Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Did They Eat It: Walking Tacos

I have pretty much stopped cooking all together this summer. We've grilled a lot, ate many turkey sandwiches, or sometimes even cereal. Don't judge, hush, don't judge.

When we were up north last weekend with our friends, my friend's 7-year-old and I were chatting by the fire. She told me she loves tacos and she spoke about tacos with such affection and love, a love I've very rarely heard my children speak of food with.

I told her about this thing I'd read about when I was planning our camping trip Walking Tacos. "It's a taco," I told her spellbound face, "but it's in a snack size bag of chips with all the taco stuff in the bag."

She said, "I want to eat that!"

I'm glad I told her about Walking Tacos and not Saganaki, because her enthusiasm for the food would have made me powerless, I'd have to fry my eyebrows off just to make her culinary dreams come true.

This is less a recipe and more a great idea for feeding a crowd at a party, tailgate, skating party, camping, that type of thing. Portable food with minimal clean up. I'd planned to make this for our camping trip and the Saturday night potluck but then it poured rain and we went home and slept and cursed the rain. (Again.)

But here are some of the things you can use.

Ground beef
A pack of taco seasoning
Bags of snack size corn chips like Fritos. Some people swear by Doritos.
Shredded cheese
Shredded lettuce
Diced tomatoes
Diced onions
Salsa
Black Beans
Sour Cream
Guacamole
Chopped Cilantro
Pickled jalapenos

I usually buy a pound of beef for the four of us, so cooking for 10, we did 2.5 pounds and probably could have had more...they were so good.

I like to crush up the chips a bit before opening the bag so you get chips and toppings on your fork at once.
You can also make your own taco seasoning....this is a decent one I've used before.

To save money, we bought enough bags of chips for everyone to have one and then an extra bag of chips for refills in our bags.

Did They Eat It? It's a world record folks!

Cottage Vacation

We went up north last weekend with my good friend Leslie, her husband Tom and their four kids. Leslie and I headed out on Wednesday with all the kids and Logan and Tom drove up the next night after work. We decided to go up on Wednesday as early as possible so we could enjoy the beach because...of course...it rained the rest of the weekend.

So we spent several hours at the beach at a nearby state park. We also had ice cream.

Leslie has four kids 8,7,5 and 4 and her life, I learned after our weekend together, consists of a lot of tattling, time outs, preparing meals and cleaning up after meals.

I know we all knew this already but I'm a parenting wimp and watching what Leslie's day is like every day...yeah I just don't know how you do that and don't kill anyone. Then again most people aren't as tightly wound as me.

Here's a helpful tip I learned from Leslie and you guys, it's crazy how this works. Well it at least saves you from having to intervene in 482 altercations a day between your four kids.

Kid: "So and so took my shovel!"

Leslie: "So tell him not to do that."

Kid: "Okay"

And that's it...it happened over and over again and every time I was in awe.

The second day we were there, it rained (of course because that's what happens to us when we plan fun outings) so we put the kids in the car and drove up to Gaylord to see dead animals at Call Of The Wild. I know you're jealous.

Luckily the rain stopped but it stayed cold so we were able to have campfires and when the dads arrived we let them be in charge of making smores. Leslie channeled her inner Pioneer Sister Wife and started the fire before they got up there. I sat...on my ass.

The next morning Logan made all the kids into Burritos.

Here's another thing about having 6 kids running around. When you do something fun with one? Pretty soon you've got an hour or three of "Do It To Me Now!" "It's My Turn!" "Me Next" coming at you.

At least they were cute burritos.

The next day the dads took the kids fishing and Leslie built a barn out in the backyard while I sat on my ass. I'm the worst Sister Wife Ever.

Ironically the smallest fisherman caught the biggest fish.

Maddie, oh Maddie....is cursed by being the oldest of all my closest friend's kids. So she is often stuck at parties with 3-5 preschoolers stuck to her legs and she's not exactly a fan of being the idol of all the little kids. So she was somewhat dreading this weekend. 

She just sort of sucked it up and suffered through.

I felt terrible for her and all the suffering she did.

I just hope next year she has a tiny bit more fun.

Irony

Reasonably common comment on this website.

"OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO NEGATIVE! AND STUPID! AND UGLY! AND OH MY GOD STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE! AND WHINEY! AND STUPID!!!!!!!"

