The Sunday Evening Post, Issue 20

Or, Can I do this for the rest of my life?

Ice Cream consumed: 1/2 gallon (whoooaaaa)
Ice cream sandwiches downed: 3 bars
Bags of M&M's inhaled: 1
Cookies munched: unknown
Laps swam/swum: 0
Miles walked: 0
Weight lost: 5 lbs.
Breastfeeding: Priceless


Ethan's been relegated to the basement so I can get some sleep. I can hear him wailing, but just not every fuss and whimper. Some distance has become a necessity. There have been too many nights waking up to find myself with him on my lap and not even realized I fed him. Or looking at the clock and rationalizing that even though it's been only and hour and a half since the last feeding he must really, really be hungry. What a wimp am I! Resisting chocolate was nothin'! And, relatedly, too many days of muddled life from such outlandish wimpery seriously needs to go.

I feel like there is more I would like to say, but am afraid of glorifying the mediocre (Eric Shumway) and until I can organize my thoughts and shake them out into words I'll call it night.

Have a great week everyone!

p.s. Thanks for all your service ideas. We're just in the brainstorming phase and will keep you posted. Ha ha ha...get it. Posted. Lame, lame, lame...

p.p.s. Amy, I can't get a hold of you via email. So here's what I would do about your squash. Call your county extension office. They can help you figure out what is eating your veggies and what to do about it. Google their phone number. You'll want to talk to the agriculture agent. I really want you to win the contest! And it's such a lovely garden.

p.p.p.s. Rachel, Go read a book. You too, Laura. Shocking, simply shocking! Here's a good one: Montmorency by Elanor Updale. Don't worry, it's Young Adult fiction so noncommittal time-wise and it's all about thieving and redemption. Finished it last night locked in the bathroom pretending to be busy. Quality literature.

The Sunday Evening Post, 19

Or, it's a whirl.

Do you ever wonder what your memories would be if it weren't for photographs to give place to them? I think my kids will be able to remember things much younger because we have pictures to remind them. I also frequently think about my ancestors and what they recall of their children's faces. It's easy for me to think of Isaac as a baby because I can see a certain photograph in my mind. Anyway, our little sweet something is two. Make that, our little something is two.

The only time I hope to ever see smoke effects coming out of his nose. "Again!" is a well used word in our house. Those were hard working candles.

Each present was like a pot of gold. I think we spent $7 total on his gifts. A pack of gum (GUM!!! MINE!!!), a Thomas the Train book from Goodwill (Tchoo Tchoo!!!!! ME!), a lock puzzle board thing (Whoa. ME!), a pack of pencils with balls on the me (BALLS! WHOA! ME!!!!), a Thomas the Train movie (the biggest "TCHOO TCHOO" ME!!!!!!!).
It's worth noting the pack of gum was gone by 7 am this morning. I can see exploding seagulls in my head...

Whenever my kids have a birthday I can't help but think of all the other kids who were born about the same time as them, and equally about the women I pregnant with. Happy birthday in the next little bit to Alyssa, Dylan, and Armour---and here' to you Meg, Melissa, and Beckee!

Natalie has been cursed with my soft voice and being four and a chatterbox about everything in the world and then some. Poor thing. It's a whole lot of talking that I can't catch. I'm trying to perfect the fine art of "Uh hun" and filter out what I can. Any conversation in the car goes out the window with her. Not so unlike the scene from Little Mermaid every day over and over:
Flounder (Natalie): "And whoa and arg, and the shark and ..................."
Ariel and King Triton (me):
Flounder (Natalie): "And then the seagull came and it was this is this and that is that..."
King Triton: "Seagull...seagull?"
All it takes is one word.
This is her first ponytail. She's being waiting for the official day of having long enough hair for one. A sure sign of growing up.

This is his I'm-so-happy-to-be-in-a-tree-with-my-mom-she-has-a-death-grip-on-my-legs look. Really, so happy.

Spiiiike. Way into his fingers and everything a normal baby does like cooing and being just gloriously adorable. Love babies.

A few other things.

I almost burned my kitchen up by leaving something on the stove. On high. I think I will be scrubbing my kitchen ceiling and cupboards and walls for a few more days. You know that pink stuff you chew that shows where you didn't brush well enough? Smoke is like that. It's caught into all the smudges, cobwebs, and grease tops of my cupboards (it is a kitchen folks). It's just everywhere and I'm seeing how clean my kitchen wasn't. Just grateful for two things:
A) Natalie was just standing there in shock next to the stove when I came in the kitchen and didn't try to do anything herself to fix it, and
B) I got there when I did. I was outside and could smell something burning and thought the neighbors must be cooking. Ironic. The Spirit pretty much shoved me and I went back inside the house.
A few more moments and something big, like a wall, would have caught. Maybe that's dramatic, but I kinda don't think so.


