Celebrate Good Times

Zachary thought this "apple guy" was so funny.

Abram and Aubrey had finals last week. Thankfully, my high school did not have finals--maybe a test at the end of the quarter, but never a comprehensive final each semester. It was kind of a stressful week for them, and they both did a great job on their exams. When I picked them up from school Thursday, they were ready to celebrate. Where do you go when you really want to kick it up and really celebrate the end of finals week?

The movies? The mall?

No, you go to WinCo.

It's only the best grocery store ever, and a little piece of heaven on earth for me. Sure, you have to bag your own groceries, but the store is so bright and clean, and the prices on everything are amazing every day of the year. The best feature of WinCo is the bulk food aisle. Not just candy (even though the selection is amazing). All sorts of pasta, kitchen staples, grains of all types, spices, cereals, treats, nuts and just about everything you can imagine. You can buy as little or as much as you need. If you are making pesto and you just need a few tablespoons of pine nuts, you can just go buy a few tablespoons of pine nuts! What a concept! I love it.

But the candy selection at WinCo is truly impressive. I cannot go there without buying some sort of treat for myself and whoever is shopping with me. I am partial to sourballs, toffee peanuts and chocolate covered gummy bears. Zacky usually picks "Sweet Fishies" or orange slices. The day of finals, Abram and Aubrey got to choose whatever they wanted. And since it was a special day, they both got to pick two things. Boy, do we know how to party.

As if the incredible prices, and unbelievable bulk foods selection wasn't enough reason to shop at WinCo, the other thing I love is Leonardi's Pizza. It's the best-kept secret in Portland. Truly it is my favorite pizza. You can buy a slice and eat it then, have them bake it for you or take it home and bake it. I've tried a lot of pizza, and usually am slightly disappointed. But I love Leonardi's Pizza.

Candy and pizza. What a great day.

Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo

I went to the zoo yesterday. I'm not a big zoo fan. The Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake was sort of fun when I was a kid, but I don't remember ever begging to go. I remember the concrete habitats the animals were caged up in and sticking my head in the lion drinking fountain while my dad took a picture.

When Abram and Aubrey were little we lived in Omaha, we had a zoo pass and went there almost every week. It was a great zoo. We also were spoiled having the Kansas City zoo a few hours away. That was the first zoo I had ever seen where great effort had gone into keeping the animals habitats as much like their natural ones as possible. I could have sworn I was somehow transported to the African Savanna where the lions, giraffes, and zebras were roaming freely. And then dinner at KC Masterpiece.

When we moved to Portland we took the kids to the zoo like good parents, and we were shocked. Nothing had changed at the Oregon zoo in at least 50 years. Same old cages and concrete habitats that you see in "Sammy The Seal" and "Curious George" books. We didn't ever go back. Not necessarily from an animal-humane point of view, but just from a what-a-rip-off-boring-zoo point of view.

I had noticed in the news over the past several years that the zoo had been making improvements. And every year when we get our property tax statement and I see how much money I'm paying for the stupid zoo bond I didn't vote for, I think I really should go see what I've purchased.

Yesterday was a no-school day for the kids. Mark, Abram and Jacob left on a snowcaving trip, and I decided it was a good day to take the five buddies to the zoo. They loved it. I was surprised at how much more modern it was. It is a great place to take a walk, if nothing else. And because it costs the same for our family to go once or to buy an annual membership, I bought the membership, and we will be back. Lucky for Zachary.

Our kids are full of ethusiasm and energy. They ran and laughed and said so many funny things that my tummy hurt from laughing. I was laughing so hard at Joel banging the glass on the sea lions exhibit like Darla on Finding Nemo, "Fishy, wake up. Why won't you wake up? FISHY!"

Afterward, we went to lunch at Panda Express (aka Kung Fu Panda), where we were all surprised when I opened my fortune cookie to see that I had no fortune. I was glad it was mine and not Zachary's. He gets pretty excited about extracting the paper from the fortune cookie. We topped it off with Krispy Kreme donuts. It was a very fun day. Much more fun than snowcaving would have been, in my opinion.

I think the funniest part of the day was when we had been at the zoo about 20 minutes, and I realized that I was almost the only mother who was NOT wearing Dansko clogs. Not saying they are bad--just sayin' that I think I may be the only mother-of-young-children in the Portland area who does not own Dansko clogs. It was really funny. I told Aubrey, and she didn't believe me. But then around every corner we would encounter another mom wearning Danskos and we would both start laughing. Especially when it was a group of 2 or 3 moms who had come to the zoo together, and they all had the same shoes on. It was really funny. I have heard they are quite comfortable, but after seeing them all over yesterday, I'm beginning to believe there is something to that. The problem with Danskos for me is that the heel is so high that not only to I tend to trip myself, but also Mark is only 1/4 inch taller than I , and I tend to choose footwear that does not make me look like an Amazon next to him.

A lesson about lunch

If kids want a cold lunch for school, they have to tell me. Otherwise, they get hot lunch. On Thursday, I packed lunches for Joel and Savanna, but Noah did not tell me he wanted a lunch, so I did not pack one for him. We got in the car and I dropped the kids off at school like any other day.

When I picked up Noah in the afternoon, he said, "You ditched me!" I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me this sad story:

When Noah was in the garage that morning putting on his shoes and getting his backpack (everyone in our family has a shelf in the garage for all their shoes and backpack), he noticed his lunchbox sitting on the floor by the shoe shelf. So he picked it up because he thought I had packed him a lunch. At their school, they have to order a hot lunch first thing in the morning because the lunches are delivered from the district kitchen. When he opened his lunchbox at lunchtime, he found that it was empty, and he had not ordered a lunch because he thought he had one. He thought I had played a mean trick on him. It turns out that the day before, he had just dropped his lunchbox on the floor when he came in the house, and I hadn't noticed it to make him put it away in the house.

