President's Day Happy Weekend of Fun

 Also, a post really heavy on pictures.

It's been this kind of a winter (see above). Don't you agree? I realized on the Monday before that we would have a four day weekend because of President's Day. Wahoo! And I so wanted to do some St. George warmness. It was supposed to get up to 57 down there!

But, can you imagine, three days before a holiday weekend, all the reasonably priced hotels were full. There is no justice in this world. There was one nice one, but I didn't feel like paying 250 dollars a night. So, my cheapness won out. Staycation!

Friday we traded babysitting with my sister so we could go to the temple. After we picked the kids up we decided to get some dinner, and the kids fell asleep in the car. So we had an ultra-romantic dinner eating hamburgers in the parking lot of Big Jim's. Just a tip, their gyro is better than the bacon cheeseburger. Then, home to bed.

Saturday, after lunch, started out with a fun trip to Walgreens! Everyone's favorite fun outing store! (Sorry, this post has a lot of exclamation points. February will do that to you.) But, during my many pharmacy trips of January and February, I had noticed that they had some plastic dress up shoes in their toy aisle.

 Clara, the day after her third birthday, decided she was going to do this potty training thing. And so she did. And once she had filled up her sticker chart, she got to pick some dress up shoes. (I forgot to take a picture in the first excitement of the purchase, since we were on our way to other things and Nathan was throwing a fit about needing us to buy him a watch. So these are grumpy post-swimming pictures.)

 After Walgreens we went to the Clearfield Aquatic Center, to which establishment we had a coupon. So we had a grand afternoon swimming, more than three hours, for 7.50. Can't beat that. Unfortunately, Alice has a neglectful mom who forgot to pack snacks for the baby. She was really enjoying the water, but eventually we realized why she kept lunging forward and sticking her face in the water. She wanted a drink. When I wouldn't let her do that anymore she would dip her fingers into the water and then suck on them. Sorry, Alice. Better luck next time.

Sunday was Sunday, which is always a good day. And then, Monday, a day of fun. Nathan was excited when he heard we weren't going to do any jobs and were going to play all day. He was a little disappointed when he heard that yes, he did still have to get dressed and brush his teeth. Frontrunner wasn't running, so we had to drive--boo. We walked through City Creek and found all the fossil footprints in the sidewalk, and the fish in the water. Then we walked across Temple Square and had a tour of the Conference Center.

 After that, and our second bathroom break of the day (we had a lot of those, more due to paranoid parents rather than the newly potty trained girl), we met up with some cousins for lunch at the Lion House pantry. Eleven people crammed around one table for lunch--woot! I'm surprised we didn't leave more of a mess. Then we took a tour of the Beehive House.

 Along the way we took a few pictures.

 Then on to the Church History and Art museum, which, it turns out, has an awesome play area for kids on the second floor. Also, it turns out, it was incredibly crowded. Nathan had a really hard time getting a turn with the things he wanted to do.

 Clara just parked herself in the little house and was content.

 He finally got a turn! Sweet satisfaction.

 And then... a walk over to the Ott planetarium. I'd never been, but they have a bunch of free exhibits that you can kill quite a bit of time at. Here's Clara on Mars. The kids are being lions, or panthers, or aliens, or zombies. I can't quite remember what this is supposed to be, but it's been quite a thing lately.

 And on the moon.

Alice was pretty glad we remembered snacks this day. The kids were wishing we'd remembered a water bottle, so I'd just take the lid off Alice's bottle and have them drink water out of it, then refill it at a drinking fountain. Nathan's decided this is a good way to drink and has started doing it at home.

I don't know how this picture got down here, but again with the claws and the growling face. If the kids weren't asleep, I'd ask them what this is.

To finish off our vacation day, we had Chick Fil A back at City Creek, and then took our exhausted bodies home to bed. It took the kids a couple of days to recover from the ensuing crankiness, which is why we don't do outings like this very often. But, we had fun. The pictures prove it, right?

