Friday, Wyatt and I put together a gingerbread house. This is the second year in a row we’ve done this and I’m hoping that it’s going to become a tradition for us to make one every year on the day after Thanksgiving. We started with a basic Wilton Gingerbread House kit and I supplemented with a big bag of M&Ms, some candy canes a bag of spice drops and a bag of giant gum drops. There is no way in hell I was going to make my own gingerbread house. I tried that once, back in high school and it was a big old pain in the patootie.  No sir — a kit is just fine.

What makes a gingerbread house look good is candy. Lots of candy. Get as much candy on that thing as you can fit on there. Then add a little more. I like lots of colors too, so besides the M&Ms you don’t see any  chocolate on our house.

This is the front view: Note the yellow ball to the right of the door — that’s the doorbell. Wyatt insisted that we put that on there. He also really wanted the gumdrop fence around the edge and I thought that ended up looking really good. I bought that tree in the front yard.

This is a view of the right side of the house. Wyatt wouldn’t let me put anything but the window on this wall, but I think we made up for it with the roof.

Here’s the back wall.

A view of the left wall:

And finally, here’s a top view looking down.

We made this little snow man out of gumdrops. Wyatt made me put those creepy blue eyes on there. They’re kind of growing on me now.

This chimney and Santa are the “customized” piece of the house. Wyatt really, really wanted this, but the kit doesn’t come with a chimney, so I had to make one. I used kraft cardstock so that it would look like gingerbread, but we ended up completely covering it with frosting, so it didn’t matter much.  The Santa is downloaded off the internet. I pulled it into photoshop and printed two versions — one regular and one flipped — then cut them out and taped them together so it looks like Santa’s waving from either the front or the back.

I think he’s my favorite part!

I took my 30,000th photo with our digital camera last week. Can you believe that? We bought it in April of 2005, so it’s taken about three and a half years for us to take that many photos. In honor of the occasion I decided to go back through our files and show the 10,000th and 20, 000th photos as well.

30,000

View of the sunset and BART from our back porch.
Taken: November 16, 2008

20,000

Carving pumpkins for the first time. I was about to give Wyatt a kiss in this photo, so that’s why my mouth is like that.
Taken: October 31, 2007

10,000

Roses from our back yard, lined up on the window sill above our sink. Not a bad view when you’re doing the dishes.
Taken: September 4, 2006

One of the things that I think is striking about these three photos is that they all feature “every day” kinds of subjects. This is one of the things that I like best about digital photography — because there are no physical barriers (no film in the house!) and no financial barriers (films too expensive to waste!) we end up photographing anything that strikes our fancy.  As little as ten years ago, people approached photography very differently.  Many people only brought out the camera for special events — birthdays, holidays, etc. — and had very few family photos. There are people I know whose childhood photos wouldn’t even fill a whole shoebox. Flash forward to the age of digital cameras and our family is taking 10,000 photos every 14 months. By the time both of my kids graduate from college, we could easily have a quarter of a million photos of them. Insane.

10,000 photos a year cause their own kind of problems, of course.  I have photo management “strategies”. We struggle to keep our photos backed up and sorting through the many photos requires a lot of time. But I’m thrilled to have a visual record of our family’s life.

My kid is not eating anything these days! Frankly, I’m not sure why he’s still alive. I’ve read that a person can survive without food for two weeks, so maybe he’s just not far enough into his hunger strike yet. If things don’t change soon I’m afraid I’ll be posting an obituary along with photos of bento boxes next Friday.

OK, so I jest….but only a little. One wonders why I bother to pack these lunches in the mornings, just to unpack them again in the evenings.

Tuesday: peas, crackers, a cheese elephant, salami, a rice star and some grapes. As far as I can tell the only thing Wyatt ate from this lunch was the salami.

Why is there a hand in that photo? Well, my dad told me the other day that he’s having a hard time judging the size of the bento boxes we have, so I asked Wyatt to put his hand in the photo for scale. Here’s another one where he’s holding his lunch box. I’m not sure this is a great way to judge the size though because the fisheye effect from the lens is making his lunch look pretty gigantic in this photo.

