A night of "cooking"

MomsMiami.com had an event at Mr. Food No-Fuss Meals last night. Free wine and snacks were promised, along with a fantastic Mr. Food meal, so of course I was there.

The first stop was a place to put away my bag in a cute locker and grab an apron.



I know I should have ditched the baby/mom bag for a chic clutch! But it miraculously fit anyway.

My friend Guinevere came, and she is such a Rachael Ray wannabe pro that she assembled her quiche in like three minutes flat!



I was making the Chicken Picasso, which has several key ingredients, namely:



The directions at the Chicken Picasso station called for adding a half-cup of white wine to the recipe. And we can all assume I followed the directions down to the nth measurement, just for the sake of this post, OK?

Sometimes the directions were a bit anal:



But the Mr. Food people probably knew they would be dealing with people like me who are often too airhead-y to realize the label includes cooking instructions, which is key when you take your goody bag home. Everything was prepared and planned and clean and in that regard, waaay better than my own kitchen at home. Also, it didn't feel like cooking.

It wasn't all work, though. Everyone who came to the event got to munch on delicious snacks and meet new people. Here's little Guinny with Sherry North, author of Because You Are My Baby and other books.



After everyone prepared their meals (the Hula Hula Pork people got a lei, but the Chicken Picasso people didn't get a painting), it was time for karaoke! Chic MomsMiami.com editor Charlene Pacenti gave a moving rendition of I Will Survive and didn't even need to look at the words.



Naw, I'm just kidding. But maybe there will be karaoke next time.

Then we posed for a group picture, and I nearly knocked over Caryl Fantel, Mr. Food's own daughter! Oh, the shame! I'm probably on the Mr. Food black list and the MomsMiami.com un-invite list for the next event.



I'm the one in front who looks like a chipmunk. And I swear I don't have Mr. Food goodies stuffed in my cheeks. That blue apron is very slimming, but the face? It can't help.

There will be a next time, right?

No need to drink and drive, or, How to get to know your neighbors

Last night, my husband and I learned just how big of a social outcast we are.

We take the Man-cub for a walk through the neighborhood every night after dinner and often stop to talk with people. (Or maybe, they stop to talk to us, because they see we have the cutest child ever born.)

One of our neighbors a few doors down was taking out the garbage or something, so we stopped to talk with him. After chatting for a while, he mentioned our son will have a playmate in a few months, when the darling baby girl across the street gets a little bigger -- in fact, he saw her just the other night when her parents brought her over.

I was instantly jealous. And I didn't mind that our neighbor knew. I let him know it had been months since we'd seen little Darling.

Our fine neighbor clued us in. "Do you guys, uh, like cocktails?" He went on to list the people on our street who come over to his house or who host evening happy hour. "We didn't know if you.... We didn't want to impose."

Impose. Happy hour. On my own street. And I didn't even know. While we're walking off our dinner, our neighbors are knocking back cold ones.

Apparently, my husband knew. He later told me he has seen Mrs. So and So walking down the street to another neighbor's, with a blender. Another time, someone with a glass of wine in hand. My husband and I don't drink much, though, so he didn't bring it up.

Then I saw Mr. Neighbor's wife leave the little Darling's house and walk over to us to say hello! She seemed quite, well, relaxed.

Two for one! No tipping. The chance to see incredibly cute babies and kids.

Does this mean I need to set up a bar in my living room?

Thank God for neighbors with illegal fireworks

Well, thank you for all your votes. My husband's vote won out, though -- even more than my vote.

We went to Lion Country Safari. We arrived just in time for it to start raining. They say that's the best time to see the animals, though. But because you can't roll down your window while you're driving through, you can't photograph the animals with raindrops on the glass. For example, here are the lions.



So.

I did manage to get a good snapshot later, though.



Tonight we were going to see our city fireworks. But it got rained out.

Fortunately for us, we had at least four neighbors who were setting off fireworks. From our front yard, we had quite a show.



So all's well that ends well.

Tell me what to do this weekend

This is what happens when you don't look at the calendar:

Me: Honey, you're off work tomorrow!

Honey Husband: Why?

Me: It's the Fourth of July!

Husband: Already?!

Me: Yeah! And I'm so mad because it would have been the perfect long weekend to go somewhere but now it's probably too late to make plans so we're stuck here like a bunch of losers.

