Cheezborger...cheezborger

We had a nice Friday evening in Truro celebrating Dad's birthday for another day. A review of the fish fry is coming, but first, check out the birthday cake we made:


Even Lars can't seem to quite believe it...a cheeseburger cake with French fries!
Bun - yellow cake
Meat - brownie cake
Lettuce - green fruit roll-ups
Tomato - cherry fruit slices
Cheese - orange Starbursts (actually, the hardest part of the cake)
French fries - pound cake
Ketchup - raspberry jam

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

That annual bike ride across Iowa...

Sweet! Matt and I are signed up for a single day ride in RAGBRAI - Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (I believe it is copyrighted, trademarked, etc.)! We'll be biking on the third day, Tuesday, on the route that begins in Greenfield and ends in Indianola. The total ride is 77 miles (longest of the week) and has 4,470 feet of climbing (second highest). Even cooler, we're passing through Truro, so we're hoping (expecting, actually) all of the Des Moines folks to come down to the farm there to wave to us as we pass by. Oh, and to also pick us up later in Indianola! :) Neither one of us have ever done a bike ride like this, so we will definitely be asking Matt's Grandpa Jim for advice.

Grandpa Jim, who just celebrated his 93rd birthday in February (yet if you ask, he is still "plenty-nine") is an avid bicycler, one of the top milers in his bike club, and a pro at doing century (100 mile) day rides! Who knows, maybe we can even get him to join us this year! ;)

FISHBRAI '09: Off Course

Bummer. Well, sometimes things don't work out as planned. We had something come up and couldn't attend St. John's fish fry on Friday. We did, however, end up at the Waveland Tap in Booneville for a later dinner. They had fried catfish as a special, but I ended up splitting the Greek pizza instead. Which was a nice meatless alternative - olives, feta cheese, red onions and tomatoes. Tasty onion rings and cold beer topped off dinner.

Due to the lack of a spiritual environment, I'm using beer bottles to rate Waveland's Friday night dinner. So, they get three beers!


Next week: we venture down to Immaculate Conception of St. Mary's!

Surprise!

Love it! I got a surprise this afternoon when I was composting in our yard - the first crocuses of the year peeking through the dirt. Now if I can just get Buddy to not pick the "pretty purple flowers"!

Here Comes the Alex...

We love St. Patrick's Day here, it's long been a favorite holiday in our family.

This St. Pat's Day, is a little sadder though because of the December passing of Father Finnell, who was the pastor at Blessed Sacrament parish in Morton, IL (Pumpkin Capital of the World!). Fr. Finnell was about 100% Irish, and he was born on March 16 --- the day BEFORE St. Pat's Day. At Blessed Sacrament, the school would always celebrate his birthday ON St. Pat's Day for him. All the kids would sing "Happy Birthday" to him and also the song "It's a Great Day for the Irish". But, we sang an altered version of it, customizing it to dear Fr. Finnell. To this day, this song is ingrained in my head around St. Pat's Day. It's kind of sad to think that it won't be sung this year for him:

It's a great day for Father Finnell, It's a great day for him.
The sidewalks of Mor-ton are filled with blarney
For sure you'd think Mor-ton was Old Killarney!
It's a great day for Father Finnell, for the flags in full array
We're feeling so inspirish, sure because for all the Irish
It's a great, great day!

Some weekend photos...

The weather got really nice this weekend, here's hoping we escape the dreaded final spring snowstorm!

FISHBRAI '09 Second Stop: Christ the King

Our tour continued on Friday as we headed over to the South Side for the Christ the King fish fry. Again, we really enjoyed ourselves and had a great time. CTK does a really nice job. It was $7 for adults, $4 for kids 12 and under. You had your choice of fried fish, baked cod or grilled salmon. We both went for the fried fish (I love salmon, but just wasn't in the mood for it).

Alex got the cheese pizza. Included was corn, rolls, and your choice of baked potato or fried potatoes (not french fries), coleslaw or salad. The fish was good and had a definite beer-batter taste to it. Dessert was also part of the deal, and in my opinion, was the highlight of the meal - homemade strawberry shortcake! The shortcake was homemade - not one of those Hostess shortcake-cup-kind-of-like-a-Twinkie-tasting things. Awesome!

