Veggies

Xela loves her vegetables.  First she stole the avocado, then she came and took my carrot too. She loves tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers too. 

Spelling lessons

Yesterday I overheard this conversation.  

chio: "d" "a" "m"

alex: no, that's what holds back water.  It's "d" "a" "m" "b" . The b is silent.

...

they go along in this vein for awhile. 

(I'm not surprised I wasn't asked into this conversation, they looked very worried when I walked in)

Me: what are you guys talking about?

chio and alex in unison:  nothing 

Me: You spell that word "d" "a" "m" "n"

(they are both very skeptical because I'm the worst speller ever and they have already stopped asking  me how to spell words; alex especially took a while to convince.  Then we had a whole talk about bad words.  Over all it was quite funny)

Ryan and the fire department

Alex And I took the two little ones to Bonham fire department today. Ryan looked like these two pictures for the entire time, all frowny and serious. Then when we got in the car to come home he was excited in talking about how he had driven the firetruck. It was very funny, we thought he was traumatized but I guess not.  

Sharing an orange with Xela

This morning Ryan and I were sitting on the couch eating an orange and watching a show. Xela was crawling around on the floor and watching us. I gave her a little piece of orange and she liked it a lot. She started crawling over and trying to get up to us on the couch, because she's not very mobile I was just letting her try to pull up to the couch.  In preparation for her actually getting up, I told Ryan that he should share a piece of orange with Xela because she really liked it.  He looked down at her on the floor and thought about it for a second and then pushed all the peelings down to her.  How Sweet he is, and very generous.

Xela dressed as a boy

While Ryan was taking a nap we dressed Xela in his favorite pants to see what Ryan would do. He just came out and said, "hi"

Ryan reading to Xela

They both like books, Ryan is not liking Xela getting to the point where she can get HIS books though. 

We're hanging in there:)

Cookie Monster Xela

Xela loves all food. We were a little bit worried because she would not eat any baby food when she was younger -we're talking around 6 months and she'd never had more than a tablespoon collectively  of ANYTHING.  So I take her into her visit and tell the doctor this and she said, "don't smash up her food, just give it to her cut up."  We did that night and she's been eating well ever sence. And she definitely liked the Oreos. 

Happy Halloween

Hot pepper. 

Princess. 

Zombie. (From plants vs zombies but he wouldn't wear the collard shirt and tie). He did his own paint. 

Chios room

I was just tidying up Chio's room for company when I relized this is the last week it will look like this. Next week Chio and Xela will officially be roommates.  So here are some pictures.  Alex and I made the bed so I'm pretty proud of it, but even without that I think this is my favorite room in the house.

Under the stairs play area. 

Closet and all the hair stuff. 

Her cape and all the wall stickers they insist look best all bunched up in the same spot. 

 

Fat chubby legs

The only one the leg fat rolls were documented were Alex.  Here are Xela's  

Spider clip

Chios is double this size. The whole time it was in Xela's hair Ryan said, "eww eww eww."

Xela

Dion's Pastrami and Provolone

I miss these sandwiches from home so every time we go through NM we make sure to get one.... but sometimes I just can't wait so I picked these for my day.  (In case you didn't notice these are essentially our notes on the sandwiches of the week so next year we can improve on them.)

We got Sam's french bread and cut off however long each person wanted cut them in half and put Greek dressing on side and spicy brown mustard on the other side.  Put as much meat as you want on the bread- half on each side and top with cheese.  Then we put it in the oven until toasted or warm. We haven't decided between broiling or baking at 450.  Both were good, but baking seems to work best when we're making a lot. We sliced the onions and tomatoes really thin, which I liked a lot, and basically shredded the lettus and topped with more Greek dressing.

I accidentally got turkey pastrami instead of beef but it was still okay.

little alex didn't like it warmed and hatted the pastrami- he said it was too spicy.  SOMEONE also mentioned wanted bacon for their sandwich.

we all agreed dill spears would work better than the good pickles and we should save those for hogis.

Perhaps my favorite part of these is the grrek dressing, but since we always forget to bring some home from Dion's we make our own.   This time I think it was pretty perfect.

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1-1/4 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1-1/4 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 Tablespoon fresh basil
• 1 teaspoon pepper
  
  

• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard
• 2/3 cup red wine vinegar

Second Day of sandwich week

Tuesday is the second day of sandwich week and we forgot that we needed to blog about this.

We decided that we needed to do more traditions in our family and besides all the spiritual ones we are doing, we are starting a tradition of gluttony the week after fathers day.  Since I the father am a glutton of sandwiches, I came up with this plan.  Monday was a great day and we learned how to make a great hamburger.  We decided the griddle indoors is much better than outside on the grill when you want a nice juicy (leaking with fat and blood), hamburger.  Preparation of the hamburger consisted of pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, worchestershierer sauce, that instead of pressing to mix in, the beef ground beef was shredded and lightly balled.  Salt is only added after they are placed on the grill.  On the grill they were pressed only once and the edges are smashed to round the jagged edges and make sure edges were touching the grill.  5 minutes on one side and then turned for 3 minutes gives the patty a nice crusty edge. We decided to grill mushrooms, jalapenos, and onions to go with texas toast for the parents burgers.  For the children they love the hamburgers with thinly diced onions, ketchup, mustard and bacon on regular toasted buns.   A boy in the family who wishes to remain anonymous said "We should cook bacon everyday!"  Chio thinks they were "great!"  I thought it was a wonderful tasting burger with plenty of juice.  Next time I will avoid all toppings to just taste the wonderful meat inside.  

Where's Xela

Tutu

Day in Fort Worth

Ryan surprised

Ryan makes this face every time something surprises him. I love it.