The lunch lady did give Noah something to eat, and Noah is a very resilient, "whatever" kind of kid, so he survived.

Everyone will be much more careful to put away their lunchboxes from now on!

The Book Thief

I admit I am a book snob. Somewhere along the line I fell in love with Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Jane Austen et al. I love the classics. I love them as works of art, and pieces of true literature. I've had the philosophy that the only good author is a dead author--with the exception of Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my top pieces of perfection in literature--a beautiful story, and yet so much symbolism, immagery and deep meaning if you want to look for it. I like novels that have some literary value--not just a fun or exciting story.

I read all the Harry Potter books. I did enjoy the last 6 of them, and I loved the storyline of all 7 of them. But JK Rowling's writing left much to be desired--I couldn't even finish the first book. She did get better with each book, in my opinion. I understand these books were not written to be great works of literature, but to be fun and exciting stories which got millions of children to read who otherwise would not have. Props.

I heard raves about Twilight. I bought the first book and excitedly started to read it. Within 3 pages, I knew I was in for torture. Again, loved the story, hated the writing. Is that a strong enough word? Like HP, I understand that these books were not written to be works of art, but just a means of telling a story.

Meanwhile, I was ingesting Charles Dickens like I was starving. Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations.... This guy could tell a story, write satire, foreshadow like nobody's business, symbolize, and use literary devices better than anyone else. Truly meaty novels.

I was sure I would never find another book by a living author (other than TKAM) that was not only so beautiful it makes you cry, but also so deep and symbolic and full of metaphor that you can't believe it. Enter The Book Thief.

I bought this one on recommendation from my sis. She reads much more than I do, and she said this was her favorite book of the last year. So I gave it a chance. I could not put it down. It was so beautiful, inspiring, heartbreaking, and so amazing. I admit that I got teary in the last part of the book.

Next up is I Am The Messenger by the same author. I'm hoping it makes me as happy as The Book Thief.

Catching up

I took a little leave of absence from blogging. I'm not sure why--perhaps nothing seemed bloggable. Also, I've been to busy to upload pics from the camera, and what fun is a blog post without a picture? I still haven't done the pictures, but here I am anyway.

Christmas break was great. I love it when the kids are home. There is something magic about having teenagers and little kids in the same house--especially when they adore each other. I'm not saying that they all get along all the time, especially some certain combinations; however, the little kids adore the big kids, and the little kids love to play with the big siblings.

We bought an air hockey table and also table tennis for Christmas this year. We decided that since the pool table was ultra-delayed last Christmas, we would plan to have the 2 new games delivered a week before Christmas. That way, if they were late, they would be on time, and if the weather got crazy like it did last year, we had a little buffer. Everything went perfectly, though and the games arrived on December 19th. I guess it spoiled the Christmas surprise, but it sure was fun to see the kids faces when they came home from school and heard an air hockey table in the basement. Truly, I love the sound of air hockey. I had not played table tennis since proba I've still got a few moves leftover from my glory days. I can use a little more practice, and luckily with 9 people in our house, I can usually talk somebody into playing with me.

Christmas day was so fun--and relaxing. There weren't a ton of presents to wrap (the 2 basement games were the big family presents). The 2 oldest boys got shotguns. Which leads me to my next story.

You know how usually I have horrible luck with buying things. Generally they come broken, missing parts, or are otherwise defective. This year, we did 99% of our shopping without going to a store, and got free shipping on nearly everything. Every single thing I ordered online arrived complete, on time, and in perfect condition. It was a Christmas miracle. The only issue we had was with these dang guns we bought from BiMart. It ended up costing me not one trip to the store--but 3.

Mark took the guys to buy the guns on Black Friday. The store, in particular the gun counter, was very busy. As luck would have it, someone who didn't really work in the guns was helping Mark and the boys. They decided which shotgun model they were buying, and were told they had one on the floor, and one more somewhere up in the stock room. An hour later they were home. Two days later as Mark was giving me receipts to file, he noticed he had been overcharged by $70 for one of the guns (which were supposed to be identical). Although the store has a NO REFUNDS OR ECHANGES ON GUNS--NO EXCEPTIONS policy, I spent 2 hours of my time waiting for the manager to figure out what had happened, and he discovered that someone had grabbed the wrong box for one of the guns, and he found the right box, and gave me back $70. I thought we were finished.

On Christmas afternoon as the boys were assembling their shotguns, we discovered that Jacob's gun was indeed a black 12-gage Beneli gun like Abram's, but it was a short barrel, and a completely different kind of gun. Mark braved the NO REFUNDS policy at the store, and the manger totally remembered that I had been there and had been so nice and patient. He exchanged the gun without any hassle.

The moral of the story is: shop online.

I got a new mixer for Christmas. I decided to take my chances with KitchenAid again, because truly I make waaaaaaaaaaay more cookies than bread. I think I'll get a Bosch for Mother's Day. Grandma Bradley was one smart lady, and she had both machines. I always say I want to be just like her. In this way, I will be. I'm just waiting for the extended warranty card to come in the mail. To quote Homer Simpson, "Extended Warranty....How can I go wrong?"

More Christmas to come...as soon as I get to the camera.