A Birthday Date

The Violet's Birthday posts continue...

Glenn had Monday morning off from school!  It was a wonderful coincidence.  The first morning he has had off from school in months just happened to be Violet's birthday!  So after her morning nap, Glenn took Violet on a date to the Natural History Museum.  USC students and children under 4 are free, but it is pretty expensive for everyone else, so that is why I didn't go.  (But I don't complain.  Two hours home alone?  I was in heaven.)

We are lucky to live so close to so many cool places.  This museum is where many of the scenes from "Night at the Museum" were filmed, and it is less than a mile from our house.  Glenn took some great pictures:

(my favorite)

Glenn said Violet really seemed to like it.  She walked around by herself almost the whole time!  Glenn is so sweet, and loves to buy her presents, and she came home with a plastic dinosaur from the gift shop.  We think we are going to buy a membership for me, so we can all go as a family as many times as we want during the year!

Birthday Haikus

My family has the strange but nice tradition of writing haikus on birthdays.  So on your birthday, you get several haikus written about yourself, which is pretty fun!  I though I'd share the ones Violet got yesterday!  Here they are: 

We'll see her Friday!
Violet, our first grandchild
She is beautiful!

From Grandma

It's cool to be one.

Vi is walking everywhere-

and gets to eat cake!

From Annie

Vivacious Violet (pronounced Vi-let)

Is a very shy dancer

Always grooves alone.

From Kenny

What? Violet's (again, Vi-let) birthday

already? She has learned much

in one year of life.

From Grandpa

You can't read this yet,

but someday when you read it,

you'll know I love you!

From Courtney

You like to read books

And you like to growl a lot.

Such a silly girl!

From Mom

Violet is sweet.
She is obsessed with books
Just like her mama.
From Dad

My birthday is in two days, and I can't wait for my haikus!

Proof that she ate something besides cake at her party :)

Birthday Girl

Happy Birthday to my Violet!

She opened her presents this morning, and Glenn has the morning off from school and is going to take her to the Natural History Museum to celebrate.

We had her birthday party on Saturday evening, and it went great!  Three little girls from our ward and their parents came.  We feasted on pizza, watermelon, and birthday cake.  We had it at the park near our house, and the weather couldn't have been better!  Pictures:

As you can see, we let Violet try some of her birthday cake.  She hasn't really had sweets before, and I wasn't sure how she would react.  It seems like most babies either won't eat the cake because they don't know what to do with it, or happily grab handfuls of cake and stuff it in their mouth smiling.  Violet definitely stuffed the cake in her mouth, but she was very serious about it.  She took her plate, walked away, and turned her back on the group.  She held the plate in both hands and dove in, head first.  Every once in a while, she would look up furtively to make sure no one was coming to take her cake!  We laughed the whole time.

That is the face of a happy birthday girl :)

The Fourth

Happy July 4th yesterday!  I hope you had a good one.  Ours was wonderful for the first 40% and wonderful for the last 40%, with a small 20% of suckiness right in the middle.

We went hiking again!  Since we borrowed our friends' baby carrier last week and had so much fun hiking, we decided we needed to go one more time before we returned it (thanks Lauren!).  This hike was really close to the one we did last week, and about the same length, 4 miles.  It was cool because at the end of the canyon, so two miles in, you get to this old huge ranch house that got burned out.  The stone stairs and floors are still there, so you can see the layout of the house, and walk around in it.  I didn't think it sounded that cool, but once we got there, I loved it!  If you hike for just one more minute past the house, there is a pretty little waterfall.

We started hiking around 7:30, and it was totally empty.  I think we saw two other people the whole way up.  One the way down, we saw a lot more people.  I think the park officially opens at 8, so we beat the rush.  One of the groups we saw was from Biggest Loser!

In the evening, we went to our ward's Fourth of July party, and had a great time.  Here's the sucky thing that happened in the middle of the day:  When we got home from the hike, we realized Glenn's wallet was gone.  We looked everywhere and couldn't find it, so Glenn drove back to the trail (now that it was the afternoon and everyone was headed to the beach, it took him an hour to get there instead of the half hour it took us in the morning) and he redid the hike and looked for the wallet.  And never found it.  So he came home and canceled his credit card.  Wah wah.  

Other than that, the day was great.  And I ate A LOT of hamburgers and hot dogs at the party, so Happy Birthday America!

A Family Walk

We take a walk nearly ever evening together, but usually Violet is in her stroller.  Last night, we decided to see if she could walk instead.  Success!  

First, she held hands with us:

Then, about ten minutes in, she let go and took off on her own:

We just walked once around the little block we live on, but it took us well over half an hour!  It was so fun to watch her explore.  She could pause, examine something on the grounds for a  minute, and then stand up and keep going.

When she started to seem tired, we tried picking her up and carrying her the rest of the way, but she wasn't having it.  She cried until we put her down and let her walk by herself!

p.s. We are off to go hiking to celebrate the Fourth this morning!  Don't worry, we won't make Violet walk this time. :)

What I did with my manioc

Behold, my manioc root:

Pretty impressive right?  After I advised you to google manioc, I did so myself, and here is what came up for images with the caption "preparing manioc root":

So now you have an idea of what it looked like around here as I made dinner last night.  Anyway, I just read this crazy vegan cookbook (Veganomicon) and this recipe looked interesting enough to make.  It is basically a Jamaican curry (how I procured Jamaican curry powder is a story for another time) topped with mashed manioc root to make a strange shepherd's pie.

We loved the curry filling.  It was basically sweet potatoes, kidney beans, and plantains in the curry sauce.  We both went back for seconds, but my only complaint is that regular old mashed potatoes could be vegan, and would taste better than manioc.  So next time I will just use mashed potatoes on top, or just serve the curry over rice.  Or naan!  Yum!  

Also, when I uploaded the pictures from the camera,  I ran across this gem of Violet and her best friend Parker, who just moved away this weekend!  We will miss you Parker! (and Courtney!  I especially will miss you, Courtney!)

p.s.  Paul, Glenn will probably miss you too.  Wouldn't want you to feel left out :) 

Our TV is deadsies

This beauty died yesterday:

I know what you are thinking: "Afton, that tv is from 1995, of course it died.  I am surprised it lasted until yesterday."  At least that is what I am thinking, if you aren't.

I am actually kind of excited about not having a tv for a while.  The only downside is that I was really into Wimbledon, and seriously watching like 6 hours of it a day, and now I will just have to rely on updates on the internet.  (On the other hand, maybe it is an upside that I won't be watching 6 hours of tennis a day?)

Glenn and I are really excited about the Olympics, so it would be cool if we could get a tv by then.  If those weren't coming up, I would probably try to convince Glenn that we don't really need a tv at all.  So if we don't get a tv by the Olympics, it won't be the end of the world, but we are checking out craigslist until then!

p.s.  I bought a manioc root.  I am making it for dinner tonight.  Google that if you want to be impressed by my sense of adventure.