Not that I'm complaining...

...but I think we've had enough rain now.

If you ever wonder why Oregon is famous for being green (and I'm not talking environmentally savvy, although that too) it's because of this:
Grey and wet...

Bedraggled tulips...

Overflowing birdbath...

Sigh.

Weekend recap:
Don't you just love men in aprons? Our Bishop (who is Jewish by birth) did a Seder on Friday evening. Jeff had the day off, so he helped with the preparations. He chopped apples and rolled matzah balls and manhandled chicken thighs.
Bishop Bill, Jeff, and young Justin.

Daniel walked in the door on Sunday afternoon wearing his Easter basket on his head. He had been wearing it most of the day.
"I'm toad," he said.

?

I spent the day cooking up a feast and watching General Conference.
This apple cake is very delicious. I made two, one gluten-free. It is also dairy-free, if that is an issue.

Apple Cake

1 1/2 c sugar
4 c chopped apples
2 c flour
1/2 c oil
2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
Mix sugar, oil, and eggs. Add apples and mix again. Add sifted dry ingredients. Bake in a greased and floured bundt pan for 1 hour or until it tests done. 350 degrees.

Easy peasy.
Your dependent goody-eaters will love you.

Just keeping track....

Here we were a year ago.
And here we are now.

 

Better camera, better piano, same darling girl.

Been there, done that

Friday 2nd:
For those of you who think I just sit at home and do facebook and blog all day, I have already driven to Lake Oswego this morning, conducted two preschool music groups, and provided one hour of excellent supervision for my Marylhurst student.
Now...
I have thought twice, thrice, four and five times about this post.
Because I don't want you to have vivid nasty mental pictures when you read it.
There, now I've done it. Your mental pictures will be in 3-D technicolour.

Technicolor is one of those proper nouns that has become a ubiquitous part of our language. And did you know that my dear Uncle Charlie used to work for Technicolor?

But I digress.

Then, I decided that indignities happen, and maybe you will enjoy a laugh at the expense of my indignity and won't hold the mental pictures against me.
So here goes!

Thursday 1st:
Today, I had the joyful occasion to visit Dr. Patrick Lee, at his Rectal and Colon Clinic. Could the name be any less subtle?
Aha! Is this an April Fool's joke?
No, I say.
Unfortunately.
I will not thrill you with details. Let me just say that after we were done with our little discussion and before things got more...interesting...he said, "Don't worry, I'll make this fun and entertaining."
Right.
When all was done, I said, "Wow, that was fun and entertaining."
He laughed. "Be careful, I charge double if you have too much fun."
When I re-entered the waiting room there were three other patients sitting there.
Our eyes met and we smiled sheepishly at each other.
We all knew.

On the way home, I treated myself to a stop at Tuesday Morning, where I bought some lovelies for the garden.
Just because I could.

Meet Harvey the Heron.
And the Toadstools.
Harvey and the Toadstools.
Sounds like the name of a band.
This would be a much better mental picture!
Did I mention that I love garden art?

Busy Babes, Tired Nana

WARNING: If you are lukewarm in your adoration of my grandbabies, you may be slightly bored by this post.

Josh and Natalie arrived at ten a.m.
The first order of business was their second breakfast of the day.
Natalie said, "Nana, I have Cheerios at home. I wub it."
"Wow, Natalie, you love Cheerios?"
"No. I wub it."

If you click on the collage, you will get a better look.

Next on the agenda were legos. These two get along so well, playing side by side and having little conversations. I love to sit and watch them, but today I was doing laundry and trying to work up the nerve to get out of my robe and into my jeans.

Natalie is working on potty-training and has a perpetual bum crack. Jeff said it's genetic. My Dad was a plumber, don't you know? But I want it known here and forever that he NEVER sported a bum crack. Josh was wearing his pants backwards, as usual, but on one of the many potty trips of the morning he remedied the situation so I missed the photo op.