Anyway….

Wednesday his lunch had a rice bear with a catsup face, strawberries and little smokies. There is also a container of catsup down below the sausages for dipping. Guess what Wyatt ate from this lunch.

One strawberry.

Seriously.

Thursday I gave him corn, strawberries and a thermos with buttered alphabet noodles with some peas and garlic mixed in.  He at the strawberries. At least he ate all five of them this time.

Today I was in a super big rush to get out of the house because I had to be somewhere by 9 am so this was the fastest lunch I’ve put together in a long time. Hot dog bun, strawberries, grapes and baked tofu. He ate the bun! He ate the bun! And the strawberries. Woooo!

So, you’ll be happy to know that I did cook dinner at home every night last week.  It was tough and we had to switch a couple of meals around and improvise a little here and there, but we managed to do it. Yay us! We never made the fish because I kept forgetting to take it out of the freezer. Also, out turkey didn’t thaw in time for Sunday dinner, so we’ll be doing that this week.

This is what I have planned for this week:

Tuesday: Skillet Paella from the Cook’s Country website, green salad

Wednesday: slow-cooker pot roast with carrots, potatoes and parsnips

Thursday: turkey dinner — out turkey didn’t thaw in time to have it for dinner on Sunday so we’ll be having it this week.

Friday: Reuben sandwiches, green salad

Saturday: Chicken parmesan, green beans, garlic bread. This is the last of our Dream Dinners meals that I prepped before Augie was born.

Sunday: pork tenderloin, acorn squash, broccoli

Monday: Thai coconut fish, stir fried snap peas and red pepper

I’m also going to buy stuff for a back-up meal of spaghetti with turkey Italian sausage.

I’ll admit it: this was not my most inspired week as far as the lunch-making went. I’m getting kind of bored with the lunches I’ve been packing. Fruit, salami, tofu, meatballs. Snore.

Also, Wyatt is having one of those weeks where he’s being super-picky and refusing to eat almost everything I make him for dinner or suggest for his lunch. It’s hard to stay inspired when all of your best ideas are rejected.

Our cupboards were completely bare on Tuesday morning, so I really had to dig to find enough stuff to fill Wyatt’s lunch box. I ended up sending some leftover beans from dinner the night before, a banana and the last two frozen turkey meatballs. He ate everything but the beans which is weird because he gobbled them up on Monday night.

Wednesday I made him a mini-burrito full of refried beans and jack cheese. I put it in a thermos to keep it warm, but I didn’t take a picture of that because there are very few things in the world that are less appetizing than a picture of a burrito shoved into a thermos. Instead, I present to you a mini burrito on a salad plate. Ta da! I also gave Wyatt strawberries.

Thursday he had baked tofu, corn and strawberries.

Daddy Bento Alert! I have a cold, so Zach let me sleep in on Friday. He also kindly packed Wyatt a lunch of strawberries, salami and a hot dog bun. I have a feeling this one will be a hit.

OK, so my big goal for this week is to make dinner at home every single night for seven days. Yikes! To many of you, this would probably be no big deal, but we are really bad about getting take out when we are tired, so this is a challenging for me.

We started last night, but I’m just getting to posting our menu today. I’m hoping posting here will keep me on the straight and narrow.

Tuesday: Pork, broccoli and red pepper stir fry over white rice

Wednesday: Skillet Goulash from the latest issue of Cook’s Country, green salad

Thursday: home made chicken noodle soup, bread, green salad

Friday: artichoke ravioli with lemon-artichoke sauce, garlic bread

Saturday: Thai coconut fish, stir fried green beans and red pepper

Sunday: Turkey dinner! I got a free turkey for spending $100 at Lucky, so I’ll be making that along with sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts and stuffing. Our neighbors are coming over and they’ll bring mashed potatoes and a pumpkin cheesecake.

Monday: pork chops with some kind of pan sauce, roasted acorn squash and green salad

I’m also making homemade applesauce and trying a couple of recipes from a book called the Toddler Café
to see how Wyatt likes them. I’ll report back here with the results on those.