murphy's law

I cook dinner most nights and I honestly don't mind. I love to cook. I love to feed people. Acts of service is my love language and all that. Here's the thing though. There is a very small list of meals that the whole family is willing to eat. I try to plan it out so there is at least one thing on the table that everyone will eat. Tacos is one of those meals that everyone will eat, so I'll make it every other week.

Tonight Mike was in charge of dinner..... tacos! The full spread. Yay! I love tacos. Everyone loves tacos.... except when they don't.

Tacos?! Oh man, I don't like tacos. Can I have a frozen waffle instead?

Tacos?! Can I have mine on a bun instead of a shell?

Since when? Since when do they not love tacos? This past weekend Abby and Maya willingly ate roast beef and caesar salad (just Abby) and enjoyed it. I guess they figured they were spoiling me, so what else could they do, but take tacos off the list..... sigh. One step forward, two steps back.

our water is hot

So the girls are off on their summer adventure with Granny. Mike and I are were positively giddy with anticipation.... what would we do with our five kid free days? Go out of dinner? Catch a movie? Meet up with friends? Hit some garage sales? The options were endless. We started with dinner out Thursday night, it was delicious, we go to talk without a gazillion interruptions and we completed intentional act of kindness number four. In a word it was great until we got home only to find our hot water tank had rotted out and was emptying it's water all over our basement floor.

The contents of our basement were unscathed because when you live in the sticks you have a little something called a sump pump, basically a giant hole in the floor collects and pumps ground water out of your basement. Luckily our hot water tank is very close to our sump pump hole and the floor is slanted in that direction. That's the good news. The bad news our new sump pump is so quiet neither Mike or I could hear it running way more that it should have been. Which would have been a tip off that something was wrong. Also when you live in the sticks you don't have access to city water. We have water trucked in and dumped into our holding tank. More bad news, we lost half a tank of water out the sump pump hole. For those of you keeping track at home, we had not a drop of water in the house. No showers, no washing your hands, no flushing the toilet.

More good news, we rent our water tank so a quick call into our rental company had us an appointment for a hot water tank replacement the following afternoon. More bad news, when the repair guy finally showed up (90 minutes past our 1pm - 5pm window) he couldn't complete the call because we had zero water in the house. More bad news our regular water guy was away for the weekend with his wife. We called our second favourite water guy, but he couldn't be there until the following morning. We had to reschedule the repair.

Then all hell broke loose when several bands of extreme wind and rain whipped through the village. The neighbourhood is littered with branches. We have five trees down at our church alone. Multiple branches down in our yard. The power was off for hours and with no power we had no working sump pump so our basement did indeed flood. Thank goodness for Poppa and the generator and his willingness to come over here to get the water pumped out. Good news, that crazy rain allowed us to collect back the half tank of water we lost on the basement floor, so now we were ready for the repairman. I am happy to report that he did in fact finally arrive to replace the hot water tank, but first he had to replace our venting that was no longer up to code. The shower that I eventually got to have will go down in history as one of the best showers I have ever had in my life. I will point out that we were more than welcome to shower at Poppa's, but we figured we'd be all fixed up by Friday afternoon and then the storm hit and here we are.

So all our giddy what should we do with all this free time equated to us being chained to the house with some combination of the following.... no hydro, no water, no hot water. The good news..... the trees that came down didn't damage our house, we finally did get the tank replaced and our hydro came back on a lot sooner than some people out there, so really there isn't too much to complain about.

that's irony for ya

It is official, the fridge does need to be replaced. Oh yes it does. Funny thing is we replaced our fridge when we re-did our kitchen, just because. We donated our old fridge to the school and it's still there refrigerating away. Of course it is.

ugh

I love where I live. I love my tiny little village. Even more so now that there appears to be a resolution to that tragic event that happened just after Christmas in the form of an arrest. I think you could actually hear the collective sigh of relief yesterday morning. Now as they say in real estate, location is king and I do love my location. Being an old village the majority of the houses are, well...... old. Ours turned a 100 years old last year and as you can imagine it lacks a lot of the amenities that today's families find so appealing in newer houses. It's not unusual to see folks buy houses out here and then do massive renovations or build new on the property.

