Gingerbread Houses

Last week a group around here was having a gingerbread house decorating event and we went.  And it was fun.  The "gingerbread" houses were actually made out of graham crackers, which we did when I was a kid, so I was cool with it.  But, instead of just using hard setting icing to glue the crackers together, they had orange juice boxes as a sort of frame for the house.  They worked okay.  The boys liked them, anyway.

Ben and I started out trying to do it without the juice box, but nothing doing.  It collapsed on us.  Luckily, there were no injuries.

Zach and Sam finished a lot sooner than us, because they didn't have any architectural setbacks, and they ran off to play and eat from the cheese platter.  Ben and I finally finished and then I managed to get these two pictures:

The back of the house and Ben being posing for the camera and being silly

The front of the house and Ben posing for the camera and being exuberant

And then he proceeded to eat off almost all the candy.  Sam heard the sound of sugar being converted into energy and came to investigate.

Sam muches away on the house.

Here Ben's house after he had picked a hefty portion of the candy decorations off the side.  

We decided to head home after this, because the boys were jazzed up and it was getting too crowded for the likes of us.  So, we went outside and chased each other around the fountain.

Good times.

(P.S. Those Santa hats?  They say "Baby's first Christmas" on them and are stretched to oblivion)

In the morning, the boys came downstairs and found the remains of their gingerbread houses on the table where I had left them.  They were completely devoured before breakfast.  

See Zach Run

Zach ran a 17k this weekend. He came in 5th in his age group! It was on a trail up in the hills, so the terrain was a little different than he was used to, but he still managed to run it all in about an hour and a half. He did great!

After parking the car, the boys and I got there right in time for the race to start. I thought we were standing out of the way, but it turns out we were right where they were going to be running. The guy starting the race yelled out, "Watch out for that kid!" because Sam had wandered off into the running area. I had to grab him out of the way. Thankfully, no trampling occurred.

Luckily for me and the boys, there was a playground right by the finish line that the boys happily played on for the whole time. They were pirates. Sadly they decided to be mean pirates when some other kids showed up and went around saying, "Arrrr!" in their scariest pirate voices. And the poor two-year-olds playing kept starting to cry and run away. So, instead I got 8 cents from my purse and we hunted for treasure and completely froze our finger tips. Good times.

Date Night Dinner

You may have noticed that little poll I put up at the side of the blog asking how much on average you would spend on a date night dinner. The reason? A couple of weeks ago I was watching America's Test Kitchen and Chris Kimball of bow-tie fame said that you couldn't even eat out for less than $120 these days and I said.............."Whaaaaat?" And then after my heart started beating again I wondered if some people really do spend that kind of money on eating out. I know that he is in a different part of the country, and that a lot of that expense is probably coming from bottles of wine, and that Chris and I are at very different stages of our lives, but still, I think he is spending way too much on dinner. And according to the results of my super-duper scientific study, so do you. Of my multitude of participants, most spent only $10-$20 on date night dinner. Conclusion? Either Chris is out of touch, or the readers of this poll are really frugal. I'll let you decided on that one.

Visitors!

Last week we got a visit from my brother Chris, his wife Jen and their boys, Mikey, Mathieu and Marc. I think the picture below is evidence enough that a good time was had by all.

Clockwise from top: Marc (in red shirt), Sam, Mathieu, Mikey, Ben, Chris' feet.

While the grownups chatted downstairs, the five boys proceeded to systematically destroy any semblance or order upstairs and have a grand ol' time in the process.

Ben took this picture of Marc.

We showed them the sites and Stanford, which was nice and uncrowded because it was Thanksgiving holiday and all the students were either gone home or sleeping somewhere. So, luckily, we weren't injured by any careless bikers, which is all too possible at other times.

Chris, Marc, Ben and Mathieu playing in the fountain. (It had been dyed red for the big Stanford/CAL game, but it really just looked pink. And disturbing.)

Sam and pink fountain. It is amazing that no one fell in. Amazing.

The entourage

Mikey, Chris and Marc in front of Memorial Chapel

It was so much fun to see them. But too short. Next time come and stay for longer guys! We all had a blast and the boys cried and cried when they left. It was sad.

And here is a picture Ben took of himself. Just for fun.

