THIS AND THAT

A visit to Grandma Jean's house . . .

Sofia at the playground . . .

A few of the critters in our lives:

Meredith, Clyde & Sofia's Barclay . . .

Mom's Dusty . . .

Our Dylan . . .

Meredith, Clyde and Sofia also have our grandcat, Jeeves, but I don't have a current picture. Will have to remedy that.

SOFIA & GEEMA MAKE ENCHILADAS

Sofia loves t0 cook. She loves to clean up too. In fact, if it's done in the kitchen, she loves it. When we go to a playground, she heads right for anything that can serve as a house and plays at cooking and serving us pretend food. She has a super play kitchen at home and a playhouse in Papa and Geema's backyard, which, for her, is a play kitchen. So, when looking for something to do for a day, I thought it made perfect sense to make a take-home dinner with Sofia, that she could share with her Mummy and Daddy after work.

I decided on enchiladas, because the preparation doesn't involve an oven or stove-top. I readied the chicken in a crockpot the night before and it was cooked, chilled and ready to shred by the time Sofia came over this morning.

Sofia folded the shopping list, stuffed it in her pocket and we started by going to the store to get our ingredients. She picked up the block of cheese, sour cream, tortillas, salsa, and chili peppers and loaded them into the cart. I gave her some cash and she paid the clerk and collected the change, even leaving a dollar in the help-the-needy jar at the counter.

At home, we got started by washing our hands . . .
Next, we set out all our ingredients for assembly . . .

Sofia put one tortilla on a plate for her first enchilada, and she put a second one on a plate for me . . .

Then we each starting assembling . . .

. . . taste testing . . .

. . . rolling . . .

. . . and topping with salsa.

We covered them and put them in the refrigerator for baking later in the day . . .

Clean-up time . . .

Grandma Jean stopped by and we sent dinner home with her . . .

We baked and wrapped up a batch for going home with Sofia and Mummy . . .

. . . and sent them on their way . . .

I expected that, being only three years old, Sofia's attention span might last through one or two enchiladas, but she happily and competently put together six of the twelve enchiladas that we made. We worked side-by-side and she never tired. Not only that, but when we were done, you couldn't tell the difference between hers and mine.

GREAT job, Sofia. I do believe we may have a future chef in our midst.

WOW !

Thank you Clyde, The Sacramento Jazz Orchestra and Wycliffe Gordon for last night's concert. All we've got to say about that is, WOW!

SPRING

It won't be official until the weekend, but it sure felt like spring today. There's a lot of work to be done in our garden, but we did get out this morning to clean up Sofia's house and play gym. Then we set out some chairs. After we picked Sofia up from school, we had a lovely afternoon playing out back for the first time since last summer.
We e-mailed Sof's Mummy at work to let her know she could find us out back when she came to pick up her little one, and then got shoes and socks on for going home . . .

When Mummy arrived, Sofia wanted to share a cell phone call with her on her pretend phone . . .

As you can see, there are some bushes and trees that still look like sticks in our yard, but they have little buds of promise on them. We have to get out a bucket of bleach and clean up some green algae that formed during our wet season. We have some empty pots that are ready for the planting of pretty, colorful annuals. And, we've got a lot of weeding to do. But, boy, is it fun being outside again!