Happy Halloween!

Here's a quick photo re-cap of our pumpkin carving.

 The "gunk" that came out of Freddy's pumpkin was unlike any pumpkin gunk I had ever seen. Caroline went to town playing with it, while the boys did their best to avoid it. It looked too much like worms and made me very squeamish.

Freddy started out in a sweatshirt and by the end, he was stripped down to a swim suit, and hosed himself down on the lawn when he was all finished. Below is his finished product. Moojie came up with the skewer idea.

 I love children in hats, but the shadow on their faces kills all of my photos :(

Moojie's on display tonight as we dinned al fresco on the veranda.  

Embracing change

Pai has taught me to love many foods that I never would have eaten before coming to Portugal. Banana on pizza is one of those things. This was dinner on Friday

Man is it delicious.

Things I want to remember

There's not much more a Mom can ask for than her 13 year old son bringing her tea unprompted when he sees her snuggled in bed with a good book.

I should never promise to pick up said 13 year old son at 1am when I 'm almost always dead to the world at midnight.

Forts on rainy days are a good thing. I will accept the disorder if it means that their imaginations get some excercise.

Coats are for indoor use in old houses from October until March. Heat is for wimps.

"Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them"- Lucy Montgomery. No where is that more true than in the heart of Zita. She is a girl full of anticipation and I love that about her.

Freddy started piano this week and 13 pages into John Thompson's Piano Book 1, we've learned 2 notes, how to read a time signature, and what the difference is between the treble and bass cleffs.

Watching those pudgy fingers clank away on middle C overwhelms me with happiness and pride

Zita settled on a jazzy version Silent Night on clarinet for her Christmas recital song. I could hear it 1 million times and still hang on every note.

Zita and Freddy fall asleep to my Sleepless in Seattle CD that I bought my freshman year in highschool, and they are always alseep by A Wink and a Smile.

Socks has finally been replaced by the Magic Tree House Revolutionary War book and a stack of Halloween books. Freddy now gets very worried by the mention of  "Red Coats."

Birthday party season is now in full swing; I need to get 5 birthday gifts before the afternoon school run today.

Getting a gift cupboard together should be at the top of my to do list.

Lisbon by night is spectacular. 

( Taken through a window)

Embracing Halloween

Some years I drop the ball on Halloween, but now that I'm not working (outside the home!), and with Zita as a major driving force behind all things celebratory, there's no excuse for not making Halloween momentous.

This week I got orange and black construction paper, and squishy window stickers. Both have been keeping us busy on these rainy after school days.

 My favorite discovery was this pen for writing on windows.  It was 3 euros at Staples in the permanent marker section and pretty much all of our windows now have pumpkins on them. I earned serious good Mummy points for bringing this home. I will definitely get red and green window pens on December 1st!

Don't get over analytical about Freddy's angry pumpkin drawings. There are happy pumkins on the upstairs windows.

I have a double batch of cookie dough ready for Friday afterschool and Halloween day, and some great witch themed cookie cutters too. Now I have to get going on my demure cat costume.

Crazy Mornings

Pandemonium runs rife during our get-to-school shuffle. We've been tweaking the system for so many years in pursuit of that perfect morning routine, but something always throws me for a loop. The short of it: there was poop and pee in the minivan this morning, I was wretching all over the driveway, and two of the three children were wet and in a dither as we were supposed to walk out the door.

Now for the longer version:  Patches the cat went missing yesterday afternoon. You see where this is going, don't you? It has been storming and windy so we just thought she was hiding somewhere. She didn't turn up for dinner and this morning she didn't come for breakfast.

I searched the garden in my PJs at 6:30am, getting soaked and cold and actually meowing like a crazy lady in an attempt to attract this blasted cat.

Zita got dressed and took to meowing and calling for Patches through the heavy rain and winds, soaking her uniform and annoying her dear mother for lack of a rain coat. Freddy reinforced search efforts and followed Zita into the rain.

We all gave up since I refuse to be late on account of a cat, and when I went to open the car door, I noticed it was locked. Just then, Patches jumps against the glass, making me scream from the fright, and also because the cat has locked the car with the key inside. Of course we are also running against the clock here. I found the spare car key and the stentch that came out of that car when I opened the door rivals any stench in the history of all time. Ever. I  start wretching with rib breaking force in the driveway, but the children celebrate and are ecstatic about finding Patches. No one mentions the fact that the car now needs to be quarantined until 2016 and we still need to get to school.

The kids kept proclaiming "pooooor Paaatchesss!" So "poor" Patches was shut in the car with quite a few kids snacks, and then stepped on the lock button, and pooed, and peed, and got hair on every single seat and surface. Poor Patches indeed.

I grabbed Pai's keys, loaded the car, and got all three to school on time. I still haven't had the courage to go back and look in the car, but I need to solve it before the afternoon school run. Might be time to try out the bus system.

