Only my kid

would be obsessed with trash cans and lids when everyone else is looking at the ponies.

Pirate Tuesday

Today I commandeered a piece of my idyllic adolescence with the help of YouTube. Sorry I don't know how to embed the video here. Aaarrrrgh!

Sprinkles

Ellen's new favorite cooking ingredient is sprinkles. Jack brought some home after grocery shopping with Ellen "to put on ice cream and stuff." The next day Ellen emptied the entire container of sprinkles into the yogurt, mixed them in, and refused to eat the brown result. I didn't buy sprinkles for another several months.

Recently I decided to take a tip from my mom and make some fun recipes with Ellen. We whipped up some sugar cookies like the ones she made with Grandma Ellen and frosted them, white with sprinkles. Yummy.

Since then, we've experimented more with sprinkles, which have turned out to be amazingly versatile. Yes, they do go nicely on top of vanilla ice cream. Pictured below, we have sprinkle pancakes (complete with smoothie mustache):



Here's a close-up:


Not pictured: sprinkle peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The key in this recipe is to sprinkle both the peanut butter and jelly sides. This way you get a nice crunch and you can actually see the sprinkles after you take a bite.

Any other sprinkle genius recipes out there? We're open here.

By popular demand. . .

. . . if you call one person popular, which I do, since in this case it's my sister MJ, who is a-maz-ing-ly popular.

I fell in love with green curry at a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant next to Baylor University popular with students and faculty. To this day, Bangkok Royal is my favorite place to get awesome green curry.

My brother spent some time in Thailand and then went back with his wife after they got married because he liked it so much. They took a cooking class at the guest house they stayed at, and came back with a recipe book.

So one day I was lamenting the fact that no place in Lubbock comes close to my ideal of green curry, when my brother admitted that he had a recipe and knew how to make it and has never since needed to go to a restaurant to get it since his is just as good. It's true.

So Chels and I headed to an Asian market (there are a surprising number in Lubbock, Texas) to get the ingredients on the recipe. This is particularly heroic of her because
1) she doesn't particularly like Thai food.
2) she doesn't like fish.
3) she doesn't like the smell of fish.
4) Asian markets smell strongly of fish.
5) one of the ingredients we needed was fish sauce.
6) today is her birthday!! Happy Birthday!!

I have since found the same ingredients at our grocery store, and the recipe on the jar of green curry paste is essentially the same as the exclusive Thai guest house recipe, so here it is:

Thai Green Curry Chicken (From Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste jar)

1 14 oz. can coconut milk
1-2 tablespoons green curry paste (the more, the spicier)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized chunks
1-2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup bamboo shoots (optional)
1/2 cup frozen peas (optional)
1-2 cups diced eggplant (not optional in my opinion)
1/3 cup chicken stock
fresh basil for garnish
Cooked jasmine rice (it's more expensive, but really does smell and taste better in my opinion)

In a large saucepan simmer coconut milk with green curry paste over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add chicken, fish sauce, brown sugar, bamboo shoots, frozen peas, and chicken stock. Simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Garnish with fresh basil and serve hot over cooked rice. Serves 2 to 4.

You can add any vegetables you like. I am partial to eggplant since that's how Bangkok Royal does it. You can also trade the chicken for shrimp or tofu. Same, same, but different.

Or if you're me, it serves me twice: dinner today and lunch tomorrow.

Go do the right thing.

I took the kids in the car for an errand run today. We stopped by the post office, went to fill up with gas, and then to the library to see the model train display and turn in some books. Mostly we spent time watching the trains go around and around and around. Ellen and Jack wanted to stay longer, and even I found plenty of things to look at along the model tracks. Finally we stopped by the park and played until the wind got the better of us and it was time to go fix dinner.

At some point I turned on the radio and we all heard the song "New Attitude". Ellen promptly called from the back seat, "Docker Laura, Mom! It's your favorite song!" I admit it; I am a Dr. Laura junkie and usually tune in when we're driving around between 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. I get to listen to about one call's worth of advice before Ellen starts loudly singing "Twinkle, Twinkle" or "The Wheels on the Bus" to drown out all the boring talk.

Yep, my three-year-old knows Dr. Laura's theme song.

Winner!!

Attention:

Yesterday I got an email that started like this:

Thank you for participating in my study, entitled “The Impact of Religiosity on Parenting Behaviors in Latter-day Saint Families.” During the survey, you were given the opportunity to enter your name into a drawing for 1 of 10 $50 Target gift cards. Well, congratulations! Your e-mail address was among those selected!

