Merry Christmas

Well it's about time I finally post some season's greetings now that it's New Year's Eve and we're about done with them. I hope you have all had a happy Thanksgiving, a merry Christmas, and that your New Year will be wonderful. Mine have been filled with family and friends and have been great. The picture above is from one of my favorite things I did this Christmas season. Some of you may not know that my friends Mary Ann, Megan, and I go around every month and sing at about four different nursing homes, and we have been doing it for about 3 1/2 years. Our Christmas programs are always our favorites to do, and this year we decided to spice it up a little by making carolers' costumes a la Charles Dickens to wear. Aside from the fact that none of us are the greatest sewers and that the costumes took about three times as long as we expected to make, I think they turned out rather well, and we got a great response to them everywhere we went*. We really love to sing to these sweet people. They are always so appreciative and gracious, and they really made it feel like Christmas to me.
We also had our annual "L.L. Bean Christmas Party" so named for the traditional, cheesy Christmas goodness we try to recreate for our party. Everyone is supposed to wear a festive sweater and we do Christmassy stuff like decorating sugar cookies, having a white elephant gift exchange, and usually playing Christmas carols on chimes, but we ran out of time for that last one this year because of a marathon game of Curses. Seriously, we only had about five cards left before we decided to stop, we had been playing it so long. I love that game. So much more has happened, but my brain is feeling very dull right now and I won't subject you to its ramblings. Happy New Year!

*O.k., so we didn't get a great response to our costumes everywhere we went. All the nursing homes liked them, but when we wore them and went to Kneaders with Mary Ann's husband, we got a couple of strange looks and later when we were sitting around the table with our bonnets and capes off, we realized we looked like a bunch of polygamists. We laughed pretty hard about it and called each other "wife one," "wife two," etc. for the rest of the time we were there. Tee hee.

Short

Sorry this is kind of a short, lame, post, but I've had a lot of requests, especially from Peter's family, for my oatmeal pancake recipe. This is just to say that I've posted it and my recipe for buttermilk syrup on my recipe blog. Happy pancaking!

Happy Halloween

Last Halloween Jonathan was a little tiny pumpkin that was just learning to smile. This year he was a gun-toting, candy-begging cowboy. We found a perfectly sized cowboy hat for him at Savers along with a button-up shirt. After a good cleaning and adding gun holster, jeans, and a bandanna, his costume was set. Peter and I were invited to a sweet "paparazzi" Halloween party where everyone had to come dressed either as a celebrity or a movie character. Peter was Yul Brynner in the King and I, and I was Audrey Hepburn. Here's the picture:



The party was so fun with a photo scavenger hunt, a game of "The Price is Right" on DVD (which confirmed my suspicions that I would be no good at that game show), way too much candy, and a great group of people.
For our ward party, Jonathan was also a cowboy, and Peter made a shirt with the Mr. Clean logo on it, "Bic-ed" his head, and made fake muscles to go under the shirt. I wanted something that would go with Mr. Clean so I went as a haggard housewife, complete with messed-up hair under a scarf, a mu mu, slippers, and a mop. We don't have pictures of that one, so I'll have to post them later once I get my hands on some.
The day after Halloween we went to another fun party. Peter and Jonathan reprised their Yul Brynner and cowboy costumes, but this time I dressed as Hermione from Harry Potter. It was fun--especially the pumpkin bowling in the kitchen. I'm still amazed their kitchen cabinets survived my terrible aim.
Jonathan had way too much sugar this Halloween. If there are cupcakes or candy in his sight, it's so hard to get him to eat anything else. At the Halloween party he kept grabbing candy out of the candy bowl and bringing it to me in hopes that I'd unwrap it and feed him some. Fortunately, he doesn't know how big a candy bar is supposed to be, so I could sometimes trick him by just giving him the tiniest corner and then eating the rest myself. Yes, I was willing to triple my recommended daily caloric intake to save my son from too much sugar. Selfless of me, I know.
All in all, it was a great Halloween. How could it not be with three parties?! I hope you all had a great one too!

Introducing. . .

. . .my new baking blog, Baking Becca. Just so you know, this is not because I consider myself an amazing cook or anything, I just really love to bake, I have some really great recipes that I have inherited from family members who really are amazing cooks, and because I think people can learn as much from my kitchen disasters as they can from the kitchen triumphs that abound in other cooking and baking blogs. Also I wanted to use that cute cupcake background that I found on the same site where I found this background. Go ahead and give it a look. Enjoy!

