Happy Easter

I tried to get up early this morning to take a picture of Tyler's Easter basket before he woke up and tore into it, but the kitchen is such a dungeon in the morning that my pictures didn't come out all that great. You can still kind of see what's going on though.

My favorite things in the basket were the non-candy items like the box of dry erase crayons, mini etch-a-sketch, sky ball (which claims to be able to bounce up to 75 feet), and mini orange bell pepper greenhouse. As for the candy, he got a box of gummy life-savers, pretzel M&M's, and plastic eggs filled with jelly belly jelly beans.

He also got a basket in the mail from his Grandma (Rick's mom) that had even more toys and candy. It had this silly Reese's bunny that sings a song when you press its belly. I found the song to be annoying, especially when played over and over, but as you can see from Tyler's face...he was loving it.

Then it was time to get dressed and head outside for the egg hunt.

This is our first Easter having a completed backyard. I'm so glad we didn't need to have the egg hunt out in the front for every passerby to watch or at the school playground like we did last year.

But it's still hard to trick that boy. He found the one hiding in the bird feeder without a problem.

And the two hiding in the tree.

Yep, he had his basket full in no time at all!

And then there was Easter dinner....nothing but the usual suspects.

Spiral ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, olives, deviled eggs, and Hawaiian rolls.

And for dessert we had mini cheesecakes topped with coconut grass and jelly beans.

Easter Eggs

As per usual on the day before Easter, we colored an 18 count pack of eggs using a standard dye kit. I don't know when or if we'll ever break out of the routine and try one of those fancy kits like the marble, glitter, or the one that makes golden eggs.

Because if we did, I might miss our vinegar scented rainbow.

Tyler's been at this for several years now so most of his eggs included combinations of two or more colors. Here he was working on one that was half yellow and half blue. He later explained to me that the yellow side was the day and the blue side was the night. That's pretty cool. A day and night egg. He should have used one of those clear wax crayons to draw a sun on the yellow side and some stars on the blue side before dipping them in the dye.

Me, I'm not so patient for that sort of thing. I prefer to use plastic egg wrappers on my eggs so that I only have to dye the ends. I just simply drop the eggs in the cups of dye for a few seconds and BAM, I'm done. And they still look nice....or so I think.

Tyler even goes all out and puts on the fancy stickers.

In the end we had a nice looking set of eggs. Those are my boring plastic wrapped ones in the middle row. Tyler did that pretty swirly yellow and orange one that kind of looks like a sunset. I love that one! Okay, maybe I need to start getting a little more creative with mine.

Fish-In

This morning we headed over to Reflection Pond for the much anticipated Kid's Fish-In. It's an annual event were kids ages 5-14 are invited to come fish at the pond at Sarg Hubbard Park, which they pre-load with 5,000 rainbow trout. For a $7 entrance fee, you get a t-shirt, rod and reel, bait, and a 30 minute time slot to catch up to 2 fish.

We got to the park right before 10:00 and watched the previous group finish up before it was time for Tyler's group to start.

Once he had his fishing pole he had to wait in line to get a worm from the guy in the orange vest.

Then it was time to fish!

We were pretty confident that Tyler would have no problem catching at least one. Since the pond was literally loaded with fish, it seemed like the probability would swing in his favor. So for the past few days we've been talking all about how he was going to catch a fish, and how we would cook it for dinner, and maybe, just maybe, if the cats were really lucky, they could have a bite too.

Well about 25 minutes into their 30 minute time slot, they still hadn't caught a fish. Nothing. Only 1 bite...maybe. Things weren't looking that great. That's when we started letting him down easy, saying things like, "Well you know, the fish don't seem to be biting much this morning, and we might not end up with a fish, but we sure are trying hard".

And then time was called, and still nothing. All we could do was pack it up and move on to plan B.

On the off chance that Tyler didn't catch a fish to eat for dinner, we had planned eat frozen fish sticks.

And clam chowder.

That's almost as good as fresh rainbow trout.....right?

Recipe Review

This week I had relatively good success with the new recipes I tried out on my guinea pigs. By that I mean, every meal was eaten with almost no complaints.

As Tyler gets older, I'm finding that he's becoming more picky when it comes to his food. He won't eat shrimp or sausage (except for kielbasa) or asparagus, and a handful of other equally mind-boggling items. And Rick....he's a whole different story. The only thing he absolutely hates is the sight, taste, and texture of onions, but his real problem lies with his issues with heartburn. He simply can't handle anything that is fried or cooked with a significant amount of oil/butter. He can't eat garlic, onions, any tomato based product, anything that involves salad dressing, and the list goes on and on. So you can imagine the difficulty I have each week finding recipes that all three of us will eat....and enjoy.

First up, I made Orange Teriyaki Beef and Noodles, a recipe out of an old Betty Crocker cookbook.

