Saturday: cats

 Cats aren't allowed on LEGO instruction books, so imagine my surprise when I came down this morning to this:

I moved them off to the side and Tornado took possession.

Friday: morning, pizza

This morning was odd.  My children barely spoke to me.  They were both content doing their own thing, so I listened to two podcasts and then continued with my audiobook.  It was lovely and sad all at the same time.  

I made pizza tonight with the pizza dough and it was delicious!!  I'm glad that I had been doing it with the pizza kits from Crust 54 for a while though; I knew what to expect once it came time to actually make the pizzas.  I knew that I needed all the toppings chopped and ready to go.  I knew about how much cheese to put on, etc.  I made all the dough into pizzas and seemed to be just the right amount for tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch, which was 143g of the sourdough discard. 

Honestly, this went so well that I kind of want to try making bread soon.  I had been planning on waiting several months before trying bread to figure out pizza dough, but maybe I won't.  We'll see how busy the summer ends up being.

Thursday: Lego, dough

 Joshua came up with a new game today.  I was expecting it to be decent, but it was actually quite fun!  He made a small Lego item, in this case, a boat.

Without showing us the boat, he took it all apart and put the pieces into a bag.  We drew one piece at a time and had to make a boat.  We ended up with a power boat.

I also started making some pizza dough today.  Liz had kindly gave me some of her sour dough starter.  I've been debating asking for some for a while, but finally realized that everyone likes the "make your own" pizzas a lot more than store bought pizzas.  So the goal is to make pizza dough regularly.  Liz has a lot more experience and suggested some rough measurements for feeding the sourdough, but I'm not there yet so I weighed everything out.  Ok, I think I'm all out of order in this paragraph.  I took out half the current sourdough starter, as I'm supposed to.  I feed the rest of the starter and put it back in the fridge.  With the discard, I started making pizza dough.

And, 12 hours later, it had doubled in size like it was supposed to!  I had looked at it after a few hours and couldn't tell any difference, but maybe it was still warming up.  I folded it, per the recipe, and put it back in the fridge for tomorrow.  I might have more dough than I need, but I'd actually like to make Friday's dinner and Saturday's lunch. I can also freeze it if I have too much.

Wednesday: problem?

I might have a problem.  Lipton Decaffeinated Unsweetened Iced Tea Mix may (or may not) be discontinued.  I had a hard time finding it a year or two ago because it was always out of stock at Meijer, so I bought a case.  I just started my last jar, so I starting looking for a good place to find it again.

All the comments say that it is discontinued, but may come back mid 2025 per Lipton.  One jar can get me through several months, so I'll look again in a bit.  Otherwise there are a few options I could switch to but they all seem more expensive (and more concentrated?) or caffeinated.  Stay tuned; I'm sure I'll be really happy or really sad in a few months.

In other news today, we finally made it to a Tulip City Rock and Mineral club meeting.  The end feelings were...medium.  The junior meeting was a bit shorter than I expected, but both kids came home with a really nice fossil.  Then the kids joined the adults for the guest presentation - I'll be honest, it was a bit boring.  It was on how the club can join with Ottawa Parks and Rec to promote rock things.  Now, if we were active members then this might have been interesting.  But...the speaker talked quite a bit about Hemlock Crossings, which is one of the buildings that has a nice nature center with a big room for events.  And about five minutes discussing the parking lot.  We've been to Hemlock Crossings; to me it seems like a normal parking lot.  Furthermore, Joshua wasn't feeling amazing.  He had a headache that he couldn't quite shake.  

All in all, we want to give it another try.  It has potential and it had great snacks.  It's just hard doing things the first time.

Tuesday: rice cooker

I think I've mentioned that the rice cooker and I have a love/hate relationship.  Ok.  That's the backstory.

I asked Isaac to turn on the rice cooker today at 5pm because I'd be with Joshua.  He sent me a text while were driving home asking some questions about it.  I gave my phone to Joshua and asked him to send a text to Isaac: as long as the rice cooker is set to cook, it's good.

I got home and the rice was cooked properly, but Isaac and I quickly talked about how rice cookers worked.

Ben came home and checked the rice cooker.  What?  He knows I have problems with the rice cooker, but it was still an odd move.  Well, it turns out that Joshua had actually sent the text to Ben.  So, out of the blue, Ben receives a text about the rice cooker.  He just gave me a thumbs up.  I laughed so hard thinking about him receiving that text out of the blue.

Monday: still hot

Today was still hot, although tomorrow is looking a lot better.

One of Isaac's chores for the week is to trim our mulberry tree.  It's a chore he enjoys.  However, at 3pm this afternoon he tried to go out and trim it.  I quickly put a stop to that, reminding him that the rest of the week will be a little cooler and better for tree trimming.

Karate has a/c and the fans were on, but I still ended up taking my jacket off.  I think this is the first time I've ever done so due to heat, but we were only 1/3 of the way through the class and I was getting significantly warmer than normal.

Saturday: hot

Nathan stayed the night, although he got to our house late last night and left again mid-morning.  It was still lovely to see him.  We got donuts for breakfast and ate them on the deck.  However, by 8:30 we went inside because it was getting hot.

The rest of the day was pretty normal; some Legos, some games, some work.