"Blink" at the Denver Art Museum

The kids are on their three week Spring break. This will all change next year when Jake goes to middle school and Isaac's school goes to the traditional schedule. Anyhow, I want to do one excursion a week so that I know that they aren't watching TV and playing video games the WHOLE TIME. Last week we met Jason downtown, had lunch and saw Blink at the Denver Art Museum

Lunch at Cap City Grill, across the street from the museum. We started outside, but it was just on this side of too chilly so we moved inside. The wait staff, who happened to be related to the owners, were very nice about it. The waitress had a brood of children herself, thus, most likely, the patience she exhibited when dealing with us.
Yeah, he's thrilled to be spending the day with his family at the art museum. I find myself thinking, yet again, "He'll thank me later".
The library, it's one of my favorite buildings downtown.


Before you get to the actual exhibit there's are activities for the kids. You can do flip books and a couple of other things that have technical terms that I can't remember. Pre-technology methods of showing movement.
One of the first exhibits and one of my favorites, it was a room of lit numbers and words moving around the room. I liked that you could see your 'shadow' against the wall and the lit images just went around you. Then you'd look at each other and see the images on your face...but not the actual image, just the pixels (at least I think that's the correct word).
not a great picture, but I think you can get the idea.

This was fun, it's on the ceiling and you can hear the tapping and see the tap dance from this angle.

All in all, I enjoyed the day with the family and the exhibit. Jake even cracked a smile and seemed interested at times.

Tortilla (Spanish-frittata-omelet-thing)

Being from the Western part of the U.S. I am surrounded by people who think tortillas are flat wheat bread products. However, in Spain and Cuba and probably other Spanish speaking countries, a tortilla is a combo omelet-frittata. A really yummy one at that. During our trip to Spain in 2006, we lived on these. I still haven't been able to completely recreate it, maybe it's the cheese, maybe it's just that someone else was cooking, maybe it was the fact we were in Spain? I don't know, but this is pretty close.

one dozen eggs

half a sweet yellow onion -thinly sliced

1 red pepper -thinly sliced

three red potatoes -thinly sliced

1 handful of grated provolone or mozzarella

2 handfuls of grated sharp cheddar

1 handful of grated asiago or parmesan

1-2 tbs or so of milk

sea salt to taste

pepper to taste

a lot of olive oil

pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a skillet pour in the olive oil and over high heat saute potatoes for about 5 minutes, lower heat to medium low and add peppers, onion, salt and pepper, saute another 10-15 minutes until potatoes are soft and peppers are limp.

Meanwhile, beat together eggs and milk, add cheese, when potato mixture finished add egg and cheese mixture to it.

Place in oven for 25-30 minutes, until eggs are cooked all the way through.

While tortilla is in oven, slice some tomatoes, red onion and cucumber and toss with red-wine vinegar and olive oil.

After 30 minutes pull out of oven and with spatula loosen edges.
Invert onto plate and let sit five or so minutes.
Slice into wedges and serve. We usually serve it with some French bread (because you can't get Cuban bread in Denver....but seriously that's the best!) and cucumber tomato salad.

It's one of our favorite vegetarian meals (we try for one or two a week).

Enjoy!

Art -- a family thing

During Spring break, Isaac (the youngest) got to do a special program where he could take some classes. He chose math-wizards (because he's his father's child) and he took another class called five artists in five days because, in his words, he draws remarkable trees and since Aunt Laura Jane is an artist and cousin Bridget is really good, he's good too. He then added that Jake must take after me because we're not that good (he will someday regret those words...right?)

The end of this class coincided with Jason's aunt's art show opening. She had a show that started with this month's NOBO art walk (North Boulder) and will run a few more weeks. She does high-relief sculpture, and if I do say so myself, she's amazingly talented.

The artist -- Laura-Jane. Isaac took the picture, I'm not sure LJ will like it, but I love it. I think it shows how fun she is and how great she is that she'll be silly with her great-nephew during her very own art show.
Jason chatting up his aunt.
Isaac made his great-aunt a name tag, "my art rocks" -- the 'r' looks a bit like an 'n' so maybe it's "my ant rocks" -- although, I think he knows how to spell aunt.
Jake, Isaac and YaYa (Jason's mom) found a puppy...is it that laid back Boulder thing that makes it okay to have a dog come to an art opening? I love that!
This is one of my favorites from her show last night. Love how the toe is pointed down, and the girl's little cheeks.

