Think fast, there's a hippo on your head

In my current state of solitude I find myself frequently reliving priceless family moments. A few weeks ago, we were all sitting in my parents' living room waiting for dinner to cook. Noah and Samantha sat on opposite ends of the couch playing with our stuffed hippo. An impromptu game of "think fast" broke out between the two and quickly spread to the rest of us seated around the room. As the hippo went whizzing across the room, back and forth from Samantha to Noah to Mom to Me to Noah to Dad to Shauna and back again, Noah became so delighted that tears came to his eyes. I can't remember how long it's been since I've seen such pure joy in one's expression. I image the next time I see it, it will be on my own face when I have my family back with me.

National Health Care

I’m totally all for national health care, as long as:

• participation is optional, and there is no penalty for non-participation
• only those who choose to participate are taxed
• cap the tax for it at around 2%, and make it flat
• the people get to vote on what gets covered
• the government never spends more than the taxes can cover
(If, in any given year, more is spent than the tax could cover, the following year, those conditions that were voted by the people to be lowest priority, that were previously covered, will not be covered, to compensate for overspending the previous year.)

I also think this might work better at the state level, it might be easier to manage that way.

And although I wouldn’t legislate it, it would also be nice if there were some kind of incentive for people who make positive lifestyle choices that are generally agreed to improve health. It would also be fantastic if there were a way to penalize doctors who prescribe a drug or medical procedure in a case where simple lifestyle changes are likely to produce the same result (because drug pushers are evil).

Am I missing anything?

I made it back to DC

One of the benefits of taking off in a snow storm is the plane wash experience. As a kid, and even an adult, I love the magical sudsy trip through the automatic car wash. The plane wash was more about keeping the ice at bay than appearances though. We got the deluxe wash, two coats. First the red goo to melt the ice, and then the green goo to keep new ice from forming. It is hard to tell from the camera phone pics, but the goo really was multicolored.

And finally I will say that air travel is much more tolerable with a good book, like say the first book of the Percy Jackson series. I polished off the first 250 pages today en route and loved it. I like Percy much more than Harry (you know who I mean).

And a big thanks to my Aunt Jodee for the airport pick-up and letting me pose as Mr. Mellerio in the SafeWay club.

Last Days of Daddy

11-08-09_1539.jpeg
Originally uploaded by thelevyisdry.

I'm heading to DC to start my new job this coming Saturday, so I'm trying to cram as much daddy time in as possible. This afternoon we were desperately in need of a Sunday afternoon diversion and found it in Rock Canyon. My lousy camera phone doesn't do the view justice, but hopefully you get the idea. Glenn's favorite part was sitting in the middle of the trail digging in the gravel with his hands. Samantha enjoyed hunting for pretty pebbles. My favorite part was being outside on a mild autumn day.

Halloween Fun

We had a great trip to the pumpkin patch which included all the kids and all the grand kids. How sweet is that?

Batman Monologue

This is classic Glenn entertaining the daylights out of his Alexander great-grandparents. If you can make it through the whole five minutes you'll learn a lot about "tirefoam" and "utidity belts".

Our Nation's Capital Awaits

So, we moved away from the east coast so that we could...move right back to the east coast. Or evidently so. Levi has accepted a position as the Research and Assessment Manager for this neat organization in Washington DC. It is a good opportunity for him, in a cool area with a lot to offer, that we've only seen briefly thus far. Thus, we look forward to a new adventure, and being back on the east coast where the air is full of water and the apartment buildings are old and drafty. But seriously, we are all of us sad to end our brief stint back in the wild west, but excited to begin a new phase of life as a family, in the region of our nation's capital. How's that for a generic relocation announcement.

Details include that Levi will fly out on Saturday, November 14th and will start the new job on Monday, November 16. Levi's will stay out there and work while he finds us an apartment and saves up to move the rest of us, and our stuff, out. In the meantime, the kids and I will stay here, I will continue to work in the mornings (which means I have to somehow arrange childcare). Sometime near Christmas we'll pack up everything and have someone else drive it across the county, and the kids and I will fly out to DC to our new home.

We're extremely grateful for everyone's prayers and help and good wishes on our behalf. They have paid off and we feel blessed that Levi's been given this opportunity to use his talents to do something meaningful and challenging. You can ask him for details of exactly what his job function is, since he's better at describing that than I am. I'm just the dumb wife, so all I really know is that this job is going to let him use all his knowledge he gained in grad school, and he's going to ride the Metro to work every day - how exciting!

Glenn Arm Blaster

Glenn Arm Blaster
Originally uploaded by thelevyisdry.

We are trying to transition Glenn from a life of Batman and superheros to one of sports. Today's attempt ended in Mega Man. Glenn got frustrated while fielding my ground balls and stormed the tee. He toppled it and broke part of it free from the base. His expression then changed from one of anger to delight as he considered the fragments. He picked up the rent tube that had been the main part of the tee, stuffed his arm in as he would a sleeve, cocked it, and fired mercilessly rounds of focused energy at me. We'll try again later.

