No training wheels!

Look carefully...it's Ross riding his two-wheeler!!

Scooter bump

If you look closely, you'll see a bump coming up on his forehead, over his right eye...

"What happened to your head?"

"Ryan and I were playing and I fell off his scooter! You should have seen me, Mama - I went flying and it was SO COOL!"

A disagreement

Chris claims the annoying alarm was saying, "Burglary! Burglary!" not, "Emergency! Emergency!" I'm tempted to tromp over and walk too close to their house so we can find out for sure.

Emergency! Emergency!

"Huny? Come here for a minute." I find Chris in the back hall, half in and half out the door, wearing a bemused expression. Suddenly, I hear a siren twirling in the background.

"Emergency! Emergency! You have violated an area ..... Protected by ..... A security system!" The siren twirls again. "Emergency! Emergency! You have violated an area ..."

We stand in door, listening to the mechanical voice and the siren take turns violating the quiet evening. The unnatural pauses in the mechanical voice are comical. "Deer?" Chris asks, "or should we call someone?"

"Emergency! Emergency! You have violated an area ..... Protected by ..... A security system!"

We wait, but nothing comes bounding through the woods. No deer. No burgler. The alarm sallies forth. "If this were Brooklyn, I'd be tempted to get a sharpie and write a nasty note on that guy's front door," I say. I've been known to pen such missives on the windows of people inconsiderate enough to park their 5-stage alarm cars somewhere well out of their own earshot. Eventually, we decide there's no actual danger and go back inside. Maybe the people in that house are too new to the neighborhood to know that the major threat around here is friendly deer? We're hoping it won't take them too long to figure it out.

Say cheese!

Q: How hard is it to get four boys, ages 5 - 7, into a nice picture?

A:

Game faces

Wisdom from Bug: "Mama, it's ok the Sabres lost because they might have won and at least they didn't lose to my Rangers."

Totally ridiculous

...but I really hope I win the Sabrebike:

Best part of Friday night...

"I was on the Jumbotron! I was sucking THIS (held aloft) thumb! On the Jumbotron at my first NHL hockey game! It was A-W-E-SOME!"

Saturday morning sounds

My head's back! Yaaaay - I love my head!

Storm Trooper, Django. Storm Trooper, Django. Storm Trooper, Djan...

Hey Lars! Let's get out the dance floor!

Jumpjumpjump...jumpjumpjump...jumpjumpjumpjump...YEAHAHAHAH!

Ross, you know you look like a lego guy, right? You know that?

Household help

In addition to bringing me mice, Pixie likes to help with my filing. She likes rubbing her feet on the files so much that most of the name tabs on my folders have had to be reinforced. It's a good thing she hasn't got claws up front or I'd be living a Garfield cartoon...

Paradise reconsidered

These are pictures of an 1890's earthen dam that broke this week on the North Shore of Kauai. They were taken by Jack Harter. You can see more photos here.

A friend of mine is studying in Kauai this year and she only lives about a mile from this dam. She and her host family are all ok, thankfully! In a brief chat with her this morning, I found myself wondering about the intensity of devastation. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have been killed in recent disasters - natural and un. In contrast to some of the most notable catastrophes, the Kilauea Dam break seems mild enough so as to be insignificant...but is it? Only a few lives were lost, only a few homes destroyed. Yet the damaged community is very small and very close knit; almost everyone left to live in the wake of this dam break has suffered personal loss. How much more traumatic is the healing process when the entire community is grieving? I can't imagine. I've known all along this would be a year my friend will never forget...I just hadn't considered all the possibilities of paradise.

No fool

My five year old is no fool. Along with the standard stack of magazines and innocuous offers, today's mail brought a 6" x 9" envelope, turquoise & white, with an abstract mouse-head design and a small picture of a Cinderella castle shown in one ear. Lars picked it up and immediately instructed, "Mama. Open this one because it will say we can go to here (points at castle) and it's Disney!" Mind you he has never been to Disney, nor does he have any idea we've plans to go next month (hence the big envelope with mouse ears...), but he is not immune to advertising and, if he is at all religious, his devotion is entirely for matching things and today's envelope certainly did not match any 'junk mail' he has previously classified. I distracted him pretty easily by handing him the inert contents of the latest Disney credit card offer which, handily, also arrived today. Still, I think that when we get to Orlando his standard 'make myself comfortable here' declaration of "Oh, I knew we were going to go here!" will be at least partly true.

Really good way to disperse aggression

me in the foreground


me in the background

Exploding Heads

My sister-in-law, Fraukow, has a new job! She's the secretary at her church, a job that fits her time and people skills very well. The problem, at least as far as her brother (my husband) is concerned, is that her head may very well be in imminent danger of exploding, as she's not actually baptized. I think she'll be ok - they've been going to that church for years now and I suspect if there were going to be any exploding heads, they'd have already detonated. Of course, nothing is for sure so, if you're a big fan of gory thrillers, you might want to consider switching to her church...just in case.

Beef...it's what's for dinner.

Chunky Maple Beef Stew

1/4 c flour w/salt & pepper to taste
1 t crushed garlic
1 stalk chopped celery
1-1/2 lbs. beef, cut into 1/2 cubes
1 19 oz. can tomatoes
1/2 c dry red wine
1/2 c pure maple syrup
4 medium potatoes, cubed
2 large carrots, sliced diagonally

Preheat oven to 325°. Shake beef cubes in bag with seasoned flour. Place in casserole dish with remaining ingredients and 1/2 cup water. Cover and bake 3-4 hours until beef is tender. Serve with homemade bread and a green salad. Serves six.

