Miss D's first sleepover.

We've had Ian with us all day today. I took him, Miss D, and K-Wiggles to the symphony this morning, then out to lunch at Noodles & Company (Miss D's favorite place). Then we came home and they all spent the day outside riding bikes and jumping on the trampoline.

Daddy-J came home in the middle, after spending the day with M-Moo, and he fed them dinner and put them all to bed while I went shopping and to the airport to pick up our house guests.

The above picture shows the floor of Miss D's room, where she and Ian are sleeping tonight (M-Moo and K-Wiggles are also in there... it's a party!).

WTG Ian for having three beautiful women in your bed with you!

Miss-D's birthday beading party.

I'm very proud of my efforts in the birthday party invitation arena this year! Which is my oh-so-humble way of introducing Miss-D's birthday party invitation...


We're both pretty excited about the party... especially me, now that I finally got things organized with the beading shop this morning!

Can't wait to see you all there... IRL or virtually! LOL!

Can you stand another food post?

Seriously? I don't know why I post about what we ate or cooked so often, but I guess we do it every single day, multiple times a day, so it's a big part of our life here at Casa Llamedos.

Anyway, tonight's dinner was Beef with Broccoli. I found a really simple recipe at Epicurious, modified it a little, and voila! 30 minutes from start to finish and all three girls pretty much gobbled it up! I think we have another winner that will be added to our repertoire.


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Quick Beef with Broccoli Gourmet | May 2007

Who needs takeout? You can make tender sirloin beef tips and broccoli in a velvety soy glaze just as fast yourself.

Yield: Makes 4 servings
Active Time: 10 min
Total Time: 10 min

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 pound sirloin beef tips, sliced against the grain 1/8 inch thick
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
10 ounces frozen broccoli florets, thawed
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 cup water

Special equipment: a well-seasoned 14-inch flat-bottomed wok
Accompaniment: rice
Garnish: fresh cilantro sprigs

Toss together cornstarch, salt, pepper, and beef in a bowl until meat is coated.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in wok over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then stir-fry beef until just cooked through, about 1 minute. Transfer with a slotted spoon to another bowl and keep warm, loosely covered with foil.

Add remaining tablespoon oil to wok along with broccoli and garlic and stir-fry over moderately high heat until broccoli is just tender and garlic is pale golden, about 2 minutes.

Add soy sauce and water and bring to a boil. Return meat to skillet and cook, stirring, until sauce is thickened, about 2 minutes.

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Next time I'd leave out the salt in the meat seasoning. I added some fresh ginger when I put the broccoli in, and I added some fish sauce to the soy sauce to make the flavor a bit more interesting. But it was quick and tasty and the girls ate it! What more can a busy mom ask?

Our little skier-girl!

When I picked up Miss-D from ski school this afternoon, I got the full report of everything she had skied... all over the mountain, I tell ya! So on the gondola on the way down the hill, I told her that I was proud of her and that she was becoming a good little skier.

She said "I'm not a good little skier, Mama."

So I said "well, then what are you?"

Her response? "I'm a great big skier!"

So here you go, our great big skier:

Uncle Marc came to visit.

Uncle Marc came to visit us a few weeks ago. Unfortunately for him, it was supposed to be a ski vacation and, well, we had 40 degree temperatures and rain. Sucky skiing.

But Uncle Marc knows how to have a good time, no matter what life throws at him, so he spent way too much time at our house doing this...





So, as a reward for his unflagging patience and unending good spirits in the face of a less-than-stellar ski vacation, the girls decided to dress up and perform a little dance recital...


(This is the only picture I could actually post online because, if you can't tell, K-Wiggles isn't wearing anything under her duckie costume!).

Thank you Uncle Marc!

Homemade pasta.

Remember last month when I blogged about me and the kids making pasta? It was fun, yummy, and, well, fun! I did take a few pictures and finally uploaded them to my camera.

Here is the best shot I took... think I need to work on that depth of field... little bit too shallow here... ok, a lot too shallow. *sigh*

Dinosaur Museum (again!)

