Creating Holiday Memories One Burnt Pork Tenderloin At ATime

I had the best plans for last night.  It was going to be all sweet and tender and full of memory making stuff -  Tree Decorating Night.  I imagined telling Hannah the stories about our ornaments, having a cookie or two, maybe making a cup of cocoa.  Nope.  Last night we created a new tradition - Burn dinner and run around like you have no idea what you're doing.  Yay!

I HATE cooking in oil - like "pour a tablespoon of oil in a skillet then place XXX into the hot oil" kind of cooking in oil.  I almost always burn stuff.  Well, last night I both burned and undercooked the same food item.

I love Aldi for many reasons.  They have a decent selection in the types of food they sell (not choices of brands) and they are happy on my grocery budget.  A few months ago I picked up a box of frozen breaded pork tenderloin.  I had heard wonderful things.  The first time I cooked them, one side was a little darker than I would have liked, but they tasted fine and we had a nice dinner.  Last night I burned one side of our dinner black and then turned them over to cook the other side.  That side was a beautiful golden brown.  When I took our dinner's temperature (I'm a bit scared of cooking pork) it was a good 50 degrees colder than my thermometer's safety guidelines suggested.  I set everything aside to cool and walked away from the kitchen.

After dinner had been ruined, Hannah and I decided to put the ornaments on the tree.  It was fulled with wonderful, loving phrases like, "AAAH!!!  That one is made of glass!  Put it down, put it down!"  and "I know you love Cookie Monster, but that's mommy's ornament from when she was your age.  Oh, please don't cry", and my favorites "Angus, get away from that!", and "Dammit!  Algernon, get out from under the tree!"  By the time we'd finished it was 7pm and I hadn't fed my kid dinner.  Because I'm awesome.

The rest of the night was a whirlwind of eggs, yogurt, Clifford, and bath time.  Still, I managed to get Hannah in bed almost on time and somehow convinced her to stay in her bed all night.  Our conversation went a little something like this:

Me:  "If you stay in your bed tonight you will get flat eggs for breakfast tomorrow morning and you will get to eat your Advent calendar chocolate."

Hannah:  "But I like to sleep in your bed.  It's one of my rules."

Me: "No, the rule is to sleep in your own bed."

Hannah:  "Okay.  But I don't want eggs anyway."

Me:  "You won't get chocolate.  There will be. no. candy."

Hannah:  "Oh.  Well, okay.  G'night Mommy."

I bribed her with chocolate at breakfast.  And I'm not ashamed.

The best part of the night was when I started walking downstairs and smelled the wonderful Chinese feast Bryan had brought home from Kin Lin.  We both agreed I should ruin dinner more often.  Perhaps we've started a new family tradition, just not the one we were expecting. 

The best moments are not always caught on film

Every once in a while there is a moment when I wish our camera was permanently attached to my body so I wouldn't miss out on some of the wonderful moments that happen around here.

Bedtime has become a bit of a struggle as Miss Sassy Pants wrestles with us for more control of how things are done round these here parts.  Will we get into jammies and then brush teeth or will we watch Clifford and read one book or will we read 4 books and sing 3 songs or will we go camping in her room?  But every once in a while there is a night when it all comes together.  She brushes her teeth and there is giggling.  She puts on her jammies and doesn't stall for 10 years because she has to do the buttons All By Herself.  She's had enough stories and doesn't try to con us into more.  Last night was a good night.

About 45 minutes after Bryan went upstairs to put her to bed, I tiptoed up there to wake him up.  I guess he thought he should lead by example?  When I opened the door, both daddy and daughter were asleep, side-by-side on the floor.  Holding hands.

It is so amazing to watch Bryan be Hannah's dad.  Does it sometimes drive me nuts that he's not doing something with quite as much care or precision as I might?  Yes.  Yes it does.  In no small way does it sometimes drive me up the freaking wall.  But then I see them holding hands, or conspiring about something together on the couch, or see his patience with her unending questions and stall techniques and those things that I do my way and he does his way don't bother me quite so much.

This picture was captured right before Hannah's blessing at our church in the Spring of 2008.  We didn't even know it existed until someone told me they loved the picture of Bryan and Hannah that was on the church's website.  I am forever grateful and happy to have this moment captured.

Catching up feels like admitting nothing really happens

I have not written a blog entry in a long time.  Since my last post a lot of things happened.

Naps.  There were several naps within the past few months.  Not mine.  I hate napping  But I do love it when the child takes a nap:

Perfecting pizza recipes  - well, not perfecting but improving upon.  I want to believe my best pizza ever made hasn't happened yet:

Attendance to Hot Air Balloon Festivals on hot-ass days when storms kept the balloons from flying.  But don't worry, really bad face painting was available:

Slamming of fingers in car doors right before photo sessions:

Witnessing the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City - Gah!  Horrible new name!) play and win against Manchester United:

The point is:  We did a lot of fun stuff.  We participated in multiple activities.  We had several difficulties.  We dealt with things and had basements waterproofed and recovered from tonsillectomies, etc.  So much time has passed since my last post that nothing feels important enough to highlight.

It's like that when I catch up with friends on the phone or via facebook or email or whatever.  I am so excited to chat and then I struggle to remember what has happened.  Or events are retold with such lack of detail or enthusiasm that I feel like an idiot who doesn't think things that happened in my own life are interesting enough to remember then why they hell do I think they are interesting enough to tell someone else and THEN I sound like I have the most boringest life ever.  Or my stories sound like the previous sentence - completely unstructured

So, I've been un-bloggerly for a long time.  I hope to change that.  Mainly because I need a lot of material to embarrass my kid with when she's older.  And how will I do this if I don't have a history of postings regaling us all with tales of potty training, pooping, fingernails that fall off, attitude and pre-school pissiness, and other wonderful and woeful topics?  I hope there are people out there who read this blog.  The bloggers (that would be the They they all refer to) say to blog for yourself.  Write for yourself.  Well, that's just boring and not what I really want.  I would like to provide a chuckle or smile to those who want or need one.  I would like to receive feedback and comments from people (friends & kind strangers both) who stumble over here.

So, I'm going to try to blog more often for myself like they tell me to because if I do I have a better chance of achieving those smile-giving goals.  And maybe I'll become rich and famous, too.  'Cause that's really what I'm hoping for.