This recipe is from the Official Vermont Maple Cookbook, Second Edition. I used Wegmans Pan Searing flour (pre-seasoned), Wegs stew beef (pre-cubed), new potatoes (small enough not to have to cut), and baby-cut carrots. It takes about five minutes to dump everything into the casserole dish - couldn't be easier! Served with Wegmans bakery bread (about as close to homemade as I'm likely to get anytime soon) and a green salad.

Who needs cookies?

Lars had strep throat last week, which meant he couldn't go to the playroom at our grocery store. When he learned he'd have to *shop* with me, his dismay was audible and visual. Huge alligator tears poured over his cheeks accompanied by hoarse croaking noises (all he could manage through the swelling in his throat) that wrenched hearts (and ears) of all those around us. He perked up in produce, though, when he realized that I'd let him weigh all our fruits and vegetables. His mood improved still further with increased involvement - choose six apples, bring over some cauliflower, red potatoes or white? By the time we hit dairy, he'd forgotten all about playroom. He picked out yogurt, cheese, canned bread, chip dip and jello snacks. While he was getting milk, I returned the dip and jello. He glared only for a moment before saying, "FINE. Then I'm going to get RED milk. My red milk what I like. And what's your favorite." Whole milk at our store has red caps, while the 2% we usually get has purple caps. I figured red milk was a reasonable trade for the dip and jello, as Lars has always been particularly attached to milk gallon jugs. Once, when he was two, we thoughtlessly used an empty milk jug as a bouy marker for the Remember Rom Rom Rubber Raft Regatta, causing Lars to sob uncontrollably. We thought he was sobbing because Chris was in the water, but the sobs continued even after Chris came out and picked Lars up. We finally figured out Lars was upset over the milk jug and Chris had to row Lars out to rescue it before he'd stop sobbing.

A few days after shopping, Ross found the red milk in the 'fridge. "RED MILK," he cried! Oh, the joy!

Lars skidded into the kitchen, full of pride. "That's what I got for you," he said, "What I got for you what's your favorite!" Ross practically threw himself at Lars in a hug that might have crushed them if they hadn't both been so full of happiness. Who needs cookies when you have RED milk?

Five Random Things (a meme)

I've been meme-tagged by Colleen! Here are five random things about me:


1. My husband urged me to start ice-skating lessons last year when there wasn't any NHL to watch and now I play left wing for the Bridgewater Wings C team.

2. In 44 days, we are taking the kids on a surprise trip to Disney World!

3. After years of trying to gain weight, I've finally figured out the secret: exercise. All those years I was a lump I couldn't keep a pound on...but I've gained at least 10 pounds since I started playing hockey in September.

4. I am jealous of my husband because he drives a Zamboni.

5. Chris and I sometimes put the kids to bed early so we can play networked computer games together.

I'll tag Spice Girl and bibliofilly...

What will you look like in 100 years?

The elementary school celebrated the 100th day of school today with all sorts of activities and games centering around the number 100. First graders made macaroni projects depicting 100 in groups of 10, 5 and 1. They had contests to see how many numbers they could write in 100 seconds. There were also essay questions like what would you do if you had $100? And, my favorite:

And the Oscar goes to...

The new National Lampoon movie features two of my favorites, Jon Bon Jovi and women's hockey. Please note that my hockey team doesn't really resemble the one in the movie...

Well, well...

The exact location of our well has been something of a mystery since we bought the house two years ago and we've been so busy fixing everything else that finding the well didn't seem very important. Last week, though, our water pressure went from mediocre to mildly unacceptable. A day or so later, I stood in rapt confusion in the back hallway, listening as an odd chorus of glug-glug-glugging happened in the pipes. On investigation, it turned out that the water seemed to be leaking out of our pipes when the taps were shut off. We'd open a tap and get air spurts before actual water would appear and the amount of actual water ranged from a trickle to randomly spaced drips...in either case, not good! So, a well guy was called. He came over, charged for the visit, and wrote up a heart-attack causing quote for work that entailed finding the well, raising the well (due to new regulations about how far down the top of it can be placed), replacing the pump and changing the pipes to the house to code compliant material (on the assumption that if he would have to raise the well, the pipe material would also need updating). Chris looked worried and I was livid - the work outline seemed reasonable but I thought the guy's estimate was way out of line and made Chris get another estimate. Thankfully, one of our neighbors was able to recommend a well guy who came over on Wednesday and gave the same work outline, plus said we'd have to replace the UV lamp in our filter, and estimated it would cost less than 1/3 what the other guy said. The wash of relief was almost as good as a shower would have been! Still a sizable chunk, but not so daunting as to elicit heart palpatations. They arrived today to do the work. Here's what they found:

1. The well! Happily, someone had already raised the top, which whacked a nice chunk off the price.

2. The pump. Sadly, whomever raised the well did not replace the pump, as the manufacture tag on the pump was dated 1989. Our guess is the same drunk uncle who built the addition on the house may have done the pump work, in which case these findings are par for the course. While the corrosion on the bottom of the pump explains much of it's lackluster performance, the big split in the top casing is responsible for the glug-glug-glugging...that's where the water was actually falling back out of our house, into the well. Our first gravity check of 2006!

3. Finally, the new pump. Currently installed and providing 40 - 60 lbs. of pressure to all taps in our house. I did not get pictures of the new pipe, but did get to drive under it in a semi-fun parody of the limbo on my way over to the arena to shower before heading in to the city for a meeting today. There are cleaner places to shower but the water in the locker room was evident, hot, and not screaming - I was thankful for all three. I will be celebrating in my own shower tomorrow. Chris has, predictably, already tested the bathtub...he says it works very well.