It's Time

Last night, Steve and I, along with my parents, were lucky enough to be at Game Six of the American League Championship Series.  We were a little nervous about going, since Steve and I don't seem to bring very good luck to the teams that we root for when we see them in person, but we donned our team shirts, performed a series of good-luck rituals, and set out for the ballpark.  It was an awesomely perfect night and we are all so excited to have been present for history in the making.

Thankfully we remembered to pack ponchos, because the game started out with a brisk rainfall - so much so that the crew had to cover the field for a brief bit.  We bravely struggled through it and managed to eat our nachos just the same.

Though our seats were rather high, I think I managed to get some good pictures.  Welcome to the World Series, Rangers!  You guys are a class act team.

The Yankees intentionally walked Hamilton every time he was at bat.

Colby Lewis pitched a great game.

Neftali Feliz closed it down.

I'm pretty sure that's A-Rod.  I'm also pretty sure he's striking out!

In addition to the aforementioned nachos, we also enjoyed all the electronic signage.

The bottom of the fifth inning was fantastically raucous! 

Isn't that a Ricky Martin song?  I'm not sure if it is, but in my mind it is and it's been in my head all day!

The Rangers brought Neftali Feliz in to close the game.  Check out the speed on that pitch!

Electronic signage AND confetti!

OK, this one isn't electronic, but it's awesome just the same, right?

Good luck in the World Series, Rangers!  We'll be rooting for you and we'll see you at Game 3.

Pumpkin Painting

Painting pumpkins is one of our favorite Halloween activities.  We have several dozen containers of acrylic paint and I let the kiddos each pick 4 colors to share.  This seemed to go well and we ended up with a nice variety of colors, rather than just various shades of green and purple.

Not pictured: purple and white

This year the kiddos really got into the idea of painting "spooky" things on their "Haunted Pumpkins."  Matthew painted a ghost (complete with hair!) and Lauren had a nifty pink and purple pumpkin theme going on.  They were really excited to do this and were very meticulous during the painting process.  To prevent any clothing fatalities, I dressed the kids in my old t-shirts and tied up the sleeves with some yarn.

Our finished products!

Mama pumpkin and her babies.

Matthew's pumpkin is the one with glasses and a pig "snot."

I did the one in the background and Matthew wanted to try his hand at painting a jack-o-lantern face, so I dragged out another pumpkin for him. 

The Animal Kingdom, Unleashed

This weekend we made the short trip to Glen Rose, Texas to visit the not-for-profit wildlife center there.  In addition to operating captive breeding programs for endangered and threatened animals, they also have upwards of 1000 animals representing 60 species that roam freely on 1500 acres.  That's right, we packed up the car and headed out on a Safari.  I really can't complain too much, since we kind of set ourselves up for some pulse-pounding, adrenaline-pumping action, but I never imagined that our particular vehicle would create such a frenzy.

It began with the ostriches.

Majestic birds.  I guess.

Just don't make fun of them when they're within earshot.

Oh man.  He spotted us!

Don't anybody move.
I'm pretty sure they can smell fear.

It's trying to peck its way into the car.
Wait!  Where did the other one go?!

Uh, oh.  We're surrounded.
At least M is happily oblivious to the peril.

We escaped the coven of ostriches but then became waylaid by a pack of roving antelope-type animals.  The females were sweet enough and Lauren had a fun time feeding them.

I, on the other hand, was accosted by a rogue male antelope-type animal, who felt right at home sticking its malodorous snout into my side of the car in a brazen attempt to snatch food pellets.  That's right.  MY SIDE OF THE CAR!  MY WINDOW WAS DOWN!  I HAD DEER (or whatever) IN MY LAP.  Thankfully my valiant knight-in-shining armor came to my rescue.  Steve crafted an ingenious ruse to draw this beast's attention away from me.  So he kicked it into high gear and launched his plan to throw food pellets behind the behemoth, thereby compelling said behemoth to back the heck up.  Alas, my valiant knight's plan had one fatal flaw.  Rather than leaning out his side of the car and hurtling the pellets over the top of the vehicle, he decided to half-heartedly toss them THROUGH the car whereupon they hit the ceiling and ricocheted INTO MY HAIR AND LAP.  I was drenched in food pellet and food pellet powder.  The moose (?) lunged.  I screamed my patented murder scream.  The moose fled, ears ringing.

I snapped this one right before all the melee. 

Check out those antlers!

After our run-in with the pack of ostriches and my near-death experience with the antlered animal, we played it safe with the zebra and kept our windows up.  Even though the windows were merely cracked so we could throw out some food, the zebra still tried to eat Steve.

After seeing her mom nearly dragged from the car by an antelope-like animal, L had lost much of her earlier bravado.

The giraffes were awesome.  Sure, one of them stooped down to jam its head through my carelessly-rolled-down window, but for whatever reason, the giraffes just weren't as life threatening as the other animals.