Because, that comment you just went out of your way to type....is not at all negative.

Peace Maker

As usual, spending all day every day with the kids is getting old. What am I saying it was old when it started...so I should say it continues to be old.

Doing fun things with them works out well, who doesn't like a day at the pool? Or a trip to the zoo? Or a playdate with friends? But when we're doing boring things I usually do when they're not around, like go to the market or balance my checkbook, things tend to get a little less than pleasant.

Maddie has a list of things she would like to have. RIGHT NOW. This list is comically full and it grows and grows by the second, especially if you enter a Target with her. The nice thing is the things on her list of things she NEEDS TO HAVE RIGHT NOW very rarely coincides with the things that are on my list of things I'm planning to buy right now.

I also tend to be skeptical of the things on her list of "needs" because they tend to coincide with whatever is right in front of her face at any given moment. "I need a new pair of shoes....More socks....A hot glue gun.....a lamp for my room....a rug...a new beach towel....this book! A magazine! A game! A belt sander!"

On this particular shopping trip a week or so ago I was amazed by the stream of things coming out of her mouth. I started to make mental bets on what she'd ask for next. It was incredible.

My friend was once a nanny for a family who asked her to limit saying "No" to their child to 7 times a day. 

I say no to my kids more than 7 times before getting out of bed in the morning. But on this trip to the market I was racking up enough "No's" to cover about a year of "No's" for that family.

Madison was getting pretty annoyed with my love of the word no on this trip through Target and I was getting pretty annoyed with her list of "Needs". Sometimes Maddie and I get a little....unpleasant when we're in a situation like this.

Maddie likes to needle and I like to become 11 and the result is frighteningly immature and stupid.

"You know what Mom? I don't think you even care about the things I need. I don't think you even love me."

"Hmm...interesting."

"Yeah and you know what? If you had a yearbook you know what I'd write in it? 'You were really mean to me all year! Thanks for caring about what I need.'"

"Oh, well you know what I'd write in your yearbook, 'Sorry you never appreciated the things you have!' "

"Guess what else I'd write? 'You are the meanest mother in the whole world.' "

"Oh really? Because guess what I'd write? ....."

Suddenly Max, who'd been walking in between us quietly listening to this ridiculous conversation, put his arms up to the sides and says,

"Ladies, ladies....how about if nobody writes anything in anybody's yearbook. Okay?"

The voice of reason from my 8 year old. Nice.

Sandisk Slot Radio Giveaway: Winner #3

And the number is:

 

I hate when the Randomerator picks a higher number because then I sit there and count each one because my comments are unfortunately not numbered. Last time the winner was number 20-or-something. Much easier.

Our winner is Amanda! Well Amanda #2....

 

Congrats Amanda and I'll be in touch.

Thanks again to Sandisk for sponsoring this giveaway!

Crazy Camping: The Pouring Rain Makes It Crazy!

Each August, a whole bunch of families from the elementary school converge on a state park campground to enjoy campfires, smores, the beach, games of horse shoes and euchre, endless loops on scooters and, inevitably, torrential rain.

I am as surprised as anyone to say this. But I love camping. I love how inexpensive it is and how it gets you out of your normal routine and how free it makes the kids to do and explore.

If you go with friends, it's just like living in a commune.
Except everybody still shaves their legs.

(One of my Sister Wives.)

Granted we still have electricity and bathrooms and showers (though what I saw in a shower on my first day up there has scarred me for life....I would tell you but then you'd be scarred too.) (Okay fine, someone thought it wasn't a public shower. They dropped the L.) (Oh my God I just gagged again.)

(Let's burn that from our collective brains.)

Most families come up on Friday after work and stay until Sunday. According to my friend's 5-year-old daughter Sarah though, "The Moms come up on Thursday and do all the work and then on Friday the Dads come up and drink all the beer." Which is remarkably accurate.

(Would like you to know he set up the campground before he drank beer.)

This year we drove up Thursday evening as a family because Logan had Friday off (Hooray for Unpaid Days Off!) and had a great time Thursday evening, all day Friday and Friday night.

Friday was a great day, except exhausting.

On Friday all the talk was weather, "Big storms coming through!" "Wide radar stretch of heavy rainfall."

