Routine, a bit late...

Okay, so I missed yesterday. Not such a good record when you decide to post every day for a month then miss the third day. Yeah, I know I suck at blogging but I'm trying, really.

Anyway, because I missed yesterday I'll do two posts today.

When Laura was a baby and Vince was working at the Clarion (which basically meant he worked all the time and we never saw him) she and I got into the habit of going to our local Chinese restaurant every Friday night. This continued well after Vince came back to the land of the living and we adopted JiaJia. One day, though, we just got tired of it and decided to devote our Friday nights to something different. Thus came pizza night.

Now every Friday afternoon I mix up our pizza dough using my favorite recipe from http://www.breadtopia.com/ and grate a secret blend of cheeses (0kay, if you must know it is mozzarella, a bit of white cheddar and a lot of parmesan) in preparation for the main event. I put the pizza stone in the oven and heat it to 550 degrees for an hour before the first pizza goes in. I make our own sauce but unbeknownst to the smaller members of the household I put it into a Contadina pizza squeeze bottle so they think it is filled with horrible stuff, which makes it much more desirable.

Laura and Vince like pepperoni while JiaJia and I are purists, preferring just cheese. When the night is over, we are in carb heaven and I am pulling out my Swiffer vac to remove the light mist of flour that covers the kitchen floor.

Summer Night Routine

When the weather is hot there is nothing kids like more than popsicles. In our case, the ante has been upped considerably by Aunt Cessy introducing "soda pops." Garishly colored and filled with unrecognizable ingredients, they have immediately become the frozen treat of choice in my house. The delicious and wholesome frozen fruit bars that I've offered in their place sit lonely and pathetic in the freezer, waiting for the phone to ring, metaphorically speaking.

So each evening after dinner, the girls take their hideous bounty and go outside since I fear if they dripped on the floor the chemicals might just eat through to the basement. Last night we had a huge thunderstorm so they got to have dessert in the garage. Do you suppose when they grow up and reminisce about their childhood summers they'll wax poetic about their mother feeding them artificial dye, chemicals and water wrapped in plastic?

Routine

Since I always say I'm going to be a better blogger and then I never seem to do anything about it, I decided to get serious about National Blog Posting Month. This month's theme is "routine," which I suppose is one of those things that people don't like to admit they are mired in. Me, I am a creature of routine and love to know exactly what should be happening when.

So here's what I do every morning on days when I don't go into the office. I get up before the kids but after Vince leaves for work (generally about 5:30 but sometimes as late as 6:30) and drink my twelve ounces of the elixer of life, better known as Coca Cola, while I check e-mail and figure out what the day holds. I absolutely love this time of day because it is the ONLY time I am ever alone any more since the girls aren't going to camp this summer.

No morning is complete without a visit to my tomato and herb plants on the deck to see what is getting ripe and what needs attention. Don't think the irony of having land but having to grow my vegetables on the deck due to our hungry deer population escapes me. At any rate, there's always something new to see or bugs to pick off or herbs to pinch back before one of my little people wakes up and starts yelling for mom.

As a lagniappe, here's a recent picture of the little people in question from when we visited the local horse rescue stable. Their friend's name is Smoky.

The Eagles Have Landed

Okay, this isn't officially about the family but exciting for us nonetheless.

Some background - JiaJia attends a pre-school called the River School on the National Conservation Training Center campus (of course now that I think of it, Laura went there too and Vince works on the campus so maybe it is a family thing...) One of the great things about the school is their emphasis on nature, which makes it all the more interesting that there is a bald eagle nest in plain view of the playground.

Some intrepid soul climbed up to the nest and put in a webcam which streams live into the pre-school classroom (it is also on the web at

http://www.fws.gov/nctc/cam/livevideo.html). It can be a bit hair raising to see the eagles in action (one very memorable day we got to see the mother eviscerate a rabbit to feed the babies!) but it is nature at its most basic and the kids really love it. Last spring the general manager of the facility set up the auditorium with the very big screen so the whole class could watch the chicks hatching.

