Where's the Beef?

I've been on a quest to improve the quality of the carnivorous things that pass my mouth and enter my digestive system. After watching Food, Inc and reading this NYT article I decided to buy only high quality meats/poultry (high quality meaning organic, free range, blah blah blah) as much as possible. This jacks up the price of food tremendously (but after reading & viewing the links above I understand why and I'm totally in support of it),  so that means we're cutting back on meat so our overall food prices don't go up. We are trying to eat non-meat meals at least 3 times a week.

I'm not much of a fast food or burger person, but I do join hands with 95% of the US population in my utter adoration of In-N-Out Burger. Those people can do a burger right. I was especially enamored with them after reading Fast Food Nation, a little expose on the fast food industry, because they are a great employer (rare in the food industry) and they just do things the good old fashion RIGHT way. So in my heightened meat consciousness I've wondered about the beef from In-N-Out. From where is it sourced? Is it the same as McDonalds (which I refuse to let enter this grand body God gave me)? I had a hunch it wasn't and I've tried to find out, but came up short. Well, today I found the information I've been seeking and my suspicions were right. They buy good beef from humane, LOCAL growers (local is important, see above links to learn why). And the answer is: Harris Ranch.

With a name like Harris it has to be good.

P.S. You can watch Food, Inc on the instant queue on Netflix of you have it.

Her cup (of talent) runneth over

Friday was a big day for Ana. It was the opening night of the play she's been rehearsing for a few months...Hansel and Gretel in a local community production. More pictures and videos in a later post.

In addition she was asked by her band teacher to join the intermediate band (she's in beginning band) in a performance at Disneyland. He is astounded at her talent, which is fascinating to me since all I hear is a dying goose when she plays (I hope she doesn't read this), but I certainly don't know what to listen for like he does. She's very excited to skip a day of school and go to DL and show off her tremendous horn playing abilities.

She was also invited to Astrocamp because she excels in her science classes. It's a weekend long science camp dedicated to aeronautics, physics, electronics, ecology, and the outdoors...all of which Ana ADORES. She's very interested in astronomy and has found a geeky buddy in Tod. He loves to share his enthusiasm for all things universeish with her because she doesn't glaze over and fall asleep like I do. (This is no joke...sometimes he will help me fall asleep by telling me about astronomy stuff while playing with my hair. Puts me out like a light. ANYWAY, this is about Ana, not my romantic husband.) She's super stoked about Astrocamp.

Lastly, she made a truck load of money on Friday selling hair accessories. Her school participates in a science camp (a different one than the one mentioned above) where the students get to miss a week of school to go learn about science at an outdoor science camp near the beach and mountains. It's a really wonderful opportunity, but it was a bit pricey, so I told Ana she had to help earn some of the money for it. So she's been crafting these cute flower hair clips and selling them at school. They're wildly popular and even the teachers are buying them from her. We thought we were doing pretty well and were getting close to the amount she needs for camp and then they dropped that Astrocamp on us which is the same price all over again. She's going to have to make -and sell- a lot more flowers.....

She's wearing one in the photo at the top of this post if you want to see them in action. Email me if you want some. She takes custom orders. :)

See How They Shine

Here are some details about the Young Americans show the girls were in last weekend. It was really a phenomenal dance and music workshop. They worked HARD. Six hours the first night. Nine hours the next, then a dress rehearsal and 2 performances. There were 3 or 400 local students involved. It's highly popular in our area.

Lily had a teensy tiny solo part

Ana & her amiga, Julia. Good girls.

Ana with our home stay guest, Kasey

Lily & friends with Caitie, our other home stay guest.

Lily getting her shirt singed by a friend

Nicole, Kasey & Lily

We all loved the performance. Even I got up on the stage and danced to the parent number. Fortunately there's no footage. We're excited for next year when we can do it again!

Young Americans

The little ladies of the house participated in a music and dance workshop over the weekend. A group called The Young Americans (queue David Bowie song here...it was stuck in my head the whole weekend) comes to our little town every year and puts on this incredible workshop. This was the first we had ever heard of it, but the girls quickly became enthusiastic about it and wanted to join. It was marvelous. We all loved it.

We also housed two of the Young Americans instructors. It was fun to have them in our home and learn more about the organization and their lives. They were lovely girls...passionate about what they do, talented, sweet, interesting, lovely. It was great to have them.

