Goin' To The Semi's

Michael and his team played in the quarter finals last night and won without a hitch. We came out in good form and overcame them big in the second quarter 28-12 to get to a final score of 71-57.

Michael got up for a three point shot here.

..... and here.

The Hubby gets nice shots of other players too. Dionte was also on fire.

Michael was also on tap for a few nice assists.

Another 3 !!!

.... and 1.    Eleven times. Yes, he had 11 free throws. Made oh, ...  11 of them.

His cheerleading section was there for all 28 of his points.

He had some nice drives for lay-ups as well.

Ben (from the other team, and previous post) also had a good game, and they had good interaction at the end of their last competition together as Ben fouled out.  A tear in everyones eye, knowing that it is the end of these cute boys b-ball careers.
My friend, another mom from our team, said, "It's just right there," placing her index finger right up to the top of her throat. "It's just right there."

Replay

Michael played against the members of the cross town rival Westmont High School several times when he was a little guy, but since they got to high school they have never met on the court.

Well, it's Michael and Ben again this Saturday for the quarter finals of the Division 2 CCS tourney.
Ought to be a good one.

I Do Enjoy Good Food

I consider myself a "Foodie", because I like all kinds and flavors of food. I like to cook interesting things, and try interesting tastes.

Last night we went to Michael Mina's in San Fran. Such amazing displays of unique titbits and combinations are the best. It makes my mouth as well as my nose and eyes water just to look at the menu.
We had about 9 small courses, presented in 12 different ways. The service, and uncommon presentation were exciting and just looking at each plate as it was presented was a treat.

One of the men, a colleague of The Hubby, took pictures of every plate that he could, to send them to his self subscribed "foodie" of a daughter. Very cute.

I tried to be very good because I'm trying to take better care of myself, but I ate extremely well and didn't feel deprived. (because I wasn't - I just didn't eat bread, drink anything but water, and in the 3 things that we could choose, I chose the less fat sounding ones) I still got to have a small savory bite of foie gras, and chocolate/cherry cake from The always generous Hubby.

Here's a picture of Michael Mina's cookbook. I'm not sure it would be one that I'd do anything but look at. I have a couple Thomas Keller books that I've never cooked anything from. I think the ingredients and quantities, time and mess to cook some of these things wouldn't fit into my lifestyle as well as others, but it's okay to look and drool once in a while, isn't it?

Auntie Steph

I stole this picture off of facebook. NOT so hot.

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Aunt Stephanie with the new little guy last weekend.
Here is the proof that she got to see and hold the new blue bundle. She was a happy girl to be able to come home for a few days. Steph has been working this school year at the "Garden Restaurant" in the Joseph Smith Memorial building near her cute, tiny apartment and finishing up her senior year at the U.
You go girl!

Michael Michael

A handsome guy and a cute new little guy to boot. His little eyes are just looking around.
It's amazing how much more comfortable MM is with newborns than he used to be. Awesome.

Another Last

Tonight is Michael's last home game. So sad for all of us.
Last Wednesday was his pretend last home game, because there is no school this week so they decided to have "Senior Night" before winter break. All his biggest fans came out to watch.

Check out the basketball ribbons on that cute little girl.
Steph flew in from Salty Lake for the event. (She also got to meet her new nephew for an added bonus.)

The Hubby handed over his camera to S, and the lens was not quite right for a long range shot of all the seniors and their parents. This ain't bad though. Luke Politi, Jeff Spagnola, Michael, & Matty Calhoun with all their moms and dad's. You just can't quite see Debbie P. and John C. on the ends. Sorry.

Got us good though. Boy I have big hair, what's that all about. Why doesn't someone tell me to calm it down.

There were also posters around the room.  Go #24 Hodge!
Now, "play ball," as Grandpa Kelly would say.

Valentines Cookies

Lexy came over and helped decorate heart cookies yesterday. I had pre-made the dough, rolled out and cooked the heart and hand cookies earlier in the day and then went to pick her up.
We mixed the Royal Icing and colored it first. She thought that would never end. But then we started doing the fun part.

She settled right into it, squeezing the bottle of icing and trying to squeeze the old school bag of icing. The plastic bottle was far easier to use. We borrowed it from Aunt Katz and returned it in worse shape than we got it. (I lost the little closer on the top of the bottle - I'm thinking it is in a safe place in my kitchen, but I'll probably have to replace it. Scatterbrained, did you say?)

After we were done, and everyone else came to play with us, we had a little tea party with hot chocolate and cookies and my new tea pot that goes with my new china. I'll show that better later.

Here is one of the favorite styles of cookies that we did. Yum.

Katz and Steph finished up the decorating of the cookies.
They seem to have developed patience and talent over the years. Good job girls!
And thanks to 4 year old granddaughters who enjoy kitchen time with Gramvi.

Ravelympics

I love to watch the Olympics.
I record hours each day and watch while I am doing some sort of project or other. Last night when I was surfing a little and trying to find a pattern or two of knitting projects, I ran into this.

There are other crazy knitters out there who love to watch the olympics. I'm part of a strange group.  So funny don't you think?
So now I guess I can sign up for events and everything. (I don't think I'll go that far.) I need to do some smocking and sewing as well as the knitting, so I probably couldn't keep up with the straight knitters.

