School Lunch

To better prepare Lilia for first grade, I decided to take her to lunch at the school cafeteria at her elementary school. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were serving ... schloppy joes, schloppy, schloppy joes! And chicken-pattie sandwiches.

I loved school lunch growing up. The nice old lady would put a check next to our names in her ledger book for everytime we came through the line. Sometimes my mom would forget to send a check, but the lunch lady would still let me have lunch, giving me a stern face and telling me to remind my mother to pay the bill. Today they have computers for that.

And working in the lunch room was the "cool" thing to do when I was in elementary school. If you were chosen to work in the lunchroom, it meant you were allowed to leave class 15 minutes early to be a server or help with clean-up. My favorite job was helping in the dishwasher area. that way I didn't have to wear a hair net and ruin my straight-as-straw hairdo.

Lunch ladies never change. They're a mix of fiesty and sweetness, much like a grandma. They want to give you all the food you'd care to eat, but they don't want you wasting your vegetables. We had a teacher, Mrs. Batista, who would guard the garbage cans and make you turn around and sit back down if you didn't eat your vegetables. I always made sure to leave room for the veggies. She was well-versed in the teacher stare: the type of stare that could scare children into obedience on a sunny day in a crowded room.

Lilia's school had fresh, cut-up veggies like carrots and cucumbers, and they even had cherry tomatoes--a favorite of young children for their explodability. They also had whole apples and pears to eat, as well as salad and canned pears. Today we had our choice of orange juice, chocolate milk, 1 % milk, or 2 % milk. In my day, we only had the choice of white milk, until high school. Then we could choose between white or chocolate milk.

We sat at the first grader's table. We got lots of stares and whispers in front of our backs. I've forgotten how non-sly elementary students are. Were they whispering about us? Uh, well, they would look at us, and while looking at us, they'd put their hand against the other person's face and whisper behind the flesh curtain. I can guess at what they were whispering about:

"That mom should not be at our table. This table is reserved for the 'cool' first graders. She is so not cool."

Lissy felt uneasy being at the 1st grader's table, so we moved to a different table that had no one sitting at it. When the fourth graders started filing into the lunchroom, Lilia said she was getting scared as well. But then her "buddy" reader came in and waved at her. That made her feel better. She really likes her "buddy" reader; an older child assigned to the kindergartners to help them with their reading.

My heart grows nostaligic at the end of school year and at the beginning of school year. Fear, joy, excitement, sadness, happiness: all those emotions bawled into one. And now my girls will be able to experience all that school has to offer.

I asked Lilia after we left, would you like to eat school lunch or have me prepare you a lunch and eat it at school? Her answer is she would prefer the school lunch. I guess that doesn't bode well for my cooking skills. Or maybe it does?...

A Short Reflection on my Mothering

My middle child just told me her boogers were running down her nose. This is the child who still insists on telling me when she has to go potty, even though she's been potty trained for close to three years. Her boogers running down her nose means I am to get her a tissue and help her wipe her nose. So I told her to take her shirt and go like this, and then I show her what a shirt is used for in southern Idaho when working in the sugarbeet fields. That's the type of mother I am.

Half-assed.

If I had to give myself a report card for my mothering efforts, I would probably earn a C in teaching them proper hygiene; D in consistency in bedtime hours; C in healthily prepared lunches; and D in proper amount of television watching.

Areas where I'm better perhaps are playing with them at the park. I get a solid A there. I'm Captain Hook to their Peter, Wendy, and Schmee (Nono is Schmee because she's on my hip most times). And I get an A for being good at wanting to scare them, but only an age-appropriate scare. Sometimes I push the scare-line boundary, however, like the time we watched Jurassic Park III together. My dad loved to push the scare-line boundary with us when we were little. His stories always involved one of three topics: old bums (beggars was an appropriate substitute, but not homeless man), rabid dogs/coyotes, and hook-armed men.

Yesterday while Kulani was teaching Hekili how to mountainbike, we went on a hike up Provo Canyon. My big mouth had to mention what scary things are found in the mountains. Lilia got spooked thinking about the rattle snakes I told her about. She wanted to turn around and go back home.

"I was just kidding! There aren't snakes in the mountains!" I barked at her, not wanting her to ruin our hiking adventure by making us turn around and go back. We continued up the trail. I get an A for being a taskmaster.

On our way down, we passed by some shady characters wearing a lot of black and smelling of a sweet smoke. Nono, the 2-year-old, was riding on my shoulders and she says, "I'm scared. It's a witch." She's into witches these days. Anytime she sees anything scary she calls it "a witch." Luckily she didn't say it loud enough for the coven to hear. I think they would have welcomed a chubby little Nono in their witches' brew that night under the full moon.

I love being a mother to these little lumpkins. I hope I don't ruin them for life.

Drawrings

The title is not a typo. Think of Mike Myers in the bathtub singing, "Well, you know my name is Simon, and I like to make drawrings."