This was a good solid recipe. Nothing off the charts flavor-wise, but pretty good for a quick cooking meal. My only complaint is that the recipe called for only 3 ounces of noodles, which is nothing. I thought I could just add more until I realized that the noodles cook in the sauce, so I only felt comfortable adding another ounce, which still wasn't enough. Besides that, I ended up substituting green beans for the pea pods, which we prefer anyway.

Next I made Barbecued Country Ribs, a Taste of Home recipe.

Yes, this one falls into Rick's heartburn zone due to the tomato based BBQ sauce, but hey, sometimes he's gotta take one for the team. As for the recipe itself, I wasn't so impressed. It calls to bake the ribs covered for around 2 hours, but every time I checked on them I found that they were stewing in their own juices. Not really what you want to see when you're trying to bake on a layer of sauce, so I kept dumping the liquid out, which resulted in one set of dry ribs. And the color was terrible....they looked like boiled ribs. So I decided to throw them on the outdoor grill for a few minutes to crisp up the outer layer. In the end, they looked okay, but were as dry as a bone.

To go along with the ribs, I made a side of Sour Cream Macaroni Salad.

This isn't really a new recipe. I've made it many times before, but I don't think I've ever mentioned it here. It's a nice, simple side dish, but what I really like about it is that it's lighter in fat and calories than a traditional macaroni salad. The dressing is made with equal amounts of light mayonnaise and light sour cream or sometimes I use greek yogurt to bump up the protein factor.

Finally I made Fragrant Fried Rice Pilaf, a recipe from the May issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray.

This was my favorite meal of the week, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise considering how much I love fried rice! The strange part about the recipe is that it actually has you cook the rice to a crisp, which kind of tastes like undercooked crunchy rice. I didn't mind the texture, but Tyler didn't care for the crunchiness. Oh well, that's easy to fix for next time.....and there will be a next time. I loved the flavor the cumin added to the rice, and the beans....I've never put beans in fried rice, but I thought they worked great in the dish.

Chicks in a Basket

I'm not sure if Tyler saw Peeps in a grocery store ad, on television, or during a recent trip to the store, but all of a sudden he's been talking non-stop about needing to buy some for a project. I don't usually buy peeps, but with Tyler twisting my arm, and the fact that they're only $1 a package, I thought, 'oh, what the heck'.

So while we were at the store yesterday, we picked up all the things he needed. An Easter basket, grass, and a package of peeps.

He had this vision of arranging the peeps so they would look like a group of chicks sitting outside on a lawn. He thought it would make a fantastic Easter decoration.

Here he is artfully placing the peeps.

Now I can't say I've ever seen a group of blue chicks sitting out on the grass before, but I have to admit that he did make a cute decoration. I really like the splash of color that the basket brings to our dining area. And the peeps look more appetizing when they're displayed like this, rather than being bunched together in a box.

And before those peeps had a chance to dry out from sitting out in the open, we borrowed a few to make peep s'mores for dessert. I didn't taste one, but Tyler gobbled his right down, so it couldn't have been all that bad.

Wear and Tear

Really?

These shoes are barely three weeks old!

I understand that Tyler plays rough sometimes and doesn't care about ripping holes in his jeans or tearing apart his shoes, but I still can't believe that his 'brand new shoes' look like this.

And I really can't believe that one of the elastic ties has already ripped at the seam. At first I thought the no tie elastic laces were a fantastic idea. It's not that Tyler doesn't know how to tie his shoes, it's that he doesn't care to take the time to do it. Usually when I pick him up from school, he'll just throw his shoes on and walk out the door, never even attempting to tie the laces. So the ones on his other shoes are filthy and missing the plastic caps at the end, obviously from walking on them all the time. But now after having these shoes for several weeks, I don't think the elastic makes a good alternative. They certainly aren't as durable. Easy...yes. Durable...no.

But hey, as long as I've got my sewing kit out to sew the elastic back in place, I might as well iron some patches onto the knees of his holey pants. Now how's that for a good time?

Boomie

I don't know if you've heard, but Tyler's changed his name. That's right.....he's decided that he wants to be called Boomie. Don't ask me how he came up with that or what it even means, because I don't know. What I do know is that he's become very insistent on the matter.

He's been bringing home school work labeled with this new pseudonym.

Charming, right?

Even his Mii character is named as such.

Tyler has a huge imagination, so if he wants to pretend that he has a different name....fine. It seems like it's all in fun, so who am I to make a big deal about it. The only thing that gets me is when he tries to use the name for official purposes.

Last month when we went to check in for his dentist appointment, I gave the receptionist his name and appointment time. Tyler quickly interrupted me to inform her that, "My name isn't Tyler, it's Boomie". To which I replied, "C'mon Tyler, that's not your name".

Then this past weekend he tried to enter himself as 'Boomie' into the Grand Prize drawing at the Arbor Festival. I've even had one of the teachers at his school tell me, "Oh, I hear you're naming the baby Boomie".

In his dreams, maybe. In his dreams.