Day 60: Cleaning Day

Today is a "catch up" day and "cleaning" day.

I'm definitely behind in keeping up with the blog. So, ready to catch up there. Ready to ask the kids to contribute some more. So, I spend some time with the content of our blog.

Also, there is a slight chance that Chris' coworkers will come over this week (very slight chance) and this is encouraging me to get our place spruced up.

That pile of laundry I told you about? The one that's in the corner but still on the floor? Well, we have an empty shelf in our wardrobe, I moved the clothes there. Wow! Out of sight is awesome! Why didn't I do this sooner?

I moved all the area rugs and other items throughout the house (doing one room at a time) and swept and mopped the entire apartment. Gross! Dust bunnies live here too! Xander even helped me with moving some shoes, tables, and rugs. He even helped me clean the bathrooms. In return, I helped him with is blog entry (he spoke and I typed).

The apartment is now beautiful!

Too bad no one will really come and enjoy this clean apartment!

For lunch today, we try some of the items from the Asian market, namely, the frozen pork buns. I tried to steam one, but we don't really have a way to steam items properly. Long story short... they got super soggy on the outside, while still frozen in the middle. So, we tried the microwave. Same thing. Hot on the outside, frozen in the middle. We finally got them warm enough and were able to have lunch.

At one point, Xander exclaimed, "There's a hard boiled egg in mine!" Venice, just after, said, "There's a piece of hot dog in mine!" So, pork buns turned into "Surprise Mystery Lunch"! In the end, they were all the same; ground pork, herbs, piece of "hot dog", partial hard boiled egg, strange "octopus-looking mushroom". The flavours were good, but... not sure we'd buy those again. Not the traditional BBQ pork buns we were trying for.

We have run out of a few foods, including milk. Later, at the market, I decided to buy two milks. Between Xander's cereal habits and mine with cookies we've been running out of milk fast, these days. It's hard to find "large" milk. It comes in quarts, so I buy two. Well, dang it. We didn't look in the refrigerator very closely. I had already bought an extra one the other day, and we had one at the ready before that... so now we have 4 milks in the refrigerator! I guess that's one way to make a gallon. I had explained it away, but it still amazed me to know how fast we were going through milk... so now I know... we aren't drinking it as fast as it appeared!

Chris is going to be gone three nights this week. Workers from the SF office are in town and there are plans for each night they are here. So, I attempt another stroganoff dinner. This time, I used sour cream (because I know how to find it!) and dried soup mixes for creamy potato and creamy broccoli. For some reason, they have cream of... for a lot of stuff, but not chicken. Sigh. Anyway, it's still not as thick as we're used to. And boy, Campbell's Cream of Chicken is missed... but it's decent! A winning dish for sure.

P.S. Venice's hair faired well at the swimming pool. The swimming cap we bought worked well. Her hair is still lovely shades of purples, pinks, and blues (although the blue is hard to see in this photo).

P.P.S. When Chris is away and we're bored... we start to look at funny apps for our devices... I wanted to make us sound like chipmunks, but this one had other voice changes along with visuals: