Food Storage Analyzer

When Emergency Essentials released their Food Storage Analyzer I pulled up my complicated excel spreadsheet and entered my food storage inventory into the analyzer. I projected teenage boy ages for the baby and pre-schooler and it told me to project 9200 calories a day. Based on this, I learned that I have 163.81 days of food stored up with percentage shortages of sodium and fat. But we're at 220% of fiber! Now where's that wheat grinder?

The best feature is that you can add things to the inventory from the grocery store or that I've purchased from their competitors like Walton Feed or the LDS Cannery. If you look at the nutrition panel, you can easily plug in the carbs, protein, fiber and the system will tally up and tell you if you've got a good balance of nutrition. My own spreadsheet tracks the retailer, price and date of items that I've bought (so that I can rotate FIFO), so I won't be getting rid of my separate inventory, at least not until the analyzer adds fields for this info. Overall, I am pretty excited about this feature. Oh, and also the $10 gift card for writing this review doesn't hurt one bit.

Pear Galette

My mom sent me a recipe for this crust years ago. Nice pears were abundant on the clearance rack and this was the result. We will definitely be making this again! The free-form crust was so much more my style than a nicely crimped pie crust.

Samuel portrait Sept 2009

For some reason this looks like he's a news anchor or weatherman.

Luke portrait 6-6-09

QOTD

Scene: Living room.  Mother and son are building a spindly lego tower.  Tower breaks and falls down.

M: Oh no!

S: What happened?  Did you go big yuckies in your pants?

2 boys

I'm happy to say Luke has graduated from the baby tub so there is now more room for splashing so less water gets on mom.



Although fully able, Luke does not want to sit.

This photo depicts circumstances that led to the inaugural "Naked Time Out." Samuel didn't really deserve the time out he got, but I didn't know what else to do. I said "Yes, you can play in the rain," not realizing it meant a gallon of mud would be smeared all over the house. So we disrobed in the backyard and went straight to timeout. Here's a link to CPS. Nevermind.

QOTD Samuel on procrastination

S: Are we going to the dentist today?

Me: No, tomorrow.

S: Tomorrow never comes.

M: What?

S: Nosh night (last night) I told uncle Paul I would clean the mud off the house tomorrow and he said 'Tomorrow never comes.'

So true. Tomorrow never comes, but oddly enough, we did go to the dentist.

Inspired Sunday

We had some leftover almond pastry filling (impulse buy - it was on clearance). We heated it up and poured it on popcorn. Easiest candied popcorn ever and so yummy.

QOTD Saturday

Daddy: What do you want for breakfast Samuel?
Samuel: M&Ms
Daddy: Sorry you can't have M&Ms. How about a pancake?
Samuel: Yes!
Daddy: What would you like on your pancake?
Samuel: Chocolate!
Daddy: Sorry you can't have chocolate. How about butter?
Samuel: mmmmmm....ok. But I want butter on my pancake and syrup on my butter!

QOTD from "Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary"

from page 179: Seth to Kendra: "What you call idiot points, I call awesome dollars."

Too, too funny! If only someone would set me up by awarding me 50 idiot points!

On the other, more responsible hand, "idiot" is a word Samuel has picked up, so maybe we'll have to keep this quote on the low down.

If you haven't read any Brandon Mull books, I suggest you start. In the Fablehaven series I couldn't stand Seth initially, but obviously he's growing on me. He also says (page 440): "I hear a brisk jog is just the thing before fighting dragons. Should we do some stretching?" This will motivate me Saturday on my next brisk jog. And I have been laughing at "awesome dollars" for more than 250 pages.

Unfortunately it is 10:45 pm and I still have 90 pages to go. And then who knows how long until the 5th and final book comes out! Drat.

QOTD

After he threw up at a restaurant at lunch today, I rushed Samuel outside to clean him off. The first thing he said was, "Those flowers are pretty."

Then when we got home he asked, "Can I sit in your lap and throw up and watch a movie at the same time?"

It's good to be home from YW camp, even if Samuel is sick.

Samuel's Quote of the Day for Tuesday June 16th

As we were walking back from the park this evening Samuel had two great quotes...

Daddy guess what? Guess what's under sidewalks? Grass - but you can't see it because it's covered by sidewalk.

and

Samuel: Look! There's a Black bird.
Joseph: What do Black birds eat? (see last post about blueberry birds to understand what I was expecting)
Samuel (with a real "Daddy you aren't very smart" look on his face): Worms of course! But you know what Daddy? Black birds are red inside when they open their mouths...

We had fun at the park by the way. What a beautiful (but hot) night.

This week...

Laundry and two little causes of laundry. We did six loads without the dryer this week, thanks to the drying racks (you can see them outside the kitchen window).

We cooked in the solar oven twice - ground beef and potatoes. Last week the highest temp noted was 175, but yesterday it was almost 250 degrees. Here's the ground beef and the solar oven. I have been very pleased with it so far. The banana bread didn't turn out very pretty, but it was cooked. And it was a partly cloudy day too.

Today while we were on a bike ride Samuel said, "Mommy, do you know blueberry birds eat blueberries? Because blueberries are blue just like blueberry birds."

His latest thing is pointing with his feet. It has improved his balance - he pointed to and counted the seven birdhouses he built and he didn't knock over a single one. But it's not so nice when he is pointing at your face.

For FHE we took Samuel to one of the Beehive's middle school orchestra concert. He was very well-behaved and we tried to only whisper. "Mommy, what's this song about?" "Pirates." (It really was; it was called Pirate's Cove.) "Where are the pirates?" It was almost as bad as a book with no pictures.

