Family Formal

I'm not sure where I heard about this, but someone told me about a woman who taught her kids about formal table manners by having a formal dinner at home. I've always thought this was a GREAT idea and have since been eagerly waiting for the time I think my kids are old enough to understand the purpose. (I think I heard about this as a teenager) So we spent a few FHE's (family night) on table manners and polite dinner conversation and then I printed up fancy invitations on the leftover blank Thank You notes from our wedding (yes, nine years ago).

Clarence helped the kids call me from the house phone to my mobile (I was in the bedroom) to "Let you know I got your invitation and would love to come to dinner on Thursday." It was so cute - I wish we'd thought to video it!

Planning dinner was the easest part because we are doing a dinner for Enrichment (an activity for the women at church) and I had wanted to try the menu out before we set it in stone.

Gougeres (cheese puffs made with choux paste and Gruyere)

Salad (a fancy one!)

Dilled Smoked Salmon on Wheat Toast

Roast Beef and Horseradish Cream on White Toast

French Onion Soup

Gouda

Bleu Cheese

Camembert

Plums

Kiwi

Ice Cream in Blood Orange Soda

Chocolate Cake (four layers!)

On Thursday, just before 6pm they all got dressed up (the boys' church clothes are in the laundry) and went out the side door, around to the front door and rang the bell. They were so cute!

The kids liked most of dinner, except the dill cream.

They were wary of the French Onion soup but did at least eat the bread and gruyere if not the all of the soup itself and liked all the cheese except the Bleu. Though Clarence likes it just fine!

(incidentally, for the activity, the gougeres and toasts will be switching places because we're not going to broil bread and gruyere on the soup but the gougeres have it and the toasts are more like appetizers anyway. The salmon will go on water crackers instead of toast and we will also have Pomegranate Soda with the Ice Cream - I know you're really interested :).

Dessert was fun - we don't often have fancy Italian sodas with ice cream! I don't have long handled spoons so we just used Bubble Tea straws to suck up the ice cream which worked surprisingly well!

This dinner also alerted me to the fact that I have no matching table linens or place settings so that has gone up on the "To Purchase Soon" list - bummer!!

As for their behavior (I got so wrapped up in food I almost forgot!) they all were amazingly well behaved! We fed James early and put him to bed just before dinner so it was only the older kids and us. They all held up until the end of the cheese course, just before dessert, when Isaac and Ethan started to get restless and a bit antsy after sitting for an hour and a bit for dinner.

When dinner was done I showed them all to the door and waved good-bye while they thanked me for inviting them, then ran around to the side door and said, "Mom, we're home!" and told me all about their evening - so fun!

Part III and IV

Part III - Pizza stuff

We love homemade pizza at our house! Every Saturday night we make pizza and eat it while watching a movie in the basement. This is special for a few reasons. First, they rarely get to eat in anywhere outside the kitchen/dining room. Second, we watch a movie in the dark on our ridiculously big TV with the cool sound system. Third, during the summer we use ingredients from our garden to make the pizza! Here are some photos from the other night's pizza!

Here's the sauce from scratch (well, we added a bit of leftover spaghetti sauce to it)

The last two zucchini (YEAH! The kids were beginning to mutiny.)

These used to be green beans, but I left them on the vine WAY too long - the seeds over developed. I boiled them like you would kidney beans. AWESOME! I had no idea they had so much flavor!

The dough, of course, came from our bread maker, it's so much better fresh!

I neglected the after shot, but it was delicious!

Part IV: Corn

The corn (actually we had this another night) was so beautiful! I was so anxious to eat it that I plucked it one Sunday evening with a stupidly giddy look on my face.

I served it up with lots of talk about how "I grew it myself" and how "it's probably no good but we'll see," right? Standard self depreciation to remind myself not to get too proud, no real need to be concerned. I took one bite and thought, YUCK! I took another bite from the other end, just to make sure. It was gross. Well, gross texture, the flavor was actually OK. But where was the crisp bursting of little kernals in my mouth? What was up with the chewy nastiness that got stuck to our teeth and formed a second layer of corn-skin enamel on them? No one but the kids finished it. Suck! It was so deceptively yummy looking!

Many Part-ed Postings

SO. I keep thinking there's nothing much going on. There isn't really, but there have been SOME things going one periodically which I shall spend the rest of the morning updating my friends and family on.

Part I - Camping in Hershey, PA

First up is our drive to Hershey, PA in June. It was a vacation that was supposed to be without Clarence because we sit around not going anywhere all summer while he works. But this year I was determined to get out of town for a while, however, he can't stand to be left out of anything so he finagled his schedule to get two days off in a row and drove the CRV behind our van on Monday and back again on Tuesday. Crazy waste of gas? Maybe, but it was nice to have him there!

