Home vacation

Last year we got home from the east coast early and had a great time on vacation at home. I came to the shocking realization that if I didn't actually go to campus and sit in my office for 8-10 hours a day, no one came after me to do things. I was able to catch up on household chores, play with the kids and also get work done.

This year we had a week off of school at home. I spent the first few days convincing the kids that despite what they may have been told by their grandparents, they are not the center of the universe. Also, I do not wake up every morning with the goal of finding new and interesting ways to amuse them. That said, we had a good time this week. The kids, Danny and I did a major toy sorting and reorganization to make room for new toys. We wrote thank you notes and finished mailing out our holiday cards and newsletter. (Hint: if you didn't get one, we may not have your snail mail address!) Joseph worked on a pictorial diary of his vacation for school. I painstakingly cut and glued 100 cricket box lids, restocked the groceries and cooked about 25 meals. I got to go running during daylight hours, which Argos and I enjoyed very much.

We went to the Normal Children's Museum for their 3:00 pm New Year's Eve countdown. The kids had a good time, although a little boy snatched Joseph's truck and ran away shortly before the countdown. Joseph couldn't get the truck back because the little bruiser had a death grip on it, was too young to be reasoned with and was unsupervised. Joseph spent the countdown sulking under the table.

We looked for a hiking trail at Lake Bloomington, but found nothing. The kids enjoyed one of the many playgrounds. Argos discovered a new favorite snack plentifully spread across the ground--crunchy frozen deer poo.


The historic Normal theater was showing Wall-E. Sam and Joseph were the only kids in attendance, but they enjoyed themselves.

We went skating for the first time this season, and Joseph learned how to skate on his own!


A little girl noticed Joseph and offered to teach him to skate, and I think that her attention (you know how Joseph is such the ladies' man) may have spurred him to risk letting go of the wall.

He can skate on his own without help, and can get up from the ice without pulling up on the wall! By the end, he was getting kind of fast and reckless--next time I will have to bring a helmet for him!

Video of Joseph skating (and falling)

By the way, if you lived here, you would have gotten this delicious cookie assortment... (Yes, those are vanilla vodka/coconut rum balls.)

Do you like gingerbread?

Well, do you?
Probably not as much as Joseph does.
Yes yes yes!
No no.

Back from Ohio

Ahh how relaxing. We went to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, where we had a lovely time enjoying the company of friends and family. We ate some fabulous meals, drank some lovely drinks, and generally relaxed and had a good time. I have been back in Normal for 16 hours and I think that my head may explode at any minute.

Here we are enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving diner. My mom does not (and probably should not) cook. In fact, 10 years ago she decided to move her oven to the basement to make more space in the kitchen. Consequently, cooking Thanksgiving dinner was a bit of a challenge. Michelle and Rich brought over the turkey, and I made sides as best I could.

Turkey shredding after the bash.

Michelle and Rich came over to hang out and give Danny a birthday present.


We took Danny out to Lolita in Tremont, which is one of Iron Chef Michael Symon's restaurants. Everyone looked very dashing. The food was amazing, especially the smoked meats. The kids snarfed down a big plate of goat cheese mac and cheese. Danny had a duck confit pizza and I ordered various sides, including chicken livers, and Dorinda had the MahiMahi.

Danny gave his seal of approval to the cappuccino (and the martinis!)


I haven't been back to Cleveland more than twice in 10 years, and it is striking how some things have changed and some things never change. The houses remain, but the people have all changed. I didn't randomly run into anyone that I knew, and in in fact I ran into few people may age that I could conceivably have known. It never occurred to me that people that I knew who remained in Cleveland have moved off into other (younger and hipper) neighborhoods.

I met up with my long-lost friend Jennie and her family. The kids had a great time playing with each other and Argos and we helped my mom eat up Thanksgiving leftovers.


The road trip back was a pain--we had two traffic delays (@30 minutes each). The kids were happy travellers because I introduced them to Mr. Bean.


We were all rather shocked to discover that it had snowed 6 inches while we were gone, and we came home to a winter wonderland (and a plowed-in driveway).

Weekend hijinks and the 5th

Another action-packed weekend in Normal. Sam and Danny's TaeKwonDo teacher had set up his place for an elaborate Harry Potter party for his daughter and her girlfriends last weekend. This weekend he had people over for a magic-themed party. Joseph was Dumbledore.

Sam was some kind of evil wizard, although he has taken off his robes to challenge Katana to a duel over who can sit in front of the hot fireplace longer.

I was a mathemagician. Here I am inverting someone's matrix.

Danny was the CheeseWizard.

Sunday we went to the pool on campus for Faculty/Staff Family swim. The kids had a great time, although Joseph still can't swim on his own and is resistant to try.