My girls like to make "drawrings." And now that Lilia is learning to write, she likes to make stories and recipes along with her drawrings. When Kulani and I went on our anniversary date last week, Lilia created this for us:

It's a recipe for chocolate-dipped bananas. It reads:

"Bananas and Chocolate. You put it in the microwave and eat it and wash your face." (I took out the spelling mistakes.)

Then there is a pictorial of the process with a microwave, a person with a dirty face, and then a person with a clean face. At the bottom, she wrote:

"Elissa helped me." Allysa is the babysitter.

The girls are also super easy to manipulate into helping me clean the house. It's embarrassingly simple. It requires an abundance of overexuberant praise.

First I ask them to do just one simple job for me.

I'll say, "How old are you?"

And Lilia will say, "6."

Me: "Okay, since you're 6, pick up six toys from the living room."

Then Lissy will say, "Should I pick up 5 things?"

Me: "Five is a lot. Are you sure you can do it? Let me see if you can first."

They'll each pick up there designated amout, and I'll say, "Holy cow! I did NOT think you guys could handle that, and you did it like you were 7 or 8-year-olds. I wonder if you could pick up 8 things?"

The girls: "I can! I can!"

Me: "Well, let me see first."

Girls get to it lickity split.

Me: "Oh my goodness! I am calling the newspapers to tell them I have two of the best cleaners in the world here at my house! Seriously, you guys are the best!"

And then the girls keep picking up the living room and showing me what else they are cleaning, while I make a pretend call to The Daily Herald.

But seriously, in the whole-wide world, you could NOT find two better cleaners. Now if we could only get Nohea to pull her 2-year-old naughty weight around here.

Happy Dozenth Anniversary, Kulani!

Fisherstyle Recap Reduxed

It was Spring Break last week, which wasn't much fun for the kids, because we mostly helped out with Alika's wedding and it snowed a ton, so we stayed indoors.

So on Friday and Saturday, I wanted to do something fun with the girls. On Friday, Lilia went to work with her dad. Here's a picture of her eating breakfast before heading out for her big day as Dad's secretary/helper.

Then on Friday night we went swimming at the girl's favorite swimming pool: The Lehi Legacy Center. It's better than our American Fork Rec Center in the winter because it has an indoor water slide and a toddler area, as well as a big bucket that pours out every 15 minutes or so. The girls love that. It's as great as Seven Peaks to them.

On Saturday I did some yard work, and then we went swimming again, but at the A.F. pool because we have a pass. Then we went to the Sticky Shoe dollar theater in A.F. We watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The girls loved it. Nohea actually stayed in my lap for the whole movie, but not without some help from me. I had to keep her distracted by lots of face snuggling, tickling, and coddling. That's why we always go to the Sticky Shoe, which is what the locals call it. It's pretty old and run-down, and people who generally go are families who tolerate squaking babies better than if we went to a full-priced theater or the dollar theaters frequented by college students.

Sunday Kulani played Fisher Test Kitchen. He made a new taste sensation he adapted from Bon Appetit. It was a coconut curry shrimp dish, and it was heavenly. Here's a picture:

We had Maren and Racer over. We also made garlic steak and shrimp.

The following are some more random pictures. We invited over our old neighbor's family for Easter dinner and egghunt.

And Kulani and I turned a year older last week. My angel neighbor Ellen brought me these amazing chocolate cake bites from a new bakery she found in Provo.

Alika's wedding

The beloved Alika, Kulani's nephew, and his sweetheart Brittney were married in the Mount Timpanogos Temple on a very snowy day. The famed George D. Durrant officiated the ceremony. He gave poignant and sweet advice to the young couple. Possibly the best wedding I've ever attended. Brother Durrant was in Kulani and my ward when we were first married, and he is easily one of the best humans I've ever met. I didn't get a photo of them in their official wedding get up because it was too snowy and cold!

Afterwards, Kulani and his siblings prepared an AMAZING meal for all of Alika and Brittney's family and friends at Mahana's new house in Provo. Here are some photos:

This is one of the centerpieces Kehaulani created. So cute! She did a great job. Alika and Brittney met at BYU-Hawaii. Britney is from Wyoming and Alika is from Blanding. After the dinner, Kehaulani gave all the granddaughters the centerpieces, as well as a beach towel.

Kulani manning the grill for the garlic shrimp.

Here was the main table for the bride and groom and their parents.

What up, bruddahs! Hekili and Kanaue throwing the shakah your way.

Grandpa getting a plate full of love. Grandpa was loving it the most. He loved seeing all his kids working together creating great Hawaiian food. He was in heaven.

All the Fisher siblings contributed to the wedding feast. It was like the Justice League coming together. The food was AMAZING! They fed about 170 people, with tons of leftovers.

California Trip: Foodie Edition

Those in the Fisher know understand we like our food. For Kulani especially it is more a passion than a pasttime. So I thought the best way to journal about our trip to southern California would be to blog about the food. For the record, we were in California for the main purpose of Kulani participating in the Oceanside Half-Ironman.

