Signs of Renewal and New Life

New leaves are finally bursting out on our pecan tree!  I’ve been checking every day.  In the summer I can’t imagine that the tree will lose every single leaf, but somehow it happens and then miraculously it fills out again.

I love how everything starts waking up in spring.  Back in November when all plants were 70% off at Houston Garden Center, Trent and I bought a duranta (side note:  good for attracting bees) and a banana tree thinking that we could keep them alive through the winter and therefore get a great deal on two plants.  Then we had a January baby and had two hospital stays that coincided with freezes so of course we didn’t always get around to getting things covered.  The the duranta and the banana tree looked dead, but we cut them back and now-

I also found part of a bird egg in the flowers.

And speaking of new life, my pregnant sister sent me some pictures of the tree she painted in the nursery-

It’s super cute, those are the best words to describe it.  She’s good at painting.  (Imagine that last sentence is in Jim Gaffigan’s alter-ego voice.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about that you might want to check him out because you are missing out on hilarious.)

I wonder who my little niece or nephew will be…can’t wait to meet you!

Ode to an Art Form: The Magazine

With two sweet sleeping boys upstairs, I sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, the April 2010 edition of Martha Stewart Living, paper and scissors, a hot glue gun, and the branch I’ve been saving in the garage for over a year.  Less than an hour later:

Thank you again Martha for a great project idea.  I really love magazines.  Trent and I counted tonight and I think we (mainly me) currently have twelve magazine subscriptions:  Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Everyday Food, Glamour, Marie Claire, O Magazine, GQ, Guideposts, Time, Coastal Living, Budget Travel, and Family Handyman.  That last one is Trent’s, but I read it every month anyway because you never know when you’ll need to know how to build a pergola or install a socket.  I read every magazine we get, pretty much cover to cover.  Well, let’s be honest, I’m not reading every article in every Time.  It’s weekly.  Plus I’m mainly in it for Joel Stein.

But pretty much I’m reading all of all of them and then waiting to find new issues in the mailbox.  I love that a magazine appeals to so many senses - sight, touch (so silky!), smell (shiny paper plus perfume samples is one of the best smells ever), and if you’re making a recipe from one, taste.  It still feels like such a luxury to have them around; I remember the first time my mom let me get a Seventeen when we were on vacation and I literally read every single word over and over.  Even though we have enough coming in to fill a basket every month (which combined with the Houston Chronicle might explain why there are constantly so many stacks of paper around our house), I still keep some of the old issues if I think I might want to look at it later.  It may sound crazy, but that’s how we ended up with our new spring paper floral arrangement. 

Costal Living and GQ came today, so as soon as I finish here and pack Rush’s lunch, that’s where I’m headed.  But because I need to keep the grandparents happy, especially because some of those subscriptions are gifts from them, let’s talk about the grandkids.

We had a great family trip to the zoo last weekend.  It was fun to see Rush so excited about the animals.  If you ask him about the zoo now, his response every time is 1.  Poop (for some reason I pointed out the elephant poop to him)  2.  Giraffe (he loves giraffes)  3.  Night Night, followed by him acting like a monkey (the chimps looked at him through the glass, then lay down right next to the glass).  Please note that in the picture below we’re at the zoo and the elephants are behind Rush.  

It’s bike riding season!

Tate is getting cuter by the day.  He started off incredibly cute, so he’s building on that.  He’s smiling, cooing, and a joy to be around. 

To all a good night-

The Year of the Taste Test

We did another taste test recently; this time testing cokes. For some reason I feel weird just saying “cokes” – should I clarify that we were testing sodas? I don’t mind saying “coke” 24 hours a day to mean any sort of carbonated beverage, but I go to type it and I feel like I’m sending Coca-Cola along the same path as the escalator. I’m pretty sure that they’re not that worried about trademark retention, but I’m just doing my part.

