Seven Down, Four To Go

A week has FLOWN by- I thought Meg and I would be sitting, bored, for most of her fall break, but with the week we had there was little downtime for that!

Iron Chef Dutch?
Megan and I have been cooking dinner together- I know most of you that know me don't list "domestic" or "family chef" when asked to name my virtues (which I'm sure happens to you all the time, getting stopped by strangers shouting, "QUICKLY! NAME THE MANY VIRTUES OF KARI NOSER! WE HAVE NO TIME TO LOSE!!!") but I have been cooking up a veritable storm the last few weeks. Megan has even been adventurous enough to try it all! She's eaten fish two times this month (up from once the entire rest of this year) and has been my little chef, helping with measuring spices, collecting ingredients, and even browning ground beef! The only downfall is that the fridge is quite full, and we often find ourselves at lunchtime saying, "How old is the Shepherd's pie? Was that Sunday or Saturday?" and things like that. With our guests in town in just a matter of weeks, we won't have that problem for a little while.

Library Nerdiness
The library system in the Netherlands seems overly complicated and is weirdly costly- it was 35 Euro for Megan and I to get library cards, and if a book you want is at another branch there is a charge to have it sent to your local library (some upwards of 2 Euro a book! What?!? I can bike to Haarlem for free!) BUT, they have an English books section for adults AND children, so we've been reading a lot this week. On our last trip, Monday, Megan and I had an OCD moment- there is a kid's Lego station that has a bin in the middle that resembles a Trivial Pursuit game piece (google it if you are lost on that analogy) and she and I took about 10 minutes after we had built masterpieces to sort all the Legos into separate bins by how big the blocks were. It was delightfully compulsive, and Megan really got into it. We even roped in a kid that came up to build- at first he watched us like we were weird (we're used to that) then you could see that he figured it out, and he corrected us when we misplaced blocks in the wrong bins. Ahh, OCD is contagious!

KNP Starts With A BOO!
The first photo shoot for Kari Noser Photography went well- you can view images here:
http://www.karinoserphotography.com/ESCGHalloween08/

The kids were great, the mom's were great- I am so lucky to be included in this group! I've even gotten a few potential clients emailing for availability! It really was a great party, even for my poor neglected Glenda The Good Witch. She did surprisingly well, even though I was basically unavailable to her 98% of the event. Such a trooper.

More soon- Kip and I are going to watch The Office!