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Owen and the Spirograph

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Owen finally got out his Spirograph that he got for Christmas. His first reaction? WHOA. THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. 

  

He couldn’t believe it when Tom and I both told him we’d spent countless hours drawing on it as kids. I just hope he stays interested for more than a few days.

It’s a little disconcerting to come home to this.

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However, there was a Fairfax Water truck on the street so I wasn’t worried. Owen asked the guy what was happening and was told they do this once a year to make sure they work. We must have missed it last year.

Edited to add: If I had been reading my Twitter feed, I would have found this:

Does Your Water Taste Funny? Spring Flush on Tap

Each spring, Fairfax Water flushes its water mains by opening fire hydrants and allowing them to flow freely for a short period of time.

Attack of the ants.

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The kids woke me up to tell me there were ants all over the floor. I was a bit groggy, but…WHAT?!

Yep, they were right.

I have NO idea how pieces of Maggie’s food got over there or why all the ants suddenly bombarded us (it seems there are always random bits of food somewhere and we’ve never had ants yet) so out came the Taro. 

Our best pizza yet!

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We just made our best pizza yet!
Goat cheese with rosemary and garlic infused oil*, caramelized onions, flank steak, and fresh mozzarella. I mixed too much oil into the goat cheese so it seeped out in the oven and started to smoke on the stone…but the bonus side effect was actually a crispier, fried crust! It was our best pizza yet!

* We were gifted a bottle of goat cheese that was marinated in rosemary and roasted garlic oil. After the amazingly delicious goat cheese was gone, we used the oil mixed with our own (Costco) goat cheese to make a paste for the pizza.

The standoff 

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Sheryl brought her dog, Oscar, and he got along fabulously with Maggie. Charlie, however, wasn’t thrilled. Oscar just wanted to play but Charlie was not having it. First she slept here:

And then there was some growling and hiding and then this happened:

And then I had a clothes bender…

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So, as a byproduct of the weight loss, pretty much everything in my closet is new. But I’ve been holding off on buying summer clothes until I got closer to my final weight so I wouldn’t have to buy even more summer clothes (I went through multiple sets of winter clothes as sizes kept changing). The weather is getting nicer now…so it was finally time to get some summer stuff. As luck would have it, friends were staying with us for the weekend and Sheryl—who has worked in the fashion industry for probably 35 years—went with me to pick out some new stuff.

AND OMG IT WAS SOOOOO MUCH FUN!!! :p

AND OMG I SPENT ENTIRELY TOO MUCH MONEY!!!! 😯

But I now have a whole new wardrobe of SUPER cute and stylish (!) summer clothes thanks to Sheryl’s assistance. It was so much fun…

  • looking for and trying clothes on with a friend.
  • fitting into pretty much every single thing I tried.
  • being able to decide what pieces I really LOVED and not just what FIT.
  • liking how I looked in most of it (though Sheryl had to convince me of some pieces).
  • buying most things in size large, but also a medium and even a small! A SMALL!!

I got six dresses (from a formal ball gown to casual sundresses), 11 tops, 2 pair of jeans, a pair of patterned slacks, a short skirt, two long pencil skirts, and a spring/fall all-weather parka (because the same type coat I just got in October is WAY too big—GRRR).

I don’t think I’ve done a clothes shopping trip like this EVER in my life—the closest might be a back-to-school shopping trip where I’d get like two pair of jeans, a few tops, a sweater, a pair of shoes, and some socks. It was expensive, but everything was from Nordstrom Rack and Marshalls so overall it wasn’t bad. And I am now set for summer clothes for the next few years, if not more (since NS should keep me at about this same size forevermore—I mean, realistically, I could wear these clothes for the next 8-10 years).

BRING ON SUMMER!!

I had my first bender tonight.

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Food bender, that is—dinner out with 15 peeps at what turned out to be an amazing restaurant (Green Pig Bistro).

The food was all excellent and everyone was passing around plates to try everything (because the portions were HUGE)…so on top of probably 15 bites of random dishes (which would have been a complete meal in itself), I ate my entire plate (which actually was one of the smaller plates—four tiny scallops and probably a cup of crab and coconut risotto) and then a few bites of desserts (ours, plus others!).

I didn’t feel overstuffed at the time, though I knew I obviously ate too much. But I ended up waking up during the night feeling like I had a hangover. I actually had to think: “Wait. Did I drink last night?” Because it felt sooo similar. (Note: I didn’t drink.)

The following morning I didn’t even want to think about food. And I was nervous to step on the scale—I had actually been pretty close to losing my 4# of fluff but that went out the window. But DAMN it was worth it. 🙂

One fun part of the dinner was a surprise birthday dessert for Tom! We had seen another table get the sparkler and one of us decided that it should happen at our table because fire. And they just happened to pick Tom!

Happy un-birthday, Tom!

Kidisms 25

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Owen came upstairs to tell me that Katie was being rude. She wanted a gem from his Lego set and he said no:
She called me a rat and it wrinkled my heart.

Tom: Katie, do you want to watch TV?
Katie: Yes, because Murray has a little lamb.

Katie: Mama, do the tickling thing again, where I was laughing.

We were in the car headed to the park.
Owen: Mom! Did you see that?
Me: What?
Owen: It was like a bird but it was metal or plastic. And birds aren’t made of metal or plastic. Birds are made of…birds!
Katie: No, birds are made of feathers.

Katie taking a break.

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We were at the park and Katie was taking a break because some little girl didn’t want to play with her.

Long story short, she ended up getting a book from someone and she just thought it was THE greatest thing. “Mama! It’s got words in it! And pictures!” 🙂 And I just love this picture.

And a selfie because why not?

Owen and the password 

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So Owen came upstairs and woke me up about 6:45 to tell me that he couldn’t get on the iPad because it asked for a password. What? Password? We have no password on it. So I’m trying to wake up and be alert and comprehend what he’s telling me and I just have no idea so I tell him I’ll figure it out later.

So, this is what I went downstairs to find:

I asked what happened, and of course he wasn’t very helpful. He said it asked for a password and so he typed in mine. He doesn’t know mine, so I asked exactly what he typed. He said “The little A —” and I stopped him. “What little A?” He pointed to the @ sign and then continued “a JenHudson.” I laughed. That’s not my password anywhere (or username for that matter) but it cracked me up that that’s what he used. I had NO idea why it would ask for a password since we’ve never had one. We do have one set to restrict purchases, so I tried that on the off chance it got turned off and he reset it. Nope. I tried my iTunes password. Nope. AppleID password. Nope. And every time you try a wrong password, you get this:

Except the time increments increase so soon I was up to five minutes. After 10 wrong guesses the iPad erases itself. Hoo boy. I was 99% sure I would be wiping the iPad and reinstalling everything.

So I asked Owen again EXACTLY what happened (while simultaneously asking my online friends for help). He told me he picked up the iPad and it had a black screen then it had the Apple and then it asked for a password so he typed it in. AHA! I asked what he typed in. He quickly answered “qqqq” — so I tried it and BINGO! That was it.

So, what happened? Either the iPad updated itself with a new iOS that night while plugged in or it prompted him to update in the morning and he just said yes. And since we had no password set, when it rebooted it prompted him to enter one (we would normally skip that step) and he picked qqqq. 🙂