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.