In the midst of our hunt we came across this little shelf in one of the entryways of the houses we were checking out.
Sadly, the shelf did not come with the house. We were prepared to offer $25,000 over the asking price but no shelf, no deal!
Over the weekend I was finally able to locate some Jeppson's Malort, a renowned and despised beverage of the Chicagoland area. Once I heard about how disgusting it was and how you could only get it in this immediate area I had to try it.
It was not as bad as everyone said it was. However, it was very, very bad. It starts out with a pleasant Campari-like bitterness that just swells and grows in your mouth and then seems to cause your taste buds to implode as if there were a black hole growing in your esophagus.
Martin has been obsessed with Jen's mum's dog, Pete, and has become quite good at alerting us all to his presence. He spends most of any given day pointing at Pete excitedly yelling, "Dah! Dah!" I really think he thinks we can't see Pete and he's trying to do his best to sound the alarm that there is a strange, furry little man lurking in the house.
On Saturday, as I worked, Jen went apple picking with Lauren, Evelyn, the boys, and her dad.
The Wombats seemed to have a pretty enjoyable time. Now, luckily for me, I have thirty pounds of apples that I need to figure out something to do with before they rot.
Living here has been dominated by having to get up incredibly early to feed the boys breakfast and get them to day care before I go off to work and Jen begins the nightmarish death march that is her commute to work. This means sitting them in front of some milk-filled sippy cups, muffins, and grapes that they really have no interest in eating before we drop them off. We do this because the day care claims to not provide breakfast, yet every morning the first thing they do is plop down a bowl of cereal in front of them.
Surprisingly it is quite frequent that when I go to pick them off I often run into them on the street in a mega-stroller with four other kids.
Speaking of strollers, we've been leaving our stroller in the garage but, unfortunately there is a misfit family of chipmunks that has taken over the place. One day they filled the seat with birdseed. That didn't seem so bad until the next day when they got muddy chipmunk footprints all over it, pooped in the seat, and actually chewed away part of one of the straps.
I preferred the bird seed prank, actually.
Driving home from work each night I kept passing this place that sells exotic meats. Finally I had to stop in and see what they got.
I got a full menu of what they have available. My current desire is to try their lion steaks. I'm just not sure how to cook them and ever time I type "lion steak recipes" into Google it says, "Surely you mean loin steak recipes."
So if anyone out there knows a traditional way to cook African lion, please shoot me an email!
Since everyone here is too much of a wuss to be interested in trying lion I had to stick to more conventional meats like beef. Boring! So I threw together a beef stew with some of the many peppers in the fridge.
Doug made up some tacos with corn and flour tortillas, pulled pork, grilled chicken, bacon and goat cheese guacamole, and a number of other delicious toppings.
Martin has been slowly discovered dancing and his favorite song is the ABC song from this little musical table that Aunt Lauren picked up.
I'm a bit fond of the scatting woman, myself. This table has some kickin' jams!
On Pumpkin theme night I made a vegetarian version of the stuffed roasted pumpkin with cornbread, fresno chilies, Swiss chard, and onions. I also got a nice aged cheddar which I forgot to add to it which I will need to relegate to snack status.
For pumpkin theme night we also had this Crooked Line Oak Jacked Imperial Pumpkin Ale from Uinta Brewing Company which I've been sitting on for over a year. It aged pretty well and survived the trip across country as well. It's sort of like the way they aged port by sailing it around in ships. Our Subaru Outback creates a similar environment while speeding down I-80.
I even picked up a pumpkin wine which Lauren loved since it had approximately a 2:1 ratio of sugar to wine. Jen said it was "disgusting" while I thought that a thimble full would suffice.
After day care it's a bit of a challenge getting them both inside which leads to one Wombat inside, one outside, and a new game to keep them busy for a few minutes.
Yesterday morning I got a call from the realtor to check out a new place which looked quite nice. I raced down, checked it over, then got a call that Martin had a fever and had to pick him up from day care. I entertained him for a bit while furiously trying to organize a showing for Jen and getting Lauren to come over and babysit him so I could get to work.
Martin stayed home today where we had an early visit with the new doctor and confirmed that he either has hand, foot, and mouth disease or roseola. Either way it just means that he will have fever for a few days with very few other symptoms and will get a rash when it goes away. We had a blast this morning watching "What Does the Fox Say?" performed live on the Today Show and just playing around.
All in all it's been a pretty fun day, other than faxing a lot of legal documents back and forth between me, Jen, and the realtor in order to get an offer in on a house. Faxing still remains the most baffling technology to me as to why it still exists. I'd rather do anything that fax.
I'd rather have hand, foot, and mouth disease.
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