Cheese glorious cheese - and other things to be thankful for in 2008

If we were to ask Eliza what she's been thankful for in 2008, I think she would say cheese. This little girl loves her cheese - cheddar, mozzarella (even the fresh stuff), and even the cheese slices. I think her favorite of all has got to be freshly grated Parmesan; she can eat spoonfuls of the stuff and made quite a dent in a huge Parmesan wedge from our Christmas visit to Lolo and Lola's house which included a trip to Urzi's Italian market in St. Louis (told you that this was one of our favorite places to go...). Now that I think about it, this girl loves her dairy products - not only cheese, but yogurt, milk, and ice cream. Anyway, you've got to check out the wedges of Parmesan!




With the end of 2008 just around the corner, there are so many things that we can be thankful for but most important:

1. Our health - other than a few minor injuries (ok - mainly me with the broken finger) we've all been very healthy. Molly is learning the basics of gymnastics; Eliza was also in "gymnastics" for toddlers until her listening ears no longer worked - so now we're taking a break. Eric and I are just getting back in the swing after many holidays and our minor injuries.
2. Our families - we've been able to see all of our sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews this year! That doesn't always happen since 3 out of 4 of our siblings live in Texas. It's always great when Molly and Eliza can see all of their aunts, uncles, and cousins. We were able to host a Thanksgiving feast with all of my family and some of Eric's family for a blend of traditional Thanksgiving and Filipino foods. We were able to share an early Christmas with my mom and dad in Fredericktown and then also with Eric's family here in KC including his brother and family from San Antonio. The holidays have been great - full of family, fun, and food!
3. Our friends - we've been able to see a lot of our friends throughout the year and especially during the Mizzou football season. We've also been able to reconnect with long lost school pals through that crazy and addicting social networking site - Facebook. It's been quite fun "seeing" old high school and college pals and keeping up with their lives now that we're (still) growing up.
4. Our happiness - we're just happy people. Probably because Marbles is so entertaining...

Other notable happenings this year include Molly having a wonderful first half of kindergarten. She's grown into quite the 5 year old and has made so many friends at her new school. For Eliza - well - just reliving the world through the eyes and ears of a 2 year old is a joy in itself.

Now we're looking forward to a great 2009 with all new adventures!

The house that the Andi, the OT, built...

Well, it's been almost 4 weeks since the surgery on my broken finger. Less than 2 weeks to go! The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I will have the 2 pins removed. Happy Thanksgiving to me!!!

I'll still have to wear a splint for (hopefully only) 4 weeks - weaning my finger off of the splint, little by little. If I let my finger "droop" on its own, my 4 weeks start over. Wow!

X-rays tell the story

So much for a friendly neighborhood flag football game a couple of weeks ago. So much for Eric and me getting in "football" shape (running routes, changing our workouts, etc.) and throwing around the football for the few weeks prior to the flag football game. The day of the game, tossing around the football for some warm-ups, I caught the ball right on my fingertips. I remember saying to Eric, "Hey, I think I just jammed my finger. It looks really weird." I wasn't in any pain so I taped it up and played the game. The game was really fun and our "side" of the neighborhood won.

Little did I know then what I know now. The next day I went to our on-site health clinic to get it checked out. Again - no pain, it was a little swollen and there was a little bruising but I could still move it with no pain. They took x-rays and it appeared that there was a fracture. So I was to splint it and come back in 2 weeks to determine whether or not I would need to go to the bone & joint specialist (what?!!). (You have to understand - I've never had any broken bones...)

Well, a week passed and the swelling and bruising had gone away but my finger still looked a little funny. It just wasn't straightening like I thought it should be. So, I went back to the clinic to see if I should be splinting it differently so that it would be straight. Then, they suggested that I go ahead and make an appointment with the bone & joint specialist (yikes!) to get it checked out further.

So today, I went to the specialist - thinking very optimistically but also knowing that my finger still just didn't look right. I knew that something was going to have to be done. To the doctor, it was clear that my little bones were no longer aligned (which is causing the droopy finger) and to top it off, my extensor tendon (my dad would be proud of me for using medical terminology) that runs on the top of your finger, had torn a little bit of bone where it connected. After re-splinting my finger to straighten it even more and another set of x-rays with the splint, it was very clear now that splinting will not do the trick. (Oh man!)