These days I have a bit of a love hate relationship with my house. It's great for the four of us... for the most part. I do wish the girl's bedrooms were bigger, but they have a playroom for themselves so they only really sleep in their rooms. Recently we had a birthday dinner for Maya that we had to have at Papa and Grandma Linda's because ours sucks for larger scale entertaining... in the winter. I mean we have lots of great parties in the warmer months when folks can head outside. It's times like these that I wish for a brand new house that is full of open concept entertaining space.

Now this week was a busy week for my kitchen. Lots of baking going on and that's when my irritation level is off the charts because that kitchen in there is the exact opposite of a cook's kitchen. Again it's fine for making dinner for a family of four. Despite the fact that everyone who walks into our kitchen for the first time says..... wow big kitchen.... there is only space for one person to work comfortably. When I'm doing a lot of baking well it gets to be quite the juggling act. For the most part I've got it figured out, but sometimes I get caught standing there with a hot pan and no place where to put it down. So I've been on the internet researching ideas to make the whole thing more workable. Ideas that won't break the bank.



That is the extent of my counter space in my 12x24 kitchen. I'm open to suggestions.

i heart facebook

This Abby and her "new to her" bike. It's a hand me down from my niece and it's nothing fancy, but Abby loves it and it gets her around town with her bff's.



The evening before Abby and I snuck out for a little bike ride down the trail and when we got home I wheeled "my bike" - which is also a hand me down to Abby bike, but she doesn't like "mine" as much as the one she got from her cousin - into the garage. Abby left hers in the driveway. You should put your bike away in the garage, I told her.

Nah, it's fine here and I don't know if I'm finished riding it yet.

So she didn't put it away and I didn't put it away, so it stayed, leaning up against the garage right outside my back door all night. Well at least until 11:30ish. Mike had gone to bed, but I stayed up to have a shower, after which I sat at the computer... which is right at my back door.... to check my email, wrapped in a towel.

Just after I sit down I hear a couple of footsteps on the driveway. Our driveway is gravel, but we have a walkway of patio stones to the back door, so I literally heard 2 steps on the gravel and then nothing. My heart was instantly in my throat even though I figure it must be somebody's dog loose. The light on our garage is on a motion detector and it didn't turn on and I don't hear anything else. A quick peek out the window and I don't see a soul, but I also don't see Abby's bike. I woke Mike and asked if he put Abby's bike away, he hadn't, but he gets up and heads out in the van to see if he could see anything or anybody. He didn't.

We were both pissed and disappointed, I mean what kind of person steals an 8 year old's non-fancy bike? Did they think she had a real Louis Vuitton bike purse? Because that thing was totally fake. Did they think she had wads of cash in her bike purse? Because she didn't just some rocks treasures she's collected while out riding with friends.

So we both post about the stolen bike on facebook and then we go back to bed. This turned out to be both a good and bad idea. Bad because half the school knew Abby's bike had been stolen, while Abby had no idea. We planned on telling her after she got home. No sense getting her all upset first thing in the morning and then dumping her at the sitter's. So when she got off the bus, with tears threatening she asked us... Where is my bike because people at school told me it was stolen.

Who told you that, I asked.

Half the school was talking about it. Jacob told me and Maddie said she thought it was on facebook.

The power of facebook!

Good because half the school knew her bike had been stolen, so when one of the kids from down the street saw a bike abandoned by the rail trail he wheeled it back up to our place to see if it was Abby's. It was. There was much happy dancing going on at our place from both The Abster and myself. The kid who found it, is not one I know all that well... so he probably thought I was a little cuckoo when I was in his face asking what his name was and which house he lived at. He just doesn't realize he's got cookies in his future.

The power of facebook!

Now her bike purse was missing, but Abby went back to where they found the bike and it was there in the grass, all her treasures still intact. As for Abby she is... and I quote... the happiest girl in the world. And her bike, every time she came back from a ride it went right in the garage and I made sure it was locked up tight last night.

monday monday

Here's what today has going against it...

I have my lady days, so I've been snappy-ish (with Mike) with a side order of weepy.
Our central air is not working. Are you kidding me? It's a kabillion degrees outside. Freakin' hot is not something you want to add to the above cocktail.
I couldn't sleep for the life of me last night. I finally fell asleep sometime after 3am. My alarm goes off at 5:30am. You do the math on that and then see above. Oh and that little nap I thought I'd get after work. Didn't happen because the internet we canceled when we got our new internet... yeah they didn't actually cancel it, according to the bill I got in the mail today, so we lost about an hour on the phone straightening it out.

