Conglomeration

So many fun, random things happened this week and I don't even know if I have a picture to go along with any of them. (Guess I found one!) I don't know why Mira's birthday pics got messed up, I'll have to work on that.

Last week we watched General Conference in our living room on our computer. We set up a tent and brought our pillows and blankets in. Then we had a bowl of candy to be eaten each time the speaker said a designated word. First we chose "teacher" and "Jesus"--- that got a few candies in the first few talks, then Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle was speaking and Calvin, wanting another candy, got right in front of the computer, touched it with his finger and told Elder Holland in his little 4 year old voice "say teacher, say teacher." (Alas, Elder Holland didn't hear him) It was quite the game and kept them captivated, especially when one speaker said "teacher" over 30 times! By the afternoon session, when Sean and Mira were napping and Calvin and I were watching, Calvin was repeating whatever the last word or phrase that was said and stated "that is our word" and then dutifully gave himself and me a piece of candy. Needless to say- the bowl was empty by the end of the day.

Last week Calvin spelled his first word! He was looking out our window, he started reading a sign on our lawn. "C-O-O-N"--- it was so funny and ironic that it was Dwight Coon's (a local politician- I may have a future post more about him later) name.

I got to sign to my mom & dad over Skype! Blessed, blessed Skype. My dad had never used it before and I wrote out directions, not knowing if it would work-- lo and behold we miraculously connected just by chance and I tell ya, I was on cloud nine, grinning ear to ear---- I've never quite had the experience of picking up a phone and just talking to my mom and dad. It has always been through an interpreter of some sort. But with Skype, our webcams connected and we could sign back and forth like we were in the same room! Now we're talking 3 times a week! It has been SO fun. Just another blessing of technology.

Some highlights about General Conference- I really like the Prophet's talk about gratitude. The story he shared was about a family who didn't have electricity but scrimped and saved to be able to install lights. One night as the family was sitting to dinner, the children started complaining about the meal on the table. The father, got up, went to the attic and got the old oil lamp they used before the electricity was installed. He turned off all the lights and put the lamp on the table. The whole family was amazed at how they ever saw anything before with this dim light....and they felt more gratitude about all of their blessings. That is how I feel- just grateful, grateful, grateful.

Grateful that the sun shines and we have the seasons change regularly with no help from us.

Grateful that we have comfy beds and a warm home.

Grateful that we are loved and have ones to love.

Grateful that we have laundry to wash, because it means we have clothes to wear.

....and many, many, many, many, many, many more.

I find that when I am grateful- I want less.

We could all benefit from a lot less want and a lot more thanks.

*Mira started saying her name this week: "Mi-a"- it is so cute and squeaky. She is saying a lot of cute things- too many to remember.

*Just to document this part of our lives- she has also entered full blown toddler tantrum phase. There have been moments that I don't know who replaced my sweet widdle girl with this 24 lb, roaring, raging monster....but thankfully it passes... and my girly comes back. I'll just say this- if she doesn't want to get into her carseat, good luck trying her because its surprising how STRONG a 2 year old can be!

* Calvin told our music leader at church today after we sang "Give Said the Little Stream" that his dad sings that at night to him. I felt a warm, proud mommy moment.

* I dyed my hair dark brown! (hence the picture)

(...and if you want to know anything about the respiratory system, including alveoli, oxygen levels and partial pressures- I'm the girl to ask because I've been studying like crazy!- the goal is to get into the Dental Hygiene program, starting Fall 2011 and finishing June 2013- I've given a lot of prayer and thought to this and know it is the right thing, right now, for us. I never thought I'd be in school while my kids are so young...but here we are...going... one step at a time. I've felt the incredible power of Prayer and answers to prayers. And I know it will all work out. {A blessing and a trial together.} Happy prayers to you, whatever they may be.)

Happy 8th Anniversary

Sean and I recently celebrated our 8th anniversary- whoo hoo! We're definitely not young'uns any more, but I don't feel much older than when we were newlyweds.

