Ballet Super Star Weekend

You guys, we have SO MUCH to cover. I always think our weekends feel so fun and lazy and easy and restful, and then when I go to type them out I spend like 4,000 words and too many pictures trying to capture it all. That's about to happen again, so consider yourself warned. And lucky that I left my phone in the car as part of my unplugged New Year's Resolution while we were at the zoo this morning so there aren't any pictures of that.

First up, Tara is pet-sitting a French bulldog puppy and asked if she could bring her over Friday. "Of course!" I yelled into my allcaps text message, "Cora LOVES dogs!" And oh does she.

Hermes is the cutest and Tara said she was as obsessed with Cora as she was with her. Which seemed obvious when I got home and immediately tried to love her and she was super skeptical.

Claire tried too and she was just "Where is the little one?"

Here she is!

And then, after Tara and Hermes left (after Cora gave Hermes a thousand kisses and some sticks from our yard to-go), I realized Landon was spending the night with a friend and James was coaching late and the weather was spectacular and it was Friday and we most definitely needed a girls' night out.

The girls grabbed their purses and we were off to try a new Mexican place that opened up near us with a big patio and $5 happy hour margaritas. It was great. I love spending time with the girls, and not just because they love cheese as much as I do (side-eye to Landon) and they fill up on tortillas and queso and are super cheap (side-eye to James), they're so fun and funny and so very much themselves. I love any time I get to spend a little extra time with them.

We got home at the same time as James and let the girls pick the movie. It was Trolls (obviously) and there was a lot of dancin, but we all missed Landon and kept wondering where he was and why he wasn't asking to switch the movie. Claire said she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw his door open and went in to check on him. James swam at 7 a.m. and went in and did the same. We're used to all our ducklings being together. Luckily Cora had her second dance recital at 11 a.m. (relieve the first here) and we like to turn out for these things in full force, so we went to pick him up at 10. He may half-heartedly pretend otherwise, but Landon LOVES a family supporting occasion.

And a photo booth accessory.

Cora had been talking about her "ballet 'cital" for weeks, asking every one of us repeatedly, "Are you coming to watch my ballet?" When each of us always responded, "yes! of course!" she'd squeal and give us a hug. She loves with her whole body and soul and it is the best and she was SO EXCITED to do ballet up on stage and that was the best too.

This would be our 5th ballet recital as parents and we'd never had a child dance on stage to every song. But Cora seemed calm and confident and overflowing with the joy of dance.

They did the introductions and she stood up and said her name and did her poses and we were like, oh my gosh, is this really going to happen?

And then BAM. It did!

We had toe pointing.

Second position.

Spinning!

She rocked it. And she loved every. freaking. minute.

The big kids were beside themselves, "She's dancing mom!" James and I were cracking up and passing the video camera back and forth between the heads of the women in front of us who would not stay in their seats. This is the last song and my personal favorite, but if you need more camera, the other 3 little parts are all here.

It was amazing.

We brought her flowers and she loved them.

She got to sit on faux-Princess-Belle's lap and she loved that.

She got glasses as a dance recital party favor and she loved them too.

It was 11:30 p.m. when it was all over and it was probably the best day of Cora's life. Besides basically all the other days.

She got to pick the location of her victory lunch, PIZZA! (AND SQUASH AND CHEESE!, though I couldn't fulfill the squash part until we got home; butternut squash is literally her favorite food while she still hates fruit and candy and most delicious things, she is such a weirdo and I adore her), so we drove to Mellow Mushroom and feasted and then she went to bed and napped for 4 hours. Being a star is exhausting.

My favorite part is when I finally went to wake her up (at 5 p.m.) she emerged from her bedding wearing her new princess shoes. Shoes that were not on her feet when I tucked her in.

Once everyone was awake we drove over to our local polling place to vote in our municipal elections (mayor, city council, school board, and water district board). I will admit I have frequently ignored local elections- figuring that either all the choices were depressing or I didn't know enough to vote and/or it didn't matter anyway because I'm a democrat in Texas and see reason 1, but after the shitshow of last November I vowed I would never ignore any election ever again. A week ago I went online and downloaded my ballot. I read all the voter's guides I could find to learn more about the candidates and also WTF a water district board is. This guide was my favorite, mostly because of the title, but also because it was the best description of what the water district board is, something even the water district board's website could not tell me. So we voted! And we all got stickers. And the whole thing took 10 minutes and then all we went home and ate dinner.

