Melarky

Wellington was so excited when I told him to jump on his bed then jump off his bed into some pillows. He thought it was great! Plus it gave me a chance to try out some things on my new camera. I’ve still got a ways to go when it comes to figuring out what’s what on the camera. Marky was so sweet and got two how-to books from borders the other day for me. I’m really excited to read those and get some more practice. Developing my photography skills has been a little dream of mine for a while.

From a young age I was interested in art. I remember being in my first art class in 5th grade. I loved it. I thought it was so cool to learn how to draw a cube instead of just a square. My favorite was to use a pencil to shade things and give them depth. My Dad, who is a bit of an artist himself, always encouraged me. We painted things together and used to attended art shows. Last summer we even went to the art walk together. My Dad still has a couple of my paintings hanging in his house right now. It’s always kind of funny when I go there and see things I did from way back, It makes me feel so loved that he still talks about and hangs up paintings I did from the 90’s.

I took art classes all through school. In 9th grade, my art teacher was Mr. Baker. He made a big impression on me, as well as the other kids in the class. I should give a little background, cause it’s hard to explain why Mr. Baker made such an impression on me without sharing some more of the story.
Click here to read the rest of this post…

I’m done, more than done, changing Wellington’s bum. I love him but changing his bum stopped being cute a long time ago. He turned three last November. I had these great plans of potty training him way before that (like by age two) but it never happened. Now that baby Hilyard is a little older, I feel like I can devote more time and attention to Wellington.

Gotta love Potty Scotty!

I’ve been kinda gearing up for this potty training stuff for a while. We would practice here and there and even made him a promise that if he went number twosies in the potty, he’d get a bike. Which he did finally get right as summer was winding down. A few months passed and sporadically he’d go in the big boy potty, but he was still basically in diapers.
Click here to read the entire potty post…

I got a new camera and here’s the first shot I took with it and here’s the second one (I had to get Hilly in there).

We watched the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox with Welly a little while ago, and he has been LOVING it (and it’s not so bad for adults either). In case you missed it, the movie is a stop motion adaption from a Roald Dahl book of the same name, directed by Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, etc…).

Because the director doesn’t normally do kids movies I was a little worried about content, but after checking out the movie on kids-in-mind.com, I felt it would be ok to watch with Wellington. Good thing I checked too because Welly has been repeating tons of lines from this movie (like weird bizarre lines I wouldn’t expect him to repeat, i.e. there is a part in the movie where Mr. Fox is telling people their Latin names, and a fox is Vulpes Vulpes. Took me a while to figure out what welly was saying because he pronounces it “Bulpis Bulpis”, be he says it all the time).

There isn’t any swearing in the movie, but instead they use the actual word “cuss” to replace all cuss words (so a character might say “What the cuss is that?” or you might see “CUSS” spray painted on a building in the background etc…). That is as bad as it gets, and in my opinion is actually kind of funny, but I could see some parents not being crazy about it.

The animation is great, the voice acting is great, and the story is really fun (not just for kids, both Mel and I really enjoy it too). I sort of remember it coming out, but don’t remember hearing much about it, so it seems it has kind of flown under the radar, but it’s well worth watching if you get a chance. Below is a little featurette on the movie from youtube:

1020 W 200 N, Logan

When Mark took me for my first wrap at LW’s I was a little apprehensive about eating a meal at a truck stop. I was expecting chips slathered in nacho cheese sauce (absolutely nothing wrong with that), a variety of nameless and not too good looking hot dogs rolling around on a warmer. Now LW’s may have nachos and hot dogs and they might be wonderful, I’m not sure, the only thing I’ve had there is their wraps and this is what my review is about.

The wraps at LW’s stop are kind of like the poor man version of Pita Pit. It’s set up the same way as pita pit (or subway too), where you pick your tortilla wrap flavor (sun dried tomato is very nice) pick the main meat (we usually get turkey bacon, mmmmmmm it’s good) and then you go down the line telling them what fixings you want on it (lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mayo, mustard, etc…). The wraps themselves were large and very tasty. I’ve only ever gotten turkey/bacon on mine. All the toppings (veggies, sauces, cheese) were all very good and seemed to be a good quality (what you would expect to find at Pita Pit or a Subway).