On our first anniversary we went to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest to support my German obsession. Sean posed in front of the May Pole (der Maibaum) for me

Happy Anniversary honey!!!

And Then She was TWO!

Another year has come and gone and my baby is now a whopping 2 years! I love this month-by-month collage that documents her growth along the way.

Here she is sporting her birthday crown (I left the sequin "2" off because it took her about 10 seconds to rip the "4" off Calvin's crown last month. Sigh.)

Rocking it out with AC/DC and heels to boot. This girl is going places!

Some of Mira's favorites/stats:

• My purse. She loves to pull it down, dig into it and then when I tell her not to- ask "why?" in the sweetest little girl voice.
• Lately she has been sleeping on a twin size mattress on the floor, one of her favorite things is to sneak out of bed, grab a book and race back to lay down and read it. It is so cute it is hard to be mad about.
• I think I already mentioned before how good she is at getting lids off bottles, drawers open, etc!
• She is so tender-hearted it melts my heart. If I ever get mad at her, she just cries with hurt feelings and I immediately apologize and give her a hug.
• She is the funnest baby to put down for a nap- 2 minutes in the rocking chair and her placid, baby face is in la-la land. Love it.
• She will let me fix her hair, but is pretty good at pulling it out too. Especially if we're driving in the car and she is bored. She's been known to have a clump of baby hair in her fist along with the uprooted rubberband! So--- sometimes we just don't fix her hair. Its all abou the au-naturale baby look (except clothed)
• She is very good at her animal sounds and identification. Moo, ruff and meow are her three favorite.
• She is a good eater! Often we'll give the kids a toned down version of what we're eating, and then she'll usually commandeer one of our bowls- veggies, meat, spices and all! I've called her my "spicy girl" since my pregnancy because I craved spicy foods with her and she will eat spicy foods too. I've put Sriracha (red pepper sauce) on this girl's eggs and she won't bat an eye. Pepperjack cheese? More please. Salsa? Yes-a Mama. Black pepper? The more the better. Like I said: Spicy Girl.
• 'Mira' means 'to look' (verb) in Spanish so I guess that means she's a looker too! My funniest story about this is when we were at a park and there were a few Hispanic families having parties at the same time. One little kid was on the playground near Mira, which was across the bridge from me. I saw a dog and wanted to point it out to Mira so I yelled, "Mira! Mira! Look! Look! A doggie!" (she calls them "goggies") And the kid who was about 3-4 years old looked at me and said, "huh?" And I realized that to him I had just said "look" 4 times, in two different languages. It cracked me up. I guess it would be kind of weird if someone named their kid "Look" But "Mira" just fits her (plus I had no choice, she told me her name in a dream)
• She is a very curious and happy girl.
• At the playground, she LOVES the swing. Always has. She could swing for 30 minutes straight and not ask to get down. Lately she keeps telling me- "Higher Mommy!"
• Her language skills are awesome. About 2-3 months ago she started stringing together 5 word sentences: "Can I Calvin's shirt please?" Sean and I would stop and look at eachother and count the words on our hands and just stare in amazement.
• She keeps up with the crowd. Very important with a go-getter older brother. Often she makes up activities that he imitates because she is so cute and creative. She's got dance moves that would make Elvis jealous!

We love our little Mir-Mir!!!!

Be Baked Bread

A few years ago I started baking bread with my friend Valerie and she introduced me to the amazing Bosch mixer where you can make 5 loaves of bread at once and NEVER have to knead it once. The mixer does all of the work. It is simply amazing. This started from me going to her house frequently and baking bread with our babies in backpacks or playing on the floor.


Then one day my sister's fiance found the steal.of.the.century. A Bosch mixer, in perfect working condition, at Deseret Industries for....12 dollars. I don't think this deal has ever before or since been heard of. Mind you these things sell for $400 brand new! Soon I was happily mixing up my own batches of whole wheat bread with store bought flour or borrowing friends' grinders.


