Home Despot

While I was asking the boys what they wanted for lunch today, Judah said, “I want to be healthy, so I want fruit. And crackers with cheese melted on them.”

Well, at least he knows that fruit is healthy.

Again. And it’s sticking right now. Oh dear.

Things to do:

• Make Caramel Popcorn for the New Year’s Eve party at the Shubin’s tonight.
• Fold the rest of the laundry.
• Put the laundry away.
• FInish cooking kidney beans.
• Supervise Judah’s vacuuming of the living room.
• Make some sort of lunch.
• Make some sort of dinner.
• Break out the monthly amounts for the Grocery and Household budget for 2009.
• Put away groceries still in bags from yesterday.
• Make bread

Those are only the more essential things. I could also clean the bathroom, tidy up the whole house, design a ribbon embroidery project and order materials for it, continue trying to crochet baby leg-warmers, vacuum the entire house, etc. Sometimes it’s really hard to know where to begin. Probably should go get Juday working on the vacuuming and start the bread, since that has the longest wait-times involved. Happy New Year everyone!

No, actually, I just had one.

And I have to say… a White Christmas is highly overrated! Not that I’m not taken by the first appearance of snow, and the beauty of the landscape covered in white. Truly, I’m always delighted when we get “real” snow (defined by me as when the snow is high enough to cover the tops of the grass). But when the snow starts one Sunday, causing church to be cancelled, and sort of hangs on all week causing all of the Christmas parties and events to be cancelled, dumps a whole bunch more on us as my parents are trying to drive down the gorge, causes church to be cancelled again (one Sunday was relaxing, two gets to be a little old..), nearly prevents my family from flying out of PDX, keeps me housebound for 3 more days, and finally makes it necessary to chain up, merely to get out of our driveway so we could go to my in-laws for Christmas…. well, it makes one glad that most of our Christmases are a lovely, drizzly Oregon green.

It wasn’t all bad, of course. For one thing, Michael had to stay home Monday and Tuesday, effectively getting the whole week off (although he did some work from home for the first three days). The boys were excited to see the snow, and got plenty of opportunities to experiment with it. Judah was starting to get into the possibilities of playing in the snow, and even took our saucer for a spin right in front of our house. No, our hill’s not that steep, so he really didn’t move much, but there was one slick part where he picked up speed a little, and he thought that was pretty fabulous. Ezra however, when it got really deep (say 12+ inches) would just go outside and stand there. After all, he could barely walk, and it’s not like we have snow pants or anything around here, so every movement pushed more snow into his boots. He didn’t stay out long. We spent more time pursuing indoor activities, such as painting, baking cookies, and playing board games. But on Christmas Eve day we all went sledding. We dressed as warmly as we could, packed the baby in our jogging stroller, and made our way down to a little walking park near our house that had several lovely pre-prepared (by other sledders) sledding runs just the right size for a 5 and 3 year old. Even sedate old me went down a few times, shrieking all the way, just for the fun of it. I’d post pictures, but wouldn’t you know it… I forgot the camera!

Last night, as I was trying to get to sleep I was giving thanks for the predictable seasons in our lives. You know, the busy, festive holiday season followed by the fresh, starting-over feeling of the New Year. As I followed that line of thought, I got to thinking about how Rev. Van Dyken my former pastor and catechism teacher always told us that the joke was on the secularists because even though they denied God in everything, they still had to sign dates as A.D. - Anno Domini, In the Year of Our Lord. Now the busy little bees have noticed this discrepancy and have started rewriting the history books in C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). I was disgruntled by this thought but I chuckled (silently, so as not to wake Michael up) when I realized that whether you call it AD or CE, it’s still in terms of years, i.e. the the time it takes the earth to circle around the sun. And Who determined that time period, hmmm?

On the way to Grandma Valerie’s a few weeks ago on an extraordinarily clear and beautiful winter day, I was able to point out all three of the volcanoes that are visible from a certain point on I-205, going north. Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier. Since I was in a talkative mood, I proceeded to tell Judah about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, two years before I was born, including the story of how Grandma Rachel watched the eruption from her vantage point in one of the bigger towers in downtown Portland where she was working at First Interstate Bank. Usually when I try to impart educational information to the boys while we’re driving in the car, my efforts are received with something less than enthusiasm, but not today. I believe I said that the mountain had exploded - and Judah was hooked. He asked me to keep telling him about the mountain exploding. So I proceeded, dredging up everything I thought I might know about volcanoes, trying to explain what a volcano is, how it’s formed, tectonic plates, etc. After a while, he told me he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I stopped. On the way home, however, when we drove over the Glen Jackson bridge with a full view of Mt. Hood, he asked me to tell him more about the mountain exploding.

