Happy shrove Tuesday!

I read a blog post about celebrating shrove Tuesday in Britain with pancakes, so I decided we had to try them for breakfast this morning. They are very similar to crepes. A thin pancake sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice then rolled up. We ate them with jam on top along with eggs and bacon. A tasty start to a long day of Parent-teacher conferences!

Liam's 14th-day 2

Liam celebrated his birthday with our family actually on his big day this year. He requested prawn red curry with rice for dinner (I also made a chicken stir fry for the non-curry or non-seafood folks) It was very good and nice and spicy! Good for Liam's still stuffy nose :)

Present time!! No gag gifts from us, but some funny cards.

Liam asked for a berry trifle for dessert, so tasty and cooling after a fiery curry!

Liam's 14th Birthday day 1

For Liam's party with friends this year he chose to have a LAN party. LAN stands for Local Area Network, basically a bunch of computers hooked together so a bunch of friends can all play a game together. Liam chose a first person shooter game where they could play as teams and against robots generated by the game.

I had forgotten how loud boys playing together could be! You would have thought they were actually running around, instead of just pretending to on the computer!

I think they all had a good time. Liam got a good gag gift from one friend, Liam kept telling Nick he wanted 'birthday stuff' as a gift so thats what he got! Cars, party blowers, candies, noisemakers, and toy guns all packaged in Power Rangers party bags! Too funny!

For dinner we had grilled burgers with all the trimmings with chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert. Liam loves to play the game "Minecraft", the cake is in the shape of a cake from the game. It was a good party even if he was still a little sick, Liam was diagnosed with a sinus infection on Thursday. Next up, the family party on day 2 :)

JrFLL 2012

Saturday was the presentation day for our Junior First Lego League group! (More info can be found here) This group is the younger version of the robotics program Liam has participated in for years. This is only the second year it has been available in Alaska, but it sure has grown. Last year there were only 2 teams presenting (one of them was the one I did with Rose from Weller) this year there were 11 including 6 from Weller! Each team needs to make a lego model and show-me poster within the guidelines for the 'challenge' from FLL. This year it was all about food and food safety.

We attempted to take a self portrait...not too bad :) I have lots of good stuff of all our teams, but I find it a little creepy to post pics of other peoples kids.

This is the project from the team Rose was on, they are called the Wiggle Waggles. They picked for their favorite snack to study: chocolate covered strawberries. For research they ate some, looked up facts about berries and chocolate, and we had a guest speaker who is a health inspector for the military come talk to the kids about food safety. The kids had a great time telling the FLL representatives all about what they built and learned, and they all received a medal at the end during the awards presentation for the big kids.

New recipe

Today I have Lego group at Rose's school, it doesn't get done till 4, so we rarely get out of there till 4:45. Kyle is on nights and has to leave for work at 6:10...so I needed some dinner done in a hurry! I decided to try this one: LINK (General Tso's pork tacos with broccoli slaw)
I like to use my slow cooker, but to me it is better suited to something soupy. Not something my kids will really like to eat. But we all love General Tso's Chicken and most things in a taco shell are tasty! I swapped the pork for boneless skinless chicken thighs and wad some Asian chopped salad mix from Sam's club. It was good! So good there wasn't much leftover...I used about 2 pounds of meat and I think there was enough sauce left, that you could easily double the amount. Next time I will and use the leftovers to fill steam buns.
Such a busy night, I didn't remember to take any photos...so you get a cute little kid picture instead :) (September 2004)

There was much speculation about this dish, maybe it is Ch-exican food? Maybe if the General had taken a Hispanic wife this would be the offspring? Fusion cuisine? I figure it is pretty American, not really an authentic version of anything, but tasty all the same!

A new game

The kiddos got a build it mousetrap game from Gandad and Grammie Lorna for Christmas. It has only a passing resemblance to the old game where you have to collect pieces of the trap as you play the game to trap the mice in the end. In this game, you have to use your 'mouse' ball to knock over pieces of cheese to collect. You can still use the trap to take an opponents turn, and there is a space ship in there somewhere used to launch your mouse. It was a good fun game, we like games a little more fast paced and this one is much better/faster than the original. Besides, you get to say 'Giant Cheese Mountain of DOOOOOMM' when you roll the center mountain for your launching point! Thanks Grandad and Grammie!!

Cookies?

Nope, a new recipe for baked falafel. Tasty with feta cheese and veggies for my dinner. Also good for trying to trick your family ;)