First Birthday

Since Jonathan is taking a really long nap, I have time to post! Yay! We had his first birthday celebration last week, and it completely blows my mind that he's been with us for an entire year. I can't believe so much has happened since last September because the time has gone so quickly. To celebrate I made him his own cake, which he wasn't sure about at first. After some patting it and testing it with his fingers, he began to squash it all over his tray and then fling his hands around which meant cake bits got all over the bookcase, the floor (even the parts we hadn't covered with plastic), the trashcan, the chair, etc. Here's a picture of the aftermath:

After that we had to bathe him before he could open presents. We probably should have thought of that before hand and had him do presents first.


He then got to open presents.

And what baby doesn't like playing with the box more than the actual present?

We had fun even though it is a little bitter-sweet that my baby is growing up so fast!

Letterboxing

O.k, so maybe I'm kind of a nerd but Peter and I have become hooked on something called letterboxing. I found out about it through a magazine article a while ago, and since then we have been hunting down letterboxes both close to home and while on vacation. Basically, letterboxing is kind of like treasure hunting. It started in England and then came over to the U.S. and kind of morphed into what it is now. You find clues to get to a letterbox on the Internet (I usually use http://www.letterboxing.org) and you follow those clues to a hidden box. In the box is a notebook and a stamp which is usually hand carved. You also should have your own stamp (preferably hand carved but it can be store-bought) and a notebook. You then stamp the box's stamp into your book and your stamp into the box's book. It's pretty fun, especially when you find a box someplace that you've unknowingly walked past dozens of times. Peter and I like to do it as a family home evening activity.
On Monday we finally planted a box ourselves up a canyon that we like (naturally I can't say exactly where or I'd have to kill you). It was a fun adventure. Here are some pictures to document the fact that I do get out once in a while:

Here is Adventurer Peter. He is excited to be wearing a purple baby carrier.


Adventurer Jonathan finds nature very relaxing.


Adventurer Becca making use of a thinking log.


Adventurers Jonathan and Becca at the entrance to a sweet mine up the canyon. Unfortunately, Adventurer Becca is a bit of a pansy when it comes to dark underground places and wouldn't stay in the mine long enough to get a picture actually in it.


Adventurer Peter is much braver and didn't mind being inside the mine. It really is him, even if he just looks like a floating t-shirt.


So there it is. Good times. Great oldies.

I Like July

Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays. I'm a sucker for parades and barbecues, and it was fun to share it with Jonathan this year. We hosted my parents for breakfast and then found a great spot to watch the parade with the shade of a big tree and some very nice clouds. Jonathan got increasingly serious as the parade wore on. I'm sure it was because he was contemplating the meaning of the day. Here he is all happy at the beginning:


And feeling really cool wearing Peter's hat:

With his flag shortly before he ripped it off of its stick and I had to take it away:

And finally, watching a big balloon very seriously. Doesn't his profile look kind of like something from a Peanuts comic strip?

It was lots of fun. He also started to officially crawl at a barbecue at Grandpa and Nana's house that day, and today he learned to clap. This is such a fun age--he seems to learn something new almost every day. How amazing to see it all happen!

Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime?

Argh, I've done it again. I've let too much time pass between posts. Since my last post I went to St. Louis to visit my sister and her cute family (and had the best frozen custard of my life at Ted Drewes), Jonathan has increased his tooth count to four, and I shaved off Peter's hair (with his permission, of course). I could easily write three good-sized posts about these topics, but it's late and I want to finish watching "Dan in Real Life" with Peter. So instead, I'll tell you about my plans for this summer. I've been inspired by a girl in my ward who has decided to make this summer the "Summer of Megan" and do all the fun things you always wish you had done when summer is over, so I'm doing something similar. Having borrowed heavily from the primary song, "Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime," here is my list of what I want to do this summer:
1. Lazily dream on a bank as the clouds roll by.
2. Swim in a pool to keep myself cool.
3. Swing in a tree up high.
4. Watch a parade.
5. Drink lots of lemonade.
6. Star gaze.
7. Make s'mores.
8. Host a barbeque.
9. Make homemade ice cream.
10. Go camping.
Kind of pathetic how many of those involve food, huh? Now I'll have a little more pressure to do what I'm saying I'll do, since I'm now accountable to whoever reads this.
Well, since I still have a little more time to write since Peter's studying, I'll do a quick Reader's Digest condensed version of all the topics I mentioned earlier. My sister Rachel is the closest in age to me and we have been best friends since I was born. She has two adorable boys, a very smart doctor-husband, and three huge-but-sweet dogs. We had a lot of fun visiting them and enjoying the many incredible attractions around St. Louis, many of which were free like the St. Louis zoo. One of those attractions was Ted Drewes where they don't even write down your order no matter how complicated and still manage to get it right and get it to you quickly. I would have made the words "Ted Drewes" in that previous sentence a link to their web page, but I don't know how. Anyway, they have phenomenal frozen custard. I got a "Christy" which was a brownie, custard, and hot fudge sauce. Yum. Peter and I also got to go to Nauvoo for a day and we got some pictures of where our ancestors used to live. Here's Peter's great-great, etc. grandmother's cabin:

And here are two lots that my great-great etc. grandfather lived on. On my right is the one he owned, and on my left is one where he was a tenant for a while:

Jonathan just keeps amazing me at how fast he can change in just eight months. He has four teeth, still isn't crawling but is really good at scooting and rolling to where he wants to go, and has learned to roll a soccer ball off of his lap towards anyone sitting in front of him.

