Mud and Meatballs

We decided to risk the mud today, and try for a game of kickball. The field wasn't too bad if you stayed on your feet. There was just one puddle by second base.

  

Selah was trying to stay motivated with some face paint. 

 (Behind her, you can see that Jonah wasn't staying on his feet so well. By the end of the game, he was mostly brown.)

For dinner, inline with everyone else trying new things in the kitchen during our shelter-in- place adventure, we made Swedish meatballs. IKEA released their recipe, so we decided to try it. I doubled the recipe, and had 31 large meatballs. I feared that I shouldn't have doubled it.

I clearly have no idea how to keep meatballs round as you brown them.  And I thought I burnt the front pan, so I baked them separately to not ruin them all.  But they were actually fine and the crispiness was enjoyable! 

Finished result. They were delicious. 

Noah and Elijah wouldn't try them.  Selah didn't like them.  And I only had 2 meatballs. Yet there were only 8 meatballs leftover. 

I'm not sure that Bryan, Jonah, and Micah NEEDED to eat so many, but they certainly didn't walk away hungry and there's just enough left for lunch. (And contrary to the picture, we did have green beans and honey dew as sides.  Not just potatoes and meatballs!)

We took a late evening walk to our neighborhood waterfall, tonight. Elijah was anxious to see it. I was happy to burn off a bit of those meatballs.

And whatever this Bush is, it smells glorious.  

Another Wet, Dreary Day

Today, was the fourth rainy day in a row.  

We decided we didn't care if it was raining.  I was a light rain.  I love to run in the rain, light rain is like liquid sunshine.  

(Actually,  it's not. Nothing beats actual sunshine.  Living in Colorado for a year certainly made that clear.)

Anyway, Selah and I went for a 2 mile run/walk.  In the rain.  I do so love how fresh the air is during and after a rain!

We stopped at the stream that was SO much fuller and faster than it had been earlier in the week.

This is our little, neighborhood waterfall.  It doesn't take much to entertain us these days.  

We approached from the other direction, and Selah was anxious to know what the sign said.

We weren't expecting it to say the sidewalk was closed.  There weren't any signs from the other direction. Oops?

After lunch we ventured out to find something outdoors that was still open for fresh air and exercise.  We had driven over the Rappahannock River a number of times and there were sometimes people on the rocks below. So we went in search of an avenue there.  

We found some trails on the map. Our first attempt to park landed us in a construction zone.  So we tried again, passing at the local ball field. Talk about a ball field!

They begged to play kickball, rather than head to the river. It was an interesting, rubber field. Easy to maintain,  I suppose. But, alas, there was a sign stating,  "este espacio esta cerrado." My Spanish isn't the greatest these days but I was pretty sure that meant it was closed.

So we headed to the river trail, as we had already checked to see that the trails were indeed open.  

E: Mom! Look! There's a fire hydrant buried in the woods!

This is Northern Virginia in the Spring. It's wet, for sure. But it is also very green!

Obligatory one non-candid picture.  You can see their joy.  

We made it to the quarry. The kids could have played here a while,  but there were other people around.  And we certainly don't want anyone to claim it's not safe and shut down another place.  (No one was within 6 feet of anyone else,  but neither was anyone on any of our trips to Shenandoah and they've shut that down.)

So they looked at the fish, and we moved on. Elijah was upset we wouldn't let him try to catch them.

Rocks to climb on!

B: Selah! Find a stick! Let's see how deep this is!

Sometimes mossy rocks are gorgeous. Looks like a forest from the sky.

THE SUN CAME OUT!!!!! Not a minute later, Bryan asks if we are ready to leave. Nope. Never.  At least not until the sun is setting! It's been at least 4 days of no sun! It was so glorious to see it again.

We're all venturing back across the treacherous path to land and I look back and see Selah is walking the opposite way.  With a large tree branch. 

Apparently,  her last branch got stuck and she wanted to free it. She was unsuccessful. 

The boys threw in one last boat from land.

And Bryan suggested they look for Morells. I assured them that the giant mushroom was not a Morell, so they smashed it. 

You can see Elijah's thoughts in his body language.

As we approached the trail that we arrived on, Bryan said we were going to try a different way back that hopefully wouldn't be so confusing and therefore quicker. I agreed, while praying profusely. He isn't known for his sense of direction. However, he's always survived Army land navigation events.  So... all in good fun, I annotated this picture. 

Turns out the new path was a road.  It was certainly less pretty but much quicker.  He found is the van with no issues! And in only 13 minutes!

It certainly wasn't a bad Sunday, but this was my favorite part.  Big, fancy salads on Sundays make me happy. 

We May Be Starting to Go a Little Crazy Over Here...

This was the line for Tader Joe's today. It's hard to see, but Trader Joe's is at the end of the strip, by that far building. Being that we were all social distancing, it wasn't as bad as it looks, only took about 20 minutes to wait. It's a small store, so they limit the guests to 25. 

Thankfully, I was able to procure everything I needed besides cornstarch and salt (of all things.  Apparently, cornstarch is only sold at Thanksgiving time and salt is only sold in a grinder... and I don't prefer to grind my own salt for baking.) 

I then stopped at the Dollar Tree, assuming I could get those items.  Salt, they had. Cornstarch, they didn't.  So that ruins the Saturday morning breakfast of Cherry Turnovers thay Chef Noah planned to treat us to. I fear they'll be quite messy with no cornstarch.  

This afternoon, the tennis courts were free and we headed over for some soccer. It's been raining for most of the past few days, so playing elsewhere would be messy. Selah did come join us and Elijah  is the MVP because that kid is everywhere with passion.  He clearly isn't getting enough opportunities to burn off energy these days!

A friend of Selah's has started up Zoom cooking meetings on Fridays.  Today they all made brownies together.  Selah added "candy coated chocolates" (aka M&Ms. I finally found them while waiting to check out at TJ. She was so happy.)

Apparently, it is important to taste-test straight out of the oven before Mom can even take a picture.

While Selah was willing to make the brownies GF for Micah,  Micah doesn't like chocolate. So we had found a GF lemon cake mix at Aldi recently and he decided to make that. 

He added a lemon frosting and it was a winner.  More people choose that than brownies! It didn't taste GF at all.  

This is Chef Noah's piece with strawberries to enhance that lemon flavor. 

In between the baking and eating of dessert, there was dinner. Bryan, Micah, and Jonah are on a shrimp kick.  Bryan had a trip to Florida recently and had Yucatan Shrimp and loved it so much he wanted to recreate it. So he did last week while I was gone. They devoured it in quick order while Elijah ate pierogi. They said 2 pounds wasn't enough. So this time I bought 3 pounds... against my better judgement as we could have all had steak for that price! It was a win again, they ate all 3 pounds.  But I think maybe next time they could eat more sides and less shrimp. Just my opinion...

Then, there was this. I think he's starting to lose his mind. 

He said, "what if I rub this sauce in my hair?!?"

And we all looked at him like he was crazy. So he did it. 

Truthfully, that worked better on those cowlicks than most hair gels.

While he showered, these two worked on new tricks as we all watched the second round of the draft.