Wes likes to occasionally sit down and practice letters. At school I know they have him practice tracing the letters of his name, which we should probably practice more at home.

When he “writes” I think he’s actually just kind of drawing, and if it turns out to resemble a letter, then he’ll declare it a letter.

Here he is writing the letter “V.”

On Friday we had a date night that involved going to a cooking school and taking a class.

I have grouched on here before numerous times about my lack of cooking finesse (most recently here). When I saw Groupon offering a cooking class for 50% off I went for it and bought one for both me and John so we could go together.

It was a bit of a time commitment when you consider the cost of babysitters, but it was worth it. It took us an hour and a half just to get there, when it should have been an hour or less, so we were late. But the other students were just chilling, eating chips and homemade dip and drinking wine. We were in the minority for once; there were more wine-drinkers than not.

After we got our aprons on and introduced ourselves we got up and went to work. The class is three hours (actually, it went late and was four), and in that time you work in teams to make, and then eat, a four-course meal. We signed up for “Classic Steakhouse.” (Come on. You’re not surprised “steak” is in the title, are you?)

The menu was:

mushroom caps stuffed with crab imperial
iceberg wedge salad with homemade bleu cheese dressing
oven roasted asparagus
twice-baked tall potatoes
bacon-wrapped filet Mignon with Bearnaise sauce
bananas foster

This type of cooking was fantastic because all the ingredients you needed were already set out on neat little trays in the appropriate measurements. Oh, and someone else was there to clean up after you. So wish I had that at home. I’d cook all the time.

We were in a team of five. First up was the appetizer of crab-stuffed mushrooms.

Let me just say now that John hates both crab and mushrooms.

But here he is so diligently stirring the crab meat mixture anyway. Because he is a team player.

As we prepared the food our instructor, Shaun (female), guided us and occasionally I’d learn something new. Like about how you should clean mushrooms with a mushroom brush instead of in water. Huh. We didn’t believe there was such a thing as a mushroom brush until she whipped one out and showed us.

After preparing the appetizer we made homemade bleu cheese dressing. I don’t have pictures of it, but it was easy and I think I’d be silly to ever buy the stuff in a bottle again because this tasted so much better.

Next up was asparagus. We learned how to snap off the bottom third, and how if you want to keep asparagus fresher longer in the fridge, put the ends in a bowl of water. (Hear that, Mom?) We tossed the asparagus in olive oil with salt and pepper and arranged it on a tray (actually, a rack on top of a tray) to bake.

Then we made the steak. Which was pretty much the reason most people signed up for the class. We are all great steak lovers (or married to one).

Shaun said that the only grocery store she will buy fresh meat from is Harmons, but that mostly she gets it from CostCo.

We wrapped our filet in bacon (easy) and secured it with a toothpick. Then we heated olive oil in a skillet until it was smokin’ hot before adding the fillets. We seared them on each side and seared the bacon around the sides. Then the skillet went in the oven for a few minutes to finish cooking.

Then, The Beast: Bearnaise sauce. It’s one of those tricky sauces that can go wrong easily, like hollandaise sauce (which I’ve made twice–and I only had to do it twice because it failed the first time).

Bearnaise sauce has delicious fresh tarragon in it, which I’d never used before but it smells so good. It uses shallots, too, which was also new to me.

However. We completely goofed up the sauce the first time around. You have to whisk the base constantly while slowly adding melted butter, and if you add the butter too fast or too low or breathe wrong, the sauce will break–meaning it falls apart into a grainy mess instead of getting thicker and more beautiful. I don’t know what our problem was, but we flunked. Only one team out of three made their sauce right the first time around.

By the time we finished the sauce (twice), it was close to 9 pm (which is when the class was supposed to end). We hadn’t eaten anything except the chips and dip when we first came, and we were ready to dig in!

So we did. We sat around the table and talked and ate while the kitchen staff served up the food we made.

First up: mushroom caps stuffed with crab. John tasted it and then gladly gave up his serving to seafood-loving team members. I thought the crab mixture was good and would be really tasty on a toasted baguette, but I didn’t love the mushroom. (I really don’t like mushrooms in general.)

Our salad was good. The bleu cheese dressing was a little heavy on the lemon, but it was still miles ahead of the store-bought stuff.

Then the entree. We had our oven roasted asparagus, which was crispy and so tasty with the oil and salt and pepper. The twice-baked tall potatoes were good and creamy (although we realized we forgot the salt and pepper, and we all agreed next time we’d add more cheese). And, the steak! Crispy, juicy, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Yum.

