Recipes That Don't Work

Yeast and I are frenemies.

Friday Night

I spent an hour and a half sitting at my kitchen table reading this blog and have rededicated myself to pointless blogposts where I can whine and brag and pontificate and not care if anyone is reading it or pointing fingers.

Ben took Anna to see "The Avengers" tonight, she left smiling and came back smiling, so I guess it was a success. Also, popcorn and lemonade for dinner. She has been watching "The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" the cartoon series every morning on Netflix. I had to call her "Wasp" all day.
Wasp is not in the movie, but she was one of the founding members of The Avengers in the comic books. Her regular name is Jan. So I could refer to Anna as "Wasp" or as "Jan".

I did the grocery shopping tonight with Eliza while they were gone.

I bought one of those 1 gallon buckets of chocolate peanut butter ice cream. I predict I will eat it all within 10 days. I'll keep you updated.

There is a large fire on the other side of the lake, the smoke has filled the valley. I have felt sick most of the day. They call it "The Dump Fire", does that mean it's burning up all kinds of unsavory garbage and the smoke is poisoning me?

How was your friday night?

Pet Store

No other experience has simultaneously made my kids super excited and me super uncomfortable as taking them on a recreational trip to the Pet Store. I will not allow them to have a pet so I thought it would be fun to go see some cute little puppies or something. Well, it was not like that, but the girls still loved seeing all the different fish, hermit crabs, frogs, birds and etc. The cats were gigantic and freaked me out completely. They didn't have any puppies but there was an observation window into the grooming which was...eh.
To top it off, on our way out I was stopped by an old woman with a thick russian-bloc accent who said, pointing to Eliza "Hey lady, you should keep her right with you, I have seen them whisked away in a second when the mom is not looking and they are gone."

So I'm pretty much never leaving the house again.

Oh! There's a Home Depot!

Ok, so this one is mostly for Ben and me to remember how ridiculous kids are.
Yesterday we tried to go furniture shopping, and it was very disappointing. Also, Anna was bad (disobedient) all night and spilled soda in the car etc... So on the way home nobody was talking and we were all quite gloomy.

Anna started squirming and screaming, at one point I guess while kicking my seat, she also accidentally kicked her foot, so she started whining and did not stop. She was just looking for attention and I was just waiting for her to cry herself to sleep. So she whined and whined "OWIE! MAMA!" and then, very randomly, she leaned forward and in a perfectly happy, chipper voice, said "OH! There's a Home Depot right there!" Then she went back to whining right where she left off.

I couldn't hold it in, I just started laughing, then Ben started laughing. We eventually got to tears, driving down the freeway, unable to control our laughter. We laughed until it hurt, all the way home.

Then Anna got put to bed.

Of Late

What?! I still have a blog? that's crazy... ok, well we  I have been a bit AWOL but I'm sure you aren't heartbroken over it.

We moved! back to Utah. Connecticut didn't work out, so Onward and Upward. We are excited to get back to our house in a few more days, for now we have been at my gracious and wonderful parents house soaking up all their attention.

 This is a picture of Eliza helping, that is a bin full of food storage, 25 lb bag of wheat on top. She's a trooper.

 Here is Eliza borrowing her cousin's trike, safety first of course, she insisted on the helmet.

 This was some fingerpainting we tried, I made it from a recipe I found on pinterest. It wasn't super paint-like. more glob-like. The girls didn't last very long.


We had a great adventure last week, two of my dear cousins and their mom were in town, they wanted to have some adventures with their kids before they both have new babies this summer, so they invited us to go to the Zoo! So, for those keeping track, that was 3 very pregnant moms, with 8 kids under the age of 8 plus an amazing grandma all trying to stay together amidst hundreds of field tripping kids at the zoo. And we didn't lose anyone...for very long.

 Above is Abish and Anna and Ellyn trying to all get on the bronze rhino for a picture.

 This is Anna and Bo and Ellyn all 4 year olds holding hands on the way to the gorillas.

 Ellyn, Abish and Zeb as big as the gorillas.


Also, last week was my birthday! Ben took me out for the night while my parents watched the girls. So I didn't get to blow out my candles, but that's ok, because I have been feasting on birthday cake (angel food with strawberries) all weekend. It's amazing.

Now I'm all caught up. So there.