Since then I’ve borrowed two movies and several books about volcanoes in general and Mt. St. Helens in particular for little Judah. And even if it’s a little over his head, he’s still entranced. This must be why people do unit studies!

Nothing in Particular.

A few family album type bits of information:

• We went to my parents in Tri-Cities, WA for Thanksgiving this year! We drove up on Wednesday, without incident. I brought rolls - 60-minute rolls from the old Kitchen Aid cookbook, and poppy-seed sourdough rolls from my bread-machine cookbook – although not prepared in the bread machine. That is, the 60-minute rolls were actually prepared – the sourdough rolls were just in the dough stage and subsequently went on rising at my parents until mid-afternoon, when I shaped them, let them rise all night, and baked them in the morning before church. You know something’s a hobby when you’ll do something that ridiculous. But they were good. Not as sour as I was hoping, but still good. J All of the rest of the food (prepared by my mom, dad, sister & sister-in-law) was wonderful. While we were there my brother Ben and his wife and kids came over on Thanksgiving as well as the day after, so Judah and Ezra and Monica got lots of face-time with their only cousins, Rinah and Valor. It was a joyful, fun family gathering, hopefully to be repeated many times!
• On December 6^th we had our Parish Christmas Party. It was notable for the fact that I was so prepared ahead of time that I was NOT running around like a chicken with my head cut off just before the party started. I even moseyed on over to the grocery store for some half-and-half I’d forgotten two hours before the party without even an elevated heart-rate! As parties go, it wasn’t the most exciting, but the kids had a good time and the cookie exchange and singing Christmas carols was fun.
• Judah’s birthday party was scheduled for December 14^th and as bad weather approached, we were apprehensive that we were going to have to cancel it! The snow fell that morning, and things were looking pretty grim, especially as church was cancelled due road conditions. But Michael’s parents wanted to come anyway, so we called the other two families and told them to come if they could. One of them lived too far away and couldn’t come, but the other family did, plus a few extras, so it was a nice sized party and Judah had a good time with his two good friends, John and Zane (I call them the Three Amigos) and all of John’s siblings. His Aunt Abigail made him a “Zurg cake” as he requested, “Aunt Abigail, do you have a recipe for a Zurg cake?” (A Zurg, in case you were wondering, is a character from Toy Story 2 and the Buzz Lightyear TV show, which Judah was introduced to at my in-laws. Apparently it made a big impression!)
• Due to the snow, every single social event I had planned on attending or hosting this week was cancelled! I like snow-days, but snow-weeks? Well, that’s what you get for living in a temperate climate where winter weather mostly consists of drizzle. People just don’t drive in the snow, and our cities don’t salt the roads. Michael’s gone to work both days this week though, but if more snow falls tonight and tomorrow, as expected, then he might get a day off as well. All of that’s fine, I just hope my parents make it OK on Saturday. They’re flying out of Portland on Monday and will bunk with us Saturday and Sunday night.
• If you’re wondering how my routines and good habits are doing in the midst of all of these parties and holiday events, they aren’t. Mystie and I discontinued our morning calling until January, figuring that this time of year is not the time to try to start and nourish new habits. When the January and February doldrums hit (tax season for me) – that’s the time to get back to work trying to get up early, exercize, get organized, etc. For now, we’re on holiday.

Monica is almost 7 months old.

Monica desperately needed something tasty to chew on - perhaps she’s teething? So I investigated online and in fairly short order found this recipe, the Our Favorite Baby Cereal Cookie Recipe.

These are great! Monica attacks them as a puppy does a bone and they were easy to make. I put them in the freezer in a bag, and pull out half of one, whenever I need her to be occupied for a few minutes or during dinner. Another plus is that making them made me feel all frugal and good-mother-ish. Special thanks to Mystie for accidentally leaving a box of rice/barley/oat baby cereal in my refrigerator!

Judah, “Mom, I have to go find my map for Treasure Planet - I left it outside!”

Me, “Oh, were you looking for treasure planet?”

Judah, “Yeah, we found 3 or 10 of them.”

Me, “3 or 10?”

Judah, “Yeah, or one or so.”