Lost in Translation

Our family took an out of the way detour up to the outlets yesterday. Fernando and I decided to divide and conquer to hit more stores in less time. Our meeting place would be at the Children's Place clothing store. Fernando proved to be the better shopper of the two since he actually had items to show for the time spent in the stores. He kindly bought two little basketballs for Mia and Tiago. These would help solve the inevitable fight we have during family basketball times as to who gets the ball. Mind you we own two and there is always another one at the church, but why not all choose the same ball.

Mia and Tiago were each given the responsibility to carry their own basketball to the car. Mia seemed a little anxious about this. Finally she asked me, "Did Daddy buy this for me?" in which I responded "Yes, Daddy bought it for you". Strangely, she kept asking that question over and over again. Both of us persisted in the same exchange of the original conversation. Finally Mia yells "Did Daddy pay for the basketball or did he just take it from the store?" I hadn't realized that she didn't connect buy and bought as the same word just a different form of the word. The experience brought mixed emotions. First how frustrating, but funny miscommunication can be. Second, the proud feelings of a parent that she would be concerned about accepting a shoplifted item. And finally, the intrigue one has after realizing their child thought they might actually do something that wrong.

Never Meant to Be

We have lived in the DC metro area for five years now. There are so many historical events that it is almost impossible to attend all of them. I understand that due to family situations (ie kids under the age of 5) or schedule conflicts (ie events on Sunday or a rotation out of town) we just can't be at even the most desired events.
Most often, I cope rather well. Unfortunately, I can not be so positive about the most recent missed event. On Monday, there was the last White House Easter Egg roll that our family could have attended. Fernando would have even had the chance to come with us. We missed the first year because we didn't understand the scale to which one must commit to in order to get the coveted tickets. It starts the Friday before with a mass camp out in front of the White House to get a wristband. Then if you get a lucky wristband, you wait the Saturday morning in a long line to get your chance at up to 5 tickets (which surely everyone takes the full allotment even when they might not need that many). This ticket gets you in at a certain time on Monday. The next year, friends of mine willingly braved the cold to ascertain tickets to share with Mia and I. We discovered to our horror that the effort was in vain. The torrential down pour cut our group out just shy of making it onto the lawn. So drenched and disappointed and slightly hypothermic, we took the metro back home. Here is a before picture of Mia on the metro. I wrote in an email to my family about the picture "It was taken while we were riding on the metro to D.C. in order to be a part of the White House Easter Egg roll. I won't include the "after" photo. It is far too sad to see her soaking wet and with blue lips." Next two years we were out of town.
This year was going to be our year. Yes, I know that I am near birthing a child, but nothing was going to stop me. Fernando made himself a willing camp out canidate and made the trek to DC ready to play the night away in line with a myriad of computer games and may be throw in a little studying. Upon arriving to the Ellipse, he was shocked. In front of him lay hundreds of tents full of people wrapping and zig zagging around as far as the eye could see. Still determined to secure those coveted tickets, he made his way to the end of the line. A "helpful" park ranger told him of his chances: that unless he was here at about 4 pm earlier in the day, go home. Which he did upon my request. People had been camping out since 3 am Friday morning. Losers! Ok I am bitter. I just wanted to take my turn on the lawn since the tour of the White House is lame. I have come up with several options to make obtaining tickets for the event more family friendly but sadly, there are many more who are willing to sit in line for over 24 hours. I guess I didn't want it bad enough.


(Hall of Fame football player Troy Aikman reads "One Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" for children at the reading nook at the 2008 White House Easter Egg Roll, Monday, March 24, 2008. MINUS THE TOVAR FAMILY)

What do hollowed out eggs and cinnamon bread have in common?

(left to right blue bird, bunny rabbit, and chick)

Saturday Easter festivities for our family involve all of the what I lovingly refer to as the "silly" side of Easter. I personally think that all the bunny and candy should be a part of a celebration of spring and let Easter be for the Atonement and Resurrection, but peeps have more of a say in this matter then I do. Luckily, I do have a say about what and when we celebrate as a family. Upon perusing the Martha Stewart website, I saw my Spring Celebration craft (Easter for everyone else). I am personally not the biggest fan of boiled eggs making this project ideal. The eggs had to loose their middles before dyeing. The egg innards couldn't just be wasted. Solution: Berry-Yogurt Stuffed French Toast. While the French toast cooked, the kids and I dyed our eggs. With 8 total, I reserved the three you see in the picture for my craft fun and let the kids go to town on the rest. Delicious and rewarding in more ways then one.

Homemade Love

Scrapbooking and I have a love hate relationship. I love to buy the various products but hate making the executive decisions with the all powerful tacky glue. I have even purchased a book that lays out various options to maximize the paper's power for cuteness and historical remembrance. And yet, a large Tupperware container stays unnoticed under my bed until I have to store away more products.
There comes those moments in my life that inspire me to greater heights or at least I get ambitious enough to fiddle with the paper. Easter cards for my family brought the inspiration this time. The finished product is below. I want you to notice the intricate pattern combination (in other words that wasn't a mistake to have so many different busy body patterns) and the central location of the brad to keep the ribbon in place.

