Budding Artists

On Thursdays, we have a tending swap with a few of the gals in the neighborhood. It has been a really fun thing for both Lucy and I. Today we decided to go to an artworks place as a big group.
Staley & Lucy



I think the girls had a good time. It was quite funny to see how their little personalities shine through in whatever they are doing. Todays activity was painting on canvas. Lucy was very methodical about which colors went certain places. She'd dip a color and paint a circle, then very carefully put the brush in water and choose a new color. It was a rare thing when she mixed colors together and I don't think it was ever done on purpose. She also was concentrating pretty hard on what she was doing (which was a great thing for the other girls since she can sometimes go into her "mothering" mode of telling them what to do). I tried to get her to explain what she was doing in this video, but she wouldn't have it. Nothing but business!

Strawberry Fields

Wednesday we went on a little day trip with our great friends Wendy, Elina, and Eli to pick strawberries. The best place we could find was in Fredericksburg (about an hour north) and we had a great time! Lucy and Elina started out being good pickers, but then quickly became PRO strawberry eaters and then enjoyed themselves racing up and down the rows. I picked about 14 lbs of strawberries so the last two days have been spent making strawberry jam, freezing strawberries whole, making homemade strawberry icecream, strawberries on waffles... you get the picture. But, MAN, are they good! They are SO sweet! It makes me never want to buy the berries from the store again (but of course I will!) We are already planning a trip back for peach/blackberry season. YUM!!!

Check out this strawberry face! You might have to click on it to get a closer view.

Some new dinners

Here are a few new dinners I tried last week. Probably not that exciting to most of you, but it is a break away from my good 'ol staples of chicken strips/macaroni & cheese combo, taco salad or haystacks, so I thought I'd post a few pics... I'm not sure if these pictures are to prove I can make other stuff than the three staple dinners, but nonetheless, here they are.

The first is a salad with chicken, romain lettuce, mandrain oranges, almonds, and dry ramen noodes. I flavored the chicken with seasame seed oil, but I think I'd flavor it with the dressing for round 2 of this salad. The dressing was lite italian dressing (you don't want the stuff that has the oil at the top and the stuff at the bottom... get the creamy stuff) with some of the ramen noodles flavoring package. I stole that idea from kraftfoods.com and I thought it turned out quite yummy. Just add as much of the flavoring package as you like... it becomes more salty the more you add.

The second pic is my first attempt at fish tacos. I think they are yummy to eat, but have never attempted to cook them myself and I think they turned out pretty good. Plus, it doesn't take long to cook fish so that makes it nice. The tacos had rice flavored with cilantro, black beans, and fish (tilapia? Not sure. But whatever it was, it wasn't an expensive variety.). Then I made a fresh mango/avacado salsa. This was a varation of a recipe I saw on my friend Natalie's recipe blog (http://hotgarlic.blogspot.com/) Most of the stuff I make is a varation because I never seem to have all the stuff around that I want to eat. I made this salsa from mangos, avacados, cilantro, fresh lime juice, red onion, and garlic cloves. Natalie, if you read this next sentence you might gasp, but I think it was a bit garlicy for my taste. I'd probably omit that or scale it back by quite a bit.

Two favorites... google reader and crock pots

I thought I would post a few words about two favorite things...

First, I have discovered google reader and I love it! It took just a bit of time to set up, but now that I have it going, I think it is fabulous. I really love reading everyone's comings and goings on their blogs, but I found myself wasting time online clicking on all the links to see if people posted anything new. Now, I click on google reader and it tells me who has posted. I can either read the post there or go to the blog. Love it! The only thing that I don't love is that it doesn't let me add subscriptions of private blogs. Anyone know how to get around that? There is one other blog address that it won't let me subscribe to, but it isn't private so not sure what the deal is there....

Anyway, I'd highly recommend it!