Not so anymore with the acquisition of this bad boy! After much research, this tiny little miracle is deceptively simple. It has a part that attaches directly onto my Bosch motor (I have to lay the motor on its side) and then grinds away fresh milled flour. Then if I found after starting the dough that I don't have enough flour- no problem! I just whip this grinder back on and throw some more wheat in the hopper. Very cool. Its called Family Grain Mill and its made in Germany which sealed the deal for me.

One of my family's recent favorites has been cinnamon bread- cinnamon, sugar, butter...you can't go wrong.

The above left loaf is onion & herb. Sunflower seed bread has also been really yummy. I've also been experimenting with soaking the flour before I mix in all the ingredients and use the recipe found here. It is identical to the basic Bosch whole wheat bread recipe except you soak the flour in an acid the night before. Let me know what you think if you give it a try.

Modern homemakers unite!

A Crowning Event!

Dear Calvin: Happy Birthday!

You are now 4. You are a big boy. You used to show how old you were with 3 fingers, now you are an expert at showing it with 4 fingers. You have not been shy about telling people when your birthday was and how old you were turning. You even struck up a conversation with the fabric cutter when we bought your crown material and told her this. By the way you chose the lizard material on the inside of your crown. Your mom found the pattern to this cute keepsake here.

She, always has and always will love your beaming smile and bright, blue eyes.


Here are a few factoids about your life right now:

• Your stated favorite food is bacon and shrimp. This is after your aunt Nedda fed you such food and you then denounced broccoli as your favorite food and replaced with this number.
• A few times I have caught you reading Calvin and Hobbes. You weren't named after that Calvin but you are remarkably similar to him :) You love to prowl around on all fours like you ARE a tiger and are quite good at it. Fast too.

• One of the gifts your mom and dad got your for your birthday was Woody and Buzz bed sheets. You love Woody and Buzz.

• Your favorite toy is a sword. You are always watching out for bad guys. Often we are supposed to be the bad guys while you are Spiderman or Batman or Robin with his boomer-hang, or a Knight saving the Princess from the Dragon. You always know which pants and shorts have a sword pocket to put the sword into, and if that fails, it can always tuck in the neck of your shirt. Once, when you made a noodle necklace, you were delighted to discover that it also could be used to hold your sword.
• 
• You love to run in the sand and play at the beach with such an enthusiasm that it is a delight to watch your play at work.

• Once you ate 2 bites out of a bunch of strawberries and then lined them up neatly along the table as you ate them.

• In Primary at church, you are very good at answering questions and are always eager to participate. You know that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and that we can be baptized when we are 8 years old, among many other things.

This is but a small sampling of your current life, but oh we love you SO much and always will!!!

Sometimes I think of blog posts while I'm driving in my car.

Things I need to update to the blog-o-sphere.

Like how I finally got a wheat grinder and am loving it. Or the smorgasbord of random art projects we've been doing (toilet paper roll art, fabric birthday crowns). Or how Calvin, if you add "I'll beat you!" to anything, will race as fast as he can to do whatever he didn't want to 2 seconds ago. (it works like magic) Or how Mira, much to my amazement, clearly said "chocolate cereal" the other day while point to the box above the fridge. Or how she can resourcefully pull out a bottom kitchen drawer to stand on its ledge and get up to the counter or a higher drawer, all with a little cheesy/mischievous grin on her face. So this is the best I can do for now, at 11:42 pm on a Wednesday night, with a Chemistry final in the morning. Wish me luck.

Mira at the beach

-and Calvin getting ready for church

Chairs & Table a la paint!

For those of you who saw this on facebook, forgive the repeat. But I wanted to show my dining set transformation!!!!! This is a solid wood dining table and chairs we graciously received 3 years ago but I wasn't quite sure how to make it match my style....the following pictures show the transformation.

