Looks Familiar

I don't know why I find this so crazy, but I do. I was looking for clothes on Black Friday and in one picture, the model looked like she might have been at the Mission Inn? It was hard to tell from the little that was in the frame, and it could have just been another Spanish-style building somewhere, so I let it go.

But then another photo absolutely JUMPED out at me.

Does it look familiar to you? It's undeniably downtown Riverside at the museum, also featured in several of mine and AJ's wedding photos!

I don't know why this brings me so much joy, but it does. Riverside for the win!

Thanksgiving 2022 (with a Lesson in Baking: Pumpkin Cornbread)

We had Thanksgiving 2022 over at my mom's and because of the cornmeal I still had from the cornbread I made earlier this month, I offered to bring cornbread. I think it's the first real fail I've had lately. I wasn't super impressed with the previous recipe I used so in looking for another, I found a pumpkin cornbread recipe, and since we had a pumpkin from the farm, I figured I'd give that a shot.

Well, first I had to make the pumpkin purée. (It sure was depressing to see how much purée you end up with from that whole giant pumpkin in the end)!

Jarred pumpkin purée

I was a little nervous about the cornbread because, with the purée added, it would be a lot of extra moist liquidity, and wasn't sure how evenly it would bake. And I did kinda have issues with the edges looking okay but the middle still being pretty moist, but I think it turned out okay in the end, baking-wise.

I thought I was so clever garnishing
it with the roasted pumpkin seeds

The real problem ended up being the flavor and taste - it was pretty bland. I guess it was fine for cornbread, but I couldn't taste the pumpkin flavor at all. Turns out just puréeing a pumpkin isn't enough, my mother informed me you're also supposed to add spices and cinnamon. That's right, I didn't pick up on that and the recipe didn't inform me to do it and it was my first time so I had no clue what I was doing. Sorry for the guinea pigs who had to be subjected to that on Thanksgiving!

Sophie seemed to have a decent time although she didn't want to eat much other than the cornbread (ironically, and maybe the only one) and we played a lot of Yahtzee.

We followed with the tradition of dedicating the Friday after Thanksgiving to setting up for Christmas, which Sophie mostly loved. She's obsessed with the Hogwarts Express train that we got as a gift from AJ's sister (I mean who wouldn't be?) but we're definitely going to wear out those batteries soon, I can tell.

Sophie's Cocomelon characters on
their way to Hogwarts

AJ also had friends over on Sunday and ended up ordering wings and fries, of which Sophie had some. She enjoyed dipping the fries into the ranch dressing so much that she started dipping everything into it, including her orange slices. And she must have really loved it too cause she didn't just do it once, she repeated it several times.

Happy Christmastime officially!

Lessons in Cooking: Pumpkin Seeds

I forgot this was cooking until it was much later in the process (as always now). I'm baking cornbread for Thanksgiving and I found a pumpkin cornbread recipe. I actually wasn't inspired to try it until I remembered that we still had 2 pumpkins that we should use and I figured I'd give it a shot and make the pumpkin purée myself rather than storebought.

Then once I had amassed the seeds from preparing the pumpkin, I figured why not try to do something with the seeds?

I prefer sweet seeds rather than savory, so I found a roasted cinnamon recipe. I knew I had to dry out the seeds first and I guess I did it wrong because after washing and rinsing them, I left them inbetween two paper towels overnight and the next day I had to pick them off and they all mostly had some paper towel residue left on them, oops. I decided to just go ahead with it anyway since there weren't that many and I still wanted to try roasting them.

The recipe was small and simple, using sugar, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and coconut oil. I think there might have been too much oil for the amount of seeds that I had, there was still a lot in the pan when I pulled them out, and they still seemed a little damp, but they had already been in the oven 10 minutes past the maximum cook time and I didn't want to burn them, so they just were what they were at that point.

Roasting in the oven

Drying on the counter

In the end they weren't bad at all, and they smelled like Disneyland churros. I think I needed to dry the seeds out more so they had a little more pop. Next time!

Members Only

We're members of the aquarium thanks to a pretty awesome Mother's Day gift from my mother in law, and I was paroozing the newsletter we received in the mail over the summer. (I was originally intrigued by the offer for members to arrange animal encounters, thinking maybe I could see the penguins, but it was like only for sharks and stingrays or something lame so that was a bust) but I saw they offered a member's only night in the fall. Two actually, one that was adults only and one that welcomed the kids. I signed us up for it, thinking it would just be a fun middle-of-the-week activity and it was so far in the future I had no problem committing.

I started to second-guess our decision to go this week. Things have just been so busy lately, particularly for me with work and it's just been overwhelming a bit, and Thursdays are busy and we had also just gone to the aquarium on Sunday so I wasn't sure it was going to be a good idea. Then I made the huge mistake of telling Sophie that we were going to go look at fishes when I picked her up from daycare, explaining we had to go home first to eat and wait for daddy and then go. All she heard was look at the fish and threw a fit that we went home.

AJ needed to take a breather once he got home, and the traffic to Long Beach was awful. I just wanted to say screw it, let's put Sophie to bed and call it a night. But I had more ego to not cancel this plan we had committed to so long ago, so we went.