After dinner we went on a family walk/bike ride to visit a friend's new puppy. It was the perfect end to Cora's awesome day. And then she went back to sleep at 8 p.m. for another 11 hours. She sleeps more than any toddler I know, but I think exuding all that joy all the time just wears you out. Or she's just the rare toddler who understands how awesome it is that for a few years of your life everyone in your world will structure their life around your sleep whims and desires and she's soaking up all she can.

Today James and the big kids went on their run and then we headed to the zoo. Much joy and happiness and running ensued. We pink puffy heart our zoo.

When we returned we brought champagne over to some new neighbors, ate leftover pizza, and then tucked Cora back in bed for another nap. Claire had a friend over, which turned into two friends, which turned into a mom date for me, while Landon worked on a robot alligator metalworks kit he bought in the zoo gift shop. He's running a small business selling hand-made bracelets and necklaces to his friends and it's surprisingly lucrative. I'm probably going to have to do an audit soon.

I erranded, Cora awoke, and other friends came over for more swimming. It was such a gorgeous day. Cora had a wardrobe change partway through when she remembered she had a Princess Belle swimsuit. I understood.

I made these black bean burgers for dinner and they were SO GOOD. I had never had a black bean burger but they were easy and hearty and everyone loved them. I served them with roasted sweet potatoes and strawberries. It was the perfect Sunday night dinner after being outside as much as possible all day.

And now I'm doing Orangetheory in 7 hours so I need to end this, but may you all embrace your weeks ahead with the joy of Cora on stage and the enthusiasm of my children jumping into our freezing cold pool. Or even just half the enthusiasm. I'm aiming for half.

Harkening Back

I've been stuck in a cycle this week of insomnia - being tired - insomnia - and being more tired, so I haven't been as productive at night as I prefer. But last night I fell asleep in a reasonable amount of time and I taught barre tonight, which always leaves me feel a pleasant combination of ennervated and invigorated, so I'm putting words on the screen! We can this. Also, James is working on summer scheduling, so he's not going to bed before midnight anyway and I like to keep him company. Like Cora keeps Landon company when he practices headstands.

To properly recap, let's harken back to Saturday afternoon, a more innocent time, a time before Congress passed a healthcare bill that does nothing Trump promised and is so awful and immoral they made sure to exempt themselves from its coverage (and to make sure they voted before the CBO scored it, because deep down they know that insuring millions fewer people is not actually going to work out to lower premiums for those left), back when Republicans sort of still pretended they cared about human lives and fiscal responsibility, juuuuuust as I was pressing publish on this last post, we heard a knock on our door. James was asleep, Cora was "not tired," and the big kids were watching the Great British Baking Show with me in the name of "down time."

not tired

I ambled over to the front of the house and it was our neighbor! Who wanted to let us know a giant limb had fallen out of our tree! And wondered if we knew that and/or need a car to go anywhere later because ours were clearly being held hostage for a while.

We most definitely did NOT know our tree had broken and we DID need a car because we were supposed to leave in 30 minutes for our play! And that's how I ended up driving a Range Rover for the first time! On our way to see the BEST children's play we've ever seen at Casa Manana.

The plays are always good, but this one was just spectacular. The singing and costumes and stage production and cast... we loved it. Not even fear of the tree clearing estimate hampered my enjoyment. After all, I now had a Rover! Our neighbors are the best.

James called around to see if anyone could clear our limb, but no one could come out until Monday or Tuesday and the minimum quote we got was $350. He decided to take matters into his own hands and busted out a hand saw and ax and tore that thing apart. He's my hero. I stayed inside to monitor dinner and drink wine while occasionally calling out safety advice.

By bedtime, our driveway was clear and I could go to Sunday morning yoga!

The kids spent the morning enjoying their new tree home and the afternoon helping James clear all the leaves and branches to a neat pile by the curb. Teamwork! I didn't help with any of it.

To thank our neighbors and in a bit of serendipity with Teacher Appreciation Week, I baked 5 loaves of my mom's amazing Orange-Glaze Poppyseed Bread. And then some cookies, because why not? We'd just saved $400 on tree limb removal!

