Me: 200, Target: 0

It has been a whole month since the Target incident. I have not visited my former favorite store since then. Not once! No quick trip to the toddler clothing department to find the latest cute outfits for the girls. No cruising the candle aisle for wonderful wax to make my home smell nice. Nothing! I figure I have probably saved like $200.

Just had to gloat. Now I have to go finish painting my bathroom. kthxbye!

That's My Girl!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, she's hot, she takes care of two kids, she flies and she stills finds time to remodel the house while watching HGTV and blog with careless abandon.


Yes, I am a lucky man. Lucky she said "Yes" when I bought her a big ring to try to take the sting out of moving from Seattle to North Carolina. Lucky I didn't drop the ring off the top of the Space Needle, while stumbling through my little speech as crowds of tourists kept bustling by, interrupting. I had to start over a few times...



Well, we hadn't managed to dress up and go out in a while, and we have a history of planning big events (birthday, anniversary) and having the babysitter cancel at the last minute. Saturday was no different. We had tickets for the big Dining Out, and 2 hours before cocktail hour our babysitter called from Phoenix in a traffic jam. Through sheer will power and a dozen phone calls, Jennifer managed to get the babysitter all the way to our house where we rapidly turned over the kids to him and changed clothes. We bolted to the Dining Out arriving a mere 3 minutes before the event started.


The Dining Out began with a normal level of pomp and decorum, but I knew we were with the right crowd when the bread rolls started flying across the room (thanks Erin and Wendy). The grog bowl had opened, and my bride decided that she knew enough about this sort of thing that she needed to reward me for getting dressed in 69 seconds. Spontaneously, she arose and, taking the role generally reserved for military members, proceeded to inform the room that I in fact was wearing a black bow tie instead of a blue one. This being such a heinous breach of etiquette, I was sent to the grog bowl by my own bride as punishment.

Obviously concerned for my well-being as I approached the toilet bowl of foul brew, my wife grabbed the camera... While the early pictures did not turn out, I managed to keep ending up back at the grog for various indiscretions - offering more opportunities for photos.

Proudly, my squadron came out of the event as winners of the Thompson Trophy and drainers of the grog bowl (twice).


Everyone had fun, Jen looked beautiful, the kids survived without traumatizing the babysitter, and my wife became an inspiration for her audacity in sending her own husband to the grog.


I'll drink to that!


Tim

Ooh-la-la

It's still a work in progress, but we are getting to the point where I am more comfortable with showing our house. Tim was a dear over the weekend, and put my priorities (moving furniture out of the house and into storage) over his (napping, drinking and yard work - don't get me wrong, he did accomplish the items on his list, but more on that later), and now our house looks so much bigger. Particularly our room, which lost his dresser and his night stand (whuh? you thought I would remove my furniture? Anyway, I gave him 2 drawers):

We made the den/guestroom back into just a den, and tidied things up a bit.

Kate's new old room.

As for the living room, not much has changed except the removal of several toys and the replacement of our old sofa with the futon. Painting, unfortunately, has taken a back seat to more important things like de-cluttering and raking. I am also working on closet space, so I can toss extra toys out of sight.

The old college try

After spending a whole month sleeping in the same room over the summer in Oregon, Tim and I decided to put the girls together here when we got home. Since then, they have probably spent 3 weeks total sleeping in the same room. At first, it was cute. Kate would pester Claire as she tried to sleep, and Claire would laugh for awhile until it wasn't funny anymore, and then she would cry. Then, Claire would just cry when we put her in their room at night together. She would cry and cry and cry until we picked her up and put her in the pack and play in another room. That has to tell you something: she would rather sleep on a glorified piece of cardboard than on a mattress in the same room as her sister?

It started to seem silly, us having 2 cribs and a permanent playpen set up, just for 2 kids, especially when we are trying to make the house look all neat and big. So today we moved them back into separate rooms.

Note the look of slight annoyance on Tim's face. We have taken those cribs apart too many times. No more!

Claire helps Tim put the crib back together again.

Claire's new old room.

Tonight we went to sushi for dinner. On Friday I had gotten it into my mind that I wanted to go out to sushi tonight, preferably preceding a movie, and also with my sister and no children. (Friday was a 1st/2nd/3rd/whatever the hell Friday it was at the squadron bar, and I was going a bit stir crazy home alone with the children.)