Sadly, we didn't actually take many photos, and you may have seen these on my Facebook, but it's all I've got! We met up with our friends, the Holts, whom we lived across the parking lot from in Chapel Hill, NC. Jen, being the graphic designer she is, made matching t-shirts for all the kids so they'd be easier to keep track of at the amusement park (and because they're just so darn cute!). And here they all are, taking up one entire ride all by themselves!



Here's my good friend Jen and her kiddies behind us on the train. James fell asleep so Clarence walked him in the stroller while we rode around the park. It was a nice break!



And some of you may already know how much I loathed the Hershey chocolate factory that is so NOT small kid friendly but we got a cute picture of the kids before we realized it was a bad idea to try to keep track of 7 small kids in the dark during a historical video and left.



Our trip ended by getting rained on (we were tenting) so we went to a hotel the last night while the Holts swam and the Tangs all got sick. Yep, Isaac and I were puking our guts up, which made me ESPECIALLY glad we'd gone to a hotel and not in our tents. It was only a 24 hour thing so the drive home wasn't too bad, and we made it home only 3 hours later than we'd planned!

Part II - The Garden

Next is my garden. I've posted a few things here and there about the seedlings but it's all grown now and over producing and I just can't keep on top of all the zucchini and yellow squash! Here they are in June:



Here they are a couple of weeks ago!



And the tomatoes are turning orange as we speak, by next week I'll have an overabundance of them as well. It's my own fault, I knew I was planting too many but I couldn't stop myself!



One of the plants I'm most excited about is the corn - who grows corn in their backyard?! I do! I'm getting at least one nice sized ear on each stalk! Some have two! This is what it looked like shortly after planting.



And here it is now! All big and tall (one stalk fallen victim to a critter) and almost ready to eat! I can't wait!


And you may remember a former posting of how Clarence butchered my bushes. Well, I've put the space to very good use and it is now my herb garden! Not only that, the flowering quince and rose bush I was so sad to lose have come back with a vengeance! Here is a picture of my herbs!



Do you have any idea how much FUN it is to get herbs directly from your own soil when you need them? I don't buy parsley, basil, sage, green onions, thyme, mint, lemon balm (which is great in water) or fennel because I'm growing them all by my kitchen door. And I don't have them rotting in my fridge because I only need 3 tablespoons but had to buy 5 cups worth. And! When they start to get overgrown I prune them, hang them and now I have very potent dried herbs to last through this winter. Jealous? If not there is something wrong with you! (just kidding!) This is so much fun I'm going to rip out more bushes this fall to make room for more herbs next summer! (and when I say "I'm going to rip out bushes" you know I mean "Clarence is going to rip out bushes")

Parts III and IV are coming soon!

Another Referral

I'm not very interesting lately, unless you count cleaning the couches as interesting. However, I've come across another post that made me glad my kids are as repelled by poop as I am. Enjoy. http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=2540 (again, copy and paste because I don't recall any of the HTML I used to know)

Already?!

I was sitting on the couch a few moments ago when Ethan walks over and flips me the bird. He just stands there, flipping me off. I've been expecting him to learn some naughty things at school and so I quickly run over in my head how to let him know it's rude to stick that finger up at people - without making a big deal about it. Then he says, "Mom, I hurt my fingernail." I laughed. Hard. I gave it a kiss and then a big hug and told him how funny he is. He gave me a look that said, "I always knew you were nuts" then went back to the piano to finish practicing. I love kids.

A little somethin to make you smile

An oral retelling of the Star Wars plot by someone who's never seen the movie. I'm going to go watch it again.

http://vimeo.com/2809991 (sorry, I can't get the link thing to work so you'll have to copy and paste)

Only a few minutes long - take a break!

Can't catch a break!

I am a pruning fool lately! There is a 50' stretch of random, oversized shrubs lining my driveway and I want to be rid of the poke-y ones (barberry, for those of you who know what that is) because they're just ugly after the way my well-meaning neighbor has been shearing them for 10 years.


I got the one just right of the yellow forsythia out Saturday morning before needing a nap (we went dancing Friday night and I was TIRED - I'll blog about that when I get the picture off Hubby's phone) and Clare was being the wonderful husband his is by continuing to work while I napped...for 3 1/2 hours.


When I woke up at 4pm he was making dinner (I know, my husband is better than your husband) and he excitedly told me to go view his hard labor. So I open the door that opens to the driveway and this is what met my eyes (though it was still daytime).



