Go Bandits!

It might not have made the top of the news hour for all of you, but the Silver Bandits played their final games of the year on Saturday. They did really well, making it all the way to the championship game before coming in second in their most injury-prone game of the season. I know at least three girls hobbled off the field crying, and we lost count of the times we all cringed on the sidelines, saying, “That’s gotta hurt.” Honey ended up being one of the wounded after she tripped over a defender’s foot and then the same foot happened to kick her in the chest. Oops.

Sometimes getting hurt can be such a shock. She was astounded that it hurt so much and that she just couldn’t seem to catch her breath. I was talking to my friend Denise afterwards and she was telling me that she still remembers the first time she got the wind knocked out of her. She said she was playing with her brothers in the basement when it happened, and when she panicked, “I can’t breathe!” her brother just said, “Oh, you just got the wind knocked out of you.” She said, “The WHAT?!?!” with this tone of voice that said, “You knew about this? This happens to people?!?!” It’s absolutely appalling.

And what was Hot Wheels doing during all this drama and commotion? He was curled up in a blanket right alongside the field, fast asleep. People were walking and yelling all around him and he was completely conked out. 

The team was a bit disappointed to lose in the final game, but they had a terrific season. They treated each other with such kindness, too. Any time one of their players got hurt or was having trouble, her teammates would all check in to make sure she was ok. The coaches were a perfect blend of challenge and encouragement and the players all improved individually and as a unit. Plus there was a party on Saturday night at Denise’s house. What more could a team ask?

Well there had to be a thank you for the coaches, of course. A great excuse to make some nice big cookies.

 

The best part about this recipe is that although it seems to involve surprising amounts of ingredients, it’s really a double batch. So there was plenty left over to roll up and freeze for a rainy day.

At the end, we just put the cookies in bags with a note for each coach. Done.

Election Day Snapshots

 

We walked out of our polling place at 8am, so you can see I was still a little blurry.

 

Hot Wheels, on the other hand, was bright and chipper.

 

We spent the evening at Amy and Andy’s, jumping from station to station, watching the returns and eating the tastiest butternut soup on the planet.

 

Amy was standing in the Cowgirl Creamery shop in the San Francisco Ferry Building on Tuesday afternoon when a man walked in and said to the woman at the counter, “I need some victory cheese.”

 

At the end of John McCain’s concession speech, Amy and Andy’s daughter came in and asked, “Why are you all clapping? They can’t hear you.” Amy replied, “Yes but we hope they can feel us.” 

 

Right after they announced Obama as the new president all the kids came running in – “What happened?! What happened?!”

“Obama’s the new president!” 

“So for real life we can have a piece of candy with breakfast tomorrow?”

“Yup.”

Halloween Roundup

Well we were lucky here – the rain held off on Halloween night, so we had no drippy devils or soggy Skywalkers. It was a great evening. We have a nice custom of homemade pizza with our neighbors on Halloween night before trick or treating. Then all the kids started out together – Cruella de Vil, a dragonfly, a snowflake fairy and Spiderman. What a crew. 

 

 

Tom and I usually wear some sort of a costume as well, but the past couple of weeks have been so busy I was counting myself lucky to get the kids set up in time. That’s saying something, as the amount of time I invest in a costume never amounts to much. Except about 4 years ago when Halloween was just 2 weeks before Hot Wheels was born. I decided it would be a good joke to go as a mummy. Have you ever been a mummy? It sounds so easy. 

This year I had a flash of inspiration around a $3 pair of caramel colored boots I bought recently at a rummage sale. Nice boots. I’d planned to wear them on Monday with a black skirt and turtleneck and a caramel colored scarf. Then it hit me – save the outfit for Friday and I could be a black & tan! Thanks to Sarah Palin, it was a perfect year to go as a six-pack, and it got me thinking.

You could go as families: pull on a black coat and hat and be a porter, choose a slightly heavier friend to be a stout, wear flannel, a knit cap and boots and you’re a lager, grab a robe and thermometer and be an ale.

Or you could pick species: Red Stripe, Rolling Rock, Sam Adams… the options are many. It’s a perfect group costume and handy for the office since a good number of them can be pulled off without anyone knowing you’re in costume. I guess Sam Adams might be obvious, unless you work in the historical reenactment field.

On Saturday morning, the kids performed the sacred candy hierarchy ceremony.

 

It’s a bit of a bummer since Hot Wheels’ food allergies prevent him from eating any of the real A candies – no snickers, reese’s, m&ms, twix for him. But that didn’t prevent him from participating in the sorting. He gave all of those candies to his sister and she gave him her dum dums, starburst, dots and licorice. 

We did discover one candy he can eat that I definitely would put in with the A candy – peppermint patties. (The small ones – the big ones don’t have the right chocolate to mint ratio for me.) We bought a couple of bags for our candy bowl last week, and after we came back from the store, we had this discussion.

“Mummie, after my lunch, can I have one of those crabby patties?” 

“You mean a peppermint patty?”

“Yes.” 

“Sure – but why are you calling it a crabby patty?”