Last up was the bananas foster. We basically made a caramel sauce with bananas in the skillet, and then set the whole thing on fire. Except the flame was totally unimpressive. I didn’t get a picture of the piddly flame, or of the final product, but we ate the bananas with Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

It was such a wonderful night. We enjoyed the food, the company, and the experience. I have heard people say that they love getting together and cooking for friends, which I never really understood. But this was really fun, relaxed, and now I understand what it means to get together to break bread with friends.

If you’re not from around here you probably don’t know about the biggest Halloween tradition: trunk-or-treat. It’s an alternative to going door-to-door to homes of people you don’t know at night. Instead, people in a church congregation gather in the church parking lot and kids can go car-to-car to receive candy.

I decorated the trunk and set a bowl full of wrapped cookies so people could help themselves while John and I walked around with the kids.

This year Wes was a cowboy and Carissa was Little Red Riding Hood.

Wes was supposed to be the Big Bad Wolf, but that changed when I walked into a fabric store, felt overwhelmed, and walked right back out again. He is a cowboy courtesy of Walmart.

John carried Carissa while I walked with Wes. At first, Wes was a little slow following the crowd of kids, but after the third car or so he clearly understood that at each stop he could hold out his bucket and someone would give him candy. After that we went really fast! Wes is not really into candy (he likes M&M’s, period), but I think he liked accumulating a bucket full.

Carissa wasn’t into it so much, so John carried her around. I gave her a small basket, but maybe I shouldn’t have given her one at all because it was overflowing before we were even half-way through.

We have ample sugar in our house now.

Wes got a camera for his birthday this year from Grandma. It’s a Kidizoom brand–bright orange and highly indestructible.

Here are a few picks from his first set of pix.

Eating bread.

And yogurt, double-spoon style.

Wes reading scholarly stuff.

…or maybe it’s a comedy.

Carissa out front. I love her little polka-dot tights with the ruffly skirt. Dressing a girl is so fun.

But what to do with her ever-growing hair when she won’t keep a hair clip in?

Last week I took Wesley and Carissa to the local pumpkin patch.

There was a corn pit and a mini-maze for little kids. Here Wes is standing behind the corn pit and in front of the maze entrance.

He liked the maze.

But he was more interested in finding rocks in the hay than finding his way out.

So he spent a long time in there. He found a bale of hay to stand on, looking out.

Later he took a walk in the pumpkin patch.

He didn’t pick a pumpkin, though–he picked rocks.

Which he took over to the petting zoo and tossed into the animals’ water buckets.

While Carissa watched.

John here. I know Shannon is the one who gets the Post glory in these parts, but I had to comment on the awesome-est flowchart I’ve seen in a while (and yes, awesome-est is absolutely correct—it’s in the dict-tionary, I promise).

So NPR (that’s National Public Radio, I am indeed referencing to it) recently conducted a survey of its listeners to get their take on the top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books. Well they released their list of books and that was that. No descriptions or commentary. Just a list. If you wanted to—you know—actually pick one to read you were on your own. Brush off your top hat that you’ve been keeping in the attic for just such an occasion and pick a title at random.

SFSignal, however, has taken those 100 books and created a flowchart to help you navigate to those books you might be interested in. Whether you’re “new to the fantasy genre,” looking for your next Cyberpunk-With-Funny-Hats novel, or want something Science Fictiony / Fantasy-esk without being seen in that section of the bookstore, then they got you covered.

You can start navigating the flowchart here.

If you prefer your flowchart mapped out (i.e., you like to know what kind of trouble your response might get you into) then the whole chart is viewable too.

Our house at bedtime (or maybe a little after).

Autumn is in full swing, but today was as beautiful and warm as if it were mid-June. I met up with my friend Marcy and her son Marshall, and we took our kids to the zoo.

It was a lovely day.

Wes rode the carousel (on the rhino, or “eye-no”, as he says).

Mostly, he liked to look up at the turning mechanism that makes the rhino go up and down.

We enjoyed seeing all the animals…

…like the elephants (see the baby elephant?)…

…and giraffes.

After the giraffes, there is a steep hill to climb, made all the steeper when pushing a double stroller loaded with 50+ lbs of kids and accessories. But it was worth it. This stretch of road was actually my favorite in all the zoo because it was high enough that you felt like you were hiking in the mountains. And, I guess, we practically were.

I also like the expression on the kids’ faces, although I’m not sure what they were thinking when I snapped this.

Us with our friends Marcy and Marshall!

A three-day-a week ritual.

