One time, there were some rude people who left a bad taste in my mouth and generally dimmed my enthusiasm. You know that feeling where you are taken aback and just want to crawl in bed for a while? But then, there were some kind people who were welcoming and funny and nice and restored my love of humanity.
Nice people are nice. The end.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Christmas fry bread
We usually have cinnamon rolls (or their more decadent cousin, caramel sticky rolls) for breakfast Christmas morning. This morning, because Jonah has been asking for it all week, we had Navajo fry bread. Not only do we have a new Christmas breakfast tradition (more on that in a bit) but after months of testing, I think we finally have a perfected recipe. This made 4 more fry breads than we could eat this morning. Since we sometimes have it for dinner (Navajo tacos for dinner followed by honey/powdered sugar fry bread for dessert), I think this is a generous size for a family of four. Yes, Caroline is small, but we really pigged out this morning. Josh, Jonah, and I had no less than 4 each I think.
This recipe is adapted from two different recipes in the Casa Grande stake cookbook (one with very vague measurements--what is 1 bowl of flour exactly?--and one with even vaguer directions) and the Pioneer Woman fry bread recipe which has pictures, so that's helpful.
4 cups all purpose flour (I have not tried it with whole wheat. I might have a rebellion on my hands if I did.)
4 tsp. baking powder
dash of salt
1 cup milk (you can also double the water and add 2T. powdered milk, according to one recipe. We almost always have milk and rarely have powdered milk, so I've never tried it.)
approximately 1 cup warm water
Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour in the milk and stir with a fork. Slowly add the water while stirring until the dough is just combined. You do not want to add too much liquid and you do not want to overwork the dough. That said, I've had best success with a slightly sticky dough and mixing it around enough with my hands at the end that it forms a shaggy ball. Cover with a towel and let rest for at least 30 minutes. *This is why fry bread made such a great Christmas breakfast. I mixed it up before presents and it was ready to go when we were done.
After letting the dough rest, divide into balls about the size of a lime. (The Pioneer Woman says plum. Either we have really large plums here or she has a much bigger frying pan than I do.) Roll the balls into flat, thin circles (or alternately, pat out by hand). Dip the dough balls in flour first if it is too sticky to work with. Meanwhile, heat oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet until a piece of dough sizzles in the oil. Figure it will either be too hot or too cool and the first fry bread might be burnt or undercooked anyway and get to work frying!
I eat mine with honey and powdered sugar. Josh prefers butter and powdered sugar. The kids have converted to the powdered sugar thing, but for a long time they liked butter and cinnamon sugar or Nutella. Pretty much anything is delicious.
This recipe is adapted from two different recipes in the Casa Grande stake cookbook (one with very vague measurements--what is 1 bowl of flour exactly?--and one with even vaguer directions) and the Pioneer Woman fry bread recipe which has pictures, so that's helpful.
4 cups all purpose flour (I have not tried it with whole wheat. I might have a rebellion on my hands if I did.)
4 tsp. baking powder
dash of salt
1 cup milk (you can also double the water and add 2T. powdered milk, according to one recipe. We almost always have milk and rarely have powdered milk, so I've never tried it.)
approximately 1 cup warm water
Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour in the milk and stir with a fork. Slowly add the water while stirring until the dough is just combined. You do not want to add too much liquid and you do not want to overwork the dough. That said, I've had best success with a slightly sticky dough and mixing it around enough with my hands at the end that it forms a shaggy ball. Cover with a towel and let rest for at least 30 minutes. *This is why fry bread made such a great Christmas breakfast. I mixed it up before presents and it was ready to go when we were done.
After letting the dough rest, divide into balls about the size of a lime. (The Pioneer Woman says plum. Either we have really large plums here or she has a much bigger frying pan than I do.) Roll the balls into flat, thin circles (or alternately, pat out by hand). Dip the dough balls in flour first if it is too sticky to work with. Meanwhile, heat oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet until a piece of dough sizzles in the oil. Figure it will either be too hot or too cool and the first fry bread might be burnt or undercooked anyway and get to work frying!
I eat mine with honey and powdered sugar. Josh prefers butter and powdered sugar. The kids have converted to the powdered sugar thing, but for a long time they liked butter and cinnamon sugar or Nutella. Pretty much anything is delicious.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
yesterday was the perfect day
Sure, we got lost. And then there was the time that I had to set an alarm (that doesn't happen often, folks). And my cinnamon roll pan was slightly overstuffed, so I had to toss the middle rolls because they never finished baking. But it really was the best day. It started with the house smelling of cinnamon rolls. Then we drove to Josh's cousin's house for a Christmas party with his mom's extended family. My family is too big and too spread out for the cousins and second cousins to get together at holidays. I have high hopes for 15 years from now. Maybe when my nieces and nephews all have young families of their own they will still want to celebrate together. I hope so.