The only part of my plan that worked out was the sushi part. Tim looked at me a little skeptically when I told him I wanted to go out to dinner, but gave in. After 3 minutes at the restaurant, I knew it was a mistake. WHY do I always FORGET how difficult it is to go out to eat with children? Kate wanted to play with the water glasses and the soy sauce, and the girls were fighting over the one box of milk that I had in the diaper bag (preparation would have helped a little). Claire started devouring the edamame that I was giving her, and then not long afterwards started regurgitating it. *Mental note taken.* Kate refused to eat the fried rice we got her for dinner, and Claire tried to grab every item off the table and throw it to the floor. Both girls wanted to drink my sake, which I sternly told them, I needed.

But. But! We got the girls bathed and into bed, and both went to sleep within 5 minutes, without a peep. It is now peacefully quiet, and also late. Good night!

A day in the life of Kate and Claire

Nutella toast.

Also:

• Kate can now say 'ketchup'. She used to say 'teputs'. I have no idea, y'all.
• Kate helped me put away the 'green mangos' today. Also known as 'avocados'.
• Claire's version of 'milk' sounds more like 'Mao'.
• Her 'thank you' is super cute: 'tee tuuu', which for her also means 'please'.
• Claire is saying 'UH! UH!' for everything she must desperately have Right Now.
• She is also a pain in the arse to put into her car seat (arched back, 'uh! uh!', wriggling like crazy, etc.).
• We had our first walk-through for the house this morning, and the house looked pretty good. (Of course, I say this knowing what a mess it looked like last week. I hope the people here today thought it looked good.)

Step one: storage unit

I got a storage unit yesterday, and already everything looks more possible. Goodwill picked up our old nasty sofa and a bookcase, we moved the futon into the living room, and I moved several boxes into storage. Soon I'm going to love this house again!

My list of things to do is still long, but it seems more doable now that the house looks less cluttered. And although I'm dying to paint the walls, I have moved that task down on the list of important stuff to take care of. Clutter is now number one.

Thank you to all who wrote in with brilliant tips! I think the house will look pretty good soon. Now, if only people will start looking at it.

How do you do this?

Our house is on the market. We haven't officially decided what we are doing yet (Vegas or HK), but I think we're pretty sure we're heading to Vegas. We both really want to move to Hong Kong, but after doing some research, we found that 1.) it's so incredibly expensive to live there that we would be living no where near the fun part of HK on a first-year (or 5th year) FedEx salary, and 2.) FedEx may not actually be hiring guys with no heavy/international experience. So. Vegas looks more likely.

Now we (I) are (am) in the process of tidying up the house to make people not only want to buy our place, but pay a premium for it. Do you have any idea how hard this is to do? I didn't. There are toys everywhere. There is too much furniture in almost every room of the house. The yard is full of weeds, and the house needs touch-up paint on too many surfaces. And people who want to see the house can call with 30 minutes' notice and expect us to leave so they can walk through it! GAH. Tim thinks we are crazy for listing the house before the Heritage Festival is over (March), since he won't really be able to help much with things around here until it is over. But our realtor pointed out that if no one sees the house, no one is likely to want to buy it, so here we are. I am trying to be somewhat organized about the whole thing, but find that I start one project, and get distracted by another one mid-way through it. Oh, and I have 2 children who want attention most of the time. So. It's naptime, and I need to get at least one of my 800 things to do done. Catch ya later!

Come fly with me

Well, okay, I guess that's a bit premature. You really don't want to fly with me for at least another 2-3 more hours of me practicing my landings. But I did get to take flight today, with my instructor Kelly right by my side to remind me about all the things I was forgetting. It was a beautiful day for flying; there is still a little snow on the mountains, and the sky was perfectly blue and clear.

Getting back into the cockpit is not exactly like getting back on a bike. I wish it was that easy, but it's slightly more complex. That's probably why there are so many enthusiastic pilots out there. I did pretty well, minus the first landing ("Pull up! Pull up! Don't forget to look all the way down the runway!"), the third landing ("Ooh, 90kts is pretty good for final...maybe you want some flaps?"), my parking job (yes, I parked in between the lines. You are supposed to park on them), and my engine shutdown. Let's just say that you can't simply turn off the engine with the key, and that's what I did. And I'll never forget again!

