A little knowledge ...

Colleen and I were in the grocery store today, with a coupon for tortilla chips. We were trying to decide which ones to get, when Colleen read the labels and said: "Get that one, mommy. It has zero trains in it!"

Presenting the two-time champ

Cate has done it again. The defending St. Thomas the Apostle jello creation champion pulled off the repeat.

Last year, granted, the title was as much a result of Robert's charm as anything else. It was a wedding cake that fell apart and got rebranded as a volcano. This year, we made one entry, and made it work. You can see at left here, Robert defending the Colemans' jello entry from the grazers.

These are not Dots. These are jello dots -- several different colors of jello molded in tiny ice cube trays. In the end, a fairly simple result, but clever and time-consuming, including the precision with which the molds were poured.

Watching Cate pour a lot of work into this (and a lot of jello) this afternoon, and stress out over it, I was ecstatic to find out that "we" had won.

Wednesday night is church night for us, starting with Robert's children's choir practice at 5:30, followed by a community meal, a prayer service and religious ed classes. While the kids and Cate (who assists the kindergarten class) are in class, I'm in church choir rehearsal. When Cate and the kids came into the church to wait for us to finish, I motioned for Robert to come up and sit next to me so I could ask him who won.

It was a close vote, apparently. But not in my mind. Best dish, hands down.

Cate also prepared her grandmother's seafoam salad, which is a green jello whipped with cream cheese and pears, layered. Surely not doing the concept justice. (And Cate wasn't blown away by the imprecision of the family recipe card handed down, either!)

The other part of jello night is playing Bingo, and the parish has these vintage cards from the 1950s. This year, Colleen put her reading skills to the test for a while, playing one card. For most of the two-digit numbers, one of us would have to translate, but she enjoyed it enough to keep playing for three or four rounds before losing interest.

The movies of our childhood

Elizabeth is coming of age, a little bit, and we've slowly allowed/encouraged her to read more mature books and watch more mature movies.

Shortly after we moved into our new house -- which seems somehow to have become a blog-free zone, for which we apologize -- Cate and I brainstormed a list of the quintessential movies of our childhood. For example, when I was Elizabeth's age, I remember Pa taking me to see War Games in the theater. I remember specifically because I got up to go to the bathroom while he was asleep and got in trouble because he woke up and I was gone!

Many of these movies fly past us on DirecTV, and we try to capture them on the DVR. Elizabeth has already watched War Games and Ghostbusters, which is a Cate personal favorite. She's also seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here are the other movies she and I identified:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Back to the Future
The Birds
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
E.T.
Field of Dreams
Hoosiers
The Hunt for Red October
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Jaws
Space Camp
Star Trek (original cast, movies 2, 3, 4 and 6)
Star Wars

For Star Wars, that's the original trilogy -- it's funny to hear Elizabeth and Robert refer to the movie we all know as simply Star Wars by calling it Star Wars: A New Hope.

These are primarily movies of the late '70s and '80s, but I would say almost anything is up for discussion. What would you add?