The weekends seem to get busier and busier these days. As if the work week isn’t hectic enough.
De Young
We kicked off last weekend with Peanut’s first exhibit at the DeYoung museum. Yes, that DeYoung museum. How’s that for a resume entry: 1st art exhibit on display at the DeYoung museum at the age of 4.
Peanut's Artwork on Display
But really, Peanut’s class art project was chosen among numerous city-wide entries to be on display for the Young @ Art exhibit – “a citywide celebration of student creativity”.
So Friday after school, the family headed to the DeYoung as they were going to have a ceremony of sorts with music, dance performances, and so on.
We met up with Peanut’s classmates and teacher at the museum, took pictures, looked at the other exhibits and before you knew it was almost 7p – way past dinner time for my kidlets.
What the event organizers don’t know is that 7p is the witching hour for preschoolers and their younger siblings. Did they really think that we’d have time to grab dinner before the 5.30p event? Did the hoighty-toighty people at the museum really think that a bunch of 4-5 year olds were going to sit still when there was just so much going on?
The Complete Installation
“Couples”/Zeppelin
Okay, so I’m extending the three word weekend to four this time…
As you may know from my spammish RunKeeper posts on Facebook, I’ve been working out a lot. A lot a lot. I’d been hoping that I could lead by example and get The Husband moving. A little, but not a lot.
So, two weeks ago, I managed to convince The Husband to join me for a training session with my trainer, CG. I had a slight advantage because I had been training with CG for 12 weeks, if not more, but The Husband managed to survive the session. He came out a bit sore, even with all the stretching.
After some discussion, we decided to move ahead with our “couples” training and kicked off our sessions last weekend.
Though we are working out together, I have a couple of modifications to my exercises. Where The Husband would just be doing back lunges with a reach, I’d be doing back lunges with a reach while holding the 8lb dumbbell. The Husband would be doing quick steps on the bosu and I’d be doing the quick steps on the bosu while holding up the 10lb medicine ball. Then we started some exercises on the TRX.
My trainer, by the way, is a walking Wikipedia of fitness – which is a good thing because the workouts are never the same and it keeps things fresh.
So how do The Husband and I celebrate me finishing up 12 weeks of personal training and kicking off sessions together? A dinner at the House of Prime Rib, of course!
With the kids at Grandma’s, The Husband and I were able to enjoy a nice evening out. Now, for me, the HOPR is a special occasion type place, so I was a bit disappointed that people were not as dressed up as I thought they would be. It’s been 10+ years since I was last there, but still.
The goodness that was the HOPR salad, the baked potato overloaded with fixin’s, the creamed spinach, Yorkshire pudding, and of course the beef from the zeppelin of meat itself was worth the wait. Unfortunately, portion control did not cross my mind as I ate dinner. I’d like to say that I need the calories, but I pretty much ate everything. I passed on dessert, if that counts for anything.
Bring it! The King Henry cut
The overloaded spud
Boss
Finally, it’s Sunday and we are taking the kidlets to their first ever SF Giants game! Ringo is wearing his Lincecum tee shirt and Peanut, well, Peanut is dressed in pink and we’re all excited!
We make our way to the ballpark, looking at all the boats in the bay. Peanut is quick to point out that people are having parties on the boats and that when she’s older she wants to have a party like that on a boat. As I look at the drunk women on the boat, dancing, I tell her, “Um, yeahrightno.”
Even with bleacher seats, near the coke bottle slide and “kids” area, kettle corn, pizza, and fries – they weren’t having any of it. Sudden outbursts of cheers from the crowd startled Ringo a few times and Peanut only wanted to go on the slide. (She ended up not going down at all because she didn’t want to go by herself, so she and The Husband waited in line for nothing.)
We did get to enjoy a few innings and scored runs by the Giants – thanks to Cody Ross (Ross is Boss!). But, we left after the 6th inning, which is unfortunate, since it turned out to be a great game that the Giants won and I guess they opened the field up to the kids so that they could run the bases once the game was over. Oh well.
Lessons learned: baseball games are for mommy and daddy…for now. Also, beer always, always tastes better at the ballpark.
