Vacation Pictures: Here it Goes...

A great benefit of Tom's amazing amount of vacation time is we actually get to use it when we want to. So, we headed South for nearly two weeks to see both of our families. We started with my family and the Great Trusty Family Reunion on the 4th of July (yes, I'm behind on the blogging) in Oceanside, Oregon. It was great enjoying the Oregon Coast (our old stomping grounds) and letting the cousins hang out. Celia loves hanging out with my nephew, Balo, and Sabrina quickly learned how to terrorize sweet little Clara (who is older than her, but much calmer). My sister's family just moved to Omaha which crushes my dreams of them moving in next door. As a general summary of the Oregon visit: Sabrina slept in her little tent the whole trip, can crawl to get the camera before we can take her picture, loved hanging out with the big kids, and enjoyed destroying every train track Balo set up. Celia and Balo were hilarious. They slept in bunk beds in the beach house and talked most nights until 11. They built trains, did some flying on the beach house couch, built block towers and tore them down in record time, and were in the Oceanside 4th of July Parade. The rest of us hung out at the beach, watched the kids play, dressed up matchy-matchy for the reunion, and took advantage of the beach house's famous "blue" wall and the matching shirts to take "photo booth" style photos with a feature on our camera that takes ten pictures consecutively. Definitely time well spent.

Sweet Potato Pasta

We have been running at full speed since the last blog post. We went to Oregon, then Washington, and then camping on the beach catching fish. All of these events will eventually be blogged (when the amount of pictures seems less daunting). However, it's the catching of 27 fish (25 salmon and 2 flounder) which leads me to this blog post. Our 72 lbs of filleted fish meat in the freezer from last week's fishing expedition has solidified my desire to become weekday pescetarians. Sounds cooler than it is. Basically, I only want to eat two dinners a week that involve a meat other than fish. So, I'm coming up with vegetarian and fish recipes. I wanted to write down the recipe I made up for delicious sweet potato pasta before I forget it. So here it is (made up using a combination of several recipes found online):

Sweet Potato Pasta:
3 cups cooked, chopped sweet potato
1.5-2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
1.5 Tbsp dried basil
3 Tbsp Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup heavy cream
1-2 cups milk (until the sauce is a paste... thicker than sauce but thinner than peanut butter. Also, I'm sure you could forgo the cream and just use milk, if you so choose.)
Salt and pepper to taste.

Throw it all in a food processor and then warm it up on the stove in a saucepan (making sure that you turn off heat as soon as it gets warm so as not to actually cook the milk). This amount is perfect for a pound of pasta. Heavy pasta is preferred.

This pasta would also make a great side dish. I'm making some tonight as a side for our flounder (pictured below). Aren't flounder the ugliest fish you've ever seen?

Sundays Rock

Celia: The ballerina

Celia took a ballet class this week. Other than being REALLY good at doing all the ballet positions and jumping, ballet class involved a lot of looking in the mirror (despite what the rest of the class was doing) and seeing how great her skirt looked (down on the hips and up on the chest).






Celia was also quite bossy. Though she didn't pay much attention to the teacher herself, when other people weren't paying attention, she was quick to tell them so. And I do have her, on video, telling her friend Sophie: "Don't ever to pick your nose!"

Sabrina: No! We're not ready!

She's not even nine months yet! She just learned to crawl! I don't know how to baby-proof! She pulled herself up for the first time on Wednesday night and has pulled herself up about ten times since then. She's moving way too fast. Now, when she wakes up, I always find her sitting up in her bed, trying to pull herself up. It makes putting her back to sleep nigh unto impossible.

And, of course, she's always a product placement for food.

This is How We Roll

** Disclaimer: That is not a magazine, but our credit report from the bank. That is also NOT a Cheeto on Sabrina's table... just the Gerber Graduate equivalent (not as bad, but almost... she eats EVERYTHING IN OUR HOUSE... we're running out of ideas!).

Celia: This week

Monday - Celia was dressing up, as usual, and came up with a pretty good "Cindy Lou Who" costume, we thought.



Wednesday - I got in the shower after Sabrina fell asleep and came out to find Celia sitting at the table finishing her oatmeal (that she started three hours before). It looked suspicious and there was some hair on the floor and on the table. Here was our conversation:
Me: Did you cut your hair?
Celia: It's okay, It's okay.
Me: Is this all the hair? (pointing to the little bits on the table and floor).
Celia: No, there's more. But it's okay, it's okay.
Me: Where is it?
Celia: I threw it away.
Sure enough, I found this giant wad in the garbage can. She really likes cutting yarn, and she had some yarn in her hair, so she decided she would cut it while it was in her hair. Lucky for her, she has some luscious locks that hide it all. You can't even tell!




Thursday - Celia was going downstairs and on her way, Tom said: "I'm going to tickle you first" and she said "okay!" very enthusiastically. Then she stood there, motionless while he tickled her. Then as she was going down the stairs she said: "Daddy tickled me Mommy, but I didn't laugh."

Today - Celia addressed Daddy's Father's Day card all by herself. I just told her what to write and she did it. I'm glad that her trademark is a million lines in her E rather than a heart above her i, which I'm pretty sure will happen for her in a few years. I like this better.



Oh, and she pointed the her A in "dad" and said: "That A is like a jellyfish!"