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car overtakes car in front by jumping/driving over it.

in this order, wants to sign up for yoga classes, then guitar, then swimming and if he has time left over in his schedule maybe soccer.

I can’t figure out if he’s already realized girls take yoga or if he really is still too cool to care what the other kids think. Either way, I’m quite amused.

An entirely different note, Justin Timberlake would just die if he saw this:

Magic happens when you let your cookie dough sit for 36 hours according to the New York Times. They aren’t just trying to sell newspapers, they know what they’re talking about!

Read, bake and be the judge.

There are 6 layers of cake freezing in my freezer for Saturday’s party. Still deciding on a filling, but I’m pretty sure this will be frosted in fluffy white meringue frosting, because well, clouds go well with rainbows. No?

Summer around our house looks like a low budget horror movie with the red juices of summer’s bounty dripping from my countertops and children. When the cherry harvest is finished, the strawberries and beets kick in to carry us through until winter.

I’ve never been a beet eater, but our CSA is seeing to it that this is not for lack of trying. Dirty and with the greens removed they look like beheaded dead rats. Blood and all. And their dye tinges everything. Thinking of saving a few for Halloween… They’ve been great julienned and sauteed, but having just baked up 4 of our 20 zucchini (thanks, again CSA), I’m thinking a chocolate cake might be the best resting place for one of our many bundles of beets. A quick google returns a ton of recipes. I’ll let you know if I get that far.

In the meantime, I just finished baking my favorite sponge cake recipe yet. It is from Marion Cunningham’s Fannie Farmer Cookbook (though at the link you’ll find the recipe hers is based on). Though there are several variations, my variation used 5 eggs, separated; 1 cup sugar – separated 3/4 and 1/4; 1/4 tsp salt; 2 tbs lemon juice and 1 cup flour.

The end result is a fluffy cake with a chewy/crispy caramel coat that would be delicious on its own, though at the request of the birthday child, mine was promptly filled with chocolate chips, vanilla ice cream and topped with buttercream frosting. It sits chilling in the freezer, now.

One cake down, and one more to go before the week is out. The big celebration gets a rainbow cake. Can’t wait to get started. Check back Sunday night for pictures.

My public service for the day – tips for spotting a drowning. May you never need to know this, but just in case you do.

I’d wish you a Happy Fourth of July, but we’re closer to Bastille day. So, let them eat cake then off with their heads!

In recognition of the independence of our country, we spent Independence weekend in Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor. (The Bro More to those in the know)

Lovely hotel from the outside. The same characterless 5 star generic hotel room on the inside that I’ve stayed in around the world. Yawn. We’ll be camping or lodging in Manitou Springs our next visit.

We made the kids suffer through the 3 hours of ascent to and descent from Pikes Peak on the cog railway. The scenery was breathtaking. The train was a marvel of engineering, using a cog wheel to control the direct (straight up and down!) ascent and descent. And standing at the peak felt like standing on the top of the world. All of this lost on the kids, of course.

We visited the giraffes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Everyone had a dangerous looking photo taken at Garden of the Gods.

There was plenty of swimming, obligatory fireworks, a thunderstorm (just as exciting to the Northern California crew as the fireworks), and good quality family time.

Etched into our brains after all that quality time with little Taylor Swift (aka Sylvie) is our daughter’s take on one of Taylor’s songs:
You wear short skirts, I wear tshirts;
You’re cheer captain hook, I’m on the bleachers;
dreamin’ bout the day when you wake up and find
anda whatcha lookin for has been here whole time!

You are blonde to meeee!
You are blonde to me!

Here she is filming her music video at the Garden of the Gods.

Hope your 4th was wonderful, too.

Kids these days. When asked to identify the lady on the Barbie dress Sylvie was wearing (Barbie, duh), Sylvie confidently insisted it was Hannah Montana. Okay. I get it. That girl is on more underwear and tshirts for the under 6 set today than Barbie. It doesn’t matter that there is no Barbie or Hannah Montana item in our house. I chalked it up to random playground chatter. Maybe the name came up. “My parents really want me to start using the potty, but they refuse to buy me the sparkly Hannah Montana panties. I’m holding out.”

Sylvie recently announced in her dinner table confession of the day that she loves Taylor Swift. Thinking perhaps the Kanye interruption at the VMAs made the playground, too, I filed this information in the back of my brain. In a moment of motherhood clairvoyance, I googled the most common lyrics of what I thought was an embellished version of a preschool song about clothing that Sylvie sings pretty much constantly, “She wears short skirts, I wear tshirts…” Whoa! Sylvie knows a Taylor Swift song! Who got my 3 year old hooked on Taylor Swift?

I’ve yet to piece the whole story together, but someone introduced my daughter to Miss Swift. Taught her the song. And she’s apparently watched the video on her favorite teacher’s phone. The secret lives of pre-teens (3-12)… For some reason I thought we’d reach this point much later.

At least it isn’t Brittany Spears or Lindsay Blow-han.

the square root of two written as a decimal.

If only to be a fly on the wall when these things get introduced on the preschool playground. If the dangers my children are avoiding in their play are any indication, the preschool playground is a heady science convention. Gone are the days of cowboys and indians. My children, instead, spend hours working together to navigate the treacherous ice floes, avoiding the hot lava running out from underneath their beds, and escaping that hungry black hole. The latest to cameo in their play is the evil tsunami.

Is it the movies they are watching? Or is this simply a side-effect of living where the average elementary school classroom looks like a Benetton commercial and the dinner table discussions are likely to involve topics of research at the local university?

It certainly has nothing to do with my weakness for geek music: