Val-deri, Val-dera!

It was a busy weekend (duh – aren’t they all?). One thing we did was spend our Saturday morning in the mountains (foothills). We went on one of our favorite local hikes, Corwina Park.

I am particularly fond of this hike because it’s beautiful and very shady. There’s a lovely little stream running by the side of the trail for the first half of the trek and then when you get to the top, you get a beautiful view. As an added bonus, the parking lot has access to a river, so we can toss Loki in and get him clean(er).

Tabby and Ben both love to hike. Ben got so excited when Matt pulled out the backpack I thought he’d explode before we could get him in the car. Tabby hikes all on her own now and is an incredibly good hiker for the most part. The rest can be coaxed along with a snack here and there. I packed the applesauce in the tube I got from Costco this go-around and that was a major hit.

A couple of Tabby’s comments from hiking today:

“I wish Ben was big enough to walk and I could ride in the backpack.”

“I think Loki might go feral!” (We had just had a lengthy discussion on the difference between “wild” and “feral.”)

As as an added incentive/reward for good hiking, Matt purchased her her very own CamelBak.

Myself, My Android

Earlier this week, I got a new phone. I’ve had my HTC Hero for almost two years and it has worked very well for me, but I got the chance to upgrade at a great price and with how fast things change, I decided to snap it up. I got a HTC Evo which will be completely out-dated when Sprint Releases the Evo 3D later this summer but oh well. It’s shiny and new and it works beautifully for what I need.

So I thought I’d share some of my favorite Android Apps with you while I was thinking about it:

  • MyFitnessPal – this syncs up with the My Fitness Pal website and allows you to sync all of your nutritional and exercise data. All free.
  • Open Sudoku – This comes with 3 levels of puzzels, 30 puzzles in each level, I believe and then you can download (for free) 100+ puzzles for each level. Excellent interface.
  • Solitaire Free Pack by Tesseract – they have a premium pack that isn’t too expensive, but I still haven’t exhausted the tons of free solitaire games on this version.
  • Just Pictures – This does a wonderful job of syncing with Flickr to show off your photos via your Android phone. It’s pretty fast and it caches well. You can also use it to set wallpaper.
  • Kid Doodle – this is a neat little doodling app for kids; they draw in glowing neon lines and then can play back what they’ve drawn in movie style.
  • Amazon Appstore – This was one BIG reason I switched to the new phone! My old one wouldn’t load Amazon Appstore. Now you can get Android apps through Amazon and they feature a paid app for free every day.
  • Stitcher – This app lets you listen to podcasts without downloading them. You stream instead and don’t run out of space on your memory card.
  • Pandora – Just like Pandora for anything else, you can make a station based on a song or artist. I find this especially useful for finding new running music and at Christmas when I’m sick of the junk they play on the radio.
  • Shazam – It listens to the ambient music and tells you what it is and who sings it.
  • Google Goggles – I’m not sure how this would be useful, but it’s fun to play with. It takes a photo and then scans it and googles what it thinks it is. Definitely does better with some things as opposed to others. It found my phone, the can of wasabi peas I keep on my desk, an image of Starry Night on my computer screen, and my cyber clean. It couldn’t find my Keen bag, my favorite pen, or our company logo.
  • ES File Explorer – Lets you browse the files on your phone just like in Windows Explorer or whatever.
  • Google Skymap – Allows you to use your phone to tell you which stars are where.
  • Keyring – Allows you to scan in the barcodes from your reward membership cards and will display them for scanning instead of bulking up your keyring. Genius!
  • Yelp! – Senses your location and then uses it to find you places to eat nearby.
  • Groupon/Living Social – Both have good apps for holding your deals.

and for my brilliant finale:

  • NETFLIX! They released the app, many articles said Evo was on the list of supported devices, yet I couldn’t download from the Android Marketplace. Found this thread and downloaded it anyhow and now I’ve got my Netflix on my phone. Nerdvana. Note: I had to use ES File Explorer to locate and install the package.

Any other faves?

Strawberry Lemonade Cake

My mom had a birthday this past week and one of my small joys is to make a birthday cake for those I love. I always do it with good intent, but my cakes are never particularly… pretty. They always taste good, I will give them that, but they’re not big on the looks.

I tried to give my mom a choice of cake recipes I’d been storing up to try out, but after a bunch of back and forth, we really didn’t have a good answer, so in the interest of what went well with my dad’s fabulous dinner (salmon, rice, asparagus, salad), I picked out this Strawberry Lemonade Cake from Baking Bites and decided to give it a whirl. At the last minute, though, I ditched the standard cream cheese frosting for some of the lovely whipped cream cheese frosting I used on the kids’ birthday cakes. I was running out of time and nervous about properly frosting a layer cake with thicker frosting. Sometime I would like to make this as written, but I was extremely happy with the results. The birthday girl enjoyed it as well and my lemon-loving husband just raved.

