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Empty forehead. Ready for swim meet!

California Playin'

morning - junephotoaday

bright & very early this morning ... swim team practice.

Here Comes the Bride

Ice Skating Video

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the women out there!  I hope you had a wonderful day!!  I loved spending time with my family and getting pampered for the day.

Hubby & Turkey got up before church to make me banana-chocolate-chip pancakes with fresh-squeezed orange juice.

At church, my kids made little cards ... it was more like a questionnaire.  Each of my kids answered 5 questions about me.  With kids this age, answers are always funny and interesting....

1. What is your mom's favorite food?

• Penguin: angel hair pasta with marinara sauce
• Peacock: Pancakes & Doughnuts (I think these are HER favorite foods.)
• Turkey: Chocolate chip pancakes (hmmm... I'm seeing a theme here)

2. What is your mom's favorite chore? (Does such a thing exist??)

• Penguin: Watching Kids
• Peacock: Clean the house
• Turkey: none

3. What is your mom's least favorite chore?

• Penguin: Cleaning
• Peacock: Clean the house
• Turkey: make pancakes

4. What is something your mom always says to you?

• Penguin: I love you, too.  Now get in bed.
• Peacock: Clean your room.  I love you.
• Turkey: cereal

5. What is something your mom does just for YOU?

• Penguin: drives me to activity days
• Peacock: makes hot chocolate
• Turkey: school work

At church, all the girls & women age 12 & up got to have an hour of socializing while we ate cheesecake and the men took the all the kids.  Heavenly!! After church, I got a delivery of flowers from Hubby's boss thanking me for all the sacrifices that I make that in turn helps them run a great office ... very thoughtful!  Hubby & the kids also got me flowers .... and chocolate goodies ... and a gift card to eat out ... and a fun new toy.  After an afternoon of resting, we had a nice dinner with Hubby's family.

Family Time

After swim lessons today, Hubby & I dragged the kids around town to run some errands.  Somewhere along the way, we met up with my sister and daughter to do some shopping together.  While we were in Target, it started pouring rain, which is very unusual for us here in AZ.  I needed to run into Barnes & Noble, so Hubby got to sit in the car with all the kids ... looks like they had fun with my camera while I was away. :)

{Good thing my niece usually likes all the attention she gets from Peacock & Turkey}

{Peacock LOVES babies ... she will be the best babysitter and mom someday!}

After errands we met up with more family to celebrate a birthday & Turkey was excited to get into the cowboy saddle.

Day 2 of Swim Lessons

Round two of swim lessons this afternoon ... the girls continued to improve as did Turkey, but he has to act like swim lessons are torture.  He only whined about half the time today which was improvement. :)  He always says he has fun though....  I think he's heard the phrase, "Stay away from the pool or you might die ... or drown" ... or something along those lines ... too many times since he was a smaller guy.

Day 1 of Swim Lessons

Swim lessons started today.  Sadly, I only took 3 photos and none of my boy.  I will have to be a better photo-taking mom at tomorrow's swim lessons.  The girls did great and worked a lot on improving their freestyle stroke.  Poor Turkey is still deathly scared of the water ... but even after just 15 minutes I could see him gaining trust in his new teacher and we'll hope & pray that he'll be swimming before long.  :)

Almond Tilapia Meuniere - French Fridays with Dorie

I've been MIA with my Dorie recipes recently.  My family participated in two concerts here during the month of April which meant lots of extra practicing & rehearsals.  And then I went to California to play in two concerts over there.  The whole family tagged along, so we ended up making a little vacation out of our trip, but that means packing, unpacking, cleaning the car, etc and not a lot of extra's like new recipes this past month.

Wednesday, Hubby had the day off work.  We got the house cleaned up, ran some errands, celebrated my mom's birthday, and had a nice day together as a family.  Thursday he didn't have to leave for work until around 1:00pm, so that gave us the morning to tackle a couple more jobs and then set-out to find some ingredients for this week's FFWD recipe.  We stopped at a couple stores, but didn't find flounder, so we opted for the frozen tilapia at Sam's Club ... I'm more of a tilapia girl anyways, so I was excited.

While hubby played toys with the kids, I made our family a nicer-than-normal lunch ... the kids & I usually eat leftovers. :)

I made some almond flour in my beloved Vitamix ....

Before-

After-

In addition to almond flour, I used a little flour and some lemon zest to coat one side of my tilapia.  Lemon with seafood is one of my favorite combinations.  