Enjoying the game - sort of
Santa
We kicked off the weekend with a holiday party at Madison’s day care. Parents were invited for dinner at 5p – the owner cooked for all of us, yummy Peruvian fare, including a delicious rice pudding concoction. We enjoyed our food, child-free, while watching videos the caretakers had put together of all the kids – it was nice to finally see what Mads is or isn’t up to during the day!
At about 6.30 we met the kids in the main room, shortly before Santa made his appearance. Now, Mads hadn’t been too thrilled about strange old men in red suits and big beards and this night was no exception. Even though she saw that everyone was getting presents when they went up to Santa, she refused. REFUSED. to go collect her gift. Once the gifts were handed out and Santa left, the kids just about ripped into their gifts. Being one of 3 girls at day care, Mads received a nice lavender tulle tutu and matching headband. The mom that bought it for her was so excited to shop for a little girl. “It’s so much fun!” she exclaimed. Unfotch, Mads wanted nothing to do with it once she saw that another girl had received a princess dress and was already wearing hers. Mads went to drawer where the dress-up clothes are kept and proceeded to pull out the blue princess dress and asked to put it on. (Oy! I was so not looking forward to a princess phase so early.)
don't touch me
Macy’s
We got a late start to our Saturday, we ventured downtown at about noon, grabbed some lunch, did some shopping and went to see the holiday windows at Macy’s. Together, with the SFSPCA, Macy’s produces some great storefronts with some awfully cute animals in the windows. Mads was excited to see a black kitten responding to her window taps, a cute little puppy just sitting nicely, and even a sleeping black cat!
She wasn’t too thrilled about the SFSPCA mascot, as you can see.
(Yes, we managed to take advantage of some of the sales most of the stores were holding.)
Slumdog
Later that night, S & I made our way to the Embarcadero to see Slumdog Millionaire. Please go see this movie if you haven’t already! It tells the story of a young boy growing up in the slums of Mumbai (Bombay). Though the conditions are absolutely heartbreaking, it’s still my feel good movie of the year.
And here’s a clip f/M.I.A.
Happy Holidays!
Yup, it’s the return of the 3 word weekend…
Halloween
Last Friday, as you know, was Halloween. And, as expected miss Mads…um, preferred not try on her costume at home. So I packed it up, brought it to day care with us and wished them luck. And, as expected, she went willingly into her costume.
only candy could keep her in this costume
After picking her up, our attempt to go trick-or-treating didn’t go well. Don’t get me wrong, she wanted the candy – badly – just didn’t want to work for it. Which is fine for me, since I probably would’ve eaten most of it. :o(
Reunion (kind of)
Thanks to the wonder that is Facebook, I’ve re-connected with a bunch of my college friends and found myself at my friend’s birthday party/housewarming. I haven’t seen S in, like, 6 years, and it was so good to see her and other college friends. It’s funny to see us all grown up with families, homes, husbands – thinking back to Spring Break in Vegas, Wednesday nights in Tijuana or parties at the EX house in DelMar. Sigh. Anyways, it was worth the drive to SanJo in the rain to see my dear college friends.
Madonna
Madge was back in town. Mind you, I was about 6 months preggers when I saw her last. This time around, S was spared, and I accompanied my friend L, who is about 6 months pregnant. Before we arrived, I told her my theory: if the baby is moving around a lot during the concert it’s a girl (or gay boy). She and her husband, B, are also waiting to find out the sex of their child. Anyways, I digress. We had pretty kick a** seats – floor seats, probably 20 – 25 feet away from the stage. Sweet! So we’re sitting around, chatting with the people next to us, Madge is running late, as usual, I’m looking around, OMG! John Legend is, I kid you not, 6 feet away from us! At this point I was cursing myself for not bringing my camera. But then the show started and I forgot all about it (kind of). As you can imagine, Madge (I wonder if she’ll still be called this now that she’s hightailing it out of London) puts on a pretty darn good show. She performed the bulk of her new album Hard Candy, which, imho would’ve been better if Britney had done it. The show was fabulous and am happy to say that I got my week’s cardio in that one night – so fun!
