Fish Sticks and Cabbages

February 16 was Tartar Sauce Day so we had fish sticks with tartar sauce.

February 17 was National Cabbage Day. We made something I had been wanting to for a while- Hungarian stuffed cabbage. It's been a few years since we made any. Yumm. Because my cooking ability has improved so much in the last few years (thanks to all those food bloggers and shows, etc.), stuffed cabbage seemed pretty simple. I used the same recipe I did before and it was simple enough, just a little time consuming with taking individual leaves off in boiling water, etc. 

But the end result was yummy. I made some French bread to go with it and we had Fanta. Jeremy drank a lot of Fanta on his mission in Hungary.

Father's Day 2023

Jeremy wanted Hungarian food for Father's Day and sauteed zucchini with mushrooms so he had to do most of the shopping and cooking for it. He did request french bread which I was happy to contribute.

Jeremy also wore his tie that Jr. decorated for him for Father's Day 13 years ago. He's worn it most years on Father's Day since then.

International Women's Day 2022

There was so much potential for a fun picture last year on International Women's Day, March 8.

This year, I made sure we got that picture even if it was 11 o'clock at night when we finally did.

International Women. I have Jeremy's whip from Hungary on my lap. I'm reading a book by Carola Dunn, originally from England who later moved to Oregon (It was also National Oregon Day- note one of the books on my lap is "On to Oregon," and of course I'm originally from Oregon, not far from where Carola Dunn moved). Nichole is reading "The Reluctant Dragon" and I'm holding "The Wind in the Willows" both by Kenneth Grahame who was from Great Britain. Now he's not an International woman but March 8 is his birthday. Note the "reluctant" dragon trying to climb off Nichole's shoulder. Of course it's fun to throw in eating "graham" crackers on Kenneth Grahame's birthday. Then Nichole is "proofreading" her book for National Proofreading Day.

Oh, yes. I'm quite pleased with how this picture turned out this year.

More Dinner Club

Some dinners don't fit into our celebrating (it's amazing how many do) but I'm loving Dinner Club so here are some more of my #dinnerclub posts.

Summer Reading

Library Summer reading programs are underway.
Orem Library had a virtual kickoff event this year (obviously). We were able to watch the event on Facebook that introduced the theme of "Around the World in 8 Weeks," including the traditional puppet show. Jet loves puppets.

Provo Library is doing their program virtually and their theme is "Imagine Your Story" so there has been a lot of fairy tale and folk tale type activities such as #provostorytrails where we go out for walks at local parks where they have parts of a story on signs along the trail. That way we get exercise and a story at the same time. So far we've read "The Elves and the Shoemaker," "The Nightingale," and a local story called "The Story of Utahna and Red Eagle."

Here are some of the other things we've done so far:
Make up your own recipe. Jeremy made enchiladas with his own sauce for himself and me.

Bake a treat for someone. Jr. and Nichole made cinnamon rolls for the family. I made chocolate depression cake, a recipe from Budget Bytes, and added fresh cut strawberries on top of mine.

Build a castle out of LEGOs. Lucky's had hidden gold inside.

Take home activities. We made a hot air balloon and passport.

We celebrated Australia Picnic Day (a couple months early) with a water balloon fight and egg on spoon races.

We've also had plenty of fun singing songs and reading books. We even listened to a Hungarian song about Winnie-the-Pooh or Micimackó as they call him in Hungary. And we do more fun things every day.

Hungarian Pirates or Pirate Cube?

May 19 was the anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, which we all know was invented by a Hungarian.
What better way to celebrate than to eat Hungarian food, twist Rubik's Cubes, and watch... The Pirates of Penzance?
The kids once again got creative with rationalizing movie watching. Jeremy made us rokott krumpli and the kids wanted to watch that movie so here's what we eventually came up with.
Originally it was that Hungary is a European country and so is England where Penzance is located. Meh. Too much of a stretch for me. However, May 19 was May Ray Day and the pirates wanted to may-ray the major general's daughters. The pirates could also be described as devils and there may be food and cake served at the wedding. May 19 was also Devil's Food Cake Day.

We saved devil's food cake for a later date, though, to celebrate my birthday along with homemade alfredo pizza. Mmmm. Craveworthy.

Like with Jeremy's birthday, Lucky made me a present of a LEGO character. This time it was Guybrush Threepwood doing his Guybrush Threepwood dance. What a sweetie.

September 2019

I neglected to mention in my last post, because I didn't notice the picture, that in August Lucky and I got our one on one Mommy-son date watching a movie and eating popcorn. Phew. I got that in.

Hmmm, now what happened in September? Well, let's see.
It started off on September 1 (as most Septembers do). It was Johann Pachelbel's Birthday. We probably listened to some of "Pachelbel's Canon in D" or the Piano Guys version, "Rockelbel's Canon." I didn't get pictures and I don't remember for sure. Maybe we just talked about it.

September 2 was Labor Day so the kids didn't have school. Since Jeremy was working that evening, we had Family Home Midday (instead of Evening) and we had ice cream for the treat. Yumm.