First there was A LOT of sanding. The top had varnish and a wood-grain layer that needed to be thoroughly sanded off.

Next I experimented with different layers of paint, first primer, then yellow, then bits of white and gray on top of the yellow. The yellow I mixed myself by buying inexpensive Rustoleum pints of paint and then getting it to a color a liked. I used oil paint which is stinky and a royal pain to clean out of your brush but it is worth it because it dries verrrrrrrrry hard.

In the meantime I started hand scuffing the chairs after unscrewing the chair bottoms. The chairs were all sprayed with primer and then hand painted with a nice thick coat of solid gray.

I love this fabric!!!! After having well loved (read: stained) cotton chair bottoms, I was ready for something much more durable. Enter the best thing on the planet: LAMINATED COTTON. Fun prints. Thinner than oil cloth. Wipes off like a dream. Run to fabric.com to get some. No food is too penetrating for this bad boy. It all wipes off lickety-split. Did I mention that I love this? And, Hello?! It's Amy Butler!

After I did all of my yellow and white layers, I put a coat of gray over the table top, and darker gray on the legs. The top has flecks of colors poking through and the legs are solid. The nice thing is, now with the paint, I was able to appreciate the woods detail features, such as this, more.

The backs of the 6 chairs took quite a while to paint. Every time I looked at them at a new angle I'd find a spot I missed. If you turned them upside down you'd probably find some more spots. But as it is they look pretty good.

Voila`!

My ($17!) New Best Friend

Can I just tell you that for a good 2 months of my life, my freetime and mental space was filled with what kind of vacuum to buy?

This is an important decision. Second to deciding who to marry!

The saga starts here: My 4 year old vacuum has not been holding up too well. It does the big jobs but what I really needed was a quicky vacuum I could boogey with every day. You see- my kitchen is carpeted. And I have 2 small children who get food on the floor after every meal. Cheerios. Rice. Pasta. Orange bits. Apple bits. Bread crusts/crumbs. My trusty previous friend was not holding up to the daily drama.

Had I done this post earlier, I would have put up a poll asking everyone's opinion. Such was the quandary I was in.

First I needed convenience. I steered over to the cordless, rechargeable vacuums. Shark was first on the list. It was portable but required charging time after every use. Plus it's full size head might not fit under my counters well or inbetween my pedestal table legs. Did I really want to spend $70 on a so-so product?

While I was looking at cordless, this little Electrolux number caught my eye one day at Target. I loved its modern orange color and sleek design. If it did the job I was willing to pay the $100. I coveted this.

On a side note, part of my research included online reviews (which weren't helpful) and browsing at Costco, Target and Walmart every time I went in. I became quite the vacuum nerd.

My husband brought up the point that perhaps we just wanted a $60 regular vacuum that we can run into the ground. I was all for that idea until I saw how large their base-heads were. No way those would fit into my little crevices. No way I would want to lug that beast out 2-3 times a day either. Let alone daily.

But what about bagless? I wouldn't have to buy any more bags and could dump the junk into the garbage. I had heard about how dirty those were.."it releases the dirt!" mainly from Oreck infomercials whose bags trap that dirt. Speaking of Oreck maybe that was the vacuum for me. Costco was carrying one that had a mini shoulder vacuum plus the full sized plus a year's supply of bags! $200-300 later and I would be all set. Or would I? I briefly considered that option. I even looked into restaurant grade "hokeys"- all mechanical, not electrical at all. They didn't hold my attention for long.

Then on one late evening when the whole house was asleep and I needed something from Wal-Mart (the only store open) I perused the vacuum section yet again at 10:30 pm. I searched high. I searched low. I studied every specimen. And then I found...THE ONE We fell in love. My beautiful, blue, corded Eureka stick vacuum. $17 later and the rest is history. It is a match made in heaven (as long I don't vacuum up popcorn). Two months later and it is still a thriving relationship. I didn't believe it could be true- the cheapest was the best?! But it is everything I need: lightweight, small head to maneuver between small spaces, corded so I never have to recharge it, disposable cup that easily dumps out. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Happy SIGH.

