Bath time

Andrew very excited that he turned on the faucet by himself

Cars get a wash too

Owen does shampoo

Good times

That last picture was taken a moment before Andrew went number two in the tub. Good times.

Best.cheese.sauce.ever

By popular demand, the recipe to The Cheese Sauce

Ingredients:
1 white onion, fine dice
1.5 cups white wine
1/2 stick unsalted butter
+ 1 tbsp 5 tbsp AP flour (that's All Purpose flour - just took me a couple hours to figure that out)
4 oz shredded sharp cheddar
2 oz shredded pizza cheese blend
1-1.5 cups 2% milk
dash tabasco
dash worcestershire
S&P to taste

Procedure:
1) sweat onion in 1 tbsp butter until translucent
2) add wine and reduce until almost dry
3) add butter;
4) melt and add flour to make roux
5) cook roux slowly for 15 min
6) add milk and stir until all roux is absorbed
7) add cheese and simmer slowly until melted
8) add worcestershire and tabasco,
9) salt and pepper until nummy
10) strain and enjoy!

This sauce is super good on most things edible. I topped off my baked potato three times with the sauce. May explain why my pants are a wee bit tight.

More tricks

Owen is sitting up!

Part time update

Things I’ve been doing now that I have all that extra free time:

• Working
  
• Laundry
  
• Dishes
  
• Cooking real food
  
• Dishes
  
• Cleaning the cat box
  
• Grocery shopping
  
• Picking up the boys before they get the early evening grump-grumps and hanging out with them before we’ve got to start the bed-time routine.
  
• Laundry
  
• Creating a less chaotic home-base for all my boys

Working my part time schedule is really working for the family and it seems to be working for the man, I mean job, too. I’ve had to stay late a few days (until 3:00 p.m. or so) and put in some time on the weekends (who schedules 7 a.m. Monday morning conference calls that require big fancy PowerPoint presentations? The head honchos in Minnesota that’s who. And us Californians get all defensive and don’t want to appear like slackers so we say, “7 a.m. Monday morning? Sure, no problem, we love to start work before the sun comes up.”)

Things are not quite as spic and span, organized and Martha-esqe as I’d like them to be but I think that’s to be expected for the next 18 years or so.

Great things about going to my brother's house

We went to Uncle Scott's house yesterday to hang out with the family. There was much eating and football watching. The camera was in the car (why I didn't grab it I do not know) so I don't have any great picks, but here are a few highlights:

• Andrew calls my brother Uncle Spot
• Sammie and Cassie love to play with Andrew and Owen, and the feeling is so very mutual
• The cheese sauce oh, the cheese sauce. He made the best.cheese.sause.ever.
• Watching the kids chase each other around and around in circles in the living room. The best entertainment really is free.
• Free cooking lessons. Let me tell you about how great a convection oven is because now I can. Did you know that if your roasting pan is a bit tight for two chickens, you can sit them up on their ends in the roasting rack and they will both fit nicely?
• Air conditioning. He lives in Palm Springs and it was 89 degrees yesterday. Isn't it like Fall or something already?