Peter finally got tired of his thinning hair, so we buzzed it on Friday night. I think he looks quite dashing. (And no, he doesn't usually smile like this.)

Well that's it. I just remembered I haven't mentioned our bathroom remodel, but I'll do that another time. Happy summer, everyone!

Green-ish

“We recommend to all people that there be no undue pollution, that the land be taken care of and kept clean to be productive and to be beautiful”
--Spencer W. Kimball (Ensign, May 1975).

Happy Earth Day! So for a while now I've been eyeing the canvas bags in grocery stores that you can buy and use instead of paper or plastic, reading articles about cleaning your home the "green" way, etc. and thinking I really should start doing that sometime. Well, Earth Day and my friend Heidi inspired me and I finally took the green plunge. Yesterday while out grocery shopping I bought two lovely reusable canvas bags which they then loaded my groceries in. As you can see, Jonathan is very proud of me. Then today I cleaned my bathroom using only white vinegar, baking soda, and lemons. Here's the low down on how well that worked:

Vinegar: Despite the fact that this made it smell like I had been dying Easter eggs in my bathroom, this was my favorite cleaning supply of the day. I put a little on a cloth and wiped down the mirror then followed with a dry cloth and it worked beautifully! I used vinegar and water to clean the sink, vanity, toilet, and floor and it seemed to do just as good a job as the usual products I use. In the shower the vinegar seemed to do a slightly better job at dissolving the hard water deposits than my usual stuff. The smell even wore off as it dried so now there's only the slightest smell of vinegar in my house which could actually be coming from the cleaning rags in the laundry closet.

Baking Soda: Thumbs up for this one as a way to remove soap skum and hard water from the shower floor, although it did take a little extra elbow grease to do it. I just need a new box of baking soda now.

Lemons: These were supposed to do a good job at removing hard water deposits, and they did on the sink faucet, but the shower walls didn't show much improvement so I had to bring in the vinegar. They sure did smell good, though, and later I was able to run the peels through my disposal to make it smell nice. :)

The finished product:

So I know I'm still just light green, having just done these two small changes to be more eco-friendly. I still have a ways to go before I'm on par with, say, my parents who drive a hybrid, recycle most of their trash and compost a good portion of the rest (honesty, you'd think they were democrats), but at least it's something. And maybe next year I'll be brave enough to switch to cloth diapers. Maybe.

Kindergarten Day

I love random holidays. I stumbled across a site that lists all kinds of weird holidays back when I was teaching junior high, and I filled up my calender with them. Lately, though, I've been out of the habit of observing these holidays, which is a shame because they give you a reason to celebrate almost every day. So today I decided to start up again with Kindergarten Day. Because I love any reason to eat macaroni and cheese, dinner became a conglomeration of all the foods typically eaten by a kindergartner. We had mac and cheese with hot dogs cut up and mixed in, carrot sticks and apple slices with peanut butter, and little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (with crusts cut off, of course).

Here are my boys with Peter's meal (which Jonathan was deeply coveting):

Sorry, Jonathan, just some mashed up banana for dinner for you. Peter is such a good sport about all my weirdness. He ate everything without once complaining that it wasn't the most filling meal for a 6'2" man, bless him. Happy Kindergarten Day!

Bookmarked

Yay! I've been tagged by Ruth. I love books and reading, so this one's a good one for me. Here's what I'm supposed to do:
1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages)
2. Turn to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog
5. Tag 5 people

The book nearest me is one I just finished, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. What a beautiful book. Anyway, here's my sentence:

"If Marmee had begged Jo to go cut off her hair and sell it," Swede hypothesized, "I wonder how heroic a thing it would have been."

The context is the protagonist's little sister is trying to convince him to use some money he's just earned to buy food instead of to buy a canoe he really wants by referencing Little Women, another great book. So there you have it. I now tag New York Lindsay, Charmain, Beth, Christian, and Heidi.

Touchdown for the Tender Mercies

(Thanks to Katie for the title.) You know that the Lord is looking out for you when the morning after posting that last entry you get a call from a girl in your ward inviting you along with some other moms to go to the museum and you have a really good time just talking and being with other adults. Yay for tender mercies and for people who listen to and act on promptings!

Mama (didn't say) there'll be days like this...