So this year so far our pair of eagles has laid two eggs. There is some speculation that there might be a third but since I don't know much about eagle egg laying habits I can only repeat what I've heard and leave it to Tyler and Jane to tell me if this is even possible.

At any rate, we're all waiting for spring and the new babies, followed by many sightings of the parents teaching their children how to hunt. It is truly a sight to behold but not for the faint of heart.

Happy New Year!

We had a quiet and fun Christmas here in WV. Santa brought everyone a few things they really wanted but otherwise took it easy on the elves this year (a scenario played out in many homes across the country this year, I imagine). Laura got her guitar, JiaJia got her cupcake maker and Vince got his floor jack so there were smiles all around. What did I get, you ask? I got to fix a big breakfast including hominy, my all time favorite breakfast food that nobody in this house likes but me. Yum!

Here's Laura with her guitar. Yes, I know its pink but it was for Laura, remember?
JiaJia, with her cupcake maker and a nail art set that Vince got her (the reason why there are tiny sparkly stickers EVERYWHERE on the first floor of the house - remind me to have a little talk with him about that...)
After she changed her clothes on Christmas morning, JiaJia brought me the ubiquitous leopard satin pajames and said, "Mommy, we have to say goodbye to these. They're too small." All I can say is some prayers get answered.

Last night I fell asleep about 9:30, as is my usual, and the girls woke me up at 11:30 so I could go down and watch the ball drop with them. Everyone had a tiny glass of champagne then we all trooped back up to bed. This was what I found this morning - the lump in the back of the bed is Cecily's daughter Sophie who is staying with us this week (and a darn good thing since it appears that I'm coming down with the same virus that Cecily has been fighting - Sophie is like an older sister to my girls and they will do what she says so it is like having a live in babysitter).

Happy 2009, all! Let's hope it is a good one for all of us.

A visit with Santa

The River School had its Christmas pageant Thursday night and Santa was there! Our friend Matt Poole (WeiWei's dad) was the official photographer for the event and snapped this of the girls.

The rest of the evening is something of a blur puncuated by the memory of young Luke, stepping to the front of the stage to perform his solo, only to projectile vomit about 15 feet (I am NOT kidding) across the room. It really got bad when several of the other kids, upon seeing this, began to gag themselves, in sympathy. They don't put THAT in the parenting manual, my friends.

Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season!

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Now if only it wasn't 71 degrees outside! Where the heck is that snow anyway? There's just something wrong with stepping out in flip flops ten days before Christmas.

If you saw a pig fly by your window recently it might be because I relented and let Vince and the girls put up the Christmas tree early. Generally I'm a stickler for waiting until the Sunday before Christmas but this year I couldn't take the noise and told them to go ahead. As a result we've had a fully loaded tree up for a whole week (and, as I knew would happen, the novelty has worn off already for the younger members of the household).

At any rate, they're still enthralled with the Advent Calendar, which in an improbably heathen twist, contains a note from Santa every day. Yes folks, that whirring noise you hear is my sainted mother spinning in her urn at the thought of a lovely Christian tradition being co-opted by the pagans. JiaJia refers to the notes as "fortunes" since her total experience at finding something unexpected inside something else is based on fortune cookies. I guess I need to expand her educational horizons a bit.

Today I start my annual cookie baking marathon, which has greatly increased in scope this year. I have to go to the office on Wednesday to deliver 17 (!) bags of cookies to various coworkers. I'm afraid I set a precedent over the summer when I started baking for our weekly executive briefings because now I can't go to the office in Virginia without being collared by various and sundry people (including the big boss) wanting to know if I've brought goodies with me. Not that I mind, of course, since I'd rather be baking than doing just about anything else.

Speaking of which, I've finally got my other blog going again so come visit me there if you'd like - http://www.myburntofferings.blogspot.com/. Its still under construction as far as its appearance but I'm excited because I've been invited to link to a large food community on the web. In other food related news, my friend the Sneaky Chef (otherwise known as Missy Chase Lapine), is using a quote from me in her new book. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm livin' the dream...

We're planning a quiet but merry Christmas here at the Wolfe Den. Hope yours is equally wonderful!