Garden Update: Holy Peas!

Planting snap peas may have been one of the smartest things I've ever done. They are growing like crazy. They are delicious. Ben will eat them, and Sam is considering it. And they make me look like I know what I'm doing. Which, of course, is completely true.

Morning sunlight through pea pod.

They've actually outgrown the bamboo stakes I was using as supports, but they've gotten quite strong and don't seem to mind. If they get too much taller, though, I'm going to need to support them with something else. I don't know what yet. (Click HERE to see what they looked like before) It's very encouraging to have things actually growing. I wish I had grown more now.

Here is an explanation of what is growing (Click on it to see it bigger).

The Tour

My lettuces have been eaten quite a bit by unidentified creatures. I'm going to try to home style remedies to keep them away. We'll see how it works. And they're kinda bitter. I haven't been overly faithful with my watering. Domage.

Cut-and-come-again lettuces

Now, the real question is, what do you use bok choy/choi for? And is this already too far gone? And why are there so many different spellings for bok choy?

Enormous Bok Choi

Chit Chat

Ben: Ma, you wanna come play puppies with us?

Me: Puppies?

Ben: Ya, it's a fun game where we pretend to be puppies and be puppies.

(while Ben was using the potty and Sam and I were right outside the door)

Ben: Ma, I need some privacy.

Me: Oh, I just love you to pieces!

Sam: No, I don't want to be in pieces.

Me: Oh, okay, well I'll just love you then.

Sam: Someone can't love their child when they're broken into pieces!

(I only caught the end of this, but they were interviewing each other with their little microphones.)

Ben: And what's your other favorite food?

Sam: Cereal!

Ben: You already said cereal.

Sam: Ya, I know.

(And here is a continuation of the above several minutes later. For the record, I don't think Ben has ever knowingly eaten cabbage.)

Sam: What's your other favorite food?

Ben: Cabbage.

Sam: What's cabbage?

Ben: it's a favorite food I like.

Tales from all Hallow's Eve!

I haven't gotten into Halloween for many a year. It's just never really been my holiday. I like the candy and the dressing up part, but that's about it. I'm not into scary. Or being scared. Or ugly things. I do like pumpkins and their seeds, but not their guts. I will say this though, Halloween is infinitely more fun with kids who care about it. Ben and Sam really got into Halloween this year. In the days and weeks leading up to it, the boys kept closing all the doors and turning off all the lights upstairs so that they could play Halloween. They would come downstairs and say, "Ma, come and play Halloween with us. Let's go upstairs to Halloween!" There are often spooky voices involved. It's been fun.

Ben and Sam showing off their muscles in a small portion of their costumes

The boys decided quite a while ago that they wanted to be space robots. I made them felt armbands with '"controls on them and jet packs out of plastic water bottles and paper mache. The jet packs were, if I do say so myself, pretty spectacular. I took a series of pictures if anyone is interested. We combined those with their letter shirts (from their super hero costume last year). Total cost = $0. And the boys loved them, which was the whole point.

Ben working on carving his pumpkin

Ben and his Jack-o-Lantern. If I called it a pumpkin after it was carved I got into trouble. "It's a Jack-o-Lantern, Ma!"

I mentioned to the boys that I could dress up as well and they jumped right on that. So, I went as a fairy queen. My neighbor let me borrow the wings and the wand and I used my old prom dress for the... dress. And yes, if I held my breath when Zach zipped me up I could still fit into it. Except I had a bunch of little bruises at the tops of my arms. I think the sleeves were too tight.

Sam, Me, and Ben after leaving a trick-or-treat.

They did pretty well about saying "trick-or-treat" and thank you. If anyone asked what they were they said, "space robots with masks."

Zach went as a bummer.

Sam, Zach and Ben

Ben, Zach and Sam. Too adorable.

It was very much fun. We let the boys stay up with us past their bedtime eating candy. They are doing a very good job sharing. I asked Sam if I could have a piece of candy and he said, "Yes, but just one!" The magic is in the inflection. They're also sharing with each other, which of course does a mother's heart glad. The only problem is that I should have snuck the package of Runts last night, because they wouldn't let me have any of them today. But, despite an almost total lack of banana Runts, a good Halloween was still had by all.