Our drive through the wildlife center taught us many important life lessons about the value of family and the importance of expressing love for one another.  

But mostly we were thankful that we weren't riding in a soft-sided vehicle, because I'm pretty sure the ostrich would have been able to peck through that.  And really, did you see those antlers??

Chocolate Insanity

Today is Steve's birthday.  In honor of his special day, I got it in my head to make him a 14-layer cake.  I read this post on Bakerella a while back and made a mental note of it.  Mind you, Bakerella has more patience, a cleaner kitchen, and fewer child-like helpers around the house, but I think my creation is acceptable.  I had to tweak my version because Steve's birthday request was for a chocolate cake with white icing.  What he ended up with was a chocolate sour cream cake with a white chocolate ganache filling and white chocolate buttercream icing.  

Using fat-free sour cream and Eggbeaters was the only way I could make this recipe even remotely healthy, though I'm not sure it qualifies as healthy.  If anything, the sour cream and Eggbeaters make it only slightly less heart-attack inducing.

I think the pans look pretty cool, though in hindsight I could have spent less time photographing them and more time spreading the batter evenly.

 Action shot of a cake baking!  (I'm pretty sure this is cutting-edge blogging now.)  Thanks to our double oven, I was able to bake 6 cakes at a time.  I'm a little disappointed that I haven't had the chance to bake the 100+ nuggets that my oven allegedly has room for, but at least I can say that I used it to make 14 cakes in under an hour.

My fleet of cakes are cooling.  They remind me of big pancakes.

Chopping the white chocolate for the ganache.  I was so tempted to sneak a few bites, but I held off.  Really.  I did.

It's not quite done yet.  The cakes are stacked and the filling is in place.  Next time I do this, I will be sure to double the amount of filling I use.  Also, next time I will be sure not to drop two of the layers on the ground.  The astute reader will note that we're down to a 12-layer cake now.

This is the frosting step.  Right now there's only butter and powdered sugar in the bowl.  I almost stopped at this step, but with melted white chocolate and heavy cream waiting in the wings, I figured this concoction could only get better.

I brought in my assistants for the fun part.

Quality control was a little lax on this project.

This isn't exactly the final product.  My "helpers" insisted on a very healthy dose of sprinkles on top of the cake.  I don't mind sprinkles, if they're used in moderation, but I'm afraid we've violated some sort of acceptable sprinkle-to-cake ratio.

So this picture isn't a terribly flattering shot of my cake, which has some uneven frosting going on on top.  I blame my frosting assistants.  Or perhaps the weight of the sprinkles.  When I try this cake again, I think I'll opt for a more noticeable filling.  I was hoping the ganache would stand out a bit more.  In any case, it was delicious.  I cut myself a teensy slice after my Tuesday night workout, so hopefully the calories consumed and the calories burned will even out.  Oh and check out the birthday boy in the background!

Glittery Goodness

Since my previous post was a bit heavy, what with the looming threat of mold and collapsed ceilings, I decided to do a fun one today.  What could be more fun than glitter and glue?  (Actually, glitter, glue, and UNICORNS would be more fun.)  In any case, M has been asking to play with glitter and glue for a while now, and given that things have been a little out of whack around here, I decided to cave and let them have a go at the glitter and glue craft.

Not pictured: -The Jewels.

The kids had a fun time using the glue - experimenting with how hard or soft to squeeze the bottle to get the desired shape.  As much as I wanted to micromanage their artistic expression, I held off and let them make whatever shapes or designs they wanted.

M started strong with an 'M' and a ladybug.

L is more abstract.

Once we had gotten used to the glue, I unleashed the glitter.  I had to step in several times to make sure the kids didn't just open the entire container of glitter.  I must have said, "sprinkle, not dump" at least two dozen times...to no avail.  I also brought out some jewels for the kids to glue to their papers as well.  They got a kick out of the jewels too.  L took a break from dumping mounds of glitter to sort the jewels by shape.  M, of course, had to get involved by sorting those jewels by color, which essentially undid all of L's sorting work.  It was tense for a moment, but the allure of gluing jewels and sprinkling glitter won out.

The ladybug turned into a glue puddle once M realized that puddles were way more fun, and messy, to create.

She was very meticulous when it came to the jewel application.

M, with glue and glitter on his hands.

The kids had a blast, but they were pretty quick to beat it out of the kitchen when it was time to clean up the glitter.  There's still glitter in the kitchen and even in other parts of the house, for some reason.  I suppose it could be worse (see pictures in "Oh What a Week It's Been").  Perhaps if I wish hard enough, when the recovery company comes to cut out Matthew's ceiling, they'll find piles of glitter, jewels, and perhaps even unicorns in the attic, rather than icky clumps of wet insulation.