“Lidia’s not a girl.. (short pause) she’s a kind of sister” with this extra funny sort of confused look on his face.

It’s a good thing we had not started moving yet and then I had to explain to him why I was laughing. And yes he has seen Aristocats but I doubt he knew he was pretty much quoting it. The boys did end up with gummy worms which ended any concern over Lidia getting chocolates.

Unless you are the parents.

And have twins.

With one child it’s put them back in bed a few times and make the room dark and they’ll generally sleep. Playing with things too much to sleep? put them away. With twins in the same room it all changes. Who can sneak out of bed the most? Who can find something to play with? It all becomes an exciting new game and competition. “I bet I can get on top of the dresser faster than you can!” “Oh look the monitor has a light, let’s go get it!” and so on. Getting them to sleep which use to be a story, hugs and kisses and placing them in their cribs with their favorite blanket and maybe having to check on once more before they’d be out is now an ongoing ordeal of continuously placing one or both boys back into bed, pillows back on bed, covers back on bodies, rinse and repeat till you basically wear them out. Did I mention they are stubborn?

Oh and with a toddler bed comes that other fun new thing, falling out of bed. We are looking to add something to prevent this but until we do it means during the night one or both boys will fall out of bed one more more times and then cry pitifully until Mom or Dad come to rescue them. Oh and one of those falls will of course come about an hour before any sane person should be waking up at which point they of course decide it’s time to get up since they are out of bed anyway. And since one is up he might as well wake his brother up too.

And so the morning starts with two cranky boys who didn’t get enough sleep being looked after by parents who also didn’t get enough sleep.

And then there is the daughter blissfully sleeping away through it all till her princessness decides to awaken at her normal time.

In time they’ll learn to sleep in more and we’ll deal with or they’ll learn to not fall out of bed and things will be better but for now it’s an experiment in sleep deprivation.

Just a few days ago We grilled some salmon that turned out incredibly well. So well I had to take a picture.

I believe this was my best grilling of fish ever. We were quite sad when it was all gone. A bit of fun for me was the recipe didn’t yet have a picture on the website so I was able to upload the picture of my perfect (IMHO) salmon :)

The recipe is quite simple and here it is:

Salmon (either 2 thicker fillets that can be butterflied or 2 regular fillets that are nice and wide and be folded in half)
2 cloves of garlic peeled and minced
4 tbsp softened cream cheese
4 stalks of fresh cilantro chopped up
1 tsp kosher salt

1.) In a small bowl mix together the cream cheese, cilantro and garlic.
2.) Either butterfly the fillets or if using thin/wide fillets make a cut down the middle about 2/3 of the way through the fillet so it can easily be folded over.
3.) Spread the cream cheese mixture onto the fish and fold it up (cream cheese in the middle).
4.) On a hot grill (can only hold hand over for 2 seconds at most) that has been brushed with vegetable oil grill the filets about 6 minutes on each side (keep a close eye on the fish, you’ll see when it cooks through the side, you may need more or less time depending on the thickness of the fillets).
5.) Sprinkle the fillets with kosher salt while grilling (the jewels).

That’s it, so long as your grill is clean and you brushed on oil sticking shouldn’t be any problem at all.

I plan on continuing to post more cooking successes (and hopefully few to none failures) and pictures.

BEST. WAFFLES. EVER.

Simple yet so so yummy. We are calling them Cinnamon Waffles (they didn’t really have a name) and I plan to make them again (soon!).

What you need:

Waffle iron (duh)
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
4 egg yolks
4 egg whites
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO))
1 1/4 cup milk
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla

In a large bowl sift the Flour, Baking Powder, Salt & Sugar. Once done make a well in middle of the bowl.

In a medium bowl mix the Egg Yolks, Vegetable Oil, Milk, Cinnamon & Vanilla. Pour the mixture into the well of the bowl with the flour mixture. Gently mix just until everything is moistened.

With either a mixer or in a bowl with a whisk beat the Egg Whites until they start to stiffen (form small peaks). Poor the Egg Whites into the batter and gently fold it in.