When Wes knows it’s time for school he waits by the window and says, “Bus! Come!” When the bus arrives he runs to the door and hops (literally) down the front steps. I used to walk with him down the steps all the way to the bus, holding his hand. But Wes won’t hold my hand anymore. Instead, I stand on the porch and watch him go.

He is four years old now, after all.

Wes has never been one of those kids who gravitates towards crafts. So the other day when he came up to me and said, “Paint!”, I had ask him to repeat it a few times to make sure I heard right.

We went downstairs to the office and dug up my old (very old) tray of watercolor paints. I set him up at the table with a cup of water, a coloring page, and old newspaper, and then he got to work on his masterpiece.

And here he is showing off his ambidextrous skills. He is left-handed but often uses his right.

Carissa turns 14 months old this weekend. She is growing so much in size and personality. I feel like once she hit one, her personality started to soar.

When she’s happy she giggles and wiggles and dances on her tippy toes (John says she gets that from me). She’s a lot more vocal (read: LOUD) than Wes was at her age; sometimes I think she whines too much. But like Wes, she gets into everything. Her favorite activity involves emptying drawers (which she often does in partnership with her brother). She has three teeth on the bottom, four on top, and is getting some molars (oh, boy!). She is very ticklish and likes it when I do “Five Little Piggies” on her toes (which ends with a healthy dose of tickles). Wes also likes to do “Piggies” on Carissa’s toes. His version goes like this: “Pig, home, pig, home, pig, WEE-WEE-WEE-WEE-WEE” as he tickles her like crazy.

I can definitely see John in her, but–and I’m a little sorry for her–I think she’s starting to look more and more like me, especially like me as a little girl.

Then again, not a day goes by when I don’t look at her and think, “She is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” so maybe that’s not a bad thing after all.

Wesley’s Favorite Grandpa

Carissa’s Favorite New Skill

Carissa’s Favorite Team

Wesley’s Favorite Activity (watching football) with His Favorite People (his family)

So, I seem to have lost my camera. Last seen: on the top of the trunk of my car, as I buckled Wes and Carissa in their car seats.

Not a happy thing.

Today, in fact, I found myself oft times thinking not-happy thoughts and focusing on not-happy things. It took a lot of effort, and maybe some sprinkling of blessings from above, but the day turned into a very nice one. Even though I still can’t find my camera.

This morning we had a baby sitter early to attend a pottery making class. I signed us up for it as an excuse to get out of the house on a real date (hee hee). We barely made it to the class on time, only to find the place basically empty. We came to learn that 1) whoever scheduled us for a class signed us up for the kids’ class, not the adult one, and 2) the teacher canceled all classes today anyway and didn’t tell the pottery studio she wasn’t going to be there.

Our babysitter meter was already ticking away, and I maybe whined lightly to the attendant about how we got a babysitter especially to be there for the class that was scheduled wrong and then canceled. The word “discount” might have popped up a couple times.

So we’re going to reschedule that class. Since we were already out, we debated seeing a movie (a total rarity), but it would have put us getting home later than we had planned. And since it turned out I left our cell phone at home, and the movie theater didn’t have a phone we could use (really??), we opted to float around the mall and enjoy a sit-down lunch instead. It is always nice to walk around with one’s hand in your sweetheart’s, no matter what the occasion.

After we were home and the kids were settled into naps I found myself idly catching up on bookmarked blogs that I haven’t read in a while. One of these is the Nie Nie Dialogues. It’s written by a local woman who survived a private plan crash in 2008. Eight-five percent of her body burned, and her husband sustained substantial burns, too, but they survived. They have four lovely kids and–amazingly–one on the way. Pretty much, every time I read what this woman has gone through and still experiences daily I am in awe, and it gives me a healthy and needed dose of gratitude for my own life.

After dinner (grilled cheese) I needed to get out. Wes and Carissa gladly agreed to a ride in the stroller and off we went. Tonight was cool and brisk–the brink of Fall. We walked around our neighborhood and stopped at the playground behind Wesley’s school. (He was super excited to be at his school and kept pointing to the doors, saying, “Open!”)

Wes didn’t want to climb in the playground but preferred to race around the grassy field, playing with old deflated basketballs and soccer balls left behind. We chased each other and played tag (which, in Wesley’s world, means you run after him saying, “I’m gonna get you!” until you do and he giggles wildly and runs away as fast as he can so you can get him more). Carissa toddled after us, trying to catch up. It was dusk. The clouds were full and spread across the whole sky. The air was still, except for our shouts and laughter. Wes kept pointing up and declaring, “Moooooon!” It was a beautiful evening, and I wish I had my camera to take pictures to share with you. But at least we have the memories.