The rest of the day was for playing outside: the girls on the swing, and us trying madly to de-trailer park our yard.

Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?

It turns out Kate is. I got her The Three Little Pigs book recently, and she's woken up in the middle of the night several times now, worried about the big, bad wolf. We keep telling her we live in a brick house, but she is still scared. Oops. I plan to hide the book away today, in hopes that she will forget all about it.

We went to Agua Caliente park last week for the first time. I had no idea there was a park with a pond and ducks so close to us. Kate and Claire loved it. We wandered as far away from the park personnel as possible before feeding the ducks an entire sleeve of saltines (there were a lot of signs about not feeding the water fowl), and Kate even shared Claire's goldfish crackers with the ducks.

Claire has a new word: puffs. It doesn't come out perfectly, but it's understandable, which is impressive considering she has the flu and is very lethargic and whiny. I think she's going to be a linguist.

Kate is jumping. She has been trying to figure out how to get off the ground for ages, but has just now mastered it.

We are putting out house on the market next week. Next week! This does not leave much time for painting (which, by the way, my realtor said I didn't really need to do? Hmm), or anything else. Everyone is sick here, and Tim needs to work this weekend, so we'll see how much I can get done. There is a Lot to do. And I'm more than a little stressed out about how I'm going to have the house in a showable condition for the next couple of months. We are all going to be learning how to clean up after every single mess. The kids are going to HATE it.

It snowed yesterday, here in town. It didn't stick, but it was fun to watch!

Happy Consumers Day!

I think Valentine's Day is sort of silly, as you might could tell from the title of this post. Don't get me wrong: I'm not against love or roses or heaven forbid CHOCOLATES, but to pile them all up on one particular day in the year when the prices of such things are sure to be THROUGH THE ROOF, that seems silly. I did get Tim a card, and a small gift, and I even buckled and got Kate a chocolate heart from See's which she'll get to eat tonight. But hearts and all that crap, ugh. Maybe that's my problem: I can't stand heart-shaped stuff. And red and pink together? Well, only on a very cute baby.

This morning I went to the gem show with my friend Erin. Whooooboy! It was like shopping at Namdaemun in Korea, but with better parking and it didn't smell like fish. I got all kinds of fun things: gifts for friends and family, a ring and some earrings for myself, and some pearls to make a necklace for my sister-in-law, Sheila, who did not get one from me when we went to China. I'm pretty sure some of those Beijing vendors were there today, selling their wares to Americans from all over this country.

It's super windy today; a storm is blowing in and they say there will be a foot of snow tomorrow morning above 4000' and maybe even snow here in town.

Tonight we'll have a regular dinner and maybe some wine, followed by a chocolate heart for Kate. What will you be doing?

27 Dresses and a little bit of vomit

Oh, it's been a weekend. Not a bad one, but not really a great one, either. Where do I begin? Most of you probably want me to begin, well, at the beginning, but I am going to jump to last night, and the title of this post. Then we'll get to the stuff you really want to hear about. Mmmkay?

Yesterday was okay to begin with. I won't go into the whole poo incident, and will skip ahead to the more fun stuff. We were invited over to Shayne and Reagan's house for playtime and lunch, which was awesome, since I was sort of going stir crazy with the girls. My sister came along too, and we all had a nice lunch and the kids played well together. Jess and I also had plans to see a movie last night (27 Dresses), and I did actually make it, but just barely.

Dexter is my regular babysitter, but he was busy last night, so Rae (Dexter's mom, and a friend of mine) asked if it was okay if her second-oldest son, Owen, babysat instead. Since Owen is, what, 11? she would come along at first and transition the girls to bed and then when they were asleep, she would go home. They live about 1 minute from here, so this was fine with me. But, it was apparently not fine by Kate. My problem, in retrospect, was not leaving immediately when Rae and Owen arrived. This made Kate think that it was just a visit, and she became hysterical when I tried to leave. As I walked out the door at 7:20pm, I heard her retch because she was crying so hard. She does this often enough that it didn't surprise me, although I'm pretty sure it was an unpleasant surprise for both Owen and Rae. I raced back inside to find Kate wailing and covered in vomit, Claire beginning to get hysterical, and Owen with a shocked look on his face. Rae was in crisis mode, and had already started the bath. I tried to calm Kate down while removing her jammies, and Rae gave her a bath while I cleaned up. Owen did a good job of keeping Claire occupied and out of the puke. Fifteen minutes later, I was out the door and on my way to the movies, while I frantically dialed my sister and then Tim to tell him about how awesome my night was going. I called Rae at 7:45 and things were fine.