I baked foccacio. (I could swear that I baked two of them. Hmm...)

And of course, every time we go swimming, Joseph gets sick. After we got back from the pool, Joseph's face was bright red and he was acting squirrely. We deduced that he had 5th disease. (See--that giant pile of parenthood preparedness books that I read 10 years ago when I was pregnant with Sam did come in handy!)

Monday, Joseph had no school, but we had to take him to his school with us for a parent-teacher meeting. By the time the red-cheeked "slapped" look starts, the 5th disease virus has run its course and is no longer contagious. But to avoid suspicion at school until we could get a doctor's note, we told Joseph that his red face was an allergic reaction to the Dumbledore beard. When he was asked about his face, Joseph said: "I had a surgery on my face from my Dumbledore beard," which was kind of cute and inexplicable until we explained that he meant "allergy" not "surgery."

Green tomato cake

Although today it was >70 degrees F, last weekend nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing, so I had to pick the remainder of the garden. I had a ton of these green tomatoes, so I went online and found some recipes. This one for green tomato cake was awesome! It was a really delicious cake, and the green tomatoes were kind of sweet and tangy, like kumkwats.

Pumpkin weekend

This weekend was all about the pumpkins. We bought carving pumpkins at the last Bloomington Farmer's Market of the season, which the kids carved with gusto.
Joseph's jack-o-lantern had a mean mouth but nice eyes.

Sam said that he was going for evil incarnate.

Sam, Joseph and Danny carving jack-o-lanterns

This week, NPR had a cheerful little piece about how it isn't hard to make your own pumpkin puree, but it is oh so much better than canned. So I decided to tackle cooking one of the enormous baking pumpkins that we got from Sam's teacher's farm. It took me HOURS to dismantle and puree that thing! It was like field-dressing a deer (and the kitchen looked about as messy). I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup, and I still have a freezer full of puree and three more pumpkins left to process. Thanks NPR!

Soggy bottom dinner

I have been kind of crabby all day, so tonight we decided to go out for dinner. After much agonizing and menu comparison (did I mention that the food here in Normal sucks!) we finally decided to eat at the Hayashi Teppan grill. The ambiance was very pleasant, and the reasonably priced food that the other people were eating looked very tasty, so I was pretty happy with our restaurant choice.
We were seated and had picked out our entrees when I heard a crash and felt a gallon of ice-cold water flooding down over my back. A clumsy waiter had managed to spill an entire tray of ice-water glasses on me! Various waitstaff people rushed over with napkins, but I was soaked to the bone. I could tell that my underwear was saturated with freezing water and my dress was clinging to me in a manner entirely inappropriate for a family restaurant. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at me, so all I could do was stand up and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Luckily, Danny remembered my purse.

photo by A. Morell

Soggy underwear or no, the kids still needed food so we stopped at Famous Dave's and got carry-out. As it happened, the ribs were delicious: they were lean and the BBQ sauce was "St. Louis style" which I had never had before. The sides were all fantastic, but the coleslaw was the best coleslaw that I had ever tasted! The cabbage was fresh and crisp, and the dressing was light and tangy. So, not entirely a bad night out!

Apples! Pork!

It's festival season! This weekend we went to the Apple and Pork festival in Clinton. Last year I was enthused about this thing. This year less so. Half of the festival is really awful kitsch and crap. Which would be fine to skip over if not for the fact that the kids wanted to check out every stupid booth. Literally every booth contained either overpriced cheap crap (John Deere 'collectibles,' bejeweled factory-made clay dragons, T-shirts with trashy slogans, VHS tapes, non-interesting yard-sale items) or terrible crafts (handmade Halloween and Christmas decor, 'witty' yard signs, potpourri and scented candles, and the ubiquitous license plate birdhouse).

We had some sliced apples with 'caramel,' funnel cake and sausages while we watched the decent live entertainment. So why doesn't anyone every come up with food to sell that combines apples and pork? Apple pork sausage? Apples crisps with pork rinds?

The kids enjoyed the scarecrow contest. Surprisingly, SpongeBob did not win--it must be rigged! Check out the perfect little ear of corn Plankton!

We also stayed to watch some women demonstrate how to weave lace, which was pretty awesome!

The kids had a good time at the petting zoo. Sam walked slowly around doling out one crumb to each animal. Joseph gave half of his grain to the rabbit, and the other half to this entertaining llama.

Engines! Engines! Engines! Also cool antique tractors, horse-drawn carriages and antique farm equipment. NPR had a story the other day about antique tractors as the next big investment collectible. (What? Ordinarily I would say that it must have been a slow news day, but lately with the election and the end of the world and whatnot there are no slow news days.)

"Once again, the conservative, sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor"