This power must be used only for good...

She's not asleep. She's transfixed. She didn't move a muscle for a full fifteen minutes. Unprecedented.

Closed due to illness

Not us. But the schools system is. For two days because students were dropping like flies from the highly spreadable germs all over the place. I'm glad. It seems like everyone I know (or don't know) has been battling either the flu or the pukes in their family. We did (Emma got it too, by the way), they did, she did, even she did, and them, and she did, and her. And I know there are more of you out there!

Happily, no one around here has had a relapse. So we have been enjoying our time off with staying in our pajamas half the morning, playing with friends, and floam. Lots of floam.

There's never been a better reason to get pregnant...

Did you know that Ann Taylor LOFT has a maternity line?? I didn't! Luckily, Design Mom knew. (And over at sk*rt you can even win a gift certificate (among other goodies)!) The choices for all the preggers ladies just keep getting better.

EDIT: I should have realized the speculation this post could cause. For the record, no I'm not pregnant. But I do hope/plan to be at some point in the future, so I love to find totally hip maternity clothes.

The Wax Museum (and tilt your head a little leftish)

Yeah, I filmed it sideways. I did not consider the inability to rotate it the right way later on. So, anyway...

The Wax Museum was last week for Emma. This was quite the project for a 2nd grader. She had to do a little research on her assigned historical figure, Eleanor Roosevelt, and write a short speech. Then she and her classmates stood like wax figures in the gym and waited for parents and other classes to come and push the "on" button on the floor. She would recite her little speech over and over for an hour as the crowd moved through. She took her role very seriously and did not break character (that of being made of wax) when we told her "good job" and "show Dad how loose your tooth is".

Hanging out with her pal, Harriet Tubman...and the whole class.

Dying Wagon Wheel Pasta

I'm back to human again. Josh and Lydia are getting there. And Ben just barely took us back to the beginning of pukedome. C'est la vie.


So, last month was Ben's 100th day of Kindergarten. At our school they make a big, day-long party out of the event. The now-seasoned students make and eat a 100 foot long banana split, see how far they go in 100 steps, count things up to 100 like crazy, and other assorted centi-festivities. Including making a necklace out of 100 pieces of wagon wheel pasta dyed different colors. Hmmm, where would they get all that pasta? Why, helpful mother volunteers of course. When Emma was in kindergarten I was in charge of green and our kitchen table still bears a few stains from that day. With this bit of hard won experience, I was much more prepared to take on red and blue for Ben.

Here's the directions:

1 box wagon wheel pasta

1 bottle of food coloring

2 T. alcohol

1 gallon sized ziplock bags

newspaper and tinfoil

Put your pasta, coloring, and alcohol in the ziplock bag and shake, shake, shake

Spread out the pasta to dry on the tinfoil which is on top of the newspaper (just for good measure). The original directions only called for one measly sheet of wax paper for drying. Can you imagine? It would soak right through. It would dye your table for at least two years. And counting.

Everyone hates being sick

Even worse than powdered milk is the sicks. The really sick stomach sicks have been dominoeing through our family in a most ruthless manner. First attacking our poor little Lydia, then a few hours later seizing Josh, then a few hours later merilessly hitting me. It was a messy and sleepless night for many in our household last night. But we are faring better today. I've been nursing a bowl of chicken-noodle soup for about two hours now and it's really done me good. Also good has been my good Scott who worked from home today in order to basically take care of us all and afford me many naps. Thank you, Scotty.

A Man of Many Talents

Ta-dah! Josh received these awesome stackable robots from Troy and Dan for Christmas and they have been fun for the whole family. The box they came in had several examples of configurations for the robots, with varying degrees of difficulty. The top photo is an example of "advanced". The bottom photo is "expert". It is much, much harder than it looks to get these suckers to balance. Our very own Scott was the steady hand who completed these two amazing displays. Bravo!

Inspiring...

...that's what this quiet book is.

She's done it again. Cally has fashioned the coolest, most mod-orable quiet book known to man or baby. You can see many more photos of its intricate details here.

Now for the GOOD consumables...

Graham crackers and icing. This is such a reminiscent little treat for me. Do other people eat this?

When I was growing up, this was what we always did with leftover icing. Like when you only really needed 2/3 of the tub for the birthday cake or something...what are you supposed to do with that last 1/3? Throw it away? Never! Eat it straight out of the tub? Disgusting! Make 3 or 4 cupcakes to spread it on? Ridiculous! There was only one thing to do with that leftover partially-hydrogenated goodness...marry it to some graham crackers. Mmmm. Make little sandwiches or just dip them.