But my phone said, "60% chance of rain." So I opened my big fat trap and said, "Well that means there's a 40% chance it won't rain!"

(Plus it was so beautiful, it couldn't possibly rain!)

When I woke up Saturday morning my phone said, "100% chance of rain." So much for optimism.

(At least there was bacon.)

We rigged up a rain fly for our rainfly-less tent and it was pretty....janky looking. It rained and rained and rained some more. Our little campground started to look like the saddest shanty village.

I started out the morning saying, 'I can handle the rain! I'm not a baby!'

After the first 4 hours of rain, my resolve began to leave. In the 5th hour, with my daughter standing next to me asking every 2.3 seconds if we could go home now, I tried to have a drink to see if that would numb me to the ridiculous rain pounding our communal canopy.

(I may have gotten a little angry about the weather, but I swear I didn't do this.)

That didn't help so I flipped off the sky, got in the car and waited for Logan to drive us home, leaving all our camp stuff up there until the following morning.

This was the third annual Crazy Campers trip and it's rained every Saturday since this event had a name. Every year we think, "There is NO WAY it can rain again next year."

Then it does.

That's what makes it crazy.

(Doesn't this look crazy?)

Sandisk Slot Radio Giveaway #3

All right kids, it's time for the final Sandisk Slot Radio Giveaway. You remember Slot Radio don't you? Let's refresh.

The slotRadio™ player is a small, stylish, portable music device that comes bundled with a slotRadio™ card preloaded with 1,000 handpicked songs featuring artists from Billboard®'s charts, and professionally arranged into a variety of genre-themed playlists.

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Additional 1,000 song, genre-specific and themed slotRadio™ cards. Digital music has never been this easy – just feast your ears!

For this giveaway tell me the best concert you ever attended. Your comment is your entry, here are the rules.

Here's mine:

We saw Belly and Radiohead as one of our early dates. I'm not sure it was the music that gave me a tingly happy feeling (since I'm not much of a music person) or the anticipation of Logan kissing me. But either way it was the best concert I've been to.

You can enter until 12am EST Friday August 14. The winner will be selected randomly from the entries and announced later that day.

Thank you to San Disk for sponsoring this giveaway!

Hong Hua Authentic Chinese Dinner

Our friends Joe and Cari invited us to dinner at their studio the other night.

Tip: If you get invited to dinner at Joe and Cari's house...say yes. Joe is a photographer who works with lots of people but is especially well known for his food photography work. Chefs appreciate him making their restaurants and their food look so good, and sometimes they offer to come over and make dinner for 10 or 20 of their closest friends.

Hong Hua was Hour Detroit's Restaurant of the Year and Joe photographed the spread for that review. The owners of the restaurant wanted to share their food with some of Joe and Cari's friends.

Sometimes I'd like to trade services or products, you know I'll give you this thing of value in exchange for this thing of value, but my dramatic lack of marketable skills makes this difficult. Good thing I have friends with lots of marketable skills.

As a special surprise the guest list was kept secret leaving me to debate if they'd invited my in laws, or our ex landlord.

Luckily they didn't invite them, but WOW that would have been a really fun party!

If Joe would have invited my in-laws, he'd have been laughing at the choking tension in the air. Instead he was laughing at funny witticisms. Phew.

While I was taking pictures, Logan said, "Oh thank goodness someone's here to take pictures." Sarcasm, it's what makes our marriage go around.

Overall a lovely night. Maybe if I offer up a bushel of apples I can get a restaurant to come to my house and make dinner for a bunch of my friends.

First Piece Of Mother Daughter Advice.

The other day I had to take my car into the shop. You see, we decided to go to one car to save some money and in the spirit of my shitty luck, the car has been in the shop more times than in the entire four years we've owned the thing.

In a span of 25 minutes I drove the car into town, dropped it off, walked back home, collected the kids, forced Maddie to ride her bike and rode over to the dentist office for the kid's cleanings.

I don't own a bike, unfortunately, so I have to ride Logan's bike. Logan's bike is sized perfectly for a man about 6 feet tall. I am not a man and I'm a lot shorter than 6 feet. There's also an unfortunately placed bar on Logan's bike and when I stop, I can just barely touch my toe to the ground. 

I have to, very gingerly, slide off the seat without running into the unfortunately placed bar.