Patches is on the left.

Halloween Costumes

We are going to do our best to create the most authentic Halloween possible at Zita's school on the 31st. Part of this involves dressing up and hosting trick-or-treating houses in the classrooms.
My efforts to find a costume thus far have borne little fruit. When it poured with rain on Sunday, I took Freddy and Zita out to help me find a costume. The sum total of my options were: sexy German beer maid, complete with blond wig; a sexy witch outift that hit mid thigh on the average woman of 5´1"; and Dracula.  "Sexy" is not my word, it's written right there on the package "Bruxa Sexy."  See? Not going to work...

Dracula was in the men's section and at 5´8" I am actually considered man sized here as any glance at me in the post office line would tell you. So to recap the options: Sexy German beer maid, Sexy witch, Dracula.

I might just have to go as Dracula since the below "Heidi" costume really isn't going to work either. Although I do have a friend who could lend me those white thigh highs left over from her surgery.

I'll keep you all posted, but if in the meantime anyone has make-it-yourself school appropriate costume ideas, please share!

Tide Pools

As soon as the weather starts to turn, sunning and swimming are enthusiastically replaced with hours of exploring the many tide pools we have close to our house. The tourists are gone for the most part and it's  just us and a few dog owners on the beach.

Who can resist jumping off the rocks? Not Freddy!

 Catching this scurrying little crab was quite the excitement

 No trip to the beach is complete without digging.

 No sooner than two busy body ladies warned Zita that she would fall, did she slip and get a cut on her knee and a bad scrape on her leg.
Some first aid help from the dive center, a double scoop icecream, and bike riding down a ramp on the waterfront lifted her spirits.

I later asked her in the calm of the evening if she answered back to the ladies making running commentary and she replied "oh, they were a nuissance, but I didn't let them spoil my time." I wish I had possessed that pearl of wisdom- that it's not worth getting into discussions with people who readily give parenting advice to foreigners- many years ago.

Weekly Menu

Here's last week's menu:

Monday: ginger teriyaki steak, green salad

Tuesday: baked breaded fish fillets, green beans

(I use boneless fresh fish segments, and take off the skin myself. Next I dip each fish portion in eggs, salt, pepper, and a bit of milk. Lastly, I roll each in a bread crumb mixture with lemon that I make in the food processor, and then bake)

Wednesday: Veggie Burritos (filling: corn,roasted red peppers, broccoli, onion, tomato, black beans, rice, cheese)

Thursday: Veal baked in puff pastry, green salad

Most butchers in Portugal have some version of this. Our local butcher does a shredded roast chicken version, and the veal version (below). The butcher assembles them fresh every morning and I don't have the processed food guilt that frozen food causes. Just pop them onto a baking sheet, brush a little egg on top- or forget to and do so unevenlly half way through the baking process as I did- and let them cook for 30 minutes or until golden brown. One can assemle these at home too, but buying them ready-made is worth  the time saved.

Friday: pizza :)

What makes me happy?

Getting this in the mail!



Thanks Mom:)

Things I want to remember

Going into Lisbon is worth the drive, which is only 20 minutes, because I get to see pretty houses like this

and look out the window and see this

Moojie had 4 big tests this week which meant a lot of flash cards, quizzing, reading, and time spent up in his room

Freddy had a field trip to a bread making windmill where he made bread in an open fire brick oven, and happily showed off the bread to his brother and sister.

Zita is in her element with the holiday season upon us, and has listed and drawn countless Halloween ideas, and wants to discuss every minute detail of Halloween all day long.

We are sitting in front of the white board a lot doing homework and revision.
Someone remind me to buy more markers!

The Halloween Sounds app on the iPad got very annoying very fast

We are still plodding through Socks, but have also added watching one or two musical snippets through YouTube on the iPad. Mary Poppins, Annie, Sound of Music, and some Cat Steven's are the usual nightly requests

This week was smooth and calm compared to most weeks

Zita loves her music theory class and now brings her clarinet instead of the recorder. Hallelujah! Update: her second music class at school has now added the recoder. doh!

Blackie the cat keeps finding ways to sneak into the house and goes straight to Pai for a cuddle.

I'm on the Halloween committe at Zita's school, and spent the morning discussing games, prizes, decorations, and costumes with other moms.  School party meetings are so much more fun than work meetings. No regrets here!

Watching Moojie read a book to Freddy goes on my list of top 10 favorite things to watch.

Today is school picture day and Moojie went with his uniform sweater that is now a 3/4 length sleeve and rides above the belt line. I think I bought it when he was 6 inches shorter than he is now. Oops.

