Tasty Tuesday!

Love Shrek? Go enter for a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or do you prefer a $25 Wal-Mart gift card? Then go here.

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It's officially summer. Little Miss is finished with school, and Mister Man has only a day and a half remaining (and fifteen green days in a row!). It's also gotten really hot in Chicago - today being the exception, of course - which means that I'm sort of done using the stove or oven for the summer.

I do a lot of chicken grilling, and I use a lot of citrus marinades (ok, a lot of marinades in general). I realized that I haven't posted this one yet, but it's definitely one of our favorites!

And my apologies - I again have no pictures. This is a super easy and fast throw together recipe (as in I did it in eight minutes between conference calls last Thursday), and there are no leftovers once it's cooked!

Grilled Lime Chicken

Ingredients:
1/2 c lime juice (squeezing your own tastes much better)
3 cloves garlic, minced (don't use the jarred stuff!)
2 T sugar
1/3 c oil
salt and pepper to taste (you don't need much!)
6 chicken breasts

Directions:
Mince the garlic, juice your limes (3-4 is about 1/2 c depending on the juiciness of them). Add all the ingredients except the chicken into a container and shake well - or use your blender to whip it together, in which case you may not need to do anything but peel your garlic.

Add your chicken, and let marinate for 2-4 hours. I sometimes cut into strips of chicken to help it cook more quickly and have the taste get into the chicken more if I don't have as much time to marinate it.

Toss it on the grill - cook for 5-7 minutes per side, turning only once. Don't overcook it!

I like to serve mine with rice and corn and other fresh veggies. Yum!

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday!

Another One Bites The Dust

We're getting down to the finals days for a couple of these. If you've been thinking about entering, go do it now - a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.

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Today, I went to the wee ones' t-ball game. It was hot. I really, really didn't want to put on socks and sneakers, even though I knew I should if I was going to be out on the field coaching (ummm yeah, sucker me is also the t-ball coach).

Nope, I instead chose to wear my favorite pair of oh so comfy summer mules that I wear almost daily - alternating with a couple other similar styles. Granted, they've been due for an update in terms of fashion and wear, but I wasn't quite ready to go shoe shopping yet (and ummm yeah, I know it's odd, but I hate shopping for shoes and have probably fewer pairs than my husband does).

On the field of play, I did my usual - drawing of circles for the children in the field to show them "where you live" while playing each position, helping each child get a batting helmet on and ensuring they are all correctly positioned in the batter's box.

All was well, and I was very contentedly looking forward to my post game freezer pop. I changed Mister Man out of his cleats and back into his gym shoes. As I stood up and began walking over to his equipment bag (I use this term loosely, but bear with me), I noticed that walking was a challenge.

For some reason, my right shoe was making it really hard for me to walk. I kept going and finally realized something was wrong - maybe a stick stuck in my shoe?

No. No, it couldn't be that simple. Somewhere in my overuse and misuse of my shoe, I managed to pull apart the leather upper.

R.I.P. my dear mule.

My $1 flip flops from Target that have been my shower shoes at the gym for the past year and a half fortunately stepped up and managed to get me home, but they are not the long term solution.

Anyone want to go shoe shopping with me?

Strategy Number 532,742

We're getting down to the finals days for a couple of these. If you've been thinking about entering, go do it now - a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.

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I treasure my sleep. I like to sleep a lot. I am not a morning person (and really not so much of a night owl either, somehow). I never got over the teenage tendancy of trying to sleep as late as humanly possible before facing the day.

On weekdays, this means I wake up moments before the wee ones and dress at the same time they do before we head downstairs to eat and pack up backpacks. It's possible that there are days I don't brush my hair or anything else until after they've been dispatched to school.

The wee ones, however, are morning people. They wake up chipper and wanting to play - knowing that the days tend to be fairly full, leaving them with less than the amount of time they'd like to do nothing. While they don't get up super early, I have had to institute the rule that they are not allowed to go into each other's rooms to play until at least 7am.

In fact, I don't really need an alarm clock any more, because at 7am ever morning on the dot, I can hear them starting their games, generally in Little Miss's room.

