Making a yummy homemade pizza on Friday night has become quite a tradition around here. I usually do a kids' pizza with pepperoni or bacon, and then Todd and I like to try different things. Or...I guess I dream things up, and Todd plays along. But I think they're usually pretty good. One of our favorite ones happened a few weeks ago when I just couldn't make it to the store. I just gathered up what I could find in the refrigerator and called it "Sweep the Kitchen" ala Johnny's (for my Louisiana readers.) I think that week our toppings were pesto, goat cheese, roasted red bell peppers, asparagus, olives, and bacon. It was wonderful!
This week I followed the toppings from a Cooking Light recipe for Pear and Prosciutto pizza. The toppings were caramelized onions, provolone, a sliced d'anjou pear, prosciutto (an Italian ham), and walnuts. After it was cooked, we topped it with fresh arugula tossed with sherry vinegar. Oh so good and tasted so fancy!
For anyone who hasn't picked up on this little tidbit...we have to be on the go with these boys all the time or they start to climb the walls. Literally. They wake up at 5:30 every morning, and the first question on any day that isn't a school day is...where are we going? Now, you might say..."Well, you've spoiled them to being entertained. Kids can entertain themselves." I invite you to come experience 5:30am until 1:30pm (naptime for Henry)...you will see how long a day can be if you try to stay home! :) Leo will be roaming our street on his scooter by 7am on a Saturday, and by 9 he is looking for his next thing to do.
Also, I am thinking about the looooong summer ahead of us. We need lots of options!
Many of the venues in Dallas offer memberships, and if you plan to go more than once in a year....that is often the best option. So this weekend, we used Christmas and birthday money from Gran & Grandpa and Brooksie & Papa to buy a year's membership for our family to the Dallas World Aquarium. Yay!!! We are so excited!!! Thank you!!! We made sure that Leo (and Henry, to the extent possible) understood that this was a gift from his grandparents. This gives us one more option for our activity list. It's close to our house and easy to get to in downtown Dallas. It is indoors, so that gives us a rainy day option. It's also a nice complement to our zoo membership b/c you can tour the Aquarium in about an hour and a half or so...as opposed to the zoo which requires several hours and usually packing a meal or planning a stop. We love the zoo, too - just a different option here!
We went down this weekend to purchase our membership and spend a rainy morning at the Aquarium. This place is not like your typical glass-aquariums-in-the-wall place. You take an elevator to the top and walk down through a big open room that makes it feel like you are in a real forest. Leo had been here before on a field trip, but Henry had never been. Also, Leo's class has been studying the rainforest, and we have been reading books about the rainforest at home. After going through the Aquarium, I am even more excited about this membership. Leo was totally engaged and excited about all the things he could spot. Just the night before, we had been reading a book about the food chain in the rainforest....and there we were the next morning looking at live anteaters, piranhas, sloths, toucans, etc. We got to hear a zookeeper talk about the sloths (which were FASCINATING to us all - even Henry listened to her whole speech) and then we got to watch them feed the sharks while in a walk-through tunnel. We could see their undersides and their mouths working...how the sharks and rays manipulated the food to get it to their mouths. Did I mention that Leo was fully engaged??? He really is the perfect age for this, and Henry was equally impressed.
My pictures and videos do not do it justice. It's hard to hear the zookeeper...but she is feeding the sloths...and a sloth is hanging down from that hole above her head to get his carrots.
When we left, we had to assure Henry about 50 times that we would come back soon. Nice that I can go with him on a weekday and just let him take it in at his own pace.
The Aquarium is in the West End, so we went out to lunch. The great news is that we had a wonderful lunch with the boys! Amazing! There is hope. The sad news is how empty the West End is. :( Todd and I used to go there when we were dating...it had so many restaurants, shops, clubs, and a movie theatre. It is pretty empty now with lots of our favorite restaurants shut down. No movies, no shopping, no clubs. We settled for TGIFriday's...which is not at the top of our list. But it was actually pretty good today. And it was crowded with cheerleaders who were in town for a competition, so there were lots of bowheads for the boys to watch shriek and giggle. They drowned out our two. ha! Their mothers were all drinking heavily - I think it had been a long weekend with all those girls. ;)
The week of Feb 7th, they started telling us early in the week that we would have snow on the night of Thursday the 11th. They were predicting 2" overnight and into Friday morning.
We awoke Thursday MORNING to 2" of snow, and it just kept on coming. Leo went to school on Thursday, but Henry's preschool was cancelled. It snowed all.day.long. I don't think I've ever seen a day when it snowed from the time I got up until the time I went to bed. We ended up with 12.5" of snow! In Texas! Wild. Leo's school and most everything else around here was cancelled on Friday. Many people (including Miss Allie and family) were without power for Friday or even into the weekend, but we were really lucky and never even had a flicker. There was lots of road damage (new potholes) and tree damage from the heavy snow.
The boys had a great time. We played outside and made snow ice cream. When I saw what was happening on Thursday, I ran to Blockbuster for kid movies, so they enjoyed watching those. Even though Todd could probably have made it to work by 10am on Friday, he stayed home to help me with the boys.