Breaking Dawn comes out this week. Don't pretend it's not on your calendar secretly marked as "Go shopping for butter." At midnight. When I was in high school every February the entire school filled out a questionnaire, then your answers were scored or something with everyone else's in the school and then on Valentines Day you could buy a little card that told you who your best match was. Did you ever do that? It was the most fun $2 you could spend in high school on valentines. Personally, I think Bella, Edward and Jacob should just do that. Solve all their problems. No really though, (don't finish this if you want want to read my prediction and I should also say I haven't read anything else about it so if you also have the same prediction or heard otherwise, okay, well, this is just from my brain) all signs point to Edward becoming human again. At a cost. I'm really curious how she's going to resolve the whole SOUL thing. Next subject.


I read the Book Thief by Markus Zusak this week. The Holocaust has been pretty highly documented, don't you think? So when a good friend gave me this book to read my initial thought was, "another Holocaust book" and don't get me wrong, I find the subject endless fascinating, I just wasn't prepared for this take and I complicatedly loved it. I had to re-read the first chapter twice to make sense of the narrator. I've never felt such a loss over a fictional character before. My heart just aches, still, for Rudy. I really enjoyed the author's writing. It is quite visual both graphically and literarily (is that a word? spell check says it's not).


Also read the Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Not as good as Woman in White also by Collins. Nothing quite will be as far as suspense goes. It was a great read though. This book is the original detective book. Supposedly all others, including Sherlock Holmes, is patterned somewhat from it.

Whew. I should head to bed. I so love sleep.

Anyone? Anyone?

I need some ideas for fun service projects for Relief Society. (If you are unfamiliar with Relief Society, it is an organization for women in my church. Each ward, or congregation, has one and all women 18 and older are members so it's a diverse group. We focus on service, education, and womanhood. It also happens to be the largest and oldest organization for women in the world!)

What have you done that was memorable, unique, inspiring, enriching, life changing? Or just have a good idea? Remember to click on the title of the post (Anyone? Anyone? in this case) to comment. Or email. Or call. Thanks!

The Sunday Evening Post, Issue 17

Or, Mmmm...

I'm so glad you want these recipes, Sara. Just remember to call them "Jessica's muffins" and "Jessica's Pie Crust"and it's okay with me to add "amazing" in the somewhere. Preferably just before "Jessica"...just kidding...how obnoxious...put it after.

Cookie-like Pie Crust


1 1/4 c. flour
2 T. sugar
1/4 t. salt
8 T margarine, room-temp soft
1 ounce cream cheese
1 1/2 T. oil

Grease a 9 inch pie plate. I use oil. Whisk dry ingredients and set aside. At med-high speed on a mixer (or like a crazy person if you are doing it by hand), cream margarine and cream cheese until smooth, about 2 min. Add dry ingredients while mixer going at med-low speed until like cornmeal and scrape down. Turn up the speed and mix until large clumps. Drizzle the 1 1/2 T oil in as mixing until dough texture forms. (You may need to add a bit more oil if it still is dry or crumbly.) Press into pie pan evenly (bonus, no rolling!). No pretty crust edge, just press it in.

Bake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool on wire rack.



Jumbo Blueberry Muffins

Struesel Topping
1/2 c. flour
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. butter

Muffins
2 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 eggs
3/4 c. brown sugar
4 T. butter, melted and cooled
3/4 c. butter milk (or 3/4 c. milk with a splash of lemon juice; let stand 5 min until curdled)
1 t. vanilla
1 cup frozen blueberries

Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a jumbo muffin pan.
Whisk dry ingredients.
Whisk eggs and brown sugar until well blended. Gradually add melted butter, buttermilk, vanilla.
Stir in dry ingredients using no more than 26 good strokes. Gentle strokes. There should be a few clumps of flour.
Remove blueberries from freezer. It's very important to leave them in until the last moment possible or they will start to defrost and get soggy. Toss with 1 T. flour and carefully fold in the blueberries.
Fill jumbo 5-6 of the jumbo cups. Filling 5 makes for over the top large muffins. Filling all six of the cups make for more modest jumbo muffins.

Sprinkle ALL of the struessel topping over the muffins. It will look like a tremendous amount but as the bake and puff up, the topping will cover nicely. Trust me and don't skimp.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

*Thanks to Cooks Country magazine for a good portion of this recipe!

The Sunday Evening Post, issue 17

Or, a little ketchup.

I'm not sure how to respond to comments. So I'm going to "catch-up" a bit. Remember the $250 spring cleaning dollars? It's finally all spent...doing pretty much everything you all recommended minus the free brownie give away, which, Amy, happened to be my most favorite suggestion of all. It still makes me smile. Most of it went to a few free things we acquired and have fixed them up using the extra cash. This piano.

Jared's mom did a majority of the refinishing while she was here helping out after Ethan was born.

Here it in on it's back when we had to put some "stuff" into the pins before it could be properly tuned.



NJP, it is a nice sink. It was there when we moved in. It makes me smile when I clean it because it's pretty. The world needs more pretty sinks, yes?


