Half-Pint House

Weekend Adventure

K9-almost-10 and I are leaving soon for Dallas. This will be my third time to take a weekend trip with one of our girls who either is, just turned, or is about to turn 10. I took M13 (then 10) to Chicago. Twenty months later, I took C11 (then C10) to Chicago also. As we don't live so close to Chicago anymore, the logical conclusion for this trip (some 17 months after the last one) boiled down to Dallas. So off we go.

My original idea was to take the girls to their first Broadway show during this trip and I did that with M. But there wasn't a show playing the weekend I took C, so we went to a Cub's game instead. As it turns out, there really isn't anything I want to take K to on this trip to Dallas, so we're head to Medieval Times.

You know what's funny? Though it wasn't intentional, each of these places are directly in keeping with each of their personalities. It happened by accident, but what a happy accident!

It's raining outside. We have to drop E8 off at a friend's house on our way out of town, but off we go.

We're really looking forward to it!

Say I Love You. For Less.

At Save and Make Moolah today, I'm waxing eloquent with nostalgic memories of...the mall? Yep. And talking about some classy Valentine's Day gifts that say I love you. For less...

A Few Favorite Children's Books for Valentine's Day

I listed five of my favorite children's books that are appropriate for Valentine's Day (or ANY day!) over here. Go check them out! Let me know some of your favorites as well!

I'm Okay With Walls, But Spray Paint? Not So Much.

I finished painting K9's room today. I don't have anything on the walls yet and no curtains, but that will all come in time. I haven't really done curtains ANYWHERE in this house yet. I do have fabric to make curtains for two rooms, but they are both common areas downstairs. Not really sure what I'm going to do for this bedroom yet. Any ideas?

In this next shot you can get a better idea of the hack-job I made of her bed. It was hunter green. it's now murkey-streaked white. Also, the dresser in the closet used to be a weird light green with a dark green sponge-painted design. It had all the appearances of some random kid being given complete freedom to have their way with a piece of furniture. It has been restored to a respectable white again. I'm super happy with the dresser. But the bed? What was I thinking?

And here's the other angle of her room. Looking pretty bare from over here.

I'm taking K on her 10-year-old weekend city trip next weekend. We'll be heading to Dallas and we'll be checking out the Ikea store while we're there. I have an idea of a couple of things that will round out this room just perfectly.

But until then, I'm pretty happy with the way it all turned out (except for the bed). K9 loves it too, bed included, so I can live with that.

Cornflower Blue

I bought paint for K9's bedroom back in...July or August? Yes. Sometime last summer. I'm light on writing gigs this month, so I decided THIS. WAS. THE. WEEK.

Her room is now cornflower blue. I wrote about it over here today.

National Dress Up Your Pet Day

I wrote about National Dress Up Your Pet Day for SheSpeaks.com. I'm not sure we qualify as having fashionable doggies, but you can see what's going down with this over there. *grin*

Home Economics

Whenever we're eating out somewhere and our kids end up with a dessert, but we don't, we tell them they need to "pay the tax." This is just our funny way of asking for a bite of whatever they have. When you have four kids and they each have a treat, that's four bites of something and it's usually enough to satisfy our own desire for something sweet after dinner. Our kids are *usually* happy to comply.

Tonight we went to a Mexican restaurant with some friends. After dinner the girls each received a sopapilla. Craig reminded them that they needed to pay the tax. They started the process of sharing and a few minutes later we heard this:

C11 to K9: "Did you pay the tax to Mom?"

K9 to C11: "But I already paid the tax to Dad!"

C11 to K9: "You have to pay them both."

Pause

K9: "Government these days."

*giggle* If I remember correctly I had just taken a drink of my water and actually spit some out right there on the spot. That was good for a several-minutes-long laugh.

It's been a bit of a week

I just realized it's been a whole week since I remembered I had a blog. I guess posting almost every day in December made me think I was off the hook for January. Or something. Whatever, it's my blog, right?

Last Sunday Craig started feeling pain akin to the kidney stone adventure of 2009. The rest of the week was a series of finding a doctor here in Oklahoma City, scheduling the appointment, then the CT scan, then waiting because there was an 18-hour period of time in which we really thought he might have cancer instead, then being super relieved that his problem was really just kidney stones. Another appointment on Friday. Now laparoscopic surgery today.

The biggest surprise so far was discovering that they are only going to remove one of them today - the 9mm one. They are saving the 7mm one for a rainy day. Actually, they don't work on both kidneys at the same time in case of complication - you need to have one functioning kidney. Makes sense, fo sho, but it was a surprise to think he may have to do this again in the near future.

So. Here I am, in the waiting room, listening to a variety of interesting (and I use the word interesting very loosely) conversations happening around me, and waiting for Craig's number on the TV screen to change from green to blue because when that happens, it's all over.

For now, though, I wait.

Yummy for Breakfast

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There's no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.

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You know, for most things I'm a purist at heart. I make my own pie crust and can NOT bring myself to buy refridgerated sugar cookie dough for anything. Maybe I'm just too cheap to do it, but I also know my version tastes better, so there's that too.

