Memorial Day

We got ourselves out of bed this morning and made it to the 9AM Loveland Memorial Day parade. Jeremy was thrilled to see his classmate Emme and her family. On our way home we stopped at Home Depot for annuals. We planted some, but not all, this afternoon. Later in the day we had a cookout with Mom, Mike, Louise, Rachel, and the Loughners. Loughner girls convinced us to get out the water slide. It was a really nice day.

Impulse Buy

I'm weak. I was at Kohl's just trying to get a price adjustment for some things I bought Friday that went on sale Saturday. Perfectly innocent thing to do, right? Somehow, I came home with this:

The kids had a spectacular time on it yesterday while Tim and I worked on spreading mulch. We spread 8 yards altogether (with Tim doing the harder work!). After the mulch and the slide, the boys and I made our first visit of the season to the neighborhood pool. We were EXHAUSTED by the end of the day. Thankfully, we picked up Chinese at Timmy's Wok, so I didn't have to cook. Yay.

Milestones

The 4-legged baby has been keeping us busy. Last Monday, he learned to go up and down the inside steps. This is a big deal. It means we're moving out of infancy, where I had to carry him upstairs and down all the time. He's still a little reluctant to go, but he's getting better.

Going Green, Year 3

Today was the first pickup of my third year in Earthshares CSA. It was a green day:

2 lb spinach
1 lb leaf lettuce
2 baby garlic
2 oz mixed herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme, and more)
1/3 lb kale

A small, but nice start to the season!

Dinner Idea

Things have been a bit busy at the Case House lately. This is partly the regular end-of-school-year nuttiness, but it's mostly because of the new little 4-legged addition to the family. So, I haven't been cooking much. Sunday at Kroger, on a whim, I grabbed a flat iron steak. I was actually home this afternoon and early evening, so I decided to try my hand at cooking the steak. Into a ziploc bag, I place the steak, some leftover hoisin sauce from a meal a while back, some sweet chili sauce, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. I let it marinate for a couple of hours then grilled it for about 10 minutes. I found some garlic scape pesto in the freezer (from the CSA last summer - I think I'm needing to clean the freezer out!). I mixed it with just a little butter and spread it over the steak after it was cooked. The whole thing sat for 10 minutes or so while I finished the side dishes and then I sliced it up. YUM! Definitely better than doing the same thing with flank steak. It was a very successful meal, if I do say so myself.

Sandtray Center

We've discovered a great little place in Historic Loveland called The Sandtray Center. It's a place where kids can experience literature and social groups while playing in the sand! Jeremy goes there every other Tuesday afternoon with some friends from school. Two weeks ago, they read I Can Read With My Eyes Shut by Dr. Suess. A few days later, I dropped Zachary off for his reading group and found this in the window:What fun! Jeremy made the little book - he was trying to rhyme some words. He's so excited about making little books, that we now have a "writing center" full of pens, markers, crayons, paper, and itty bitty books ready to fill up with all of his creations. I even bought a special stapler that can staple together 100 page books if he wants. THEN I promptly jammed the thing with the wrong kind of staples, despite the fact that there is a HUGE upper case warning right on the front of the stapler: DO NOT USE STANDARD 1/4" STAPES. THEY WILL JAM THIS STAPLER. Nice! Anyone have any repair skills?

What Kind of Household....

What kind of household do you live in when the eight-year-old disappears into the bathroom, you ask him if everything's OK, and is answer is that he's just fine, "I was just working a math problem?" Wow. We're sort-of geeky around here. In a good way, I'm sure.

Pajama Day

So, I sent my boy to school in his pajamas (on purpose). Celebrating Right to Read week, today was Pajama Day. Here are the kindergarten and first grade cuties at the bus stop.

Stuff at my House

Sweet Boy

Sometime over the last couple of months the boys discovered Extreme Makeover Home Edition. They love it. This week's story was about a little girl who had an illness herself and had devoted herself to raising money for cancer research. About halfway through the family's story, he got a huge smile on his face, jumped up and down, and said (almost giddy), "Wow! This one is even worse than usual!" It was probably not good that I couldn't stifle my laughter at this point. He immediately burst into tears. "MOM - there is a kid PRACTICALLY DYING, and you think it's funny?" So, the lesson is, that he is empathetic enough to really feel for the family, and I realized he was so excited about the opportunity they had to HELP them. Poor kid. I'm not that great at helping him navigate his feelings, I guess!