Carnivore Confessions: To Meat or Not to Meat?

November 23, 2010 By

For most people, the focal point of holiday meals is the meat. Thanksgiving is no exception with the hallowed turkey.

While I would not consider us huge meat eaters, there is no better smell for me than a burger or steak on the BBQ or a brisket in my husband’s smoker.

Last summer, I tweeted about this love affair and how, while I do not disparage vegetarians, I could never live that lifestyle during grilling season. A friend replied that grilled tofo and BOCA burgers are also delicious.

Ummmm, you just keep telling yourself that while you sink your teeth into that tofu turkey on Thanksgiving.

I occasionally eat veggie burgers but tofu ranks right up there with solicitors who contact us despite the fact we’re on the do-not-call list. If I were to give up meat completely, I would do just that. But there is no way I would resort to all those weird, artificial alternatives.

When I told Jamie about my friend’s grilled tofu suggestion, he proclaimed:

Biting into tofu is like biting into a void. It’s like mixing vegetables with Jell-o. Your mouth says you should be tasting savory meat. Instead, you get a big, slimy cube.

Dude could totally rival Jack Handy’s deep thoughts.

Haddie had a few deep thoughts of her own when she brought home this art project from school.

In case you need help translating, it reads:

He looks cool. He’s diying. Run! Away from it!

I love the turkey. He is nice and he’s diying.

I don’t see her becoming a vegetarian anytime soon.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, holidays, Humor

The issue with school lunches

November 18, 2010 By

If my daughter had her way, she would eat “hot lunch” from the school’s cafeteria every day.

Unfortunately for her, she has a money-saving mom who only allows that indulgence once per week and it’s usually on a day they’re serving something healthy.

Sucks to be her.

Last week, it was a particularly chilly day and she queried if this was the day she could get her hot lunch. Responsible parent I am, I extolled the many virtues of saving your money as I packed her lunch. I grabbed her lunch bag, threw it in her backpack and sent her on her merry way to school.

And then looked at the kitchen counter to where I had left her unpacked food.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Hadley, Humor

Let It Snow!

November 14, 2010 By

We woke up last week to a momentous occasion: the first snowfall of the season. Both kids tried to use it to their advantage.

Haddie begged me to drive her to school. I told her she’d be standing at the bus stop in far worse conditions than that this winter.

Tough-love is my version of a pep talk.

Bode tried to declare it a “Snow Day” and stay home from preschool. Yeah, that .000005-inch of snow will wreak havoc every time.


Well, maybe if you’re woosies and live in Texas where the entire state is halted at the sign of a snowflake.

I should know. We got stuck in Dallas on our way back from our Costa Rica honeymoon for that very reason.

I love love love love the snow. I hate hate hate the heat. So I have to admit even though I’m so excited for our cruise aboard the Norwegian Epic, the timing could not be worse because I am finally getting weather I love in Denver.

But I’m willing to make the sacrifice and go anyway.

The third member of our family, Remy a.k.a. “Fat Kitty” had a rather extreme reaction. The bane to his existence is playing in the backyard with the kids. All day long, he “Meows” incessantly until one of us relents and goes outside with him.

Once granted his freedom, Fat Kitty follows the same pattern: He walks through the sliding door, does a big, long stretch and then sharpens his claws on the outdoor mat.

I don’t have the heart to tell him he’s been declawed.

He then roams around the yard in his own private utopia eating grass, lazing out in the sunlight or hiding in the shade. One time, Fat Kitty shocked us all and caught a mouse in the pumpkin patch.

It was a true revelation that he was, indeed a real cat and not just a big, lazy ball of fur.

On our snow day, I tried to lure him outside but our fair-weather cat was having nothin’ to do with it.

He reminded me of my snow-despising mother.

The woman who has lived in the Great, White North her entire life.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Colorado, Hadley, Humor

The new standard of birthday excellence

November 9, 2010 By

At church, I work with the 12- and 13-year-old girls. Though my responsibility is to teach on Sundays, I try to attend their weekly Tuesday night activity at the church when I have a chance.