When the kids were too sick to go to school last week, but too well to stay home all day, we decided to head down to Lehi to the Museum of Ancient Life, otherwise known as the dinosaur museum. We've been there more than a few times, but the kids still love it. It's far enough away that I knew they would fall asleep in the car on the way there and/or on the way back, so it seemed like a good idea!

When we got there, it was just about lunch time, so we decided to eat in the museum's cafe, which thankfully has very kid-friendly food (dino-nuggets, anyone?) and good healthy adult food too.

The light coming in through the cafe windows was amazing, so I shot a bunch of pictures of the girls, trying out different camera settings and just playing around. I got a couple of shots I liked, but I also learned a lot about the different settings on my camera.

Here's M-Moo eating the enormous grilled-cheese sandwich she ordered!




K-Wiggles, no explanation necessary!

I can't really explain why, but I just love this photo of Miss D. Even the distracting straw in the foreground of the picture somehow only adds something to it for me. Probably drives everyone else crazy. Oh well, good thing it's my blog!



Here's a cool, hands-on exhibit near the beginning of the museum. The kids love to explore, touch, and feel all the sea creatures in this exhibit.


This is K-Wiggles, playing with the dinos in the sand-and-water exhibit (I'm sure I've mentioned that in previous posts about the dino museum).





This is M-Moo and Miss D acting as junior paleontologists, uncovering a dinosaur fossil in the quarry pit.



And this is what happens when I try to take some quick shots of all three girls at the end of the day, except now we're outside and I forgot to reset the camera (that I had dilligently set up to shoot in the low light of the indoor dinosaur museum). It's not the best shot of Miss D, but at least I got the other two. (Someday I will get a good picture of all three together!).



So just for fun I tried converting it to B&W. Not really any better, but I thought the effect was worth sharing!

A new belt in Karate.

Miss D has been studying karate since last October. She had her third "tip-test" at the end of February, and on March 5, she had her promotion ceremony for her new belt -- white-with-yellow-stripe!

Here's her old belt, with the three tips for her three tip-tests.




And this is Miss D, in her newly minted yellow-stripe belt, showing off her "horse training stance."




Here's a nice (if I do say so myself!) closeup of her new belt. I just love the contrast between her "tough" karate belt and her "girlie" fingernail polish!



And this is the cake Miss D chose for us all to celebrate her karate prowess! It was even more yummy than it looks in this picture!

Another cooking art project.

Last night's potstickers were such a success, tonight I decided to tackle pizzas.

Ok, so I did them the easy way... 4 of the 8-inch boboli crusts, some jarred spaghetti sauce, pre-shredded cheese and pre-sliced pepperoni. But I did chop up some zucchini, red pepper and mushrooms (I put them on mine, and K-Wiggles put them on hers too).

The kids had a ball making the pizzas, it was a cinch to clean up the kitchen afterwards, and they even ate their creations. M-Moo ate almost an entire 8-inch pizza! Miss D ate half of hers, and K-Wiggles ate almost as much.

We splurged with some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for dessert and the four of us had a lovely meal together! I meant to grab the camera and take pictures of the pizzas, but alas, something happened and the time got away from me, blah blah blah. So you'll just have to imagine!

A fun cooking art project we did today!

A blogger that I follow recommended these downloadable Book of Days. It's hard to explain, but basically you download the Book of Days for each month and it's got activities to do together with your kids. You print it out on heavy cardstock and then put them in a binder along with the stuff your kids make and do so you have a record of the projects you do. I'm not doing it justice.

Anyway, February's Book of Days had a think for making potstickers. M-Moo really loved the potstickers at the kids' Chinese New Year celebration at school the other week, so I thought it would be fun to try and make our own.

My kids love cooking art projects! Me, I put up with it because they have so much fun! LOL!

So we made the potstickers tonight and it was actually one of the best cooking art projects we've ever done together. Even the littles were able to scoop the filling onto the wonton wrappers, wet their finger and then wet the edge of the wrapper, and then fold the wrapper up and pinch it together (ok, I helped a little to make sure they were really closed, but they did a lot of it!).

Then I fried them in oil while the girls set the table and we scarfed down about 40 of the little suckers between the four of us. They even liked the dipping sauce that went with it!

It was really fun and very tasty!