Besides wraps it looks like they have other hot deli type foods similar to like a grocery store deli (fried foods, chicken, potato wedges, corn dogs, etc.)

LW’s is a little out of the way. But for me, so is Pita Pit. Pita Pit is on the north end of town, while I’m on the South. LW’s is closer, but more West. But if you like Pita Pit’s wraps, but would like to spend a little less money (actually a lot less) and would maybe like to fill up your car too, I’d suggest trying LW’s truck stop.

P.S. Thanks goes to Gary for showing the wraps to Mark so he could share them with me .

Melarky has gone mobile. Installed last night, a great wordpress mobile plugin. We tried a few different mobile plugins with varying results, but ended up going with WPtouch, one catering more to our iphone and ipod touch friends (okay, it was installed for selfish reasons but hopefully others can enjoy it too) but it should run pretty well on the Android or Blackberry phones as well.

It runs super sleek on the iphone and has some pretty great features, some of which you don’t even get on the main site. You can easily scroll through posts, see right away how many comments on each post, you can leave comments, even twitter the post your reading. You can browse through categories, pages, search, and send a message to me that will instantly show up on my phone.

You might have noticed we also added a new feature on Melarky. If you look underneath each post there is a box with some links that say; “Similar Posts you may be interested in”. These links will take you to previous posts on Melarky that share common subjects with the post you are reading. This is also a wordpress plugin, that I had Marky slightly modify (he put a box around it and added the “similar posts” bit). It usually does a good job at finding a post that has a similar subject, but sometimes it can be a stretch.

Holly is a master knitter and has been EXTREMELY generous with her talents. A while ago she was kind enough to help fix a siwash (knit sweater jacket) that Marks grandma knit for him when he was little (more info and a picture). She sent us a a baby present for Hilyard the other day and IT’S SO INCREDIBLE IT DESERVES THIS ALL CAPS EXCLAMATION!

She called to let us know that something was coming, but didn’t say what it was, but as usual, was very humble and mentioned several times “It’s not really all that good, it’s the first time I’ve done something like this, so it’s kind of just ok…”. Holly is a liar, the blanket is amazing. When Mark opened the box he said “I don’t want to let the kids touch it, I’d rather frame it and stick it up on our wall…”

In case you don’t know, she knit the blanket to look exactly like a Pac-Man arcade screenshot. She knit every single dot (including the larger power pellets) and got all of the colors of the ghosts and maze and it’s just incredible. We actually got this blanket right before Christmas, but wanted to get some fun shots of Hilly with his blanket before we posted about it. This honestly is such a special blanket, the amount of time she must have spent on it, and it’s just perfect for our little nerd in training, thank you so much Holly, you seriously rock (way to make the pontoofs we’re sending you look like crap, we have shame ).

I got this recipe from my Mom a while ago, but it has only been in the last few months that I tried making my own tortillas. They quickly became a favorite of ours and it’s really hard to go back to store bought tortillas after having these. Now I still like store bought tortillas for certain things (breakfast burritos), but when it comes to beef tacos, these home made variety are a must!

They are super easy and you usually have everything on hand. There are a few tips I insist on. I’ve made these a ton and sometimes they don’t turn out the same because either I didn’t measure just right, kneaded the dough too much, refrigerated it too long, etc. Well, here’s the recipe (exactly how it was given to me) and I’ll explain after what is really important when it comes to making these.

Ingredients

• 4 cups Flour
• 2 teaspoons Salt
• 1/2 cup Shortening
• 1 cup Lukewarm Water

Directions
Cut shortening into flour and salt in large bowl. Add water. Knead 50 times. Divide into 12 balls. Set aside in refrigerator covered for 15 minutes. Roll out balls into flat round tortillas. Heat skillet to medium, and place tortilla on greased skillet until brown spots appear (will need to cook both sides). Best served warm.

