Look who's 4!

Today was Andrew's fourth birthday party. His birthday isn't until Sunday, and he was the first to let you know it wasn't his birthday. When I showed up he cried "Aunt Susan" and ran across the room to give me a hug. Then he asked me, with the saddest puppy dog eyes, "why didn't Uncle Chris come?". I told him that Uncle Chris had to stay late at work instead of the truth which was that Uncle Chris was at home drinking beer and eating frozen pizza. He seemed to accept that and sulked back to his room. Uncle Chris is coming next year come hell or high water!

This year Andrew wanted a John Deere birthday so Susan made him a special cake and the whole family dressed up in matching shirts.
The letters are made out of foam from an alphabet set C. found at Wal-mart. Dinner was a bbq and they had ribs, chicken, beans, corn and pasta salad. I skipped dinner, but I did make some room for cake and ice cream!
After cake and ice cream came the presents. Susan knew what we got him so she held it back until the end because she said that he wouldn't want to keep opening presents once he got the camera. When he opened it he yelled "A camera! That's what I wanted!". It was priceless.
By the way, Todd's shirt said "Will trade wife for tractor". The tour de force present from Susan and Todd was a new trike which immediately had to be taken outside to break in.
Even Connor got to get in on the trike action with a little help from his Papa Ted (Susan's dad).
Chris tried to call and talk to Andrew on the phone, but it was too late. He was outside riding his trike. Uncle Chris missed out and he has to live with the fact that he broke that little boy's heart. Or he could probably make it up with one gift or visit. I'm sure Andrew is easy like that.

Voting for More Prisons

Tuesday was our special election day. The Canadian, being the communist that he is, is not registered so only my super important voice for heard for the Hartman household. All the measures were about robbing Peter to pay Paul. Based on previous Dancing with the Star results I know that Americans, including Californians, can't be trusted with important issues so of course everything failed but the measure about no raises for legislature when we're in a deficit. I love voting because I get to visit my new favorite care home, Sycamore Glen, right down the street. I took Chris with me this time so he could fall in love with it too. I told him it looks like a cruise ship inside. Then on our way out somebody walked by us and said it looked like a cruise ship without the ship. See?!
Look at my plush luxurious reading chair I shall soon be enjoying when I move in.

Yesterday we went shopping for Andrew's birthday present. We'd decided to get him a digital camera like he asked for after I confirmed with C. that she wasn't getting him one. We went to K-Mart, Target, Big Lots, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart and then ended going back to K-Mart where we started because they had the best prices. I found one on clearance for $25.00 that is actually a nice little camera. It's a 3.1 megapixel big kid camera. No Hannah Montana for Andrew.
We didn't do much tonight. Chris worked in the gay-rage while I whispered sweet nothings to all my new clothes I bought on Monday. When I went out to check on him I found him waxing Tango.
Now Tango is shiny and sexy. Vroom, vroom.

I get to sleep in tomorrow because instead of working in Paradise in the morning I get to go to a 2 hour purchasing conference in Chico in the afternoon instead. I'm meeting Kari for lunch right before hand at a chinese place in the Raley's shopping center at the bottom of the hill. Then tomorrow night, Andrew's b-day party starts at 6:00 pm at the Sunshine House. It's a bbq, but it wasn't enough to entice Uncle Chris into attending. Too many strangers + too many kids = too much noise. Completely understandable.

It's 8:30 pm and 79 degrees inside and 79 degrees outside. I think that deserves a walk around the block. I'm off!

Playing Hooky

I spent my day off today tooling around downtown doing a little birthday shopping...and maybe picking up a thing or two... or six or seven for me.

One of my stops was at Kohl's where I picked up a couple of little goodies:
I know it's summer time, but it was on super clearance for $15 so I couldn't pass it up. I also picked up some new summer kicks:
I also got some new bermuda shorts and found some tank tops at K-Mart:
I did manage to spend a little time at home this afternoon during which I checked on our veggies. The crockneck squash it getting soooo big! And now we have a couple of baby cherry tomatoes and a baby eggplant.

Since it was another hot day today (mid 90s) I decided to make some nice, cool Cobb salads for dinner tonight. They included rows of beets, hard boiled eggs, turkey bacon, chicken, cherry tomatoes and gorgonzola cheese (mine also had avocado). His was topped with blue cheese dressing and mine had fat free ranch. It was quite delicious.
Apparently I'm expected back at work tomorrow. How lame is that?? Who wants to go back to work after a four day weekend? Oh well, I only have to work Tuesday-Thursday because Friday I have a 2-hour purchasing conference in Chico in the afternoon so I don't have to drive up the hill in the morning and then the following Monday is Memorial Day which we both get off. My only goal for the week is to figure out what to get Andrew for his birthday bbq Friday night!

The Babysitter's Club

We did it! We managed to take care of two little boys for an hour and a half without any damage to them or the house! Of course it wasn't all fun and games, we did make them earn their keep by providing us with manual labor. We had about three more wheelbarrow loads of dirt to move out of the driveway and to the side of the house so we put them in charge of taking out the big rocks and roots.