Bucket List

As our time grows short, I realized there was one thing I definitely wanted to do before I leave the east, and that was to see a part of the Appalachian Trail. If you are unfamiliar, the AT is a hiking trail that runs from Georgia up to Maine, uninterrupted. My introduction to the AT was "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, wherein a middle-aged, out-of-shape travel writer tries to hike the entire trail in one summer. Lots of people actually do this, lots do it in sections, but the point is, it goes all the way up the east! 14 states! So I watched a National Geographic documentary about it a few months ago and it said that half of the US population lives within a day's drive of the trail. So I looked it up and we are only an hour away from the trail and it included a short loop trail of about a mile, too perfect for us, so today, when temperature hit 90, I thought it would be a good late afternoon activity.

So the above pictures are my proof that I saw the Appalachian Trail. The pictures below are the proof that we had to stop for ice cream on the way home.

Eliza got really hot and red on our little walk, so despite my best intentions, she ended up on my shoulders for the second half of our walk. She also drank all the water.

Gas Postulation

Gas prices are going up, there is no doubt about it. The causes are speculated to be many, but a primary one is lack of refineries. We need to refine the oil that comes out of the ground, it is a complicated, dirty process, but it needs to happen. But where would you build a big dirty refinery? I don't think anyone would volunteer to have one in their neighborhood.
But what if the price of gas and other commodities dropped significantly the closer you lived to a refinery? For example, the state that allows a refinery gets gas for half of the average for the rest of the country. (We are conveniently putting aside the geographic needs that a refinery has, like access to a lot of water.) Would  citizens be more willing to have a refinery in the outskirts of their cities if it meant more jobs and cheaper gas? Will it come to that eventually?
We can't wait for green energy to pick up, that's just not happening fast enough. Another option, what about refining the refining process? Making it cleaner with less pollution and waste product? I'm sure people are working on this, but could we amp up the energy put into it?

I found a camera

I found the camera that we got for Christmas, and that we have apparently not uploaded from since. There's not a ton, but maybe a few blog posts to make up for lost time.
First of all, I found that, despite her overwhelming cuteness, I can take terrible pictures of Eliza. These can be used to blackmail her in her teen years.

Ok, that's the end of the disturbing pictures. To redeem her, here is a cute picture:

And this one just made me laugh.

Happy Valentines

Love, Anna and Eliza

Genre Connections

I really like reading memoirs, they are usually interesting and clever and occasionally insightful. I recently realized that memoirs are the reality TV of books. That seems obvious now, allow me to relate how I came to this conclusion.

I was watching TV and I saw an ad for a show called Billy the Exterminator. From what I gathered, it's about an uncouth but extremely daring guy named Billy, who will go after any animal in any part of a house. The ad shows him under porches wrestling with big snakes, in attics battling hoards of bats etc. You can tell he's seen it all, and I sat there thinking, I would never watch this show, but if he wrote a book about his experiences, I would totally read it.

I'm not sure why I would read the book but not watch the show, but then I realized that I recently heard about a book written by a professional dishwasher, Dishwasher Pete. I totally wanted to run out and get this book and learn all about the ins and outs of the dishwashing industry. But what would I gain from this? I won't learn anything particularly useful, probably, at least not for my life, I could read a much more pertinent or at least more educational biography or something. These memoirs are the reality shows of reading, just kind of ridiculous white noise. They feed my curiosity about people.

Anna says

Anna is very verbal, she just talks and talks and talks. So here are a few of the best gems for the ages:

Situation: Outside playing with a friend, friends grandmother offers Anna an apple, but first asks if Anna is allergic to apples
Anna says: No. I'm just allergic to poop.
Skips off.

Situation: I asked Anna if she could be Eliza's babysitter for 10 minutes while I got dressed.
Anna says: Well, she lives with us. And also I don't want to.

Anna says: Remember that party we went to, where someone painted a flower on my cheek?
me: yes, that was fun huh?
Anna says: That was the good old day.

Situation: I hand Anna a sippy cup of milk and ask her to please not spill it on the couch.
Anna says: Your couch?
me: umm, yes. my couch.
Anna says: Well, could you share with Daddy?
me: share the couch with Daddy?
Anna says: Yeah because he needs a couch too.

These are just a sample of hundreds that I cannot and will not remember.

Eliza is still playing the mime. I am ready for her to start talking any time now.

Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls the other day,...well, let's back up a bit

My mother is a cinnamon roll professional, she is not one to brag about herself, but she knows for a fact just how good her cinnamon rolls taste. She takes them to sick neighbors, bake sales, random service and etc. I remember very fondly watching her when I was young, I was mesmerized watching her roll out the dough to a perfect rectangle (bread-tangle) then using a pastry brush (!!! this is the only time I ever remember seeing a pastry brush used) to paint melted butter across the whole thing then dusting it with the perfect combination of brown sugar and cinnamon concoction. She definitely has the whole system down, she can make a batch of cinnamon rolls in no time flat and they always turn out perfect.

I still need more practice, first I need kids old enough to help me eat them all.

I have developed a classification system for cinnamon rolls. There are three basic parts of a cinnamon roll:
The Dough
The Filling
The Frosting

My mom's rolls define the first class, hers rate very high on the Dough scale, it is soft and delicious. I can't even think of the words to describe them, but I definitely eat them for the dough.

The Filling is often the highlight of other cinnamon rolls I have experienced. My cousin Megan (who we stayed with during the snowpocalypse) made some of "Aunt Cherie's Cinnamon Rolls", which were gooey and delicious. They rated very high on the Filling scale. (plus Megan gave me a tip, when you microwave a cinnamon roll, put a bit of butter on it, it melts in and keeps everything moist).

The Frosting, the obvious example here is Cinnabon. They are so coated with a rich and creamy cream cheese frosting, with one look I have to weigh the pluses and minuses of the dental work it will cause me to endure if I eat one.
My mom uses a spare glaze that I am used to and doesn't cause mental toothaches.

In conclusion, what do you prefer? Do you have any additional observations to add?

Sisters (and Cousins) in Texas Trip

I took the girls down to Texas for a quick visit with the fabulous Franciscos. It was so fun to see how big they are and to visit their big new house, I call it Mansion House II. 

The kids enjoyed almost daily dips in their hot tub, and Ben finished building this clothesline hours before we arrived, so I felt we just had to put it to use.

 After weeks and weeks of asking for it, we finally made some candy sushi with fruit roll ups and rice krispies and gummy bugs. So yummy, then we sent the kids outside to run it off.

One of our grandest adventures was visiting the SAS factory, it's very old-timey with old cars and a general store that sells popcorn for 15 cents and cokes for 10 cents. They also had a penny candy section, where you can fill a bag for $2 with anything you can reach. The kids loved it, I thought it was pretty fun too.

 This was an old toy car inside, the kids climbed in to check it out.

Other, undocumented highlights include:

Pocahontas

Downton Abbey

Desserts, Desserts, Desserts

Skippyjon Jones

Literal Videos on YouTube

Swings

Trying to go places that are closed

Thanks Franciscos! We miss you a lot.

Anna photography

Anna took all these pictures of her sister while I was in the other room.

I'm glad someone is taking pictures of Eliza.

Christmas Gingerbread House

I just finished cleaning up after making our Christmas Candy House (2011)! Our neighbor friends showed up at the door just as I was getting the roof on and Anna was arranging the candy. So they helped us decorate, it was a little nerve wracking for me as the first thing they did was push licorice ropes into the roof seams that were still a little tender, but I'm glad they were there.

 Our Mission Statement was "More is More"

 Actually the 4 year old had a very classy minimalist thing going. Totally put me to shame. I have gaudy taste in candy houses.

FAQs:
Q: Is that a kit?
A: No it is not. For the first time ever, I designed and built a fancier-type gingerbread house based on one I found in a book. I made the dough, cut it out, baked it and built it with my own two little sticky hands. It is about one foot tall and 14 inches long. None of the angles meet and there is a wall awkwardly sticking out in the front.

Q: How long did that take?
A: 3 days? One for making dough and designing, one for baking, one for assembly and decorating.

Q: What about the icing?
A: I made the icing, that is primarily what made my hands sticky. I do not like the recipe I used. I wish I could remember what recipe I used for our Halloween house, it worked much better. This house used all of 2 batches of icing.

Q: Did you make the candy too, smarty pants?
A: I did not make the candy, but I did take my 2 kids to the grocery store in the middle of the day to buy candy, which is never really a good idea. Eliza had a death grip on the M&M bag.