After the Christmas party, we drove around the eastern part of the valley to check out potential camping locations. It was a cold and sunny day, so perfect. At one point, we encountered a gate (and had a sleeping child in the back), so I hopped out and jogged down to the camping site to check it out. It could barely even count as a run, really, but it was the most I've done in weeks and the creosote was smelling heavenly from rain the day before. Basically, it was beautiful.
Campsites successfully assessed, we drove home via slightly less eastern part of the valley and stopped at my very favorite orange stand/store thing. 20 lbs of oranges and a couple grapefruit later, we headed home after a long day away. Miraculously, the children were even happy on the car ride (after having been in the car much of the day).
These are little things, but these are little things that mean a lot to me.
After the Christmas party, we drove around the eastern part of the valley to check out potential camping locations. It was a cold and sunny day, so perfect. At one point, we encountered a gate (and had a sleeping child in the back), so I hopped out and jogged down to the camping site to check it out. It could barely even count as a run, really, but it was the most I've done in weeks and the creosote was smelling heavenly from rain the day before. Basically, it was beautiful.
Campsites successfully assessed, we drove home via slightly less eastern part of the valley and stopped at my very favorite orange stand/store thing. 20 lbs of oranges and a couple grapefruit later, we headed home after a long day away. Miraculously, the children were even happy on the car ride (after having been in the car much of the day).
These are little things, but these are little things that mean a lot to me.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
All about Caroline
Not too long after writing the all about Jonah post, Caroline and I were home alone while Jonah and Josh were out together somewhere. Like every day, at some point it seemed like a shower might be possible, so I ran off to clean up. Usually Caroline invades the bathroom and goes through my makeup and nail polish and tries to cut off her hand with the nail clippers while I holler, "no, put that back! please don't paint the floor with black nail polish!" This particular day, though, the house was silent. After my shower, I felt a sinking dread. What would I find? I eventually found her coloring at the table with a dry eraser marker she'd found in the bathroom. (You know those things write and erase off mirrors, right? It's great for leaving notes.) When I felt tangible relief that she was coloring on a coloring book instead of herself, the wall, or the table, I celebrated with her and realized we needed a post all about Caroline. While Jonah is mostly steady and predictable (sometimes to a fault), Caroline is our wild card.
-She is talking quite a bit these days. There is no way to even keep track of her current word list anymore. The ones that come to mind, though, are towel, puzzle, brother (her name for Jonah), monkey (almost exclusively reserved for Curious George), stroller, milk (she rarely accepts any other liquid), and cookie. Other than the long list of recognizable words, she's also started telling stories. Usually when we see someone who has been gone (Josh after work, for example) she will talk for 3 minutes straight. Most of it is not coherent, but there is a ton of inflection and hand waving. If I happen to be in the room, I can usually interpret the main theme. For example, she fell at the park and bonked her head. The story she told Josh that night involved a lot of pointing to her head and saying "uh-oh."
-One of the cutest stories she's told recently involved the song "If You're Happy and You Know It". A spoof of the song was on a news quiz on the radio a few days ago and she immediately started trying to sing along and clap. So I turned off the radio and sang for her. No matter what verse we sang, she only liked to clap. At the end of each round she would giggle hysterically and yell, "again!" Watching her reenact that for Josh was hilarious and adorable. (It also reminded me that when Jonah was this age, we couldn't drive anywhere without singing "Old MacDonald had a Farm." The only verse allowed, though, was grandpa's big white truck. For some reason, "If You're Happy and You Know It" also made him cry.)
-She loves babies and animals. She will chase down babies at the store or park. Dogs, too. I *think* she finally understands that we have to ask before petting a dog because she will look at me and wave her hands and say "puppy! dog!" until we go pet it. Speaking of the park, if the swings are all full, it's a crisis. She has been known to lay down in the middle of the sand/sidewalk/grass and sob until a swing opens up.
-She is our lover. When she wakes up before Josh goes to work, he will often bring her to bed with me. The thing about me is that I don't like people touching me in my sleep. Well Caroline is usually so delighted to see me and be in bed (rather than stuck in her room still) that she will stroke and kiss my face all over. It is both adorable and annoying. When she sees Jonah every morning, she gives him an enthusiastic hug. Speaking of Jonah, she calls him brother (it sounds more like "bruh-vm"). It's cute.
I don't know what we'd do without this little sweetheart. She'll be having a birthday two weeks from today! As much as I miss her little baby self, her 2-year old self promises to be even more fun.