Garage saling has very effectively whittled away a bit here and a bit there although I assure you it was all QUALITY stuff. My sister-in law Melissa was here this past week (along with Brad and Linnea which was the second time in two weeks---eat your heart out everyone) and she came with me to a couple around the block. She got to witness my infamous hemming and hawing along with talked me into a couple of deals. Thanks. I went back and got those two toy trucks. Isaac's birthday is around the corner and I'm so classy I picked up his gifts right there.

I've been cooking some.

Jared's bday cake. A pound cake and a pound of whipped cream.


Lemon Mereingue pie...this is the best pie crust ever. As a rule I use butter in baking and never buy margarine for anything but for some reason we had no butter and a cube of margarine in the fridge so there you go. I adjusted a few other things like from not having all the ingredients and a great cookie-like crust emerged.


We had some to-die-for blueberry muffins at a friends house. When pressed for the recipe he said he just combined a bunch of recipes he found off the internet. I hate that. So I did my own little search and combine and got these. YUM!


Natalie thought so too.

In case you didn't know, I make some sure good hamburgers. Jared can't always attest to this because he loads up with crazy toppings. This is a hamburgercheetoacononi not to be confused with his regular hamburgerfritoritoringaroundtheroni.




Here I am enjoying Chocolate Chip Cookies for the first time. Did this photo capture my "mmmmmmmmmmmmmm" well enough?

I didn't think so.


I must say though, it wasn't what I imagined tasting chocolate again I expected a little more died-and-gone-to-heaven reaction. But, it was instead a little more like, "hun...okay...pretty good." I meant to photograph everything I ate that day but got as far as breakfast. You probably don't need photos to know what it consisted of.


This jar of Nutella has been in my fridge for six months. Unbelievable. And no, I didn't eat the whole jar!


Jared through me a surprise death by chocolate party that night. I think I was a little dead in the morning. Everyone brought something chocolate. We had:
chocolate chip cookies (more) (and more)
french silk pie
rolos
m&m's
chocolate milk
(are you sick yet?)
chocolate dipped strawberries...minus the chocolate (?)
rocky road ice cream
brownie chunk ice cream
grasshopper cookies
peanutbutter filled chocolate cookies
(go throw up now)

Yes, Denise, it's that need for chocolate is kinda gone in me. It's no longer self-medicating. This new found self-control has spilled over into a few other areas of my life and for that I'm grateful.
So, one of my friends there cornered me later on in the week and asked if I wanted to go sugarless for two weeks with her. I (gulp) said, "Yeah, that sounds like fun!" What do I get myself into?!?! Completely sugarless, folks. Honey is okay and obviously natural sugars in fruit, etc OKAY.
I didn't realize how much sugar I was eating mindlessly. Yikes. Melissa, it is hard. How did you do it for a month? I think my cousin Dawn did it for a year as a teenager. Whoa.


Other events since turning the big @&. :)

I let my drivers license expire. Whoops. So Saturday found me practicing parallel parking over and over and over and...on the curb in front of our house. This is just one of my free comic relief shows I've put on for our neighbors since living here. I did pass. And I will tell you my judge guy (what are they called? the people who have to drive around with you and pass you or not) almost fell asleep TWICE! I wish I would have driven an automatic for the test. I so would have used arm signals instead of a blinker but trying to shift and stick one arm out the window? I'm pretty sure steering with my knees would have lost me a few points.




The kids are fine and happy. Somehow Natalie is fixated on campers and wants to know what our dream campers would be like. Yes. Campers. Here she is pretending to be a strawberry. ??? She gets that from Jared. Although my mom would probably counter by reminding me when I was a piece of toast during a game of charades. Oh, and a pile of laundry folding itself.

She brought me a bouquet from outside. Nice change from the usual dandelion bunch.


I found these sticky-note people all over the desk one day. The black ones have a circle with a dash through it to signify No Frowny Faces allowed and the green ones have no "NO" signage and just mean Happy Faces allowed. I posted them on the fridge to remind me. She also drew a crazy looking face with a "No" sign around it on my June's budget sheet. She said it meant "No Nervous faces." ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! That speaks volumes.
Isaac is almost 2. That's all. Isaac is almost 2.

You can guess what he was doing while Natalie was being a strawberry.


Ethan. What a fun, fun baby. He's topping the growth charts in the 95th percentiles. He does everything normal like get all wiggly and cute when someone talks to him and his hands are endlessly fascinating. Very darling all around.

boys will be boys

Babies. Babies in the bath. Hardly a better photo opt. Really, we are the only ones who care to see 30 pictures of him in the sink. Perhaps there will be an opportune time to harass him in his teens with these, but mostly it is nice to know we will be WELL stocked with pictures of our kids to delight us to no end well through our golden and silver years.

So during our little shoot getting cute picts like Exhibit A...


We also caught Exhibit B...

The Sunday Evening Post, Issue 16

Or, Self Discipline what?



Tomorrow's a big day. Around the first of the year the thought came to me, "How long could I go without chocolate?" Oh, a year? No. Way too long. Six months? Yeah, six months. And then it was sort of a challenge to myself that I couldn't back away from. So, tomorrow's a big day.