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Monthly Archives: December 2006

Cookie Exchange

18 Dec

Ayla and I went Christmas caroling last night. Oh yes. That’s right.

Oh the way over in the car with Ayla we figured out that between the two of us we know all the words to exactly one Christmas song. Jingle Bells. And even that was iffy – Ayla said, “Mom? Are they going to have song sheets or something? Because I’m pretty much just making up my own words to the second part of Jingle Bells here.” Heh.

They did have song sheets but most of the kids were younger than Ayla (and all were extremely enthusiastic about the whole venture) so after about the 25th time of Jingle Bells followed immediately by Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Ayla (rolling her eyes) was done.

So, we went back to the ‘party house’ for a cookie exchange, food and *fun*. I brought the Chubby Rocky Road Bars.  I came home with a PILE of assorted cookies. Tell me, what is there NOT to love about a cookie exchange?

So, after last night it took a prayer to button my pants this morning and the damage control for today is a diet of only coffee and Lean Cuisine.

Evren didn’t come with us last night because he is a sick little puppy with a cold who has a doctor’s appointment this morning. (To quote Evren: “I. AM. NOT. A. PUPPY!!!)

 
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Posted by on December 18, 2006 in Ayla, Evren, Family, Food, Friends, Holiday, Humor, Jenn

 

Free Oreos

13 Dec

I went to donate blood last night.  I tried last month and didn’t realize that they had some absurd rule that you couldn’t both go to the dentist AND donate blood in the same day.  I had Evren at the drop-off day care and was trying to take care of everything at once.  (I started to write ‘kill two birds with one stone’ but does anyone even say that anymore?!  It seems kind of brutal.)  Anyway, I got a call last week so I said, ‘yeah, sign me up.’  Everything went as planned and it turns out, they changed the questionnaire and the whole ‘under the care of a dentist’ issue isn’t even on there anymore!

Here is a great way to donate something during this holiday season without spending any money!  In fact, they’ll give YOU some cookies and a T-shirt, but you can feel good about yourself.  I think one of their holiday mottos that they have is something like ‘Give The Gift That Always Fits and Never Gets Returned.’  Catchy.

Think about it.  It takes less than an hour.

 
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Posted by on December 13, 2006 in Great Ideas, Jenn

 

Strict Demands

13 Dec

Evren and I went on an early morning grocery store run yesterday.  The brilliance that is management at this particular store set up a HUGE toy display right inside the front door that you can’t miss and provokes all sorts of demands and tantrums.  I had coupons and I had completely forgotten about the display, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone there.  But, we did finally manage to get away from the display after touching every single toy and trying to put more than one into the cart.  (You think you know me, but I didn’t give in this time!)

We started in the produce section and I casually asked Evren, “So, what kind of fruits should we get today.”  His mood was fine, pleasant and cordial even, and he didn’t seem to be catastrophically affected by the toy situation of 5 minutes previous.  But, yet, this was his answer, yelling…”GRAPES AND STRAWBERRIES!!”  And then me, “Yikes, Evren, why are you yelling at me?”  He says calmly, yet sternly…”Grapes and Strawberries are my favorite.  I.  Told. You. That. THREE. Times.”

Alright.  I got it.  Geez.

(In case you are wondering how this riveting tale turns out, when we actually made it to the grapes and strawberries and I actually gasped out loud at the prices I gave him the choice between grapes at $1.99 a pound and strawberries at $3.99 for a container.  He chose the strawberries and now, less than 24 hours later, they are all gone, he ate all of them himself.)

 
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Posted by on December 13, 2006 in Evren, Food, Humor

 

Friends of the Library

12 Dec

Holiday Pretzel TreatsClick the photo for a larger  pic.

The Friends of the Library is a group of volunteers that support the local public library.  They are called on whenever the library is having a fundraiser to provide time and effort.  And of course you pay a fee to join, so that there is another way the library is able to raise funds.  This past year, I managed to join not only one, but two of these Friends of the Library groups.  “Wow!  She is so charitable!  Where does she find the time?!,” I’m sure you are saying to yourself right this moment.  (Ha!  ok, enough laughing.)

The first one I joined was the Friends of the R* Public Library and I only did so to get into to their super-huge annual book sale on opening night.  Only ‘friends’ got the opening night pass so I gladly paid the fee to join, got to go on the first night and it was totally worth it – I brought home a stack of books that are still piled on my night stand.  I think I paid something like 13 bucks including the fee to join and came away with more than a dozen books.

THEN, later in the year, I heard that the A* Public Library was hosting their annual membership drive, which I have been wanting to go to ever since I heard about it a couple of years ago.  It’s called The Chocolate Orgy.  Ahhh…it all makes sense now – you KNOW I couldn’t miss that.  I have lots of friends in A*, so not only did I attend, I made a bazillion mini dark, dark chocolate cupcakes for the event and out of support, also joined their Friends of the Library group.  (Well, the way they herded you into the event, you had to pay before they even let you SEE the chocolate, so I paid whatever they were asking!)  It was a beautiful evening and the next morning, after having had a plate of chocolate for dinner, woke up with my first ever pounding headache, chocolate hangover.  (Who knew?!)

So, this past week I got an e-mail from one of these groups and apparently they really do want you to volunteer!  It was especially funny because the woman who wrote the e-mail didn’t clarify which library she was with and I had to sheepishly write back asking her, “er, which library are you with? In a frenzy, I’ve managed to sign up with more than one.”  Turns out, she was with the R* library and was asking us to please bring some yummy treat up to the library today as a thank-you to the librarians.   Sure!  Any excuse to make anything that falls under the category of Desserts – that’s my kind of volunteer project.

