Oh wait, I mean asparagus AND margaritas. Not together. Preferably not at the same time! I crack myself up.
Anyway, last week, those of you who expressed your opinion said you liked #PinFTW, so we’re going to keep it going at least a while longer. And, unsurprisingly, today’s PinFTW is about two of my favorite subjects – food and alcohol!
First, grilled asparagus. I will admit – I did not think I was a fan of asparagus. To be honest, most of my experience with it has been of the canned variety, and people – that is just not right. However, fresh asparagus drenched in olive oil and other seasonings? Is delicious.
Photo from Dishing the Devine
I’ve made this twice now, and it is soooo good. I haven’t quite convinced my children of this, but trust me. It’s great. And soooooo healthy!
And speaking of healthy, what is more healthy than cherries??? Especially when they’re accompanied by tequila. This recipe for cherry margaritas is from one of my favorite food blogs, Annie’s Eats.
When we were in Michigan last week, I picked up a couple pounds of cherries from a road side stand, and we snacked on them all weekend – and I whipped up the margaritas for the moms. They were great! I wish I had one right now.
There you have it – the pins I’ve actually put into use. What have you got for us??
Here are just a few rules:
1) In your post, please link to your original source – the pin you got the idea from.
2) Make sure and link back to our original Pin For the Wednesdays Post here at Mommin’ It Up! (please!)
3) In the Mr. Linky below, leave a direct link to your Pin FTWednesdays post, not to your main website.
4) Totally optional – grab our cute #PinFTW button! The code box is over there in our sidebar.
This post popped into my head this morning for some reason, and just thinking about it, I couldn’t stop laughing! Originally published almost five years ago, when Joshua wasn’t even FOUR (and now he’s about to start THIRD GRADE!!) it’s one of my favorites. I couldn’t fight off the urge to share it with you in case you weren’t reading on December 7, 2007…enjoy! (And comment! Please!)
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Joshua is almost four and his intelligence astounds me every day (’cause you know, Bobby and I are a couple of dummies). He’s known all his letters since before he was two, partially because we have a magnetic bathroom wall. Yesssss, the tiles on our bathroom wall are made of metal. I’m not sure what era this is from exactly but it’s both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Yay! Anyhoo, a couple of years ago we got a slew of magnetic alphabet letters for the bathroom wall to entertain educate him while I was in the shower. Recently, thanks to his super-genius and the PBS Kids show Word World, Joshua has begun spelling actual words with said letters, without even asking me how they are spelled! Yesterday when I got out of the shower, he said, “Look Mom, I’m going to spell the word bug.” He then proceeded to find the b,u, and g and put them in the correct order. I was amazed and of course rewarded him with MUCH praise. Then, he asked me how to spell the word “corn.” I helped him sound it out, he spelled it with the letters, and I cheered again. Yay genius boy!
Fast forward to that evening at bedtime. Bobby and Joshua are in the bathroom preparing to brush Joshua’s teeth, and I am in the bedroom putting my PJs on. All of a sudden I hear Bobby calling me so I run to the bathroom. There I see that Joshua has made a new word. I won’t write it here because I don’t want my blog traffic to get perved up, but let’s just say he took the c off of corn and replaced it with a p. “Mommy look!” he cried. “I made p*rn!”
Bobby was already cracking up, and I just collapsed on the floor laughing. Joshua was veeeeery pleased that he had made us laugh and started giggling too. “I made p*rn!” he exclaimed again proudly. (OF COURSE, he has no idea what that means, or that it’s even a real word. He just knows phonics!) I was laughing so hard I was crying. “What are we gonna do?” I asked Bobby, who was no better off than I was. “I don’t know!” he said. He was cracking up so badly I thought he was going to have an asthma attack. Joshua noticed that we were slightly distracted from his spelling efforts, so he took the p away from the orn and said, “Mommy, now I’m gonna build the word p*rn and you’re gonna laugh.” So off I went again, rolling on the floor laughing so hard my stomach hurt. I thought I might be able to distract him with other words. “You can make other words that rhyme with corn, honey. Like worn or born.”
