So my menus have changed already this week. I had to make pizza tonite in honor of Leah's suggestion below. I loved the crust recipe and utilized Susannah's tip (given to me in Utah) to make one of those huge Costco 106 oz cans of tomatoes for the sauce. I'm going to be freezing a ton of it for later use. Now when Fridays roll around, I just pull out a bag of frozen sauce and I'm ready to go.

Leah, we used some of the Pecorino from Italy on the pizza and it was heaven!

Also, we watched the first half of Sleeping Beauty (the girls got it for Christmas and we haven't watched it yet). We did mom's old technique of the concessions stand. I oil popped popcorn and the girls got tickets. Leah B was so excited that she made signs saying how many tickets each item cost. The girls each got 6 tix....admission to the movie was 1, popcorn was 2, a small Skittles pack was 2, and lifesavers and dumdums were 1 each. It was so cute watching Esther decide how she wanted to spend her tickets.....and a great way of rationing out the candy. It wasn't overboard at all. Hilariously enough, though, Leah finished her treats off really quickly and wanted a dum dum. I told her that she had to pause the movie and do a Circus trick for us and then she could earn an extra ticket. It was a classic moment. Pretty Napoleon Dynamite, actually. We were all staring at her as she started sheepishly and ended up doing the most hilarious moves that had me and Jon laughing and hacking (our coughs are still bad . . . . bummer!) Anyway, it was awesome. And memorable. Of course Esther wanted another dum dum, too, so her Circus trick came next.

Mom and dad, I'll have you know that Esther wanted nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty. She played "airplane to Ghana" the entire time, saying that she was going to visit you. That involves getting underneath a blanket and pretending we're on our way to you. Literally her favorite game of all time.

It was a good night.

Oh yeah, another change to the menu: Chicken and rice soup with carrots, onions, celery, and edamame. A fabulous way to use up leftover rotisserie chicken and talk about health to the sickly.....Mom kind of taught me that one when she was here in February. Thanks, Mom.