-She is talking quite a bit these days. There is no way to even keep track of her current word list anymore. The ones that come to mind, though, are towel, puzzle, brother (her name for Jonah), monkey (almost exclusively reserved for Curious George), stroller, milk (she rarely accepts any other liquid), and cookie. Other than the long list of recognizable words, she's also started telling stories. Usually when we see someone who has been gone (Josh after work, for example) she will talk for 3 minutes straight. Most of it is not coherent, but there is a ton of inflection and hand waving. If I happen to be in the room, I can usually interpret the main theme. For example, she fell at the park and bonked her head. The story she told Josh that night involved a lot of pointing to her head and saying "uh-oh."
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| More candy? (This immediately proceeded the sobbing face from a few posts ago.) |
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| Speaking of flinging herself to the ground and sobbing, this time she was sad I would not let climb in the otter enclosure at the zoo. I can be so unreasonable sometimes, right? |
-She is our lover. When she wakes up before Josh goes to work, he will often bring her to bed with me. The thing about me is that I don't like people touching me in my sleep. Well Caroline is usually so delighted to see me and be in bed (rather than stuck in her room still) that she will stroke and kiss my face all over. It is both adorable and annoying. When she sees Jonah every morning, she gives him an enthusiastic hug. Speaking of Jonah, she calls him brother (it sounds more like "bruh-vm"). It's cute.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
All about Jonah
At this precise moment, Jonah is teaching Caroline how to make a bed. Sometimes I think he is really too sweet to be allowed. So in honor of my child that is too big for the little boy section but too small for the big boy section (or so I tell myself), here are some things Jonah has been saying or doing recently:
-He loves the PBS show Wild Kratts. He's watched both seasons on Netflix at least three times through and still wants to watch it every afternoon when his chores are done. Probably because he's seen each episode multiple times, he's been known to spout some hilarious animal-related wisdom. For example, this morning he told me all about the migration habits of monarch butterflies. Earlier this week he told me, in great detail, all about the symbiotic relationship (yes, he used that term) between rhinoceroses (or rhinoceri..the dictionary tells me that I can use either.) and oxpeckers. For anyone who hasn't seen Wild Kratts every day for two months, those are the birds that sit on the rhinos' backs.
-He won't wear pants. I'm not really surprised, considering he's been wearing boots in the summer and sandals in the winter for a few years now, but I should have thought ahead and stocked up on the after-summer sales. I usually replenish his clothes at Christmas, but there's not much in the stores he'll wear. Luckily, the spring clothes will be out before too long and I can feed his addiction to flip flops and shorts.
-As he gets older, he is starting to enjoy playing games with us. He will play an entire game of Ticket to Ride with us, much to Josh's annoyance. It's not playing with Jonah that annoys him, it's just that Josh almost always wins. And since Jonah can't be counted on to choose routes that are entirely logical, Josh has a harder time predicting his every move than the other players at the table. I think this is hilarious, of course, and invite Jonah to play with us often.
-He loves music. This is nothing new, but it is still very much part of who he is. At this point, he has expressed interest in learning to play the piano, guitar, drums, clarinet, oboe, trombone, trumpet, violin, cello, and saxophone. He is taking music classes through Let's Play Music (highly recommended), and it has been fun to watch his skill and enthusiasm grow. Unfortunately, he's also camera shy when it comes to music. All my sneaking and begging has not produced a single picture, let alone video, since this one (from when we first got the piano). I'm thinking some bribery might be in order.
We sure love this kid. And lest you think he's perfect all the time, I sat down to write this glowing post because he was patiently teaching his sister how to make a bed. During the course of writing this, however, he has regressed to baby talk (a current favorite of his and annoyance of mine), fought with Caroline about who gets to play with the blocks (which I gave to her after the fight over who got to play with the train), and cried because he didn't want it to be Sunday and then again because he didn't want Caroline to eat lunch until a certain time. If I didn't live here, I would think that meant it took me two hours to write this. But no, he crammed all of those activities and more in the 15 minutes I've been writing. In the process of writing that, though, he has cycled back to patient and kind and is now helping Caroline assemble her stuffed animals in carefully-crafted towel and pillow houses.
-He loves the PBS show Wild Kratts. He's watched both seasons on Netflix at least three times through and still wants to watch it every afternoon when his chores are done. Probably because he's seen each episode multiple times, he's been known to spout some hilarious animal-related wisdom. For example, this morning he told me all about the migration habits of monarch butterflies. Earlier this week he told me, in great detail, all about the symbiotic relationship (yes, he used that term) between rhinoceroses (or rhinoceri..the dictionary tells me that I can use either.) and oxpeckers. For anyone who hasn't seen Wild Kratts every day for two months, those are the birds that sit on the rhinos' backs.