Hooray!! I spent 20 minutes about a month ago clicking "strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree" in a parenting study. After I finished I was feeling like a pretty mediocre parent. But now I see that it was time well spent.



And then I actually found some amazing parenting pointers in some articles my sister sent me, and a book I picked up randomly at the library: The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One- to Four-Year-Old. I think with a little effort I may become the happiest parent on the block.



$50 and a better parent. Can life get better than this?

Firsts and seconds

First cousins:

Bentley (left) was born on a Monday; Jack Jack (right) was born the next day. They celebrated their 2nd birthdays at the end of February. Bentley's dad and Jack's mom are brother and sister. Yes, they are sharing a chair here, and they are both totally fine with that.

Second cousins:

Abigail (right) was born early Wednesday morning; Rose (left) was born just after noon the same day. Abigail's dad and Rose's mom are first cousins. Here they're celebrating two weeks of life. See the differences in their facial expressions? That's pretty much how they roll.

Not only do all these kids share close birthdays in February, they all live close together. We can look out our front door and see their front doors. Practically. How did we plan all this? I don't think we could have planned it if we tried, but we sure do love having family nearby.

Jumping dodge ball

Our favorite game these days is jumping dodge ball: not for the faint of heart, and only to be played when Uncle David and Bentley come over.

Equipment:
1 mattress
lots of balls

Instructions:
While cousins jump on the mattress, Uncle David throws balls at them. "Aim for their feet."

Sew: a needle pulling thread

In January of 2008 I came home from my brother's wedding and started work on a quilt for him and his wife. Getting the sewing machine out with kids awake has not worked out for me, so I decided to make embroidered panels first and then sew them all together. I decided it would be a good first anniversary gift. I also thought it would be a good idea to give myself a year to finish it. I was only trying to be realistic.

In January and February I cut squares of fabric and gathered pictures. In March I traced the pictures on the fabric and began embroidering them. My box of fabric consisted mostly of blue, so I decided to embroider all in blue, too.





In April, May, June, and July I embroidered.



In August I finished embroidering because I realized I should have been half-way finished, and I was falling behind.



In September I started cutting and piecing strips of blue, sewing them (with a sewing machine) and cutting them to make strips of 2" blocks of assorted blue fabrics.

In October and November I laid out the picture panels a dozen different ways, and then I got frustrated and did nothing because it wasn't working out the way I wanted it to.

At the beginning of December, I realized I had less than a month left. I started spending every night after the kids were in bed sewing strips, sewing finished strips to the pictures, and then cutting random pieces of fabric to sew in between and make everything fit together.

In January I finished the top of the quilt, bought fabric for the back and a batting the same day, and then invited everyone I know to come to a quilting party.





Three quilting parties later I got my living room back and began thinking about the binding.

The first anniversary of my brother's wedding came and went, their sealing day came and went, and then my due date came and went. I got with it and learned how to finish the binding. Then I went to the hospital and had Rose, with one side left to finish hand binding. A week after I came home I finished up the quilt.

This is the scrappiest and patchiest of all the scrap and patchwork quilts I have done. This is the seventh quilt I have pieced and quilted, and the fourth quilt I've pieced completely by myself. I also consider it the most complicated quilt I've attempted. I used more graph paper and brain cells trying to get the numbers worked out than in all my other quilts (and probably every math class I've ever taken) combined.



This is the most "by hand" quilt I've made, what with the embroidered squares, the hand quilting, and finishing the binding by hand. When I started making quilts I never would have even considered spending that much time to do something I could finish in a fraction of the time on a sewing machine. My life has slowed down considerably since then.

This is my favorite square. I found this picture in a Friend magazine after I had almost finished all the embroidering and decided it had to go in my quilt.



See that blue swirly print with the yellow stars? I have a pair of pajama pants made out of that fabric in about 2001 when I was an assistant ward camp director and all the girls made matching pajama pants. That fabric has made it into three or four of my quilts. It's a Harry Potter print :).



The middle panel on the top row of the quilt is a drawing of the Rexburg, Idaho temple. All of the pictures I chose have a special meaning. This is one of the most obvious, and one of the most special to me.



Happy anniversary!

3 kids = no time to blog

24 hours a day
Rose's 8 meals a day
Ellen and Jack Jack's 3 meals a day
1 family dinner
8-10 size one diapers a day
3-5 size five diapers a day
2 snack times a day
5 hours of sleep a day
2 loads of dishes a day
loads of laundry
loads of picking up toys
loads of vacuuming
loads of laughing
loads of hugs and kisses


Ellen still goes to preschool every Wednesday, and last Friday we started up Friday Spanish and a field trip again.