We really didn’t have a clear plan or a goal with the test. I know my dad has said that people tend to get confused with Coca-Cola and Sprite during a blind taste test. Other than that we were just tasting (blindfolded), commenting, and trying to guess the correct beverage. I just know that I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to pick out Diet Coke, which would mean I would need to totally evaluate who I am and what I’ve been doing with myself for the past twelve years.

Five tasters (Trent, my dad, my brother-in-law, a Crystal Beach local and friend, and yours truly) and seven beverages later we learned that everyone can pick out Dr. Pepper. The lemon lime beverages did throw some people off, but in my personal experience you could smell the lemon lime flavor. Chris was the only person to guess every drink correctly. I personally learned that I don’t really like most cokes, but I recognized –and liked- Diet Coke immediately. Identity confirmed.

So what’s next? I would like to see a redo of the light beer taste test of a few years ago. My dad wants to test Brie and Camembert, which sounds like it should be paired with a wine tasting. I'm still trying to figure out how we could keep fast food french fries hot enough to have a valid test. Maybe we could do a bake-off for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. That’s a win-win situation.

In the immortal words of Hunter (although at the time he was speaking to a cat): Is this what you do with your life?

The Epic Story of The Table

Last fall when we were getting ready to move Rush into his new bedroom, we bought a little kid table and chairs from Ikea that I thought was wood with a light stain, but in fact was raw wood. That was not great news for me, as I had recently discovered that contrary to my own ideas about myself, I’m actually terrible at painting. For some reason I decided I could paint it anyway, probably because I consider it too humid to work with stains. And I’m delusional.

So I started painting the table and it was indeed a disaster. One of many problems was not having a clear plan, so I ended up with a brown chair, a purple chair, a yellow chair…it was seriously ugly and at some point I had the sense to put down the paintbrush and ban myself from ever trying to paint furniture anything more complicated than a single color. I mentioned the episode to my sister Casey, who loves to paint furniture, and she immediately said she wanted to paint it and would pick it up next time she visited.

Next time she visited, she told me she was pregnant. My first thought was “New life, how wonderful!” My second thought was that I would never see that table painted. I didn’t want to be a downer and let her know that she would likely be too tired and nauseous to even get out of bed, so I let her take it. She brought it back, not painted, the next time I saw her.

The table and chairs sat in our garage, quickly becoming an expensive waste of money, until my mom, painter extraordinaire, came to the rescue and took it home with her. A month later she brought back a masterpiece more fabulous than I could have imagined:

It’s so amazing that I can’t believe I’m supposed to let children eat on it or use crayons around it. I can’t imagine how long it took to finish, but it really looks awesome. I could never, ever, in a million years have done anything like it.

So Mom, thank you, thank you, thank you. I asked her if she would start selling any painted furniture, which she did occasionally when we were growing up, and it sounded like her rates had really increased. I think she said anything this labor intensive would typically run about $5,000. It’s a good thing I have connections.

Tate, Beach. Beach, Tate.

Tate and Crystal Beach are now acquainted.

Until recently our last beach trip was the weekend after Thanksgiving, so we were getting a little antsy for the wind in our hair and sand on our feet. 

Because Tate is still a little guy, the two of us spent a good portion of the trip inside the cabin.  Thankfully I had a lot of help from my parents and sister and brother-in-law.  My mom was a huge help in rocking take and helping Rush could maintain his standard of 85% of waking hours spent outdoors.  I can just picture little two year old girls being fooled by his personal ad, “enjoys long walks on the beach.”

Clarify that as long, active walks on the beach, often involving running, with periodic stops to check out construction equipment.

I missed winter at the beach this year, jumping straight into spring and soon, summer.  My dad already has a bucket of Crystal Monkeys in the freezer, so winter is officially over.  Actually though, there might always be a bucket of Crystal Monkeys in the freezer…It’s a secret, evolutionary beverage that involves coconut, banana, orange, mango (?), and tequila. 

