Food Fail

This week has seen its share of kitchen fails. Two nights in a row dinner was just off: too much salt/seasonings in the chicken broccoli rice thing, and too much tomato and/or BBQ sauce in the chili I tried to whip up in 10 minutes mixing cans of everything into a pot. UGH! I guess recipes do exist for a reason and I should learn to cook with them more.

But tonight's fail beat them both. We were safe with dinner, since we grabbed some fast food on the way home from picking up Chris from work. But I have had this craving for a good donut ever since we moved here, I was hoping to find a nice mom-and-pops kind of shop that made world class donuts. There's one in my home town (or to be more precise the town right next to my home town) called "Donuts" or lovingly referred to as Lakewood Donuts for any local. They are perfect. Light, Big, Substantial, Soft, and not too sweet.

Anyway I'm sure you can see where this is going... no good donuts here = try to make my own = FAIL. I guess the temperature of the oil is pretty tricky and important so just throwing some yummy dough into a bunch of hot-ish oil for however long it takes to think they could be done is not a good idea. I made two kinds, chocolate cake donuts and regular potato flake donuts with maple glaze. The chocolate ones looked like burnt pieces of cow pies and tasted like crunchy sugar. I haven't fried up the regular ones yet because I gave up.

I gave up because it was 30 minutes past bedtime and NONE of the kids had naps today and the doorbell rings. Oh yeah, we had home teachers coming over! The house was a wreck and smelled like oil and burnt chocolate and Gwen kept grabbing at my shirt because she was tired and wanted to nurse to sleep. Somehow amidst all of this I still found it cute. I've not nursed my boys this long where they were aware enough to ask for it. Still I felt like this:

Anyway, I finally got the house a bit cleaner and am waiting for Chris to get back from the store with balloons for Charlie's birthday tomorrow.... and a deep fryer with temperature control so we can fry up the rest of the donuts.

Tables beat plates and chairs

Somehow during every meal all of Charlie's food ends up off his plate and on the table. I just don't get it.

Also, Gwen's recent trick is to climb up the chairs and onto the table. She's so proud of herself until she remembers that she doesn't know how to get down. But she's not that worried. She knows that she was given a strong, loud voice for just these occasions.

puddles + heaters

What is so entertaining but frightening enough that my kids are content to just watch at the edge of the doorstep for so long?

Anyone guess right? The lawn mower! Its loud and big and its the first time they've seen (or at least remembered seeing) Chris do it himself.

I love this goofy cheesy smile Gwen does sometimes. She's so expressive and such a tease and cheeseball. She LOVES to run away from me whenever I say "bedtime" or "diaper change." She'll do it with a huge grin on and watch me out of the corner of her eye and stop running when I stop etc...

The boys saw some good puddles in our alley-way a few weeks ago and wanted to jump in the puddles. They still want to be California boys and refused to wear shoes or pants at least Alec wore a fleece jacket.

They did enjoy warming their feet up by the heaters and requesting "Chot Hocolate." I think they will start to realize on their own soon that it is just TOO COLD for shorts and bare feet. Its below freezing every morning now.

Hooray for Help!

My parents came to stay with us last weekend to help soften the burden of Chris's second Chemo treatment. The fun started with a late night run to Dairy Queen for blizzards. I really enjoyed showing them around our place and I enjoyed even more giving my dad a list of all the things I'd love for him to fix. He put up hooks and mirrors; cut and laid down carpet, fixed two gates and installed motion-sensor lights! He also got my mom's old Iphone unlocked and helped me set up Canadian cell phone coverage! Finally! We're SO grateful and thrilled for it. My mom and I baked apple pie, cleaned the house, made meals, and shopped for winter gear. We now all have snow pants, jackets, gloves, hats (or I should start saying tuques)... well except Charlie still doesn't have a coat that fits him, Value Village has like zero 3T clothes. I'll keep looking for it and we have a big backup if we need it too soon.

They also played with the kids a lot: fake fighting, reading books and more books, outings to the park and play places. Saturday afternoon we went for a walk in the beautiful fall weather, had a picnic and jumped in leaves. Such a perfect afternoon. Sunday afternoon we did another walk up by the river before going over to my Bishops house for Thanksgiving Dinner. That was a really fun time too. My parents are very friendly and good conservationists... I love that about them.

My parents also treated us to pizza and watched the kids so Chris and I could have a date! Our first one here. We tried this Mexican restaurant called Julio's Bario. It was fine... real Canadian Mexican. We'll try the two other Mexican restaurants in Edmonton and look forward to getting some "real" Mexican food in the States.

A conversation between Alec and Chris

Alec: "I want to skype, now, Daddy."

Chris: "Maybe Skype wants to alec"

Alec: " what?"

Chris:"Maybe Skype wants to alec."

pause....

Alec: "Does that make any sense?"

You know Alec is growing up when his own Daddy seems too silly.

Fall colors

On my drive home in the early morning from a run I noticed this colorful tree along our alleyway. I took Gwen out to help me take pictures.


Later that afternoon we had to drop off and then pick up Chris at work for a few hours in the afternoon thereby giving us some time to kill around the University/River/Downtown area.

These Fall colors just keep calling my name and I thought it would be stunning to see them around the river. I drove around until I found some parks that looked promising.

Then we spied a trail that led down to the water.


We had to explore and ended up throwing rocks in the water for a while.

Charlie found a triangle rock.

It was pretty muddy so I kept having to pull Gwen away for the water's edge. She is really starting to have an opinion and did NOT like me pulling her away. In fact when it was time to go she threw the biggest fit I've ever seen her throw and kept trying to literally RUN back to the river no matter how far away from it we walked.

Turns out, Chris needed to stay a bit longer so we drove across a bridge to explore the river from the other side. We found this pedestrian bridge and decided to cross it. It was SO windy. I was curious if Gwen would be frightened by walking on this skinny, high, windy thing...but no. She loved it. Alec was nervous enough for both of them and always kept a hand right by her.

You can see some of Edmonton a bit in the background. In some places it has a bigger city feel than I expected.

We've really enjoyed our Fall here. It is BEAUTIFUL and its everywhere. I kept saying over and over in an excited voice, "Isn't this pretty! Wow, this is so amazing" as we walked through leaves with a warm-ish wind on our faces. Alec started making fun of me by saying in a silly voice, "this is so pretty, this is so pretty..." Mock all you want, Alec... I will still keep saying it.

Ponytails

Even though its not quite long enough to actually need a pony tail, I've been putting some in occasionally over the past few weeks. Its pretty adorable. For the first few times she just sort of stayed still enough for me to put it up, but lately she'll run away and start crying if she feels me start to pull back her hair! but um... I still put them in.

No, there isn't anything in her hair for those last two pictures. But she's just so stinkin' cute I had to post them.