Dotzour Family.com – Page 39 – Althea, Bryan, Andrew, and Sylvia

October 26, 2009October 22, 2009

Leaf-filled yard

Our beautiful maple tree in our front yard is at its peak of amazing yellow. I wish I could bottle the color of yellow as the sun shines through the many layers of yellow leaves. It’s just magic. I capture it in my mind and hold it close to help add brightness to some of the grayer months to come.

I thought you might enjoy some pictures of our yard (on a less sunny day) as Sylvia was having a blast running through the leaves.

You may notice that she has her pacifier in all these pictures. I wish she didn’t. I tried to convince her that she didn’t need it. But she won. That girl has a will of steel. Especially when I don’t really care.

Anyway, enjoy…

Here she is pushing Poodle in her swing. So cute! It was all her idea.

Running, running through the leaves.

Our street is carpeted with yellow leaves. I love the way the puddles are hiding under their blanket.

Leaves are so fun to run through! Last year, Sylvia was only crawling, so this is her first month of leaf-running excitement!

A few last hardy flowers are blooming in my garden.

Impression. Leaves blowing in the wind.

This &^%$ squirrel is annoying. He’s brazen and sassy…

…and he eats my pumpkins.

I used to have about six gourds. They’re gone. And Sylvia’s pumpkin is squirrel-meat. It’s already eaten all the seeds inside!

Sylvia doesn’t care, though. She’s having too much fun with the leaves!

Happy fall, everyone! Photos are in the gallery.

October 25, 2009October 22, 2009

Art supply box

For Andrew’s fourth birthday, Bryan’s mom made him a special box filled with great art supplies. It’s compact, but it contains about any fun art supply you can think of. And Andrew loves it because it’s special for him.

Last week, I did a by-pass surgery on our ailing art supply drawer. We have a large buffet drawer filled with art supplies, but it’s been dumped out and pawed through so many times that any order or reason have fled and left chaos in their wake. Simply put, you could hardly open or close it. So I cleaned it out and re-organized it, and in the process, I also did a little re-organizing of Andrew’s art box.

Since then, he’s been just smitten with his art projects. It’s funny how when you pull out a toy and shine it up a bit that it can take on such a new life. Andrew’s been enjoying his art box more than ever, and I can often find him (in his room with the door closed for privacy) working hard on stencils or collages or pipe-cleaner creations.

Granny, thanks so much for such a great present. Your boy sure is enjoying it!

October 24, 2009October 22, 2009

My siblings

Michael and Lisa’s wedding weekend was great. It was a wonderful wedding…and oh how I love weddings. Family and friends gathered from near and far. I loved it.

Thinking back, the part of the weekend that makes my heart feel the coziest (other than while I was sobbing at the wedding ceremony) was having me, Michael, Maretta, and Joe all together again. We were all in the same place one day in June, and the last time before that was at Christmas time. And there’s just something so special about all of us being together.

Maybe it’s a bit that there’s a part of mom in each of us, so when the four of us are together, She feels more present. Maybe it’s because Mom herself…however she is right now…somehow celebrates when her four chicks are back where they can all be counted at once. Maybe it’s just because I love my siblings so dang much that little in this world makes me happier than when we’re together.

In any case, I’m still feeling happy about the fact that we were all able to play together for a few days. I’ll long hold on to the memory of the four of us and Heather setting up the reception site. We were singing along to Beatles songs while we laid down table clothes, decorated tables with pumpkins, and folded napkins. What a joyful day!

I love that the purpose of us being together was to celebrate Michael and Lisa’s wedding. What a wonderful new sister we have!

October 23, 2009October 22, 2009

Homemade yumminess

I have more money-management posts coming soon…thoughts are swirling in my head and are about ready to be born…but in the meantime I wanted to share a couple items that I normally purchase that I’ve taken to making myself. It’s nothing big, and I’m not saving many dollars, but it feels satisfying to discover that I can save a few bucks while easily making something that I somehow thought was rather complicated.

The items are…

Drumroll….