A Day about Love

 Valentine's Day, Schmalentine's Day, right? It's kind of a weird holiday. But we made it a good one this year. Valentine's cookies from the grandparents, a preschool Valentine party, Valentine's hidden in dad's work bag, a phone call from an old and faraway friend, and a fancy Valentine dinner. Every year we have chicken alfredo pizza, but we changed it up this year with a different kind of crust--totally worth the extra preparation time. After dinner we read our Valentine's letters to the kids--our new tradition. Hopefully we'll remember to keep doing it next year because I thought it turned out well. Then we headed out to deliver a few Valentine's treats and...the kids were asleep by the time we were done. And so, quickly to bed. It was a great day.

 At lunchtime, this girl had a sucker in each hand, and then I found another one stuck to her shirt. Brother and sister were being unexpectedly generous with their treats. She was pretty grateful.

The first time I had a Caprese salad was in Amsterdam, jet lagged, nauseated, 2 months pregnant, wandering the streets late at night wondering what sounded like it wouldn't make me gag. We found a little hole in the wall Italian place, and pizza and salad suddenly sounded wonderful. But when we got the salad, I was so disappointed: This isn't a salad. What is this? But we had it again at Setebello pizzeria in December and, yum. So I decided to re-create it. Fresh basil, mozzarella, and tomatoes that miraculously tasted almost like fresh. Drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. mmm... We're definitely growing basil this summer.

And now, a word about magical thinking. Nathan somehow took this apart, removed a key, and put it back together. Put it back together so thoroughly that neither I nor Levi could get it apart to replace the pink key. We think he might be magic.

Thank you, Peggy Schwendiman

I don't know who Peggy Scwendiman is, but she makes some good soup. My mom gave me a copy of an old ward cookbook from my ward growing up and it has a recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup, Peggy Schwendiman Style. And, mmmm.

Boil enough chicken breasts or thighs in 6 cups of water to make 3 cups of diced meat. Reserve water; remove meat. (I usually strain the water to get out the little goops of boiling chicken).

Add:
2 t sea salt
1 large onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
5 t chicken boullioun
3 carrots, diced
1 t basil

Boil 30 minutes; add diced chicken and noodles. Cook for 20 more minutes. This soup is delicious, especially with the following homemade noodles:

1 egg
2 t oil
2/3 c water
1 1/2 c flour

Mix by hand and roll out to 1/16 of an inch. cut narrow strips with pizza cutter. Add noodles to soup.


So, there you have it. Easy, delicious soup. A couple caveats: I never add that much boullion (talk about sodium). I don't have sea salt. I always add more carrots. And when making the noodles, always add the water last. Once I ended up with double the noodles I could fit in the soup because I had to keep adding flour to get a rollable dough.

This is dinner tonight. Yum.

Doctor Visits

The last couple of weeks we've had ...doctor visits. As a family, in the last two weeks we've had a cumulative six doctor visits. All but two of those were for me. And the girls were lucky enough to have the best kind of doctor visits: well child appointments.

I was able to schedule Alice's 9 month and Clara's three year visits together. Alice is 15 lb 10oz, about the 7th percentile (don't worry, her head size is still the 75th percentile.) As for Clara, I was reading a friend's blog a while back wherein she said her two year old was 25 pounds. And I thought, "Oh, what a small kid." So, guess how big Clara is? 25 pounds. She's about the third percentile. It was also a great visit because no shots were needed. Unfortunately, that won't be the case in a couple of months when I schedule Alice's 1 year and Nathan's 5 year visits together. 

I won't dwell on all the myriad details of my illnesses since I'm tired of complaining. But last Friday after coming home with antibiotics for a double ear infection (third prescription of the week), I joked that there weren't many more parts of me that could be infected--maybe fingernails?) Ha. Then Wednesday I went back for thrush, and Thursday for conjunctivitis. The nurses and pharmacy techs are starting to get to know me.

But I'm getting better! (The power of positive thinking, you know.) My cold is gone and my ears are starting to clear out. I no longer sound like I'm underwater! And once my antibiotics are gone I'll start a probiotics course to get rid of this stupid thrush. I feel like I'm a walking petri dish. Luckily, though, I'm getting less contagious by the day.

