I know

I know, I know it's been a while, a long while. And what a lame post to stall out on. My computer with all the pictures has a virus on it and I've been too lazy/busy to move pictures from my online albums and backup hard drive to the other computer so I could post. So here goes my attempt at catching up. Cue all the collages---

We're trying a new sport for the Fall-- Soccer.

The novelty of the game wore out for E really early, however he did score his first goal last week (not surprisingly on his own goal).

First practice

First game

I didn't take him long to decide that he really just wants to tend to the field, although he does play a little every game so he can get "daddy drink" at the end (that's what we call sports drinks around our house)

But we are all there supporting him anyway.

Hmmm. What else did we do? Oh yeah. We took a quick trip down to Dallas so I could go to my 10th Dave Matthew's Band concert. My mom was nice enough to let us crash at her house and watch the kiddos for us while Br and I got a night out. Thanks Dave for putting on a fantastic show and thanks Mom for making it possible for us to go!

The next week we went to the fair. E still LOVES the pig races.

We rode tractors,

We ate,

We pretended to be farmers

and saw lots of animals

The biggest shock was that E got the most excited running around the arts and crafts displays. From cakes, to dioramas, egg art to holiday displays - the kids loved them all. Who'd guess.

And of course we spent lots of time making cakes

This one was my favorite

until I saw how cute Loralee made the beehives that I made for her daughter's birthday party.

Hanging a beehive cake form a tree-- ingenious. Check out the rest of her ingenuity here.

(but caution-- If you can't handle amazingly fantastic and creative entertaining ideas this website is not for you)

Speaking of cake, I decided to enter the Tulsa Sugar Art Show this year. It's at the Tulsa State Fair (not to be confused with the Oklahoma State Fair). The show is put on by Kerry Vincent -- you know the British judge on all the Food Network cake challenges.

Here is my entry

I always wanted to make a gnome cake, but just never had a reason to. Although I didn't even place in my category it was still very satisfying seeing the smiles that were triggered when people spotted my 2 foot random cake creation. I've already started to brainstorm about what I want to do next year.

Following the cake show there was a two day class where we constructed a 28' by 32' by 12' cake show piece instructed by Bronwen Weber, Cheri Elder, and Carolyn Wanke Mangold

Over the course of a billion hours and with the help of like a million people we created a huge cake.

There was a 10 foot tall haunted house sitting on top of a cake hill

The house was surrounded by a pumpkin patch with little trick-or-treaters being mocked by a huge ghost.

Then in the other corner there was Frankenstein's wedding

The wedding took place in a graveyard (notice the fruit bats)

The wedding guests included Mummy and her little ghoul and little blooder.

We were rotated through the different sections so we could take part in the whole process. Among other things I made A LOT of leafs, a window, ghost, and a spider, gave Frank a faux hock, killed his bride's bouquet, crushed A LOT of cake to make dirt, and took a lot of pictures.

No it's not all actual cake, although a lot of it is and what is not could have been if we would have had the time but. Overall it was an amazing experience!

There's my summary. Now on to attempting to put my house back together, catch up on laundry (seriously people does it ever end?), and attempt to make Halloween costumes for the kids. Wish me luck.

Farewell my good friend and faithful companion

So I got this wallet for my thirteenth birthday. No there's nothing all that interesting about this inexpensive, brown leather man's wallet, other than it was the one I REALLY REALLY wanted. I only just recently lost the little identification card that came with the wallet. Despite moving about 13 times I never actually changed the contact information. In fact the emergency contact was a family friend that I was staying with right after my birthday while the rest of my family moved back to ABQ from Dallas, but they moved when I was in high school so that info was no good either.

Ask my good friend Wendi about the wallet and she'll tell you it is a "Seinfeld wallet". This refers to George Costanza's infamously fat wallet that was so stuffed it was like a "filling cabinet" under his rear and made his sit with a slant (but nothing a few napkins under the other cheek couldn't balance out). Although I denied having such a thing I watch the episode earlier this week and she is right. My wallet was also "an organizer, a secretary, and a friend." (a good friend that was "morbidly obese")

George: ...Important things go in a case. You got a skull for your brain, a plastic sleeve for your comb, and a wallet for your money.
Jerry holding up a hamburger while holding George's wallet.
Jerry: But look at this thing. It's-it's huge. You got more cow here than here.
George: I need everything in there.
Jerry looking through George's wallet
Jerry: Irish money?
George: I might go there.
Jerry: Show this card at any participating Orlando-area Exxon station...to get your free 'Save the Tiger' poster.

Although I never carried around useless foreign money, I was guilty of having hard candy in it at times just like George. And just for your amusement I'll list other random things that could be found in my wallet at any given time:

• Stickers
• Subway club stamps (long after they discontinued that program)
• Expired driver's licenses (Although I would misplace my valid license on a regular basis because it was rarely in there)
• Receipts (usually for things you would never consider returning)
• Bank transaction records
• Shot record
• Coupons
• A "Tilt" game card with no money on it
• Gift cards for places I frequent but always forgot to use (yet never the gift card I went to the store to spend)
• Grocery store shopper cards (some for stores that aren't located within a 100 miles of my residence)
• McDonald's Monopoly pieces
• Insurance cards (rarely the current one)
• Little pieces of paper with random important info (for about threes months after I move I have a piece of paper with my new phone on it because I can never remember it)
• Credit and bank cards (both current and expired)
• Frequent flyer card
• Gum
• a pinewood derby car axle (I don't' even know why)
• Souvenir coins
• and a tiny little coloring and activity book that I put in there just in case (mind you it was in there five years before I ever had kids).
• Oh, and sometimes money -- usually coins, sometimes actual dollar bills.