Tomato sauce!

and…

ooo, the anticipation..

We don’t buy a lot of processed food in our house, but it didn’t really occur to me that spaghetti sauce was processed. In fact, I really never considered the fact that tomato sauce (for spaghetti) could be made from scratch. Growing up, Mom always got Prego and then juiced it up with extra herbs and molasses and hamburger. Bryan and I have had a crush on Classico spicy tomato pesto. mmmmm good stuff.

Then one day, I decided to buy a big can of crushed tomatoes. I poured in a few tablespoons of olive oil. I added a small pile of oregano and a bit of basil. I pressed in a couple cloves of garlic. And yum! I actually can’t tell a difference in the flavor between it and a jar of sauce. And the prep time in almost no different. Opening a jar of prepared of spaghetti sauce and heating it takes maybe three minutes. Opening a can of tomatoes, tossing in oil spices and (sometimes garlic powder if I’m in a real hurry) while heating it takes maybe four minutes. Easy, cheesy! And I’m saving at least a dollar:)

My second homemade item is a little less standard. You see, I really like to make myself vanilla lattes in the morning. I like a cup of 3/4 steamed milk and 1/4 coffee with a shot of vanilla syrup. Recently I ran out of my syrup and was feeling a little guilty about spending a couple dollars on a new bottle. So I looked it up, and it turns out that it’s the easiest thing ever to make. Two cups of sugar and two cups of water. Boil. Add a vanilla bean (scraped first if you’d like). And I even happened to have a container of Penzy’s vanilla beans on hand. So now I have my homemade (non-sugar free) syrup in my old syrup bottle. It’s supposed to keep for six months in the fridge. I shall, however, devour it all before then!

So that’s my news for the day. Lovely made-from scratch items that make me smile.

Oh, here’s something else that makes me smile:

mmmm. I love Ghirardelli chocolate chips!

I’d love to hear from you! Do you have any easy made-from-scratch items that you’d like to share?

October 22, 2009October 22, 2009

Thoughtful Thursday

This post title has been re-named to better reflect reality. (Just so you know, it’s not Wednesday!)

October 20, 2009October 20, 2009

Sylvia in costume

Hopefully, Sylvia will be a blue bunny for Halloween. Bryan’s mom brought a costume she had made for him as a toddler, and I’m hoping that I can convince my young miss to wear it…at least for pictures!…in the next few days.

LuAnn also made Sylvia a great skirt, and I thought that these pictures might be just the thing to get your Tuesday morning off to a happy start.

Sylvia loves to dress up in necklaces and scarves. She also loves to walk around the house in other people’s shoes. Andrew’s. Mine. Bryan’s (SIZE 15!). She’s remarkably adept at staying upright in a variety of footwear. And she especially loves my heels. It’s pretty funny to hear my 20-month-old clomping down the hall in a pair of my high-heeled shoes.

Today as I was getting dressed, she carefully lined up a (miss-matched) pair of high heels and then pulled on my pant leg until I came over to her. She continued tugging on my pants…clearly indicating that I step into the footwear that she had picked out for me. That girl!

October 19, 2009October 18, 2009

Chesser

I don’t normally post much about Bryan on this blog. He used to have his own blog, and for the most part, I don’t think that tales of computer programming are really my forte.

But I wanted to share that I’ve been excited and proud of him this year for really getting into playing chess. He plays online extensively (he’s CuervoKing on chess.com if anyone out there is a chess player looking for a partner!) He spent all day yesterday in Milwaukee playing in a tournament. It’s his fifth tournament of the year. I love knowing that despite a demanding job and a (perhaps more!) demanding set of kids, Bryan’s able to find time for a little recreation. Actually, one of my goals for 2009 was to support him in expanding his leisure activities, and I’d say at least when it comes to chess, we have achieved success:)

Bryan won three of the four games he played yesterday, and the game he lost was to the guy who won the whole tournament, so he came home pretty happy.

Here’s a picture of him playing (back left).

