Party Animals

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Carmen had her birthday party with her friends today. She chose a Petland birthday party where the pet store brings in a variety of animals for the guests to hold and learn about. (Carmen's current career goal is to be a vet.)
You'll need to hit pause if you want to read the captions in the slide show. I can't slow it down!
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Chloe

All ready for school this morning:

Happy Birthday

Carmen turned 10 today!

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Carmen has become the short order cook for Chloe and Steven lately, which makes her new chef hat so fitting. Actually, she operates more of a diner, but the diner hats I found weren't as cute.

[Sometimes when she's playing diner Carmen makes a lunch menu, and then when Chloe is done eating Carmen writes up a bill on a pad of list paper and has Chloe sign it. After Chloe has printed her name and pushed the pad back across the counter, Carmen says in a worn-out sounding voice (for the full diner effect), "Have a good one."]
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Today our little chef got the day off. Me, not so much.

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In our house birthdays are all about the food. Here's what Carmen asked for today:

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Breakfast: fried ham and potatoes
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Lunch: Ravioli with rose sauce and parmesan cheese
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Dinner: Sushi
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After a round of 'Happy Birthday' in sign language or otherwise,
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Carmen topped off the day with Blonde Brownies iced with melted milk chocolate.
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Happy Birthday to my little foodie!
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Blonde Brownies - Aunt Ruth
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1/2 c butter

1 c brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla (Natalie: we are loving the Mexican vanilla, it is completely spoiling us)

1 c flour

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients (I do cream the butter and sugar, but the official recipe comes with no instructions whatsoever).

Spread in a 9x9 pan.

Sprinkle chocolate chips over the dough (we don't usually melt chocolate over top for icing , that was just Carmen's special birthday request).

Bake 350 x 20 minutes.

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Picking up

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An unremarkable, but fairly typical, look at my staircase on any given afternoon:
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The theory is that when the owners of these things get home from school they will take what belongs to them upstairs and put said items away.

A last hoorah

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We went skiing over the long weekend (teacher's convention/family day). We're slashing the spending around here, but the ski weekend was already booked and partially prepaid so we went forward with it and had a great time. Skiing is possibly my favorite thing to do as a family. It is just so fun and rewarding to see the kids master a skill and to share a leisure activity together. Ken even managed to relax and forget his work stress for the weekend.

Ken works in the oil industry and over the past month his company has laid off 30% of its employees. The upper management and VP's (Ken included) have all taken what translates into a small pay cut. Additionally, everyone in the company will take a week without pay this spring. Now this is why I work. At home we'll adjust our spending to accommodate the pay cut, but I'll pick up some extra work days to balance off Ken's week without pay. It is all very manageable, yet somehow the stress of what could happen down the road, and how things could get worse is taking a toll. Ken is monitoring his blood pressure.

The real slashing in spending this year will be thing things we would have done with a bonus, which I assume won't come in 2009. We are not developing the basement - no big deal, really. All holiday plans are currently suspended. I'm not going to spell it out, but there is a message in this for a few of you.

Here's what is still happening: Ken is still going to Ride the Rockies in Colorado in June (already booked and paid for), and Jaclyn is still going to EFY-Calgary in August (ditto).

And that is the extent of our suffering. Minor, I know. But I'm spoiled, therefore I suffer.

He knows what he's going for

Tomorrow will be Steven's first Box Lunch Social at school.

For this event, it's popular to include a special item (other than food) for extra appeal. Steven had some definite ideas about what he wanted to bring for the girls to bid on.

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We saw this Edward poster when we were out shopping, and Steven experienced a visceral reaction. He didn't want to eat lunch with anyone who would bid on this - she would not be the girl for him.

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Steven's aiming for more of the froggie-stuffed-animal,

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homemade-cake kinda girl.

Living My Life Like It's Golden

I went to drop off gold helium balloons at the church today, and here is what I found:

Our main doors had been paint-ball'd.

So I took these pictures and then I called the bishop. I told him the paint was still wet, and I asked him if I could go ahead and clean it up while I was there since I had taken pictures for reference should the church need them. He said yes, thanks, and sorry. (Why the apology?)

Other than that, today was golden.