Fiesta Friday!

Cheese Enchiladas!

Nothing but trouble

About five seconds after I took this picture, 100% of the contents of that white box were all over the closet. And she accomplished that while sitting squarely on her zebra the entire time.

On the subject of Mexican food

In an effort to keep up our accents and maintain some cultural ties, I have instituted "Fiesta Friday" in our house. This means that dinner every Friday will consist of some sort of Mexican food and, much more importantly, J's famous margaritas. Last Friday, due to mountains of moving boxes, I cheated, and we ordered take out from the "best" Mexican food place in Dayton. It was passable, and will do if we're ever desperate. So today is my first real Fiesta Friday. Since the weather has been unseasonably warm, we decided that grilling fajitas would be a good, easy choice, and the girls and I headed to the grocery store this morning to get the fixings. Shouldn't be hard, right? Just meat, beans, and tortillas, pretty much. Well, welcome to Dayton.

Since time was short, I was hoping to find pre-marinaded meat. After the butcher looked at me like I was nuts for asking if he carried any (seriously, his jaw dropped open and he stopped what he was doing to stare at the weirdo with the baby tied to her back), I decided to just pick up some skirt steak and do it myself. Well, they don't sell that. Instead, the closest thing I could find is something called "flat iron steak" which looks close enough. We'll see.

Next, on to pick up rotels for Spanish rice and some refried beans. Nope, no rotels by the rest of the canned tomatoes. And, nope, no refried beans with the rest of the beans....hmmmm.....

Of course! They're on the international aisle!

Arg.

And that shredded Mexican cheese blend? It's called nacho cheese here.

And fresh jalapenos? Forget it. Only pickled.

And you know how tortilla chips constitute about 98% of the chips aisle at HEB? I only have 3 choices here, with the best being On the Border.

Amazingly enough, Kroger has a tortilla bakery thing onsite, so I picked up a pack and we'll see how they do.

I'm thinking my Fiesta Friday is going to be a bit more complicated than I had planned.

The last few weeks in review

After a long time coming, we're finally settling ourselves in for our new adventure in Ohio. J and Grandpa drove up with the pets and a 22-foot Penske a couple of weeks ago, and Grandma helped me fly up last Sunday with the girls. I am so thankful we did not have to drive. The horrible ice storm threatened them the entire way, and they pulled into Dayton just as the worst was coming. And combining that with the incessant screaming of a car-sick cat would have certainly put me over the edge. The boys worked on "little" projects around the house the rest of week, including one involving the building of a second floor to the garage accessible only by dumb waiter. You should see J get down from up there.....

When we flew in we were greeted by freezing temperatures and a layer of snow on everything. Claire was ecstatic. It was too late to go out and play that night, but she did quickly the next day when it was actually snowing.

(Yes, Mom, those are the butterfly pants....)

The novelty quickly wore off, especially when lows dipped to zero by midweek. We had a team of movers and 2 trucks show up early Tuesday morning to unload our stuff, and a new team show up for part of the day Wednesday to unpack our things. I was leery of that at first, but I'm so glad we had them come. They finished in 4 hours what it would have taken us 4 weeks to do. We spent the rest of the week organizing and checking out our new town.

Grandma and Grandpa flew back to SA on Saturday, and we spent the majority of Sunday at home, trying to put things away and organize more. The temperature got up to 55 yesterday, and the snow is starting to melt!

Today is J's first day back to work, and I'm planning to check out the Kroger. Let the fun begin!

Snow!

First of all, I would like to thank Texas for scooting to the front of the line and giving the girls their first real taste of snow before Ohio steals all the glory.

We were up early, hoping to see snow....and we did! Claire didn't know what to think when we first looked out. She thought someone had painted the ground.

Once snow was confirmed, however, she wasted no time in throwing on her jacket,

doing a little snow dance with her sister,

and heading outside.

She stayed out a grand total of about 3 seconds. Turns out snow is cold. And wet.

When Honey came downstairs, the party continued. Moo put on her bear coat,

and C put on shoes. Now they were ready! While Madeleine didn't really care for the cold, Claire loved it. She's gone in and out all morning having a great time. Yay for snow!!!