One thing no one ever tells you about being a stay-at-home mom is how lonely it can be. Not that I didn't kind of see it coming, but it's still been more of an adjustment than I thought it would be. Sure I have Jonathan and he's more than happy to be with me all the time and that is sweet and fulfilling, but sometimes I just miss my circle of friends. You see, I really like people (although I have a hard time remembering that at Costco on Saturdays). I love having friends around me. I'm a little embarassed to admit how hard I've cried over various friends that have moved several time zones away. Sure there's phone and email and blogs, but those just don't seem to fill the same void for me as actual face-to-face interactions. I still have friends locally and am making more, but at this stage of life people either seem to think that I'm to busy to do anything with them or that they're too busy to do anything with me, and that makes me a little sad. If we don't have time for people in our lives, what's the point of anything we're doing? I'm really not as down as this post is probably making me sound, but this has just been on my mind this morning. Maybe I should just enjoy the solitude for now because maybe someday I'll be standing in my kitchen with five kids running around, knocking things over, begging for my attention, and I'll miss being lonely. We'll see.

Time for Frivolity

I realized today that I haven't been blogging about frivolous things enough lately. It seems like the only times I think to post are when something big has happened like getting married, having a baby, or finding the worst music video on the planet. What of the everyday adventures like learning to make fried rice last night, or the sour-lemon face Jonathan has just learned to make, or the planters full of pansies and primroses that are currently making our deck a little more spring-ish? They make up a life as much as the big things (if not more so). So here's a start:

I have finally conquered no-bake cookies. Growing up, I never had a problem with them. In fact, they were sort of the starter cookie you would make before you were old enough to use the oven. But then I moved to Utah and have had the darndest time getting them to set up since then. I have no idea why. Okay so once it was because I accidentally used 3 cups of karo syrup instead of 3 tablespoons. Ahem. Yeah. I was talking to my mom and was really distracted at the time. But even when I used the right amount of karo they wouldn't work. My best guess is that things boil much faster at 7,000 feet where I grew up than they do here so they weren't getting enough boil time. Well finally I started boiling them for exactly two minutes before adding the oats, peanut butter, and vanilla, and they have worked the past four times I've made them! Yes! Victory is mine!

Some Updates...

I'm really sorry I'm so bad at updating my blog. I'm also sorry that I seem to begin every post lately with some kind of apology or excuse for being bad at updating my blog. Ah well. Time just keeps moving so fast. I can't believe on Tuesday Jonathan will be 6 months old--that's half a year of watching him grow taller and a little chubbier every day, of delighting in the smallest things that he learns to do, of not sleeping through the night, etc. etc. etc. He really is so much fun. Exhausting, but fun. His latest milestones are starting solid foods on his 5 month birthday (February 18th) and then learning to roll onto his belly from his back four days later. It's kind of funny--after he gets onto his belly he can't get back so he'll start to fuss, so we'll flip him back over and a minute later he'll roll again, then get tired of it and start to fuss to be flipped again. We call it the pancake game because we just keep flipping and flipping. He is really laughing a lot lately too, especially at Peter. Bath time is their favorite time to play. Peter will be getting Jonathan undressed and I'll be filling the tub and I'll hear Jonathan shrieking with laughter in the other room and I'll go in and Peter will have him in stitches tickling him and smiling at him. Oh, he's starting to fuss in the other room so I'd better go soon. Here's the latest picture of him from this afternoon when he kept wrapping himself up in the blanket while he was rolling over. Pardon the blurry feet, but he pretty much is always kicking. His feet never hold still. I'm pretty sure he's going to be the next David Beckham.

Happy (Late) Holidays

Wow. I'm really bad at getting around to posting. But be that as it may, I still wanted to post some pictures from our Christmas festivities. We had a really great Christmas. It is so fun to have a little baby--even though he really has no idea what's going on, it's fun for us to experience his first Christmas with him. This first picture is of him at our 3rd annual L.L. Bean party. It's basically a party thought up by my old roommate, Heidi, where we just have all kinds of cheesy Christmasy fun like decorating sugar cookies and wearing festive sweaters. This is a picture of me modelling my festive sweater and Jonathan showing off his cute Santa suit that my sister sent him:


And because Peter's pretty proud of his modelling skills, here's his festive sweater photo:


Katie, Peter's sister spent Christmas with us. We were supposed to be at our condo, but a water line broke the Friday night before Christmas, so we ended up staying with my parents and Katie was invited along. Here's the group pre-gift opening on Christmas morning:

And finally, here's Jonathan in his first gift opening experience. He stayed awake long enough to open the llama in the second picture, then he conked out:

I really wish I could write more in detail, but Jonathan is on my lap and has decided he's been patient enough as I've posted this much. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's. Happy 2008!