Since Jamie is in the Bishopric, he has to attend meetings that evening so I always have the kids in tow.

I arrived last week to discover the youth disbanding to various cars to collect food donations for Thanksgiving. Knowing my kids wouldn’t want to be dragged around, we invited ourselves to another ward (congregation’s) activity.

I’m all about letting the best ward win.

Behind our church is a smattering of trees. So lovely is this grove that many people (including my classy sister-in-law Tammy) have their wedding receptions here.

Muchos trees also = muchos leaves.

For a service project, the teen-age boys from my friend’s ward chose to rake the grove, which is no small feat.

We chose to reap the rewards of their labors and spent an hour jumping, racing and burying ourselves in the piles.



Oh yeah, and inviting ourselves to warm ourselves on that dark, chilly night with their hot chocolate.

On Saturday, Bode was invited to a birthday party at his friend Noah’s house. When I arrived, his mom Sam said, unbeknownst to me, that Hadley was invited as well. I returned home to extend the invite but by that time, she was head-deep in pumpkin goop so declined.

When I retrieved Bode a couple of hours later, the boys were attacking a pile of leaves. Hadley was not pleased with their choice of activity.

“NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WOULD BE LEAVES INVOLVED AT THAT BOY’S PARTY!”

Leaf-jumping: the new standard of birthday excellence.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor

The Great Pumpkin’s Mushroom Kingdom

November 2, 2010 By

Halloween is almost anti-climactic after all the pumpkin patches, parties, weigh-offs and trunk-or-treats.

This year, the kids opted for a Mario Bros. theme. Bode’s hero is Mario and Hadley begged to be Yoshi, his sidekick dinosaur. Bode’s costume was easy: I went to the local thrift store where I found overalls and a red shirt. I bought the actual Mario hat from the Halloween store.

I’ll admit I wasn’t too thrilled about Yoshi so when I couldn’t find a costume in Hadley’s size, I proposed she dress up as Princess Peach, the damsel in distress in Mario’s ficticious Mushroom Kingdom.


Just pretend they are posing with The Great Mushroom.

If you know Hadley’s aversion to all things princess, you would realize what a risky move this was. Somewhere, at sometime, a princess did her wrong and these royal wenches represent all that is evil in the world.

Fortunately, due to her affection for Mario, she made the exception to be Peach.


Though she did have the pageant girl wave down at her school parade.

On Saturday, we had a busy day with soccer games and a playdate with Aunt Lisa while Jamie and I auditioned at the Marriage Ref. That night was the trunk-or-treat at the church. Knowing they would get loaded up on sugar, I fed them a healthy dinner. Thirty seconds prior, Bode professed to be starving to death and proceeded to eat half his weight in food.

“My tummy is sooooo full,” he moaned.

I thought he was exaggerating until it was time to go to the trunk-or-treat an hour later. He refused, with the same complaint.

“Bode, don’t you realize you’re going to go to a place where they are going to stuff you full of candy?” I queried.

“Don’t care. My tummy is too full.”

I don’t know how a kid like that came out of me.

He bounced back on Halloween and we joined our neighborhood revelries with a fire-truck-led procession, followed by trick-or-treating.




The local Medved dealership sponsored our parade and brought this Camero. It was love at first sight for the Lord of the Gourds.

Please don’t ask me how many times he made me retake this photo in order to best showcase his dream car.

As you can imagine, visiting the house of The Great Pumpkin makes us a VERY popular stop for picture-taking.

Next year, I’m charging a fee.

All these were fun times but my favorite moment came earlier that day when I attempted to clean up the house. As I swept the kitchen floor, the Lord of the Gourds commented:

“You’re the best looking thing with a broom today.”

‘Bout time someone recognized it.

Happy Halloween!

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, holidays, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With:

Knee Trauma and the Village Idiot

October 21, 2010 By

I’m stopping to come up for air after another one of *those* weeks. Nothing extraordinarily bad but definitely extraordinarily busy. It started with a rock-climbing adventure to Alderfer/Three Sisters, one of my favorite hiking areas in Evergreen.