Go ahead. Laugh at me but I will say that I never carried a purse, I was always (okay-- usually) able to snap it closed and I managed to keep the same wallet for 17 years (I'm not saying I didn't' lose it a couple hundred times, because I did).

It was on my birthday this year that I decided maybe I should take a big step in life, retire the Costanza wallet and get a new lady wallet. I've down sized to just the essentials - money, credit cards, and driver's license. I'm not sure what I'll do if the kids suddenly demand an animal themed coloring activity book in the middle of nowhere. If subway ever decides to bring back the stamps I guess I'll just have to start over in my attempts for a free foot-long. And that little cub scout I'm going to come across one day who is sad because he is missing an axle for his pinewood derby car is going to be out of luck. In any event I am a little nervous as I take on this new approach to life. I hope I have the courage to stick with it-- I'm very tempted to return to my little buddy. Wish me luck as I bid adieu to my friend who has been by my side (because my pants are usually too tight to put it in my back pocket) for 17 years. (cue sentimental music)

Irony

It's funny how what you chase after changes with time.

As a kid I chased after the ice cream truck, ran to the door to see who was there, chased after balloons after they slipped from my little hand, and was surprisingly fast as I chased after insects.

As I got a little older I chased after the qualifying time to try and make the state swim meet, chased after important school papers that went flying in the wind, chased after dumb boys who I didn't realize were dumb, and chased many dreams.

I have fond memories of chasing after all these things I really really wanted. This is why I did felt a little bit of irony when I stopped to think about how I frequently have to chase down my baby to try and change her poopy diaper. Running towards stinky pants. Seriously, like I really want to catch that. Just funny how things change and even more amusing that I don't mind it (that much). That's all.

(This probably ended up being a lot less philosophical than you expected, huh?)

Sunny California

I mentioned earlier that Br's gift to me for my birthday was taking me to California to go to Let's Make a Deal. No that's not the one with the suitcases, it's the one where people dress up in crazy costumes and pick between what's behind the curtain or what's in the box. I dressed up like a cupcake and Br was "a game show host". A few people thought he was dressed as Obama. Come on people, just because he's in a suit doesn't mean he's trying to imitate the president. My good friend Pfister and her husband Mike met up with us. They were a chef and a dude with a handlebar mustache (Actually he looks a lot like Matt Damon so I said he was dressed as Matt Damon with a crazy mustache).

Anyway, Br did his very best to make my dreams come true. While I didn't get picked to actually make deal, we did have fun sitting in the audience and getting a sort of behind the scenes experience.

Besides the show we had tons of fun. The weirdest/most amazing thing was traveling without kids. I'd forgotten how much of a bigger deal it is to travel without little ones. I mean there is no stroller, no car seats, no kid sitting on you lap on the plane, no kid to try to keep from kicking the seat in front of you, no huge bag full of "just in cases" to lug around, going to sleep and waking up when we decided to, no need to order a meal that a kid can pick at, no need to go to a kid friendly locations, wearing an outfit all day without having a little hand or face smear yuck all over, etc. Don't get me wrong, I actually LOVE taking trips with our kids, but I'm not going to lie when I say I REALLY enjoyed this trip with just the hubby.

By the way THANK YOU JOJO for taking such good care of my kids so we could have this experience. I swear my kids were happier when I got home than when I left and I know my house was WAY cleaner than I left it.

Okay back to the trip. We stuffed out faces at a few celebrity chef's restaurants -- two Top Chef Master's restaurants (Jar and Border Grill) and one Iron Chef (Mario Batali) dining experience. Batali's Pizzeria Mozza is by far the best Italian dining experience I've ever had. So flavorful. We ate TONS but I did have that yucky overly full feeling at the end. MMMMMMM. Our second best meal was actually some blueberry banana pancakes with the best maple syrup ever that we got from room service the last morning we were in town. We also did some "research" at an ice cream place and Sprinkles. Oh, and I decided I wanted to eat at a food truck and luckily that was the only place to get food on the studio lot when we went to LMAD (that's short for Let's Make a Deal for those of you who skipped through the opening paragraph because this blog post is too long).

Luckily for my waistline we did more than eat. Our hotel was in the same complex as the Kodak Theater, Walk of Fame, the El Capitan, and Grauman's Chinese Theater. We had an amazing view from our room.

While in town we did a lot of driving around. It was fun to people watch in Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

We had a lovely afternoon at the Griffith Observatory which provided a nice view of Hollywood, and Downtown LA.

We then headed to Santa Monica for some dinner, fun and games on the pier, and a brief walk on the beach so I could touch the ocean.

Before leaving town we hit the farmer's market (which looked like it had been turned into a high end shopping area since they built the Grove next door). Once we got in there we were happy to see that it still had produce for sale as well as other traditional farmer's market type vendors.

Right before heading to the airport we went back out to Santa Monica to say hi to Br's cousin. On the way out we just happened to drive past the LDS temple.

I have nothing to complain about this trip. We had the time of our lives and shockingly enough we in the vicinity of a Disney theme park and didn't actually go (I guess we've proved we do have some self control). Thanks Br for all your hard work planning this adventure. Thanks Brit and Mike for making the trip that much better. And THANK YOU JoJo for the priceless gift of watching our kids.