After I got dressed, we dragged the scooters out of the shed and took a walk. The sun was out, there was a brisk wind, and we were happy to be outside.

Listening to water trickling down the storm drain.

Dandelions are the flowers of choice for most kiddie bouquets. I asked Kenzie why? a few days ago. "They're so pretty," she said.

Natalie got tired on the way home and also needed to go potty, so I carried her and the scooter. When we arrived home (See Nana, I told you it was over here, said Josh) it was time for a snack.
Mandarin oranges.
Chocolate.
Yogurt.
Broccoli.
Carrots.

Then some serious block building. Whereupon I took the opportunity to lie on the couch next to them and take a pseudo-nap...

...and of course Bethany and the older kids walked in the door a few minutes later.
We have been trying to talk Josh and Daniel into haircuts for some time. They were both very shaggy. Neither bribes nor shame had convinced them to endure the clippers. Today, Bethany told Josh that he could have a piece of gum if he got his hair cut.
"Okay," he chirped.
This is much better than the shaggy bedhead he was sporting all morning.

Natalie was determined that she needed a haircut too. She really wanted to be buzzed, but I appeased her with a trim.

Daniel got the shaggy prize. He still wouldn't bow his head to the clippers until I told him that he wouldn't look as handsome as Josh. "Okay," he chirped.

He doesn't enjoy the clippers and flinches every time I move to a new part of his head. This was his strained expression for the duration of the job.

Ahhhh.

Fire in the Hole!

On Sunday, we had a family birthday party for Jeff.
Fifty five.
Bethany decided that so many candles would melt the frosting.
I made a chocolate-cherry cake, a tradition at our house. In its usual incarnation, it is a dark cake with whipped cream filling and a ganache coating. This time I used a German chocolate cake mix and put chocolate chips in it, with white chocolate filling and chocolate fudge frosting.
I was not happy with it.
The white chocolate was too sweet.
Sometimes I am too clever for my own good.
I hear my Dad's voice when I write that sentence.
However, the basic recipe is simplicity itself.

Chocolate Cherry Cake

One dark chocolate cake mix
One can of cherry pie filling
3 eggs
Mix all together and bake in two 9" rounds or a 9x13" oblong, about 25 minutes.

Because this is Bethany's favourite cake, I felt an obligation to make something gluten-free. Inspiration, in the form of a 3-pound container of cream cheese, dictated two cheesecakes: a big one with graham cracker crust, and a smaller one with a crust made from gluten-free cookies. Once again, I made the mistake of messing with the recipe. Let's just say that it is a perfect cheesecake by the recipe, but smarty-pants here went a little too far. It took way longer to cook than it was supposed to and came out kind of curdly and also dripped something all over the oven. I think the smaller one was pretty edible, because Bethany liked it.
Here is the original recipe, highly recommended by me because it usually turns out perfectly.
When I don't add extra sour cream and eggs.

Justa Pasta's Marvelous Cheesecake

Crust:
2 c graham cracker crumbs
1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c unsalted butter
Mix till crumbly and press onto bottom of 10" springform pan. Refrigerate.

Filling:
32 oz cream cheese
1 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 egg
Beat all together till smooth. Pour into crust and put in cold oven. Turn on oven to 350* and bake 40 mins.

Topping:
2 c sour cream
3/4 c sugar
Juice from one lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla
Drop of almond extract
Blend together, gently spread on cooked cheesecake. Return to oven and bake 15 mins at 300*. Refrigerate at least 4 hours.
It is dense and creamy and delicious.

Here is the poor overbaked specimen.

Little Jeff ate a sweet orange instead of dessert.

Natalie tucked into the cake. She loves her food and is very independent in feeding herself.