Iron-on Butterfly

 

In effort to satisfiy Glenn's insatiable craving for super heros, we made him a Superman suit from an old iron-ons we had laying around and a blue turtleneck we likewise had laying around. Well, in a two-kid family when one kid gets an iron-on shirt, so must the other one. Samantha's choice was much more gentle.

Watch Out For Liver Bees

Samantha and I were playing "crack the egg" on the trampoline this afternoon. She was the egg. "Ready?" I asked. "Ready as a liver bee!" she squealed. "What's a liver bee?" I asked her. "Sounds dangerous," added Levi from the picnic table. "I don't know, that's just how the saying goes," Samantha replied.

This weekend was the Fathers and Sons campout, so while Levi, Glenn, Grandpa, and Uncle Noah had a rollicking good time sleeping in a tent and getting all dirty, Grandma, Samantha, and I had a girls night. Grandma Susan took us to a French bakery not far from here where we each picked out a pastry, and the man behind the counter said, "Merci beaucoup" about twenty times over the course of our choosing pastries. He is by far the nicest French person I've ever encountered. Maybe once they're away from France long enough, they become nicer. Or maybe being completely surrounded by Americans, he can't afford to be so rude to them. Or maybe he really was just a very nice person. We took our pastries home in waxed white paper bags, and set to work making Roquefort Pear Salad, and Guacamole with Baked Corn Tortilla Chips. No, the salad and the guac/chips don't really go together, but they were both very yummy.

The first time we made Roquefort Pear Salad, we couldn't find Roquefort so we substituted feta, and that was wonderful - probably in the top 3 of incredible salads. This second time, we'd actually found real Roquefort, in a little square green package, with not a scrap of English on the label anywhere. $8 for 3.5 ounces. But I decided just this once it would be okay, just for the sake of trying it. It turned out not to be appealing at all, to me. (I can smell it all vomity in my memory right now as though it were still right here.) Susan has more sophisticated tastes, fortunately, and she liked it, though commented that it was very strong. But from now on, I think I shall make "Feta Pear Salad" which is better also because "fetapear" sounds like one word and a whole new awesome food.

The guacamole and chips were amazing. No worries there.

Then after dinner, we thawed part of one of our 17 big bags of frozen peach slices, and made peach ice cream in the ice cream maker - nifty contraption. While our ice cream was being mixed, we started a movie. Samantha first suggested "Ichabod and Mr. Toad," but hoping to settle on something the adults could enjoy, we told her Mr. Toad could get a little scary. Instead we watched, "Happily Never After". Shrug to that film. And had our peach ice cream and French pastries, and that did us in.

We'll have to get Levi to blog about the campout.

The next morning, Saturday (yesterday), Samantha and I picked up our Co-op share in Provo. We had ordered one Standard Share plus two extras, honey and bacon. I didn't know quite what to expect, this being our first time. It turned out to be really well organized and fun. We pulled into this church parking lot and took our grocery bags to the sign-in table where a nice volunteer gave us pieces of paper that had marked what we had ordered. Then we just walked along the line of boxes and volunteers, and had our food handed to us, then we picked up a newsletter (for the recipes, of course) and were on our way. Easy as pie. There were a lot of families there, and some college kids - everybody decked out in Cougar Blue for the game that afternoon. All the food is locally grown/produced, and most is grown using organic methods whether or not it's "certified organic". All of it is premium quality and at the peak of freshness. Today for lunch after church we used our beef, tomatoes, and green bell peppers (along with tortillas and peppers from the Provo farmers market) to make yummy beef fajitas.

I took pictures of our loot from the co-op and from the farmer's market. This is our co-op produce, followed by our co-op meats, then our farmer's market goodies. The hat is made of alpaca wool, and is reversible - for Samantha for wintertime. I would've picked another color besides pink, but it'll be on her head, so we had her pick. Samantha and I also each got a neat beaded bracelet. The lady I bought that bar of soap from went into great detail explaining the soap's wonderful, health-promoting qualities, and reiterated a number of times that it "gets right down to the cellular level" which I think is hilarious because anything you put on or in your body is going to get right down to the cellular level in some way - I bought the soap for its lovely ingredient list and because it smelled good, and because my facial care regimen right now consists of, well, nothing. That farmer's market has really grown up. I remember what it looked like during it's first year when I was about 18: picture six vendors, some tie-dye t-shirts, some flowers, only 1 person selling actual food - a real disappointment to my spoiled Californian expectations. But now it's a real market with probably 50 vendors and about half selling a good variety of real food. Live music. A happy atmosphere. It's at Pioneer Park and I believe it runs every Saturday through October, so we've got one more month to enjoy that.

And because we haven't talked enough about food in this post, I should mention I made really yummy scones (in the traditional east coast / European sense, not the Utah "fried dough" concept). Susan had the idea of putting in chopped dates, and I made an orange glaze for the tops. We each had one and gave the rest to the Cherry Hill Elementary Carnival's bake sale. The carnival was super cute. There were lots of games, treats, and activities, all put on by volunteers. The kids went on a swing ride powdered by electric fans, and Sammy had her hair spray painted orange. Levi bought back several of our scones.







We may have an exciting bit of news on the job front in about 3 weeks or so. Stay tuned.