I've never used melted butter to cook my fish before, so this was new and it turned out great!! 

We ALL had seconds and I served the fish with steamed broccoli like Dorie suggested.  I will definitely make this again!  Delicious & healthy meal.

Ice Skating Class

The Easter Bunny brought my three kiddies "coupons" for 5 ice skating classes during the month of May.  This evening was their first class.  From my point of view, it was one of the funniest & most enjoyable things I've watched in a long time!!

Penguin has been ice skating with friends a couple of times this year, so she went off with her "older" class & did her own thing ....

Peacock was a bit apprehensive but she had a good time.  I expected her to be a bit grumpy about trying something new with all new people around her, but there was no grumbling or clinging to my leg.  I was proud of her!

Turkey was hil-ar-EEE-ous!!  He had me and lots of other watching parents laughing out loud.  The poor kid spent 95% of his lesson on his bum or knees sliding all over the place and trying to figure out how to even stay on his feet.  Through it all he keep chatting away, trying to help other children, and he had a constant smile on his face.  I think because he was so happy, he was kind of left to his own defenses out on the ice, but by the last 5-10 minutes, he was staying on his feet, starting to push out with his feet, & moving a little bit. He did great & he's begging to go back.

EVMCO Concert Day

CONCERT DAY!!!

April 20, 2012

Turkey & Peacock sang with the Young Singers choir.  They performed Mozart's Alleluia and A Bushel & A Peck (from Guys and Dolls). They were darling!!

Penguin sang with the Children's Choir and they performed The Lonely Goatherd (from The Sound of Music), Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze (in German), and When You Believe from The Prince of Egypt (in English & Hebrew) which included a solo part in Hebrew for Penguin.  She did an awesome job and confidently sang in front of 1000's of people!  As she stood up at the front of the stage and sang, I couldn't help think about the miracles that took place and the things I had to trust & believe in to get her from a Russian orphanage & into my family.  The lyrics were very fitting for my sweet girl.  I was SO proud of her!! And in both concerts after this song was completed, the performers received a standing ovation.

And I, the mother (with a pink star below), faithfully plowed away on my trusty ol' violin for about 6 hours yesterday evening.  Today my back, neck, arms, etc are not happy with me, but I had a fabulous time!  Thanks to all who made the effort to come share a spectacular evening with my family & me!!

orange - aprilphotoaday

Fresh-Squeezed Orange Juice made from Oranges that were picked from my parents' back yard citrus trees.  YUM!

From Classical to Broadway - An EVMCO Event!

It's concert week!!  Yesterday I practiced my violin for 4 hours.  Today I could only get in two hours ... my brain was somewhat dead.  My Turkey is practicing standing still in concert position for 15-minutes a day ... a very hard task for my wiggly boy.  My Penguin is gearing up for a little solo part that she will perform (in Hebrew!) in front of 1000's of people Friday night.  And Peacock is ready to go! We are all super excited for our Friday night concert and we hope you'll grab one of the few remaining tickets to come see us perform!!

If you love the classics of the masters and Broadway tunes, this is the concert for you!  We will be performing everything from Rachmaninoff to Mozart and Les Mis to Sound of Music.

The 8pm concert is currently sold-out (but keep your eyes peeled because sometimes seats might pop up if tickets are sold back to the arts center) and the 5pm concert has limited seats, so if you are interested in attending, get online and buy your tickets now!  If anyone is interested, I have one ticket for the 8pm concert.

Here are a couple songs that I'm looking forward to performing ... 

Lemon Loaf Cake - Tuesdays with Dorie

Life is very hectic this week, but I had to take a break from violin practicing to make this recipe this afternoon.  The batter was pretty easy & quick to put together.  The hardest part was zesting the lemons, so this is a recipe that anyone can bake.

I sliced into my loaf while it was still a bit warm and the crust was a tad crusty - perfect! In insides were soft and dense like pound cake - perfect, perfect!  Mine turned out just a little bit drier than I'd like, but I was a bit sloppy in measuring my flour and being in AZ, I could reduce my flour a tiny bit next time.  I have lots of strawberries in my fridge, so I think I'll serve my lemon loaf cake with some berries and whipped cream for an after-dinner dessert and I think the berries and cream will add a little moisture to help make the cake seem a little less dry.

Can't wait to see everyone results.  To get the recipe, go HERE or HERE.

Happy Tuesday!!