So this is it Monday. I am officially breaking up with you! It's over.

one less person to update the internet

Oh my gosh folks, I have missed you all so much. Here's the deal.... my computer is broken. I mean really truly broken. I was hopeful it was merely a software issue that had messed up windows, turns out no. My motherboard is fried. And just to make things fun, everyone else in the free world has a ATX motherboard, but we have a "special computer" that doesn't like to be a conformist, so it has a BTX motherboard and BTX motherboards apparently don't grow on trees my friend. So my computer sits in the shop while we wait for a new motherboard to be shipped from the good ole US of A. Conservative estimates say it will take 10 - 14 days before she's back home. So don't expect any posting or commenting from yours truly in that time period.

I'm writing this from my best gal pal ML's laptop which she has loaned me for the weekend. Isn't she the best? Of course she expects me to hand it back over to her tomorrow, something that will be hard to do because I've enjoyed my time with the laptop muchly. My plan has been to wait for the boxing day sales and see if I could score myself a deal on a laptop... after this weekend it's going to be hard to wait. There is something pretty awesome about internetting from the couch while you watch TV.... my laptop sisters and brothers out there know what I'm talking about.

I'm annoyed that I am without my internet/computer home base. I have so much to share with you, but I can't get the pictures uploaded. Well I guess I could upload them to ML's laptop, but I figured she doesn't need anymore of my life taking up hard drive space. I am dying to tell you about Abby's Survivor birthday party which was so much fun, I highly recommend it as a theme. The volcano cupcakes I made were uber cute, if I do say so myself. For the second year in a row Abby collected canned goods instead of gifts. She wants to start keeping track of how much stuff she takes down to the local agency we donate it to, so this year's donation is 43 items. After we counted up the total she looked at me and said - I'm so glad I'm a nice person - Me too sweet girl, me too.

I'm going to try and get some scheduled posts up tomorrow before I hand ML's baby back over and if you're of the praying sort offer up a few that the fancy ass motherboard I require will get here super quick.

check list for a sleep in saturday

#1 Kids having a sleepover at Grandma Linda and Papa's. - check

#2 Stay up a little later than usual watching 17 Again with Zac Efron. Realize Tracy may have been right and develop an inappropriate crush on young Master Efron. - check

#3 Think about going to bed, but instead putz about on the internets twittering and facebooking. - check

#4 Finally head up to bed, but instead of sleeping right away read a few more pages of The Da Vinci Code. - check

#5 Put the book down and turn off your alarm clock before hitting the lights and drifting off into dreamland. - check

#6 Sleep until some ridiculously late hour of the morning. - check

#7 That was the plan. Of course all that planning doesn't mean anything if you forget to turn off your daughter's alarm clock that's set to go off at 5:45 am. That normally you can't hear because she's in her bedroom with her door shut. Except she's at a sleepover and her door is open and so is yours because you thought - who cares, the kids aren't home. And now it's 5:45 and you're stumbling across the hall to shut the dang thing off. While cursing your own stupidity at the same time. - check!!!

i hate technology

Dudes, it is two thousand and nine. I should be able to easily get my pictures from my phone to the internet. After a kajillion hours I finally figured out how to send them to my online album, but now guess what..... I can't access the online album. And I need these pictures to adequately explain to you my impromptu shoe shopping excursion with Abby. Actually with Abby, Grandma Linda and Maya.... just call us crazy, but it seemed like the right thing to do today. The story is gold, but at the same time it's nothing without the pictures. This would be reason #1256 - why I need an iphone.

me vs. maya vs. the potty

On the outset it looked like potty training Maya was going be easy. Let me pause here for a very loud HA! I mean say that even though she'd steadfastly refused to even consider the idea of potty training. Even while she was using the bathroom at the sitter's. I say that even though the whole taking her to the bathroom every 30 minutes resulted in 0% toilet usage and 100% going in her pullups. I say that even though promises of suckers resulted in 0% toilet usage. I even went one step further and started giving Abby suckers for going to the bathroom, which ticked her right off, but not enough to actually -- you know -- use the bathroom. It appeared she wanted to play hard ball. It's been a few weeks now since I decided I'd play hardball with her and this is what I've learned about potty training. This of course is specific to Maya, Abby was a totally different experience. One I don't remember being such a pain in the ass, but it likely was.