After sweating them into an inch of their lives I took mercy and replenished them with push pops. Sponge Bob push pops to be exact.


We spent a little inside time watching toons (Handy "Mandy" and Phineas & Ferb) and playing dice which was literally just throwing the dice and counting the numbers. Fun times!!
Susan dressed up both the boys in plaid so that they would fit in with Uncle Chris.

Connor's favorite toy was the wooden dragon that sits up in the front window. He would point at it and growl and then laugh hysterically.
Susan came back for the munchkins at 11:45 am. Immediately that made Connor say 'good bye', wave and smile at us and head for the door. Too funny.

They were both so well behaved that it was no problem to watch them other than I didn't have a single thing to entertain them with other than push pops and juice boxes. I need to have an emergency supply of little kid board games and books or buy a treadmill for them to play on and wear themselves out with. Eeeeexcellent.

World Bunko Domination

It was Bunko, bible study and praise team (singing) practice this week. I'm sure Chris has just assumed I moved out since he's only seen me for about two minutes all week. Tuesday night was Bunko waaaaay up in the boones of Nimshew (top end of Magalia). The only good part of having it at Lucille's is that she always makes wonderfully delicious snacks and dessert. Her husband is Italian and he always makes fresh focaccia bread and this time he stuffed it pizza fixings. I didn't actually have any, but it sure smelled good. My favorite was a spicy cilantro dip (I know, cilantro is the devil's herb) that I was dipping crackers into. It's a powder mix you stir into sour cream. She got it at some home spice party. Anyway, for the first time in what seems like ages I finally won a bunko prize! I won 'most 5's'. That's rolling 3 of a kind of any number other than the one we're rolling for and it's worth 5 points. A bunko is when you roll 3 of the number you are rolling for.
It was a container of votive candles and a gift card to Coco Amatrice, a specialty chocolate shop in P-town.
Wednesday night was bible study at Joanna's house. She just finished having her kitchen remodeled, but hasn't had a chance to upack all her things out of boxes so she fed us Moongate Chinese for dinner. It was good for vegetarian (we have a wanna-be vegan in the group, ugh).

Thursday night was praise team practice. I was asked to fill in for somebody who will be gone on Sunday. It was fun and nice to meet the other singers. They were all very nice. Even when I started to unknowingly sing the men's part.

I took today and Monday off from work. I have a TON of vacation hours and I need to start whittling them down. Today I just wasted half my day grocery shopping. I had a coupon for a 15 pack of Fuze juice drinks at Costco so I made a special trip out there. Same with Raley's, they had a sale on their frozen soy products so I swung by there special just for those. I was laying tracks all over this town!

I bought some top sirloin steaks yesterday at Holiday for Chris to bbq tonight (hopefully without having to coax a mouse out of the bbq again!). I have some cheesy mashed potatoes and salad to go with them. Store bought lettuce for our salads tonight, but we have been dining on our homemade lettuce. It's pretty tasty. When I went out to the garden to take inventory earlier today I saw that the paddy pan squash is getting big and fatty. As is the crookneck squash. I think we're just going to have to chalk up the red bell pepper as a total failure. It only has two stumpy, chewed up stalks sticking up. Apparently it has better things to do than grow like a respectable pepper.

I think we're having Mum over for dinner tomorrow night. Mr. A. is gone for like another half a week in Orygun. I'm going to make the crockpot lasagna I made for my b.s. group a couple months ago. It was so delicious and unbelievably easy. I mean, it's not as easy as going to her house for dinner, but whatever. I'm not bitter.

Look at our garden grow!

I went out back today to do a welfare check on our little veggie garden. It is growing like gangbusters. Our cherry tomatoes have quadrupled in size and the squash is starting to take over the planter box.
Here are the baby crookneck squash. They're perfect dollhouse size.
There's probably about 10 of them started. In the planter box we've got three paddy pan squash plants going:
We also planted about 5 heads of butter lettuce. One of them looks ready to eat and I think we'll be picking the leaves tonight:
The japanese eggplant is coming along nicely too, but no baby eggplants showing yet. We also have a banana pepper and a red bell pepper growing, but they seem to be taking their sweet time about it. Same with the lemon cucumbers. Oh well, we'll soon have all the fixin's for salad.

Mother's Day Marathon

So many moms, so little time....

Trying not to be the worst children in the world we made sure to carve out some time this weekend for both of our moms.

My mom was first with a Friday evening dinner and theater date. Dinner at Johnnie's was followed by Man of la Mancha at Chico City Light Opera.


For Mum, we went out to brunch/lunch with her and Mr. A. today around noon at Nash's (on Esplanade next to Enloe). It was yummy and they enjoyed it.

After lunch we went back to 'rents so Mum could open her presents. We bought her a hummingbird feeder and a Barefoot Contessa cookbook which she ended up already owning. We suspected that might be a possibility so we remembered to keep the receipt.

Now we're settling down for a viewing of Bolt. We got it from Netflix a couple days ago. That is, assuming the Canadian doesn't crash from the cocktail of allergy medicines he's on. He is a festival of snot and sneezes. Not fun. Alright, movie time!