Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I guess time travel increases the appetite.

I ended up in a time-warp today. Ten minutes before we left for the pool the sun came out, so I decided we should go. Fun day! Lots of friends were there, too, and the kids had a blast, although Leah's blast was spent mostly out of the pool. For the last hour she pranced around on the deck and practiced laying on her beach towel.



Ben demonstrated his attention to detail. He wanted me to lay out his towel near where I was sitting on the pool edge (best of both worlds, you know - out of the water AND near Mommy). I spread it out, only to hear his oh-so familiar "Eh, eh, EH!" and turned around. There he is, pointing at the one wrinkle in the darn thing. And he wasn't satisfied until I smoothed it for him.



Then a bit later I moved it after wringing it out, and he threw another fit because it was placed one foot from the original location. Sheesh. He is going to be such a blast to raise. Good thing he's also a hilarious dancer.



Time-warp time. We left the pool and I decide to go to the folks' house and get the last of our stuff. Just a quick visit. Right.



My first mistake was letting the kids out of the van. But they actually haven't seen the grandparents for awhile. And they needed a snack.



At one point, I walked through the kitchen and glanced at the clock, which said 6pm. And I seriously thought, "Geez, why do Mom and Dad have their clock an hour fast?" So you see, kids never stop thinking they are smarter than their parents.



But I DID believe my van's clock, and almost freaked out when I realized it really WAS 6:15pm.



Good thing I was planning one of my semi-gourmet summer meals. Stir fried broccoli, cauliflower, & yellow squash with green onions and garlic. Except for the garlic, all the veggies were from our CSA "garden box". When they were almost done, I threw in some frozen uncooked super-sized shrimp from Sam's Club. I should have taken a photo - it was a gorgeous pan of food.



I had cooked spaghetti noodles, and then melted several tablespoons of butter, to which I added a liberal amount of lemon juice and a handful of fresh cilantro, also from the garden box. The sauce was just to pour over the noodles & veggie mix, since I knew Leah wouldn't like the extra "green stuff" in her food.



I usually make this sort of dish several times during the summer...you just can't beat shrimp for speed of preparation! And I love the fresh vegetables - the CSA ones are especially flavorful.



And let me tell you, it was yummmm-y! Leah declared a couple of time how much she liked the shrimp (a more recent development, thank goodness) and all the veggies except the squash. I had her demonstrate for Ben how to eat it, so she ended up cleaning her plate. Ben was busy concentrating on his noodles, and since Leah was whining for more food, I gave her Ben's plate. He immediately objected...strongly. So I gave it back, and he promptly started working on the broccoli & cauliflower. Any time he slowed down, I gave a little piece to Leah, and he would immediately get possessive again. Probably not the best association to have with food, but hey. It worked. He cleaned his plate, too, minus three chunks of squash.



Then they both ate a generous bowl of frozen yogurt AND half a banana. And baths, and bed. Yay, summer!

4 comments:

Aaron said...

I like to hear about you tricking your kids. Seriously, I really, really like it.

Noel said...

The international space station will be visible in Fargo Thursday night:

THE FOLLOWING ISS SIGHTINGS ARE POSSIBLE FROM WED AUG 06 TO MON AUG 18
SATELLITE LOCAL DURATION MAX ELEV APPROACH DEPARTURE
DATE/TIME (MIN) (DEG) (DEG-DIR) (DEG-DIR)

ISS Thu Aug 07/09:20 PM 11 degrees above WSW to 11 degrees above S

and also Chicago

ISS Thu Aug 07/09:22 PM 10 degrees above WSW to 10 degrees above SSW

I just saw it from Moline and it was brighter than a bright Venus and brighter than Jupiter which it passed by in the sky. This is the first time I've seen it and it was cool.

Ooops, the topic is time travel, not space travel. Need to stay on topic in spite of achieving one of my minor life goals...

Noel said...

Here's the NASA web site for checking when the space station may be over your neighborhood:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

I may have ingested CSA garden produce a few weeks ago. It seemed tied to a bizzare Bookclub rite where this box of vegetables was going to show up at Bookclub Central Committee Member CB's house while she was gone and people had to go and get portions of the produce before it spoiled. I wasn't sure why vegetables would be delivered to someone's home when they weren't there, but now it makes a bit more sense. I bet they'd like fresh vegetables on the space station....

JJ and EJ said...

Mmmm, all those fresh veggies sound delicious! (Minus the shrimp, but that's just me.) Oh I can't wait to see Leah and Ben-o again. We had a Ben on our volleyball team and I accidently kept calling him Ben-o until his wife started calling him that too. It was pretty funny! : ) They came over and I had to show them a picture of our Ben-o!