Did I mention the substance deposited all over the bottom of the oven?
Monday was Jeff's actual birthday, so I made him a nice dinner of tilapia and roasted potatoes. I roast potatoes on a high heat, 450* or more. I had put the pan in the oven and was about to start on the rest of the dinner when I happened to glance through the window in the oven door.
Flames.
Big flames.
I grabbed the pan out of the oven and had the presence of mind to locate the baking soda and throw a handful over the flames.
Immediate extinction.
I was so impressed with myself, you can hardly imagine.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to grab the camera before I extinguished the flames.

Dinner was a little late.

Disneyland with guns

I woke up at 4:30 this morning, way too early for a Saturday. Karen and Mark picked me up at 6 and we had to roust Jonnie out of bed. The poor lad works graveyard shift and he had worked part of it last night and then gone home for a few hours sleep. We wended our way swiftly down to Brownsville to the Oregon Firearms Academy.
Basic Firearms Safety course.
Disneyland with guns, as one of our instructors put it.
We met Nicole in the parking lot. Here we are, at the beginning of the day, looking relatively normal.

First on the agenda was a trip to the loo.
Which was unusual, to say the least.

Note the details, such as the valance around the ceiling.
Of the porta-potty.

Mind you, I did hear that the boy's loo wasn't so pretty.
Not that I would know firsthand or anything.

We sat for four hours in the morning, learning all about safety. Luckily, the instructors were quite entertaining. There was a guy, named Tom, who needed to shut up, but I managed to restrain myself and I didn't say it to him. But seriously, why is there always one of those in the class?
Lunchtime finally arrived.
Here is Mark, who ingeniously (and kind of nerdily) took a little camping stove with which to warm up his Campbell's soup.

After luch, outside to the range.
Hooray!
We then proceeded to find all kinds of ways to look berky.

I was hoping to get photos of us looking awesome, shooting our guns, but I was too busy looking awesome, shooting my gun.

Even the outside of the porta-potties was cool.

Here I am, on the SECOND walk-through for my graduation. The first one was too fast for the camera.

Oh yes, I asked them what you call a girl redneck.
"What?" they replied.
No, I said, I really want to know. They had thought it was a joke.
The answer?
Sweetheart.
Now we know.

You win some, you lose some

Karen, Lori and I went to the better Living Fair today.
Strike one: Karen slept in and was half an hour late.
Strike two: We got to the Expo Centre and there were hardly any cars in sight. Turns out we were two hours early.
So we went up the freeway to look for a good place to pass the time and eat an early lunch.
We're all about the lunch.
Strike three: I missed the exit and we ended up in Vancouver.
So we went to Sports Authority (Strike four: no ammo) and then to Michaels, where Karen did not disappoint us with her spending on cute garden gizmos and Lori bought some snazzy reading glasses.
Did you ever wonder what women of a certain age do for fun?
Just follow us around for a morning, we'll show you FUN!
We laughed at how many times we got lost.
We laughed at the Bear/Bare Dancing establishment.
We laughed at how many strikes I had against me already.
We found a pub for lunch.
Harleys in the windows.
Scruffy looking gents at the outside tables, luring us inside with a promise of awesome clam chowder.
We succumbed.
Four dollars for a giant, delicious, chunky, bowl of clam chowder.
On the corner of Denver and McClellan in North Portland, for future reference.
I was happy.
Back to the Expo Centre, right on time.
Strike five: I forgot my camera.
Which turned out to be not a bad thing, because, other than the free organic icecream bars and free frisbee from the Red Cross, it was less impressive than usual. Maybe because we have seen it all before. Solar seems to be a bigger presence than at former shows, so maybe it will get cheap enough for the masses some time soon. We have noticed that some of the vendors are quite aggressive lately. This bugs Lori, the soul of cheerfulness, and she is gleeful while telling them she is not interested. We decided that bigger is not always better.
Especially when it comes to Better Living.

P.S. Found some ammo at The Gun Broker on the way home. I am in danger of turning into a redneck. What do you call a girl redneck, I wonder? Stay tuned. I may find out tomorrow.