We ran a few errands on Sunday, after Landon submitted a quiz under my door asking if me to circle yes/no/maybe for various exciting activities like "go to the park" and "go to Target or Toys R Us." He remains the cutest. We did Target AND Toys R Us so the big kids could spend the $15 my parents gave them in their eggs at Easter. This was an agonizing experience fraught with danger, there were so many choices and they had to make the PERFECT ONE. There could be NO REGRETS. Cora does not enjoy shopping and was super over it super early.

Particularly since I'd already selected her gift for her and it was coming in the mail. I possibly spent more than $15, but when the Disney Store has a sale and you have to spend $50 for free shipping and your toddler grew a million inches in 3 months so all the swimsuits you bought ahead of time were too small and had to be returned, you go big.

New shoes.

Belle swimsuit.

Amazon Anna dress. (The other Disney dress is a beautiful Princess Aurora gown she's getting when we go to Disney in a million months; It's so beautiful I'm jealous of my toddler.)

Obviously she LOVED her new things. She demanded I "bring her Gigi's face" which I decided must mean FaceTime? My parents never do that, so I don't know where she came up with it, but it seemed to satisfy her. She knew her Gigi would love her "new tings" and she did. It was the cutest. She wore her shoes for the rest of the day and tried to convince me they were slippers when it was time to go to bed. Disney can have all my money.

(Also the cutest? She got to go home with a friend for her first ever playdate on Monday when both our nannies had conflicts after school and she had the BEST time. The pictures made me melt. Claire does not do princesses, so this was a very special bonding experience for Cora.)

The week has been super busy and full of logistical details I will spare you, but this event yesterday was a TOTAL highlight. My grandpa, retired Air Force Colonel, Vietnam vet with 169 combat missions and a Purple Heart, got to take back to the skies thanks to this awesome local organization in San Antonio. The video made me cry. He's always happy, but his huge smile after being back in the air was a joy to see.



Adorable. If I had access to emojis in blogger, I'd be using all the hearts and rainbows and happy faces here.

Maybe even a unicorn. It's a special occasion.

Today Landon had his orthodontic consults. I put James in charge of the whole operation- scheduling, consults, insurance, etc. He picked Landon up from school at 10:30 and 1:30, which made for a crazy day, particularly since he had to go back to school at 3 for his Battle of the Books practice, but they liked both orthos and Landon is SUPER EXCITED about braces and wants them on AS SOON AS POSSIBLE (we had a long discussion about the colors he can put on them and what's appropriate for which holidays and which colors he'll pick first and it's all SO EXCITING AND HE JUST CAN'T WAIT). One had a less invasive plan that cost $2,300 less than the other, so we're going with him (he's also who our dentist recommended). Getting to wear colored bands are your teeth is expensive y'all, and we'll get to do it again for Landon after all his adult teeth come in! It's like we had that fourth baby I wanted except Landon is both of them.

But for this round he'll just have 4 braces across his front upper teeth, like a little starter pack, and that is so adorable I almost don't mind the sudden $1,100 expense. I mean, we did just save $400 on that tree limb.

Moving on to this week's food! Why do my little meal plans always turn into novels when I write them out? Food is just my favorite and I want to give you all the information.

Sunday: Slow Cooker French Onion Pot Roast with mashed potatoes (not the polenta as instructed bc I didn't have any polenta but I did have potatoes) and lightly sauteed green beans. This was SO GOOD. "Best meal in months!" according to James, and he likes all our meals.

Monday: Migas with spinach, black refried beans, diced tomato, avocado, whole wheat tortillas. Migas are my favorite fast egg dish. Scramble a bunch of eggs in a bowl with some milk, salt, and pepper, set aside. Cook diced onion and garlic in butter until soft, add a whole bunch of spinach until wilted, add eggs and start to scramble. While still wet, dump in a bunch of stale tortilla chips (or broken leftover tostadas from dinner the week before!), stir around until eggs are set. Eat with black beans and tortillas. So good!

Tuesday: Pizza at the PTA Board Meeting.

