90 Billion Sodas

David and I have a new obsession, and it’s our goal to try all the bazillion kinds of fancy soda at this nondescript little hole in the wall my friend Dierdre found, Rocket Burger.

Over 300 different kinds of soda and new ones all the time that the staff is usually super excited about.  These people know their soda.

I totally wasn’t kidding about David and I trying them all… so be prepared for more soda posts.

We were only going to get a couple, but then they said if you buy five you get one free so… hell… you can never have too much soda.  The Fungal Fruit tasted like bubble gum which isn’t bad I guess but not a taste I’m excited about.  River City makes an awesome root beer and the Raspberry-Lime Rickey and Stewart’s Grape was delicious and exactly what you’d expect.

The Chocolate-Covered Maple Smoked Bacon… oooo that was good, but not for long.  That’s one you get to share the novelty of with other people.  After my first sip I swore I would drink a whole case, but by the third sip I was like “The smell of bacon in this mixed with the moisture on my face that is unavoidable with a carbonated beverage makes me constantly think that my face is greasy… and now I’m done.”

The Cafe Azteca Sparkling and Spiced Espresso Cola was my favorite.  It tasted like a dirty chai latte, but in soda form… I bet it would make a mind blowing float.  The Cafe Azteca is now tied as my favorite soda with one I got previously on an adventure with Dierdre called Leninade.  The carbonated lemonade was good, but the bottle kept us laughing all evening long because it was covered with hilarious communism jokes including the tag line, “Leninade, A Taste Worth Standing in Line For”.  Because the only thing that can make a good soda better is getting a hearty serving of political humor as well.

My Epic Weekend Adventure

An epic adventure was needed.  It was desperately, desperately needed.  So a month or two ago Kristen and I planned an epic adventure that we knew we couldn’t do until both of us had baby sitters on the same day.

Then suddenly, the stars aligned.  Our friend Megan was going to be in town for a weekend.  The same weekend David’s mom wanted to take the kids.  The same weekend Kristen already had a baby sitter on Saturday because she was working later that day.  And the clouds opened above us, and the angels sang, and we all ran away to a day of much drinking and picture taking together.

Our first stop on the lightrail we got off, ready for fun.  We were immediately approached by a homeless man who asked if we had a dollar. We didn’t… who carries cash anymore?  ”No no, don’t be sorry.” he told us.  ”No problem.  Thank you for your time.”  We kept on walking until the man’s demeanor completely changed and he turned to Kristen and said “I have a plan for today.  And that plan is to eat.”  We all laughed politely but he stopped us.  ”No, you don’t understand.  I’ve been asking people for a dollar all morning and nobody’s given me one.  If somebody doesn’t give me a dollar, I’m going to rob somebody.”

We all laughed uncomfortably and I moved behind David in one quick motion.  (David, for those of you who don’t know, is reasonably big and people are highly intimidated by him.)  Maybe it makes me a bad friend but the truth is I suspect Kristen and Megan can run away fast than I can, I’m going to take my advantages where I can get them.

He looked us up and down then added.  ”I’m going to rob someone.  If you don’t want it to be you ladies, you need to go that way.” pointing the direct we weren’t going.  We went that way anyway… wasting a few minutes going the wrong direction seemed a small price to pay.  Afterall, nothing fucks up an epic adventure more than getting stabbed before it’s even begun.

When we finally resumed our first stop (if you can’t read the instructions we had to stop at the third restaurant to the east) was this adorable little place called Fez.  None of us had ever been there but I’d recommend it.  We told the bartender to get us whatever four drinks he thought we would like the most and he did a fabulous job.

He then surprised us with a round of shots.  Huzzah!

Our bartenders name was Jesus and we started talking to him, explaining out whole epic adventure plan and telling him about almost getting robbed when in the middle of our story crazy homeless man shows up outside the restaurant.  ”That’s him!  That’s him right there!  Holy cow!” we exclaimed.

Jesus threw the towel he was using down on the bar and charged outside announcing “Don’t worry ladies, I’ll take care of this.”  We don’t know what he did or said, but he took care of it.  The crazy guy left and we didn’t see him again.

