Busted Chandeliers and Egregious Misspellings

Before I dive into this post, apparently I had not one but TWO family name misspellings in last weeks post. Look, I am very busy and can't be troubled with things like proper name spelling... . Anyway, great grandma Torland was Helena SyRena Olina Svehaug and apparently little Mr. Evans' name is spelled BerrEn. The Dayzdtomato blog staff sends its profound apologies to all impacted.

Moving on, today is our (that would be Luis and me) 6th wedding anniversary. If you're into numbers, here's a few more fun statistics...in October we will have been together 10 years. We were 22 when we met, I was 25 and Luis 26 when we were married. And, as you will see in the following pictures, we were not only younger by 5-10 years, we were also about 20 lbs. lighter.

This is Luis a month or two after we started dating. When I saw this picture today, my first thought was who is that kid?
Luis and I...the dating years...

You'd think a Puerto Rican boy would have a little bit of a tan, wouldn't you? Well now you know why the serving staff at El Tapatio is so shocked when he starts speaking Spanish to them...

Note: Wedding pictures below courtesy of our photographer David Barss. God forbid I get sued 4 months into my blogging career.

Anyway, Luis and I call this his "GQ" picture. Oh yeah, he's hot.

I've always liked this one of ours. You can perfectly make out the contour of our noses...

The moment that sealed the deal:

Apparently we kept sealing the deal...

Not being one for mushiness, I won't start here. However, its been a great 6 years and I enjoy every day with my best friend.

So, you might be wondering how Luis and I might choose to spend our time together celebrating our 6th anniversary (or you might not, but regardless, that's about all I have to write about this weekend). Mason and Siena spent Friday night with Ya Ya and Papa Ron because Luis and I had one of our most important Saturday's of the year: Fantasy Football Draft.

Here's what a draft cheatsheet looks like by the end of the event:

Only time will tell how the Boricuas fare this year.

Last night we went out to dinner together (woah, that doesn't happen very often anymore) and then to see The Phantom of the Opera. It was my third time seeing the show and Luis' first. I'm glad to say that as reluctant as Luis may have been going into it, he enjoyed the show (I loved it of course but that's a given).

This is how we spent today, our actual anniversary. Yes, that is our laundry that needed to be folded. Ugh.

But don't think that the kids didn't have a nice weekend. Mason and Siena had a great time playing at Ya Ya and Papa Ron's house Friday and yesterday. Again, Mason took his Chevy pedal car with him and honed his mechanical skills in Papa Ron's garage. I'm not kidding. He literally puts his car up on a jack and makes repairs and adjustments meticulously. Whose kid is this?!?

As the weekend comes to a close so does the Olympics. I am sad. We've watched as much as humanly possible. Luis and I have adopted our Olympic "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" that we will now have to break up with - my Olympic boyfriend was Troy Dumais, the US springboard diver; Luis' Olympic girlfriend was the Swedish 110m hurdle girl who bit it on the first hurdle of her heat (clearly he wasn't into her for her athletic prowess). Well, I guess Mason and I won't have to battle for the tv in the evenings anymore.

All Work and no Play = KUMLA!!!

After not getting home until after 9 every night last week (except Friday), I was ready for a nice restful weekend. I was so tired by the time I got home Thursday night that I forgot where the parking brake on my car was (only had the car 5 YEARS). In addition, after taking the kids to Sushiland for lunch yesterday, I walked out and was putting the kids in the car before I noticed a crumpled up piece of paper in my left hand. That would be the unpaid ticket. I left without paying.

We did get some good news at work. Cadence withdrew their offer to buy Mentor which resulted in a collective woo-hoo from my hallway. Of course that's because we knew that our jobs would be secure for the forseeable future now. We won't talk about what's happening to Mentor's stock price now though.

Anyway, Mother Nature had other plans and cranked up the heat to close to the century mark with a little humidity on top. That meant the Cruzes cranked up the AC and stayed indoors. Mason was feeling under the weather most of Saturday anyway so he didn't mind being confined. And of course the Olympics were on so its not like we didn't have pleanty to watch.

Yes, of course I went back inside Sushiland and paid the bill. What kind of a schmuck do you think I am?!?