Husband: Speak for yourself.

(Apparently, we missed all the commercials, fireworks stands and red, white and blue cupcakes for sale at Publix that indicate a major national holiday is approaching. And my husband didn't get the memo at work. We're observant like that.)

Then I read somewhere that July 4 and July 3 are the first and second deadliest road travel days of the year, respectively. So I feel a little better about not going anywhere.

However, my man has pointed out we should still have fun. Because a day off work is still a day off work. We looked at several options -- everything from flying to the Bahamas to staying in bed in our pajamas all day. But we've narrowed it down to:

Lion Country Safari -- to drive through a giraffe's legs and take the Man-cub to the petting zoo

Museum of Discovery and Science -- for the new frog exhibit and an Imax movie

The beach -- because my car needs more sand

Kayaking in our own tandem, possibly at John U. Lloyd Beach State Park -- because my kayak is way too dry and lonely

Please vote, or give me additional ideas. Thanks!

I'm full of scrap

This weekend, I went to the big estrogen fest scrapbooking convention that hit town. For better or worse, I am very susceptible to the power of suggestion. All it took was one little e-mail that told me I, too, could expertly preserve my precious photos in beautiful, artsy ways by taking scrapbooking classes and plunking down money to enter the big vendor hall. That's right -- they make you pay just to shop. Rows and rows of stores lined up to sell paper, ribbons, paper, T-shirts that say "It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eyelet," paper, stamps, paper, album kits, paper, printers and more paper.

First off, I met up with MomsMiami blogger Lissette Mendez and her friend Sarah. Fun gals! They work behind the scenes on the hallowed Miami Book Fair, which has to be one of the best jobs, ever. They are such good scrapbookers that they didn't have to take any classes.

I, however -- who once almost flunked art in elementary school -- signed up for a class that promised I would go home with an acrylic album. I had no idea what that was. Apparently, I was the only person attending who had never heard of these see-through albums, which were for sale everywhere. Slinking into a seat in the back row with my paltry bag of supplies (some women were toting around wheeled luggage full of their scrapbooking goods), I felt like such an imposter. I didn't even have the right equipment to make the dern album.

Fortunately, a nice woman from Palm Beach sitting next to me loaned me her poker. And by that, I mean she gave me a sharp tool to open my package of supplies. She also showed me what the heck the class instructor was talking about.

On my other side, a woman let me use her glue stick because mine was so old that nothing was sticking to the paper. She was there with two other friends -- all the way from Tampa -- who were making a girlfriend weekend out of the scrapbooking convention. These women were so good that they did the bare minimum on their albums, deciding to use their own papers later and not the one they gave out in class. Bonus: they gave me some of their class-issued supplies.

So, I got by with a little help from my classmates.

I was all thumbs and made mistakes, but nothing too heinous. And just as promised, I actually finished the five-page, six-inch album (sans photos). And then we held hands in the air, swayed and sang, "We are the champions, my friends...."

Erm, not really that last thing. But that's what I felt like.

And then I made good use of my paid entry into the vendor hall. Let's just say the Man-cub's next few years should be well-documented -- if not artistically perfectly so....

Never wear sequined thongs in an aviary

My son has had The Very Hungry Caterpillar book for more than a year now but seems especially interested in it lately. Like probably most kids around his age, he likes to touch the holes where the caterpillar has eaten through all the food in the book.

Wait, stop the story for a moment. Did you know the author, Eric Carle, lives in the Florida Keys? That's all I wanted to say....

So when you get to the last page of the book, the caterpillar has turned into a beautiful butterfly. By then, we've passed all the pages with the holes in them, so my son has lost interest in the book by the end. But I decided to turn the book into a butterfly, moving the sides of the book up and down and make it "flutter" around his head.

Now he loves the end of the book. In fact, the boy will even skip the pages with the holes just to get to the butterfly at the end and make it fly.

With his new interest in lepidoptera, I thought he'd enjoy going to Butterfly World. We went today. The first part of the butterfly garden you enter is amazing! There are butterflies everywhere you look.

