Roblog

I got a surprise Valentines day present from my wife last month: a bear from Build-a-Bear Workshop. She got one for my car, actually.

You see, back when I got my first Saturn, which was the first car I bought myself, I was very excited about it. I thought it would be fun to have a representation of the other 8 planets in my Saturn. I had a Mercury thermometer, a small glass Earth hanging from my mirror, a Mars bar wrapper, and a small Pluto figurine in the back window. When we started dating, Donna helped me get a few others: postcards of Venus de Milo and Neptune. I never did get Uranus or Jupiter (although I thought about spilling some red nail polish to make a great red spot).

So for Valentine's Day this year, Donna got me a bear with a solar system t-shirt. It stays in my car as its mascot. It took a few weeks for me to come up with a name, but once I realized it should take on the name of a moon of Saturn, I just had to pick one. Most of the names of Saturn's moons sound feminine. I sort of like the names Tethys and Enceladus, but in the end, I chose Mimas.

Naming the bear after a moon of Saturn is particularly appropriate because the bear's pants keep falling down. He really needs some suspenders.

Somehow, I got culinarily ambitious and wanted to try to make some homemade marshmallows for Easter. Not only that, but Donna was going to be away all Easter weekend, so it would just be me and the girls to make them. I found a few recipes online and picked one that sounded fairly easy.

I was pleasantly surprised when the experience was fun and the marshmallows turned out nicely. At first, I was a little underwhelmed by the results, since they tasted almost identical to a fresh store-bought marshmallow, but after getting several compliments about them I'm changing my moderate opinion of them and have decided they're fresh and yummy. It sure was a blast making them with my 6-year-old daughters.

I'm still looking forward to playing with the recipe a bit by adding food coloring or flavoring. Doesn't a homemade peppermint-infused marshmallow floating in a mug of hot chocolate sound wonderful?