Now its Sunday. Mason was feeling better and we had a birthday party to go to. Second only to celebrating Ellia and Berron's birthdays was the fact that kumla was on the menu!!!

Here's the birthday boy Berron. He has the cutest big blue eyes...
For those of you unfamiliar with everyone that I know, I'll try to provide captions. Berron is Heidi and Dan's little boy (Heidi is my cousin).


This is Berron's cousin Jocelyn. She is about a month and a half younger than Berron and one day off from being exactly 2 years younger than Siena. Jocelyn is Jay B. and Chandra's little girl (Jay B. is my cousin too). Oh yeah, and she had a good lunch.

Alas, the kumla. For those of you unfamiliar with this wonderful substance, kumla is essentially a Norweigian potato dumpling dish. Essentially kumla has 3 ingredients...ground potatos, flour, and suet. Yes, fat. There's an alternate method involving the use of butter rather than suet but the suet version is the more tasty variety. This is fairly similar to potato dumplings made in Norway.

The "Torland" family twist however is that my Great Grandmother Helena Sylena Olina Svehaug Torland* (I type that out in its entirety only because its the coolest hame ever) used muslin bags to boil the kumla. The 3 ingredients detailed above are packed into fat sausage shaped muslin bags and boiled (as shown below).

Once the kumla is properly boiled (dialated?), the "birthing" process must commence. This involves opening the muslin bag and, well, pushing. Here comes the kumla now!
There are a few non-kumla eaters in the family, more commonly known as "in-laws". My mother seems to be the once exception to the in-law kumla hater rule. She enjoys it. Uncle Doug will eat some too. The rest, however, can only be described as losers...the pizza is for them...

Amanda and Shelley are checking out the reject dinner...

Anyway, back to kumla. Once the kumla has been delivered, it is sliced in chunks and eaten with butter. Notice of course there is no other food on my plate. When it comes to kumla, no other food matters. Note of course that the suet chunks are picked out and not eaten.

Here's one of the losers-oops-I mean in-laws eating pizza...

The crowd eating their kumla.

Mary Lou and Bruce had a great assortment of water toys and bubbles outside that all the kids had a great time playing in. Daddy is launching Siena down the ramp...

Post splash-down...

And the cool bubble machines. I think the grown-ups enjoyed them as much as the kids. Especially Chandra. She also got the prize I think for producing the biggest bubble.

Mason in one of the other wading pools the Ham's had set up. This is the same pool that Siena later climbed in fully clothed. That's my girl! (Unfortunately no pic - camera battery died).

Chandra again. This time twirling. I thought I'd spare her the post twirling dizzy, nautious picture...

Siena and bubbles got on well. It was great to see her engage in an activity that involves a soap-based formula rather than dirt.

I don't know if Papa Ron was enjoying the bubbles quite as much as Nannies though...

Since Ellia was getting over a bit of a stomach bug, Heidi kindly decided that Ellia shouldn't blow out the candles over the cake. Instead she blew out a candle in a piece of kumla...that's a special treat in and of itself!

The Evans family during the birthday song...I'm not sure what Ellia is saying about our collective singing...

Berron's got his knife in hand. He's ready for cake.

Course, Siena's cake eating involved a blue mouth...

The "Kumla Feed" was at 2 and now that its 8, it occurred to me that I'm hungary again so a sandwich may be in order. I'd love nothing more than to fry up some of the kumla I brought home (the kumla fest doesn't end at the feed) but I'm not entirely sure that my digestive tract can handle that much potato and nothing else in one day.

On a side note, I just cut my thumb putting dishes in the dishwasher. Nothing serious but I take it as a sign that I am not meant to do dishes.

* - Upon watching beach volleyball last week, many of us in the family noticed a Norwegian player named Ingrid Torlen. Torlen was our family name in Norway prior to immigration to the US where it became Torland. My dad was particularly interested and looked her up on the internet. Turns out she is from the same town in Norway that our ancestors hale from. Odds are pretty good that she's a distant relative of sorts. Pretty cool.

Games On!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am an Olympic freak. Addict. You have no idea.

Friday, those wonderful notes sounded...duhhh, duhhh, da duh duh duh...and I had that feeling that can only be described as giddy like a little schoolgirl. I love all of the sports...swimming, track, basketball...as well as the more obscure sports like ping pong, synchronized swimming, and archery. I can't explain why but I just love it.