The other thing that I love is not a new love, but an old favorite. However, this Sunday I again remembered how much I love them. For some reason, we are absolutely STARVING when we come home from church. Right now, we have church from 2:30-5:30pm, but that isn't the problem. It doesn't matter what time we go, we still come home and think we are so hungry we will die! I'm not sure why church brings that out. Anyway, that is one of the reasons I love crock-pots. I have three. Obsessive... probably. But on Sunday, I used all three. I used my small one for cooked carrots... yum! The medium sized crock-pot held potatoes. I just cut them up, skins and all, and add some water. When I get home, I drain the potatoes. I throw in some milk (evaporated if I have it), butter (marjarine will not cut it here), some garlic and salt & pepper. Then, I take out my beaters and whip it right in the crock pot bowl. Add some chives or parsley and wah-la! Plus I love doing mashed potatoes like this because I can put them back in the crock-pot on warm and they stay hot. That is always a challenge for me with big dinners... getting everything done at the same time so that it is still warm and yummy when it is time to eat. The last thing I cooked in the large crock-pot was a cornish game hen. This was my first time to cook one of those things and I think they are very yummy. I just put a little water in the bottom and dumped some raspberry-chipolte sauce on it. It turned out great! Side note: I love that sauce! I know some people can find it at Costco. I get mine at HEB. I think Fischer-Weiser has the best brand.... it has just the right amount of kick. Back to the point of the story, dinner was done in less than 15 minutes from when we got home from church. I wish I'd have taken a picture of all my crock-pots instead of the final dish, but nonetheless.... here is my tribute to the crock-pot!

Just blah

For the past two weeks I don't think I've accomplished much. I mean, I think if I wrote it down and really thought about it hard, I'm sure I could come up with some stuff. It seems like when you serve in the church Young Women there is always something to work on. But all in all, I have just felt like being lazy. Last night, I tried to force myself to do something (a simple thing... clean my kitchen) and I just plain didn't want to. Instead, I became obsessed with finding the musical "Meet me in St. Louis" (came highly recommended by my good friend Mary). After calling several Hollywood Videos and Blockbusters, George found it at a Hollywood video at least a half hour away from our house. Nice guy that he is, all of us got in the car and took a trip clear up there just so I could get my movie. I know, extremely high maintence. I could have waited two days and got it on Netflix, but I have a really bad habit that when things are harder to find, I want them more and more. Lame, I know.

Anyway, this whole "not wanting to do anything" mood has made me think a lot of a theory my high school math teacher used to tell us. It is basically that people have cycles of motivation in life. I think he felt it was generally a monthly cycle, but there were "peak times" and "low times" and of course, the inbetween (how we live our normal lives). Even high achievers and lazy folks had these cycles, its just relative to how you are. He used to tell us that he hoped we were in our "highly-motivated" cycles when it came time to study for a test. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I think I believe the theory. I'm hoping the lazy streak ends soon because I like my highly-motivated self better.

All girl

Here are some photos of Lucy in everyday life.
Lucy loves clothes. This site is a regular occurrence... several outfits lined up on her floor to see which she wants to wear. Usually she'll tell me the reasons things go together... why they "match." Obviously from this pic, she had to be quite creative here. I tease George when he wears the same colors together (usually Aggie blue t-shirt and Aggie blue shorts) so maybe that was her reasoning behind the "purple, purple" outfit... she likes to be just like her dad. Most days a skirt is the number one choice and if she doesn't choose it at the first of the day, she'll have one on by the end of it.

Lucy wears this dress nearly every day. It come on about a half hour after we've picked an outfit. She keeps her shirt, but strips the skirt or pants underneath and goes for the princess dress (an old church dress from my neighbor). For the outfit to be complete, she must have her pink crown, pink high-heels (a princess must look good even while vacuuming), pink and red heart neckAlace (sometimes a princess neckAlace will substitute) and a pink bracelet.
Crazy Lucy
This is a favorite activity of Lucy's... pulling all the couch pillows off to make a bed.

I often find "tea" set out for her dolls. She can reach the sink in the bathroom so usually the cups are full of water. Notice the nice choice of clothes here. Obviously today wasn't a "have to match" day.

This is Lucy's favorite puzzle lately. It is a castle and she has become quite the pro at putting it together. Of course, it is more fun to do while mom or dad is there so we never really know if she could do it all on her own. I don't think she's quite there yet. Its funny to hear her logic as she explains which piece goes where. She also likes the matching game and "Old Maid." This picture was actually taken the same day as the one above... notice the complete change of clothes. I think we went through four different outfits. Not because they were dirty... she just wanted new clothes.

