claire

I Mean, Really

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I decided to make up a fresh, healthy, homemade meal for the girls today.  I got the recipe from a cooking magazine called “Cooking for Two”.  While technically I am cooking for three, I realized that this magazine was perfect because I can cook for Claire and myself and just assume Molly won’t eat it.  Molly is still only interested in six foods total: yogurt, lil’ smokies, raspberries, PB&J sandwiches, flour tortillas, and black beans.  So why not just go with it?  I decided to make a real recipe for Claire and myself and let Molly have an Uncrustable® and some raspberries.

I decided on the tandoori chicken because Claire always likes chicken.  Let’s add in some fresh apple slices, try sneaking in some steamed spinach, and toss in some potato chips to ease things along.  This was a serious cooking magazine from America’s Test Kitchen designed basically for at-home dates.  This was not a “quick dinner” recipe.  I spent 90 minutes making the tandoori chicken from scratch and finally presented the final meal to Claire for a slightly late dinner.  I was so proud.  Claire and Molly helped out with the cooking some, which made it more fun.

Once I served up the mean, Claire gobbled up the potato chips and apple slices and picked at her chicken.  She ate a few bites and said it was pretty good but couldn’t finish it because she wasn’t very hungry.  Molly ate her Uncrustable® in like 2 minutes.  It was maybe five minutes before the girls were finished and off to other things while I sat alone eating my hard-earned tandoori chicken.  Okay, the chicken was slightly dry and bland, but I worked hard for it!  And really, it’s tandoori chicken.  It’s supposed to be that way!

So I worked for 90 minutes on a fresh, healthy meal that was partly eaten in five minutes.  This is why Chick-fil-A makes so much sense.   I could have spent only $10 and 10 minutes getting them Chick-fil-A and spent an extra hour playing with them.  After 11 years of practice, parenting is still tricky.  You can never win!

Houston for the Holidays

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Kit and I worked out a pretty good Christmas schedule, where we had the girls in Austin with Kit and her parents on Christmas morning, and then I drove the girls to Houston on Christmas afternoon to see may parents for a few days.

The girls had not seen a lot of my parents lately.  My parents have been going through a number of medical issues for the last year of so, and while I had made many solo trips to see them and help them, I hadn’t brought the girls for those trips.  This time the girls got two spend two full days in Houston with them plus two partial days.  This is the longest they have spent in Houston in years!

We took advantage of our full days by finally getting to Galveston, which I had been trying to do almost as long as Claire has been alive!  We also hit the mall, in particular the American Girl store for Molly, and saw the 3D movie Sing.  Sing was a really sweet movie and way better than crap like Home Alone 2, which we watched at home with my parents.

The girls loved Pleasure Pier in Galveston.  My dad tagged along and mostly sat on benches while Claire, Molly, and I did rides.  We got there early and played on the beach in the fog for a couple of hours before it opened.  After Pleasure Pier, we went to Rainforest Cafe to live it up all the way.  We made fun of inconsistencies on the menu, such as Jurassic-themed chicken nuggets.  We also envisioned a Texas History themed restaurant, featuring Sam Houston’s Tennessee pulled pork and Santa Anna’s green enchiladas.  (So wrong!)  The we listened to the Anna Kendrick memoir, Scrappy Little Nobody, on the drive back to my parents’ house in Houston.  It had drugs and sex all over the place.  Talk about wrong!  We eventually turned it off and just drove quietly back to Houston.

Trail of Lights 2016, aka Death March 2016

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I took Claire and Molly over to the Trail of Lights just before Christmas this year.  I love the Trail of Lights in theory, but so far it always turns out to be an exhausting death march, even this year it was just a short walk from my place.  We waited through an extraordinarily long and fast line to get in and waited in an extraordinarily slow line for food at the Chi’ Lantro trailer, where we had to settle for kimchi fries instead of chicken wings.  The final insult was dessert at another trailer, where Molly and I got pretty good ice cream sandwiches, while Claire opted for the “warm chocolate brownie”, which turned out to be a cold chocolate cookie.  We got back home late and with our energy and senses utterly exhausted.  Still, I’m glad we made the effort, and at least it wasn’t cold the year.

Claire the Flapper

Image | | patmcg

Claire had a major role in the 5th grade musical play the year.

She was a flapper and got a brief solo singing part!  She sounded amazing and looked great in her flapper outfit.  She’s a natural flapper.  Way to go, Claire!

Here’s Claire with her friends Susie, Wolfie, and another girl whose name I forgot. (oops!)

Claire’s 11th Birthday Party

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Claire turned 11 and had her birthday party at Altitude Austin, an amazing trampoline park.  Altitude is extra fun compared to other trampoline parks because it has a special area for bouncy dodgeball.   We played dodgeball for probably an hour and ended up exhausted and sweaty.  Claire invited six of her amazing friends.  Despite all their energy and the fun they were having, we managed to get them together briefly for a group photo (below).

Molly came along to Altitude too.  Then the girls went to the house for a sleepover while Molly came to my place for some one-on -one fun time with me, including making a gingerbread house and our own little sleepover.

Indoor Fun Day

| patmcg

With the weather cooling off a bit and making it hard to to spend the day at Barking Springs, and Sno Beach shut down for the season, we’re having to move our weekend fun activities indoors.  Today, we took Claire’s friend Susie to lunch at the always delicious Homeslice Pizza and then off to Pinballz arcade for some indoor fun.  The girls had lot of fun playing ping pong and messing uncooked dough at Homeslice.  And they did a crazy job as a team effort winning tickets at Pinballz,  They won over 3000 tickets, with Susie digging into her own money for tokens after my budget had run out.  They were picking rolls of 500 tickets out of the claw machines at will, and basically emptied one out in a matter of minutes.  With the prize tickets, the girls each got a ping ping gun, plus an inflatable ninja doll and some miscellaneous small toys.  We all went back to my place and had a ping pong gun fight and basically destroyed the place.  We can have fun even when it’s not warm and sunny out!