Q: Is that a mirror?
A: Yes, I put the whole thing on a mirror because I couldn't find a board strong enough but light-weight enough to hold it. I think it looks nice.

Q: What's with the windows?
A: If you crush up some hard candies (jolly ranchers) then put them in the window cut outs with 5 minutes left to bake, they will melt down and make some killer colored windows. I think this is the coolest part, and the part I was most worried about, but it was no problem.

 So, that's the deal. Fun times!

Thanksgiving Cinderella

For a special Thanksgiving treat Gramma and Aunt Rachel arranged for Cinderella to meet Anna before dinner. Here are the best pics, courtesy Aunt Rachel

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Screaming baby? love it. This is very similar to how her visit with Santa went.

As Seen On TV

 The following is an example of my hair dream and hair reality as depicted by bygone cartoon characters.

Hair Dream

Hair Reality

Secrets

So Friday night I took Anna to a Relief Society night, she played with some older girls while I oversaw the quilting project. At the end of the night I collected my children. Anna kept conscientiously pulling her skirt over her knee and saying "oh that's a secret". I pretty much figured that she fell down and ripped a hole in her tights but I was ok with it. So I told her she didn't need to keep it a secret because I wasn't mad. Well she was outrageously upset that I figured out her secret (she was an hour past her bedtime). She just desperately wanted me to not know her secret.

On Sunday, Eliza was sick so Ben took Anna to church. She was apparently very good in sacrament meeting, so Ben praised her for that and said "I want to tell Mommy how good you were" and she said "No! let's keep it a secret" Ben asked why, and she said, "Because I need to have secrets from Mommy."
Of course, Ben told me this, but it's ok. Anna still thinks it's a secret.

Halloween and Thad's visit

Halloween - October 31st.

Thad's visit - October 29th.
Largest, earliest snowstorm to hit Connecticut, like, ever - October 29th

We lost power at about 3:30 on Saturday the 29th, we stayed in through the night as the snow fell. We all slept together in the girl's room to keep it nice and toasty. In the morning we had 12-18" of snow and we heard that it would take probably a week to get the power back on. Basically the whole state, plus parts of surrounding states were without power. So we packed up and headed out the door. We didn't have great phone reception (more than a few cell towers had been damaged) and the roads were extremely treacherous with downed power lines and trees all over the place. We made it to the highway with less than 1/2 tank of gas. We tried to stop and get gas a few times but the cars were lined up or the stations were just plain out of gas. Once we made it out of CT and closer into Boston we found some gas and food.

I called my amazing and gracious Cousin Megan to see if we could take refuge at their house outside of Boston and she offered before I could even ask. She and her whole family were amazing and so much fun to hang out with. She also happened to have a 4 year old son - doesn't get better than that.

On Monday we hooked up with Thad, who was staying with our friend in Cambridge. We played at the house all day then Anna finally got to go Trick or Treating. This was her first time and she was great at it; not at all shy or timid, and also very polite. I took her for half the time, then Thad took her while I took a cold Eliza Unicorn inside.

So pretty much the whole week we had a little vacation. Ben worked from his computer at Megan's or took the day off to play. We went to the Museum of Science in Boston - It had some awesome exhibits. At one table you could make a bobsled out of the materials they provided, the goal was to either have the fastest or the slowest bobsled and Anna's was the slowest. It took 14 seconds to go down a 3 foot ramp. So we got to put her name up on the leader board. (she was competing against all the high school kids there on a field trip). Thad and I and the girls went to Plimouth  Plantation, which was pretty fun, except for the 2,000 field trippers chasing the chickens around. We just hung out until 2:00 when we knew they had to leave.

All the while we were checking the online map of Connecticut outages. It was bleak. Our town consistently had the highest percentage of customers without power. It was hard watch as it just didn't improve for the first 5-6 days. The original goal was to have power back on for 99% of the state by Sunday night, we were still above 50% that night. So they pushed the timeline back to Monday, then Wednesday.

We also spent a few days with Gramma Lynne who also lives near Boston. At the end of the week she went on vacation and let us take over her condo for a few nights, we were so grateful for that. We got to play with Aunt Rachel, playing Candyland and doing some paintings.

We planned to stay until Tuesday morning then head back. On our drive in we got the call from our neighbors that the power was restored at 3:30 that morning. Most of the trees in our complex were missing a few branches, it looks very different.