The next few days were a compendium of business and church meetings, babysitting, deadlines and stress. I hit the wall a couple of nights ago when, out of nowhere, I had an excruciating episode with my knee, rendering me unable to walk.

I spent the next day on the phone with our insurance company tracking down an orthopedic surgeon. I’ve held off as long as possible due to our daunting $2,500 co-pay for anything beyond an office visit. This is what you get for being self-employed and have a husband with a horrid health history. This is on top of our sky-high monthly health insurance premium.

You’d better believe I’ve been watching the health insurance debates VERY carefully because we’re one of the victims of a failed system.

And you’d also better believe that socialized medicine is sounding pretty darn good to me right now.

I was feeling down and out that day. To top if off, I was teaching 17 Beehives (12- and 13-year-old girls) how to make apple dumplings at my house that evening. As I fretted about what to do with them while the dumplings cooked, a sign from God appeared.

OK, it was actually a package from Nintendo in the form of their newest release: Wii Party and (brace yourselves for this): my very own disco ball.

Suddenly, my life had meaning again.

And so we baked….

Watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and we partied it up with Wii Party with our disco ball reflecting groovin’ colors.

The next day, the kids and I played Wii Party with Bode’s buddy, Larry. The little dude has never touched a Wii and Hadley treated him like the village idiot.

Being Wii-ignorant is the new leprosy.

Until said “Village Idiot” beat her.

It’s been a brutal week for everyone.

Disclaimer: My brother Jade’s portrayal as “Duct Tape Man” is the closest I could come to a picture of a village idiot.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Colorado, Hadley, hiking, Humor, outdoors

Rock Creek Farms–Through the Years

October 19, 2010 By

You’d think with all the effort that goes into the pumpkin-growing season we’d have some reasonably-sized pumpkins to carve like most normal people.

We don’t.

And so we go to Rock Creek Farms in Broomfield, CO. This has been an annual fall tradition since Hadley was a baby. Things have changed just a wee bit over the years….

2006

2007

2008

2009
And for 2010, we invited several friends for a fun-filled day of bouncy castles, petting farm, straw maze and more.

Rock Creek Farms has also added wagon rides to their line-up but at $8 for adults and $5 for kids, we opted to save our money….

….to purchase a pumpkin bar, cookie and M&M caramel apple from their food stand.

Priorities, you know.

We also spent some time in the fields selecting the perfect pumpkins for carving. So impressive was the display of thousands of pumpkins that Bode, when he saw the sea of orange, proclaimed, “Oh. Ma. Gosh.”

Kid could totally be a valley girl.


We were thrilled with our selections until we walked into the door and the Lord of the Gourds freaked out. “PUMPKINS? YOU CALL THOSE PUMPKINS?”

He now has a new moniker: Pumpkin Snob.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Colorado, Hadley, Humor, pumpkins

The (Pumpkin) Party’s Over

October 12, 2010 By

For most (normal) people, pumpkin season is just beginning. Last weekend marked the end of ours.

On Friday, a woman dropped something off at our house. “Wow, that’s a big pumpkin!” she exclaimed, referring to the kids’ 208-pounder at our doorstep.

I looked at her, puzzled. “You must have somehow missed my husband’s pumpkin?”

I walked her out to the driveway where I pointed out James’ beast. “That,” I said pointing to the kids’ pumpkin, “is not a pumpkin. THIS is a pumpkin.”

Crocodile Dundee would have been proud.

On Saturday, my kids entered their orange beast in our city’s giant pumpkin contest. Despite the fact Jamie’s pumpkins are now too large to enter, we continue to be supportive because that is where his obsession began three years ago.

Or maybe they should harbor part of the blame.

Jamie is a bit of a local celebrity. When we pulled up, a throng of local gardeners clamored around to see what their beloved Jamie had brought. Several others pulled me aside, raving how much he has done to help inspire and instruct other growers.

It was like hanging out with Elvis in Vegas.

