As my sons get older, their posing together for photos is becoming more and more rare…
Almost exactly one year after Timmy and I spent the day at Denver Zoo to celebrate his stock market contest win, I took both boys up there for Mother’s Day in May. Dave was in Pennsylvania visiting his own parents, and as I’ve said for many years, I only ever want a fun day—doing something I want to do—with my sons. More »
Hopefully the Moms reading this had a nice Mother’s Day. I enjoyed a nice day with my boys. I’ve cracked the code for happy kids: a trip to the beach! They were happy, I was happy watching (and catching a few waves with a Boogie Board!), all was well with the world.
The boys each brought home really cute Mother’s Day gifts from school on Friday. I’m such a sucker for handprint art from my kids!
Timmy asked me to turn his Mother’s Day card to me into a Handprint Identification Panel for his room. So that only he could enter/exit, and not his brother. Okay, why not? What else was I going to do with a Mother’s Day gift from my son?
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| That’s my handprint on the right, so I could access Timmy’s room to empty his trashcans and take care of his laundry. Otherwise he would have been on his own for those chores 🙂 |
Each boy also brought home these question and answer sheets. They filled in the blanks answering questions about Mom.
I won’t show the whole thing — since it has things like my age and my favorite colors. You guys don’t need to know all that. But here’s a sliver of each boys’ assignment, which is a glimpse into what they think about me.
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| An excerpt from Jacob’s assignment. The first question and answer absolutely melted my heart. The second one…well…I guess it’s a sign that perhaps I need to get off the grid a little more often. |
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| From Timmy’s assignment. If you can’t quite decipher it, it reads “She likes to clean and shop.” I guess I’m glad Timmy thinks I like to clean. Not sure I want him thinking I don’t like cleaning…even though I don’t care for cleaning that much. A necessary evil. |
The other questions and answers were all very nice. Jacob’s answer certainly has me assessing the laptop fused to my lap, and whether it’s time to back off a little. I think so.
So if you see less of me online, this is probably why…
Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Yes a little early, but I have a fun-filled weekend planned so I don’t know when I’ll write again.
Dave did really well this Mother’s Day!
Okay, so he booked his annual trip to visit his model railroading/railfanning friends in Maryland and Pennsylvania for this weekend. And that’s where he is as I type this. But that was seriously unintentional — the group he hangs out with belongs to the Conrail Historical Society, and they planned this annual BBQ/membership meeting for the 1st full weekend of May. That’s usually when it is. But this year, since Mother’s Day is on the 2nd Sunday of May…and the 1st Sunday of May was not the first “full” weekend of May…well…my head hurts just thinking about it.
As we usually do as a military family, when real life gets in the way of a particular holiday, we just choose to celebrate on a different day, so we went out to a nice family dinner last weekend.
But a package arrived yesterday from Thinkgeek.com. I didn’t expect anything other than the dinner out…I ask for the same thing every year: a nice day with the family.
Is it what I think it is???
At first I thought, “no”, since the package was heavier than what I thought it was. After all, I hadn’t indicated to Dave that I wanted ANYTHING from ThinkGeek. But he somehow knew.
I didn’t know he even realized that there’s a GeekMom.com t-shirt! I’d planned to just get myself one eventually. But he knew, and he got me one! Perfect gift, perfect size!
What was the heavier-than-a-tshirt item in the box? It was this:
Does Dave know me or does Dave know me??? I’m so excited to get this book, Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter. This book was featured on GeekMom last December (complete with a giveaway for a free copy) and I’d been interested in getting it for several months.
And before anyone asked, YES, I have the Alton Brown books!
Nothing says Mother’s Day like a good old “Beer Butt Chicken”!
Dave kindly offered to cook dinner for the family tonight. He wanted to make something nice, so he asked me what was on hand in the Vollmer kitchen. The only good meat that was defrosted (i.e., not hot dogs or 1/2 a package of bacon) was a whole roaster chicken.
“So, what can I do with it?”
“You have many choices, you can roast it whole, or cut it up into pieces and bake/sautee up 1/2 of the chicken. Or….
I’ve wanted to try a Beer Butt Chicken for years!”
“Hey! Anything with ‘Beer’ in the name of the recipe is all right by me!”
(At least it wasn’t “Anything with ‘Butt’ in the name of the recipe….”)
A colleague/friend from when Dave and I were stationed in Ohio and in Florida, named Ben Kowash, was the first to introduce me to the concept of stuffing a can of beer up a chicken’s backside and grilling it to perfection. I remember him and I discussing cooking on several occasions, and he was quite the chef. He made pad thai sauce from scratch! I don’t even do that!
Since today was a pretty stormy day, we checked online for oven-roasted options, and found several. This is the one we adhered to the most. We sprinkled Old Bay seasoning on the skin, with the little kids, we didn’t want to go for anything too spicy. (Who said Old Bay was just for seafood?) So instead of grilling the chicken, we put it upright in our oven (rack at the lowest setting) for about 1 1/2 hours at 375 degrees F.
Oh my goodness, the chicken was GOOD! I don’t think I’d ever experienced a juicier, more tender chicken breast in my life!
So Ben, if you happen across this posting, thanks for putting the idea in my head, although it was about 6 years ago!
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| From 2008 05 06 Fl… |
For Mother’s Day, I thought I’d share this clip about a fellow Air Force “Major Mom” and her family featured on Saturday’s CBS “The Early Show”.
Dave and I watched this together yesterday. I’m being considered for a deployment to Al Udeid, Qatar in 2009 (don’t fret, this is a good thing) and Dave is hoping that maybe if I’m gone next Mother’s Day, CBS will present him and the boys with a trip to NYC, tickets to a Broadway show, and iPods for everyone.
You HAVE to see the look on the oldest daughter’s face when the CBS lady says that the USO donated iPods to each of the family members!
To all the Military Moms out there, I salute you!
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