Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Drama & Hysterics

(actual serving on a salad plate)
Oh THIS is the life! Wild children, revolts, drama, tears and then a little more drama to top it off. I made a casserole for supper last night, Santa Fe Chicken. It has rice, black beans, cream of chicken soup and some cilantro mixed together. Then you throw some chicken breasts on top, dab a bit of salsa on each piece of chicken and then sprinkle on some cheese. The craziest thing in there is the cilantro and really it's just glorified parsley!!!!!!!! I thought I had it made when I remembered this dish. They eat nachos all the time, take out the chips, insert rice, BINGO! You know what they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him you've got a plan. Well, I'm sure He got some entertainment last night.

I put the serving dish on the table. We've found that if they get to pick their own portions and serve themselves, things seem to run smoother. If they don't take anything, no dessert and that means more of everything for us! So, I put the casserole dish on the table. The cheese has melted nicely, it smells awesome and my mouth is watering!!! Sweetie & Honey looked at it and the sight was enough to move them to tears. and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Seriously, it was so awful that Murray & I couldn't help laughing. They could hardly sit up they were putting so much effort into the crying. Surprisingly, Lovey scooped up a big plate for herself and just ate and ate. Her only question was "how many beans do I have to eat?" and then went back to her meal. I tried pointing out to the resistance effort that EVEN Lovey liked it and she hates everything, so it must be alright!!!!!!! Nope, more hysterics. We gave up and moved on and let them have their pity party but it was hard to ignore, let me tell ya! Eventually Honey caved and had a bite. When she didn't immediately succumb to the hazardous materials we like to call supper around here, she realized it was fine and ate the rest without a fuss.

Sweetie however, had her heels dug in nice & firm. I told her she had to have one bite ( see picture with dessert fork, that's the unreasonable demand). Murray decided to go head to head with her and told her she'd sit in her chair until she ate the microscopic piece. Her sorrow was on a roll and unstoppable. She tried to leave and he made her come back and then she realized he meant it. She'd be sitting there til bedtime. Hmmmmm. Not so cool. She tried to talk her way out of it but I shut her down and refused to engage in any negotiations. I started cleaning up the kitchen, everyone was done, dessert was over and I wasn't waiting on her (I didn't actually have much hope that this manoeuvre would be succesful. After some Hollywood worthy grimacing, she managed to eat the whole morsel.

Score one for Daddy! but I'm sure she'll get her revenge!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Lovey's Report Card



and last but not least, here's the scoop on Lovey. Apparently there is a body snatching exchange that occurs daily sometime after she gets on the bus and enters the school. During this process, she is transformed into a shy, quiet girl whom we have NEVER laid eyes on at home. The rest of the report we can confirm is absolutely her! :)))



Honey's report card was sent out early as her teacher was going to be absent this week when they normally give them out. That's why we had hers up earlier than the others. Sorry to leave you hanging. I know there were many sleepless nights as you waited for the rest!

Sweetie's Report Card



Another great report!!! Woot woot!! Click on the report to see a larger version, cuz you've got to read this to believe us later when we're bragging up these kids!!

Last night for family movie night we had several stops and starts as the tv screen gradually reduced it's viewing area. We turned the tv off & back on and usually that worked to bring the full picture back but it was getting quite annoying. Then a little over halfway through, there was no resuscitating it anymore. Our "reboot" method was having no effect, in fact, we couldn't even get our 1 inch horizontal viewing bar. I realized this when I asked Murray if was going to turn it back on and he said "it IS on!". We had to hook up his dilapidated laptop, (yes, everything we own is crap or broken) and watch the remainder of the movie that way.

This past week I'd been shopping around comparing tv's, LED vs LCD, the dimensions of our entertainment unit (we had to have something less than 36.5" wide), p's and Hertz and it took at least 3 visits to make sense of what was important, what we could live with and what we needed. So I finally narrowed it down to one and started pressing the guy on price. It was $799 on sale for $748 but I wasn't ready to pay the price on the sticker. I h
ad a feeling I could do better. The guy was anxious for me to take it home and resisted giving me info to take with me, preferring to close the deal. He offered to take it down to $728 but that didn't seem like a huge concession so I insisted he write down the models & prices of the two I was considering.

When I got home we scoured the online ads for stores in our area and found that Sears had the same model advertised at $679, ha! I phoned to check in store availability but they didn't have any. I figured the guy at the other store probably didn't know that & phoned him back. Murray was willing to go back in and pick it up but the store closed and the guy never returned our call. We dropped in today and showed them which model we were planning to buy and asked if they had any price match options and they did! Welcome to the world of widescreen baby!

For Rick: 37" 1080p 60Hz LED