LJ and her dear friend. She's one of my favorites too! She has a gift of making you feel like everything you say or do is brilliant and amazing -- so the kind of person you need around. I can see why she and LJ are friends.
One of her Bronze pieces. I thinks she does such a wonderful job on the draping of the material. I can imagine that would be difficult to do with clay

I overheard two ladies who were looking at this group of sculptures say that they were drawn to these. And why not? They're great!
This is the piece that LJ made for us. I have it hanging in our kitchen. When I designed our kitchen, I made sure there was a space for it right by this window, so that I could enjoy this piece where I seem to be most of the time....at the kitchen sink. You can see more of her amazing art work here on her website.

Now back to my own budding eight year old artist. Here's one of the pieces he did in his program. It's a boy doing a karate stance (not sure which one). It's not balanced and can't stand on its own --- but still, it's brilliant...don't you think? (whatever -- I'm his MOM- I think everything he does is brilliant)

POTD -- and it's not even April yet

seriously?

volcanic eruptions

I found a book called 365 Experiments the other day and picked it up because I thought it would be fun to do with the kids. It felt like I was pulling teeth for them to do just one of the experiments in there (and I let Jake pick). He's doing his best to look like I abuse him here in this picture.

The first experiment the boys did was a volcano. The book called for:

play-dough (I used modeling clay)

film canisters -- you know how hard those are to find these days? I just used up two glass spice jars so I washed and used those.

1 tbs baking soda

1 tbs vinegar

(we used a lot more, because we wanted to see some real action)

We pretty much just stopped measuring and poured the vinegar right in. You can see Jake here with a hint of a smile.
I forgot to mention nails...they weren't part of the original list, but the kids wanted something to represent all the people that get fried with hot lava....how did I raise such blood-thirsty beings?

I also made them look up what actually causes volcanos to erupt and why vinegar and baking soda have such a reaction and made them write it in their own words, because I'm a mean horrible mommy (at least that's the impression I got with all the eye rolling -- they'll thank me later -- right?).

Next week it's how to make limestone....Isaac's choice. It calls for shoeboxes and I have none, I do believe that's a reason to go shoe shopping. I love science.

our dirty BIG secret

I have a couple secrets to share with you. It's all probably TMI and I will probably alienate a lot of you out there....but there could be someone out there in blogland who will find comfort that they are not alone....

We'll start with my problem with procrastination. Dodi, on January 23rd mentions in her blog that she finally put away Christmas. I read it, I laughed, I commented....but shamefully I had my stack of various nativities on the side table waiting for me to pack up.

Well come March they were still there. Last week, I FINALLY packed them up. If you look closely you can see the clovers on the newspaper ads....that would be ads for St. Patrick's day. How sad is that? Wrapping Christmas up with St. Patrick's day advertisements......

All wrapped and ready to go into...what is our next dirty secret.....our basement. Have you ever seen the show Hoarders? I love that show. I'm horrified by that show. I AM that show. At least my basement is. Let's start with over 20 years ago when my dad died. I packed away some of his books. We both shared a love of reading and a love of collecting books. The problem was, I never opened those boxes again. Part of it was that it was too painful, partly who knows why. We've been carting these books with us over seven moves (Jason, in this case is a freakin' saint!). We moved into this house about six years ago and have have since remodeled the first two floors. The problem is that I've just been throwing stuff in the basement to-deal-with-later as each room got completed that combined with the boxes and boxes of books have given us THIS:

My project for the next couple of months is to go through EVERYTHING and throw out at least....gasp - half, okay maybe a third, mostly a fourth of the junk down there and find a home for whatever we keep. I started today, I cleaned out six boxes and have three boxes in a pile to donate to Good Will and the library.

And, I found these gems....
Jason threatened to slap me when I began to disparage his trekkiness.

We also found some of my high school report cards...which Jason decided to scan and save on his computer --why? I wanted to toss them....seriously a D in Algebra, like I want my kids to see that? I definitely don't want them to see the 30 absences from the same class (a correlation?)