For a beach trip with two kids, we enjoyed some surprisingly calm moments.  Tate always had someone willing to hold him while he slept, so he didn’t spend too much time actually napping in a pack and play.   Rush always had someone to read to him.

There were actually so many people willing to hold Tate that I started to miss him a little bit.  He looks huge to me now, literally like he grew overnight.  He has the sweetest smile.

Rush and Tate like to start their mornings off with a snuggle.  If I try to pick up Tate too soon during their brother time, Rush starts calling “More Tate!  More Tate!”  I hope they have this much fun when they start sharing a room.

I’m already trying to find a weekend for my next beach getaway.  I wouldn’t by any stretch say that I came home from the beach rested, but I came home feeling like I had one more piece of my normal self back.  I don’t like to go too long without reconnecting with the shore.

Brought to You by the Number Two

It’s hard to believe that my sweet, adorable little Rush is already two.  He had a big year, a year that I doubt any of us could top.  In no particular order, he learned to walk, started talking, rode on an airplane, went to Disney World, spent countless hours on the beach, started school, fed a giraffe, and became a big brother.

He had a perfect birthday celebration:  people who love him,

a birthday wish,

dozens of cupcakes,

and at the end of the day, time to play in a big bucket of ice water.

I’ve had so much fun with that guy over the past two years.  Come on twos, bring it.  We’re ready.

90!

There might be a point, possibly right past middle age, where it could be impolite to broadcast a woman’s age.  But once you turn 90, it’s definitely time to be proud.  Trent’s grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday on Sunday and we were happy to celebrate with her. 

Tate Arthur is named after her husband, Arthur, aka Honey, so I think he holds a special place in her heart.  Before we even left the hospital with Tate she had dubbed him “Little Honey”.  They met for the first time on Sunday and spent most of the afternoon snuggling together.  The snuggling combined with a family lunch of fried catfish and hush puppies?  That’s a great birthday at any age.

Here is a woman you would expect to be much younger – active, sharp as a tack, flawless skin.  Anyone would be lucky to look this good at any age.  She’s proving that 90 is the new 50.

Many happy returns of the day Grandma.

The Test

I enjoy a good hamburger and I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoy eating fast food hamburgers.  Watching Super Size Me just makes me crave McDonalds.  So recently we got together with our dear friends Nick and Kellaura for a taste test to find the best fast food burger.

Competing for title of tastiest burger were the Whataburger, Sonic Burger #1, the Jumbo Jack, the Whopper, and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, which was the closest thing McDonalds has to a classic hamburger.  None of us are big mayonnaise fans so we made sure all the burgers were with mustard, no mayo, but besides that we ordered them as they come.  When I say we’re not big mayonnaise fans, I mean three of the four of us would be gagging if we ate a hamburger with mayo.

The rules were simple:  It was literally a blind taste test, because we didn’t want to anything like sesame seeds to give away the chain.  We took turns, with each person trying every burger, rating it with one to five stars, and trying to guess the restaurant correctly.  Drinks and fries were available for pallet cleansing in between bites.

Our biggest realization was that as a fast food hamburger cools it becomes almost tasteless.  Kellaura and I were the last to test, and our ratings were lower than the guys.  We ended up with comments like “takes like air”, “doesn’t taste like much either”, and “also doesn’t takes like anything”.

In the end, there was a clear winner:

The Whopper!  Go Burger King.  It was the highest rated hamburger by all of us, four or five stars every time.

It was a little shocking for us, as we’re all loyal Whataburger enthusiasts and none of us frequent Burger King.  I think I’ve eaten at Burger King four times in the past ten years and two of those times were probably at airports.  But after the taste test I think we’re all looking at the King with a little more respect.  Flame broiled apparently does give it a lot of extra backyard grilling flavor.  It looks like we’ll all be reevaluating our choices next time we head out for fast food.

