Aurora Borealis

We were supposed to meet up with some of the folks from the pro-life commitee after they got finished with this afternoon’s annual Life Chain down at the cathedral.  But the benediction service following Life Chain must have been very brief because they were done much earlier than expected and weren’t interested in waiting until the pizza place opened at 5:00.  So just the family went.  Agent Murphy struggled to take an afternoon nap, but he still managed to be mostly happy at the restaurant.  (A kid’s birthday party - 8 kids and 8 adults - came in right after us, so even if he’d decided to be cranky and loud, it wouldn’t have mattered.)  Good food, and we’re glad to see this neighborhood pizzeria is doing good business, and we were very excited to see an ice cream shop is “coming soon” across the street.

In other news, all the letters from Agent Murphy’s name puzzle bench are currently accounted for.  It’s good he has his whole name back!

Well, sort of.  We had leftover pumpkin soup on the menu for lunch today, and we planned to make RW’s pumpkin pancakes with some of the extra canned pumpkin.  So we had them together as pumpkin brunch.  The pancakes were quite yummy, though my flipping technique needs some work.

Meanwhile, Agent Murphy has gotten up from his morning nap all grumpy.  Hopefully he’ll do better with his afternoon nap because we’re going out for pizza tonight.

So I came down with the cold Mr. Tldz had.  Felt pretty crappy all weekend.  Still don’t feel great today, but I didn manage to get a fair bit done.  Of course, there’s feeding the Agent, picking up toys, picking up toys again, feeding the Agent, picking up…  Well, you get the idea.  But I also got diapers folded, a load of kiddo laundry washed and put away, scrubbed the stovetop and kitchen floor, and made another test run of Agent Murphy’s proposed birthday cake.  I didn’t mess up the frosting this time, so we’ll get more of the full effect.  But my cake decorating skills definitely need work.  Maybe the Agent will get birthday wishes written on his cake.  Right now we just have squiggles.

We’ll be having fudge cake for dessert tonight.  If it’s any good, I’ll use that recipe for Agent Murphy’s birthday cake.  I intended to make my butter cream frosting, but messed it up and have a bowl of goo instead.  (Sauce on your cake, anyone?)  At least I know that recipe works - well, most of the time; so I was really just testing the cake.  The recipe says it’s good enough to eat without frosting.  We’ll see.

My birthday was yesterday, but Mr. Tldz and I went out for dinner on Saturday.  (The restaurant isn’t open on Sundays.)  Yummy Thai food from Phuket.  Leftovers for lunch today.  It was a leisurely meal with no baby in tow.  Yep, it was a big day for Agent Murphy’s half-birthday - he stayed with a babysitter for the first time.  His Aunty M. was nice enough to come over for the evening, and apparently he comported himself well.

Even though it was a day early, I got to open my presents when we got home - Alton Brown’s kitchen manual for organizing our own recipes and kitchen notes and Joseph and Chico.  An authorized biography of the pope for children written from the perspective of a cat he used to own - how cool is that?!?  A quick glance at it suggests it will be a lot of fun and well worth reading.

Yesterday, we enjoyed sweet tea - our first batch of sun tea of the year.  That went along with leftovers for lunch - green tomato pie and barbcued green beans.  Gosh, you’d think I was a Southerner or something!  Then it was homemade pizza for dinner, followed by chess pie.  We also made an egg custard pie for the week, so we’ll be able to compare and contrast the pretty similar recipes.

All in all, a lovely weekend.

My first attempt at sauerbraten turned out reasonably well.  Sauce was rather too thick, though.  Next time I’ll use more water than the recipe calls for.