Proving once and for all that Jesus saves.

We took the next train south after that and ended up at the park behind the library.

We had as much fun at the park as we could, but the truth was we were raging hungry.  The instructions said we had to find a man with a mustache to tell us where to have lunch so we went on a hunt for a mustached man.  We searched…

…and we searched…

…and we searched…

…and we searched.

We searched for so much longer than it seemed possible we would have to search… although that could have just been the hunger talking.  After what seemed like a million years we found someone with sufficient facial hair who told us to go to The Spaghetti Factory, which we gladly did.

Oh lord it was delicious.  We didn’t have a bartender to tell us what to drink so David declared he was our bartender and ordered us stuff he thought we’d like and he was correct.  There are very few pictures of the food because everyone was too hungry to do anything with it that wasn’t digging in.

We did, however, take plenty of pictures afterward.

“““

The rest of the day was lots of walking, lots of picture taking, lots of talking and searching and fun.  Eventually we were suppose to find someone on a skateboard to tell us where to drink next but if we thought finding someone with a mustache was hard it was only because we didn’t try to find someone on a skateboard.

Eventually we gave up because we were thirsty and decided to just go the next place we saw that we could drink.  Then, like magic, a Hard Rock appeared before us.

Hurray for epic adventures!

Wine. Blogs. Tattoos. SLR.

You know that thing where you’re innocently having an evening with your girlfriend, enjoying a glass of wine and talking about all manner of mommy life while your kids watch movies together, all cuddled up on the couch with popcorn under the supervision of your wonderful husband?

And before you know it, it’s 5am and the two of you have started a blog, amassed a decent following on said blog and it’s corresponding facebook page, spontaneously ran out and got tattoos of your favorite vintage SLR cameras together, and now you’re sharing a carne asada burrito from some-bertos and you’re all “What just happened?  And also, I’m so tired.” ?

Why do people keep leaving us unsupervised together?  Our husbands should know better by now.

That Time I Abandoned Y’all

I’m sure you’ve all noticed, since reading this blog is probably the most important thing going on in any of your lives, that I haven’t been here for a while.  About a month to be exact.  I’m glad you survived.  Here’s the quick run down of what I’ve been doing the past month.

1. I wrote a book.  The main reason I haven’t been here is because at the very last minute I told someone I would do NaNoWriMo with them.  For those of you who don’t like to put yourself through completely unnecessary torture, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and every November a bunch of crazy people try to crank out a 50,000+ word novel in those 30 days.  They call it “30 days and nights of literary abandon”, I call it “30 days and nights of wanting to punch my laptop”.

I broke away from the hilarity I normally write and tried my hand at a tragedy.  That’s right, the woman who brought you such literary masterpieces as “The Night Of Bodily Fluids” and “Jesus Scratched His Balls” wrote a novel about death and sadness and teenagers burning themselves with cigarettes.  There was lots of late night crying into wine… and when you’re writing so much so quickly you’re kind of forced to eat and breath your story so it was really hard to get away from it.  It was a weird month.

Also, because it’s not what I normally write there’s a good chance it sucks.  Like, a lot.  So there’s also a very good chance I will never show it to anyone, but I still did it… hurray!

And for all of you wanting a funny Plaid Sheep book don’t worry, a book of hilarity much like this blog (some straight from this blog) called ”The Foul Mouthed Mennonite” and a parenting book called “The Zen Art of Chilling the Fuck Out” are still squshing around in my mind grapes.  And those I will definitely show you when/if they’re done.

2. Thanksgiving.  I’ll spare you all my Thanksgiving rant, but I will say it’s my least favorite holiday.  I don’t understand the point and I hate the food.  I’m weirded out by meat that still looks like an animal because I’m the most hypocritical kind of omnivour, so the turkey is just upsetting, and it seems like the theme of typical Thanksgiving food is taking something good and adding more things to it till it’s just weird.  Sweet potatoes are delicious on their own, they don’t need marshmellows, go put those in some hot chocolate where they belong.  And green beans are a tasty side dish, I will never understand the insistance on drowning them in cream of something gross soup… you can leave the crispy onion on top though, I approve of those.

