A pretty perfect day

It started off as a perfect day would, enjoying a hot shower in our newly fixed bathroom while my little cherubs slept peacefully in their beds. The sun only just starting to stream through the living room windows as the coffee maker brewed its sweet nectar and the washing machine whirred with the first load of the day.

Soon a sleepy little boy made his appearance in the hallway requesting snuggles and cereal. Since we are in holiday mood an extra backyardigans episode was allowed as we waited for our little sunshine to wake up. After a leisurely breakfast we headed off to the weekly feira* to stock up on fruits and veggies with the promise of a hot pastel* if the kids behaved themselves.

Despite several attempts at escaping the stroller, we managed to fill the bags with fresh tomatoes, carrots, bananas, grapes and more, and savored a hot cheese pastel with strawberry juice.

Enjoying our treat at the feira. 

Then we headed to the mall to take Elena's photos for her school registration. Lucas and Elena enjoyed some time at the play place and I got to pick up lunch from Subway, one of our favorites.

This is the best. idea. ever! So helpful to have a place to put one child while the other is busy. 

The kids were cooperating most of the time, but there was still quite a lot of wrangling to keep Elena close by. The thing about having a pretty perfect day is that somehow the imperfections don't seem to be such a big deal.

After all it's perfectly reasonable to expect two toddlers to take off running for the elevator (and nearly lose one inside it) and for a little girl in the beginning stages of potty training to mess up three pairs of pants in one afternoon, and for said girl to try to eat several small rubber wheels....

So it definitely wasn't a "perfect" day, but it was close enough and I will enjoy being able to tackle all the small problems easily because when it's a bad day, those small problems can seem mountainous.

After a successful dinner (mostly), and a calming(?) bath, both kids seem to be asleep. Now for some down time, oh...and off to clean those dirty pants!

* feira = farmers market
   pastel = a deep fried pastry with a (usually) savory filling. It's very good when eaten hot and is a traditional feira food.

Ginger Beef and an unexpected discovery

As I looked over my weekly menu on Friday morning, I saw that I'd planned to make ginger beef for dinner. To make sure I had everything, I glanced through the recipe. I had one of those "duh" moments when I realized that even after planning a week of meals, with a grocery list, I had forgotten to buy the most essential ingredient - ginger! So I got the kids all ready to go out - we'd walk down the road to a small grocery store at the end of the street. It's never easy to get out and about with two small kids and a stroller; but where we live we face some extra hurdles. We live in quite a hilly area and the sidewalks are terrible. Each property owner is responsible for their patch of sidewalk, which means the sidewalk is different in front of each building, there are ramps and bumps of differing heights, making space for driveways and entrances, and almost no ramps on the curbs. We also have several cobblestone roads to cross.

So as we left our building, I decided to explore a bit and see if we could find a better (albeit longer) route to the store. Turns out, the street that runs parallel to our main street has a much better sidewalk for a stroller. I also made another wonderful discovery; that street has a weekly market (feira) on Friday mornings! Imagine if we'd taken the usual path; we would've bypassed the whole thing. It just goes to show why my dad says, "why take the same road twice?" There is so much out there to explore. So we got to walk around the market, pick up fresh ginger and green onions from a vegetable stall and I couldn't resist getting a few flowers to adorn our table for a few days.

I think we may have found a new Friday morning activity!





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad