My So Called Life

This is what I invented the category for

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie says so many funny things that, even though I try to write them down, there are still a million that I forget. Anyway, here are a few from the weekend.

“Do you like to help your mommy?”

“Yes.”
“What do you help your mommy with?”
“Daddy!”

Evie kept saying something about “eating letters” but we didn’t know what she meant. She said she had eaten an orange one and a green one and we eventually realized another girl had shared 2 M&Ms with her in those colors.

Sara to me: “Should we go to the G-A-R-D-E-N?”
Evie: “I want to go to the G-A-R-N-F!”

Evie wanted to touch Nala, but I told her not to because Nala was sleeping. So instead, she said she was going to touch daddy. Then she said, “Nala is jealous. Very jealous.”

Evie was helping Sara in the garden with a child-sized watering can. Sara looked over and saw Evie dumping the water all overherself, mostly down her back. “What are you doing?” asked Sara and Evie replied, “Watering myself!”

 

As many of you know, I have a very large extended family and they do many things together.My mom is one of 17 kids. One of the traditions is the annual rummage sale in the spring, which happened over the last weekend. Almost everybody in the family contributes and the result is the largest rummage sale I’ve ever seen. Everything is dirt cheap and many of the items are bought by other family members before the sale really even begins. You want to know how big of a sale it is? Despite many items being priced at a quarter or less, they cleared $800 at the end of the first day! That’s a lot of quarters.

On the second day, everything that is left goes down to a quarter. I mean anything, a t.v., a table and chair set, whatever. I think this is brilliant. The point isn’t really to make a lot of money, the point is to get a little cash for stuff you wanted to get rid of anyway. Most of the stuff we put in the sale was stuff we had intended to donate to Good Will. Instead we got enough cash to cover our own purchases (~$4) plus cover pizza that night. Everything that was left we did end up donating. And it is fun to look through everybody else’s junk!

While we were at the rummage sale, Sara took Evie for a ride in a borrowed wagon. It’s not as funny to describe as to see, but Evie fell asleep about a block from home. As the wagon was pulled along, she swayed back and forth hard enough to smack her head on the cup holder a couple of times, but she must have been tired because she still didn’t wake up.

Just as a side note, Evie looooves shrimp! In addition to everything else she ate for supper, she ate 13 shrimp last night!

You scream, I scream, we all scream for iCream

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the weekend, we went to a new ice cream shop, or should I say iCream shop. We heard about this place because the person who started it is a University of Chicago grad and they did it as a senior project.

What they do is make the ice cream while you wait, instantly freezing it with liquid nitrogen. Aside from making some awesome science fiction fog, the advantage of this is that they don’t have to make every possible flavor ahead of time. So you can make any flavor, any color, any type of ice cream that they offer, which makes for a near infinite amount of possibilities.

For example, let’s say you are big fan of frozen yogurt. When you go to an ice cream place, they maybe only have one or two choices that are frozen yogurt because frozen yogurt is not that popular; so they don’t want to make a bunch of mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt, only to have to throw it out later. So you are sort of constrained to what they have, which may only be vanilla and chocolate. But this place doesn’t need to make it up ahead of time, which means you can get whatever flavor you want.

I went with almond flavored low-fat frozen yogurt with heath bar and nutella mixed in. It was delicious! I think Sara had almond organic ice cream with peanut butter and banana mixed in. Nobody was disappointed.

The downsides are that it was a little on the expensive side and also the service wasn’t super fast…they do have to make the ice cream. It wasn’t a problem on the cool-ish day we went, but in the height of summer with a huge line of people, I could see how it would be a problem.

But if you find yourself on the North Side, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend iCream!

I know funny people

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Last week a good friend of mine from back home, Zach Rody, did some stand up at a comedy club. First off, I have to say that anybody who has the gumption to actually get up on stage and do that is impressive to me. Comedy is one of those careers, like painting for example, that everybody thinks they can do but, as it turns out, the majority of people aren’t very good at. And even if you are one of the few that are good at it, it still takes a big leap of faith to get up and do it, so 90% of the people never bother. Therefore, if you actually get up and do it, you’re already ahead of 90% of the people, and if you are actually good at it, you are ahead of another 5% at least. Rarefied air.

So check out the video and see if you think Rody is in that top 5%. I think he is. The video is less than 5 minutes. And if you’d like, you can read an eye witness account here.

Evie Update Monday

/ Shane / 1 Comment

“What color is Evie’s hair?”
“Blonde”
“What color is mommy’s hair?”
“Grey!”*

*Disclaimer, Sara is forcing me to write in here that she does not actually have any grey hair.

And P.S., it’s my blog and I can write grey with an ‘e’ on it like a filthy redcoat if I want to! Take that world!

Over the weekend we got our garden all set up. We bought our plants from the gardens of Gethsemane – no joke, that was the name. It’s not as good as the garden of eat’n’, but I was still chuckling over it for a long time. It took Sara and I about 3 hours in the garden and another hour or so on the back porch, but everything looks beautiful. Looks like we’re going to have even more stuff than last year, as every square inch of our garden is accounted for, including plans for what goes in when certain things are done.

Evie went on the potty for what I think can be counted as the first time. She has gone a few times before, when she was younger, but I think this was the first time where she did it consciously, knowing what she was doing and why. That’s a big step. We’re not really potty training her per say, but we do let her sit on it whenever she wants to. Usually she will sit forever, but never go. So hopefully she will start to do this more and more and then we can try to potty train her for real. It certainly would be nice to be able to leave the house without all the diapers, etc.!

Sara found an article that says morning sickness increases the chance your child will have a high IQ. She thinks that people are just saying that as a consolation prize for the people who have a rough time with morning sickness, but anecdotally I will say that Sara had really, really bad morning sickness and Evie is really, really smart. You be the judge.

Since I began with a funny story about Sara, I feel I should end the same way; bookend-like. The other night I was sleeping blissfully when Sara forcefully pressed her arm against mine and yelled triumphantly, “They’re finally together!” I woke up rather confused and looked at her, but she wasn’t awake. I guess I’ll always wonder what the heck she was dreaming about.

She takes after her daddy

/ Shane / 3 Comments

After polishing off an entire avocado for her afternoon snack, Evie leaned back and smirked, “Daddy’s ‘mpressed.”

Fairly uneventful weekend. Evie had her first ice cream cone. She wasn’t too messy, but she didn’t really get the idea of eating the cone so she was burying her nose in there trying to get as much out of the cone as possible. We did some shopping at some places we don’t go very often, including buying enough food to stock a pantry that would make a Mormon blush. Blame it on my current end-of-the-world-scenario reading.

There has been a recipe floating around my extended family recently, but we just finally got around to making it. Basically you dump all the ingredients in a mug, mix it up, microwave it and voila, chocolate cake for one.

The first one sort of exploded like a chocolate volcano in our microwave. Our tip is to do it on 70% power. Sara pointed out that if the recipe is old they probably had lower power microwaves back then. Also, if you can manage it, use an extra tall mug. Those two things combined seemed to do the trick for the second cake.

I’d have to say, not bad at all. The taste is good, though the texture is sort of odd. I wouldn’t make it just to eat it, but it may be worth it for the fun of making cake in a mug. Also, it is single serving size which certainly has its advantages. So, if you’re like stuck on a desert island where you can’t get cake but you inexplicably have a microwave or some other strange cake-less situation (like you live in Norway), I’d say give it a try.

Chocolate Mug Cake

4 tbs flour
4 tbs sugar
2 tbs cocoa
1 egg beaten
3 tbs milk
3 tbs oil
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

Mix ingredients together and pour into large coffee mug. Microwave 3 min. Remove cake from cup and slice into 6 pieces. Drizzle with caramel or chocolate syrup and cool whip on top.