So, Evren and I made yummy Holiday Pretzel Treats this morning and took a big container of them up to the library.  Evren was in charge of unwrapping the Hershey Kisses – a skill at which he excels.  It’s super easy and great for gift-giving.  (The mailman got some today too.)

We weren’t able to get away from the library without about 5 hugs to the life-size Clifford dog they have and a half-dozen Berenstain Bears books.

 
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Posted by on December 12, 2006 in Evren, Food, Holiday, Jenn, Recipes

 

Back Flips!

10 Dec

Sunday night Ayla went to her gymnastics Christmas party.  The second half of this past year she was on the ‘pre-team’ – she was going to class 4 hours a week to train to hopefully get invited to be on THE TEAM.  They are going to make the formal announcements this week, but at the end of the party her coach took her aside and told her SHE MADE IT!  She is now a Level 4 and she will be training for 8 hours a week and begin competing in the Fall.  I’m not sure what this means for soccer and volleyball.  I’ll think about the logistics of it all tomorrow.

 
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Posted by on December 10, 2006 in Ayla

 

Goody

08 Dec

Yesterday Evren’s best friend Emily turned three years old. And since it’s the law that you celebrate your 3rd birthday at Chuck E. Cheese that’s where you found us last night. The kids had a blast, of course. Emily’s cake (in the photo) was literally the most beautiful birthday cake I’ve ever seen in person and she apparently thought so too. We sang Happy Birthday to her, she blew out the candles perfectly, and then as her mom Elsa started to cut the cake Emily burst into tears! It was the sweetest thing! She didn’t want her mom to ruin her perfect birthday cake by (gasp!) cutting it into slices to eat! We did manage to distract her with presents and then she was fine with the whole cake-cutting thing.

Elsa is known for her goody bags so Evren & Ayla made out from this party pretty well. On the way home from the party in the car Evren says, “Mommy?” What honey? “(sigh) I just love my goody bag so much. And I love Elsa so much too.” Awwww…..

After we got home and the kids played with all their loot, Evren carefully packed everything back into his goody bag, ran upstairs and put it in “a safe place” (his closet). At bedtime he wasn’t happy when I wouldn’t let him sleep with his goody bag. He was already snuggling with 2 blankies, Pooh, Teddy, and his favorite book and I really didn’t think we needed to add ‘a bag of toys’ into the mix.

Thanks for a great party Elsa! Happy Birthday Emily!

Click the photo for a larger view.

Emily’s Birthday Cake

 
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Posted by on December 8, 2006 in Birthday, Friends

 

Skeletons

07 Dec

In the car this morning after dropping Ayla at school Evren and I took a drive to the nearest Starbucks with a drive-thru. It’s a town over, but whatever. Don’t judge me. The entire way there he gave me a play-by-play of every scene from the Lilo & Stitch movie. (You know he doesn’t ever stop talking while he’s awake.) Then after we got our chocolatey-coffee goodness we were on our way home and I was listening to NPR on the radio and there was a woman being interviewed talking about Muslim CULTURE.

This prompted Evren’s very insightful question, “Mommy, what’s a culture?” (Excellent, I thought, let’s get this learning opportunity rolling.) “Well, honey, culture is how you grow up. We live in an American culture, your daddy grew up in a Turkish culture. Hey! Can you guess what your culture is?” With no pause for reflection, Evren replies with this..”Mommy, does everyone have a skeleton?” (????) “Wait! I thought we were talking about culture?!”

“No, mommy, I want to talk about skeletons.” Well, that we did. This in-depth discussion on skeletons prompted some questions I had a hard time with.

Like, “Where do skeletons come from?” Er, good question! I think I fumbled through that one with something about when a baby is in a mommy’s tummy, etc.

Here was another good one…”Do skeletons have hair?” (easy, I got this one.) “No.” But, you know what the next question was, don’t you? “Why not?” I think my genius answer went something like, “Honey, that’s just the way it is.”

 
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Posted by on December 7, 2006 in Evren

 

Fashion is Subjective

06 Dec

img_1499.jpg

I caught Evren walking around the house like this over the weekend. (???) Just a little fashion statement he came up with on his own.

Ayla claims that GAP stands for ‘Get Away Punk’.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2006 in Ayla, Evren

 

Telescopes & Lollipops

05 Dec

Evren had two different projects going yesterday. The first was he wanted a telescope. So, without mention of this idea to anyone, he pulled a brand new paper towel roll out of the pantry and thought it was perfectly reasonable to unroll the entire thing to get at the cardboard roll in the middle for his telescope. It’s logical, right? As you can see I caught on about half way through. Earlier, he had decided to unwrap every single lollipop and put them back in the candy jar. No explanation or reason, it was just something that needed to be done apparently.

Naked Lollipops

Click the photo for a larger version.

 
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Posted by on December 5, 2006 in Evren, Photos

 

Dinner Conversation

02 Dec

Leftover meatloaf and potatoes was what was on the menu tonight. It feels like I have a brick in my stomach now but whatever, it was good. Here are some snippets from our conversation at the dinner table tonight.

Ayla: “Hey Mom! You want to hear a secret?!? Huh?!?”

Jenn: “What?”

Ayla: “I LIKE PIE!” (Laughing and amused with herself)

Jenn: “What, that’s a secret? Everyone knows you’ll eat anything with whipped cream on it. You would eat a pencil if it had whipped cream on it.”

Ayla: (still laughing, but throws on her snotty voice for effect) “Uh, nooooo….but I WOULD lick the whipped cream off the pencil!”

(and then, a little later)

Evren making an announcement: “DONALD DUCK IS A PENGUIN!!!” (Hysterical laughter at his joke)

 
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Posted by on December 2, 2006 in Ayla, Evren, Food

 
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