I was in a bit of a hurry at that point so we wouldn't be late and had to wear what I'd been wearing. A skirt.

We made it to the dentist and back home without incident.

A day or two later Maddie says, casually, "The other day when we rode our bikes home from the dentist? Your underwear was showing."

!!!!!

"Did you think about, I don't know, MENTIONING that to me while we rode?"

"I didn't want you to be embarrassed."

....

"Okay Maddie, I'm going to give you some advice. As a woman, it's sort of a rule, if there's toilet paper on a shoe, a piece of food in a tooth, OR UNDERWEAR SHOWING you always tell. Because that's the only way to get into heaven."

Another item checked off my life list. "Give Maddie words of wisdom she'll always remember."

Grand Rapids Zoo

Quick piece of advice. If you're trying to get out of a particularly difficult time in your life, and the gray fog that typically accompanies that kind of time, you're going to want to do things. Things besides staring at a blank computer screen trying to find something, anything, to write about aside from the gray fog you don't want to talk about.

Last week my friends Leslie and Jodi (and me) took our kids to the Grand Rapids Zoo. This zoo is about a two and a half hour drive from my house and since my car was doing a nice thing last week where it would overheat if I spent more than 40 seconds at a stoplight, the kids and I rode in Leslie's car.

We drove to Grand Rapids together, three of her kids and all two of mine, and there was spitting on siblings and kids calling someone else stupid, and someone not SHARING THE WATER BOTTLE. Then sharing it but throwing it at a very thirsty kid's head.

At first on the drive I felt that every sound from the back seat required attention, then, I followed Leslie's lead. Which is pretty much you ignore the din of noise until something rises above, then you deal with it. I guess this is what happens when you have twice the number of kids I do. Or you're conveniently deaf in your right ear....maybe she had that surgically done.

The Grand Rapids zoo is significantly smaller than the Detroit zoo, but the exhibits are far more hands-on, easier to view the animals and also they feed their animals crack cocaine. I couldn't believe how active they were. A mountain lion debated eating us, a snake came up to the glass and opened its mouth, a snow leopard pounced on something (a squirrel?). At the Detroit zoo the penguins are enclosed in glass and in Grand Rapids the exhibit is open. I never realized how loud they are. Holy hell they're a loud group of animals, just like our collective eight.

Maddie isn't what you'd call "daring", she likes safe things like reading a book. I mean why ride a bike when you could walk a lot more safely? Imagine my surprise when she pleaded, no, begged to ride a camel. I didn't necessarily want to spend the 8 bucks for the two of them to take a slow walk around a circle on a camel, but if you're Maddie's mom and she asks to do something even slightly daring, you say yes.

Hopefully she doesn't ask to share needles with a guy on Woodward anytime soon.

This camel is saying, "Whoa, is that Madison Summers? Wouldn't she be safer a little lower to the ground?"

Next we went to touch the Sting Rays, which was pretty much mind blowing.

Mind: Being Blown

Turns out stingrays like to have their backs rubbed, we didn't have any food to give them and they kept coming up for more.

They swim around the tank, sometimes jumping out of the water, or flapping their "wings" against the side of the pool.

Don't touch their tails though or they'll gnaw your arm off. Not really, they only have teeth in the very back of their mouths and their barb has been clipped (it's like a finger nail) so they're perfectly pleasant.

The kids spent about an hour touching the stingrays and the occasional shark. There are sharks in the tank too, but don't worry they're "nice". I guess they asked them for references.

In San Antonio we got to feed and touch dolphins at Sea World, it kind of blew our minds, even though there was an unnerving feeling that the dolphins were smarter than us.

As we left the Sting Ray lagoon Maddie said, "I liked petting the dolphins at Sea World, but you could tell the dolphins just liked us for our food. The sting rays just liked us I think."

I think my kid feels unconditionally loved by a sting ray.

Bike Parade 2009

Let's try this....

On Saturday Maddie and I went over to our old (beloved) neighborhood for the annual Block Party.

There were pinatas, egg tosses, crafts, water balloon fights, a movie outside, scavenger hunts (2), a kid's bake off, candy, 20 desserts and yet...

If we'd only shut the street and let the kids ride their bikes up and down all day long they would have been just as happy with the block party.