jj's visit, labor day weekend and curry.

last week, emme's school was closed on thursday and friday.  since we'd just taken days off to go on our sweet vacation, i didn't feel great about taking more time off (even if i would have loved to).  fortunately, my parents are non-stop awesome with their willingness to help out in these situations, so my dad fled the scene of the hurricane and came to austin.  since he was with her and i was in the office, i don't have a ton of pics from their adventures, but i can attest to the fact that ek had a great time with her jj.  she woke up every morning asking for him and was not really interested in seeing mama or daddy.  he took her to the pet store, to the central market playground, etc. and they read books non-stop.  friday night, the four of us had a fun happy hour dinner at contigo and jj hit the road after brunch on saturday.  we loved having him stay with us, and emme relished the extra attention. 

the rest of the long weekend was a great combination of productive and restful.  i wonder how much more organized our lives would be if we got a three day weekend every week.  sigh.  i taught a friend how to quilt, we brought the dogs to the park, we did some swimming, i organized ALL of emme's clothes (past, present and future), justin painted an area in the living room that's been needing a touch-up AND the hall, laundry got done, and the kitchen got scrubbed and decluttered.  of course, we all woke up with colds on tuesday morning, so it was kind of a frantic back-to-reality day.  emme decided 4:45 was an appropriate time to greet the day and spent the morning as a cranky mess, including coloring in green crayon on the couch upholstery.  ugh. 

finally, just a random mental note (if i write it down, i will remember it)....i had some red lentils in the pantry and have been wanting to be better about making stuff like that.  i found a red lentil curry recipe online and conveniently had pretty much every single ingredient i needed on hand (which is basically akin to a magical event in my house).  the curry paste i had on hand, though, was green curry paste (which i had never used).  it was HOT.  like, open up your sinuses hot.  i like a little spice.  but this was crazy.  and of course i served it to emme before trying it.  ha.  she took a bite and was like "too spicy mama", which is one of her favorite things to say these days (maybe we should stop letting her taste the salsa?  anyway...i threw a bunch of greek yogurt on it to calm it down a little...and it was tolerable for us, but emme mostly stuck to the roasted zucchini.  so here's my tip...when feeding toddlers, go for the yellow curry.  or be VERY conservative in your curry paste contributions...