-He won't wear pants. I'm not really surprised, considering he's been wearing boots in the summer and sandals in the winter for a few years now, but I should have thought ahead and stocked up on the after-summer sales. I usually replenish his clothes at Christmas, but there's not much in the stores he'll wear. Luckily, the spring clothes will be out before too long and I can feed his addiction to flip flops and shorts.
 | |
| What you can't tell from this picture is that it was cold and windy outside. |
-He loves music. This is nothing new, but it is still very much part of who he is. At this point, he has expressed interest in learning to play the piano, guitar, drums, clarinet, oboe, trombone, trumpet, violin, cello, and saxophone. He is taking music classes through Let's Play Music (highly recommended), and it has been fun to watch his skill and enthusiasm grow. Unfortunately, he's also camera shy when it comes to music. All my sneaking and begging has not produced a single picture, let alone video, since this one (from when we first got the piano). I'm thinking some bribery might be in order.
We sure love this kid. And lest you think he's perfect all the time, I sat down to write this glowing post because he was patiently teaching his sister how to make a bed. During the course of writing this, however, he has regressed to baby talk (a current favorite of his and annoyance of mine), fought with Caroline about who gets to play with the blocks (which I gave to her after the fight over who got to play with the train), and cried because he didn't want it to be Sunday and then again because he didn't want Caroline to eat lunch until a certain time. If I didn't live here, I would think that meant it took me two hours to write this. But no, he crammed all of those activities and more in the 15 minutes I've been writing. In the process of writing that, though, he has cycled back to patient and kind and is now helping Caroline assemble her stuffed animals in carefully-crafted towel and pillow houses.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Christmasness
Have I mentioned that I don't have the energy or gene or whatever it is to make a huge deal out of holidays? (Other than the food, of course.) Case in point: Jonah loves to decorate for holidays. Every time he sees people's yards he says "we should get one of those (insert here: inflatable Santa Mickey, blinking string of snowflake lights, obnoxious roof reindeer) too!" So we made some snowflakes, which he loved. We hung them all over the house. Then two fell down. A week ago. Maybe tomorrow I will hang them back up. I'm sure he'll remind me in the morning like he has every morning since the falling occurred. Anyway. Do you know what I do love? Christmas music. I belt that stuff out all day long.
Another thing I love? The movie White Christmas. My favorite quote from this watching (there will be many more) was "Don't you know girls like that are a dime a dozen?" "Oh, don't quote me the price when I don't have the time." I don't know, it just made me laugh.
Another thing I love? Christmas cards. It seems so unlike me, what with the requiring of planning in advance and spending money and getting to the post office, but I just really love them. We got our first card in the mail yesterday (yay!) and if I keep up my current pace, we'll have ours in the mail this weekend. Every morning (after contemplating hanging up the fallen snowflakes) I say "today I'm going to finish them all!" But so far, it's been more like today-I-will-write-a-few-here-and-there-between-other-things-and-say-I'll-finish-the-rest-after-bedtime-but-instead-go-lay-down-and-watch-White-Christmas. Speaking of which, I'm about 30 minutes from the end, so I'm off to finish it!
P.S. Here's one of the pictures that did not make the card. You're welcome.
Another thing I love? The movie White Christmas. My favorite quote from this watching (there will be many more) was "Don't you know girls like that are a dime a dozen?" "Oh, don't quote me the price when I don't have the time." I don't know, it just made me laugh.
Another thing I love? Christmas cards. It seems so unlike me, what with the requiring of planning in advance and spending money and getting to the post office, but I just really love them. We got our first card in the mail yesterday (yay!) and if I keep up my current pace, we'll have ours in the mail this weekend. Every morning (after contemplating hanging up the fallen snowflakes) I say "today I'm going to finish them all!" But so far, it's been more like today-I-will-write-a-few-here-and-there-between-other-things-and-say-I'll-finish-the-rest-after-bedtime-but-instead-go-lay-down-and-watch-White-Christmas. Speaking of which, I'm about 30 minutes from the end, so I'm off to finish it!
P.S. Here's one of the pictures that did not make the card. You're welcome.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
RTR
From Nick Saban, the coach of the University of Alabama football team: "We win and lose with class. Congratulations to Auburn for winning
the Iron Bowl. Alabama lost as a team and the loss is not the fault of
any single player. This is an opportunity for us to improve and
refocus. Our season is not over and we will work hard to finish strong."
From Josh: I think I'm depressed. I need to stay in bed for a few days.
From me: I wore my houndstooth today as usual. Roll Tide Roll!
From Josh: I think I'm depressed. I need to stay in bed for a few days.
From me: I wore my houndstooth today as usual. Roll Tide Roll!
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