To dress for the occasion, I put on a pair of blue flip-flops that are topped by butterflies made out of sequins. Cute, huh? Well, when we got to the lorikeet aviary of Butterfly World, a bird there also thought my shoes were cute. In fact, the bird decided to stand on top of the sequined butterfly. My son was amazed, the lorikeet keeper (say that five times fast) was curious, and I was amused.

Until that little bird finally moved on, and I noticed he left behind green poo on my toes. Niiiice!

Overall, my boy enjoyed Butterfly World. We'll definitely go back -- but next time, I'm wearing work boots.

More water park fun: A review

In my quest to tour local water parks, today I took my son to Coconut Cove in the South County Regional Park in Boca Raton. I'd heard from another mom that it is really good, and with a glowing testimonial like that, how could I not go? Coconut Cove is close enough to go to casually, but not exactly nearby, but I had to try it out.

After I paid to get in, the cashier gave me two bracelets to put on us. My son -- being a boy and all -- has never worn a bracelet of any kind. I have never put anything like that on him. And apparently I suck at putting these bracelets on, because both of them ended up too big for him and shaken off onto the floor. I returned to the cashier and asked if she could give me two more bracelets, and she told me she wasn't allowed to -- I should just show the bracelets I had if someone asked me about them. By this time, though, I had crumpled the bracelets into a wad, which wasn't very impressive.

The disheartening part about our trip to Coconut Cove, though, is that my son -- the same child who played for almost two hours at Splash Adventure just last week -- refused to so much as stand in one inch of water here. I guess he's just having an off day. With my son clinging to me, I tried walking him around the water playground, up the stairs, showing him the cute foam sea turtle just under the surface of the water, pointing out the other children who were happily playing.... He wouldn't take the hint. So I gave up and went home. (Notice the lack of photographs in this post.)

To compare it to Splash Adventure last week, though, I would rather have gone there than Coconut Cove today. The water playgrounds at both parks are almost the same, and Splash Adventure is closer to my home and about half the price. True, Coconut Cove has two tall water slides and a river float, but they were closed today -- and my boy wouldn't have been interested or able to use those features anyway.

Next week, I hope to try out yet another water park.

My work is so hard.

Oh, and I just found out about the City of Miami's first water park, Grapeland (what is up with that name?!), which just opened. Yay!

Living my water-park dreams

About zbdlkjt years ago, there was a huge water theme park called Atlantis in Hollywood right by I-95. Anyone been there? I totally loved that place. One summer in high school, I spent the whole day there and got burned so bad that I had sun poisoning for a week. My forehead swelled up so bad I looked like a beluga whale.



Fun times.

Even though I am a goofball responsible adult now, I dream at night about water slides. (That is, when I'm not dreaming about Jason Taylor.) I just love water slides.

So I was excited yesterday to read in the paper that today would be the first day county water parks would be open every day for the summer.

Guess where I went today?



I took my son to Splash Adventure, which is in Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach.

I have to say, the water park was much better than I could have dreamed. Splash Adventure is like going to a playground that's been flooded. I think I read that it's 18 inches deep at its deepest, which is perfect for the boy. There was a gentle water slide, a corkscrew slide, a tunnel slide and a short double slide. The whole thing is set up where there are levers and wheels to turn to make water come out of holes in the floor, or fall from above, or spurt out of a tube. There were plenty of lounge chairs and big umbrellas around the water play area, too. Plus, there were always two or three lifeguards standing by.



If my son had the language skills, I'm sure he would have asked me if we can come back every day. I am thinking about taking him to a different water park every week. Even though my beloved Atlantis is gone, it's amazing how many county and city parks have added smaller water parks.

That's definitely one good reason to live in South Florida.

Fun with peacocks

All work and no play makes families dull, not to mention they want to strangle one another or at least pull one another's hair out.

Not that I'm speaking from personal experience, of course.... Ahem.

This weekend, our family went to Flamingo Gardens for a little play. We hadn't been there in a while, and we wanted to get our fix of peacocks. That's right. Because a place called Flamingo Gardens should totally be known for its pea fowl.

We came at the right time of year, apparently, to see the peacocks putting on an impressive show for the peahens (aka lady peacocks):



Even tail down, the peacocks were fun to watch.



And I thought I'd treat any possible readers to the seldom-photographed backside of the peacock:



After watching the peacock show off his feathers, was it wrong of me to tell him I was so impressed that I would go out with him?