Upon sliding the little "Friendship" card out of it's amazingly manufactured envelope, the recipient enjoys this picture. Hopefully it will help you feel a little fuzzier this Easter season.

Happy St. Patricks Day

(You can't have St Patrick's Day without green food coloring added to some edible object. . .pancakes were our choice since I had creative license to thematically shape them.)


This weekend brought some great opportunities to celebrate this strange holiday. Saturday was gorgeous outside. Fernando and the kids went to a little parade. They unfortunately missed most of the bagpipes and festivities due to an over ambitious police officer preventing people from parking in unmarked VIP parking. Just imagine how much time it would take unloading kids, being told to move, so you reload your kids, and then are stopped by the same police officer who decided it would be ok if you stayed in that particular space. They did get to see the remnants of the festivities including a random/spontaneous group of Indians singing some chant down the parade path and a guy on stilts.
Later that afternoon, we went to the library to enjoy some Irish singing and dancing complete with soft shoes and the hard shoe Riverdance-ish performance. Mind you, the girls were in training and lacked all the flair found in the Lord of the Dance. Fernando was convinced that I could join in seeing as how I took an Irish dancing class at BYU. As fun as it sounded, I just don't think leaping around with my 37 week pregnant self was a good idea.
To celebrate on the official day, we attended Brookside Gardens annual St. Patrick's Day Walk. They described it as follows: "Join in the fun festivities and activities while following the trail of "Lively the Leprechaun" who, when captured, leads you to the treasure of healthiness. A St. Paddy's Day craft, scavenger hunt, and healthy snack add to the celebration."

Translation: We decorated cute little cups, followed 'Lucky' the Leprechaun around the gardens and into the Green House full of beautiful plants and flowers to the pot of gold/Yukon Gold Potatoes and left with a bag of fun including a granny smith apple.

For dinner, I had hoped to make a recipe of Corned Beef and Cabbage. If you haven't ever tried it. . .you are missing out. The price per pound led me to a cheaper Irish dish of Shepherd's pie. To jazz it up, we made a giant meatball base and cheesy garlic mashed potatoes to cover it up. After it came out of the oven, I topped it with green onions, tomatoes, and bacon.
For dessert, we had homemade mint brownies with ice cream on top shaped like a potato. You know the Irish and their potatoes. To make potato ice cream, scoop out the vanilla ice cream onto a sheet of plastic wrap that has been sprinkled generously with cinnamon and sugar. roll it up and use the heat of your hands to shape it into a potato.
We luckily got to share these festivities with my brother and sister-in-law who came in to town from NYC.

How Much Do You Like Strawberries?

I love the transition from winter to spring. Even though it is unpredictable, the weather is better and hope for more outside time in moderate temperatures is enough to make anyone happy. A side bonus for this time of year is strawberry season. I love going to the store and purchasing strawberries at ridiculously low prices. Those low prices haven't hit yet, but I still couldn't resist grabbing two containers the other day at the store. Those lasted all of about 12 hours and from this video you can see why.

Taking away the Information Advantage

In the internet world, one is capable of leveling the playing field between sales associate and buyer. Stinky for companies, but awesome for the consumer. This wonderful equalizing force reared its head yesterday as I had the responsibility of finding a replacement for our digital camera. You see, digital cameras and heat are not the best combination. So avoid my costly mistake and don't put your camera on the counter next to your working stove. The camera will still take pictures and movies, but they will be almost completely black. Just a tip.

Fernando is usually the one who is in charge of major purchases mainly because he is so into researching to find the best product and is willing to spend hours doing so. I on the other hand get bored of the research after a few minutes and simply look for a good price. Fernando said he wanted to empower me with the feeling of satisfaction that comes from thorough investigation. Hours later, I came up with a few stores that had similar options for similar prices. The camera of choice is the Canon PowerShot A series. Now there are several models available, but upon closer inspection they aren't that different in capacity just megapixels and optical zoom. (But don't take my word for it. . . . empower yourself if you are in the market.) In what I thought was the end, Ritz camera had the best deal: a A570 for $158.99 with tax, a free photobook, a $15 in store gift card, 20 free prints with cd, and a photo class that was supposedly worth $280. The sales reps were trying to push some products on me, but because of my research I was not fooled. When I showed it to Fernando, he started to inspect the camera's parts. He found a wiggly lens. In the real end, I returned the camera with all it's freebies and happened upon a steal of a deal. Office Depot offered a higher model and or higher megapixels and higher optical zoom for the same original price of Ritz Camera, but the sales associate was so wanting to sell me 20% off. So I purchase a $200 camera for $118 and got a protection plan that covers my life eg water damage, dropping the camera, and anything else you could imagine all for $20. I'm happy.