I almost forgot to do this. Let's see how quickly I can knock it out.
I just heard a really cool word. I thought I sort of knew what it meant, but I still had to look it up. Pastiche. Hodge-podge. Imitation. In this particular case, it was a Native American running a souvenir shop selling stuff that wasn't just his own culture, but it was others as well because he knew that's what would sell.
But it's a cool word. It's a big word with a fun meaning.
Today was a good day. We got to sleep in until 7 am. Had hoped for later, but Rachel was hungry and wasn't interested in just snacking on the food available to her, she wanted something more substantial. We were able to stave her off for a little while, but by 8 am we were all up. Except Ben. He slept later.
We started with breakfast and started building a new playlist in iTunes which we called "Saturday morning." We decided we needed a family-friendly list of stuff to get everyone up and moving. Fun. We got it up to just over 150, but there are plenty more in our collection we haven't added yet. After breakfast, we all got to work on stuff around the house. Laundry, cleaning, jumping jacks for Ben, Rachel and I. Fun.
After lunch, Rachel watched some TV while I mowed the front lawns and then the lower back lawn for the first time since last summer. Grass was really tall and it looks like coyotes have spent some time in our backyard. Ugh.
We still have a large pile of boards from when we ripped out the kitchen floor piled on the ground below the kitchen. I ripped half of them into smaller pieces and filled a greens can full of them. Over time I'll fill plastic bags and drop them in the trash until it's all gone. I have another session of ripping to do, but the pile is much smaller now. That feels productive. There's still a lot to be done, but it's nice to have made some progress.
After that, loaded Rachel's bike in the truck and drove to one of the neighborhood parks where she rode two complete laps around the path. We talked about how learning to ride well is not about not falling, it's about falling in a way that you can recover from without getting too hurt. We practiced mounts and dismounts, including falls. She got a lot of practice starting back up and working to keep things going uphill and how to manage speed downhill. It's nearly flat, but there's just enough to get some practice. We mostly worked on braking with the handbrake while continuing to pedal steadily. At the end, there's a slightly larger hill and at first she didn't want to do at all, but I suggested that if she did it, then she could tell Lori that she'd ridden the entire way. On that one, we worked on braking with the pedals. And it turned out she had a lot of fun with it, able to bring it to a complete stop and then start again, kept doing it over and over again.
Then we came back home. I had been thinking of going to Sharis or Dennys or something. I wanted breakfast. When we walked in the door, Lori suggested breakfast. Awesome. So I made up a massive batch of pancakes, including some pink ones for Lori and a chocolate chip pancake for the three of us (Ben just got regular ones) and a Health-bar one for Lori and I each. (Heath now sells a bag of the broken ones they sweep off the factory floor, in the chocolate chip aisle. Good stuff, though hopefully not really off the factory floor.) The Heath ones turned out to be very subtle and a little crunchy. In our opinion, much better than the chocolate chip ones. The chocolate chip ones were good, but it was giant Ghiradelli chips, so they didn't melt as well and they were much larger. Next time I think I'll try cocoa mix instead for a more uniform chocolate. Ben, of course, loved the pancakes, excitedly exclaiming "waffle!" whenever we'd hand him a piece and then shoving it entirely into his mouth.
Lori had me make a double-batch, she's freezed the ones we didn't eat, apparently she can pull them out whenever and pop them in the toaster and the kids, especially Ben love it. I'm married to an incredibly smart woman.