We also found my high school literary publication where I had a poem published....Jason read it and laughed and laughed...His comment was, 'geeze, trace, was part two how you slit your wrists, can you get more depressing? Maybe we should send this to the Zoloft company and they can use it in an ad" I won't include the poem here...thankfully I've grown out of that teen-girl-life-is-horrible-angst.

This project may be funner then I thought it would be. Tomorrow, more boxes. I wonder what I'll find.

POTD -- Easter project

Saw this very cute Easter idea on another blog and decided to totally steal -- uh, I mean try it for myself.

Can't wait until the tulips come up in my garden, until then....I bought some at the store....Spring is here...it makes me happy.

POTD -- quick dinner...really quick.

This is one of our favorite oh-my-gosh-I've-worked-10-to-11-hours-met-Jason-at-baseball-where-I-stay-and-finish-watching-Jake-practice-baseball-and-Jason-takes-Isaac-to-Karate-Jake-and-I-go-home-get-dinner-ready-in-time-for-Isaac-and-Jason-to-get-home dinners.

Fish Tacos, super duper easy

or Lazy Fish Tacos

A couple boxes of your fave frozen fish, I use either the garlic herb or lemon herb

A package of corn tortillas

Coleslaw salad mix (without dressing)

Jalapeno Ranch Dressing

Like I said, I'm super lazy, but my friend who is a much better cook, housekeeper, crafter, mom, human being then I am, takes regular ranch and mixes some green tabasco sauce...I think it might be jalapeno juice -- I'm not quite sure, it's green and in a tabasco bottle. I also think she makes her own fish too....wouldn't be surprised if she made her own tortillas, I'd hate her if she weren't my best friend...

Et voila....(Jason likes it with two corn tortillas per taco, me not so much)
The family gives it two thumbs up....and Hannah hopes someone will drop something....

POTD --Busted

How could such a little cutie like this do anything wrong?

Ah-ha, so busted. She was up on the couch but got her tags snagged on the blanket when she jumped off (most likely when she heard me walking towards the living room). Oh well, at least this time it wasn't eating a whole jar of peanut butter that some child...Isaac...left on the counter, or ripping through a box of kleenix in the back yard, leaving a ton of white wet soggy cold messes to clean up.

Good thing she's cute and lovable.

potd -- time for Botox?

I don't actually spend a lot of time looking at myself, don't normally wear make up, and when I do, my glasses are usually off when I'm applying and I just see a pleasant haze. Well the other day I caught a look at myself in the rear view mirror and saw how angry I looked, so I tried to relax my expression and all the creases STAYED....AHHHHHH, not only that, little tiny brown specks all over my cheeks, freckles? Do olive-skinned people even get freckles? Is it better to say freckles then say age spots?

So what should it be, micro-derm abrasion, botox, bangs, or whatever else is out there?

And there it is ......... I'm turning into my mother.

potd -- first signs....yay!

POTD --- Waiting for Spring

So this is the little garden between my house and our neighbors that I love to plant with an overabundance of flowers. Notice the snow......This is the magazine I just bought for the purpose stated above.
Now, I just need Spring to get here.

Big sigh.

I should write a parenting book.....

The kids, Jason and I were at Red Robin the other night and Isaac asked Jake for a bite of his dinner. Jake said, "No." Not because he wanted to eat it all, but because he was being mean in that big brother sort of way (which I totally understand because I was mean in that big sister kind of way).

Isaac started to whine (he does it so well, I'm hoping there's a doctoral program for that).

I say, "Isaac, this is your brother's dinner, if he doesn't want to share, he doesn't have to........but...."

Jake's hands clamp down on his ears and he starts singing.

(WTH)

I ask him what he's doing.

"Mom, please, please don't make me feel guilty"

Meanwhile, Isaac gleefully chants, "make Jake feel guilty, make Jake feel guilty"

The four of us cracked up.

Jake gave his brother a bite.....without me screaming, guilting, or threatening

And this is when I realized parenting with sarcasm and guilt does work.

POTD -- I wasn't kidding

Last week I mentioned that I was getting my tax stuff all together and when I did I would organize it and tab it all out for the accountant, because I'm OCD like that...well I wasn't kidding.

But, yay, tax stuff ready to go! I hope I don't owe (I rhymed, I'm so proud)