Some other big pluses about CTK's fish fry:
- Everything was served on dishes and silverware.
- It was held in their parish hall, which had a cozier feel than the school cafeteria.
- Big thumbs up to the gentleman who played the accordion throughout dinner. It created a nice, Italian restaurant kind of ambiance. As we snagged a table near him, Alex loved to watch him when he wasn't playing with other kids.
- Beer was available in the can, for an extra $2

We apologize for not having any pictures, we were so busy talking with our table mates and keeping an eye on Buddy, that we didn't get a chance to snap some photos.
Overall, we give Christ the King 4.5 BCs for the good food and extras!

Rating: Simply Saintly!

Next week, it's the family sentimental favorite, Basilica of St. John. In my humble opinion, the most beautiful church in town!

Elmo off script

Too funny...Elmo with Ricky Gervais

FISHBRAI '09 First Stop: Sacred Heart

We hit the Sacred Heart fish fry last night as the first stop on the FISHBRAI 2009 tour. SC holds their fish fry in the school cafeteria. Cost is $7 for adults, kids 3 and under are free. We did have to wait in line, but it was worth it. You had the choice of fried or baked cod, cheese pizza, baked potato or french fries and coleslaw. Drinks were water, lemonade and coffee. A bake sale provided desserts for an additional cost - proceeds go to the church youth group.

I was kind of surprised that there were not as many families there, but lots of seniors. Everyone was very nice and the volunteers kept asking if we wanted more water and lemonade. The fried cod was great and was well seasoned, the baked version was good as well. The cheese pizza --- eh, not that fab, but it was more for the kids. Sides were solid and the desserts offered were fantastic. We got a bag of puppy chow for Alex to munch on while we waited in line for our food.


Our rating? It's hard because it's the first fish fry we've been to this year, so we are giving Sacred Heart a 3-4 BCs for "Delightfully Divine" (or 3.5 if you want to average it).

Next week: We travel to the South Side and try out Christ the King's fish fry!

FISHBRAI 2009!

It's Lent! Forty fun-filled days of reflecting, refraining and repenting! And for Catholics, it's that time of the year we love to rub our guilt-ridden, suffering psyches onto the general public by NOT EATING MEAT ON FRIDAYS!!!

Yes, we love to show the world how "good" we are at suffering this time of year. But there's a secret weapon...THE LENTEN FISH FRYS!!! It's not hard to refrain from meat when you can go to your neighborhood church and pay a few bucks to feast on fresh, tasty, all-you-can-eat fried cod. Plus, during the Great Recession, it's a cost-effective way to feed a family, support your church, socialize with friends, and enjoy a night out with the kids.

So, in honor of Fish Fry Fridays, we came up with a truly dorky idea. We are going to hit a different church fish fry every Friday for the rest of Lent. We'll take photos and rate each one. We wanted to come up with a clever name that really captured the essence of our mission...but none came to mind (any ideas are welcome). To ensure the utmost accuracy, a scientific rating system has been devised:

The Buddy Christ Fish Fry Rating Scale

Each fish fry will be ranked on a scale of 1-5 "BCs", with 1 being "Depths of Hell" to 5 being "Heavenly Perfection".

Proposed Tour Schedule:

March 6 -- Sacred Heart

March 13 -- Christ the King

March 20 -- St. John's Basilica

March 27 -- Immaculate Conception of St. Mary's

April 3 -- St. Francis of Assisi

Stay tuned...the first recap of Sacred Heart will follow!

Little Gekko

It's only fitting with the stock market hitting new lows to take a fond look back at the Go-Go 80's...

Alex took his bath and as I brushed his hair, we laughed at the slicked back look and started calling him Little Gordon Gekko, in honor of Michael Douglas's villain from Wall Street. We don't keep French cuffs or suspenders on hand for our toddler to wear, so we substituted with one of his Polo shirts, popping the collar, of course. Then we had to take it a step further and have him repeat some of the more well-known lines from the movie...


Next impersonation for Alex?

Room with a view

We made some updates to Alex's room in the last few months thanks to his grandmas! Grandma Dianne got him the new table and chairs - perfect for his cars and trucks! Grandma Gloria gave him a Christmas gift for another piece of furniture and we ended up getting this cool organizer that matches. Looks great! Thanks so much grandmas!



Sidenote: we actually just re-arranged Alex's room today, so it looks different from the photos taken earlier this week!