And as it turns out I didn’t spare you my Thanksgiving rant at all.  You’re welcome.

3. I taught myself to knit.  I haven’t decided yet if knitting makes me an old lady or a hipster, because on one hand I did have my hair in a bun while I did it, but on the other hand I did instagram a picture of it… so the jury is still out on that one.

4. I learned that I hate knitting.  Knitting is just crocheting for people who like unnecessary work and are wayyyyyy more cordinated than I am.

5. I attempted once again to get organized and whatnot.  Read this if you want to know what my life looks like.  Choosing to dive into that again while attempting the novel business was a bad idea but, ya know.

6. I went to the fair multiple times where my daughter kissed all manner of barnyard animal,

Finn and a goat fell deeply in love with each other,

and I took a million gratutitous pictures of the most awkward furry creatures I could find that I now have no use for.

10 on 10

Simple premise, 10 pictures in 10 hours on the 10th of every month.  If you want to play along hop on over to Rebekah’s blog and enjoy.

My daily breakfast hooping.  I’ll write more about that later.

Yes, I went a little nuts with the black and white.  Don’t judge me.

Those gingers sure do love their cookies.

David didn’t work this afternoon so we took the little monsters to the mall to play at the indoor park since it’s 115 outside and ride the carousel.

We also went to the food court…

…because David has a thing for pretzles.

We also stopped by the candy store where we came across cricket snacks, sour cream and onion flavored.  Verona loved them but I was too weirded out that their little legs kept getting stuck in my teeth.

Photography Adventures

Project “Summer of Whimsy” Days 2 and 3

Downtown has awesome things to take pictures of, everywhere you look there’s some fabulous architecture, or funky cafe, street performers, a protest of some sort… you name it, it’s happening.  If I could I would take solo photography adventures down there every third day of my life.

It should be noted that we live all of 15 minutes away from downtown.  It’s not like going is a big damn deal in reality… only in my mind.

Tuesday I took the kids down for a photography adventure… which amounted to me taking about four shitty pictures, realizing the kids were bored as hell and I wasn’t getting anything good, before scrapping the whole plan because there were more fun ways we could be spending the day.

So I called a friend that lived close, we took all our kids to one of those frozen yogurt buffets, to the library, then let them run around in the shade outside the library where all the skater kids were doing cool tricks and the homeless people were napping… you know, urban culture and all that.

Not the adventure I had in mind, but fun for everyone anyway and that’s the point.

Wednesday nights I have small group at a coffee shop down there so yesterday I left early to try again, sans little monsters.  I knew of some funky street art I wanted to see if I could capture… I didn’t get as much as I wanted cause the lighting was weird, but here’s a few of the more decent ones.

Birds and Butterflies on Roosevelt

Wine and skulls at the coffee shop.

Project ‘Summer of Whimsy’

My official summer goal:

This summer I want to do something every single day that I really want to do.  (Inspiration credit to Tiff over at FreePlayLife.)  It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be a big huge deal, it just has to be something that I REALLY want to do.  If there’s nothing already happening that day that fits into that fits into that category… well damn it I’m going to find something.

I’ll also take picture of most of it for y’all.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post.  Not even a little bit.  It’s also not special, just the Barns and Noble at Desert Ridge, but I took it last night and really like it without being able to explain why, so I’m sharing it.

I seriously might pinch you till you bleed if you’re not wearing any green.

St. Patrick’s Day!  As I mentioned before, you can’t be in a family with three people who look obviously Irish without the 17th of March being kind of a big deal.

So, as usual, we had a whole day of St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans planned.  I found out a few weeks ago that the Irish pub that serves as hang out spot for us and our friends, Tim Finnegan’s, was opening early in the morning and serving breakfast so meeting up with our friends Rachel, Mico, and Carmen there was the first stop on our day of adventures.