Pour the batter into the iron and cook as directed by your iron. We have a 6 inch round waffle iron that take a bit under a half a cup to completely fill it out (I never get them perfect). The recipe makes about 8 of that size waffle.

Serve with your favorite toppings (Maple Syrup, powdered sugar, whipped cream, fruit, etc).

Enjoy! We sure did.

Saturday it snowed, and snowed, and snowed some more. Ok, time to shovel. About 10 inches, not too bad it was pretty fluffy. Did I mention I’ve been sick with some sort of sinus/coughing/headache/wipeyouout virus for the last week? OK this is getting old but with a bunch of help from Crystal the sidewalk is clear and half the driveway is clear so we can at least get out. We can finish the rest later.

So I head out to the store to do some sorely needed grocery shopping. As I’m heading back it starts to snow again. Big wet heavy snow. As we go to bed Saturday night it’s still snowing (yipee). The next morning I get up and look outside, everything that had been shoveled is now covered by even more snow and the bit that we didn’t get to is buried out of sight.

Hey at least I’m finally feeling a bit better today. So back outside I go with my Shovel. I open the garage door and am greeted by a two foot snowdrift (oh goody). I grab my shovel and proceed to dig out a shovel width patch down the driveway to the sidewalk. I noticed earlier my neighbor had given in and gone out and hunted down one of the last remaining snowblowers for sale so I dig my way down the sidewalk to his house to bribe him :)

The snow on Saturday wasn’t too bad, but today it’s 10 inches of wet thick heavy yuck. I help him finish out his driveway and head over to his other neighbor to help dig her out. After that we proceed back towards my house to finish up there. It’s pretty sad, we have to knock down the snow some just so the snowerblower can handle it! We get all 3 driveways and sidewalks completed just in time for the plow to come through.

Did I mention we live on a very very wide street?

Thanks to our friendly plow driver (with that I’m getting overtime grin on his face) we now have this 4 foot plus tall mass of snow that is 6 or 7 feet wide over the width of our driveway. Nicely packed too. Time to get out a spade to break it up. At this point I’m pretty much dieing so I have to give up for a while (what a time to be sick). Crystal heads back out and with some more help from the neighbors and the snowblower they manage to get the plow gift cleared out from the driveway.

I wonder what the mailman will do? I think about one person on our street managed to actually clear out the snow in front of their mailbox (thanks to one of those old also works as a wood chipper type snowblowers that looks like it could eat a Honda whole). Others, well I think they have a mailbox somewhere under that snow. Ours is visible, you just have to climb over seven feet of snow (from the road to it) to get to it. Of course it got colder overnight so that wet yucky plow compacted snow is now likely one solid mass. Maybe a blowtorch is in order?

Oh well, one more weekend of fun in Wisconsin winter. It’s really not that bad once the shoveling is done :)

It really wasn’t that bad. The components are actually pretty simple so long as you have every tool you need. If was fun to get hands on and learn a bit more about the suspension and drive axle.

While I was at it I corrected the stop position of my wiper blades the shop had messed up when they replaced a crank arm a while back.

The other thing which turned out to rather funny was a noise in the ac/heat vents. It sounded like the fan was broken in some way. Basically lots of noise and no airflow. I had to remove the glove box to get at the fan and what do I see as I pull it out? A bunch of ATM deposit envelopes half into the fan half eaten by the fan! They had managed to slip over the top of the glovebox and slit into a space leading into the fan! They were the cause of the noise (being eaten) and the blocking of the airflow. Turned out to be a nice cheap fix :)

Just two more things to figure out now on the car and it will be good as new again. The windshield wash motor isn’t running, it’s either dead or lost it’s power connection. Just need to pull out the battery and a cross member to get at it to check it out. The other remaining issue is the same blower motor that I thought the fan was bad on. It has a different issue too and that’s that it only works on 4 or 5. I think the fan is ok, just the lower power setting isn’t getting power I think. It does have 2 fuses going to it so I think one of the connections just has a problem. I’ll have to half pull it out to check it out and that’s another weekend project. I think I’ll have to remove the passenger seat to actually have the space to get under there to pull it out (yuck!).

Oh well, it’s good learning and a heck of a lot cheaper. Saved about $300 doing the wheel bearing job myself!