Continue reading “Strawberry Lemonade Cake”

Tabby at 4.25

June 4th ticked off a quarter year of the way through Tabby’s fourth year. I’m still shocked and dismayed as these milestones fly by. Wonder if it will ever slow down a bit?

I’m really loving this little girl. I know she’s not 100% perfect, but the small battles we have over this and that (she’s a bit prone to drama and sometimes she doesn’t mind) are so small that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Sometimes this freaks me out a little. She’s too good. Too easy going. What am I in for with the teen years? Major payback? Oh well I won’t ruin this by borrowing trouble.

I notice the changes more slowly with Tabby these days, but she still does change. Just recently, she’s stretched out a bunch and seems to be all legs and arms. I’m sure that’s where all the food she’s been packing away is going to. She’s been eating like a horse and still hovering right around 35 lbs. She wears everything from 2T to 4T and I need to measure her again soon because I’m sure she must be inches above her last mark on the kitchen wall.

She seems to have abandoned some of her picky eating ways. We’re having more success with not gagging on “no thank you bites.” She’s also succumbed to my marketing campaigns for this and that. Quiche is gross but egg pie is tasty and delightful. Seaweed? Repellent!! But nori? SO YUMMY!! She will pretty reliably eat meat and cheese (but not string cheese – prefers bleu cheese or sharp cheddar or some of that delightful Wensley-Dale) and most carbs. She just recently discovered grits and I think Matt about burst with pride.

She is becoming a master at the art of negotiation. Some of her favorite phrases these days are, “but Mommy …” and “actually, Mommy …” It’s quite killing to hear her talk in her little girl voice with her adult-like vocabulary. She says almost all words perfectly, though ‘R’s give her some trouble still. Three=”fwee” for example.

Her newest interest is video games. She and Ben have a computer in their playroom. He loves it because it plays his beloved “Buzz!!” but Tabby loves it because she can play all the latest Dora and Kai-Lan games and draw and Skype with her family in Nashville. She also acquired a Dora Gameboy game (you take care of Dora’s puppy) that she is much in love with. We have to strictly limit access or she would play nonstop.

She has also recently overcome her fear of the waterslide at our rec center pool. This is huge for her and wonderful for us. You can only sit in the shallows of the kiddie pool guarding against disaster for so long before you want to scream. Now we can make the long trip up the stairs eleventy million times which is a vast improvement, believe it or not. I think we’ll get to take the kids to Waterworld this summer!

In many ways I am so sad at how fast her childhood is going by, but I dearly love the incredible little person she’s become. She is my little buddy and we both love doing things together … reading, cooking, making things … and the older she gets, the more stuff we can do together. Definitely a silver lining.

A Very Nice Weekend

We packed this weekend to the limits!

Thursday night: Took the kids swimming at the rec center. They both went down the slide about eleventy million times. Ben got water up his nose and decided snuggling was more his style.

Friday morning: Went to a killer workout with H. Triceps still a little sore.

Friday afternoon: Visited the Denver Botanic Gardens with my parents and my aunt and uncle, in town from AZ. Beautiful day. Kids played forever in the little river. Tabby asked a million questions about plants. Ben ran amuck.

Friday evening: Went out to dinner with everyone. Behaved myself admiarably and shunned such treats as margaritas and enchiladas. Had excellent shrimp tacos.

Saturday morning: Ran errands. There is a great shopping center with my two most oft-visited stores right next to each other (instead of 10-15 min apart like near me), too bad this area is more than 25 minutes away. Boo. Had Chick-Fil-A for lunch. 8 nuggets is actually fewer calories than 1 chargrilled chicken sandwich. Who knew?

Saturday afternoon: Manic mode as we prepped for two parties in the evening. I was baking a very complicated cake (and spilling batter all over myself) and then hopping on the treadmill for a run while it baked. Matt was running errands, wrapping presents.

Saturday evening: Went to our sitter’s daughter’s graduation party. Kids had a great time playing in the back yard. We chatted it up with mostly strangers. Then we high-tailed it back to the house to pick up the cake and then to my parents’ to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Dad fixed amazing dinner (salmon) and kids got to ride their plasma cars all around Dad’s newly re-floored garage.

Sunday morning: Loaded the kids in the stroller (way too early) and went for a run/walk with H. Beautiful day.

Sunday afternoon: Had INDIAN food with H and her boys and then checked out pieces of land Matt has been scoping out. Followed by NAPS.

