Reading goals

Our Princess got the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter box sets from Aunt Laura for Christmas, so our goal is to read them(and maybe have Our Princess do some solo reading, fingers crossed) this year. We've actually started reading Harry Potter from friend's books we've borrowed and are on the third one. The girls love it! I enjoy attempting to do all the voices...

** Did I mention that the library has all of these on CD?  Yep, so much easier to read in the car!!

A New Year!!

I have many New Year's resolutions this year. I believe I'm making up for past years when I never could be bothered to make any. So here goes:

1. I don't want to say lose weight, because I really don't care what the scale says. We're making plans to take our kids somewhere Magical in September and I want to fit comfortably on the rides, not live in fear that they won't be able to get the belt across or the harness down. So, in order to do that, I want to lose a few sizes. Three to be exact. If I can get to a size 16, that would be wonderful. However in order to do that, I have to have a plan:
A. Drink 1 gallon of water(at least) a day
B. Make an effort to either do Zumba or Bootcamp once a week
C. Play with my kids as much as I can
D. Begin to cook healthier meals for myself and my family
(Yeah, who'd have thought resolutions would have subsections? Beware the fine print!)Hopefully, I will be successful this year and it will become a habit!

2. I want to get back into blogging every day, even if it is only a picture or two. I think, like a scrapbook, this is something I can look back on and enjoy long after my children have grown up.

3. I'm going to begin to control the chaos that is my home. If you have chaos issues and have never visited the flylady, you don't know what you are missing! I've tried so many other methods in the past, because let's face it, who wants to have a chaotic home? and never had any success until I found her website. I'm not even sure how I found it one day, I just know that my house would be cataclysmically insane if I hadn't begun shining my sink before the third princess came along. So, off to shine my sink and swish and swipe!
Happy New Year!

Memories

10 years ago, I was helping out at a local hispanic church with the ESL classes. I was living on-campus at school and since it was Sunday night, the cafe closed early. I was starving and I wanted real food, not drive-thru, but I didn't want to go by myself(I don't see how people do that...just feels weird). There was a guy whom I had spoken with several times who seemed nice enough, so I asked him if he wanted to go get something to eat with me. He was happy to come along. I drove, since he rode with someone else to church. I figured it was just friends going out for dinner, but since he ended up paying, I guess that made it our first date. We went to Perkin's and sat in the back booth near the bathroom. We talked about his huge family(8 siblings) and his excellent english(he'd only been in the States for 6 months) and my ok spanish and schoolwork. It was a great evening, one we repeated many a Sunday night afterward. Ten years later, he's the best husband I could ask for, the best father of my children I could ask for, and I wouldn't change a thing!

American Girl Club

We've been reading American Girl Books for a while now, so when we heard that our new HSA had an American Girls Club, we had to sign up! Our Princess loves it! They read a book about a certain American girl before the meeting, do a scrapbook page, learn about that American Girl and her time, have a snack, play games, do a craft...

This month is Josefina, a New Mexican girl from the 1800s and we are in charge of craft and snack. So we made horchata, a cinnamon-rice drink, last evening and flan this morning. Our Princess and I decided we would teach our friends to make tissue paper flowers for our craft, a common decoration in Mexico. My best friend made thousands of them for her wedding, but she made them out of white toilet paper, so they were about the size of a real rose, and they decorated the black limousine with them...very pretty.

Memorizing

Our Princess memorized her first poem. I decided that since it would be her first, I wanted it to be a positive experience. So I let her pick it out. It was 7 letters long...seriously. Well, she had it memorized in 5 minutes! And she enjoyed it so much, the next poem she memorized had 17 words, and she had it memorized in about 20 min. I bribed her with her new poem, hoping that a longer poem would be worth a video game or the new Beauty and the Beast DVD. I get to pick this one out, so it will be substantial. Or at least worth $20 in prizes ;0)



TOMMYCATS
by Mary Ann Hoberman

Big
Black
Tommycats
Are never
Never
Mommycats!

Flan

After a four-month hiatus, I figured it would be beneficial to rejoin to blogging community with a recipe...

Flan (Super easy!!)

2 cups evaporated milk*
2 cups sweetened condensed milk *
1 tsp vanilla extract
10 eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat oven 325 degrees
Mix the first four ingredients in a blender. heat the sugar in a med. pan until syrup-like and brown in color, 8-10 min. (keep stirring it, it burns easy)then pour it into a 9x13 baking dish, trying to cover as much of the bottom and a little up the sides as you can(easier said than done). Give the egg mix one or two more pulses, then pour it over the sugar. Place entire baking dish in a larger dish filled halfway up the smaller baking dish with water...careful not to spill water into the flan mixture!
Bake in the oven for 1 hour-1hour 30min...start checking at an hour. it should have light brown color...if you find your oven cooks the top too quickly try covering it with foil next go 'round. When you can put a knife in the middle and it comes out clean, it's done! Let it cool for about 2 hours before trying to do anything else with it(you can take it out of the water dish though)

Now, the tricky part...take a knife around the edges to loosen them, place a larger plate(or a baking pan, but you want something that will pool the syrup to the middle or have a lip to keep it in) on top of the baking dish and flip it over quickly...like I said earlier, tricky...add a sprig of mint and voilà! You have yummy!

*as most cans come in the 14 oz variety, 14oz is approximately 1 1/2 cups...just so that you know and will have enough...I hate it when recipes are non-shopper friendly...I mean really, I'm not going to sit and measure a cup and a half in the store...just tell me to get 2 14 oz cans...

6

Wow...6 years old...that' s 1/3 of her life with us. My baby girl is finally(already?) six! She's a very sweet-natured girl who is quick to help others. She's the one who goes up to others she sees by themselves to talk. At her K5 graduation, her "superlative" was "Everyone's Friend." I couldn't be more proud of her. She loves Josefina, her american girl and to read stories about her. She loves to be crafty and makes cards for everyone. She says she never wants to leave us when she gets older and that she wants to marry her daddy. She never wants to cut her hair, at least until it gets to her feet, because it would hurt to walk on it all the time. She loves to pray and be read to. She plays soccer and sings all of the time. What a blessing she is to our family.