Wednesday: Chicken breasts, zucchini, and rice with Everglades Seasoning. Have you had this magical seasoning? My parents ate a chicken dish with it at a friend's house and immediately bought us all a jar. It's super good. For this iteration I just diced up some nice organic chicken and tossed it with olive oil and seasoning and then broiled it for 10 or so minutes until done and juicy. I sauteed the zucchini rounds in a little bit of butter and more seasoning and made the rice in the rice cooker with chicken stock. Super simple. Very tasty. Let me know if you have other Everglades ideas!

Thursday: French Dip Sliders, chips, fruit, veggies. SO FREAKING GOOD. Go make them. Use lots of crispy onions. Get a roast beef that is rare and not heavily seasoned, otherwise the au jus sauce will make it too salty. James now declared this the best meal ever. It also comes together really fast- prep time until it was sitting in the oven took exactly 10 minutes. (Other notes: I skipped the sesame seeds because I didn't have any, skipped the seasoned salt bc I used salted butter, and used 1/2 tsp. garlic powder instead of dried garlic bc I didn't have that either. It's a flexible recipe.)

Friday: Creamy Spinach Tomato Tortellini, except with ravioli because I don't have tortellini.

And that's a wrap! Tomorrow I will get my car inspected (thrilling) while reading a bunch of deposition transcripts (even more so). There probably won't be pictures. But I did score an amazing deal on pink shorts at Gap today ($5! and they were for me and not my children like everything else I buy!), so I'm going to let that bit of joy carry over into tomorrow. Happy Friday!

Weekend Wrap-Up of the Week Before

While I was busy reliving our crazy weekend in Houston- being fancy and marching for science - the rest of the week unfolded. Monday started out very delayed after I went to bed for the first time at 3:30 a.m. after taking Claire to her first ever ER visit. (It was scary; she's 100% fine now.) I was tired. It was a groggy start to the week.

On Wednesday all 3 kids had dental appointments. Unlike last time, Cora did not try to attack anyone who touched her mouth. Instead, she was delighted to be there and giggled her way through her oral exam. Her teeth look great! Claire's do too!

Landon's are healthy (taking away sweets for a month last fall seems to have incentivized him to brush his teeth regularly), but they are badly misaligned. I arrived at the very end of the appointment (James had taken them all there at 1:30, but he has to leave at 2:45 for coaching; we high-fived as switched places. Two working parents y'all, it's a daily exercise in logistics) and the dentist recapped the exams and said, "With Landon, we're looking at braces sooner rather than later."

"Oh, like in the next year?" I asked, thinking 10 was young for braces and also wondering if Cora was going to steal another toothbrush.

"No, like you should call to make an appointment with the orthodontist tomorrow."

Oh. I was neither emotionally nor financially prepared for that.

So he now has an appointment for this Thursday. I'm glad we went ahead and maxed out our Health FSA for the year, though that was supposed to be for my massages and not Landon's braces. Good thing I haven't actually scheduled any massages yet. He's just a tiny baby though? How can he need braces?!

Except he very much does because the current alignment of his teeth means that his upper and lower front teeth connect with every bite and he's already chipped off a little piece of his front tooth and that's an adult tooth so we prefer they stay in their original shape.

Since I'd taken the last two hours off work for the appointment, we got to spend a little extra time together before afternoon activities. The girls wanted to color and read, but Landon immediately asked to go outside and play baseball. I do not play baseball. Landon does not play baseball. But James got him a glove, bat, and some practice balls for his birthday two years ago and we pull them out every now and then to play around in the front yard.

But ever since one friend had a birthday party at a TCU baseball game last weekend and another friend told him all baseball players make $60 million a year, Landon is ALL IN. I told him we only had 10 minutes before we had to leave for gymnastics and he responded "you can throw like 100 balls in that amount of time mom." He has high estimations of my abilities. Also, "That one was outside my stroke zone, Mom." ranks highly in the list of phrases I never thought anyone would say to me.

Thursday was Take Your Kids to Work Day! I've written about what this day means to be before (funny enough, as part of last year's TYKTWD post and also some career musings that sound an awful lot like my recent thought tornadoes); it was genuinely one of the more impactful events of my childhood. For my kids, who find it more surprising that men can be lawyers and work in offices, it's more of a party and fun chance to spend time together.

Being the government, there are no resources devoted to the event, so it's all employee run and fund-raised. They did such a great job! All the kids got badges and were sworn in as investigators, learned about investing money, and then lead their own investigation into the big bad wolf and whether he defrauded the three little pigs. It was super cute.