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You’ll have to try to ignore the young girl who’s staring irritably at the camera while kneeling on her pink sneakers. Sometimes those little kids are just wicked-smart!

The chess folks also uploaded some videos of people playing chess at the tournament. Here’s a clip of some champions at work:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9h8tG06ccU]

Somebody wrote up a blog post about the tournament. It’s where I grabbed the photo, so if you’re interested, you can see more!

Ooo, I also just found a link to Bryan’s US Chess Federation profile page. Honey, I’m doing research about you! I also discovered that you have played 584 games on chess.com. That’s a lot!!

In other news, Bryan has been doing a version of Extreme Workdays this past week. He’s been coming home for dinner and the kids’ bedtimes and then working until close to midnight most evenings (we took off Friday night and caught up on Mad Men…finished season 1!). Bryan went into work on Sunday morning, and as of 9pm, he’s still not home.

His office has an end-of-November (or maybe now it’s end-of-the-year) deadline, and there’s a mid-deadline on Monday, so my sweet guy is putting in 110%. It doesn’t seem to get him down, though. He’s such a dedicated worker:)

It’s times like these, when things in his office kind of blow up that I’m especially glad that I don’t also have an out-of-the-home job. When he needs to put in some extra hours, we both put in extra hours, and it works just fine. If we were juggling two jobs, though, it would be trickier!

I leave you with a picture of my sweetie:

October 18, 2009October 17, 2009

BEWARE: Monsters below

While we haven’t watched Godzilla movies since June, the monsters still feature prominently in Andrew’s play-time universe. He loves to watch clips of the movies on YouTube on Terry’s iPhone, and he regularly requests that I look up pictures of his monsters using Google images.

Here’s Andrew, sporting his cool Godzilla hat and mitten costume (made by his amazing granny).

Here’s Sylvia wearing some hand-colored Mothra wings (also by Granny). For those of you not familiar with Mothra, she’s a giant month who (temporarily) defeats Godzilla to protect her egg. According to Andrew, she’s very good.

You’ll know for sure that Mothra is good because Andrew is smiling sweetly in the photo below. “That’s because she’s sooo nice.”

King Ghidora on the other hand…not nice. Also, he has three heads. Andrew was rapidly waving his head from side to side when I took this picture. When I inquired why he said, “Because then maybe in the picture it will look like I have three heads too!”

This guy below isn’t technically a monster. It’s a frilled lizard. But it’s part of the monster gang.

Oooo. Even without a toy, Andrew is still terrifying! Someone, help!!! Save me from my son!! I fear I shall be devoured!

That boy!

Aaak! Godzilla himself!

But really, he’s just sweet:)

October 17, 2009

Kids on the farm

Andrew, Sylvia, and I had a fun time visiting a farm today! We met up with some of the families from my mom’s group at the Hinchley Dairy Farm, just west of Madison.

It was so fun to spend a couple hours on a real, working dairy farm! I had several friends who were dairy farmers back in high school, but it’s been years and years since I spent an afternoon hanging around a dairy operation. Tina Hinchley, farmer extraordinaire, drove a group of us on a tractor hay ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins. Andrew and Sylvia found good ones right away!

Tina then took us on a tractor ride through their dairy barn where they keep the cows that aren’t currently being milked. I learned that it takes a couple years for a heifer to be old enough to be bred, and she produces milk for the first part of her pregnancy and then for 7-9 months after the calf is born. Then it’s back to getting pregnant. [Aside: sooooo glad I’m not a cow.]

Continue reading “Kids on the farm”

October 16, 2009October 16, 2009

First friends

Sylvia is (thank heavens!!) exiting a phase where she wasn’t able to happily play with kids her age. Get togethers with Celia or with Rayna were, uh, challenging.

But in the last month, the earth has shifted, a new season is upon us, and Sylvie is reveling in her friendships.

This morning, Rayna has been visiting, and the two girls are playing so well. In fact, they are happily chittering to each other in the sunroom right now.

Check out these cute pictures I took of our morning.

and then…