Turtle Grand Prix

super duper trail mix oatmeal

This month is the time to serve this traditional cultural dish. We've had 2 neighbors bring it to our door, and it was served to me at a party today. It's part of the local culture and has to do with Noah's Ark. According to the origin of the dish, when the Flood subsided and Noah's ark landed on dry ground, they wanted to hold a celebration as an expression of gratitude towards God. The food storages on the boat were practically empty, so Mrs. Noah (I'm guessing it was her) took all the remaining ingredients and mixed them together in one pot. Waah-la...a new dish! It can have up to 15 ingredients in it. It's a sweet dessert, almost like a pudding. Some of the items in the bowl include rice, chickpeas, walnuts, raisins, white beans, dried apricots, pomegranate, peanuts, figs, sugar, and cinnamon. It tastes kind of like a trail-mix-on-steroids-kind-of-oatmeal. In all honestly, it's pretty good.

Turtle Cake

Annie wanted a turtle cake, so this was my best shot at it. The icing was a great reptile color, but it's an awful green for Christmas cookies (trust me). The toenails and shell outline were chocolate chips, so we had fun eating turtle toenails. Annie wore green on purpose...she's crazy about turtles!

Believe it or not, the turtle is not on fire. The turtle is just sparkling. We used the traditional sparklers (at least they're traditional here) on the birthday cake.

Meet the Turtles

Here's Annie's birthday present! She's been asking for turtles for some time, and so we took the plunge (pun intended) and got her these critters. These little guys are outlawed in the US, but here they're totally legal. So meet the 'lil outlaws. Annie named them Samson, Simon, and Peter. I hope this video doesn't take too long to download. It's just a slideshow of the outlaws.




P.S. For all you concerned ones out there, yes, we wash our hands after each handling. These outlaws have to stay in the aquarium almost all the time. They don't get much free play; they stay mostly behind bars.

Where is Dickie V?!?!?!?

After being inspired by watching Jimmy Chitwood in the movie "Hoosiers", David started his basketball league (11-13 year olds) this past Saturday. While David didn't have the chance to make the last-second shot like Jimmy, he did score 6 points. He made the first basket of the season by anyone, got a layup on a fastbreak and made the last basket of the game. In fact, he was still talking on the way home about why his last basket was only a 2-pointer. His foot was on the line when he shot, but I told Dickie V would still have been proud of his shot!! He would have been screaming loudly, "Awesome, baby! Get a TO, baby! He's a PTP'er! There's an M&M'er! That kid's a Rolls Roycer! He's a Surf and Turfer, baby! It's Maalox Time! He's playing like Mr. Pac-Man, baby! Eat a Wilson Sandwich, baby! Slam-jam, baby!" I am not sure what some of those mean, but Dickie V probably doesn't either! By the way, when does he return from his surgery because we need him calling David's next game?

Guitar D

Next week David's going to begin guitar lessons. We bought a used guitar from a friend for 40 bucks. It came with a case, tuner, extra strings, and polish. He's been picking out a few songs in anticipation of his lessons. Here he is with his new prized possession.

Figure 8's

We've been ice skating twice in the past two weeks, and Abby and Annie have fallen in love with it! As a result they are going to begin ice skating lessons next week, and they are pumped! I'm excited because where they are skating has a Starbucks, and while they're having lessons I'll be having a Caffe Mocha! Mike and I have recently been working on our budget, and um, Mike, I'm gonna need a separate line item for the Starbucks addiction!

rotten tomatoes NOT

I've been seeing these things at market, and I thought, "Who in the world would buy rotten tomatoes?" A friend recently enlightened me that they were persimmons. There's a chance we could eat them at a neighbor's house, so I bought some for in-house food training. You can tell by the facial expressions what the kids thought of them. In all reality, they weren't that bad. They were actually sweet, but my children have a gift for the dramatic. Although they look like fried apples in the bowl, they are indeed peeled persimmons.