Now my next research item is finding the perfect pet for our family. I feel like we need to be on one of those shows with an expert. This one could take a while. I'm not in any hurry. It could be a year, but mainly I'm interested in good dog breeds that do well with small children and are a right fit for our family. The search is ON!

Going Local

(not loco!)

I don't know if it has been the increase in media attention or my own personal feelings or both but in the last year I have made more changes in where we get our food than in the previous 8 years I've lived here.

My first step was buying beef and pork locally. Last September I went to a fruit stand that had grass fed beef and fresh pork. Turns out the actual farm was just down the road. I called the number and voila! I soon had Kirk"the-meat-man" to buy from. I love how fresh it is and the prices are comparable to Winco meat! The beef is incredibly lean and justs tastes healthier. I have yet to find quality chicken at a price I love...still working on that one.

The next two steps have occurred in the last week. I just found fresh milk from a farm that is very close to my house. I have never been a milk drinker but I must say this milk is absolutely DELICIOUS. Paula, my new milk woman, talked about how it will stay good for 3 weeks and she has had customers tell her they have to work at souring the milk if they are trying to make buttermilk etc. It has all of the original enzymes and the cream- which I need to figure out how to skim and make butter or something (...baby steps..) Mira loves it too. She totes around a little bottle drinking it which is pretty adorable. Calvin isn't used to drinking milk so I offer him a small glass at every meal to warm him up to the idea. What can I say- I trained my kids to love water. As of right now we have a giant glass jar- looks like one of those deli pickle jars- filled with milk in the back of our fridge. Come on over and try a glass!

Finally, I joined a farm CSA (community supported agriculture) where we'll get fresh vegetables every week. I like the one I joined because they let you pick which vegetables you want instead of just making up a box for you. For those of you who have never heard of this- here is how it works. I pay a membership fee for the summer. I chose a small share which allots me 6 vegetables a week. A pound of carrots or bundle of chard will count as a vegetable. Their season lasts from June-October. It will even out to about $15 a week. We will still buy some fruit but as far as veggies this will be it. I was so excited to eat the radish and chard today. My kids loved the fresh carrots too. I think this will get our family to eat more veggies. I feel good about the quality of them too.

I'm experimenting with some other things like soaking my grains before I cook them. It is all a process. Some of these things I've been thinking about for a while but never had the know-how/guts/perceived funds to move forward.

One more thing: I forgot to add that I'm getting eggs from my sis-in-law's (hereby known as Lindsay) co-worker. They are fresh, they are free range and they are delicious. They vary in size (some are huge!) and color (white or brown) and are $3 a dozen. We go through a good 2 dozen a week. Egg-central!

If any of you are interested in my contacts I'd be happy to share them.

Happy vegging!

Show and Tell

Hey everybody!

How've you been?

We've just been hanging around.

Carving Bob-the-Builder pumpkins.

Wrestling each other in spy glasses.

Dollin' it up at gymnastic class.

Hammin' it up on our bikes.

Or reading a book with Dad.

Ya know, the usual.

The holidays passed by way too fast.

This is what we ate at Thanksgiving. Jealous? It was delicioso.

This is our family Halloween pic. As you can see we all coordinated for the event (not). But we had a lot of fun. Calvin still wears his cowboy vest all the time.

The kids are great friends. They can be seen conspiring in a number of things as shown here. Climbing into the dog's bed, playing walking-the-dog, busting into the apple chips. Again, the usual. Not shown is a picture of them both sitting in cooking pots. One of their favorite pre-dinner activities.

Christmas was cold and fun in Idaho and Utah. Too many fun memories to pick just one. We got to see all of our families and had a wonderful time. And we had clear roads the whole time!

SO-- Happy 2010!!!!