Here's the link to the Book of Days -- you can preview the February one and see the potstickers recipe...

http://blueyonderranch.com/book-of-days/february-preview/

And here's a link to the blog where I got the idea... she has pictures of her kids making them. Me, I can't take pictures and cook with my kids at the same time... just not that talented!

http://balancingeverything.com/

Just thought I'd share!

We're BAAAAAACCKK!

Ok, so that's a little overly dramatic, but it's how I feel. The sickies hit us hard this week. I really can't complain, as we've had a remarkably healthy winter this year *knock wood*. But after two of the three kids came down with the fever, runny nose, hacking cough thing, I finally got it. I felt it hit, literally in a wave, on Friday afternoon at about 4:00 p.m. It came on just like the kids' illness did... raging fever to start, then the drippy nose.

I also figured out why K-Wiggles on Tuesday told us that her ear was hurting, as I spent all day in bed yesterday with stabbing pains in both my ears as my sinuses filled up and drained and filled up and drained. Ugh.

I did take the whole day off on Saturday, never getting out of bed except for bathroom and kitchen runs. Miss-D had her usual Saturday ski school, and Daddy-J spent the day away from the house, so the littles had free reign of the house all day. They were unbelievably good. And they didn't mind a bit surviving the day on the Ritz crackers, dry cereals, and oreo cookies they could find for themselves in the pantry (little stinkers even brought me crackers and cookies!).

And the house wasn't completely destroyed, which truly is amazing.

Thankfully, today I was feeling much better. We took all the kids out to breakfast and then skiing and then swimming. M-Moo and K-Wiggles got up on the chairlift for the first time today. I got to ski with Miss-D on the Tombstone lift for the first time. She is really skiing so well... I'm very proud of her. Actually, I'm proud of all of them. I never thought M-Moo and K-Wiggles would actually be skiing this year, but they are! M-Moo can ski High Meadow almost all by herself (Daddy helped her on one steep section). And K-Wiggles decided that, as fun as it is to straight-line down the bunny hill, if she shows us she can stop (which she can, she just doesn't want to) then she gets to go up on the chair lift. So we made three runs on High Meadow with her stopping at very random times and places!

And Miss-D can ski all sorts of "blue" terrain without assistance. She even had a really good crash at one point today with Daddy and blew it off with very few tears!

So because we hadn't had quite enough fun with all the skiing, and because it was 40 degrees and sunny, we decided to hit the swimming pool afterwards!

Which turned out to be one thing too many for poor K-Wiggles. Well, actually, she loved it, but she loved it so much that we couldn't get her out of the pool without an enormous tantrum. *sigh* I hope the poor people at The Canyons pool and spa that were having relaxing massage treatments weren't too put off by her screaming "I want to keep swimming" for the 15 minutes it took me to wrestle her out of her swimsuit and into some clothes. *double sigh*

Ah well, another successful day at Casa Llamedos!

Ugh! The sickies have hit our house.

So I wrote yesterday (I think) that Miss-D had a fever on Sunday night and stayed home from school with me. Of course, last night she went to bed just fine, but woke up at 2:00 a.m. with a fever of 103. I gave her Motrin and she went back to sleep. She woke up this morning at the usual time and seemed just fine -- no fever, no glassy eyes, perky, good appetite, fine. So off to school she went.

At 10:00, I get the call from the school to come get K-Wiggles, as she is having a hard day and has a temperature of 102 and is complaining of ear pain. Well, ear pain means off to the doc we go. Turns out her ears are fine, but she does have a swollen and sore throat. Rapid strep came back negative, but I had them send it in for the 24-hour culture since her symptoms had come on so recently.

I just heard this afternoon from my carpool-mate that her strep test today came back positive, so my guess is K-Wiggles has strep. Who knows if Miss-D has it too. She hasn't said anything about sore throat and has been eating fine. K-Wiggles didn't eat breakfast this morning, which is very unusual for her and I should have guessed something was up. Mama's a little slow sometimes.

Anyway, it's 5:30 now and they are all in bed. K-Wiggles fell asleep almost immediately. Miss-D will lie quietly in her bed and be asleep soon, and M-Moo has been out of her room once already, so she should be pretty much done for the night. Hopefully they will all sleep through the night, or else be up once to have medicine and go right back down.