Mike's 180

I was driving home Friday evening after being out with a friend. Our street was covered with ice and untouched by plow, salt, or anything else which would have been helpful! As I made it up the hill, a funny sensation overtook me. It SEEMED like I was going backwards and sideways. I know my driving may leave a lot to be desired, but I knew it was not that bad!

Much to my dismay, I was right!! By this time, I am halfway down the hill and still going sideways. Fun for a moment, but there are other cars that drive on the same street as me. I decided the brakes would not help, so I turned my steering wheel to the right to see if I could complete my 180 and be driving down the hill instead of trying to stop on it. For once in my life, it actually worked and I smoothly drove off into the sunset..........until the car on my left looked at me like I was one strange foreigner who had absolutely no clue how to drive! :-)
I was not about to let him spoil my fun, so I cranked up the radio and sang all the way home - without incident! Moral of the story: enjoy the little things in life, especially the victories!

First Snow

We had our first snow of the season today, and since the kids were out of school we were able to kick it off with an all-out snowball fight with several other families. There were about 20 of us in all. It was guys against girls, and now that David is a 6th grader, he and his friends are actually just as dangerous, if not more than adults. My friend received an injury to the chin from a snowball from my son and an another injury to her leg by a dad tackling another boy. I got a pretty good pelt from a 6th grade boy who excels in baseball under my chin. The dads played nasty and put snowballs down people's shirts. We played in the snow for a couple of hours. Then, we went ice skating and made fools of ourselves at the ice rink! It really was a super fun way to kick off the first snow of the season. I need some marshmallows for my hot chocolate!

Magical Atmosphere

It's not uncommon to have to pay money to use public toilets. This place tried to promote their toilets as something special. The sign stated, "Only 50 cent is enough to feel the magical atmosphere. " Well, we paid the money, and nothing magical happened except it wasn't a squatty. That was worth the 50 cents.

Time away

We went on vacation for 5 days following Christmas. These are just a few pictures of our time away from the big city!

Christmas morning

Here are the kids Christmas morning with some Webkinz. Annie actually woke up at 4 a.m. and checked her stocking. She played with those items for an hour and fell asleep at 5 a.m. in front of the Christmas tree. David woke up at 6 a.m. ready to go, and he was surprised to see Annie asleep on the floor, so he woke her up. Time crept by until 7 a.m. when Mike and I forewarned them was our wake up time. So at 7 a.m. on the dot Annie came into our room to announce Christmas morning. After we opened gifts, we had the all-traditional Christmas breakfast - Dunkin' Donuts. It's quite a drive from our home, so we rarely have them. It was a great treat! Later in the day we gathered with some others who celebrated the day. For a first-time-to-live-overseas-during-Christmas family, it turned out to be really special time.

How many ways can you...

We have a small nativity set in our entry way. I think I paid less than $5 for it at Big Lots. Throughout the Christmas season I noticed that the kids were rearranging the characters every day. Every time I passed by there was a new arrangement. I thought I'd show you some Nativity interpretations from our kids. It pleased me so much to see it rearranged daily that I started taking pictures. Nativity sets are meant to be played with. They are meant to be touched and loved and acted out. It was the best 5 bucks I spent on the Christmas season. My 2 favorites are 1) everyone standing in single file to see Baby Jesus and 2) Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and outside and everyone else is in the stable.

Naming Animals

Emma got 2 Webkinz for Christmas. She named the black bear "Snowball" and the white terrier dog "Rudolph". I love it when kids name animals! When I was about her age I got a Yorkshire Terrier (real dog), and I thought long and hard about what to name him. I thought about the 2 things dogs say - Bark and Arf. I named the dog Barfy. I was so excited about the name until I shared it with my two older brothers at the dinner table. I took a lot of greif for that, so I renamed the dog Puffy. Unfortunately, Puffy didn't live very long because he ingested too much playdough while we were out of town.

Watches for sale

The kids are on Christmas break for 2 1/2 weeks, so we did some travelling. At one of the touristy places, we saw this storefront. It's nice to see some honesty!