Happiness Is...

...after school wind down artwork on the whiteboard.

...elves in the mail.

...an evening making fish finger puppets for barter day at school tomorrow. Who knew? I have been tasked with gluing on eyes.

 ...ice cream for dinner.

...snowman cheese sticks for healthy snack.

...movie night.  The Battle of the Five Armies!

Slumber Party!

I have not had a slumber party in many, many years.  Last night, it happened.  Fun was had by all.  It's been truly amazing to have a friend to be silly with.

Slumber party necessities.

I will call this Holiday Funfetti Slumber Party Grinch Cookie success!  It's a Jack Black movie marathon weekend, apparently.  Did a little weekend unwinding last night watching Nacho Libre with my boys and fell asleep (hello?  it's called a "slumber" party...) watching The Holiday with Nicole.  For 40 year old young at heart ladies, I think we did alright.

Earlier this month, I had this thought... I know... I'm a weirdo... and no one can see the future, but... there's some people you just hope you can be roommates with when that assisted living phase of life rolls around.  Can't wait!  Not rushing it but I think being a little old lady might be kind of fun if I'm blessed enough to still be mobile and in good health.  Slumber parties all around.

Bicycleta!  And for the recipe for these Grinch Cookies, look no further than here (they are some serious deliciousness!  I may or may not have had five.):

Grinch Cookies

PRINT SAVE

YIELD: 3 dozen cookies

PREP TIME: 20 minutes

COOK TIME: 8 minutes

These Cake Mix Grinch Cookies are so easy and festive they'll be sure to put you in the holiday mood!

INGREDIENTS:

1 box french vanilla cake mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
green food coloring, 1 drop
Confectioners (powdered) sugar for dusting
Sprinkles or candies, large heart-shaped

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. In the bowl of your mixer cream together cake mix, food coloring, oil, and eggs.
3. Chill the dough for 10-15 minutes.
4. Drop by Tablespoon into confectioners sugar and roll into balls.
5. Place on baking sheet and press 1 large heart candy/sprinkle.
6. Bake for 8 minutes until just set.
7. Let cool 2 minutes on pan before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

NOTES:

• My son's class had a Grinch party at school and we whipped up these cookies in no time. For a Grinchy treat that comes together even more quickly you can pop a bag of popcorn and drizzle it with green chocolate candy melts. Sprinkle it with with heart candy sprinkles and let cool completely before enjoying.

Look Who's Back

Look who's back!

Winding down for the evening watching Shark Tale with my boys. Gavyn just asked what year he was born. His response to the answer? "What??!! This movie was made before I was!"

We laugh and we laugh and we laugh at the genius of this part of the movie.  Love laughing with my boys.  My favorite.

Commit Already

#42 of #100gratefuldays:
  

Thankful for the first date night we've had in over two months. It was starting to show. All of you listening... committing to a weekly date night since Kekoa was a newborn is one of the best things we've ever done for our marriage. This one was past due and I'm feeling very grateful and happy it happened. I missed them! Or maybe it was the Great Plains pizza. In other news, the movie "When the Game Stands Tall" was fantastic.

I Cried

Lots of tributes, remembrances and quotes floating around since hearing about Mr. Robin Williams taking his life yesterday, but I think this one resonates with me the most, so far.  It's interesting to me how deeply affected I was by the news of Robin Williams.  How all of us were. So much so that I cried. So many of us feeling the loss of this man and what he brought to our worlds as if we knew him... so many who care that he is gone.  That he suffered. And yet how alone he still felt.  In lieu of all this, I find this paraphased quote from the movie, Good Will Hunting, profound...honing in on that first phrase "real loss" as opposed to other kinds of loss... realizing that loving something more than ourselves is scary, but one of the most rewarding things we can do in life.

 "Real loss is only possible when you love something more than yourself." - Robin Williams as Sean in "Good Will Hunting"

Food Is Memory

#12 of #100grateful days:  Happiness is date night with me, myself, I and a small dish of birthday cake batter Coldstone Creamery at the movies.  "Food is memory."  - The 100-Foot Journey

Although somewhat simplistic and at times a little too glossy, it was a pleasant sensory movie experience overall on several different levels.  Always a fan of Helen Mirren.  Has anyone read the book?  Worth reading?