Facebook...the Final Frontier

This article "Why I Hate Facebook" pretty much sums up why I won't join:

But I honestly don't have the time to commit to Facebook...And after sitting at a computer typing all day, the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer so I can upload photos to my Wall and read 25 random things about a high school classmate I haven't spoken to in 18 years.

This movie is pretty hilarious as well - if Facebook were real life:


The only thing worse than Facebook, is that stupid "Tagged" crap. Talk about obtrusive and annoying...I lasted less than 24 hours on it after getting repeated invites from a very minor acquaintance. Not wanting to seem rude, I relented and joined, only to be bombarded by "tags" and invitations to "tag" random people who I have never met before. So, I've just sworn it all off. It's more trouble than it's worth, and I plan to instead invest my time twittering about my boring life (not).

I do think it will be fascinating to see how younger kids and future generations will be in terms of privacy. With technology, everyone can showcase their lives in front of millions of people...from the mundane to the important. Is that a good or bad thing? Is it so wrong to want to keep things more private? Am I being a total hypocrite by having a blog and slamming Facebook/Myspace? Probably.

But hey, at least one of us has caved into the Facebook frenzy! You can:

A. Become friends with Matt
B. Write on his wall
C. Play Scrabble with him
D. And so on and so on...

Go right ahead, he's at 127 friends and counting...

R.I.P. Socks

Socks Clinton, the former "First Cat" was put down today after suffering from cancer of the jaw. He survived eight years in the White House and a canine sibling (Buddy). Rest in peace, Socks. Hope you get to enjoy that big litterbox in the sky!

Happy Birthday to My Irish Twin!

My sister Sammy has her birthday today - have a great one, sis! Being an Irish twin, we are 11 1/2 months apart, so for two magical weeks, we are the "same" age. It's always a nice little reality check for me that it's getting closer to upping my age a year! Have a great one and give those darling kids of your a big hug and kiss from us!

And this wouldn't be a proper birthday wish without mentioning that she shares her birthday with a famous person...Abe Lincoln! (who turned 200 this year as well) As a long-running family joke, we always have to slip in a vaguely creepy reference to Ol' Abe as well!

Back to Reality...

The past few days have been great, but it was only a matter of time before we got back to the cold February weather! Yesterday it was almost 65 and we spent plenty of time outside!

Second (Class) City

Chicago --- The Worst Place On Earth?
According to Forbes.com, it's the third most miserable city in the country! (And even more surprising, Chicago is higher on the list than Detroit! I mean, Detroit --- where this kind of stuff happens!)

From Forbes.com: "Chicago would seem to be on quite a roll these days. The city is a leading contender to host the Summer Olympics in 2016. The hometown Cubs had the most wins of any team in the National League last year and are one of the early favorites to win the 2009 World Series. And, of course, one of its own just became the most powerful person in the world (we're not talking about Oprah either, but she's close).

So with all of the good vibes coming out of Chicago, how does it show up as the third worst city on our second annual list of America's Most Miserable Cities?

Lousy weather, long commutes, rising unemployment and the highest sales tax rate in the country are to blame for the Windy City being near the top of our list. High rates of corruption by public officials didn't help either."

Read the rest of the article here.

I will be the first to agree that Chicago in the wintertime is probably the most miserable place on earth sans Green Bay. If you aren't worried about digging your car out from the snow and saving the spot, a la "dibs",

or making sure that you have enough layers on to handle the walks to and from public transportation,

then you're probably dodging falling icicles from skyscrapers,

or braving the Lake Michigan Zephyr as it roars off the shore and flattens your face.
All photos courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

One time I remember waiting for the 151 bus at Sheridan and Diversey...and waiting...and waiting. It was one of those -20 wind chill days where exposed skin can get frostbite in about 5 minutes. No cabs were available, a bus or two went by without stopping because it was so packed. I remember wanting to cry so badly because I was so bone-chillingly miserable and cold...only to consider that my lashes would probably freeze to my brows if I did. Thankfully, an office building lobby was open or I would probably be missing a finger or toe.

I really was not looking forward to having to drive regularly when I moved to DM. And part of me still hates being dependent on a car. But not during the winter time. Oh, sweet, sweet garage! You make "dibs" meaningless...my patio furniture never has to double for a parking spot!