I remember the first summer Olympics I watched...LA 1984. Carl Lewis and the men's gymnastics team. That was followed by Seoul 1988 - a summer spent watching Janet Evans tear it up in the pool. Barcelona 1992. Dream team. Enough said. Atlanta 1996 - bombs, rednecks, and Kerry Strug hobbling off the vault. Love it. Australia 2000 - the Thorpedo. Greece 2004 - the introduction of Michael Phelps. Gimmie more.

So what do we do the first day of Olympic competition? Trek on up to Mt. Hood's Ski Bowl for Jose's company's annual picnic. The only problem this year, aside from my Olympic withdrawals, was that it was freezing. Rain and cold...here's Luis and the kids looking miserable...


Okay, the kids weren't totally miserable. Perhaps they're trying smile therapy. Or it could be the ice cream and hot dogs they had just eaten.
Course, Mason was thrilled because Ski Bowl is the place with the go-karts that he can drive all by himself...

And just look at that concentration, as though if he dared to break a full smile it might cost him the big race. This driving thing takes focus and determination, nothing to be taken lightly.

And Siena found the ball pit. Her favorite place to be.

Mason liked the balls too. Especially throwing them at me...

And the wet canoe ride. They were still happy.

Mason eating his bun. No, no hot dog. Just the bun. Don't ask me.

So here's how the conversation went before we left the house:

(Me): I packed sweatshirts for me and the kids.

(Luis): Okay, good idea.

Upon arriving at Ski Bowl:

(Luis): Didn't you pack a sweatshirt for me?!?

(Me): I thought you were a grown up...

So he had to buy one ...

Siena LOVED her hot dog!!

Okay, it was wet. It was cold. I missed 5 hours of Olympics coverage. But it was worth it. The kids had a great time and as a result we had a good time.

Oh, and our racoon friends apparently procreated this spring. There are now 3 racoon kids that have taken up residence in our backyard. Of course, Luis is obsessed with our racoons so he chased them around the yard late one night in an effort to score this picture.

In other news, we had dinner at my parents house tonight. Steak was good, company was good. At one point though I accidently rubbed my eyes and popped a contact out. I'm thinking, no problem, dad has been wearing contacts for years. I'll just grab some of his solution and pop the thing back in. I went into their bathroom and sure enough, there was a bottle was right there next to the sink. I clean out my lens and pop it in. All I can say is that pouring lighting fluid in my eye would have felt better. Thinking that my hands must have been dirty, Luis cleaned it a second time and I tried it again...burn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Turns out he uses some weird crap that you have to leave the lenses in overnight and is not to be put directly into the eye.

Well, now I'm blind and look as though I have a nasty case of pink eye. Good times.

Its an American Institution!!

A day at the county fair and a baseball game. It doesn't get much more all-American. And in case that weren't enough, we've instituted dinner at the dining room table (due to an update I received this week on the benifits of such habits per scientific studies) and I joined Facebook. I don't know why I did so or what relevance it has to this blog but thought I'd add that little tidbit.

Anyway, we started out the day at the Clark County fair! It was cold and cloudy to start but the sun burned off and the rides revved up!

I sat this one out. First of all, it was right after we ate lunch. Second, it was spinning tea cups. Not a good combination. Besides, someone had to take the pictures.

Mason was thrilled to see the plethora of car rides at the fair. And he took said rides so seriously that he made sure that he properly steered each car so it would not go off track. I've never seen him so focused.

Car ride #2. As opposed to the previous car ride, Mason as concentrated at keeping this steering wheel pointed to the right...

Luis with his boobs...oops, I mean balloons (kids on ride in background).

So in case a day at the fair wasn't enough, we thought we'd throw in a Beavers baseball game. The highlight for the Cruz kids was seeing this Herbie modified truck en route to the ballpark.

The Cruz gang at the ballpark...

Below: self-portrait w/ me honey

You might be asking how do you get 2 toddlers to settle down for a baseball game...popcorn.

Here's how I get through a baseball game...

Nannies...she's too cute for her own good...

And since a fair, baseball game, and popcorn aren't enough, why not top it off with some cotton candy...

Aaahhh yeah. That's some good stuff.







And so is this...

It was a good day. I'm tired.