Weekends though... weekends, we don't have to be out the door at 8am. Weekends are when we have a chance to relax a bit more and hang out. And sleep.

Except for the 7am thing.

I've tried getting them to sleep later, but they really just love playing with each other. Even when they agree the night before to sleep in and not play so early or so loud, that promise is forgotten by the time the sun peeks over the horizon.

I came up with a new strategy last night.



At 7am, I heard Mister Man tiptoe into Little Miss's room. He ran back and forth between the door and her bed reading her the sign. Then he explained loudly exactly what it meant

And then he closed her door and went back into her room.  Silence reigned until 7:45 on the dot.

Unfortunately, I was already awake by the time he left her room the first time, so this strategy failed in its mission. I'm back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll go sleep in the basement on weekends? Or send them down there. Hmmm....

If I Were A Bird, I Could Fly To The Store...

A quick interruption before the post... I still have three giveaways going on. Enter to win a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.

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Yesterday, Mister Man was putting his library books back on the bookshelf where they belong and generally helping me clean up the playroom. Unfortunately, he tripped slightly over the kiddy jumper and stubbed his toe.

I was on the floor about six feet away buried under small pieces of toys that I was trying to sort, and really... it was a stubbed toe, something he unfortunately someday needs to learn to be able to shake off. He immediately lifted his foot off the ground and made the face where he's about to cry.

Hey Mister, c'mon over here, and I'll take a look at your toe.

All I got was a head shake in return.

Remember what I told you before? For something like this, the more you use it, the more blood will go to the area and make it feel better.

Another head shake.

Sweet Pea, come over here if you want me to help you with it.

He started hopping on one foot, something he's really not yet coordinated enough to do, especially not with half a room between us.

My husband piped up then, Just do it like you did when doing the swim test the other day. Remember when you were tired but you found a way to do it even though it was really hard? You just took a deep breath and swam anyway.

Mister Man looked at my husband with a very puzzled look on his face. But Daddy, I'm not in water. How can I possibly swim to you?

Yep, that's my boy... the smartest little kid I know, but sometimes ohhhh sometimes he cracks me up with the things that fly right over his head.

PS He was fine. We got him to play-swim over, and he was fine by the time he reached me. As I figured he would be.

Childhood Scars

A quick interruption before the post... I still have three giveaways going on. Enter to win a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.

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Growing up was always something exciting to me. I remember anxiously awaiting the first day of school when I would get to go to kindergarten, when I got to be a Girl Scout, shaving my legs for the first time - all of them were moments I longed for. Being a grownup was always something full of such mystique for me, and I couldn't wait for it.

I know I'm not alone in this, and the first day of high school, passing the driver's test, going to college, getting married - all those are milestone we look forward to. For most of us, it's only after we've passed these milestones that we look back and realize that maybe the race to grow up didn't need to be quite that much of a focus.

A book I read recently led me to think about this - about how today we're forcing kids to grow up earlier and earlier, and how much they're missing out. I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali with Delphinne Minoui really brought it home - a ten year old girl, already married and divorced, forced by her circumstances to grow up faster than any child ever should.

The recent video with the dancing seven year olds is another example, although at least (and it's hard for me to even qualify this) - at least their loss of innocence wasn't nearly so visceral.

For me, I was lucky for the most part. I may have moved around a lot as a kid when my dad was transferred, but I was fine with that. My parents loved me, and they didn't put too much pressure on me to grow up any more than behaving in front of company.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, though, and there are some things where I can still see the scars - relatively minor as the psychological damage may have been.

When I was eight, my mom left my dad and we moved to a small condo where I remember helping my mom clip coupons. I don't remember a ton about that period, but clipping the coupons has stayed with me, along with my mom searching for work and driving a tiny, used two door Ford Escort - the cheapest car she could find. The fear of not having enough money and even of spending has stayed with me since then.

In some ways, this isn't a bad thing, as I've never had any debt problems and do a great job of saving money (hey, it's how we can afford to have me stay home with my husband as a school teacher). However, my reluctance to spend money is sometimes irrational and causes me to miss out on experiences or things that I really ought to - or could - enjoy.