All my flowering shrubs were gone. The Forsythia, the pink flowery one (the spiking branches just beyond the one I took out) and even the rose bush (that, admittedly, I ignorantly butchered last spring. It was recovering!) was nothing but a few nubs screaming from the soil. I quickly walked out and shut the door, not wanting Clarence to witness my reaction to his "help" until I could accept it and move on. I was much more upset last summer when my neighbor topped my pink flowery one after I'd asked him to leave it alone but this was still hard to swallow.




On top of that, Clarence has declared that I should not attempt to take out the rest of them because it's just too much work. Well, maybe it'll be too much work for HIM, but all I have to do is cut the branches, he's the one who digs out the roots and I don't see a problem with that. However, he's given me enough room for some kitchen herbs so I'll wait until we get sun again at the end of the week before approaching the subject again.

In the meantime, I made gigantic cookies, just because losing weight was beginning to get a little too easy.

We are a biker family

Or maybe a cycling family, I'm never really sure which term is more common, though I think cycling is definitely more accurate. So here we are on our first family bike ride of the season and I started off trying to take pictures behind my back, but it didn't turn out so well...



The boys decide they need rest after about 3 full blocks (but I made them wait a few blocks more before getting water.). I think we'll need to build up their strength before the mile trek to the library.



Their favorite parts are the middle bit of the route because it's mostly downhill. They scream with embarrassing amounts of enjoyment all the way down and then have to stop to catch their breath again at the bottom. Our rides don't cover a lot of ground but they sure take a long time!



Lillian and James enjoyed it about as much as they ever do, though this year, instead of wrestling James into his helmet he wants to wear it all the time! Yay!



And, though I could easily have pulled the trailer myself (thanks to my uber cool workout schedule!) I felt Clarence would enjoy the workout, and I let him do it.



After our sadly short ride, the last 2 blocks of which Isaac walked up the "hill", I cleaned up our driveway a bit while the kids and Sammy played in the yard. Ethan being the photofilic boy he is, asked me to take this photo of him on the top of the ladder we bought so we could change the lightbulb in the stairwell (it extends and also locks flat to extend further.



And on a completely different topic, I recovered my dining room chairs last fall (or maybe summer, I really don't recall) and the kids promptly picked all the protective plastic off. Now I have to do it again with a thicker plastic or risk the fabric being ruined by their messiness (yes, we have plastic covered dining room chairs - it's the only way to keep them nice!). I'd intended to do a "before and after" sequence but honestly, the "after" looks just like this only with smooth plastic.



To close I'd like to share with you my most favorite new thing. My glow in the dark retainer. It's so strong it actually casts light! (for about 10 seconds)



Cool, eh?!

We got a puppy

...for a week. We're puppy-sitting for our friends, the Curtis', golden retriever puppy who is only, uh, a couple months old. His name is Sammy and we are very excited for this little preview into what having a dog will be like.

Here is scratching,


lazily chewing a bone,


pulling on my hoodie string,


trying to warm up under my bum


and pooing, of course.


You may wonder why I've taken so many photos of a dog that doesn't belong to me. Well, my friend Ann Marie, whose puppy this is, brought Sammy over last night and cried before leaving. Then she called first thing this morning (though I couldn't get to the phone because we were getting ready for school), and then again before noon. I'm thinking the photos will help her cope. Don't worry Ann Marie, Sammy is well loved and cared for at the Tang house. There is definitely no lack of attention. He can clear the back yard of people with the smell of his poop, which he did about a million times, and I got all but two of them picked up before he ate them! Yeah for the poo picker.

Crafty

I've been feeling spring in the air (it's been consistently above 40 degrees) and have gotten some kind of bug! I can't stop creating! So this first picture is actually a bit of a remake from NC. I cut the heads off fake flowers and stuck them into green florist foam (the really messy stuff). I like it enough to keep it but it doesn't really hit the spot, if you know what I mean. Still, it's fun!



This is our first hyacinth! Upside-down! I don't know how to flip it without involving photoshop, sorry!



And can I just say how much I love planting? I've planted so many seeds I've run out of space, and in two weeks I'll be planting more... I may have to buy hanging pots for the front window. But we are going to have one AWESOME garden this year!







I've been working on this quiet book for a few months now. I did a few online searches and gathered some ideas to build my own book (there weren't any that captured my interest enough to purchase it, so I'm making one that does!). This book will have a page for every color of the rainbow plus brown, black, pink, white and gray. Red and Orange are finished so I included pictures, I'm mostly done with Yellow but I'll wait until I'm totally done to take pictures. I'm not really good with a sewing machine but I think I'm getting better, or at least learning to make them look a little tidier.





They're mostly snaps, buttons and clasps right now but I'm going to put in other fun stuff in later pages! You should see the amount of stuff I bought at JoAnn's (especially ribbon - don't ask me why I love ribbons!)





Oh, and I lost 6lbs - can you tell?