Dog Feeding Check Mark Calendar

Last Friday Mom set up the dry erase weekly calendar to have checkmarks when someone feeds Billy, so he isn't fed extra as sometimes happens. In theory it is a great idea, but not so much when I went to erase the marks put there last week and discover the Monday evening and Tuesday ones don't come off. Apparently, someone (i.e. Mom!) used the permanent marker instead of the dry erase ones. The sharpie is in the organizer the calendar is on, but it was in a different slot and it is a retractable style marker and not one with a cap like the dry erase ones we have.

Luckily I knew about using rubbing alcohol to remove permanent marker after having to do it off of pumpkins when working at the pumpkin festival last year and a group decorated theirs before realizing the pumpkins were not free.

Calendar is now set back up with dry erase markers and sharpie is moved to junk drawer.

Forgot to give Mik a tour of house

Tonight Mik tried to have me go wake up Mom with the excuse that he did not know where Mom & Dad's room was.  I thought he was bluffing, but turns out he legitimately did not know where their room was.  I guess we forgot to give him a tour of the whole house after we moved in.

Seriously, the house is smaller than our old one, but the layout is with separate wings, so you really can just use the common areas and not encounter each other's rooms for the most part, especially since Mik has his own bathroom rather than sharing like the rest of us do.

At least Mik did vaguely remember my room was through the kitchen and he really did try to bluff knowing that he could get to my room right out the front door.  He definitely knew that, as the other day when he came home with Dad they knocked there to ask me something.

Mik Grapples with Concept of Daylight Savings Time

Having lived all his life in Arizona until this year, Mik was kind of mind blown when we talked about losing an hour overnight for daylight savings time. He knew about Daylight Savings Time and basically understood how it worked, but having only 23 hours in the day when the clocks spring forward had him staring trying to grasp the reality. In particular, because we were talking about driving home from Disney World today and gaining an hour when we got back in our home time zone, but would then lose the hour with Daylight Savings Time tomorrow. Bottom line was he could not figure out the purpose of Daylight Savings Time and likes it the way it was in Arizona, which we all agreed with.

Valentine's Day: 1st Holiday in Our New Home

Wednesday Dad and I planned how to celebrate Valentine's Day on the actual day, but Mom had forgotten to tell us she was going out of town that evening.  Thus, we celebrated it a day late tonight.

My plan was to make a heart shaped cake with cupcakes as Mom thought that was cool when we were in Target the other day.  Since the kitchen is only partially unpacked I had to improvise a little in how I made it.  For one, we had no mixing bowls unpacked when I was mixing up the batter, so I ended up using a pot.  Of course, the one box I unpacked while the cupcakes were baking was the one with some of the mixing bowls!

Secondly, we have not found the pans, so I could not make regular sized cupcakes.  What I had unpacked already, though, was my mini cupcake maker, which ended up being a better way of making them anyways.  However, it took forever to use up all the batter (about 8 batches at 8 minutes each).

I topped the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and strawberries after arranging them in a heart shape.

Not Being Able to Find Mom & Dad in New House

The first night in our new house I ended up repeating the experience of when we moved into our first house when I was 1.  At that time we moved from a two bedroom condo to a one story house with what I remember being four bedrooms and 3 living rooms.   It was basically really huge and when we first moved in I would wander around unable to find my mommy and daddy.

Over 20 years later moving back into the same house with my both parents for the first time in over 5 years, I ended up doing the same thing.  It is not that the place is huge (my room is huge compared to my old one, but the house overall is not).  However, I asked Mom where Dad was and then went to find him outside playing what I call musical cars because you have to park the cars just so to fit them all in the driveway.  Then I went in to tell Mom I found Dad only to end up going in circles trying to find her.

Thus, it is easy to wander in circles with the way the main path through the house is basically a circle.  In fact, you can do a whole circle route if you go out on of the doors to my room and then go in the front door.  Funny enough that is actually the shortest route from my room to half of the house including the bathroom.

Changing Lightbulb in Mik's Room

Of course, one week from move date and the light bulb in Mik's room finally went out. Mik is now sure wishing the move date didn't get moved back a week, as he had to put up with Dad coming in after waiting two nights of no real light in his room and putting the ladder right over him to change the bulb. He asked Mik to move, but only gave him five seconds, which wasn't even enough time for him to stop leaning against the bed. Quite uncomfortable fifteen minutes of waiting for Dad to then go search out a fresh lightbulb, but at least it is changed.

Continuing Our Melting Pot Tradition

When I "graduated" from high school in 2004 we went to The Melting Pot.  Then in 2007 we celebrated my Bachelor degree graduation at The Melting Pot.  Mik graduated from high school in December and last night we finally got around to going to The Melting Pot to celebrate (it took so long to get around to it because of Mom and Dad going to Chicago for Christmas and then having  several days of parties and get togethers this past week with their getting remarried on January 1st and having a bunch of family and friends in town).


Unlike most times we have done the Melting Pot, this time we stuck to just the cheese and chocolate.  It was also the first time we had gone as just the four of us and it was kind of odd to only have one pot at the table.  Thus, we had two cheese courses to be able to try to different cheeses.  Then for dessert we had the Cookies and Cream Marshmallow Dream.