Christmas Cookin'

                                                  You should make this. Make it NOW.

Salted caramel pretzel bark. Need I say more?

It's been a while!

I haven't written in a while! Mostly because we've been busy and I've been tired/typing whilst children are awake is basically impossible, and at night I need to frantically knit and read. I'd like to start updating more, so here is a quick post!

- Winter here is strange. Today it is 6 Celsius. Where is my snow? It snowed in Texas for crying out loud! WTF Massachusetts? Today it sort of snowed, but then freezing rain came and it all melted. However, it was still nice to wake up to some white, makes it feel a little more like home. We went to get our Christmas tree on the weekend, and people were at the farm in hoodies, one guy was wearing SHORTS. I'm disgusted.

- I still can't get used to a lot of the food here. The butter tastes weird and sweet, ketchup is weird and sweet (which I'm convinced is because it contains corn syrup down here. I had my friend compare the ingredients list to Canadian ketchup, which uses cane sugar). There are NO Bicks pickles, no Keen's hot mustard, no President's Choice, the bread is weird and sugary...and Dunkin' Donuts is no Tim Horton's. I miss familiarity...I miss large containers of Liberte Yogurt. To be fair I guess some of those products might be available in the USA somewhere... just not anywhere I have tried.

-Holiday season just doesn't feel like holiday season without friends and family around. For Thanksgiving I cooked a huge Turkey dinner, and it was odd only cooking for the 4 of us. Not to mention our oven is a bastard and overcooked my turkey, since it changes temperatures seemingly at will. The turkey was the texture of bark. BARK. I hate cooking turkey or any other meat, as I'm what you might call "crazy" and I feel the need to bleach the entire world after a raw piece of anything is in my house. I swore I would never cook a meat other than fish again after the bark turkey incident, and since then I've kept that promise. Not to mention, Knox has taken to exclusively eating meat, so we aren't buying any for a while. Eve is a self-made vegetarian, so it seems to work out fine. I wanted to make a traditional Danish Christmas Eve dinner this year (reminds me of my Grandmother & Christmas as a child), which includes pork roast with crackling- so I may have to make an exception for that. Get your hazmat suits on kids, Mommy needs to burn and bleach everything!

Here are a few photos: Happy Holidays!

Flood

Our condo complex had a huge flood on the weekend. Someone on the 5th (top floor) got really drunk and smashed their toilet. It flooded their apartment, and then the one below.. and the one below that... and the one below that.. and so on. It flooded for three hours before someone went up, knocked on the door, turned the water off and left. It was pouring out the side of the building, creeping into our apartment on the 2nd floor. We only noticed because Knox slipped in a huge puddle of water, and we thought it was us leaking from the dishwasher, then realized it was coming from the wall.

Anyway, the fire department came, the police, and an ambulance to take Drunkey McDrunkerson away. Many apartments were completely destroyed, ceiling falling down...walls...everything. Externally ours wasn't too bad, but internally seems to be another story. The walls were saturated, so we have had a monster industrial dehumidifier and fans in the house for 3 days now.

They are loud.

They are irritating.

They just sit there and taunt the children... touch me.. they say...adjust my settings, throw random objects into my moving parts, unplug me..

It hasn't been fun.

The insurance adjuster came today, and he pointed out that the ceiling is rippling- which may mean more damage than the Disaster Response Team had initially noticed. Our building maintenance guy is coming back this afternoon with the DR team to see if the fans can come out. I sure hope they can...the noise.. the noise is making me feel insane. Eve covers her ears when we are near them. We've basically been staying in the master bedroom because the noise/temptation of the fans has been too much. They mentioned there will be restorative work that is needed. I can't even think about the disruption of tearing down walls. *shudder*

And that is our latest update!

P.S. Cheese tastes weird here... it's different. Same with butter. We have to be careful to buy hormone-free cheese here, which isn't an issue at home (Go Canada). But it still tastes different.

I miss you cheese..Natrel Lactose Free Milk, Presidents Choice and Liberte Yogurt.

The end.

Now that we are settled in, I thought I should write an update. We still have many boxes to unpack, but for the most part the house is liveable, and has space. So that's very helpful! Every time a weekend arrives I have all of these unpack and organize plans, and then we end up going to Cape Cod instead.

Two weekends ago we went to Coast Guard Beach, it was amazing. We had to park in a parking lot away from the beach, and then take a beach shuttle to get there, it took about 5ish minutes. I didn't bring the camera or phone, but oh I wish I could have. The beach was amazing, it felt tropical. So family friendly, amazing waves, life guards, surfers... the works. We loved it. The kids had so much fun, and the ocean was super warm.

Google Coast Guard Beach to see photos, it was amazing.

Last weekend we went to Marconi Beach, it was incredible. Steep stairs leading down to the beach, and enormous waves. It actually wasn't very child friendly, since the waves were so big and the pull back at the shore was so strong, we basically had to keep the kids away from the water, or hold on to them tightly. They had fun digging in the sand etc instead. Neil went out a little into the water, but the waves were so big and strong I was scared to go in, and Neil mentioned that it was a little scary for him too. There was lots of surfing, lifeguards, and seals! A few seals hung around about 50 feet or so from the shore, swimming and checking out everyone. It was amazing. Beautiful beach, but more for adults.