Okay, now for some over-explaining. I tried a pastry cutter once and they didn’t seem to turn out the best. So use two butter knives to cut in the shortening. I used butter flavored shortening once and I didn’t like how they turned out. I lost count once and over kneaded the dough, it didn’t not turn out good! I think over working the dough is a big no-no, don’t do it. Now, one time I refrigerated it for a long time, it turned out werid too, it was hard to roll out the dough. 15 minutes seems to be perfect. One time I rolled out the dough without refrigerating it, then I put the already rolled out dough in the fridge, it was okay, but I think sticking with what the recipe says is the way to go. You must fry these. Don’t be a lamo-health nut and bake these, I don’t even know if you can. And try not to use that low fat, fat free, reduced fat business. Use butter and lots of it. And put butter on that pan every time you cook a new tortilla. Trust me, it’s better this way. Now, these are best served warm. My Dad used to sprinkle cheese and a little pepper on the tortilla as it was cooking on the last side. This was awesome, but I don’t always do it. I usually cook them all up at once. For Christmas Mark got me a tortilla warmer, and this has been a life saver. I can cook all the tortillas up at once, stick them in there and they will stay warm forever! IT IS AWESOME.

Once and a while I like to make dinner special and when I cook tacos, I use this recipe, make virgin margaritas and make sure we have all the toppings for a taco, I put on a table cloth and bring out my cactus drinking glasses, and play a little mood music (Gypsy Kings is our favorite and is guaranteed to set the mood and get you dancing).

Good luck and if you have any questions on how to make these, just ask. I think I might do a video one of these days.

With almost 34,000 views and 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, I only have one regret. I didn’t do my hair.

Yesterday, Melanie sent me a classified ad for a Super Mario themed pinball machine that was listed as a “Parts Machine – Best Offer”. It had some pictures of the machine (turned off), but didn’t really have any other info, so I decided to call and find out more.

The machine is actually a fairly unique pinball called Super Mario Bros. Mushroom World (they only made 519 of these machines), it’s about 2/3 the size of a standard pinball playfield, and you can set it up to spit out tickets while playing for redemption purposes. The legs on it can be set to make the machine lower for kids to play it too. Even though it’s smaller, it’s no toy, it is a real pinball machine, but very unique. Here is the flyer for it that shows some more of the features of it:

Click To Enlarge

Click To Enlarge

When I finally got ahold of the seller, he told me the machine did actually turn on, but something was wrong with it as it wouldn’t advance levels, so it just stayed on level one (the game is set up so that after hitting certain targets and ramps, you advance through each level etc…).

We still hadn’t discussed price, and I was guessing he wanted quite a bit for it (any pinball working or not, is pretty spendy, and one that is as unique as this and has something as popular as Mario plastered all over it was going to be REALLY spendy). Apparently the kid selling it didn’t know this though because when I asked him how much he was hoping to get out of it, he told me “I’d be happy if I got $50 out of it”.

I agreed to the price (trying not to let him know I had just wet my pants with excitement), but he said I couldn’t come pick it up that day as he had to go somewhere for dinner. I knew that if I waited too long, someone was sure to e-mail him a much better offer than $50 and I would lose it, so I called him back a little while later and asked if we could set up something for later that night. He agreed to let me come get it at 8:00, so I called Gary and we took off to go get it (it was in Ogden, not too far away).

Here is the machine packed up in our mini van on its way to its new home

Here is the machine in our kitchen waiting to get the legs put on. Welly was so excited to play with it.

Here is Welly posing with the new machine (still no legs on it yet). He kept saying “Thanks Dad!” and “This is for boys, not dada’s…” as we were setting it up. He is in Welly heaven, he loves it.

Here’s a pic of Gary and Welly testing it out after it’s set up and put in place. As you can see, it works pretty well, I haven’t gotten far enough to see if the level thing works or not, but we’ll look at that later, it still works for the most part so far!

Here is a better picture of the playfield in action, we’ll have to get some video of it, the sounds are fun and it’s great in action.