My Daddy (by Xavier)

Xavier and I were drawing on our giant Aquadoodle wall today (thanks Hilary!) and Xavier talked out loud about what he was drawing, mostly "car tires". I took a picture of his best creation, though--the face he drew on his daddy. I drew the body and then X carefully drew the mouth, eyes, nose, and teeth. If I got the explanation right, Joe is "brushing his teeth". :)

Do you know what month it is?

My birthday month!

and

My school is reminding students how to be cyber secure and suggests we try the quiz below to see how well we can detect phishing attacks. My school is so cool. http://www.sonicwall.com/phishing/

Things about me

10 years ago I:
1. Was an outdoorsy summer camp counselor in South Carolina, where I kayaked, canoed, did ropes courses, pretended to be fine with living among giant spiders and bugs, and met the most amazing kids.
2. Was a sophomore at BYU.
3. Worked as a medical transcriptionist for the student health center. I have to say, it is fascinating to hear what kinds of problems people deal with.
4. Turned down the first offer in my life to go out drinking. Who knew it was so easy to say no?
5.Could drive a stick shift. (Not so confident in that area anymore)

5 things on today's to-do list:
1. Visit the college my brother-in-law and sister work for.
2. Do a workout on Wii-Fit. Apparently, I am awesome at the balance required for ski jumping!
3. Call X who is with grandma for a few days.
4. Read the statistics book and lecture for last week's homework.
5. Finish reading "Auralia's Colors" by Jeffrey Overstreet.

5 Snacks I enjoy:
1. Blue tortilla chips with fresh salsa
2. Jalapeno-cilantro hummus with Stacy's (the brand, not me) pita chips
3. Snap peas and fresh veggies from home gardens
4. Fresh homemade bread
5. Anything sweet! (I'm sorry to Xavier who I gave my sweet tooth to. )

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire:
1. Pay off all of graduate debt.
2. Buy a cute house with a cute yard and then redecorate like crazy!
3. Get eye surgery so I wouldn't have to remember where I put my glasses or deal with scratchy contacts ever again!
4. Try out lots of fancy hotels.
5. Get a personal trainer and a cook, then get in really good shape and have great eating habits!

5 Places I have been:
1. the Bahamas
2. Puerto Rico
3. Boston
4. Japan
5. Illinois

5 Jobs I have had:
1. early morning newspaper deliverer (I had a great throwing arm then!)
2. gas station attendant
3. preschool teacher
4. high school teacher
5. full-time MOM

People I tag: Jodi and anyone else who wants to!

Tt is for Turtle Bread

I am a cook.

Maybe it's the cider we've been drinking or maybe it's excitement from the start of the holidays, but I have been cooking a lot of new recipes lately, attempting some semi-healthy recipes and even making some things from scratch! The other day I was rearranging our cookbooks that are overflowing our kitchen shelves and found an ABC cookbook for kids with the perfect recipe. It's called Turtle Bread. Let me back up.

My strategy for cooking usually goes like this:

1. Find ingredients in fridge that definitely need to be used up or items in the cupboards that are bugging me because I never use them (in this case, it was yeast).

2. Find a recipe that will use up the ingredient without having to go shopping for other ingredients in the recipe and/or one that does not add more miscellaneous ingredients to my fridge that will then need to be used up. (See the cute Turtle Bread recipe that will use up my yeast. Feel surpise that I have all the ingredients.)

3. Decide if I really feel like cooking or not. (Xavier wanted to cook and I didn't mind. Ok, then!)

4. Make the recipe following the directions exactly (until I realize I missed a step) OR give up and don't cook at all. (Turtle Bread was so easy and so fast with our Kitchenaid that I would make it again and again. It came out well even though I did the recipe a little bit wrong! And letting the bread sit only took ten minutes, which Xavier didn't mind because I told him the turtle was "hiding" until the timer went off. After making Turtle Bread I even told Joe we should make our own bread every time! Thinking back on my cooking history, I don't know about that idea, but ohhhh, it was tasty!)

Here's the recipe that I did which is slightly (accidentally) different from the Alpha-Bakery Children's Cookbook by Gold Medal if you want to try it:

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 pkg quick-acting active dry yeast (I couldn't tell if that's the kind I had...)

1 Tbls sugar

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup milk

1 Tbls margarine or butter

1 egg

2 raisins (I would say these are optional)

Directions:

1. Let your kids help put the flour, yeast, sugar and salt into your Kitchenaid mixing bowl. Mix.

2. Heat water, milk and margarine in the microwave to so-hot-the-butter-melts (recipe says 125-130 degrees but I had no idea how to measure that); stir into Kitchenaid mixture. Stir in egg.

3. Sprinkle a surface lightly with flour. Turn the dough onto the surface; take turns kneading the bread a few times with your child. Cover with a kitchen towel, set a timer for 10 minutes, and let the dough rest. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.