Here are a few random photos from the last little while:

 Knox in Daddy's old hat.

 Eve giddy as can be after a long day at the beach.

 Tired and falling asleep at 5pm, it made for a very late night.

 Don't ask for a large drink at Burger King. When they say large, they mean LARGE.

 This is the first time she's let me do anything with her wild hair. She pulled them out about 2 minutes later, but it was cute while it lasted.

 Knox after our last Cape Cod weekend, sleeping with his eyes open. He was pretty exhausted.

 And to finish, here is Eve wearing Knox's shoes. The picture doesn't show scale very well, because these shoes are monstrous on her, but she walked around in them for a good half hour, proud as can be.

We plan on going back to Cape Cod again this weekend. I can't wait until I start calling it, "The Cape" but I'm just not there yet. We miss everyone, and look forward to having visitors soon!

Moved!

We finally moved to our new place in Quincy! We have been without internet since the beginning of July, but should be hooked up by tomorrow.

Updates to come!

Until then... some strange clouds we saw on our drive home from Cape Cod last weekend.

Quincy!

We moved! We moved! We moved!


...but now the unpacking begins!

Weekend Plans

Off to see the U.S.S. Salem & the U.S. Naval Ship Building Museum in Quincy, then maybe if the weather is nice a trip to Nantasket Beach.

http://www.uss-salem.org/museum/visitor_information.htm

The weekend

It's HOT IN HERE. No A/C= misery...misery!

We went to Nantasket Beach again Saturday, but we went to a different part of it, much more sand. We had a great time! Neil found lots of critters near the shore- hermit crabs (teeny tiny ones), snails, prawns & clams!

Eve snacking on crackers after a long day running in the water.

Typical sleeping arrangement. This is how we wake up in the morning :-)

Halloween

Yes, there is Halloween talk going on here already. We are especially excited for this year, because we can spend it in Salem, which from what I hear is pretty incredible at that time of year. The following are the costumes Knox has suggested dressing up as so far, in preparation for Halloween:

Iron Man

Sam Flynn from Tron

And his latest, Mr. Spock

Mr. Spock is actually part of an entire themed family costume, Knox has suggested costumes for the rest of us:

Me: 'The energizer'

"Daddy can be the ship!"

And Eve:

Housing

Here are photos of Neil's work kitchen:

Now compare this to my dank, dark, sublet kitchen (these were taken with flash, in the middle of the day):

A few more photos from our current place. Actually, looking at these I can see why so many people are coming to look at it. We have rental agents here basically all day long with people, I'm guessing because it photographs well, but then they get here and are all, "ummm....why am I looking at this place?".

This is Knox's room, there is a door from the kitchen to his room.

Next is a door from Knox's room, to our room.

Then from our room, to the living room, and then onto the kitchen. It's a racetrack for children to run away from you whilst you try and change their diaper. FUN.

Come on August!!!

Father's Day

Happy Father's day! Today we went to see a condo in Quincy (that we love) and after running some errands  we thought- what the heck, let's go to Cape Cod. So we did. We drove to Sandwich, and went to Sandy Neck Beach. It was white, sandy & beautiful with big sand dunes. We arrived around 4ish, so the tide once again was coming in, it was much different than Nantasket. This beach was very long and had a wide shoreline, when the tide is all the way in you could probably walk out quite a ways, and find lots of sandbars.

The kids once again had a great time playing in the sand, water and rocks. The tide kept creeping up on us, we'd move back 6 feet and it would be back at our toes within 5 minutes. It especially baffled Eve, who looked quite shocked every time the water was once again at her feet.

Photos of the day!

Nantasket Beach!

We had a really great day today. We drove to Weymouth to have a look at a house (it wasn't for us), but while we were in that neck of the woods we decided to go to Hull, and check out Nantasket Beach. Hull is a small(ish) town that was founded in 1644. It had great seaside charm, and the beach was incredible. It was the first time the kids have seen the ocean, and they had a blast. The tide was coming in, so there wasn't as much beach left to play on, but it was still fantastic. We chatted with a 65 year old surfer, who told us when the tide is out you gain about 20 yards of sandy beach!

Eve basically sat in one place the entire time and filled her bucket with sand. Every time a big wave came and water covered her legs, she got a look of utter shock on her face. Knox loved kicking the big waves as they rolled in, digging in the sand with  his shovel, and generally running a muck. Neil and I had so much fun watching the kids, and getting wet ourselves. We didn't bring our bathing suits, but that didn't stop Neil from going for a nice dip in the ocean, and taking Knox out to crash some big waves. One thing I found especially amusing was Eve licking the salt off her face.

We had a tasty dinner at the Summer Shack for fathers day, Neil had his favourite fresh clam chowdah, I had cod cakes, Eve ate peas & french fries while Knox enjoyed good ol' fried chicken.

Here are some photos from our day. We plan on going back tomorrow when the tide is out (around 1:30), if the weather agrees. Otherwise I think we are going to head to the Charlestown Navy Yard, so Knox can have a look at the USS Constitution, a retired warship.