Mama On The Move

One of the most family friendly restaurants in the mid-west: Fitz's American Grill in St. Louis!  Food that will make everyone happy, especially the kids. But also good stuff for the adults.  I got the hummus platter but neglected to take a picture.   If you have a teen, he can get a burger which will solve all his problems, including world hunger. And when your meal is gone, you can have an ice cream float if you aren't full - which basically means that you didn't eat a meal, you just came in for a float.  (Or if you are Katie and you are determined to try the float and you end up letting everyone at the table eat some because there is no way you can eat it all without exploding and causing quite a mess.) But the coolest thing about Fitz's is that they bottle their own root beer on 1940's style equipment behind a glass window.  You can watch the bottles being processed as you eat if you are on the first floor.  It's quite nifty.

It was a good Thanksgiving. We made our very first fire in our fireplace and toasted marshmallows. There was turkey....  ...turkey....  ....turkey....  ....reindeer..... .....and more turkey.  There were games.....  ......good friends.....  ....girlfriends.... .....and even more turkeys.  Oh, and zombies. There were definitely zombies.

We just got back from a family reunion in Georgia.  If we had not stopped for anything, it would have been a ten hour trip, each way.  We stopped of course.  We had to have meals, restrooms, and gasoline occasionally. Just as we crossed into Georgia, Kerry and I spotted four vultures circling over one side of the road.  We pointed them out to the girls.  I can't remember the last time they saw vutures. "Look girls, those are buzzards.  Do you know why they are circling?  It means there's something dead or dying on the ground." "It's probably humanity," responded Emily.

When we moved to Illinois, we found things as we were unpacking that we really didn't want any more.  We had boxes around the house that we would toss items in if they were destined for a thrift shop.  One of the last things to go in the box, or actually, across the top of the box because it was full, was an old sleeping bag shaped like a teddy bear.  I think it was originally Ben's and was handed down to each of the girls over time.  They all had loved it, but everyone is too tall for it now, so it had to go. Until.... Ringo noticed it and actually used his teeth to drag it off the box so he could lay on it. And as soon as Rigger saw this....  ....he began to covet. He took the teddy sleeping bag for his own as little brothers will do. And Ringo has never touched it again, as big brothers are clearly too mature for a mere child's sleeping bag that he wasn't really interested in anyway.  It matters not which way Rigger lays, he has no pr

Emily had to do an experiment for Biology this week.  It's one we've done before, several times actually, so we knew what would happen. She had to take a fresh, uncooked egg, cover it in pure vinegar, and let it sit for a week.   What happens, as we knew it would, is that the vinegar eats the shell off the egg.   It's very interesting to see a shell-less egg, still in egg-shape.  You can see right through that thin white membrane that always makes it so difficult to peel a hard-boiled egg.   I was planning to take a picture of it to share with you. Instead, I have a picture of this:  The splat that it makes, as Emily tosses it from one hand to the other and misses. And a picture of Emily washing the splat off her feet after she cleaned the kitchen floor.

Sometimes when you look through your child's Biology notebook.....