So now...surgery with 2 pins to realign my bones and reattach the tendon and bone. Ugh! I don't know what's worse - the surgery or the recovery! Six weeks of wearing the splint 24x7 and then another 4 weeks to wean off of the splint. If my finger droops at any time, it's back to Start...4 weeks of the splint. Wow! Oh yeah - and during that time, limited physical activity...(we'll see how long that lasts. I'll get creative with some sort of exercise.) Wish me luck! Definitely more to come on this story.

**Eric's edit - humble Andrea forgets to mention that even with her broken finger, she snagged an interception for a touchdown late in the game, to seal the win. The Tigers could use her in the defensive backfield I think. They need some help.

Chicken Adobo - 2 yummy ways to cook it...

One of our favorite meals to cook is Chicken Adobo - one of the national dishes of the Philippines. The girls love it and it's frequently requested by Molly during our weekly meal planning (always a good sign for an almost 6 year old). This week we found a new - and I have to say very easy - way to cook this recipe.

The typical way to prepare chicken adobo is simple: a whole cut up chicken, 1/2 cup soy sauce, 3/4 cup vinegar, a lot of garlic (like 1 whole head, cloves crushed and coarsely chopped), freshly ground pepper to taste, 1-2 bay leaves. We usually double the soy sauce and vinegar so that we have extra sauce to put on our rice. And we like to add good sized button mushrooms for mushroom adobo. Then it's basically cook until done. The smells in the house for that short period of time - usually around 20-25 minutes - are just amazing.

However, this time around we cooked half of the chicken adobo using a slow cooker! Wow - that was also really good too. We just let it cook on low for a few hours and wa-laa...chicken adobo. The meat was really tender and practically falling off. Good stuff!

If you happen to try out this recipe, let us know how yours turned out in the Comments section.

Marbles finally makes the blog...

Well, I've been feeling bad that I haven't featured our other little one in the blog yet so...here he is! Marbles! A sweet and mischievous beagle who still has a sneaky streak even at 12 years old. He's starting to lose his hearing now or perhaps he has very selective hearing - especially around dinnertime and the girls. He's Eliza's little shadow when she's got a snack in hand.

Even though he may look rather innocent and sleeps a lot during the day, we're always having to doggy-proof the house when we leave. He knows how to push a little tractor chair that we keep under the kitchen desk over to the counter to find any goodies that we may have left out (e.g. cupcakes, cookies, etc.)! He definitely keeps us on our toes.

"Happy Lizzhee!"

Eliza turned 2 years old on September 18. The day of her birthday she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. We all sang Happy Birthday to her and she just sat down and cried. However a few days later and probably after another singing at school, she got the hang of the whole birthday thing. By the time we had a birthday celebration with some family, she was saying "Happy Lizzhee!" to herself. And she didn't mind opening the presents either.

It's Game Day!

Mizzou won! Woo-hoo! We had great seats in the Mizzou end zone just next to the band. The girls were decked out in Mizzou gear; Molly wore her Tiger cheerleading outfit and Eliza wore a Truman shirt and she wanted to show everyone with whom we talked - Truman on the front and his tail on the back. Eliza loved sitting next to the band and kept wanting to hear "more-more". It was a late game but Molly managed to stay awake the whole game; Eliza fell asleep sometime during the 4th quarter through the most exciting parts (both girls have always managed to take a nap during football games even with all of the hoopla - I wish I could sleep so soundly).

Oh and earlier in the day we visited the Arch. Molly and Eric took the south tram to the top and took some great shots of downtown. Eliza and I just played around in the lobby doing whatever to keep a 2-year old happy...

We're off to the market...Soulard and Urzi's, that is.

Well, before we start our St. Louis adventure, I have to mention that we actually started our St. Louis trek on Thursday night. We left Lees Summit at the end of the work day and headed to Columbia to revel in one of our favorite restaurants of all time - Shakespeare's Pizza. We ordered the cheese garlic bread for a much needed starter (since we were saving up our hunger most of Thursday). Then the main event - an 8" cheese pizza for the girls and a 12" Masterpiece for us. And believe us - it's a masterpiece. Delicious! We also saw Gary Pinkel; I thought that was a good omen for the game.