Here's the boat safety lesson from Samuel's swim class, just before the teacher helped Samuel fall out of the boat.

Luke's Hand Sandwich

Samuel at breakfast today

Row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily
Like's a box a stream.

"Mom, how was your day?" (It's 7:30 a.m.)
"Good, how was your day?"
"Good, I just have lots of crocodiles under my bed. When I get working I don't have a place to put my birds."


The "birds" started with 3 baby bluebirds that fell/flew from a nest in our tree. Last week at Joseph's soccer game Samuel picked up two imaginary baby birds and ran around with his hands cupped for about an hour. I can't help you because, to quote from Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts, "Sorry, got these sacks," or birds in this case.

I pulled for his breakfast today an MRE applesauce out of his 72-hour kit. I wanted him to eat one and see that it's good so that in case of emergency, MRE's won't be foreign material. I am opting for mostly MRE-fare in the kits so I don't have to rotate everything annually.

New "Snowman" lyrics

Couldn't find the video camera, but here's a transcript:

"Did you know that song?

Once there was a sowman, sowman, sowman,
Once there was a sowman, snall, snall, snall.

Once he painte, painte, painte,
Once he painte all blue."

Thanks Samuel. Now I know that song.

A reason to go to the mall

Northwest Mall's one redeeming feature: the train layout!

When it's remodeled to be a fancy outdoorsy mall, I wonder if the train layout will still be a feature. I hear Memorial City Mall has a train layout too...maybe another day.






Mesmerized. This was the best I could do at getting Samuel to look at the camera.

We had to keep a close eye on Samuel because the trains could clip your nose if you leaned in too close.

Intense about trains!

Dinnertime

Tonight for dinner we had a number of honored guests - all invited by Samuel.

Samuel and the Frog

A few days ago, after a nice rain here in Houston, we found a small frog on our front porch. Samuel was fascinated and wanted to know all about the little guy, but don't ask him to touch it.

The life and times of Luke.

You asked for it and here they are. 4 weeks old and growing fast.

Family Photos - Valentine's Day

This was a happy moment for Samuel to hold baby Luke.

Then mommy took Luke away.
Zoom out for the result.

Our first family foursome foto. What a delight!

Not your normal Monster Truck Rally

Samuel's cousins love Monster Trucks. We have started a tradition of going to Monster Jam with them every January here in Houston. In January 2008 Ethan, Nate, and Samuel had a great time playing with their own monster trucks, while wearing their protective headgear, and watching all the action. Here is a picture from last January.



Needless to say 2008 was a very difficult year for my sister Elizabeth and her family. Ethan struggled most of the year with cancer and passed away the day after Thanksgiving surrounded by family. This post is an amazing story of this year's Monster Jam in Houston. Let me tell you the story.

As part of the Make a Wish foundation trip during the summer of 2008 Ethan and his family were flown to Phoenix to fulfill Ethan's wish. He wanted to meet Jimmy Creten the driver of his favorite truck Bounty Hunter. Not only did they meet him, they got to sit in his truck, and go to the show there in Phoenix. Ethan, his family, and Jimmy created a bond of friendship. Ethan constantly spoke of his trip and seeing his favorite driver and truck.

So even though Ethan was gone this year we made the trip to the Reliant Stadium to watch Monster Jam. Elizabeth and her family had gone early to use pit passes to get close to trucks and to say hello to Jimmy again. During the one on one they gave Jimmy a little craft Ethan had made for him before he died.

During the competition Bounty Hunter performed well - and even as the night progressed he kept winning and winning. Finally the championship race featured his truck. In a perfect race Jimmy won and celebrated by performing donuts in the dirt. It was wonderful to see my sister and her family cheering him on with their home made sign.

When he got out of the truck the announcer interviewed Jimmy and asked about the race. Jimmy produced the craft Ethan had made for him and told his story. He said he knew Ethan helped him win the race. Everyone in the stadium was cheering and Elizabeth and her family were crying. It was a wonderful time. But there was more.



Following the race part of the event the trucks engage in a freestyle competition. During this part of the contest the goal is to put on a show by jumping, flipping your truck, lighting on fire, etc. As the trucks performed the crowd got more and more excited. When it was Bounty Hunter's turn he performed for the crowd, but his time was more cautious doing a large number of donuts and simple jumps over the cars. He didn't perform as well as the truck that tipped over and lost a wheel, or the truck that got stuck on top of the cars. Stacia and I thought that maybe the truck was damaged or he just lost his pep after his earlier win, but that was not the case.

My sister told us about a week after the show that Ethan's favorite part of the freestyle competition is when the trucks do donuts in the dirt. He also liked it when the trucks finished their show instead of getting damaged during their time and not being able to finish. After winning the race competition Jimmy chose to play it safe during the freestyle, and do a series of donuts, to make sure he was performing the best parts of what Ethan loved to see.

I don't know about you but I have just become a big fan of Bounty Hunter, Jimmy Creten, and Monster Trucks.

Samuel at a Rockets game

I don't remember who won the game, but Joseph caught a freebie hat! When does that ever happen? (I guess when you have any ticket better than a nosebleed seat your chances go up.) Eventually we convinced Samuel to try it on. Since our 5th row tickets and parking were both free, we let Samuel have a bucket of popcorn and a gigantic soda for dinner. We shouldn't get into the habit of buying food at arena events, but sure enough, when we went to Monster Jam at Reliant a few days ago, we spent even more on food. Oh well.