Also, there was pizza and playtime outside.

Totally typical day.

Despite the efforts of the organizers, the kids still aren't totally sure they know what I do all day, but they are SUPER jealous I get to ride on an escalator every morning before I do it.

Determined to use the rest of our day as productively as possible, we stopped to get haircuts on the way home from "work." Landon requested hair product and learned about styling creme. Claire got her bangs trimmed and Cora desperately wanted a haircut of her very own. "You cut mine too?!" she asked hopefully of each employee. Someday Cora, someday. You may be 7, but you'll have that first haircut section filled out in your baby book.

After a few minutes at home (more baseball!), it was time for swimming - or Take Your Kids to Work Day Round 2!!

Swimming is serious; also accessorized

James had had a significantly more productive day than me- guest lecturing at a TCU business class again (Product Innovation), Shark-Tank-style judging their end-of-year projects, and then driving out to his warehouse to check on his latest shipment of Bricks.

But we got to join in on his last part and his first love- the coaching. I love so much that he gets to coach our kids- he's so very good and I trust him completely with their talent and enthusiasm, and I know he loves getting to see them at the pool twice a week. His whole face lights up when we walk in.

Cora helped him coach the big kids' class before having a swim lesson of her own.

All in all, Thursday was a great and thoroughly exhausting day.

On Friday we signed up for swim team. All of us. Even me (gulp). And Cora. We're pushing the "6 & Under" age group limit a bit- Claire joined when she was 4 and she was the youngest one on the team. Cora will be exactly 3.5, but she can do 25 yards across the pool and I figure she's stuck at the meets all day Saturday anyway. Why shouldn't she have an event? Plus, look how she rocks the tiny regulation all black swimsuit I had to scour Amazon to find her. Size 22. It's the tiniest cutest thing I've ever seen.

She refused to take it off for the rest of the day, including a Friday Night Movie Night showing of The Secret Life of Pets. This summer is going to be amazing. Assuming I still remember how to swim.

And that was the week! Now I'm only one day behind and we're about to leave for our final Casa Manana children's play of the season (The Little Mermaid!!), so we'll save today for later and talk about food. This week's was delicious!

Monday: whole wheat pasta with tomato cream sauce. A meal that always feels like a cheat because it's so quick and easy, but it's delicious, and as noted above, I was tired.

Tuesday: Bean and Rice Burritos. Why were these so delicious? I loved the Mexican rice in the rice cooker. Our grocery store happened to have a "House-made Taco Tuesday Trio" in the deli made up of white queso, guacamole, and pico, so we I used all of those things on top, plus some sliced olives, chopped cilantro, and more chopped tomatoes. I used whole wheat tortillas to wrap up the refried black beans and Mexican rice. Kids thought I was a culinary genius.

Wednesday: Meatloaf (I finally found my perfect recipe by mixing together a bunch of other people's recipes!), Roasted Russet and Sweet Potato Wedges, Roasted Cauliflower and Carrots. Cora inhaled her veggies and potatoes, but the meat hurt her feelings.

Thursday: Slow Cooker Chicken Tostadas. Another new recipe that was simple yet somehow super crazy delicious. I think the chicken could use more seasoning (I'll add a 1/4 cup homemade taco seasoning next time), but the kids LOVED the tostada ("mom you made a FLAT TACO!") and I got to use up the rest of my Taco Tuesday Trio from the deli. I also put more refried black beans underneath the shredded chicken and cheese before broiling the tostadas.

Friday: We were supposed to have this chicken spaghetti, but the giant organic chicken I'd bought and frozen from Costco many moons ago was still frozen after 4 days in the fridge, so I had to fight it with tongs and a large fight to get the giblets out and after that horror show (the bag of innards broke and got everywhere), and then it took forever to boil and long story short the kids had mac and cheese, I had champagne, and then James and I ordered Chinese after they went to bed.

Saturday: Chicken Spaghetti! Finally made on Friday, ready to go in the fridge for tonight after our Casa Manana children's play!

Sunday: French Onion Pot Roast over Creamy Polenta It feels sunday-y. With carrots and cauliflower. And maybe brownies? We'll see where the day takes us.