Ho convinto i bimbi a mangiare i broccoli cuocendoli semplicemente al vapore e lasciandoglieli intingere nella salsa teriyaki. I bimbi adorano intingere - qualunque cosa in qualunque altra cosa - e adesso Appu mi chiede ogni giorno se ci saranno i broccoli per cena - ma non ho ancora ripetuto, per non rovinare l'effetto ottenuto con tanta fatica :)
Those in the photo are my two little boys, eating STEAMED BROCCOLI dipped in teriyaki sauce. Why didn't I think of this before?
Why they need to eat standing up, I don't fully understand, but it might have to do with being able to hunt for the best piece in the steaming basket - or maybe they just want to make it clear that they are free to leave at any time, who knows.
My next extracurricular project is going to be turning the old blog into ink and paper format - just in case the apocalypse comes and Google crashes and all blogs disappear into digital dust.
Seriously, this is something that does generate some anxiety in me. Even before we moved here to Due Fratellini I had been pondering the question of what would be the most time-economical way to get the blog in book form. After all, one of the reason why I started this in first place was that one day my kids could read it if they want to.
Then yesterday, completely by chance, I came across Blog2Print. It seems to be a service designed especially for Blogger, which is the platform I use, and it is just very easy to use. You give the address of your blog and within less than a minute you get a tentative preview of your book. Then you can make changes - like choosing the photos for the cover, deleting posts or adding extra content.
It is never going to be as neat as a photo bookmade on iPhoto, but as I said it is so easy that one might overlook that. Just for information, printing the full blog in hardcover format would come to about $60 + shipping. It sounds like a lot, but for the number of pages is really not that bad.
Anyway, I think I would like to do this. I will let you know how it goes :)
Questo video si colloca subito prima dell'apertura delle uova. I miei bimbi decidono di giocare a nascondino.. :)
Sorry, earlier I got so caught up in writing about my ineptitude with the Zambonis that I forgot to show the prequel to the story. Here it is. And for the last time - this year - Happy Easter :)
In Case you are wondering - and I know you probably are not, really - I am intentionally borrowing the title from a book about Canadian politics that I haven't even read yet - but it looks good ;)
I thought about what to do for Easter for a while and in the end we did absolutely nothing special, as you well know. One thing I wanted to get right, though, was the eggs. I didn't want to get really good - and really expensive - chocolate, because:
The kids really don't know the difference
If we want to keep collecting the Thomas Wooden Railway we have to save money somewhere -- even if just symbolically
I wouldn't know where to find really good Easter eggs here - because I'm a European snob
So the choice was restricted to whatever the Valuemart in front of my office had to offer. The boys love Kinder chocolate, but recently I have been very disappointed with the little gadgets found inside them. Not like those of my youth.. The thought of an oversized version of them popping out of the big Easter Kinder eggs left me cold.
Then I saw he official CHL eggs, which promised a pull back Zamboni inside every one of them: Perfect!
If you are not Canadian you might not know what any of this means, so let me explain.
The CHL is the Central Hockey League and ice hockey is of course the most popular sport in Canada - did you think it was curling???
A Zamboni is a large machine, looking a little like a road sweeper, that resurfaces the ice on an ice rink: meaning, it peels off the top layer of ruined ice and leaves behind nice smooth ice. All Canadian kids love Zambonis, just like kids everywhere love all sort of large and mean machines. Why this thing is called a Zamboni was a mystery for me for a while, until I googled it and found out that this machine was invented by Frank Zamboni and his company is still leader in the market. I'm afraid You have to be Italian to understand why all this sounds hilarious..
Anyway, Rajiv has recently become a Zamboni enthusiast, thanks to an episode of Caillou he watched in which Caillou gets to ride on a Zamboni after his skating class. For a few days after that, the toy bulldozer that Appu rides around the house turned into a Zamboni.
So I thought: this is great! We get to do the ritual cracking of the eggs with some cheap chocolate, and who cares about that anyway, and then inside there will be two nice small pull back vehicles that the kids can play with for the rest of the day. While I take rest.
If you have reached here without falling asleep, below the fold you will get to watch a video of the actual egg cracking. Papa' was with us on Skype, which was nice.
The photo album arrived yesterday. It looks quite neat, thank you Apple!
Rajiv and Rohan were very excited to see it. Rajiv took it to school today and I am very curious to hear how it went.
By the way, the only person who tried to answer my little quiz was achamma, so she "wins" a copy of the book, to be delivered, together with the grandchildren, next time we are in India. :)
You are going to hear a lot about Easter on this blog. Not because it is my favorite holiday or anything like that, but I had four full days to spend at home with the kids and I'm going to share the joy. Only the good parts, I promise: I will spare you the synchronized wailing contests and the I-want-to-go-out-in-the-rain-without-shoes moments.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the egg hunt with Kalena on Good Friday - but maybe I can get the video from Anna Marie? Anyway, let me tell you about our Saturday instead, in every boring detail.
I'm not sure you can tell from the photos, but the weather was really nice, the warmest we had so far. I sort of overdressed the kids, just in case, but I wasn't wearing a sweater and I never missed it.
We played for a while on the street in front of our house - it's a dead end, so it's very quiet. Appu insisted that we put together Rohan's new tricycle, but in the end Rohan preferred to walk.
Appu had a blast on his own big trike and kept riding back and forth on the sidewalk.
I asked him to take a photo of me and Rohan and I think he did a great job!
One of the highlights of the afternoon was finding two badminton rackets abandoned on the curb in front of some students' house. They were there to be picked up with the trash, but we rescued them and there was a soft ball too! What more could you want?
We also got a chance to play a little bit with our neighbor Kyle, after a long time.
Then we took mamma's bike with the buggy attached behind for the Rohan and Rajiv to sit in and we went for a short ride. We went through the park and to the office, to pick up some stuff I had left there, and then we went to the grocery store.
My idea of happiness, looks something like this:
If only there was another big bike in this photo...
But let me conclude with a little video, taken earlier while playing on our street.
Today I told S how to take a "photo" through Skype by using the Grab utility on his Mac.
It just so happens that a few rare events had also just taken place: I had managed to sneak away - almost unnoticed - to take a shower and wash my hair without causing an uprising; the kitchen table had been almost cleared and more or less cleaned to make space for the ritual opening of the chocolate eggs (more about that later); broken down by accumulated guilt I had cooked some proper food for lunch.
As a result of all this, when papa' took the following "snaps", we looked like a regular family having a normal Sunday lunch in a reasonably clean and pleasant environment. It's all about timing :)
