Sing It!

Kierstin and Makenzie singing with the Stretham Primary School Choir at the Ely Music Festival

The Other Side of Stretham

Surprise Surprise

Right now you're probably sitting at your computer thinking "holy whaaaa?? She's on here twice in 2 days??" I know. Twice in 2 days...after being gone an unmentionable amount of time. It's that whole attention-span-of-a-squirrel thing I've got goin' on. But I had to shout from the rooftops about the most amazing thing ever(!!!!) that happened today.

The hubs had to run some errands this morning while I hopped in the shower....Wait. Let's backtrack a second. We're not going to talk about showering on here. That's just not kosher. 

So, back to the errands. He went and it was awesome in all it's errandy glory. (But for serious, y'all, it was just some errands.) And then he called me on his way home and told me he had a surprise for me.

Oooh!! I love surprises! Actually, I'm still on the fence about surprises. It really depends on what kind of surprise it is because sometimes surprises can go very badly. But that's a story for another day.

I was still up in our room when the hubs walked in with a cardboard box that contained this mystery item. He shared his errand story with me and then handed me the box. 

I about imploded from sheer excitement!

Taaaccooooooossss!!!!!!

For serious, authentic, Mexican street taaaccooooosss!! Right here in England!!! Can you believe it?! I sure as hell couldn't.

As it turns out, there's a street taco truck at the local market on Saturdays. The same market that we quit going to well over a year ago because none of us wanted to get up that early. So all this time I could've been eating these.....(yes, I'm hanging my head in shame). But! No worries, because from here on out I will be visiting these lovely street taco people every chance I get. They were delicious!! 

I'll go ahead and tell you now that the hubs and I sat up in our room and ate them in secret. We totally did not share any of them with our kids. (I have no guilt over that at all.)

And you probably thought my super awesome amazing thing that happened was that we found out that we're moving somewhere great. Or that I won the lottery. Or someone gave me a free car. Hahaha! Nope. Just some taacccoooosss. 

I'm kind of an easy girl to please.

Adventures of the Mister

I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that I can't believe it's March. Time is flying past me way too quickly. We've just been so busy with things that I haven't even had a chance to notice the days just floating away from me. There have been about a dozen things I've wanted to jump on here and tell you all about but then life happens. And I have the attention span of a squirrel...so I forget...and the posts get lost in the recesses of my brain. (It's sad, I know. I'll try to work on that.)

But!

I couldn't resist showing you pictures from the trip the mister went on recently. I unfortunately did not get to go. And this is me with pouty face because that place is amazing!!But someone has to stay here and mind the laundry piles. I have learned over the years that the laundry does not clean itself. ((And again...this is 2015...why hasn't someone invented a way for that to happen yet??))

Anywho. He got to go to Newquay, which is pronounced "new-key"...kind of like "hey, man I've got a new key" lol. Don't pronounce it "new-quay" or you'll just look like a crazy American. (Don't ask how I know this.) But yes, he got to go and since I did not, he brought me pretty pictures to live vicariously through them. 

((That's a lot of mussells!))

But he also brought me what has become my new favorite British thing. It's food, of course. Lol Because right now I'm enjoying as much of the Brit food as I can, seeing as how we don't have forever to eat it.

This is clotted cream....and it amazing! It kind of sounds like it would be like whipped cream (or at least that's what I thought before I saw it). But it's kind of like sweet butter. But not. I don't know. But it's soooo good! 

It's going to be one of the foods that I (for serious) miss when we leave because you can't get real clotted cream anywhere but here. And the good stuff comes from Cornwall (that little "tail" at the southeast part of England), which is where this came from. I've become a clotted cream junkie. If you put butter on it...I put clotted cream on it instead even though I don't think you're supposed to do that. In fact, I'm probably bastardizing it with my American ways...but I can't help it. It's just so tasty!!!

Hmmm...since it is 2015...maybe they can find a way to get mail across the pond faster so someone can mail me clotted cream and other delicious Brit foods once we're back in the States. ((I need to find someone to make this happen asap!))

Scrubba-Scrubba

Have I ever told you that I have a love/hate relationship with my dishwasher? 

On one hand, it washes the dishes. That's super awesome. Especially when you have 3 kids because children seem to require more dishes than adults do. Or is that just my children? Well, either way, all I have to do is rinse those dishes off and load them in there and that lovely dishwasher does the rest.

I'm also kind of head over heels for the way it looks. The front of it is integrated into the cabinets so you can't tell there's a dishwasher there. No ugly appliancey front in my kitchen. No, sir. 

But see...that's where the love ends.

Little did we know when we moved into this house, the water is really hard. And you're all sitting there like "oh, I have hard water...I totally feel ya." No. I mean no offense to you and your hard water troubles, but no. I promise you have no idea. I thought I knew all about hard water. And then we moved here.

Our dishwasher has this super fancy container (because I don't know what else to call it) in the bottom. It's where we have to put the 4 pounds of salt every month or so to soften the water. This little red, plastic button pops up (you know, like on a turkey) and telling me "hey lady, it's salt time!!" Well, truth be told, it's talking to the mister because I don't add salt to the dishwasher. I make too much of a mess with it.

Now this wouldn't be so bad, except that salt *sucks*. 

Every. single. damn. time we put salt in there, our dishes come out looking crazy.

Every time this happens I am forced to get out the toughest scrubbing pad I can find, turn the water to boiling hot and scrub the dishes (the ones I just put through the dishwasher) until my fingers are achy and bleeding from all the effort. (Ok, that's dramatic. They aren't really bleeding. But they are pretty achy.) And this process continues for about 4 loads of dishes. Washing in the dishwasher, rescrubbing, washing again.

So you could go ahead and tell me to wash the dishes by hand after we add the salt...because that would make more sense, right? But oddly enough, I never remember that it's going to do this until after they come out looking like they've been dipped in cornstarch. (Any other plans?)

So, dear dishwasher...you win again. Hopefully next month I will remember to at least run an empty load before I put the dishes in there for you to dirty, instead of clean.