The festival’s giant pumpkin weigh-off has come a long way. Once upon a time, Jamie’s 141.5-pound pumpkin won. This year the bar was raised. Throngs of people gathered to watch an elated Lori Fontyn win the adult division with a 360-pounder and my kids won the junior division.


The kids’ prize was a $50 gift certificate for a local garden center.

It’s tough to say who was the real winner because Jamie insisted we stop on the way home to buy $50 worth of gypsum and soil sulfur.

Because, rest assured, soil prep for the 2011 season has already begun.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

Revealed: A Picky Eater’s Innermost Thoughts

October 6, 2010 By

An important General Conference tradition (in addition to listening to our church leaders via sattelite) is the food that accompanies it.

At least that was the case until Jamie’s parents moved to Utah and our Sunday-morning breakfast tradition of blueberry muffins, sausage and eggs was dead.

That is why I was thrilled when my friend Eva asked if her family of eight could watch at our place. In return for offering up our TV, she brought fruit, cinnamon buns, sausage, bacon and juice.

Can you say no-brainer?

I threw in some homemade caramel applesauce, an apple tart, eggs and pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies so we had quite the feast.

Jamie, the kids and I snacked all day. By dinnertime, I desperately wanted something light and healthy so opted to serve yogurt parfaits. I made granola for the first time, chopped strawberries and blueberries and let the children build their parfaits with their favorite yogurt.

They both loved it and couldn’t believe *this* was dinner.

As Hadley was polishing off her final bites, she exclaimed:

“Huh.”
“What, Hadley?” I queried.
“I just thought it was your job to make dinner I don’t like.”

Sad thing is she meant it as a compliment.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Hadley, Humor, LDS

A Tale of Two Pumpkins

September 29, 2010 By

Saturday was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Jamie had high hopes for this season and at one point, his pumpkin, “Redemption Boy,” was on track to weigh 1,100 pounds.

Until its growth started tanking in September.

In the end, Jamie hoped to just break 1,000 pounds, which would have been very possible because it was measuring out to weigh around 955 pounds.

In giant-pumpkin growing, pumpkins can either go “light” or “heavy” in either direction. It is impossible to know which way it will skew until it finally hits the scales.

Jared’s Nursery hosts the weigh-off and has beefed up the event to also include a Fall Festival with goodies such as a haunted house, obstacle course, s’mores, food and face painting.


Jamie is part of the Rocky Mountain Giant Vegetable Growers Group that organizes the event. In addition to giant pumpkins, there were also pears, watermelon and squash so freakishly large you’d swear you had been plunked onto the set of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.



Anticipation was high when it was time for Jamie’s pumpkin to get weighed in.


Well, for some of us. In Bode’s defense, Super Mario passes the time when you’re stuck in the hot sun for four hours.

Like a nervous new papa, Jamie watched as they loaded up his pumpkin and placed it on the Biggest Loser-esque scale.

Only on this scale, you want big numbers.

Unfortunately for Jamie, he didn’t get them. His pumpkin went 16% light and only weighed in at 820 pounds.


This is still impressive and his personal best but he was visibly disappointed his pumpkin did not break 1,000 pounds. However, he still has another pumpkin to be weighed at yet another competition this weekend.

Such is my life during the fall.

The kids entered their pumpkin as well. Shockingly,their 208.5-pound pumpkin not only won but it set a new Colorado state record in the children’s division.

Bode was busy scoring five goals (!) at his soccer game so Hadley was their sole representative. However a few minutes prior to the awards ceremony, her upper left leg got stung by a bee rendering her incapable of walking. Or so she thought.

When her name was called, Hadley dramatically limped to the stage, further augmenting the cheers as I’m sure people thought “How amazing that little invalid girl grew that big pumpkin!” She even forced a smile. She is, after all, a crowd-pleaser.


And I may-or-may-not have threatened her to do so.


What prizes did the kids win for such an accomplishment?

A membership into the Rocky Mountain Giant Vegetable Growers Group and a bag of fertilizer. Oh, and a club T-shirt that should have read:

I won the state title and all I got was some cow dung and this crappy T-shirt.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »