Where's Clara?

Clara, hiding behind the bathroom door. "Where's Clara?"

"In Paris?"

"No."

"In Russia?"

"No."

"Behind the door?"

"No." Grinning.

"In outer space?"

"No."

"In time?"

"No."

"In demand?"

"Yes!"

I'm not sure what that means to a three-year-old. But, she must be right.

Planning spring break

While googling things to do in Torrey with kids, I found a website with glowing things to say:

There are a great number of things to do in Torrey UT. The things to do in Torrey Utah are immense and diverse. There are always many movies to see at the many theaters. Things to do in Torrey UT are never dull and boring; one can always go see movies, plays, theater, music at the many venues, drinks are the many bars, see the normal tourist sites, go to the many clubs, or view the arts and sciences at the many museums.

Wow, this must be a different Torrey than the one I've visited. Gave us a good laugh, though.

Middling March

Well, here it is, the middle of March already. What have we been up to?..... Sometimes it's hard to remember.

While my sister's been in London (yeah, I'm pretty jealous) I've been watching her two youngest on Thursdays so my mom can go to work. Last Thursday I also watched my friend's kids for a couple of hours so she could work on an organizing project. So, two extra kids for a couple hours, a half an hour or so with seven kids under five, then the rest of the day with just five. We played outside for hours. Lunch, dishes, etc. I did five loads of laundry. I made a pie (it was pi day, and I never pass up a reason for pie). I spray painted some baskets for Easter. I made dinner. I went to a training at the employment resource center, where I saw my cousin--fun little surprise. Then, finally, book club. I was pretty glad to make it to book club after such a busy day.

And, March, spring, spring cleaning. I've so been wanting to do spring cleaning, and organize, declutter, et cetera, et cetera. I found an organizing blog, which is lovely. I spend so much time reading organizing blogs and planning home improvement projects that I of course will not get to this year that it's been hard to get just my regular cleaning done. This is getting ridiculous. There needs to be an Internet moratorium around here.

Last week Nathan was looking at the comics, as is his wont every morning while I read the paper. One of the comics had a dog ripping the pants of somebody. He looked at it and said, "rip!" I asked him how he knew that's what it was and he said, "There's a P, and an I, and an R." Well, backwards, but yes. That is what it says. He's been learning all the letters and their sounds at preschool, and it's exciting to see it all coming together. This next year he's really going to start reading and I'm super excited about it. He's also learning to write, and when he's in the mood, we'll sit down to write messages. He'll tell me what he wants to say and I'll help him figure out the letters he needs. One day he had just gotten a Star Wars coloring book with a light saber pen, so he wrote a message to dad (Luke) that said, "Luke, be careful. Don't go to the Dark Side." Last week in sacrament he was figuring out a coded message in his spiderman coloring book and it had a place to write a story. That was the best he has behaved in sacrament for quite a while. I, on the other hand, was a little noisier than usual, telling him all the letters he needed to use.

Clara is still going strong with staying dry. She hasn't had any backsliding and is starting to stay dry on some nights. Woot! She's getting quite an imagination. One day as I was helping her go potty she said, "Don't flush the toilet, I will get flushed away. And then you won't have a Clara and you'll be so sad. And then Nathan will swim down in the toilet and get me. And it will be so happy." Today she decided to sing a song that went something like this: "I love princesses/ Princesses live in castles/ Castles are so great / And all princesses live in castles.
So she's still really liking princesses, in case you were wondering.

And, Alice is walking! Not everywhere, and she falls down a lot. But she's definitely coming along. And she's experimenting with sounds. One day it sounded like she said "hi." And the other day, playing with a little toy skunk we have, she pointed at its eyes and said "eyes." Levi and I both heard it so we knew we weren't imagining it. But of course it hasn't happened again. She's also learning to nod yes and does it at random times. It's been fun to have all these fun things to offset the major temper she's getting. She's so frustrated to have all these opinions and no way to communicate them, not to mention those older siblings who maul her and parents who thwart her at every turn. And she's developed quite a liking for jelly beans, thanks to careless older siblings who leave them on the floor.

And that's March, at least until we have a birthday next week. Next week! Where has the time gone?

At long last...

 Another post about Alice. She's been doing so much growing up in the last couple of months. The picture above is when mom gets diagnosed with thrush, and so the baby gets a preventative treatment. The pediatrician's office recommended gentian violet, which, it turns out, is violently purple and stains everything horribly. Also, it tastes awful. So, which is worse? Awful purpleness or thrush? You decide.

 Luckily the purple faded after a day or two.

 I'm not sure how these pictures got separated. More purple mouth, and try not to notice the dirty jammies. I was sick; laundry got relegated.

And...technology! Alice has followed suit and fallen in love with the new phone. We have an app that makes animal sounds and she loves it. This was one night after the older kids were in bed. So she got undivided time to play. Which is good, because she's getting quite a temper. She can throw a fit with the best of them when something gets taken away. She'll yell and throw her head back, her arms outstretched. Sometimes she'll fall over in a fit of drama. Tonight we were all sitting on the couch, with Alice on my lap and Clara next to us. Alice didn't like something Clara said, and turned toward her swinging her arm, really truly on purpose. Hitting's beginning early, I guess. hm...where could she have gotten this from? Certainly not the boy who got sent to bed with no bedtime story today as punishment.

And, standing. Standing has actually been happening since I think January. One day she just stood up in the middle of the room. And if she's holding on to something she'll stand for quite a while. We've noticed her the last couple of days trying to take steps, and she's gotten one or two tiny ones in before falling.

She is also enjoying babies right now. Real babies and fake dolls (that's what Clara calls her dolls). Specifically, Clara's favorite doll has become Alice's favorite doll. We might have to fix this in a few weeks when somebody has a birthday. She's very good at waving, I think this has been going on for a while too. Two, three months? It's hard to remember. Today at the store the checkout lady (after saying Alice could be a Gerber baby and should be in commercials) told us goodbye. And Alice waved. Yesterday in the van Clara started singing and Alice joined in with some nonsense babbling. It really sounded like she was trying to sing.

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.