“Or p*rn!” he exclaimed.
(More uncontrollable laughter from his mature, twelve thirty-year-old parents.)
“Forget it,” said Bobby, “I’m just gonna hide all the p’s. ”
“Stupid Word World. Teaching my kid phonics!” I grumbled.
Somehow we all got calmed down, Joshua’s teeth got brushed, and we all went to bed. Bobby and I giggled about Joshua’s new word a while longer, and Bobby took all the p’s off the wall and hid them! Joshua hasn’t mentioned it today at all, but I’m preeeety sure he’s going to remember just in time to tell the babysitter or anyone and everyone at church this weekend that he “made p*rn”. And then, we will really have some ‘splaining to do!
I loved watching the Olympics with my kids this year. I always love the Olympics, but this is the first year Joshua and Sophie have really enjoyed it, and it was so fun to enjoy it along side them. Sophie was, like most little girls, really into the gymnastics, especially since she takes gymnastic lessons herself (although I don’t think Marta Karolyi needs to hold a place for her at the 2024 games. Sorry Soph. You are your mother’s daughter.)
We recorded the gymnastics, since they were on so late at night, so that Sophie and I could watch them together the following day. She was thrilled when Team USA won gold and again when Gabby Douglas won gold in the all-around. When we were watching the all-around competition, we couldn’t help notice how devastated Russian gymnast Viktoria Komova was when she won the silver. Komova faltered on her vault early in the competition, so her fate came down to her floor routine, and she could have overtaken Douglas for the gold, but the judges chose otherwise. After the Russian saw her scores, she broke down in tears. Silver, it seems, was not what she had come to win.
She's so excited. And she just can't hide it.
To someone like me, who has never been great or almost-great or even in the running for great at anything, Komova’s reaction is really hard to understand. But logically I know that all athletes of that caliber make their sport their entire world so that they can be THE BEST. Not the second-best. And some of them are incapable of feeling anything but despair in what you and I would see as a moment of elation. I’m all “A silver medal? That’s AWESOME!! ” And when an athlete who isn’t favored to win or even medal gets a silver, you might see that elation. But not so with Komova, who certainly had higher expectations for herself.
A few nights later, Sophie wasn’t feeling well late at night, and so I let her get out of bed and watch some gymnastics with me. It was the individual event finals for the floor exercise, and it must’ve reminded Sophie of the all-around finals, because she looked up at me and said, “Mommy? Do you remember Viktoria who was trying to beat Gabby? I feel really sad for her because I think she just likes winning, like I do.”
Sophie was awfully sleepy, and I don’t know if she even remembers our conversation. But I took the moment to reassure her that while it is hard to lose, what matters most is doing the very best you can do, and working at it with all your heart. And I told her that I was sure Viktoria did that, and Gabby did that, and that Gabby’s best was just better that day. So she wins, and that’s the way it supposed to be. I told her it was okay for Viktoria to be sad but that I bet her mommy was still really proud of her.
I am one of those people who doesn’t think everyone should get a trophy just for trying. The culmination of talent and years of hard work need to be rewarded. For some, the reward is simply participating at a world-class level; medal or no, their efforts have brought them into a select group. For the very top achievers, though there does need to be a special award. And to give everyone a medal de-values the ones who have truly achieved greatness.
But anyway, I must say for all my “teachable moment-ing”, I think my little girl got it right. (And I can *ahem* verify that Sophie comes by her sore loser-dom honestly.) It sucks to lose. And for an athlete who could on another day be good enough to win, second place can at that moment seem not so much a shiny silver as a dingy failure.
I am hoping that today, more than a week later, Komova and all the athletes in her place that competed and did so amazingly well can so how great their achievement truly was.
And I hope my little girl one day understands that giving your BEST is truly winning, even if someone else’s best is better.
