Burial

I thought this was a pretty good idea so I want to share how I handled the body of Oriole Shirt. Since I couldn't bring myself to give him away, throw him away or burn him away, and I thought it would be weird to hang him on a wall in the house, I used small thumbtacks and stuck him up in a place of honor in the closet. Every shirt should be so lucky.

Farewell old friend

Here is the eulogy for my favorite shirt. Oriole shirt. He is too sheer to be repurposed in any way and I will miss him terribly but it is finally time to say goodbye.
I got him in high school from my brother who had bought him for a dollar from a thrift store in Helper, UT. He then painstakingly picked off all the sequins leaving behind the glitter glue.
Oriole shirt has never let me down. He fit me so well, that's why he stayed around so long.
I took him to Jackson and cleaned the grease traps in him, hoping the stains wouldn't show up on the black.
When Ben and I started dating, Ben picked me up for breakfast and I was wearing Oriole Shirt and Ben, of course was wearing a Red Sox shirt. An old guy at the diner even commented on it.
Then there was the rec league softball game we went to watch and Camertle didn't have a shirt with numbers on the back so I took off Oriole Shirt (I had a long sleeve shirt on underneath) and gave it to her so she could play as #2.
Good times.
I wore him through pregnancies, through summer and winter, he has always been there in the drawer waiting for me.
So this is all the memorial I could come up with for Oriole Shirt. May we cherish his memory. If you have any good memories to share you may take this time to share them on the comments.

Felt tree

I recognize that I am not the craftiest person reading this blog, but I wanted to tell you all how cheap easy this was to make. I have had my eye on these felt trees for kids to mess with for a few seasons, and I was unsure if it would be worth it.
WELL.
The hardest part was definitely getting up the will and courage to take my kids to the craft store. Honestly, I know how hard it can be, Eliza refused to sit in the cart or even keep up with me and Anna screamed at me for not buying her bubble gum all the way home.
But anyway, I bought 1/2 yard of green felt, and 8 colors of felt for ornaments. This project was about $5. Seriously. I cut the tree out, it is actually 3 sections, and thumbtacked it to the wall. Then we cut out 3 shapes per color, we have balls, turnips and bells. Then I cut little strips and polka dots and zig zags to decorate the ornaments if desired. I didn't get out the glue gun or anything. Setting it all up and cutting it out took 1 hour.
Such an easy project if you've been eyeing them like I have been.
I was thinking of using it as an advent, we have 24 ornaments, so they can put one up each day, if I can keep them from playing with all of them all the time.
I am very happy with it.

Baby blessing

Last night we blessed Calvin at our house. It was a small affair with just his grandpa, dad, 2 uncles and the Bishop in the circle. It was very nice. Ben's mom and sister were in town so we wanted to share the experience with them.
Unfortunately, Eliza had caught pie night stomach flu so I was busy attending to her instead of taking pictures or talking to anyone, so let's just pretend I took these pictures yesterday and also pretend he's not wearing a BYU onesie covered by a blanket. K?

Ice skating!

So Anna earned a family activity by doing her chores. She decided she wanted to try ice skating, I found that Provo peaks arena has a time set aside for kids under 12 and their parents at 10:00 on Thursdays!

Aunt Beetle came along because Ben was out of town and she helped the girls skate. I loved that it wasn't crowded and that it only cost $5.

 Also they had little walkers for the kids, Anna did really well and never fell but she said it was harder than she thought it would be.

Eliza even let Beetle push her around the ice. It was a great activity, I can't wait to do it again!

How to...

How to get assistance while shopping at Home Depot:

1- wear a baseball cap
2- wear a dirty sweatshirt and/or carharts
3- have facial hair

How not to get assistance while shopping at Home Depot:

1- have three kids with you, including a baby in a sling
2- try to push the cart with two kids in it with one hand while you support the one in the sling
3- look completely lost in the lumber section.

Raking leaves

Here are the obligatory pictures of raking leaves. Eliza just learned how to smile on demand, she's got a big cheesy, toothy grin that I can't resist.

3 months

Little Calvin is getting so big. Seriously, the biggest baby yet. Ok, that's not saying much.
I took some pictures with him today with the big camera but he wasn't really smiling. Then I got my iPod out and he had a better outlook. So these are those pictures.
He's quite a looker.

You can't go home again

This is a favorite picture of mine. I want to put it up so I will always have it (until the Internet explodes). This was my yard growing up, my playground, work-ground and imagination laboratory. We played and slept on the trampoline, we kicked field goals through the cherry trees, we hooked a zip line up to the big tree and tried not to die (ah, Toni?! Ah Toni!?) as it connected to the second cherry tree. I played catch with my dad and football with brothers and cousins. We irrigated in the sunshine and in the moonlight. We tried (more than once) to turn the gazebo into a swimming pool.

I wish I had a picture of the massive driveway behind the photographer. That is where we played basketball, jumped rope with cousins using giant 50 foot jump ropes. Where we rode bikes and fixed cars.
It was great place to grow up. This picture reminds me how good we had it.

Recipes that, inexplicably, work

I found myself with 2 surplus pomegranates today which yielded almost 2 cups of pomegranate seeds. What's more, the seeds were a little too tart for me, so I set about looking for some baked good I could incorporate them into. I found a chocolate chip pomegranate muffin recipe that looked easy enough so I got started.
I decided to double the recipe so I wouldn't have any seeds left over. My first substitution, instead of 4 cups of flour I decided to do 2 cups oatmeal, 2 cups flour.
Next I remembered that we were completely out of milk- animal and vegetable. But I had some dry milk powder, so that was resolved easily.
After that I realized somewhat panicked that we had no chocolate chips! A travesty, I know, but I stopped buying them the 5th time I found Anna in my closet with a bucket of chocolate chips. So, after searching the cupboards I did find...Halloween candy! So I worked out a deal with the girls, and they let me take all the M&M's and sixlets - which wasnt much.
At this point I decided to just go for it and shoot for an excellent Recipe That Doesn't Work. So I did the ole' half oil, half applesauce trick. And instead of two muffin pans, like I thought I had, I found one regular muffin pan and one pan with 24 mini muffins. I guess we downsized during the move.
At this point the batter looked surprisingly good, considering what I had done to it.
I tried a few as they finished baking and they were not terrible, then I had one that was lucky enough to catch some of the chocolate, and it was Delicious! So next time, more M&M's and we'll be all set!
Thus concludes an unsuccessful unsuccessful baking attempt. Thank you for your time.