So, does anyone else's child work themselves into such a fit that they make themselves sick? Kate does this on a regular enough basis that I can tell when it's going to happen. What I don't know is how to head it off, besides just giving in to her demands. She does it when she doesn't like a particular food, when she's really mad about something, or when she doesn't want me to leave (which is rare, luckily). Tim's theory was that she was already distressed that he was gone all weekend, and she didn't want me to leave, too. My response is: that is understandable, but unacceptable. I need to be able to leave sometimes, and I need to figure out how to stop her from making herself sick when she's mad. Ideas?

The movie was fun. It's a total chick flick, but one that Jessica and I actually enjoyed. It didn't hurt that James Marsden is so yummy.

Okay, onto the stuff you want to know about. I know, I know! I'm being so mean! Posting pictures with no titles or explanations. On Thursday, we got our assignment, verbally. This means that you kind of want to see it in writing (probably March) before you make any big decisions like selling your house. The assignment is to Nellis, in Las Vegas, to report in June. It is a flying assignment, which Tim is so excited about. He would continue to fly the A-10, and would be in a position to advise pilots going to and coming from the war, I believe. We haven't had much time to discuss this assignment, as he had to work for about 15 hours on Friday, and left on Saturday before 5am.

Then, last night, he told me he'd just found out that FedEx is hiring pilots in Hong Kong. We visited HK in 2004 and loved it, and always thought that he would check out various airlines some day to see if they were hiring. So, now you know about as much as I do. I have no idea where we will be by the time June rolls around, but I'll keep you posted. Tim gets home tonight, so there will be plenty of discussions going on this week at our house.

Or?

=)

Getting color

Okay. I got lots of comments (thank you!) on the color of the living room and entryway. But I only got 4 actual votes! And worse, they were evenly divided! I tend to like the darker colors, so would normally go with the oak ridge, but am leaning towards the lighter color for neutrality and lightness. Our house is small, so I need to increase the size of the rooms.

You all pretty much agree that although the blue wall is JUST BEAUTIFUL, it needs to be re-painted. Sigh. I do love it. But you're probably right. I'm pretty sure my realtor will tell me the same thing soon. My question here is: does that entryway wall really truly have to be the same color as the living room? Or can it be the darker oak ridge color, or even one of the suede colors? Have you guys seen the suede in person ever? Because for me, it is so amazing: it made me want to touch the wall. And it's things like that that I think will help me sell the house. That instant "that is so cool!" feeling that someone will get when the see my beautiful suede wall. Or, am I fooling myself?

So: 2 questions. More thoughts on the oak ridge vs cedar key debate (if you did not vote), and what about the entryway wall? Same color as the living room, or another shade of brown?

Target is fast, but (sigh) lame.

It was just last week that we were all ranting about Target and its return policy, and already I have a reply from them:

Whatevah, Target. You are no longer my favorite store in all of Tucson. It saddens me that you refused to acknowledge that you have a crap return policy, but I guess you have to be who you are.

On a more uplifting note, we went to the Tucson Children's Museum today. How fun is that? Awesome! I do not know why we haven't been there before! Oh, right. It is downtown, parking is sort of a pain, it ain't cheap, and we have a narrow window between naps.

We pushed that window out, today, folks. We met my sister and her daughter there at about 11am, and ran around exploring for a little more than an hour before we rushed, starving, out the door. The museum was so cool. Lots of stuff for big and little kids to play with: a working train set, a dinosaur room where Kate told me she didn't want the dinosaurs to bite her, a rain forest room where the little ones can climb on padded objects, and our favorite: the kitchen/operating table/baby changing area/grocery store room. That last one is sort of hard to explain, but it was the best part. It was a big room, with a place for moms to sit while the little ones infected themselves with all the gazillions of germs that were certain to be on every surface. After about 20 minutes in there, we hastily wiped them down from head to toe with the provided anti-bacterial wash, and worked our way over to Cafe Poca Cosa.