There was some very intense Mario Kart action going on.

Ana, Caitie, Kasey

On Sunday night our house got a little nutty.  I had prepared dinner for our guests and then some friends showed up that Todd had forgotten to tell me about. Then the missionaries dropped by. It turned out to be very fun, but also slightly chaotic (kinda how I love things). It evolved into a talent show of sorts. We had people singing, playing guitar, playing piano, etc. Then the missionaries taught our guests a little about what we believe and the girls shared their "mission" with the missionaries (their dedication and belief in the importance of music and the arts in our lives). After a while, the missionaries had to leave, since, as Elder Buzelli puts it...."we turn into pumpkins at 9:00." I believe it was an enriching, edifying experience for all.

Elder Keith & Elder Buzelli, Deanna, Ana & Alice

Lily...queen of dorky faces

Playing our favorite pencil game with the missionaries.

Soon I'll blog about the performance, but for now I just wanted to record our experience with our cute YA girls.

Toddliness

I know you've never seen a rainbow this cute

   

observatory

My beau and I had a few hours to ourselves so I served up some Tod-style entertainment. We watched Rebel Without A Cause...our first time seeing it. It was interesting. I'm not sure why it has become a household classic because it's gone some serious flaws, but it takes place in Los Angeles, and much of it at one of Tod's new favorite places....the OBSERVATORY. My Tod is nothing if not a star geek. He spends almost all of his spare time reading books or watching films about the universe. He's sooooo mesmerized by it. It's cute. So we made the trek to the local observatory/planetarium. Besides being chock full of geeky things, it also has a view to die for. It's incredible. Chekkit.

YEAH FRIENDS!!!

Some of our favorite Utah peeps were in town over Christmas. We spent a day with them.

Hollywood Bowl

Overlooking Los Angeles

Ana almost sat down here. That snake has a rattle on one end....

These two used to be best friends. They acted all weird and uncomfortable around each other for some reason.

Runyon Canyon hike. See the Hollywood sign way out there, above Ana's head.

Lunch at Johnny Rocket's on Melrose

After lunch we strolled down Melrose, which has some fun shopping. It's not all uppity-Rodeo Driveish like I've always imagined. It's got lots of cool, funky, kitschy, campy type shops. They showed us their favorite hat shop. I'm hooked. I love me a good hat. So many great head coverings there.

Thankfully Mark & Natalie are in town often, since he's from here & his parents still live here. LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Kreeesmus

We kicked off the season with some caroling with mi amigas from dance class.

 The Harris children were with us for a few days. When they come I have to disregard my freakish compulsion to feed my family healthy food. It's Fruit Loop city when they are here. 

Tod is the 5th kid when his children are here. They play long & hard non stop.

We had record breaking rain all week. When there was finally a break in it we ran to the beach.

Tod chasing his kids way out yonder. Ew. Did I just say yonder?

Cookies for Santa

Melted snowman cookies were a hit

Christmas Eve dinner at The Melting Pot. Mmmmm. We all look slightly uncomfortable because the lady took forever to snap the pic. Also, curse that ugly flash lighting!

And finally, the big day....

New jammies

Just what he's been dreaming of. Hours and hours of footage of billions and billions of stars. He claims he's an artist, but he's such an astrophysicist at heart. He watches these non stop.

7 DVDs about the universe. Todd Heaven. He's the cutest nerd I know.

She asked for 2 bags of Flamin Hot Cheetos. She got 4.

The prize. My Frida earrings. (And a darn cute hat). If you don't already understand why I love these earrings so much, there just isn't any way to explain it...

Tak games

And that which I wanted most....the video games Todd created last decade. It was a 3 game series called Tak and the Power of Juju. I discovered you can play the games on the Wii (they were made for GameCube) with a few tweaks. I rounded up 2 copies of each game. We're gonna need these around for posterity. We'll show them to our grand kids someday. Of course the grand kids will laugh at the horrendous and outdated concepts of game playing of the early 21st century, but I'll still be proud as a peacock.

It was a wonderful holiday. Full of love, magic, family, feasting and lots and lots of merriment (and only a few fights with the girls cooped up in the house for long periods of time without school. Scratch that. More than a few. Many. It was still wonderful, though.)