Am I Irish?

 

I’m a little late getting around to my St. Patrick’s Day post, better late than never, I guess. 

See this man pictured above?  This is my father in 1972.  I am told by my mom that these clothes were really in style.  She said that my dad was quite the dresser back in the day.  Unfortunately, all that fashion sense was lost on me,  thank goodness style is not hereditary.  One thing I did inherit was his red hair, green eyes, and freckles.  All three of which we seem to think are Irish traits.  But a quick Google search and I discover that some of those traits are not Irish after all.  Only 10% of Irish people have red hair.  Most Irish people have blue eyes, 42%.  As for the freckles however, 40% of Irish folks have them. 

We have worked on our family tree, trying to see if we have Irish heritage in our past, but it’s difficult.  You see my father was adopted when he was an infant and considers the parents that raised him to be his parents.  Our family tree is full of all the people we consider family but none of them have my dad’s genes.  So we can only guess where his physical traits came from. 

Some other things to consider are:

• He has an uncanny love of potatoes
• A weird fascination with plaid
• He gobbles up any and all green vegetables including cabbage
• He really knew how to pinch pennies, but now that he is older he like to spend his pot of gold

 

Are you thinking what I’m thinking…

 

 

 

 

Forget being Irish I think my dad is a leprechaun!

Ronnie the Plumber

Last Monday our family was just finishing up dinner and Kyle was clearing off the table so we could have FHE.  Kyle was rinsing the dishes when all of a sudden Ronnie looked up to see a stream of water coming toward him.  Unfortunately he used is cat like reflexes and dodged it.  It might have made it more fun if it actually hit him.  Anyway, we were all stunned and still processing what just happened when Kyle turn the water on again and again a stream of water came rushing towards the kitchen table.  The kitchen faucet broke.  After shopping at two different stores we found a replacement faucet and returned home where the real fun began.   I tried to stay far away form the faucet changing process but I ended up getting sucked in.  When it was my turn under the sink all I could think of was this spider leg I had found under there last summer.  It was probably an inch and a half long and even though I sprayed bug spray under there I knew that most bug sprays don’t kill spiders.  I just knew that spider leg was there because a bigger spider ate the rest of him ( I know spiders don’t eat, they suck the blood, I never said I was a rational person) and the bigger spider had babies that were just waiting to hatch at any moment.  Yeah, I kind of have a thing about spiders.  Anyway, I was able to help minimally in the changing of the faucet that took over 3 hours and flooded our kitchen at least 3 times. 

I guess a good thing did come out of the faucet experience…Ronnie gained some plumbing skills.  On Wednesday he thought he would tackle the sprinkler system from H_LL.  It really is the sprinkler system from H_LL, because every year we have some major issue with it and it costs a lot to fix it because the company that all the parts are from went commercial and now charges 4 times the normal amount.  I think it’s about as old as I am too, which isn’t that bad if you’re me but really bad if you’re a bunch of PVC held together by glue and exposed to harsh desert heat.  Just look at, it’s looking old and it was a decroded piece of crap:

I had an idea to take a picture of it and take it to Plant World and see if they could help us.  I just love Plant World, they are always so nice and will take the time to try to help you out.  I’ve gotten to know the guy in the sprinkler part pretty well since they are the only ones on our side of town that carry our sprinkler parts.  So Ronnie went to talk to sprinkler man and Lana and I went to visit the birds…they have really cool talking birds among the plants, it’s better than our Zoo and it’s free.  The sprinkler guy hooked Ronnie up and sent us on our way.  A few hours later Ronnie had done this:

Much prettier!  Turns out we didn’t even need one of those value thingies.  Unfortunately, Ronnie’s favorite cell phone died in the process, a moment of silence please…

 

 

Our sprinkler box is right next to the car port so Ronnie set his phone down on the hood of the Jeep while he was working.  I had to leave to pick kids up from school so I just hopped in the car and went on my marry little way.  Picked up the kids from school and was heading home when I saw something fly right across my hood and smash on the street.  I knew what it was, but I still called Ronnie anyway to see if by chance I was wrong.  I wasn’t.  I pulled over by Bonanza High School where some boys were playing lacrosse and hopped I didn’t get hit in the head by a stray ball.  Then I saw pieces of his phone scattered on the street.   I gathered what I could and went home to tell Ronnie the bad news.  It was no surprise to him, because he needed to make a call and realized where he put his phone down at, but it did surprise him that I made it that far with phone still on the hood.  What gets me is no one said hey lady, you have a phone on your hood.  Oh well, he had two replacement phones he can mess around with so it’s not a horrible tragedy. 

Daylight Savings Time

I really hate the Monday after Daylight Savings Time!

I was curious what this song was really about so I Googled it.  Sad.

Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3, 1962) is a convicted American murderer who carried out a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California on January 29, 1979. Principal Burton Wragg and head custodian Mike Suchar were killed in the attack, while eight children and a police officer sustained wounds. One of the children, who was hit in the hand, talked about the incident on a local radio station to San Diego County.