Maya wasn't ever going to toilet train while she was wearing the pullup. Why would she pause what she was doing -- her very important work -- to use the bathroom when she could go where she stood and keep digging in the sand box? I think the pullups are a good transistion from diapers to prepare for toilet training, but Maya just wasn't going to take that leap unless she had to. So Mike and I picked a day and the two of us (yes it took two of us) wrestled her into a pair of underwear. To say she was not happy is an understatement of epic proportions, but we insisted she keep them on and then we spent the day changing her out of wet pants and panties.

Which brings me to ths -- plan out when you want to start the training. A weekend is good if you happen to work outside of the house. Give yourself a few days of hanging around the house so you both can focus your attention on it. We started first thing on a Saturday morning. The first two days we had our fair share of accidents, but all in all she caught on pretty quick. Once we made her she did master the art of going number one very quickly. Number two continues to be problematic.

She makes no attempt at mastering number two. What's worse is she's begun to think it's a bit of a chuckle when she does it. I have loads of patience, but this little issue can got through it super quick. I have resorted to "punishing" her only because she thinks it's funny and I want her to understand that's not appropriate. For the first offence I take her to her room for a chat explain to her that it's important she uses the bathroom. She hates going to her room. Second offence she can't go out to play or visit with our neighbour who is her favouritest person ever. Today we even had a third offence, which made today a "no screen" day for her (no tv, movies or computer). Just to jump off topic for a moment, no screen day was awesome! I may do it again for no reason at all. Even Abby commented it was a nice day.

I realize that she will master this eventually. It would be nice if it was sooner than later. I'm just not sure what to do beyond what I'm doing now.

This post was written for The Parent's Network blogger blast. Follow six families on their road to potty training success at The Potty Project.

i remember sleep

I'm not quite sure who I feel more sorry for at this point, Maya or myself. She's still not 100% over this cold. There seems to be a dry cough that likes to linger and it makes her uncomfortable through the night. It doesn't truly wake her up, but brings to that half awake and whining stage, on and off all night long. Mike and I split duties with her last night, I took the first half of the night and he took the second. Now I just managed to sneak away after being in bed with her since 9:30. Nothing like sharing a twin bed with a tossing and turning pre-schooler.

Even more frustrating than the broken and/or lack of sleep is the fact that this nasty cold of Maya's is keeping all of us from meeting The Mommy Project's newest edition (Abby and her ear infection helped too). Although she did post pictures on her blog so I finally got a peek at her. She's beautiful, by the way. And makes my ovaries ache. Also I find it extremely ironic that my Little My Pie is keeping me from her Lily-Pie.

And now off I go to try and get some sleep before she needs me again. At which point I plan on rolling over and telling Michael it's his turn.

maybe one day?

Oh why do you tease me so, high speed internet? Over and over again last night I see the slick new commercial for Roger's new Rocket Stick. Mobile high speed internet in stick form. Internet, which according to the tv, has that young lady high speed surfing in a canoe in the middle of a lake. On a hay bale in the middle of a field. On an iceberg in the Arctic Circle. In a space station as she circles the earth and so on. You get the gist.

I'm not sure how exactly it works, but I'm guessing it has something to do with magic internet fairies that carry the signal very fast to this little jump drive looking thing you plug into a USB port. Call me niave if you want, but the commercial led me to believe this product have a vast coverage area. I mean she's using it in a canoe folks. Turns out the high speediness stops about 10 kms from my house. What is up with that?

Of course they promise that the coverage area will be expanding soon. Yeah sure it will. Let me tell you a little story about that. Twenty-five years ago, my parents bought this house. As a family we were making the big move from the city to a more rural area. There was no cable. I distinctly recall my father asking the cable company when we could expect cable to be available out in are area. The answer........ soon. Twenty-five years folks and there is still no cable out here! That may tell me all I need to know.

it was going well

I haven't wanted to brag, but Maya transitioning from crib to big girl bed has been a breeze. When Abby made the shift I think I spent three nights standing outside her room ready to deposit her back into bed the fifty million times it took until she got the idea that she needed to stay in bed. Maya seemed to grasp the concept right away. That's not to say that she doesn't sometimes get out of bed, but usually it's because she's after a story book or a doll she has stashed somewhere in there.