We don't get icing in a tub all that often these days. (We're health-conscious you know, eating our whole wheats and avoiding too much processed food...at least in our day to day snacking.) In fact, I had nearly forgotten about this little taste of heaven. At least it didn't occur to me straight away. But after our little bit of leftover icing (from Emma's party) had been in the fridge for a couple of days I suddenly remembered. And it was all over. The kids and I devoured half a box of graham crackers and most of the icing in one sitting. In the photo above, they are scraping the last bits of icing from the lid. I was dolloping the icing onto it a little at a time, thinking that each serving would be our last. ("just one more. okay, just one more. last little bit. okay, one last little dollop and that's it. the kids will ruin their appetite, it's almost time for dinner. i've got to get these kids out of here so i can have some more.") I know, when I think about what icing in a tub really is, it's completely disgusting. I try not to look at the ingredient list while I'm eating. That might make me naseous. But if I can just take myself back to those happy childhood days when no one cared much about hydrogenation, I can truly enjoy this taste of nostalgia.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

Sunday night I kept imagining his homecoming.

Yeah, it really is that bad.

Powdered milk.

For those of you who grew up on it...'nuff said.

I was one of the fortunate younger kids in our family, meaning by the time I was born, we got our milk at the store. Not from a can/box then mixed in a pitcher. It seems like almost everyone I know drank it regularly at one point or another in their childhood. And everyone hated it. Everyone. I remember having it at a friend's house when I was 10ish and hating it too. So anyway, we do have a big food-storage can of it, which I use mostly for making granola bars and once for hot chocolate mix. The other day we were out of milk. You can see where this is going. We had been out for a day or two and that is a real problem in our house, as we are a family of milk-addicts. We have a four-gallon-a-week habit. (Some time I will tell the funny stories from Scott's childhood about milk, they have to do with over-consumption.) For some reason, a quick trip to the store was just not happening. In desperation Scott mixed up a nice, cool pitcher full of this lovely beverage just to give it a try. He made all of the kids and me try it too. (I can sometimes occassionally once in a while be a picky eater and it drives Scott crazy. "But I've had it before and I hated it." "How old were you?" "Um, about 10." "Doesn't count.") I thought it might not be that bad. Maybe at least tolerable for pouring over cereal. Wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! No one (not even iron-taste-buds Scott) could manage more than a swallow or two. The legends are true, it really is the worst stuff around. Consider yourself warned.

Lydia Dancing

Check out our baby's moves. It all started months ago with a simple head bob whenever Lydia would hear music that she particularly dug. Then it progressed to frantic knee bends when she was in a standing position. Her latest rhythmic expression is centered around her little head bopping from side to side.

Emma got this rockin' birthday card that plays a Hannah Montana song when you open it. We all know the words now.

Valentine's Day Cards

My friend Ryan just posted about her brother's line of Valentine's Day cards. They're really cute and funny. Check it out.

Emma's Baptism

That's our girl. Her baptism was wonderful. She shared the special event with her friend, Tara, whose birthday falls just 8 days past Emma's. We were blessed with many friends and family members there to support her. Emma was so excited she couldn't hold still all morning. We truly, truly could not ask for a better daughter.

Emma is Eight

Despite my best efforts she just continues to grow. There are not enough positive adjectives in the entire English language (or Spanish or French or even Italian) to describe our Emma. She is amazing. She is kind, smart, clever, funny, beautiful, compassionate, determined, talented, creative, selfless, earnest, capable, strong and self-motivated to do what is good. She turned eight years old one week ago, on the 10th. She'll be baptised this Saturday.

Last Saturday was her birthday party. She chose "baking" as her theme this year. So seven little friends came over and we made cookie-cutter sugar cookies all together. I was a little bit (pleasantly) surprised at how engaged the girls all remained through adding the ingredients and the first couple of batches of cutting out shapes. After that, most of the party people began breaking off to go play elsewhere, but a few diehards stayed with me rerolling the trimmings till the very end. All in all a very successful fun little girl party. I made the party-favor aprons out of a tablecloth from Target. That was a fun (but time-consuming) endeavor. Check out Dani's look (front row, 2nd from left)...I'm sure she was smiling normally when I said, "three". But those Fake Cruzes have a history of making weird faces at the last minute.

Amy Butler

Because I check Design Mom nearly everyday, I have checked in with A Room Somewhere a bit here lately, and she just posted about the new Amy Butler fabrics. My heart is racing with possibilities.

Someday...

Someday (not now...but eventually), when we are sure our family is complete, I would really love some wonderful piece of jewelry showcasing our children's names. Probably something silver and handmade (at least those are my current favorites). Like today I was following a few links and ran across these beauties by Lisa Leonard...

I love all of these options.

I also have on my short list this similar piece by Julian and Company...