The school was across the street from Spencer's house, from which she fired the shots. She used a rifle that she had recently been given for her sixteenth birthday by her father. When the six-hour incident ended and she was asked whom she wanted to shoot, she said, "I like red and blue jackets". When asked why, she shrugged and replied, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."^[1] She also said, "I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun"; "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond"' and "[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings." At the time of the shootings, Brenda Ann Spencer was 16 years old.

She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life, currently being served at The California Institution for Women in Chino.^[1] She has been eligible for parole four times and has been turned down each time, most recently in 2005. She will be eligible for parole again in 2009.

In 2005, she claimed that she was drunk and under the influence of PCP, and that her father, Wallace Spencer, had sexually abused her as a child and that the state and her attorney conspired to hide her drug test results.

Spencer's crime, her perceived lack of remorse, and lack of a serious explanation for her actions when she was captured, inspired the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats, written by Bob Geldof.

Her quote, "I Don't Like Mondays," also appears written on a wall in the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club.

Waffles on Wednesday

Ronnie and I have started a new tradition called Waffles on Wednesday.  Doesn’t it sound delicious?  It’s the new WOW.

  Most Wednesdays Ronnie is off from work so we get the kids dropped off to school and then start thinking what are we going to do for the rest of the day.  We usually come up with things that need to be fixed around the house so we head to Lowes.  But before we get there realize we purposely didn’t eat breakfast with the kids so we could go out to a nice breakfast kid free.  It just so happens there are tons of places to eat around Lowes, but we have found the best.

It’s called Waffle Cafe.  It’s a small business and I’ve only seen two people working there.  Jeff takes your order and pretty much acts like a waiter even though it’s not supposed to be a waiter type place.  Yooni is in the back creating the best waffles ever.  So here’s the deal with the food.  You get to choose your waffle, they have regular, oat, flax, pumpkin, and maybe another one but I can’t remember.  Then you choose what to put on top of it like fruit, nuts, candy, and sauces. 

I tried the oat waffle with pecans and haven’t been able to deviate.  Their oat waffle is made with cooked oatmeal I think and the texture is amazing.  Ronnie loves the waffle breakfast sandwich.  It’s a regular waffle folded in half and stuffed with eggs, bacon, ham, and a super secret sauce.  It looks like honey, but Ronnie says it has some ginger in it.  I asked Jeff what the sauce was and he said it’s super secret.  Then a lady dinning next to us said she asked the same question and got the same answer.

I have seen a lady order the chocolate strawberry waffle and she was making noises that were not appropriate at the breakfast table.  I swear I was sitting at the diner in When Harry Met Sally.  Anyway from her response I would say it was fabulous, just look at it!

They do lunch and dinner too with things like a waffle lunch sandwich, BBQ waffle and waffle pizza.  They also have smoothies, and bubble tea.  The most indulgent item on the menu are the waffle sundaes.

Their prices are fair and everything is cooked to order.  So if your hankering for the best waffle ever and it happens to be Wednesday meet us there around 9:15am. 

WaffleS Cafe

5165 S Fort Apache Rd
Ste 160
Las Vegas, NV 89148
(702) 597-9775

Happy Valentine’s Day

I only had one child taking Valentines to school this year so I went a little crazy.  I found some really cute printable cards and made some candy to go along with it. 

We tried to make owl eyes, but they look more like mini cupcakes to me.  Anyway, they tasted yummy.  I got Snyder's peanut butter pretzel sandwiches and toped them with a Hershey Hug then popped them into the oven for a minute or two then put an M&M on top. 

Kyle and Lana brought these for their teachers.

I found the idea here.  They were supposed to be homemade bath bomb.  Of course I didn’t start on it until the day before so I thought I could use store bought bath bombs.  Well after searching several stores I realized I wasn’t going to find them and switched it to foot soak.  Doesn’t go along with the whole bomb thing as well but I’ll get over it, I think. 

Since I was a kid I can remember pizza places doing the heart shaped pizza thing, but since I moved here this is the first year I’ve seen it advertised in Vegas.  A few years ago I called up a small pizza place (Seattle Dan’s Pizza)  and asked them if they could make a heart pizza for me and they agreed,  Here it is:

  They did such a cute job, I love the arrow through it, and I’ve never seen one as cute since.  I think I’ll have to call them up again this year for the kids valentine’s surprise.   This year the grown ups are going to The Melting Pot for our Valentine date.   As I was putting this blog together Ronnie has been emailing me and this is one thing he sent me:

Love is like a cheese fondue - as long as you stir it, it stays fresh. If you don't stir it, it gets hard and crusty. LOL. Just off the top of my head. I’m a genius.

I know what you are saying…what a romantic…and what a humble guy.  What can I say,  I’m one lucky girl. 

Happy Valentine’s Day

LV vs MO

Well life has been a bit crazy this past month.  The whole family made a trip out to Missouri to visit some family for a week.  We left on Saturday and came home on Saturday.  Then when we returned home the kids had a three day week.  Normally this would be great, but when you have a week’s worth of makeup work to do in three days it’s not so great.  Now I know my kids didn’t have to finish all their makeup work in three days but I kind of had the feeling that I was going to be going back to Missouri before too long and I wanted to make sure everything got handed in. 