“Because I can’t say peppermint.        Wait a second! I can!!”

Later in the weekend, I took some photos around the house. We have a full-blown case of fall around here.

Happy Halloween!

It’s a rainy Halloween here so far – very gusty and moody, though, so it feels appropriate. Hopefully we won’t be soggy trick-or-treaters tonight!

Last night we had a fun Halloween-eve dinner with some great friends. It was a perfect night for lighting candles and roasting potatoes. So fun. For dessert, we made cupcakes:

 

We just made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and crumbled cookies on the top, but the piece de resistance… caramel earthworms. Honey made them and she even got into the little ridges to make them more realistic.

Of course I didn’t think to take a shot of them until the tail end of dinner in bad lighting, but you get the idea. They were deliciously disgusting. 

Hope everyone has fun tonight!!

Costumes

Even though the snowflake fairy outfit isn’t completely finished, the guys had fun playing around in their costumes yesterday afternoon. They wanted to surprise Tom when he rode home from work. I think Honey looks like she’s off to a masquerade – she loves clipping a little white bird to her headband. It was a beautiful afternoon.

Honey

Last month at the Alameda flea market I came up with a couple of finds. One of them was an old grocery store sign that I put up on our daughter’s bedroom door.

 

Now everybody knows which room is hers. Just in case you couldn’t tell from the bright pink bathrobe and curtains.

Honey came home the other day and said, “Good news, Mummie! Mr. Frierson would be delighted to come to dinner!”

Right! Fortunately I know who Mr. Frierson is. He’s one of the two terrific PE teachers at the elementary school. When I called him to confirm, I asked if he had any food preferences, and he told me, “Oh just ask your daughter – we went over that at school. She said we’d be having a soup with pasta and chicken… it sounded great to me.” Now if only I could get her to organize Thanksgiving, we’d be in business!

On a different tangent, as I was working on the snowflake fairy dress tonight (just have to hem it now!) I listened to some podcasts from The Moth. If you haven’t come across it yet, The Moth is a storytelling organization in New York. “True stories told onstage without notes” is what they say, and boy do the storytellers deliver. Some of the stories I’ve heard have knocked my socks off. 

One of my hands-down favorites that I heard tonight was a story told by Matthew McGough, titled ‘My First Day with the Yankees.’ I’m making a promise here; even my die-hard, Red Sox-devoted relatives would love this story. I didn’t find the track on their site, but it’s on iTunes. (Turns out he’s written a book, too.) If you’re ever working late on a project I’d recommend it highly. I feel like my kids – just one more story!!

Soccer and squash

More soccer games this weekend. The Silver Bandits are in the tournament, so they had to play two games on Saturday. My daughter was appalled. Two games in one day? What, were they trying to kill them?!

Both games were close, and the teams well matched. They won the first and then tied the next in the final seconds of the game. Before their second game my daughter’s team experienced their first pre-game psych. The other team had a chant they took to with great vigor. I didn’t recognize it, but I can tell you it did make promises along the lines of ‘we will crush you to the ground.’ Very exciting and certainly new territory for the U9 games I’ve been attending. (Turns out that team took the chant a bit literally as they were all elbows and shoves, so I’m thinking they might need to rework some of the verbiage for a more sportsmanlike game.)

After the game, my daughter (I’m just going to call her Honey for now) was a little down. I said, “They were a tough team, weren’t they?” and she replied in a confidential tone, “Yes they were. And Mummie – before the game, they were saying some not very nice things about us, and we could hear them.” 

On Sunday our great friends came over to dinner. We made butternut squash soup and served it out of a pumpkin. I thought Honey was going to have a heart attack, she was so excited. We served the soup with pasta, chicken, roasted tiny cubes of zucchini and parsnip, and toasted pumpkin seeds. The idea was that you could put any or all of the fillings in the soup, or have the soup plain with the pasta on the side. I like meals you can tailor a bit to suit your appetite. Joan made a beautiful salad with pomegranate seeds and these fantastic little green pumpkin seeds. It was delicious. 

Now we’re only a couple days away from Halloween and am I finished with the snowflake fairy costume? I think you know the answer to that.


7:37am

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that it’s the morning of your son’s snack day at school. You’re making banana chocolate chip muffins, which may be one of the greatest snack day switcheroos in history as they contain ground flax and whole wheat flour, no eggs or butter, and only about 1 tbsp of finely chopped up chocolate, yet they taste like dessert. You’re doubling the recipe to meet your quota, and shortly after you slide the first tray into the oven, it suddenly hits you why the recipe didn’t make quite as many as you’d expected. You’ve doubled everything except the flour.

After some fierce internal swearing, you could conceivably retrieve the muffins from the oven where they’re barely warm and scoop them, one by one, back into the mixing bowl. All the while, you’d probably be praising silicone baking cups and cursing your irresponsible math skills.

I might be going out on a limb here, but if this were to ever happen to you, I’m going to guess that it’s going to be just fine. So don’t panic.

In other news, Hot Wheels just ate his third breakfast. We think he might be turning into a hobbit.