September also started off like this-
Jr. Jr.: Mom, I want to do a science experiment like my teacher did and show it to Lucky.
Mom: O.K.

Later-
Mom: When will I ever learn?

You know I love music. One of those things I've been wanting to do for a while is get dressed up and go to a symphony or something like that- you know, just one of those wishes.
Wish granted. A friend gave Jeremy and me tickets to the Utah Symphony, where they were playing live to the movie, "The Empire Strikes Back." The movie was played on a big screen and all the music was done by the symphony.

When we got there and went in to sit in our seats, we realized something wasn't right. One of the seats was missing. Ah, the weird things you encounter. The ushers were so good and helpful and found out the problem for us. Apparently that seat had been taken out over a year ago but somehow it had not been updated in the computer. Sigh. So they gave us new seats, better seats, in the balcony. We had a better view than we would have had of both the screen and most of the instruments. It was terrific.

Since FanX was going on next door, the emperor himself (Ian McDiarmid) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) popped in to introduce the symphony and encourage us to cheer as much as possible whenever anyone from the Dark Side was on screen and Boo and Hiss whenever a Jedi made an appearance.
Jeremy and I had such a great time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again to our friend for those tickets.

My parents came to Utah to celebrate my dad's birthday, so we got together at my sister's house to wish him a happy birthday and have some nice family time. I love my family.

One day for Family Home Evening, we went back to the Butterfly Biosphere because we've been wanting to do that again. It was another great evening. Lots of things to see and do including getting to hold butterflies.

Nichole and Jeremy went out on a birding field trip one evening and a few days later I went out on a field trip again up Nebo Loop. Jeremy and Nichole got a full harvest moon. The birders were enjoying watching it rise over the hills. It was so big.

September 13 was National Peanut Day and International Chocolate Day and Roald Dahl Day and Positive Thinking Day and the anniversary of when Animaniacs premiered. Busy evening. Let's see if I can remember what happened.
We started out with peanut buster parfait treats with homemade hot fudge and peanuts and vanilla ice cream. Jeremy then went off to work while the boys watched either Animaniacs or "chocolate factory" movies (they watched the other on a different day to make sure they got them in there, I think). Nichole and I took our one on one Mommy-daughter date time watching videos and trying out hairdos. That was fun. I hadn't done that in a while.

After years of not doing it, we finally got together with our friends again to do Hungarian food. Yumm. Yumm. Yumm. Yumm. And again it was fun to hear stories of experiences in that country.
We ate uborka salata (cucumber salad), kenyer (bread) with butter and sweet peppers, rokott krumpli (layered potatoes), kokoas csiga (chocolate snails), gulyas (stew), langos (fry bread) with pudding and Fanta because they always had Fanta on their missions.

September 18 was National Cheeseburger Day. We got creative and had baked potatoes with ground beef and cheese- cheeseburger.

September 19 was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We just did themed food this year. We had donuts for breakfast (it's become tradition) and for dinner we had squid pups, ketchup (because it's red), carrot hooks, golden nuggets of mozzarella, orange juice to fight off scurvy, and crackers for Polly.

Nichole made herself a skull necklace and I wore my skeleton earrings while I ran errands and Lucky wore a bandana on his head later in the day. When he got on the bus, he did tell the bus driver, "Ahoy, Matey."

September 20 was National Punch Day. I didn't have any punch to drink so I let the kids watch Kung Fu Panda with the instructions that they were not to punch anyone themselves.

Jeremy did balloons for the maker faire at Thanksgiving Point. Besides making some maker robots for display, he had a booth where people could help him sculpt a hedgehog. He had the main body of the hedgehog and people were able to put in the bristles.

Here are a few of the other balloon sculptures Jeremy did in September.

September 23 was the first day of Fall. We didn't really do anything to celebrate that I can remember (I completely forgot to stand an egg on its end for the equinox, though Jr. Jr. remembered us doing that in the past).
Jeremy and I did go on a date to watch Derek Banks perform while he was getting ready for an international competition in Japan. Wow.

September 24 was Jim Henson's birthday and Lucky got to watch a couple of movies with Jim Henson creatures. Lucky.

Lucky was thrilled that for one of his classmates' birthdays, he got to bring home a car made from treats. 

 
We were finally able to make it to a pack meeting for scouts where Jr. Jr. was awarded a few of the things he's earned. Way to go, Jr. Jr.

September 27 was Crush a Can Day. We had soda pop with our dinner and everyone got to take their cans out after dinner and crush them.

One day for scripture study, we looked at different fruit and talked about fruits of the Spirit. We got the idea from the Come Follow Me manual about Galatians.

Another day, because it is Fall, I tried out a new apple recipe for our Family Home Evening treat. It came from the September 2019 issue of The Friend magazine. Russian Apple Cake known as sharlotka.

That's all I can think of for September. Hey, not bad. Getting this posted will get me a lot closer to where we currently are. Now don't let me fall behind in October.