My parents did get back together after less than a year, and they're still together today. When I was twelve, though, I had another experience that still scars me today. My dad went into rehab for alcoholism (successfully, I might add), but it was traumatic at the time. My parents never really did a great job explaining it to me, although I remember my mom sitting my sister and I down and telling us she had some news and then asking us what the first thing Daddy did when he got home from work each night - that's what stuck with me. After our numerous wrong answers (take off his tie, I remember was one of mine), my mom reminded us that he got a drink ("Johnnie Walker, Red and water" my sister and I chirped in a sing-song voice that looking back tells me we maybe saw far too much).

Dating through and after college, that fear stuck with me. I'm not a big drinker, and I never have been (hey - couple a fear of spending money with a fear of becoming alcoholic, and you have someone who doesn't drink much). I never understood the joys of going out to get drunk, and I probably never will.

And I was, and maybe still am, paranoid about that regular drink, like that's the proof that whoever I'm dating is on their way to becoming an alcoholic and recreating the situation my mom faced. Granted, there were a couple guys I dated who probably did achieve that, but most of them? They had no issues - I was the one who had an issue, and inevitably it became an issue in the relationship.

What "happened" to me - or rather, the events of my childhood? Minor. Completely off the radar compared to what it could be. And yet, I can see the impact they had on the person I am today.

Now I try to picture the person I would be today if I were married and divorced by eight years old. And I can't. I can't imagine the scars I'd have, the fear I'd have, the issues I'd face. And it breaks my heart to know that Nujood has yet to grow up to realize the scars she bears - and to know that she is far from alone, that childhood marriage is a regular occurence yet in certain parts of the world.

And if you'll excuse me, I have two children I need to go hug. And some childhoods I need to preserve.

I received the book "I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced" as a member of the Silicon Valley Moms Book Club. There was no compensation involved. Be sure to check out what other SV Moms had on their minds while reading about Nujood.

Tasty Tuesday!

Did you know? I want to make your day. Enter to win a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.

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On Memorial Day weekend, there are always lots of activities planned, many of which center around food. For us, we spent much of the weekend at birthday parties, but today we finally had the requisite grilling and cooking, and the wee ones had a blast.

Granted, this isn't the recipe that I made today (Laura, I made your Twix bars AGAIN), it's one of my favorites for barbeques and other informal gatherings. And now that I look at this recipe again, I'm going to have to make it soon!

Happy Memorial Day - and a huge thank you to all those who serve in every capacity.

Black Bean and Corn Salsa

Ingredients:
1/2 lb black beans, washed and soaked overnight (or use a can of beans - drained and well rinsed)
10 oz frozen corn
1 small red onion, chopped
3 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 c cilantro (fresh), chopped
2 avocadoes
2 limed, juiced
salt to taste

Directions:
Soak your black beans overnight. Drain and rinse a couple times. Fill your pot with water about an inch over the beans again and simmer for 2-3 hours until tender. Drain and add to a bowl.

While the beans are coming to room temperature, seed your tomatoes (or be lazy like me and just cut them in half) and chop them 1/2 inch pieces. Chop the red onion (you want about 3/4 cup - depending on your preference; this is what I shoot for) and the cilantro.

Add these to the beans along with the frozen corn, and stir gently to mix. Add the juice of your limes and about 1/2 t salt (again - season to your taste). Stir again. Slice up your avocadoes into the same size pieces as your tomatoes and add to the salsa. Stir gently one last time to coat the avocado with the lime juice and distribute throughout the salsa, but don't break the up.

Chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Serve the same day with chips (or my favorite - slices of cucumber so I can justify eating the entire bowl myself).

Enjoy this and more with Blessed With Grace and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday!

Posting at Chicago Moms Blog Today

I'm hanging out over at Chicago Moms Blog today - I'm in the process of passing the hat in my PTO world and wow is it so not the world I thought it was! Come take a gander and make me feel loved!

Give yourself a present: Enter one of my giveaways for a week of summer day camp for ages 5-12 here, a fun Shrek-tacular prize pack here, or a $25 Wal-Mart gift card here.