...and I'm so glad we did. Somehow it was so much fun! I say it like that because it wasn't anything crazy, but it was a pretty memorable experience in the end. It was so empty it was so pleasant and enjoyable and plenty of place for Sophie to run around and linger at exhibits. The nighttime vibe was really fun and new too. They had plenty of bars set up all over so we got to chase after Sophie with drinks (what a difference that makes!) and they had a DJ set up for a mini dance party which so many of the kids went crazy for (Sophie started crying when Baby Shark finished was begging me to listen to it again and I had to explain to her that I couldn't control the music and she was distracted by the next song about raining tacos LOL).

It was such a fun time AJ was asking if they only do it once a year (I have no idea) but I'm sure we'll be back again when we can. It's funny how hard it is to go out on a weeknight now and how much fun and refreshing it was that we actually did. What a different life now.

That's A Wrap on 2

With Sophie's birthday party at daycare yesterday, we're officially done with all the birthday celebrations for the little bee turning 2. I don't think they got these decorations just for her, but either way they're pretty perfect because as far as we can tell, Sophie really loves mermaids. At least, when she wears her mermaid shirt, she loves to point out the mermaid, and she often asks to wear it and will pull it out of the laundry because she wants to wear the mermaid shirt. I've bought her another mermaid shirt but she's pretty attached to the first one, so maybe she just likes the pink shirt. But no matter.

Her daycare caretaker also gave her a birthday present yesterday that we opened at home and it's actually the cutest little thing! It's a little pet kit, so there's a stuffed dog, a dog bed, a food bowl, a can of food, a brush and a bone. So she can practice having her own little pet! It's so cute and she's in love with it. Also, I feel like the dog looks just like Mulan's dog Little Brother haha. I need to get a better picture of it for that.

There's even another party at daycare today, for baby Wesley. Sophie is obsessed with Wesley, she talks about him all the time and if she's ever lagging to get ready or get in the car we say "Don't you want to play with Baby Wesley?" and then she gets really excited and gets a move on. She even surprised us the other day when she was playing with her ABC puzzle, pulled out the W and said "W for Wesley!" we had no idea she could identify any letters, let alone knew W was for Wesley. 

I'm guessing she's going to come home on another sugar rush today, but at least she crashes early.

I'm hating this weather. I can't stand "cold" in southern California because it's never really cold. It's like it's cold but then you're always hot. Sometimes the air is cold but the sun makes it hot so you're never comfortable. I don't understand it but it doesn't exist elsewhere and it's so annoying! I do appreciate that it's not blazing hot triple degrees though, so I'll take that.

Sick Season & Sophie's Second Birthday

I guess this is something fall babies have to learn to live with, but poor thing was sick all this week, and then I caught it. It's been a loooooong week. She woke up Monday with the runny nose and watery eyes and I was hoping it might just be a 24 hour thing, but didn't seem like it when she kept waking up throughout the night and we ended up having to bring her into our bed that night. I was sad I wouldn't get to go wake her bright and early with sunshine and happy birthday wishes on Tuesday morning, but I think I actually liked waking up seeing her passed out inbetween us in bed, looking so sweet and snoring innocently. It was a better way to start her second birthday.

...but she was sick all Tuesday too which was such a shame, and it was the rainiest, stormiest day of the year so far it seemed, so we never really got to go outside and she was definitely going nuts inside the house being sick. She actually seemed decent enough in the evening that we decided to go out to Dave & Buster's. It's not exactly toddler friendly, but we found a lot of games that she had fun with (especially the carnival type ones where we could stand her on the top and she could throw the balls) and she did the bottom row of lights on Lightning Speed which is one of my favorites.

She was too tired at the end to open her presents, so we made it a point to do the next night on Wednesday. This girl cleaned up with gifts!

We all had so much fun opening her presents, and she wasn't quite understanding it, and it was hard to get her to get excited about another gift after being invested in the one that had just been opened.

This girl and these clogs lol

This Ratatouille from my mom speaks
French and English but it freaks Sophie out haha

She kept going back to the Cocomelon box
(cause that's what a Cocofelon does!)

Playing with the ice cream kit from Auntie Kit Kat

We had a rough week with her being home sick but we were able to venture out a little more this weekend. On Saturday we went to a Sugar Plum Fairy Tea that my dance studio was hosting to raise funds for their rendition of the Nutcracker. It was really cute! And set up deliciously. Sophie was getting restless but once they started dancing she was pretty into it. And when they would stop she would yell "Dance again!" and we had to shush her a lot. After that we went to Target which, after the week we had had, felt like a big deal.

She insisted we move everything to
the seat so she could lay down in the back

Excuse me are you the manager?

Today we made it over to the Long Beach Aquarium and it was annoying how dark it was so early, but we still had some light and Sophie really enjoyed their little play area, which she never really had before. Sadly the penguins weren't out because of the avian flu going around so I missed my favorite part but we got to see the second best part which is the otters.

I'm sad the weekend is over but wow am I looking forward to Sophie going back to daycare tomorrow :)