After that we made our way to another local Irish pub, Padre Murphy’s, to meet up with David’s brother Chris.

Padre Murphy’s has a massive St. Patrick’s Day thing ever year.  There’s a giant tent outside encompassing most of their parking lot with a stage and dance floor and the whole day is a fabulous string of local Irish bands and tons of performances by step dance troops.

I have a not-so-secret wish that Verona will want to learn step dance when she’s older.  Partly because I just think it’s awesome, and partly because being adopted gives you a bizarre fixation on heritage and tradition since you’re completely cut off from your own.  I have to stop myself from shoving her into every Irish or Mennonite related activity while screaming “THIS IS YOUR HERITAGE!  APPRECIATE IT!”

The point of that completely non sequitor tagent was that I try to get her to step dance preformances when I can in the hope that she’ll grow up thinking it’s awesome and want to do it in a few years.  Sorry for all the rambling it took to get there.

The kids had a lot of fun hanging around the bar too.  Mostly because they look Irish enough, especially little Finnegan with his ginger-ness and uber Irish name, that everyone who walks by falls in love with them and wants to play or hold them.  Sober people do it too, but I’ve definitely noticed a correlation between the “everybody loves a red headed baby on St. Patrick’s Day” phenomenon and people’s level of intoxication.

I’ve been lucky enough to have kids who will sleep where ever they are when they get tired… possibly one of the most convenient traits a child could have… so eventually, since we were there over their usual nap time, Finn passed out in his carseat under a table and Verona asked me to put her in the sling…

… where she promptly passed out as well.

Afterwards we all (with the exception of Verona who went to a rodeo with her grandparents) went back to our place to keep the Irish party rocking going.  Which is code for, David made corned beef and cabbage and everyone wanted in on that.

St. Patrick’s Day fact: Irish Car Bombs are only fun in the states, in Ireland an Irish car bomb isn’t a fun a tasty beverage you enjoy with your friends at parties, it’s what killed the bartender’s sister.  And that’s just a buzz kill.

December Photo Project

It’s December again which means it’s time for the December Photo Project!  I did it last year which was what started my 365 Photo Project and figured what better way to end the year.    I’d love for all of my faithful readers to join in with me (yep, that means both of you) so if you are leave me the URL of wherever you’re putting your pictures… I wants to see!

December 1 :: FISH!

Trips to the pet store are the cheapest and easiest field trips for the kids… not to mention Verona’s favorite.  I think we troll through various stores about five times more often than we actually need to go and get pet supplies.  Anyway, there is an awesome aquarium store on the east side with an amazing selection of salt water fish… all the fun of owning a salt water tank without the extreme price and amount of work.

Tattoos and such things

Once upon a time a couple years ago I met a girl.

This girl and I hit it off, hung out a handful of times, and then one otherwise uneventful evening decided to go to California Pizza Kitchen for supper where we had came to the conclusion that she was awesome, and I was awesome, and we should do something to celebrate our mutual awesomeness.

But instead of sharing a dessert to celebrate like normal people would we decided the only logical course of action was to go get matching tattoos.  Right.  Now.

So we drove around the valley for about an hour trying to find a tattoo place that was open at that hour of a Tuesday night and finally found one only to be told by the only employee there “Uh, I’m just the apprentice, I just started and I don’t really know what I’m doing… but I’ll try if you want.”  To which we replied “Yay!  Go for it!”

Long story short, we have the worst matching tattoos ever.  And I mean ever.  Just god awful.  I’m not even putting a picture up, it’s that bad.

Fast forward to now.  We’re still friends, and today she and her girls came over for a playdate, a picnic outside, and some good old fashioned sprinkler action.

Somehow the playdate turned into a daiquiri playdate… you know, because we’re too damn old for juice boxes… or something like that.

One thing led to another, we got a little squirrely after we put the kids down for their nap, we got to thinking and scheming and talking (none of which are good ideas), and ended up scampering away when David got home and doing a little bit of this…

They don’t match this time though, so maybe that means we’re getting more mature… or something.