Puzzle

My DIL got a cute puzzle of my parents for Christmas that was so fun to put together. They enjoyed it and we assembled it in one day 'cause it wasn't a crazy 1000 piecer.

Now it is approaching Valentines day and my in-laws anniversary, so I called my DIL and got the info.
Thanks Kara.
I ordered from Shutterfly a puzzle made of:

This cute picture.  61 years they've been together now and aren't they cute?

The Hubby went to visit them this past weekend and took this picture. He had a great time with them and his sister and most of her family. Our Jonathan and Stephanie also hooked up with the crowd on Saturday. Good times had by all.
Happy Anniversary GG and Grandpa H.

Saints Win

This post is not about the big game, but thought it was a nice sentiment that the "Saint's Win." They (the saints that is) actually should win every time, but sometimes have to wait until judgement day to find that out.  tee hee
I am slowly figuring out just how to embellish my pictures through Photoshop to place in a blurb book. If I get one done before Michael graduates in June, I will be proud of myself.
Here are a couple of pages I put together of one (yes, just 1) play from a game a couple of weeks ago.

Obviously a two page layout of 3 seconds in time. The Hubby captures it very well with his Nikon D3.
I left out about 3 shots in the series, cause I felt like I didn't want them to be 2x2 pictures.
Michael jukes this kid pretty good.

Most of my creative time was spent on where and how to save the pages after I completed them. Macs are great and terrible, just like the end of the earth will be. I finally settled on saving the pages to desktop and then dragging them into a Photoshop Bridge folder for safe keeping. I think it should be easier to save them where I want them, but I could not figure it out

Photoshopped Iron-on Transfer

I added to the DCH' s Christmas tree skirt yesterday. I made them this skirt at the beginning of their marriage and left blank spaces for yearly updates such as pictures or changes of address. It'll take them through 20 years or so.
Well I wanted to put a picture of the little girls with the Christmas dresses I made, and the Christmas before the addition of another sibling (lil bro. Luke)
So I started with the main picture turned backwards (because I'm ironing it onto a cloth after printing it off. Therefore the printed version has to be a MIRROR image)
I then added embellishments of snowflakes and diamond sequins for a wintery affect.
(is that the right effect??)
I also thought I'd put the date in the picture for a cute affect and had to have that mirrored as well.

Here is the finished printable picture with all the embellishment.

After ironing it onto the cotton muslin, it is flipped to look like this. I do wonder how long the image will last on the fabric.

I still think they are the cutest little girlies ever. 

I Like Lavender

It seems that I shy away from pink for little girls the more the world tries to push me into it.
Don't get me wrong, I love PINK and I dressed my cute little girls in it plenty of times, but I don't get the current kids obsession with it.
Really there are many other beautiful colors out there. Great turquoise's, and peachy oranges, and beautiful blues to suite a frilly or girly girl just wonderfully. Lately my color of choice for baby girls and apparently now little girls has been LAVENDER. If you think about it, it is quite versatile. It pairs well with so many colors. Yellow or lime green are great with it. It even goes nicely with pink, and it is plenty feminine.
So when searching for yarn to make Lena a new grandma sweater, my baby blues landed firmly on the variegated lavender in the colorful yarn store.

And this is what I ultimately came up with for the finished product. You could even argue that some of the variegation in it is actually PINK.

It has a self bow on the hat that matches the one at the neckline closing. I hope she has a few things to wear with it.
She does look cute in lavender, doesn't she?

The Big "C"

Over one year of writing on this blog and I have made it to the centrum mark.
Seems that I write about twice each week, except on weeks where I'm overly taxed with another project and on a tight deadline. On those weeks I still try to come up with a little time to at least document the time consumption in which I am participating.
Seems I write more about my family than anything else. At least when I'm writing about something else it often is for the family or because of them, so they get included in the "label" section of the post.

I am planning on continuing in this vein while adding another blog to my collection (I tried to figure out how to spell repritua here - any ideas?) about me and my more selfish goals.

I need to lose about 50 pounds and I feel like documenting about it will help me stick to my specific goals of food and exercise. So I will write about it here and perhaps this will help me stick to my goals because I have them public.

Happy, Happy Birthday Children Dears

We have had three, (oh wait, there was a REAL birthday in there too) I mean 4 birthdays celebrated by our little family in the past 2 1/2 weeks.  First Elles turned one, then the little fighter Luke was born, (if that's not a birthday you'll have to take it up with his Mom), then my middle child, and finally 2 yr. old Lena.
Such a lot of partying and eating, and singing going on around here.

Don't you just LOVE these curly locks?

The performance of waiting till we were finished singing to then perfectly blow out her 2 little candles was truly magnificent. At one point in the song, she thought we were almost finished and she started leaning over to give a big blow. But when we continued singing, our smart little girl sat back in her chair and waited for the song to officially end before she blew out the first and then the subsequent second candle.
So cute!

She's also a pro at opening her presents. I think Christmas being so close helps them understand pretty quickly what to do with a wrapped item.

Her cousin is becoming a pro at drinking out of a cup. GPa wasn't helping except to catch the cup when she decided she'd had enough.  Good job E!
You too GPa!