Farmland

I ah-DORED the movie, Farmland. Go see it if you can..... I laughed and cried and laughed and cried. Was a great evening out with co-workers. Wore my "Farm Like a Girl" t-shirt for good measure. Made me super thankful for my years growing up on the farm.

Game Over

I love that my boys sit and read for hours on end now after school.  And... running my 8 x 400s this afternoon was looking hopeful until my boys started watching A Knight's Tale.  Game over.

Gavyn's First Portrait

Gavyn's portrait of me tonight.  I was instructed to just keep smiling. And then he had to sign the back... his cloud signature. Devil's in the details or however you say it... can you find the bunny cloud? and the heart cloud? and the wind surfer? and the fisherman? and the surfer? Oh... and I'm in there somewhere, too.

last night the boys are watching the movie, Thor: The Dark World, again and Gavyn  yelled from the other room, "Mom, you just missed your favorite part." Dad asked what one that was and he said, "The one where you see his abs." That boy is awesome.

Be Very, Very Jealous

Released at noon. We are home. Kekoa and I are watching Smurfs 2 together. Be jealous. Be very, very jealous.

The Secret Life

So one of my favorite, favorite things to do is stop at Cold Stone Creamery and get a small birthday cake batter ice cream to put in my purse and sneak into the movie theater.  Went to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with a friend.  Day 2 of my ice cream once a day resolution was a success.  To eat more ice cream.  That is the purpose of life.  So far I've had ice cream at least once a day in 2014.  On purpose.  No wonder I'm smiling.

It was THEIR Idea

Halloween 2012 nearly sapped me of all my creative energy.  The boys have been on a Lord of the Rings movie marathon ever since we decided it would be ok to let them watch the series.  Kekoa determined he wanted to use my wig from last Halloween and turn himself in to an Uruk Hai orc.  Gavyn decided being a ringwraith would be all right.  I was running out of steam this month.  Fast.  And had determined this was the year I was not going to dress up.  The boys had other plans for me.  I must be Arwen, the elf princess.  And so it goes...

  

 

Which meant, of course, that Daddy should be Aragorn.  Ummm... well, we kind of left his costume a little last minute and so it was a bit uninspired and hodge podge.  He wasn't so impressed with what I pieced together.  I, however, thought my tin foil leaf pin was a masterpiece.

 

While we didn't make it to the Renaissance Festival this year.  I guess maybe, we have a head start on what we'll dress up for it as next year.

And that, my friends, is the happy ever after ending of our October and Halloween story.  A month I was not entirely sad to see come to a close.  And now.  We wait with bated breath.  For the unveiling of the first movie of the next series.  The Hobbit.  The boys are counting down the days.  All three of them.

How We Use Our Vacuum Cleaner

You may or may not be familiar with Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2 (one of our favorite movies).

Here's what greeted me this morning.  Now who wants to vacuum when you have creativity like this?  A Lord Shen inspiration.  See the resemblance?

And does anyone else's kids entertain themselves in these kinds of ways? Anyone?

Pioneer Woman's Got NOTHING on Me

The last CSA delivery arrived on Wednesday.  It's contents combined with this chilly weather inspired me to seek out my favorite leek potato soup recipe last night.  You'll probably want to double this recipe when making it.  I like that it doesn't call for cream (although I did add a can of cream of chicken soup), and it is so tasty.

Whipped up a pot of this soup and a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and headed over to Grandpa & Grandma's house to watch some football.  ISU won again!  Nothing says football season is here like...

BACON, POTATO, WHITE BEAN AND RED PEPPER SOUP

from COOKS.COM

1/2 lb. slab of hickory-cured bacon, cut into 3/8 inch dice (I used turkey bacon.)
1 tbsp. unsalted butter (I used olive oil.)
1 sm. onion, minced
3 lg. leeks (white and tender green) cut 1/2 inch
1/2 lg. carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 sm. celery rib, coarsely chopped
1 med. red pepper, cut 1/4 inch
4 c. chicken stock or canned broth
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
2 lg. potatoes (about 1 lb.) peeled, cut 1/2 inch
1 can (19 oz.) white kidney beans, drained and rinsed

Place bacon in large saucepan, cover with water. Simmer on medium-high heat 5 minutes. Drain, pat dry with paper towel. Wipe out pan and return bacon to pan. Fry until golden and crispy. Drain bacon, discard fat, wipe with paper towel in pan.