And the sleeping, oh the glorious sleeping. All night. It's a miracle. For the first time since birth she's sleeping through the night 99% of the time. Of course the last two years has done nothing, but train my body to stay awake longer than it rests, so this sleeping thing has been a transition for me as well. You'd think it would be easy. Given the opportunity to sleep, you would think the body would just know to rest, but it doesn't. Instead I lay there and look at those little red numbers and attempt to calculate how much sleep I could get if I fell asleep that exact moment. Sometimes I resort to reading myself to drowsiness. So on the plus side I'm catching up on my reading list (70+ to go). Just finished The Memory Keeper's Daughter which was great. Highly recommend.

Now while I was busy giving myself imaginary high fives for the ease of this whole endeavour, Maya was very quietly doing this......



That would her entire wardrobe there on the floor. There are nine drawers in her room between the dresser and her bed and every single one of them was empty. What do you think the odds are this was a one time deal? I'm thinking not good.

enough with the snow

How odd to see the sun out today after yesterday's endless snowfall. Abby finally made it home this afternoon after lunch. Although she would have liked to squeeze another sleepover out of the deal.

Mike went out early this morning to shovel and even though the snow was thigh high out our back door it could have been much worse. Our wonderful neighbour was over yesterday to snow blow our driveway. Twice. Mike had most of it shoveled when he arrived this morning to do it again. He did save Mike from doing the back breaking job that is the end of our driveway. We are the first driveway from the corner and the speed and angle of which the plows pass our driveway guarantees one heck of a pile of heavy wet snow blocking us in. So Mike was extremely happy to see him. They are calling for rain later this week and to that I say thank God because I really don't know where we could put anymore snow.



More and more around the blogosphere I have been seeing posts about tiny moments. Often it's a theme for an entire month. I love the idea. One of my blogging BFF's Karen from Virtually There is doing just that. I don't think I'm going to do thirty days in a row, but you can expect to see our tiny moments pop up now and then.



Today before Abby got home I whipped up a batch of sugar cookies and had them all ready for after dinner decorating. Yes they may have used more sprinkles then the cookies could structurally hold. And yes Maya may have licked her fingers many times before grabbing another pinch. And yes they both now have stained fingers and lips, but we had fun and that's the most important thing.

friday flashback - pack your bags

Well now this is just getting silly. As I type there is, yet another, snow storm raging away outside. For those of you keeping track at home, this is our second storm *this week*. Mother Nature has one hell of a sense of humour. And where is this global warming Al Gore keeps blathering on about? They are estimating 15 - 25 cm for today with another 5 over night with a dash of some pretty wicked winds. Abby slept over at her cousin's last night and we are anticipating she'll be sleeping there tonight as well. So like most people I am longing for spring and warmer weather, so it only makes sense that this week's Friday Flashback would have a summer slant.

When we were kids we went camping every summer. My parents at some point had purchased a tent trailer and we'd load up the van and haul it to Niagara Falls to the same campsite. I don't remember how long these camping excursions were. They seemed long and I know they were longer than a week. I do remember that Dad would "commute" to work from there. So there would be times it was just Mom, Dave and I there. It all sounds like a tremendous amount of work to me and one I wouldn't be willing to undertake with my kids. It's just further proof that my Mom was, indeed, super mom extraordinaire.



I have to imagine my parents had a traditional relationship when it came to these sorts of things. Meaning I'm sure my Mom gathered and packed everything necessary for the trip while Dad's job was to load it all into the van and trailer. I do remember for the sake of everyone's sanity when we hit the campsite we all made ourselves scarce while Dad swore his way through setting up the trailer. Once we were all set up we had the best time ever. Swimming, riding our bikes, painting in those books that already had the paint on the pages them you just needed to go over them with water, camp fires and all that fun camping goodness. I do have to wonder if Mom ever questioned during the "getting there" portion, if it was all worth it.

Luckily we had a very creative Mom and she figured out quick that she didn't have to do everything. That Dave and I would be pretty great helpers, especially if she made it seem like a game. Every year when camping time approached Mom would make us lists. Packing lists. Dave and I were responsible for packing our own suitcases for the trip. Seems like a big job, better left to the adults to ensure success. If I let Abby pack her own suitcase for a trip there'd be nothing but Princess dresses, high heels, dress boots and a tiara or two. She's one smart cookie, my Mom and I'm not sure how she came up with this idea, but it is genius.