Here are a few things Lucy has said recently. Most I wrote down while George was in Ft. Hood:

• “Mom, we watched Scooby-doo at the holytel remember?” (after our trip to South Padre – March 08)
• “Mom! The macaroni is throwing up!” (I was cooking noodles and it started to froth at the top and was about to boil over. March 17, 2008)
• “We can zew it to fix it” (talking about fixing her broken crayon – March 26, 2008)
• Lucy: “I don’t like peppers. They give me diarrhea.” Me: “Oh really. What is diarrhea?” Lucy: “Ummmmm. I don’t know.” (March 08)
• In her sweetest, highest, princess voice: “Mom, talk to me in a nice voice, please. Can you do it?” (April 2, 2008)
• Lucy: “Who is talking mom?” Me: “This is Elder Wirthlin. He’s an apostle.” Lucy: “Oh, just like Mary Poppins says.” (for any of you that haven’t watched Mary Poppins a million times… she sings “saints and apostles” in the “Feed the birds” song. April 5, 2008)
• “Mom, does Cinderella like pizza and bumatoes [tomatoes]? What about Moses, the prophet? Does he like them?” (April 12, 2008)
• (out of nowhere) "Is dad smart?" (April 08)
  
  

A busy day in Austin

Whew, we just returned from a fun day trip to Austin - Here's a recap:

We got up fairly early (by Kimberli's standards) and left for Austin by 8:30. The weather was supposed to be highs in the 70s and partly cloudy but we encountered a monster rainstorm on the drive into Austin which had us considering just stopping half way at the San Marcos outlets and shopping inside for the day - luckily eventually the weather improved but at least until mid afternoon it was a bit windy wet and cold.

Our plan had been to start the day with the Austin duck tours. This is a tour system run with large amphibious people movers adapted from old British military vehicles. I saw similar tour companies in Boston where I think it made a little more sense because the Charles river allowed for actual transportation by water rather than just a water ride which is what we did. Part of the duck theme involves everyone having plastic duckbill duck calls and quacking at pedestrians that we passed by. Anyway, our tour started at 11:00 and we learned some interesting things about the city of Austin and state of Texas (state dish is chili). We saw the campus of UT and the state capital and some of the fancy old hotels. Eventually we got to the water portion which involved going down the boat ramp into Lake Austin, circling past the dam for 20 minutes then coming back out at the same boat ramp we dropped in at. After our water ride our "duck" was unable to get into any of the forward gears and we were stuck and had to wait in the cold until a new "duck" could come get us. We finished another 10 minutes of tour on the way back to the visitor center but a lot of the enthusiasm was lost after huddling in the cold.

After our tour we were hungry and decided to walk a few blocks to the capital building and pick up lunch along the way. The capital grounds were nice as well as a short tour in the capital. My favorite part is the six seals of Texas which represent the six nations that have flown their flag over the land of Texas. They are (in order) Spain, France (only 6 years) Mexico, The Republic of Texas, The United States, and the Confederacy - then back to the U.S. of A. of course. Kimberli liked the lone star theming of the capital and grounds. This is also the origin of the name of the Six Flags theme parks (the six seals are on the floor under the dome of the capitol shown here.


After touring the capital we headed back to the car and decided to check out the city botanical gardens which we had heard were interesting and free. I thought this was great because the gardens were pretty and we saw a pretty big lizard and a pretty big snake (after looking on the internet I think it was a diamond backed water snake) in a pond. Kimberli just liked the gardens and walking across some stepping stones with Lucy.

After the gardens we had lunch at a hip place called the Magnolia cafe which was highly recommended by several sources. We thought it was pretty good. Kimi had enchiladas and Lucy had quesedillas and I had mushroom fajitas (Kimi always makes fun of my vegetarianish choices at restaurants). Things were pretty good but I had an unsweetened lemonade that was sour enough to have permanently puckered me.





The Magnolia cafe was located on south Congress street in one of the more eclectic neighborhoods of Austin. It was Friday night and by dinner time an antique car show was in full swing. We stopped and looked at a few of the cars as well as browsed through an impressive costume shop and a fun toy store.












From there we walked north on Congress street back to the river to watch the flying of the bats. The video below isn't our video but the gathered crowd and kayakers as well as at least three boat tours were out to watch the bats fly out from under the bridge which they do all at once every night around sundown. The best nights apparently are in August when the colony has gotten its biggest and they have to leave in better light to get more bugs but it was impressive to see the bats keep coming and coming. Apparently the colony peaks around 1.5 million bats at the end of the summer. I checked our photos and I couldn't make out any bats but I can witness that we did see a bunch.

After the bats we walked back up Congress through what had now become a raging party of antique cars with all the bars filled to bursting. Lucy was a bit exhausted and grumpy and we were happy to get to the car and drive home (definitely one of the marks of a good vacation).

Austin Bats 2006