And, fingers crossed, I don't seem to have passed any of this on to any of my family. Which is lucky. I've barely been able to take care of myself, let alone any other sickies.

And, something I've learned: if you ask people to ask your kids while you go to the doctor, they usually feed you lunch. It's pretty nice. I'm going to start inventing appointments, conveniently scheduled to end right about noon. I'll be making the rounds through friends and acquaintances. Just wait for your phone call, and be ready. Seriously, though, many thanks to those who have helped me with the kids the last couple weeks. You've been lifesavers. And of course, to Levi, who has really stepped up with cooking and kid duties when he's home so that I can rest. He's a good'un.

A Very Merry Birthday

 Well. I wanted to make sure we'd mark this third birthday with some good fun things. I organized a playdate while Nathan would be at school. And the next day was Levi's day off, so we'd have some time for a day-after birthday outing. Hooray! Fun things!

And then, sickness. Levi was home sick. Clara had a cough. Alice was all sorts of snotty and had a little cough. So we canceled the playdate and hunkered in.

 But was our birthday fun? You bet. The thing about three is that simple things are really fun. During the afternoon we got out some balloons. Balloons are fun by nature, and then when you learn about static electricity, the fun multiplies! Look! the balloon is sticking to me! To the couch! To the wall!

 Then we got out the birthday crepe paper to decorate. She was pretty proud of this one--she did it all herself.  After that we watched a movie and painted fingernails. For dinner we loaded all the sickies in the car for Chick Fil A drive-through--her choice. And then, birthday party!

 Clara wanted a pink princess birthday cake. But, this is a girl who doesn't eat cake, so why bother? So she got a pink princess ice cream cake. It turned out pretty well, and she loved it.

 It took a while to blow out candles--by the end, Nathan was helping.

And Alice was pretty happy with an ice cream cone filled with whipped cream. She did successfully beg a few bites of ice cream later. I've gotten a lot more relaxed about things like that with each baby.

And although our day didn't live up to my plans, it was probably better. A fun day at home doing all the things Clara loves best. What a happy girl, at least most of the time.

And, the day after her birthday, she started (finally) telling me when it's time to go potty. We're definitely making progress now. Hopefully we'll have less of turning "back into a baby" from here on out. Clara told Grandma a couple weeks ago that most of the time she's a big girl but sometimes she turns back into a baby--this while grandma was dealing with a dirty pull-up. Yes, let's have less of that.

A backseat civics education

A couple weeks ago, while heading to the grocery store, somebody had left the radio turned to ksl talkradio (our satellite radio's free trial period has ended, and it's been a very sad day.) Talk radio is not really my thing, but it was Doug Wright, who seems to make a good deal of sense, usually, and so I left it on. It was talk about the recent passage of the bill averting the fiscal cliff, and all the ridiculous hoopla surrounding that.

From the backseat I hear: "Mom, did we vote yes or no?"

?

"Um, we voted yes." ? I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about.

"Because we need to keep taxes low."

Well. I think we have a little Republican in the making. Because, as our four year old is quite sure, low taxes are a good thing. And who's going to disagree?

The Twenty-Fifth

 Christmas Eve, just before bed. We worked all day to get the house clean so I could enjoy Christmas. Then in the evening we had dinner before heading to the live Nativity in West Haven. Our Barton grandparents and Uncle Will were able to come. The kids enjoyed seeing the animals, and even Alice enjoyed the angels up on the roof. I haven't been for several years and it was wonderful. It was bitterly cold and it was such a testimony to me to see the Roman soldiers march through the snow in sandals and the young children try not to shiver in the cold--the story they told was so important that they didn't care about the physical discomfort. I think I've found a good Christmas Eve tradition.

 Then, the next morning, December twenty-fifth, we celebrated Alice's nine-month birthday. Oh, and Christmas.

 The kids had a great morning opening presents. The crankies started to come out at breakfast, and really came out at at Grandma Burrows' house.

 After lunch we had a drive to Farmington and (yes!) naps. And then, it turns out, a drive to Grantsville and more naps for most of us.

Christmas was a good day. And now we've even (mostly) caught up with our naps.