Add butter, reduce heat, when melted add onion, leeks, carrot, celery and red pepper. Cook vegetables until lightly browned and softened, about 5 minutes. Add bacon, chicken stock, salt and pepper. Simmer, stir occasionally, 5 minutes.

Add potatoes and simmer, stir until potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife, about 15 minutes. Add white beans simmer 1 to 2 minutes more. Serve hot. (Can be made 1 day ahead of time. Remove any fat before serving.)

Serve with buttermilk jalapeno corn sticks.

That's a Mother Speaking

My favorite part of our Memorial Day weekend (other than the awesome people who made us pancakes and bacon for breakfast) was our visit to the museum.  The boys were so excited to be in the same room as a dead guy - well, Kekoa was anyway and Gavyn stayed far, far away - which just so happened to be a dead "girl":

And the samurai warrior just like on Scooby Doo:

And the snakes?  Awesome!

But Mommy's favorite part of the weekend, by far, was listening to her boys get the giggles in the IMAX 3D film, Born to Be Wild.

It all started with the closing shot in the trailer below of the monkey with the bottles:


They could not stop laughing at the baby chimpanzees and their antics.  And once they started, they couldn't stop.  If you ever get a chance to experience the Gavyn belly laugh, you'll feel your life is somehow... well...complete.  And a couple of times, I caught Kekoa reaching out to pet the chimpanzee on the screen.  It felt that "real".  So cute.  But then... that's a mother speaking.

LadyHawke

Day 03 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show

One of the best decisions Craig and I have ever made was to not own a tv.  Honestly, I don't know when we'd have time to watch it.  The boys do have a small tv/dvd player that they use to watch movies.  We  periodically watch movies on the computer.  This is sufficient.  Between life and the computer (YouTube, JibJab, Facebook), we have plenty of entertainment opportunities and frankly, I think there's not a lot of high quality television anyway.  That's not to say Craig doesn't enjoy watching sports and I don't mind watching a bit of Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives when the opportunity presents itself.  While I think I could also get hooked on  the likes of The Food Network channel, The Bachelor, Survivor, Dancing With the Stars and The Biggest Loser, I don't really feel like I'm missing out on the finer things of life by not having access to watch them on a regular basis.
 
So, on to the question of the cast from my favorite show...  Craig introduced me to this movie, LadyHawke, when we were first married.  It's one I never grow tired of watching.  You may recognize some faces -  Michelle Pfeiffer (who also happens to be one of Craig's movie actress "crushes") and a very young Matthew Broderick.  They do some amazing "special effects" scenes in this movie without the aid of the computer graphic technology they have now.  It borders on art.  It also appeals to the romantic in me.

Run, Forrest, Run

Day 15 — Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
of Operation Get to Know Me

If I were to answer this question straight up... truly and honestly?  The answer is nothing.  I can not think of one thing aside from the obvious necessities we learn about in elementary school social studies that I can't live without.  There's, of course, the truly American answer which is... a car... or my cell phone... or... but we all know there are ways to get around each of these.  The car, for instance.  Growing up, I had access to a car, but I rode the bus through high school.  I used my parents car to commute back and forth from home to a local college.  When I moved two hours south to go to college, though, I was carless.  It was either walk, run, ride a bike, ride the bus, or beg a ride off of Craig (whom I was dating at the time and had this truly awesome Jeep Wrangler).  When we got married, we stayed with one vehicle.  We still have only one vehicle.  It's difficult to manage and schedule at times, but for now, it works.

The one thing I feel would make my life less then stellar if I had to live without it, though, is running.  I know, because I tried.  I was miserable, depressed and overweight.  Now that I've been back at it for 10 years, I can't imagine life without it.  I work through a lot of things when I run.  I've written books/blog posts in my head, organized rooms, planned trips, made to do lists, cried, laughed, blew off steam, solved problems I've been having at work - all in the span of the 30 minutes give or take that it takes to run a 5k.  When Forrest Gump ran all those years, he was on to something.  Maybe the day will come when I can't run anymore, but until then let's... Run, Forrest, Run!  Speaking of Forrest Gump... if you've seen the movie, did you like it?  And where were you when you first saw it?  We watched it in our bed and breakfast room the second night of our honeymoon almost 15 years ago.  Weird the things you remember when you stop to reflect.