We each parked, and then I, carrying Claire (and 12 other toddler items) instead of pushing her in the stroller, since I had gotten a sweet parking spot right across the street, stumbled in and found out from the hostess that they would love to accomodate us but they "don't have highchairs or booster seats, is that okay?" Um, no thank you. She directed us to their more casual restaurant "just 2 blocks away!", and I in my state of starvation nodded quickly and called my sister to tell her to head there instead. Ten minutes later we all arrived, by this time slightly frazzled, and found that they did not have highchairs either. Jess had just seen a Bruegger's Bagels on her walk, so we headed out again. Kate was getting weary by this point, which was worrisome since we were downtown in midday traffic, but she held it together long enough for us to get there and have some lunch. She even made it all the way back to the car, walking the whole way. I was pretty impressed. My back is still on fire from carrying Claire, and I think we will all sleep well tonight.

As promised: HELP!

Okay, it's time for you to help me choose a new paint color for our living room. Like I mentioned recently, we will probably be moving over the summer, and I want to prepare now (as in possibly this weekend since Tim will be gone and I think he secretly despises it when I paint). One of the biggest problem areas, in my opinion, is the living room and all its greenness. Green is sort of a love or hate color; everyone sees greens differently, and I have a feeling there will be some people who see our living room and think: GAH! It's the 1970s all over again! As a matter of fact, I am starting to feel that way. Therefore I think it would be better to pick a more neutral color for our main living space that most everyone will find soothing. I am leaning towards browns.

So, lurkers, friends, family: please chime in and let me know what you think! I don't care if you have never commented, or if you comment several times on each post! Tell me what you think! Keep in mind that we live in Tucson (desert), that our floor tile and carpet are light brown, the tile grout is dark brown, the tile and grout are 'baseboards' around the living room, and that you can see the brown kitchen from the living room. I do not intend to repaint the blue entryway wall (unless several of you insist that it needs to be changed).

Do you think a shade of brown is appropriate? Or should I repaint it to match the 'white-like' color of the rest of the living room?

Here are a couple of contenders:

A Ralph Lauren 'suede' paint, most likely in 'mochernut' (make that 'Ayers Rock!', or 'Fawn's Leap'? - no peach, no peach!), or maybe a 'cedar key' or 'oakridge' from Pottery Barn. Do you like any of these? What is your favorite? Tell me your thoughts!

Claire's 1-year photos

Perhaps my favorite thing about the Picture People is that they send you an email of the photos for free. Not so with JC Penny; they will charge you for this, even though it's bound to add to their sales when a family member falls in love with a particular picture and buys it in black and white, with captions. But whatever. We are done with Penny's, as our membership ran out and I refuse to pay for another one when the Picture People are so much closer and more professional. Not to mention, there is no sitting fee.

Claire was not all that cooperative at the photo shoot, but they did take a lot of pictures in hopes of getting some good ones. I somehow found several that I just had to have. Here's a sampling of the nearly 30 taken last week.

My favorite one.

I hate HGTV

Why oh WHY does it take a pending move to get me to do things to my house that I would have loved to have done to it when I was actually LIVING in it for some significant period of time?

Take, for example, today's objective: removing clutter. I Hate Clutter. But it is everywhere in my house, and I cannot keep on top of it. Does anyone else have this problem? My GOD. Mostly, I think it's the mail. It does me in on a daily basis. I have sorted through the mail since we've been back from vacation, but only to find birthday cards for Claire and bills that need to be paid. Other than that, there is a pile the size of Starbuck that sneers at me every time I enter the kitchen.

I sometimes watch HGTV, in hopes of figuring out how to declutter my life, and also how to make all of my small spaces trendy and chic. The problem is, ALL of my spaces are small, and I don't think any of them are yet trendy or chic, as they are full of CLUTTER.

Today I am going through a closet (I would love to go through all of them, but somehow I don't think the girls would appreciate this), in hopes of consolidating stuff. I have been through most of our boxes several times in an attempt to get rid of things that we never use, and I think I'm maxed out on giving things away. We really don't have that much stuff; rather, we don't have any storage, so everything looks crammed and messy. But today I hope to cram more into my current boxes so that it will be easier to take these boxes to a storage unit that we will get as soon as we put our house on the market. Because there is NO WAY any sane family would buy our house with it looking the way it does.