Pumpkin Patch Envy

I have a serious case of pumpkin patch envy. My Facebook newsfeed is filled with pumpkin patch pictures and here's the sad truth; my kids have never been to a pumpkin patch.  Our pumpkin patch experience consisted of me driving to the Lidl- a German discount grocery chain- putting the only pumpkins they had in the cart, and unceremoniously buying them with the swipe of a multibanco card. There was no haystack display or cute pumpkin tower as a backdrop for photo shoots. There was no wandering fields, looking for the perfect shape and then drinking hot chocolate and feeling warm and festive about it all.

So as you can see, our pumpkins don't give much space for carving a face, and who-gets-the-tall-pumpkin discussions have exhausted both dinner and breakfast table conversation.

These pumpkins are sold as food, right there next to French onion and cauliflower. They just aren't meant to be jack-o-lanterns.  The thing about European pumpkins, is that they start to mold (think Chia Pet on steroids ) and collapse into themselves at an alarming rate. What this means on a practical level is that our pumpkins can't really be carved earlier than oh, say the afternoon of October 31st, or one finds herself with a hairy, stinky, fruit fly attracting squash. It's not pretty.

On the bright side, it's not a butternut squash.

On biking and bikes

Before we left for the beach, Pai threw our little bike in the back of the car since Freddy never has a chance to practice. Never is an exageration. We took him once last year when he managed 20 meter spurts with us running behind him.  I think our backs took 2 weeks to recover.
When we go on bike rides, he goes on the tag-a-long.

The tag-a-long is great- we love it-  but it made us lazy in getting Freddy on his real bike. By real bike, I mean his sister's old pink bike, spray painted black.  So we had the bike and let Freddy ride around the parking lot where he took to it right away.

No, we did't have a helmet, but I assure everyone I would have brought one had I known the bike was in the car. He was also in an area with no cars, surrounded by 4 "fans" ready to catch him. As he biked back and forth, I sounded like a lunatic cheering away in a shrill voice  "Go Freddy!" "You've got it!" "Pedal! Pedal! Don't lean! Pedal!" 

Getting to be the center of the family's attention, even for 20 minutes, is such a good boost for kids. Moojie and Zita were so encouraging and supportive, and Freddy lapped up every second. I have no doubt he learned so quickly because of the four loud fans he had by his side.

Now I think we need to write to Santa and ask for a bigger bike.

Another Splendiferous* Sunday

There is a new walking trail in the sand dunes behind Guincho beach. The entire loop is 2-3km and we did it at a very slow pace.

 Freddy liked to run up ahead of us

and then sit and take a break while the big kids caught up.

When they saw this sheer faced dune in the distance, they couldn't resist climbing up and running down.

there goes Zita

Freddy was the bravest and went first

 The light and scenery were so beautfiul, but still I had to beg, plead, and eventually bribe the children into standing together long enough for me to take their picture. It might be our Christmas picture so I won't share it here.

Taking a little break before the final push back to the car.

Standard teenage text break.

We made it back to the car and came upon the most surreal display I have ever seen at Guincho. The sun was setting against a backdrop of 10 foot high waves,  a live band was playing, and not a single person was on the beach. I felt a little silly going up to the edge of the cliff to take this shot next to all the other tri-pod toting people. One day I'll have a tri-pod and a good camera.

After getting as much sand off as we could, we piled into the car and got as far as the lighthouse down the road before we decided that the last minutes of the sunset had to be savored.

So we pulled over and encouraged the children to explore the rocks and take in the beauty. We counted to 87 in unison as the last of the sun disappeared.

Have I mentioned yet how much I love Portugal in the Fall?

*any word used by Tigger is a real word, as far as I'm concerned

Additional information from Freddy: " You didn't write that you left the water bottles in the car and we were all really really thirsty. So thirsty!" This is true. This perfect day was ever so slightly tarnished by a lack of water.

Apple Quince Crumble with Almonds

The rest of the afternoon with Freddy had to include baking. He loves to bake. I love to bake. Everyone is happy. We have quince trees growing everywhere and this year we picked around 10.  Quince is a perfect complement to apple and makes a great crumble.

 Freddy decided that instead of slicing the apples on the chopping board, he would just dump them in and cut them like this. The result was not very evenly cut fruit. All of my kids get chef knife training at a young age and no one has ever needed stiches due to a knife accident, so please don't worry!

It took so long to core, cut, and peel the apples and quince, that we were a little late on lemon juice to prevent browing.

 This crumble was very easy. We just chopped 5 baking apples, and one quince. In the food processor, we mixed 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar,  and flour. We sprinkled the mixture on top of the apples, quince, and golden raisins.  I usually use oats, but we were out. We used Penzey's Apple Pie Spice for seasoning.

Adding the finishing touches...

still happy to pose for pictures

 It was Freddy's idea to put a few almonds on top, which turned into the entire bag. It was well called and gave it a nice crunch. I have no idea what's on his face in all the latter pictures. Pizza sauce? Who knows.

 Finally, the crumble makes it into the oven. I love my little kitchen helper.