look the same on me as they do on models.  But knowing the actual numbers gave me pause.  Actually it took the pause away.  I glanced at a few more dresses and left the website.  No way was a dress going to look even similar on me as it did on a woman significantly taller and smaller than me.  I didn't even want to see them.

I have never been particularly skilled at picking out clothes.  I find it stressful and it makes me feel inept.  I can read a recipe and know if the meal will taste good, but I cannot look at clothes and know if I will like them.  I find this especially difficult at retail stores because any item is available in any size.  I do better in thrift stores where an item is only an option if it fits.  It takes some of the choice away and the less choosing I have to do, the more relaxed I am about it.  I also like that thrift stores let you sample different brand names.  Since clothing is so abundant these days, I find that if I need something specific I can almost always find it second-hand.  It also makes me feel like I'm doing something good for the environment - recycling sort of.

Last week, Caleb spent most of it in the Keys.  He fished and fished.  He even caught a shark.   He got back in time for enrichment on Friday.  We had a busy time in Lewis and Clark - lots of costume changes!  That is all going ok.  It is not going to be spectacular, but it is fun and I think they will like the end result.  I disassembled the keelboat and made it into two canoes (the real Lewis and Clark sent their keelboat back home midway and continued on in canoes).  I turned the walls of the Meriwether Lewis's private office into more trees.

The opposite side is spray painted white and was for the White House scene.  I am going to make that side into snow covered mountains (The Bitterroot Mountains).  The nearest tree section is already painted that way.  It has never been anything but trees and mountains.

The girls and I visited the French Bakery while Caleb was gone and he has not forgiven us.

Natalie made and decorated these cupcakes for a bake sale last weekend:

She used leftover icing from this FSU cake I made:

I made it for a friend who works with students at a local high school.  Most of them are homeless, including this girl who was accepted into FSU.

And a tomato update:

Heirlooms - the tomatoes are getting really heavy.

Chocolate Sprinkles - we've eaten a few of these already.

The Whole Internet

Sometimes Rob says, "I've seen the whole internet."  And often I feel the same way.  Even though there is way more than I could ever process available, sometimes I feel like I've seen and read everything I'm interested in.  Sometimes it isn't that I've found the information I wanted, sometimes it's that I don't want to go through a slideshow to get it, I don't want to read it with a scroll of smutty celebrity stories running alongside the article, I don't want to start reading an article that turns out to be the same information repeated 3 times in different words.  It used to be that I could find interesting mommy blogs, but now they all seem to be perfect how to or advice blogs; all the real-mommy blogs are hidden. 

Rob's birthday was last week.  We usually go out for sushi on his birthday, but this year, we made dinner at home.  Annalise and I have made several batches of California rolls now and we made a pile of them:

We were going to make sushi too, but chickened out - the main reason being, neither Rob nor I felt confident that we would be able to know with certainty if the fish we bought was fresh enough to be eaten raw.  We got some tuna steaks instead and he seared them so that they were raw inside.

We made a sushi cake instead:

 Natalie lost her first tooth!

And I love this drawing Irene made this week:

She said the face behind the lady is her pet.