Which brings me back to the beginning: why couldn't I have done this a couple of years ago, so that I could have been living clutter-free all this time? Oh, right. Probably about $70 a month for storage space is the reason why.

Oh, and before y'all get in a tizzy about us moving: we don't have orders, and we don't even know for sure that we are going anywhere in the next move cycle. But I'm hedging my bets, and using it as an excuse to de-white trash our house, if that is at all possible.

Stay tuned next for: "Help! Which neutral living room color will help me sell my house?"

Baa, baa black sheep

Say these few words and Claire's face will light up like it's Christmas. She will immediately start saying 'baa baa' with you, and look at you with wide eyes and a smile as you sing the song. When you get to the 'yes sir' part, she will nod emphatically, her head tilting way back and way down in an exaggerated motion, and she'll say 'essss'. I'm not sure why she loves this song, but it is by far her favorite song in the whole world.

Kate is starting to 'read' books. I guess we don't have that many in our collection, and she has heard them enough times to repeat them back to us. The other night, she 'read' Brown Bear, Brown Bear to her sister. Adorable.

Maybe it's the whole milk? The week before her birthday, Claire started talking. She says 'puppy', 'bunny', 'mommy', 'daddy', 'aaaah duhh' (all done), 'baby', 'baa' (ball, and of course the intro to the aforementioned song), 'ducky' and 'bye-bye'. She also started walking on her birthday.

We Netflixed Happy Feet, and Kate thinks it's pretty funny. I think it's pretty preachy. Both girls love to dance to the music. Kate also finds Looney Tunes to be hysterical.

Claire had her 12mo well-baby check last week, and is now 21lbs 5oz, and 30 3/4" tall. She also has 6 teeth (4 on top and 2 on the bottom) and her lower left canine is coming through.

When we were on the airplane, Tim drew Kate pictures of what we were doing, to entertain her and to take notes for us. Her notebook is full of cute cartoon drawings of our trip. It was also a good way for me to remember some fun moments:

• Kate running and running and running around the airport, in an attempt by us to wear her out. It sort of worked.
• I think she was afraid of the moving sidewalk at first, but then she loved it. She especially liked being faster than me, as I pushed Claire in her stroller and walked on a non-moving portion of flooring.
• During our connection in Houston, she looked out the window at a 747 and said, "Get on other airplane?" She likes them, apparently. She also said, "We go to airport every day?", and "We take seatbelt off now?" in hopes of getting out of her seat and causing a ruckus.
• We started to wonder if we should be worried about one of our airplane rides, as Kate studied the EP card for about 10 minutes.
• We got in trouble from one of the unpleasant flight attendants who didn't appreciate us changing Claire's diaper on our seat right before take-off. Tim had checked, though, and could not find a changing table in the tiny room that passed for a lavatory.

I am glad I didn't have to take the girls alone on that trip - I do not know how I would have done it. They did pretty well, but when one acted up, the other joined in, and I would have been pulling my hair out after the first leg. I would also like to say 'thank you' to all who tried to entertain Claire by playing peek-a-boo with her. She loved it, and it was a great distraction. I hope I can be as helpful to other parents someday.

What's for dinner?

I don't know what we used to eat for dinner. I know that sounds a little crazy, but consider this: we were sick from Thanksgiving until Christmas, and I think we ate soup or pancakes on a regular basis. Then it was Christmas and New Years, with fancy meals that I cannot duplicate throughout the year. Not long after that, we took a vacation to visit family. That vacation was actually very useful in helping me figure out new and exciting things to eat. For instance, we are having Carrie's chicken bake tonight, with potatoes and carrot souffle. Tabitha introduced us to flank steak, which we hadn't eaten since probably before the last time we got sick. I don't know what happens, but whenever we move, have a long vacation, or are sick for any period of time, I completely forget what to make for dinner. Weird, huh? As a result, I think we have been eating a lot of fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, with a frozen crock pot meal here and there to shake it up. There you go: I don't even know what we've been eating for the past 2 weeks! It's terrible. In my defense, Tim's been working like it's tax season lately, so he hasn't been around much to inspire my meals. And the children suffer. Sigh.

I know at one time I used to make Katie's chicken curry (yum), and we ate a lot of quesadillas. I also made Joanna's southwest chicken about once a week because it is so delish. Beyond that, I am at a loss. What's for dinner at your house?