Cacciatore
The working mama’s savior – the slow cooker. Friday night our dear friends Katie & Matt came over for a “holiday” dinner. Since dinner was planned for apres work and I wasn’t able to take the day off to prepare, I turned to my All-Clad slow cooker.
Earlier in the week, I bought a FABULOUS cookbook at one of my favorite cooking shops. What makes is fabulous is that it is divided into three sections: 15-minutes hands on time, 30-minute hands on time, made for extras.
So for our dinner, I decided upon Chicken Cacciatore (Hunter’s Chicken, in Italian, I think). Thursday night I prepped the veggies. Friday am, I browned the chicken, made the sauce, threw everything into the crock and that was it! (I was a bit worried that the slow cooker was going to short, and burn the house down, but it didn’t.) I got home, threw in the ‘shrooms, cooked some pappardelle and we were good to go.
It was a lovely evening, but no naked baby dance for entertainment, perhaps next time.
Lumpia
Saturday evening, my family got together for an early birthday/holiday celebration.
As always, there was way too much food. Roast Beef, Spiral Cut Ham and Lumpia. My grandma made a pretty mean lumpia and now my uncle is following in her footsteps. I only had two, but could have easily eaten 5 or 10!
We also had a mini-birthday celebration for my cousin’s daughter Kady, who turns 2 in a couple days. She had a delicious neopolitan cake from Goldilocks. Yum!
We did have a white elephant gift exchange, but IMHO the gifts were, eh. Next year, we’ll have to require the gifts to be items people actually want.
Bouchon
As if Friday and Saturday weren’t enough, we headed down to Palo Alto for dinner Sunday night. (And S got to test his early xmas gift. Btw, I no way paid the price listed. Are you kidding? I could have gotten myself a nice gift at Burberry or elsewhere. But I digress.) Our friend G, made a wonderful dinner! So wonderful, Mads even enjoyed it! Mixed green salad with duck breast, pecans, followed by trout with green beans, roasted pearl onions & shallots and croutons, pommes anna, and ended with creme brulee and chocolate bouchons (I’ve talked about these before).
Mads really dug into the duck breast, trout and pommes anna (wasn’t too fond of the pearl onion, though) and especially LOVED the creme brulee and chocolate bouchon!
So, as I tackle another week of work, looking forward to the holidays and getting xmas shopping done!
S + I kicked off the weekend with a concert at the Warfield. We (inadvertently) caught the last few songs of Rachael Yamagata’s performance* and enjoyed the musical stylings of Ray Lamontagne*. During the Rachael’s performance, her backup guitarist had switched to his electric guitar and as the group had started the song, he breaks into this “rockin'” chord, riff, whatever it’s called. Rachael and the violinist, stop and display this amused, but “what the f***” look on their faces. It was mentioned that maybe he was resentful for having to perform all these chick-love-gone-wrong songs and as punishment he had to say “tampax” out loud. It was quite funny. I guess you had to be there. ;o) The show in all was great! We loved it!
*the new Rhapsody’s having some probs posting some tunes to movable type…i’ll post ’em laters.
Saturday, I had enlisted my mom and brother to help plant some plants and lay out the bark for our front yard. We miscalcuated the amount of bark we needed and so, for now, our front looks pretty sad. But it is an improvement from before. Later that evening, Yoli and Craig came over for dinner and games. I had prepared a simple cheese plate for starters…red potatoes with a parsely/dill/scallion butter…stracoto (pot roast) with porcini mushrooms…and berries and cream for dessert. It was my first ever pot roast and it came out quite well, I must say. The meat was just tender and falling apart…yum! We ended the evening with a friendly of Cranium…I’ll see if I can get Sylvain’s drawing of chocolate mousse posted – it just goes to show that we’re able to think how the other thinks…if that makes sense. ;o)
After dragging my lazy butt around this morning, I made it to Borders and picked up copy of The Half-Blood Prince, “the last one” according to the sales boy. Score! I also picked up a copy of Lucky mag, but couldn’t find Domino.
Oh! Lest I forget, we got our bedroom furniture! Thank goodness we bought the smaller dresser because it took up more space than we had anticipated. I’ll post pictures when our room is neat and tidy. ;o)