Sunday evening: Had dinner outside. Kids had a bath (I supervised) while Matt worked in the garden. We skyped with all of the Nashvillians for Grandpa Sandy’s birthday. Kids passed out, I did photo management, mourned the end of the weekend.

Oh the Places You’ll Go!

One of our many babysitters (our full-time sitter’s daughter in this case) is graduating from high school. Actually, come to think of it, she’s probably already graduated … but her party is this weekend. We are giving her the graduate standard … money. But I never like doing JUST money. So I decided a nice framed quote from another graduation standard, Oh the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Suess.

I just typed it out in Photoshop, and using some excellent ding fonts and a couple of graphics decorated it. Praise be to our awesome color printer at work, it came out very nicely. Knowing her style, I think she’ll like it and at very least, she gets a nice 8″x10″ frame to put something else in!

Running Around

I’ve been going through my back posts trying to get some WordPress problems worked out and I just read the post where I made resolutions for the new year. Remember that? Yea, me neither apparently.

One of those resolutions, which I’d COMPLETELY forgotten about, incidentally, was to run a half marathon in under 2:15. I know when I made it I really thought it was pie-in-the-sky, but now, just 5.5 months into the year, it’s DONE. I ran the Colfax Half at 2:12. I’m still a bit in shock. I guess it’s good to be able to surprise yourself.

The really good thing about running is that there is always a new goal. You can always shave more time off your personal best, especially when you’re relatively slow like me. So now, of course, I want to run a sub 2:00 half marathon, which is right around 9 minute miles. I’m doing better sustaining that sort of speed, but I am guessing it will be a while yet.

Memorial Day Weekend Wrap-Up

It is super-greedy, but even when I have a nice long weekend, I always want more. Such was the case of this weekend.

I left for Vail with the girlfriends on Friday afternoon. We had a nice evening on Friday with much wine and conversation. Saturday we slept in, had breakfast and then rented bikes! We rode all over Vail, checking out houses and other sights. After a light lunch and some naps and general chilling, we went to dinner at Sweet Basil (one of our all-time favorites), where we netted an excellent off-season deal. We got to walk around town afterward and then of course there was more wine and conversation. Everyone enjoyed the break of being away from husbands and kids and (though I did not plan it this way) it was extra nice because when we went home on Sunday morning, we had the better part of two days of weekend still left.

I was very glad to see my little family when I got back. Matt and the kids had kept very busy with this and that and the house wasn’t even too wrecked. We rested and made a trip to Costco and then had a little Memorial Day BBQ on the patio with my parents, sister and GiGi.

Monday was my lost day. Matt went over to our friends’ house to work on their basement and I was at home with the kiddos. We did a whole lot of nothing … breakfast, breakfast cleanup, playtime, playtime cleanup, lunch time, lunchtime cleanup, naps. I even took a nap. When Matt got home, we ran some errands and then magically, it was time for dinner, followed by bedtime.

The house isn’t terrible, but it sure isn’t CLEAN. The menu for this week consists of whatever’s in the fridge. I haven’t exercised in three days. But I’m very very rested and that counts for quite a bit.

Weekend Away

Can you believe it’s almost memorial day? It feels like Christmas was just last week. Maybe I’m confused because we got snow recently and the kids and I still have coughs. Who could blame me.

But Memorial Day Weekend is almost here and I am heading with some of my best girls to the mountains for a much-needed long-anticipated girls’ weekend. There will be 7 of us hanging out, drinking wine and doing practically NOTHING. I don’t think the weather’s supposed to be stellar, but that is beside the point. Just doing nothing is such a treat when you wrangle kiddos all day.

I am looking forward to it and I know I’ll have fun, but a part of me is very sad to say goodbye to my family for a few days. I always miss them and I don’t get to see my kids a TON during the week, and part of me hates to give up any weekend time with them. Matt is making plans with other solo dads and my parents to keep them entertained and busy. And best of all, since it’s a long weekend, we still get plenty of time together when we come back early Sunday afternoon.

The Garden is In

Procrastination/schedule/good luck prevented us from putting any of our plants in the ground until this past weekend. The upside of this is that we missed out on some of the more … fun … weather Mo Nature has thrown at us lately. But the downside is that our garden starts in particular were looking pretty crappy. They needed more sunshine and room to grow and they needed it … well weeks ago!

We finally got a break from rainy/cloudy this weekend and struck while the sun was hot. We planted our front beds with a mixture of sad-looking strawflower seedlings we grew in the basement and a few more bedding plants from Wal*Mart (I figure if they can survive Wal*Mart, my garden should be like Eden for them).  The kids hung out with us while we worked out front. Ben was a pretty big fan of digging in the dirt. Go figure.

Continue reading “The Garden is In”