Anyway, Friday morning took us to a couple of our favorite stops in St. Louis: Soulard Farmers Market and Urzi's Italian Market in The Hill. When visiting St. Louis, we typically hit Soulard Market on Saturday morning with the rest of the crowd but this time around we thought we would try it on a Friday morning. Still as cool as ever with great veggies, fruits, and flowers but we missed the freshly made mini-donuts. We were so bummed as we had forgone breakfast at Union Station for the mini-donuts. We still managed to find something for breakfast - a giant chocolate chip cookie (what can I say, we're on vacation) and an apple thingy at the Soulard Bakery. We also picked up some cherries, bananas, and beautiful fresh spray roses for the Lyngs who we were visiting later that day.

Next stop was Urzi's Italian Market located in The Hill neighborhood. We discovered this wonderful market when we lived in St. Louis over 12 years ago (yikes!). If you love to cook and are looking for wonderful seasonings and visit or live in St. Louis, this is a must-see shop. Even if we are just passing through St. Louis, we make it a point to take stock of our spice inventory in case we need to stop at Urzi's. In the past couple of visits, we've picked up bread dipping seasoning, pizza seasoning, fajita seasoning, and other goodies. This visit we're trying their pizza sauce and a hunk of parmesan cheese - should be yummy.

After Urzi's we headed to an afternoon visit with our friends, the Lyngs. We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up and boating on Lake St. Louis before heading back downtown for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory at Laclede's Landing. While walking around the landing, we saw plenty of people donning their true colors - black and gold - and got a couple of "Go Tigers!" along the way. We saw some of that ugly orange and blue stuff too (thumbs down as Molly would sign). Oh it's going to be a fun atmosphere!

I think we're ready for football season...

Around our house, our favorite time of year is fall. Cool weather is just around the corner, the leaves start to change, and most important - Mizzou Tiger football. For us it all kicks off with the MU Alumni Picnic in late August just before the MU season opener in St. Louis against Illinois (the fourth game in the Arch Rivalry game). We're pretty excited to head over to St. Louis to watch our Tigers whip up on the Fighting Illini (sorry cousin John!). More to come as we trek over to St. Louis next weekend.

First Day of Gard 2

Eliza too had quite a transition in "school" right after our vacation. All this week she was transitioning from her Toddler group to now the official Gard 2 group for two-year olds. So not only will she be doing art and music but now she gets to go to Spanish in the Library room! She's been doing great at school all week - only a few teary eyed drop offs (not bad after a 2 week vacation); I think the biggest change for her has been not seeing Molly at school like she would before. When I picked up Eliza on Molly's first day of kindergarten, the first thing she said when we walked out of her room was, "Tissy?" I said, "No, sissy is at another school now." I could see the wheels in her mind turning and she understood.

She has become quite the little shadow for all of us; whether it's a quick game of chase around the house to wild abandonment with "tissy-tissy" (a.k.a. sister Molly) to "me up"/"up me" when she is ready to be carried. She's also getting really good with 2-3 word phrases. Some of her favorites are:

• "Ahdoit" = I do it.
• "Ahdidit" = I did it.
• "momma read" (no explanation needed)
• "Ahtry" = I try.
• "Mon mon" = Come on.
• "Mar mar eat" = when Marbles has left his food in his bowl for better morsels under the table

The tooth fairy makes a visit!

What a week for Molly! Not only did she start kindergarten but she also lost her first tooth - one of the bottom front two - and its neighboring tooth is well on its way. It happened on her second day of school while she was eating lunch. After seeing her play with her tooth the night before (you remember those days, wiggling it with your tongue?), we knew it would probably happen at school - and it did. Her teacher packed it nicely in an envelope to take home. Instead, it stayed in the classroom (probably much to the teacher's chagrine the next day) overnight. The tooth fairy still visited that night after Molly wrote a nice note tucked under her pillow, "Tooth fairy - I lost my tooth To the Tooth Fairy, Molly Andrews". I think she was also trying to explain that she also lost her tooth at the school. Not sure...that's my guess.


