sequels

So I just finished Emmy and the School for Troubled Girls. It was cute, but I had to drag myself through the book. I've noticed that with a very few exceptions, I despise sequels. But why? Was the writing really that much worse? Many times, it's because the story seems forced or because what seemed so fresh and original in the first is now old news. Other times it's because the characters change too much to be believed (Scarlett anyone? Ok, that doesn't even count it's so bad [and a different author]. How about the sequels to the Luxe?). The worst is when the second book completely nullifies what was great about the first one or tries to make us think it all meant something else entirely.

So the question is this: should I wait longer to read the sequel? ...just never read them at all? ...just get over it? ...boycott anything in a series?

pizza and cinnamon rolls

Disclaimer: I'm hungry and can't seem to walk into the kitchen and eat breakfast.

We eat a lot of homemade pizza around here, but I am never quite satisfied with the crust. Well, last week's was the best yet. Here is the secret to (almost) perfect pizza dough:
1. Find a recipe you like. I'm convinced they are all so similar that the ingredients are not the secret. We really like this one, except we quadruple the honey.
2. Let the dough sit in the fridge overnight or longer. I even found a recipe that suggested 3 days! ...Like I ever know what I want to eat that far in advance. Pull it out 3-4 hours before you need it to let it warm up.
3. For a deep dish pizza, there are 3 key points: lots of oil on the bottom of the pan, lots of time to rise, and a cast iron skillet. Something about the cast iron made the texture of the crust so tasty.

We have yet to try heating up the pizza stone and sliding the dough in pizzeria style, but I'm doing it next time. We'll see if that propels the thin crust to new heights like people claim. We are looking for a great pizza sauce recipe, though. Anyone?

Now, on to today's breakfast. For many years I have been trying to perfect cinnamon roll filling so that it's gooey and delicious and overkill like the kind from Cinnabon. I appreciate a roll with just a little sweetness but Josh still thinks the kind that comes in the can are king. Surely there is a homemade roll out there that we will both consider best. Today, I'm trying this recipe (using my own dough recipe, though) which seems to just be LOTS of butter and LOTS of cinnamon. Any other ideas? No matter what I do, I just end up with a huge bread:filling ratio and while I love the bread, there has to be a way to make them gooey-er.

a chip off the old block (sort of)

I haven't figured out how to take a picture without waking him up, but for the last few weeks Jonah has been sleeping under his pillow. It started with his pillow across his hips like a blanket. Wondering if he was cold, we gave him a blanket, which he doesn't use. Even when he pretends to sleep in the middle of the day, he always grabs a pillow and bunkers down.

Well, yesterday during his nap and then again tonight I found him with the pillow over his shoulders and most of his head. Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is how Quintin sleeps in crevices instead of on mattresses. For example, when sleeping on the couch, he pushes the cushions out and nestles next to the frame. Weird.

moo?

Did I mention that there are also cattle guards at all the entrances to the church parking lot? Not as many pairs of boots this week in our real ward, but still worth a chuckle. Jonah must have remembered because he yelled (yes, yelled) "big truck!!!!" all during sacrament meeting. After, we had to take him out to watch the big trucks leaving from the ward before. Ah, good times.

a snippet

I'm back! ...and in denial. I'm so glad to be back, but since things are exactly as I left them* it almost seems like I was never gone. I had to scroll through the 700 pictures we've gathered from the trip just now and found a few favorites:
Marcela (A-L) hiding from her brother, lest he discover she's escaped from the hidden room where he keeps her. Hmm..rereading that, I wouldn't know the play was a comedy. Trust me, it was hilarious, not creepy.
All the damas. I'm not sure what we were doing to incite the assortment of expressions, but aren't the dresses lovely? (I'm a dama pretending to be a criada, hence the hodge podge accessories.)The whole group after the teachers' conference.

Let me just say how wonderful Golden Age Theater is: pretty amazing. Also, I just heard about Catalina de Erauso who was a young girl when she ran away from the convent, dressed up like a boy, sailed to the Americas, left her bride-to-be at the altar, dueled her own brother, and touched the golden streets of El Dorado (ok, probably false), all before getting injured in a duel herself and being shipped back to Spain when her secret was discovered. After being exonerated, she appealed to the Pope and received special permission to continue dressing like a man since she had managed to survive the perilous temptations with her virtue intact. How have I never heard this story before?! It reminded me of reading this book and being shocked that I had never heard about our very own psycho. Creepy.

*except Josh shaved his goatee off. Hmmm.

waiting

I'm waiting in the airport for my (so far) 30 minute late flight to El Paso. Luckily, the airport has wi-fi . Even more luckily (or not, since it was my genius, not luck) I brought Sims. It seems to me I remember sitting in the hotel for an hour playing Sims with Anna-Lisa last time I was in El Paso.

the museum

We made it to the Children's Museum of Phoenix, culture pass in hand, and spent all day. It was fabulous. We are going back at the next available opportunity. First of all, let me say that I do love the Arizona Musuem for Youth. This is a much bigger and much more glamorous deal. AMY was great for slow mornings or rainy days (we have those?). I'm not sure I would pop in and out here, especially since it's $10 to get in, but they do stamp your hand, so I guess you could if you lived close. Anyway. We took snacks and took a much needed break halfway through, so we were able to stretch the visit to 3 1/2 hours and there was more to see. Impressive, considering it was a 4 year-old and 2 almost 2 year-olds.

Somehow, I didn't get any pictures with Steph, but here's what I did get:

My favorite thing about children's museums is when they have things I could never recreate at home. Art projects are fun (and Jonah spent a long time painting with a baby paintbrush...time to try it at home, I think) but things like this castle are why I pay (or stand in line to get in free?) to go.
Jonah spent 15 minutes and would have stayed longer. The aid told me they'll give it 200-300 coats of paint and then display it around the museum somewhere. For the squeamish, they had coveralls for the kids, but Jonah pulled his off.

They also had a huge area (the size of our living room or bigger) covered in hanging noodles (the pool kind). Jonah didn't really like them in his face, but Taylor and Erik ran through no problem.I was talking, not taking pictures, so you'll have to just take my word for it that their food section was amazing. They had a grocery store (complete with 4 checkout lanes and a scale for a giant tub of lentils) and a whole kitchen area. The kitchen area had pizzas for the kids to make and a pizza oven. I thought Jonah would love it, but he spent most of his time pushing around the shopping cart. It's a little fuzzy, but I had to include this because of the sheer joy on his face:
All in all, it was a great day. I was glad to spend some time with Stephanie and pleasantly surprised at the thought and scale of the exhibits. The castle was by far my favorite. Taylor said his favorite was the car racing (think pinewood derby x 50). Josh's favorite was the Mexican food restaurant we discovered down the street. Just kidding (almost). His real favorite was a room full of tubes and tracks where you can make a course for your golfballs. I'm not doing it justice and it's more spacial than I would enjoy, but just think of a room of mazes and gadgets and you've got it.

video proof

What's funny about this is that he was doing it for like 5 minutes before we got the camera and a few minutes after.

We may have to rearrange his room so he can see out his own window (this is in our room)...