Having said that, though, I'm also not opposed to the occasional use of a mix. There. I said it. It seems that for some who do lean toward the "made from scratch" baking side, there is a stigma attached to admitting you sometimes use a mix. Case in point: Several years ago we attended a Christmas dessert gathering in the home of some of our seminary friends. She made the Most. Amazing. Peppermint Log I've ever had. It was seriously good. I asked her for the recipe and she blushed. She said, almost with shame, "I got it from The Cake Mix Doctor cookbook." I looked at her with amazement. Such a book exists? SIGN ME UP! 

I bought that book and have never looked back. I make all my cakes based off of it now. It takes the easy and allows you to make it homemade. And really, the cakes DO turn out better than they otherwise would and they also turn out better than had I just made them from scratch all by myself.

Having said that also, there are a few mixes I'm good with straight from the box. Coffee cakes and muffins fit this category for me. I think they taste good just the way they are and they are pretty simple to pull together. Take this Apple Caramel Cake for instance:

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You may be thinking, "Oh my, did she really serve cake to her family for breakfast?" And to you I simply say, "Yes. Yes, I did."

And it was good.

Sometimes breakfast needs a special kick and this did the trick for us this morning.

Paired with a glass of milk = perfecto!

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Remember to check out Duncan Hines' website www.duncanhines.com to find some great recipes for your holiday get-together! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

I Owe Kia an Apology, Take 1

Do you see the sweet ride in the photo above? That's not my car. I wish it did belong to me, but it doesn't. What it is is the Kia Sorento that we were given for the week of Thanksgiving to drive around in and get to know just enough to not want to give it back a week later.

What follows is my official apology to the good people at Kia for not writing about our experience with this car sooner. Here I go:

Dear Kia,

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for allowing us the priviledge of getting to know one of your Sorento vehicles for the week of Thanksgiving. It was a truly sweet ride. I apologize that I didn't do any homework on the front end other than to ask, "So I have a family of 6 - will the car hold us all?" because if I had done some homework I would have found out that while, yes, the Sorento technically can seat 7, it can really only do so if you aren't carrying around any tangible cargo at all. And I mean AT. All. So when we crammed six people, two dogs, and suitcases for six for a six day road trip that consisted of 20 hours on the road, we meant business. You've never seen one of your vehicles so jam packed. I think I can guarantee it.

But that's all in our past now. We unloaded the dogs two hours into the trip, so we only had ourselves and our stuff to contend with for the remaining eight hours to the farm on day two of our trip.

I also apologize that when the super nice guy came to drop the Kia off in my driveway and asked me if I had any questions, the only question I could think of was, "So how do you open the door to the gas tank?" because I sure as heck didn't want this to happen to me again.

What I really should have asked, though, was, "Can you show me exactly how to start this awesome keyless wonder?" Because I didn't bother to even try to start the car until 15 minutes before my kids needed to be at piano lessons. Yep. It sat brand spanking new in my driveway for about three hours before I bothered to get in and try to start it. Here's the truth: I could not get it started for ANYTHING. And we were running late for piano. We grabbed what we thought was the instruction manual from the glove compartment, but it turned out to the instructions for the navigation and audio system. Not one word about how to start the Kia. Or open the gas tank. We scrambled out of the Kia as fast as we could and back into our 2002 van and sped off to piano. On the way I had my 11yo google, "How to start the Kia Sorento" on my phone and we found a video that explained that I needed to step on the brake before pushing the on button.

Good to know.

After jumping over those hurdles, though, we were good to go. I apologize for our slightly rocky start. I don't blame you, those were just some little miscommunications we had, but we mended our ways. I began to love you almost as soon as we hit the road because look at this:

Dual. Controls. And car seat warmers. Those may seem like petty things, but I'm telling you, a 20-hour road trip with Frosty the Snowman as driver can be pretty miserable for the rest of us. I can prove this by saying that ALL FIVE of the non-drivers in this car brought along their own blanket so as to bundle up when Dad blasted the air. As it was, though, we were able to regulate our own temperatures ourselves. Nice.

I also apologize for not writing sooner. It seems that our 20-hour road trip landed us in a state in which we did not want to be in. By this, I mean purely relational and not physical. We have nothing against Illinois, to be sure. And by relational I don't mean we didn't want to be with the family we were seeing. What I mean is that we didn't exactly want to be with each other anymore by the time we got there and, honestly, most of the way back. Again, I don't blame YOU for this. It was our own issue to work through and we have. It helps that we're not trying to imitate The Partridge Family anymore and we've had some time to talk some stuff out. But that week itself wasn't particularly conducive to waxing eloquent about the awesome car we were in because while the car was really awesome, we really weren't.

I have some more stuff to apologize for, Dear Kia, including the story about the vomit, but I will save that for the next post.

Here's the number to my counselor: 1-800-GetHelp. Maybe we should go together next time. You come along. I'll drive.

Sincerely,

Megan