Come packing day, Dave and I would get our lists. On these lists would be little hand drawn pictures. Seven little pairs of hand drawn underwear, seven pairs of shorts, seven t-shirts, three sweat shirts, three pairs of long pants and so on. All we had to do was lay our our clothes according to the pictures on the paper. It was great because it shifted some of her work load to us at the same time keeping Dave and I out of her hair so she could get her things done. Told you - genius. We haven't really traveled with the girls beyond an over night stay here and there, so I haven't had the chance to use this trick from my childhood, but it's tucked away in my "Mom folder" if the situation every arises. Thanks Mom.

you have got to be kidding me

Outside, right now it is doing this.......

had it

I'm beginning to wonder if the snow is ever going to stop. We are in the midst of our second major snowstorm in the last week. And word on the street is there's more on it's way this weekend. I'm not usually one to complain a lot about the weather, but enough already.

up chuck

We are on day three of tag team puking. Just when the worst seems to be over the other one starts up again. So while the girls appear to be over it at the present moment, one never really knows. As for me.... decidedly queasy would be the best assessment right now. So with that I'm off to bed in the hopes I can sleep this thing off. I hate to be sick and in fact I had almost a Jerry Seinfeld-esque no puking streak going, but the girls and their love of sharing their germs put an abrupt end to that.

not awesome

Maya and Abby got a train table this past Christmas that with visitors and the revolving sickness, Mike just got around to building today. It has been installed in the toy room for a grand total of 45 minutes and already I desperately want to pitch it out the front door.

Why, you may ask? Well I'll tell you.



None of those track connections lock together in anyway. So roughly 54 seconds after Mike set it up Abby was screaming, "Maya broke the train track." So a grumbling Daddy fixed it.

And 34 seconds after that, "Daddy! Maya broke it!" And a cursing under his breath Daddy fixed it.

And 27.3 seconds after that. "Maya broke the train!" And Daddy's head exploded.

So I had the brilliant idea to tape the pieces of track together and that worked for about 87 seconds. I took the picture above after I had taped it together and if you look closely you'll see the track is already coming apart and I've just noticed pieces of and it the entire train in the living room.

I mean seriously, who designs a toy for children that falls apart if you so much as breathe in it's direction? I'm sure that must have come up as in issue during the testing phase. Did they just throw their hands in the air and say who gives a crap? They won't know until after they have it home and built. Mike has dispatched the box to the garage so I don't know off hand who made this particular table, but I do suggest if you were planning on a similar purchase to do some research and ask questions before it's home and assembled.

not martha

I am somewhat of a domestic diva. I enjoy most aspect of house-wifery. I can hold my own in the cooking and baking department. I like to embrace my Martha-esque tendencies and to that end last night we invited some friends over for dinner. Friends we hadn't seen in some time, but they are those really great kind of friends that it doesn't really matter how much time has past you can pick back up right where you left off. In celebration of the occasion I cooked up my oh so popular lasagna which I do usually tend to make for company because it looks impressive, tastes delicious and I can do it with my eyes closed.

For dessert I baked up a chocolate cake in my star shaped bundt pan that was a Christmas gift from Abby. Once it had been baked and then cooled logic told me I should whip up a simple chocolate glaze to drizzle over top of it. And that was my plan until I remembered the can of frosting I had in the cupboard. Even as I put my pallet knife into the frosting I knew I was making a mistake and yet for some reason I continued. Now this star shaped pan in addition to being shaped like a star has lots of nooks and crannies which I realized would be near impossible to frost in a traditional sense. If I'd had the time I could have used a piping bag and star tip to cover the whole thing, but I didn't. And now I had actual frosting on the cake, but it wouldn't spread. So I swapped my pallet knife for a butter knife because it was smaller and I felt like I'd have more control so I could maybe get into the little corners and ledges. Granted the smaller knife was better suited to the task in that respect, but it couldn't help the fact that the frosting wouldn't stick to the cake and instead was peeling that top fine shiny layer of cake off in sheets. Now I was stuck, I couldn't spread the frosting on nor could I scrape it off. In the end I somehow managed to cover the entire cake with frosting, but it was not pretty.



Next time I'm definitely going with the glaze.

* this post is dedicated to Nancy