Sunday, November 29, 2009

Holiday weekend




We had totally perfect weather this weekend. Imogen and Genevieve got to spend time with Jeremy's cousins, Rachel, Laura and Sarah.

It wouldn't be a real holiday without cooking mishaps


The first batch of pumpkin bread (pictured here) had no baking powder. The second batch had baking powder. Problem: the recipe calls for baking soda. Each batch makes nine miniloafs of bread. That's eighteen pumpkin flavored bricks I have laying around. Seventeen, actually, because Elijah ate one. Slowly.


The pumpkin pie, however, turned out very well, which is nice. I've never made pumpkin pie before and I felt that ruining the pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving is like burning the stuffing or something. Very not cool.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Fall is here!

It's been gorgeous days, but also that awkward in-between stage when you wake up in the morning and are cold so you put on too much clothes and find yourself roasting in the afternoon. Imogen and Genevieve each have school sweaters, jackets, gloves, hats, shoes, and tights of varying thickness for customizable warmth. This makes everything harder because there's that much more to keep track of. Genevieve naturally stores things in her bed. Imogen doesn't "store" anything so much as leave it anywhere she feels like it. In the past two weeks she has left a hoodie, a sweater (brand new) and her most prize possession, a stuffed leopard, on the playground at school. You can guess that she and I were upset about different items.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

A two year old in the house

Elijah is a regular visitor these days. I think it's cool that my kids get to have a cousin around. I hardly knew any of mine. Even though he's much younger, they enjoy having him around. He takes naps in Genevieve's bed on occasion, and Genevieve has this strange habit (which is getting out of hand if you ask me) of storing copious amounts of stuff in her bed. It began with stuffed animals. And as the collection grew, more of her bed was taken up with them. Then it was a couple books. Far be it from me to discourage my children from reading before bed time. But then, there are some nights you don't want to read. You would much rather draw. Let's add a notebook and a few pencils. And a box of crayons (just a small one). And some markers. Just in case. Of course, I don't immediately notice when she's added something, because it's tucked out of the way, under blankets and stuffed animals. So when I tuck Elijah into the rapidly shrinking sleeping area of the bed, I don't see anything amiss. Not until after his nap is over when he was covered in marker scribbles.

Halloween

We went trick or treating for Halloween. We obviously didn't have any particular costume theme we were going for here.

The aftermath. It went quickly.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Out with the old...

We saw an old man selling a shih tzu puppy by the side of the road. As we ooh'ed and ahh'ed, Imogen said, "Can we buy it mommy?"

"No, of course not," I said.

"Why not? Monster is so troublesome."

"Oh, so we just get rid of Monster and buy a new puppy?" I said, laughing.

"Sure. We could sell Monster for $100."

"No one's going to pay for that dog," I said.

"Well, maybe you should grow his hair out like a real shih tzu and someone will," she said.

Like a real shih tzu?? What's that supposed to mean? I don't think my kids have noticed that Monster has outgrown his chew-on-everything stage. Puppies are much more annoying than grown dogs. Even though Monster has taken to pantry raiding and dumpster diving. I came home one day to find a bag of brown sugar chewed open and sitting on my couch. What kind of dog steals baking goods? Not to mention the candy bars (in their wrappers) that he has been vomiting (again, on my couch). Still, I asked Imogen who was going to fund this dog exchange and she didn't really have an answer for that one.