Hamsters, Hiking & Cornbread

People have been asking how you give a hamster medicine, so here's a photo. Her medicine is a liquid so I have to scruff the back of her neck which opens her mouth, turn her over onto her back and then use the syringe to get the medicine in. She's figured out she can move her tongue around to push the syringe out so sometimes I wind up with more medicine on me than what gets into her mouth. And of course she wriggles around the tries to use her feet to push the syringe away. We call it the "medicine dance". At first I didn't think the medicine was working much, but yesterday and today she does seem better.

I was telling my neighbor about taking the hamster to the vet and how it cost $53. She just laughed and said she'd taken their bird to the vet and it cost $250. She told the bird he'd better get a job!

We've also had some folks wanting to know what Kevin and I have been doing lately. I know some of you who read the blog don't know much about Kevin and I and mostly we focus on Sarah, but us "old folks" do have a life too!

Kevin loves pro-football and enjoys NASCAR. He combines this with playing fantasy sports for both and prior to our trip to China he was the grand prize winner in a fantasy NASCAR game which netted him a $10,000 prize! So, whenever he wants to hop on the computer to play fantasy sports, I say "I'm there for ya baby! Go!" Here's a photo he took while at a NASCAR race in Kansas City.

He also likes hiking and is working his way up the Appalachian Trail is a little bit at a time. His trail name is "20 Year Plan" as he takes a few weeks each summer to hike a little further up the trail. He didn't hike this summer as he didn't want to be away from Sarah, but sometime he'll get back to it. Right now he's enjoying the outdoors by going bike riding and fishing with Sarah.

(Two photos above are Kevin on the Appalachian Trail)

I like to enter cooking and recipe contests and having been doing this for about 10 years now. It was because of a cooking contest that we actually "met" Sarah on our agency's waiting children's list and became her parents!

"How is that?" you ask? Well, I was a finalist at the Martha White National Cornbread Cook-off in 2007. Kevin had planned to head out to the trail to hike a few days prior to the cook-off but when they notified me that I was a finalist we decided he would postpone his trip by a few days, ride out with me to the cook-off and then I'd drop him off at the trail before I headed back home. The day of the cook-off our agency posted the new waiting children's list so when we got back to the hotel after the cook-off we logged on to see the list. There was our Sarah! So instead of dropping Kevin off the next day to start hiking we stayed in the hotel an extra day to work on our request letter to adopt Sarah. If I had not been a finalist at the cook-off, Kevin would have been out in the wild for a few weeks and I would have been at home alone when the list came out and we would not have been together to talk about the list and to send in our request! So, THANK YOU Martha White National Cornbread Cook-off! I didn't win a prize at your contest, but you gave us the best surprise ever -- we became parents!!!

(Photo above is me at the Sutter Home Winery Build A Better Burger Cook-off in Napa, CA)

I stopped entering contests for about the past year, but have just started getting back to it. Most of my ingredient stash has expired so it's time to clean out my contest closet and get new stuff to mess with. And my backlog of cooking magazines literally spans 14 to 16 months -- most are still encased in the plastic wrap they arrived in. (Once we found out we were going to be parents our priorities changed a bit! Go figure!) But now with Sarah in school I have some time for me so I'll get back to the fun of messing in the kitchen and hoping for the call that I'm a finalist. I can't wait to take Sarah to a few cook-offs to show her new places and so she can see her mom in action. I'd been fortunate to travel to Hollywood, Napa Valley, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland and South Pittsburgh, Tennessee all courtesy of cook-offs.

We watched one of the old Food TV rerun shows I was on and she said, "Is that really you Mom?" "Yep," I said. "Scary, huh?" She just shook her head. I'm still not sure she believes that person on the tv is the same person who burns her breakfast from time to time!

(At the Pillsbury Million Dollar Bake-Off in Hollywood, CA)