While this post may sound like product placement, we received no promotional consideration from Burger King.  But knowing how tasty Whoppers are, I would trade free food for blog posts…

Putting the A in Agricultural

I’m on the exhausted end of a very satisfying weekend. Somewhere over the last seven years Trent and I have evolved from two people sitting in an apartment wondering what we would do when we bought a house and had to deal with yard work to being two people, well, four people, who wished they hadn’t left the packet of black-eyed susan seeds and onion bulbs in the cart at Home Depot on Friday night. Between Friday night and Sunday evening we bought plants, transplanted plants, ripped out grass and added another flower bed, added two loads of dirt to our beds, and moved our compost pile. I split my time between being outside when Tate was napping and being inside with him, but Trent worked pretty much nonstop all weekend. He moved wheelbarrow after wheel barrow full of dirt and his little helper stayed pretty close to his side.

Rush came up to me yesterday and said “gibberish gibberish gibberish gibberish dirt! dirt!”

I love the process of working in the yard and I’m especially into compost. I love that a pile of food scraps, grass, and leaves can turn into soil that we can use. It’s the same feeling I get when I make chicken stock and I feel like I would have made a fabulous pioneer woman. (Although technically I would make a horrible pioneer woman…recently we lost electricity for 45 minutes and besides the fact that I couldn’t complete the simplest task, all I could think was “Thank you God that I dried my hair before the power went out.”) Anyway, we moved a lot of very organic (organic in the real sense, not the trendy sense) black soil into our garden, where we planted tomatoes, basil, thyme, and parsley and would have planted onions had we not misplaced them. There was, however, one problem with the compost:

It’s that damn Sun Chips bag! We found it deep in the midst of the good soil in the bottom of the compost. It’s been in that pile for a year. Hey Frito Lay, your compostable bag didn’t work.

That didn’t ruin our weekend or anything though. The weather was beautiful and there was work to be done. In addition to the herbs and tomatoes we planted flowers –zinnias I think, but who can remember? I’m just trying to finish writing this so I can go to bed- and a few azalea bushes. Truly most of the weekend was spend ripping up grass and hauling dirt. And I did get one of my wishes for the back patio: hanging ferns!

Tate’s take on all this: Farmers Fight!

We didn’t get any “after” pictures of all our hard work and now it’s dark. Trent’s asleep on the couch and my brain is starting to shut down with tiredness…

I do want to give a big, hearty thank you to Trent for putting in some serious man hours and power this weekend. The yard is looking great and he made it possible. On my own I would have stopped somewhere around the time when I tried to move the wheelbarrow that was full of clay. Trent, thank you. Love, your wife.

My View of a Sunday

These pictures are a week and a half old and they already seem outdated.  Rush’s hair is longer, Tate is bigger, and the grass is greener.  We’ve started getting the yard spring and summer ready.

Rush was a big help in clearing out the weeds that had totally taken over everything.

There were a few giant lettuce leaves left in the garden, but I pulled those out and sent them to the compost pile yesterday.  We’ve talked about planting more vegetables, but we don’t have any clear plan yet.  We’ll probably just pick out something at the nursery this weekend without any regard to climate or sunlight.  That’s what we usually do –great plan- but we have successfully grown lettuce and jalapenos.  Tomatoes are the easy choice, but we’ve never had great luck with tomatoes.  Last year we had huge plants, but apparently no pollinators, so no tomatoes.  We are definitely planting more herbs this year; I’m ready for mint tea and pesto.

Tate was snuggly in the sling.  He typically takes a nap in the sling every afternoon as it’s difficult to get him down for a late afternoon nap when Rush is bouncing off the walls.  We’re gradually working on beautifying the desolate stretches of fence (pictured below) in our yard. 

Trent and I have designated this weekend an official working in the yard weekend.  I made sketches of the backyard with things I want to add this year:  rocks around the flowerbeds, plants in the empty corner by the living room windows, ferns hanging from the patio, a picnic table…reality will probably take hold when we start seeing price tags. 

Even if we don’t add anything new this year, we’ll still have our palm trees.