Southern California is chock-a-block full of restaurants. We almost felt we were at a disadvantage because we hadn't studied too many food blogs of the southern California area. We found ourselves a tad unprepared. We knew a few restaurants were excellent on the Oceanside Harbor as we ate there when Kulani did the California Half-Ironman three years ago (details about those to follow).

But what all foodies know is that when you're in an area with many food choices, your best bet is to just ask the locals where they like to eat. The lady at Rite-Aid steered us to Anita's for great Mexican food. You can't be near the Mexican border and pass by the opportunity to have good Mexican food, so we took her advise and enjoyed ourselves a fine meal at Anita's. I had the Pancho lunch plate, which was a tortilla stacked with chicken, beans, cheese, and enchilada sauce. Kulani had something that involved chili relleno, my favorite Mexican dish. Both were excellent, but I didn't get to try Kulani's dish, as I had to take Nohea to the car for behaving so poorly.

Anita's on the Coastal Highway.

Pancho's plate.

Lilia enjoying the spoils.

Another interesting food choice whenever in a given geographical location is to stop and see what's on the fast food menus. For example, at McDonald's in Chicago, you can get a Vienna-style Chicago dog. In Hawaii, they offer mango fruitpies. In Oceanside, we stopped at the local Wiennerschnitzel for some ice cream. They had a "seadog" on the menu, so of course we had to try it. It was pretty good. I'm not sure if every Wienerschnitzel offers seadogs, but I know our local one didn't (maybe it does now?).

Other than maybe a snack, however, we avoid any chains. Our rule of thumb when on vacation is to only eat local food. We follow the teachings of Anthony Bourdain: Be a traveler, not a tourist.

The night before the race, Kulani thought he'd take the tried-and-true route of pasta--the proverbial "carbo load" the night before the race. We ate at Dominic's on the Oceanside Harbor pier. Kulani and his brother ate there three years ago, so he knew it was good.

Kulani had spaghetti and meatballs, while me and the girls shared a large sausage and mushroom pizza. I thought it was great, but at 2 a.m., Kulani's meal wasn't sitting right in his stomach. We'll have to cross Dominic's off our list next time we go. But the owner and his brother are super nice, and their accents sound as if they just got off the boat from Italy.

After the race, we ate at the Rockin' Baja, a restaurant also on the Harbor pier and right next to Dominic's. We also ate there three years ago, and it didn't dissapoint.

Seeing how he just spent 6 1/2 hours exercising, Kulani splurged on the Baja Bucket. It was AMAZINGLY good food! My new camera has a food setting, and I think it did a good job of capturing how awesome this food looked and tasted. The bucket included five slipper-lobster tails, six pieces of ginormous shrimp, 8 ounces of chicken, and 8 ounces of steak. I'm still dreaming about it.

I had the lobster tacos. As good as I remembered them.

Our final day in California would be our most adventurous food day. After a ho-hum breakfast at the Longborders Cafe in Oceanside, we took the leisurely route back to L.A. We drove up the Coastal Highway. It was interesting to watch as the income level in a given area went from super rich (Laguna Beach and Newport) to not so rich (Long Beach and Torrance). We kept driving all the way into Inglewood to go to Roscoes' Chicken and Waffles.

We heard about Roscoe's from an episode of No Reservations that found Anthony exploring the not-so-glamorous places of L.A. As we drove into Inglewood, the thought did come to Kulani and me that maybe we should turn around. Most of the businesses were boarded up and out of business; all the houses had bars on the windows and doors--it was looking scary, like something out of Boyz 'N the Hood. But we pressed on.

It reminded me of the time my parents took all of us to Hollywood to see the stars on the streets. This was 1993, and I've heard it's gotten even worse since then. My mom decided we should eat at Popeye's Chicken, which was approximately right across the street from Mann's Chinese Theatre. Here was this big, huge Mormon family sitting down for a dinner at Popeye's, when a seriously drunk man started screaming about how he was never "gonna eat in this sh**y chicken house again!" He was finally escorted out by some group that I think was called "Neighborhood Angels." My mom, of course, had to stop the gentleman and ask them all about their organization. We were all just thinking, "Please don't let us die today!" Another funny story as we left Hollywood was that my dad was approached by a pan handler with a sob story. My dad said, "I've got 10 kids." The man left him alone.

At any rate, Kulani had a little bit of "street cred" as he can almost pass for Mexican or maybe a a half-black guy. Me and the girls, however, stuck out like an African-American at BYU--only reversed. We were the only white folks in the place. But it was a really nice restaurant, and it was Sunday afternoon, so a lot of the people were families out to dinner after a nice day at church. And the chicken was AMAZING! Best fried chicken we've probably ever had. And we also tried all the southern-style sides, like collared greens, mac-n-cheese, and sweet potatoes. The waffles were also good. You can't go to a place called Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles and not have both chicken AND waffles.

I only took the one picture or Roscoe's because I was too afraid of offending anyone with my food blog. Lame, I know. It brought up a discussion about cultural differences, and Kulani repeated a quote from Dave Chappelle about how we need to understand the differences between cultures, not the similarities.

But here's a cultural tip if ever eating at our house: bring a healthy appetite. Love, the Fishers.