The tooth fairy took the note out of the envelope and left a couple of new learning to read books - Fancy Nancy and Dick and Jane - and a pack of Orbit raspberry gum. She told me, "That's my favorite gum!". I asked her, "How do you think that the tooth fairy knew that was your favorite gum?" She said, "Magic." She's not quite ready for picture time for this post but picture day is coming up at school...

First Day of Kindergarten!

Back from vacation and it's off to kindergarten for Molly. No time for getting into a good bedtime routine given a 2 week vacation and the Olympics! No bother - she was a trooper. We walked to school just behind our house and dropped her off. She had a great first day - learning how the cafeteria works, learning the "rules" of school, meeting new friends...

So this is how it starts...Adventures to Hilton Head and Savannah

So this is how it all begins. A spark of wanting to share memories, treks, ideas, and food (you'll find that we love food). You know the funny thing is that I work with this collaboration "stuff" at work all the time - so why did it take me so long to finally do it for home? Who knows - maybe because it was part of my "work"...anyway, on to the more fun stuff.

I wanted to kick off my first post with something to really write about - our vacation to Hilton Head, SC and Savannah, GA. Yeah!

With Molly starting kindergarten this year we wanted to go somewhere beachy for a few weeks. We looked at Hawaii again (this time way too expensive) and other areas and then landed on Hilton Head after some friends recommended it. Fortunately we scored great airline tickets and a condo within walking distance to the beach. We also decided to spend the last day and a half of our trip in Savannah, GA.

As this was our first time heading to the East Coast for a vacation, we weren't sure what to expect. What would the sand be like? Waves? Will the Atlantic be cold? Our few beach-centric vacations have been to more tropical locations - Moorea, Oahu, Kauai. Except for our trip to the Northwest on Vancouver Island - which was very cool (literally) but we were there for the hiking...not the beach so not sure if I should really count that one.

Well, we were very pleasantly surprised. The water was warm, the waves were not huge, the sand was velvety, and you could walk out for quite a ways and still only be waist high - all which are great when you have 2 little ones. We spent most of our days on the beach playing in the waves, building sand castles, and soaking up the sun (with sunscreen of course). A couple of days it rained so we would watch movies, go out to eat, go shopping, etc.

We really enjoy food and we found some good places for eats. We love pizza and we ended up at Guiseppi's Pizza at Shelter Cove (we ended up here several times actually). We tried their pizza, wedgies, and more pizza. It was a great fallback when we didn't feel like eating at the condo. We did our grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly (what a great name!) or as Eliza likes to refer to it "piggy piggy". Then we found a great ice cream place (I am always on the look out for ice cream!) at Coligny Plaza called The Ice Cream Cone. It's been there since 1971! On our second visit to The Ice Cream Cone, Eric tried their chocolate malt and said it was the best he's ever had - and that's good because I consider him the chocolate malt connoisseur of our family; I had a wonderful Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip and Eliza had the Superman (which is vanilla in Superman colors); Molly had a gumball (her independent choice) but then as you can only imagine after watching us eat our ice cream, she sampled all of ours. Other places we really enjoyed were the Harbor Town Bakery and Deli and the much needed playground across the street and The Old Oyster Factory. Good stuff!

After about 11 days of the beach, we headed to Savannah, GA. Knowing that we only had a day and a half in Savannah, we had to do some fast research about what to see, where to eat (again - it's all about food for us), etc. Thanks to the WWWW (wonderful world-wide web), we hit the highlights that we could in a 16 hour tour. We experienced Krystal burgers (part of the burger eating world championship) - which we don't have here in Kansas City and wonderful southern cooking and hospitality at the Masada Cafe - United House of Prayer Church. While in Savannah, we took a carriage ride through the historic district and saw beautiful architecture and learned about the history and, of course, spotted The Cupcake Emporium where we bought coconut, Reeses, Mabel's Favorite, and pistachio cupcakes and devoured them across the street at Wright Square. This was all just hours before underground explosions in the downtown area caused blackouts for blocks of the city - as we learned when catching the evening news. We also experienced Fort Pulaski on one of the nearby islands and Tybee Island.

Overall, it was a wonderful vacation and "end" to summer since Molly was starting kindergarten the following Tuesday. More on that later...