My feeling was right.  Thursday morning Ronnie’s Grandmother passed and we started looking at plane tickets.  We booked some tickets for 12:30pm that day.  The kids were going to stay with my parents.  So we needed to tell them why we were leaving before school that morning.  I hated doing that because Kyle is so tenderhearted and I just knew that it would effect his whole school day.  To my surprise he was ok, he said that he felt a lot better about Grandma’s situation since he talked to Sister Turner ( his friend down the street that is in her 90th year).  How grateful I am to her!  So we drop our kids off at school and head home to pack. 

We leave for the airport at 10:30.  We had an hour delay on the plane because of some light that wouldn’t turn off on the plane.  Haven’t these people ever dealt with a check engine light before?  You unplug the battery wait 15 minutes then plug it back in and your good to go.  It took them almost an hour before they turned everything off on the plane waited a few minutes then turned it back on and we were good to go.  I really didn’t mind too much, I was just glad we weren’t traveling with kids.  We had a 3 hour 15 minute flight then we had to get a rental car.  Then we had a 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive to Ronnie’s parent’s house.  It was 9pm when we arrived in his hometown.  Long day of traveling. 

While we were in Missouri I noticed some differences in lifestyle. 

First off, what people consider “nice” cars are way different.  For example, in Vegas a think a nice car is one that has all the bells and whistles and is fairly new.  In Missouri a nice car is one that reeks of gasoline, vibrates the floorboard so much your feet start to tickle, and supposedly goes really fast. 

This is one of Ronnie’s old cars that his cousin now drives.  And if you wondering yes, I had to go for a ride in it.  What is it with guys and cars???

The next thing that is different in these two regions is cracks.  I never knew this until I came back from Missouri.  The faint of heart please skip this part.  Sorry I have to share my experience with someone.  Ok, so we have all seen plumber’s crack before, right?  Well in Ronnie’s family there is this one habitual perpetrator of this crime to society.  I got to hear a story of what happened at the last family reunion, let me share.  I will change names in order to protect the safety of all parties involved.  Alisa was appalled by the plumber’s crack that appeared before her eyes and devised a plan to maybe make the perpetrator more aware of his heinous crime.  She told all the kids around that she had a fun new game.  She told them to try to flip a quarter in uncle Mock’s crack.  Sadly she had no takers, imagine that.  Now how this is different in Vegas?  Well a few days after we returned home I was in line at Sam’s Club and I saw what I’m calling a front crack!  Unbelievable!  Inconceivable!  This woman inline ahead of me had on the lowest low rise jeans I had ever seen and I had to do a double take to make sure I saw what I thought I saw.  Then I just wanted to run away, far far away.  Oh the horror, I will never be the same.  There will be no pictures for this section!

The last difference that I’ll be pointing out in this post are biscuits.  I think what most people think of when they hear biscuit is a light and airy biscuit.  They are golden brown on top and light in the middle.  The bottoms are light brown and not too greasy.  They are easily split open with a fork and just sturdy enough to hold butter and jelly.  Unless they are from Europe. Something that looks like this:

 

  I don’t know if this is a family thing or Southeast Missouri thing but in Ronnie’s family biscuits resemble more of Indian Fry Bread to me.  The bottoms of the biscuit are fried.  Don’t get me wrong they taste good, but the first time I was served them I was looking for some honey or powder sugar to put on them. 

Even though we went back to Missouri for a funeral we did have a great time catching up with family.  Family make us whole, the good, the bad, the less desirable, they all have their place in a family. 

Gus What We Did

While we all look forward to Groundhog Day on February 2nd and the forecast for an early spring from the two greatest weatherhogs on the planet - Wiarton Willie in Wiarton, Ontario and Punxsutawney Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the truth behind this 200 year-old tradition is oftentimes forgotten.

Long before the advent of Groundhog Day on February 2nd,  the Romans observed a similar event thousands of years ago on the exact same day. Rather than use the North American groundhog, the Romans used the hedgehog.

“If during hibernation, he (the hedgehog) looks out of his den on 2nd February and sees his shadow it means there is a clear moon and six more weeks of winter so he returns to his burrow.”

The only difference between this ancient event and the present day version (aside from the hedgehog, of course) is the fact that the Romans would look to see if the hedgehog saw its shadow under a clear moon at night.

Here in North America, where we have no indigenous species of hedgehog, we replaced the hedgehog with the native groundhog.  To this day “Punxsutawney Phil” and “Wiarton Willie” battle it out to see who is the better weather forecaster, but little do they or their handlers know that the original prognosticator of spring was a hedgehog.

See: www.hedgehogcentral.com

Today (because we are big nerds) we celebrated a bit of the old tradition.   We made a hedgehog cake in honor of Groundhog Day. 

  

We named him Gus short for Augustus in honor of his Roman heritage.  I don’t know, but I think we have all grown too found of him to slice him up and eat him.  I wonder if Duff from Ace of Cakes ever has this dilemma?