I suppose they're all going to stay home from school tomorrow. It's not really worth getting up and dragging everyone out of the house to get M-Moo to school, especially when she's probably contaminated too. Maybe we'll just sit out the rest of the week and go back next Monday when everyone should be healthy. (Actually, now that I think of it, there is no school on Th/Fri this week anyway because of parent-teacher conferences, so I guess we're done for this week).

Hopefully Miss D will be feeling better by Thursday so she can go to her promotion ceremony for karate. Last Wednesday she earned her white-belt-with-yellow-stripe, her first new belt since she started. Woohoo!

If I were the praying type, I'd ask all to pray that Mama-V doesn't get sick -- goodness knows mamas aren't allowed to get sick!

Happy Girls.

I haven't written much about the kids lately. Sorry for the dearth of photos... there are some on the camera, I think, but I haven't had any time to upload them. "haven't had any time" Sounds familiar, huh? Well, it matches how I feel today. Thinks are reaching "stress" point and I need some "me" time. I thought I had some today, getting my hair done, but it turned into a stressful event itself and, well, I didn't enjoy it (though my color looks great now!).

So instead of doing the work I should be doing tonight (which would lower my stress level tomorrow, huh?), I'm going to go watch a movie.

Anyway, the kids are great. They have been really happy lately. Poor Miss-D was sick last night and stayed home from school. It was kinda nice to spend time just the two of us. I made cinnamon toast for her and she watched movies. I did her finger nails. She made pictures for me and Daddy-J. She was doing ok today, but the fever came back tonight and she's got a funny intermittent cough. I hope she's feeling better tomorrow, poor chick.

Seriously, though, I'm excited with how well they've been getting along lately. M-Moo is toughening up a bit and doesn't cry at the drop of a hat whenever K-Wiggles says something not-so-nice. Miss-D has become quite the little mama/teacher, helping her sisters to use their words and reminding them about their gentle hands. They really look up to her, so it usually works!

And K-Wiggles is getting much easier to rationalize with, rather than just throwing monster tantrums all the time.

As they get bigger and older, they are able to create fun games for themselves. And they can do puzzles together. They even think up crazy art projects to do together and usually don't destroy too much stuff in the process.

They are ridiculously addicted to nightgowns and dresses... where did I get these girly girls?! They love getting their hair done, even K-Wiggles, who bravely fights back tears from the pain of her tender head while I put in her beloved "flip-tails." (Thank goodness a good set of flip tails can last almost a week!).

This time is going by so fast. I just know I'm going to blink and they'll be heading out the door with nary a "mama" to be heard.

Now I'm going to go cry into my glass of wine while I watch my movie. G'night!

The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer

Interesting book so far. The subtitle is "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Tunred Into a War on American Ideals." Some of the stuff in this book is absolutely terrifying. I knew that the various government agencies, in hindsight, had a lot of information pointing to what was going to happen on September 11, 2001, but I had never read about all of the information in one place at one time. It's horrendous to think about how close we were to preventing 9/11 and yet we didn't. What's really scary, though, is how little we have done as a nation to address the failures that lead to us not preventing 9/11. And then the aftermath is equally terrifying. Learning what those in the highest echelons of government were thinking and doing immediately after 9/11 is very enlightening. The book spends a fair amount of time explaining the history and background of some of the players who came to the foreground in the "war on terror" and how 9/11 played into their world-view and what they were pre-disposed to try and accomplish. Anyway, I'm barely 1/3 of the way through the book, and parts of it are a tough slog. It's not necessarily gripping reading. The stuff I am reading now is about the various legal offices of the government and how they were sidelined and marginalized in favor of what the White House (mostly Cheney, according to this book) wanted to do in the "unlawful enemy combatant" "military commissions." I shouldn't be, but I am still amazed at the careers that were intentionally ruined, careers of good people trying to do their job. Some of them, more than just a few, were absolutely shoved out of government and black-listed in the private sector for refusing to toe the administration's line on torture and rendition and things like that. I wonder if, 100 years from now, we will have a good grasp of what happened to the United States and its most sacred and cherished ideals since 9/11. It is just so so sad.