4. Think of something to do with your child for the last 8 minutes of the wait.

5. Turn off timer.

6. Shape a 2-inch piece of dough into a ball for the head. Shape 4 pieces into balls for feet. Make a tail. Shape remaining dough into a ball for the body; place on cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Attach head, feet and tail. Press raisins into head for eyes (or just gouge two little holes with a knife).

7. Cover and let rise 20 minutes. (What?! I never saw this step until now! That's embarrassing. This is not the step I already did "wrong".)

8. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

9. Make crisscross cuts in body, 1/4 inch deep, to look like a turtle's shell.

10. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.

Makes 1 turtle.

Spooky Boo's

I have been in a completely Halloween mood this year. I even marked off time in my dayplanner to decorate the house on October 1st while Joe was at work so he'd be surprised when he got home. Xavier was so excited to see the container of decorations come out. He chose who got which spooky pillowcase (skeleton, pumpkin, or ghost) and helped me put what he calls the pirate a.k.a. skeleton, tablecloth on the table. I changed the doormat, hung ghosts on the lamps, put up a skeleton shower curtain and made a spooky bouquet.

Today, Xavier and I played a "scary" memory game made out of funny Halloween cards, and for Family Home Evening we all decorated little pumpkins. Every night since October 1st, part of Xavier's bedtime routine is to do four rhymes or songs with paper ghosts and pumpkins as visual aids. It is so fun! He already has the first rhyme "Little Ghost, Little Ghost" almost memorized and insists that he get a turn saying it and flying the little ghost around.

It's funny that I like decorating for Halloween because I don't like actually scary things (my motto is "just say no" to spiders, haunted houses, gory costumes, etc.) and now that I'm older I can't believe the commercialization that I realize I'm a huge participant of or that parents let their kids get and eat all that candy! Do you know how many WeightWatcher points just one mini-candybar is? Still, I love it. I like our glow-in-the-dark pillowcases, seeing pumpkins and corn mazes, thinking up costumes Xavier could wear, and enjoying the fall atmosphere with our little family.

Grandma sent X a ghost camouflage t-shirt. Can you find him?

Our FHE activity--Can you tell who decorated which pumpkin? Hint: Xavier got two.

A recent spooky day in Monterey.

With a few days like this, how can you not get in a ghostly mood?

My Reading List

Can you tell what is going on in my life just by looking at these titles?

1. Your Two-Year-Old: Terrible or Tender (by Louise Bates Ames) This book has great insight on two-year-old development and I'm constantly nodding my head as it distinguishes between two-year-old and two-and-a-half-year-old behavior. It is funny, too, because it is old. It talks about letting your child have his own phonograph and records!

2. I Brake for Meltdowns: How to handle the most EXASPERATING behavior of your 2-to5-year-old (by Michelle Nicholasen & Barbara O'Neal) This one is definitely for me. It gives specific instructions on how to handle child-parent clashpoints. I love the sample dialogues. In fact, today I met a mom at the Aquarium who was having "one of those days" starting with trying to put on her two-year-old's shoes. I told her I'd just read about a "fast talking" diversionary tactic and showed her a couple of seconds later when I put on Xavier's shoes. Of course, she doesn't know that I never have trouble with Xavier refusing to put on shoes, but anyway, she seemed happy to talk with another mom of a two-year-old and said she was going to try out fast talking next time.

3. Basic Statistical Analysis (I won't mention the author, I don't think any of you will be reading it anytime soon, except Joe). School again. (BIG SIGH). I can hardly wait to be finished but I also don't want to finish because it means I will be job searching (and we know that takes a long time, especially if you're not credentialed to teach) plus then we'll only have six months before even more school loans come due. Why did I think grad school was such a good idea again?

4. Lupe Vargas and her Super Best Friend; Jingle Dancer; My Pal, Victor; One Night; Salt Boy; Josais, Hold the Book; Romina's Rangoli; Jalapeno Bagels; Halmoni and the Picnic; Mama and Papa Have a Store; The Tortilla Factory; How My Parents Learned to Eat; The Lotus Seed; A Gift from Papa Diego; Sumi's First Day of School Ever; I Lost My Tooth in Africa; The Way We Do It in Japan; dear juno; Catch that Goat!; An Angel Just Like Me; The Always Prayer Shawl, and so on. Yes, this is called procrastination. I am doing an independent study class on multicultural children's literature. It's too bad that it's not a regular semester class like most of my online classes since I obviously have no self-discipline. You see, I've had a year to finish the course and I currently have 28 out of 40 book reviews plus a paper and a half still to finish before November 15th. Still, I've had so much fun with this class. I get to go to the library all the time. After reading several articles about what is (and isn't) "multicultural" in today's educational circles, I am pretty picky about the books I get, so the ones above are the ones I've really liked. If you have a chance, check them out!

The saga continues...

Unfortunately, our week of craziness is not yet at its end because while we were finding fun books to read at the library yesterday, a car backed into ours, scratching our car and breaking a light reflector. Fortunately, the person left a note and offered to pay for the damages. (Now, please, please, please let this be the end of our most recent string of unfortunate events that, luckily, are also always fortunate in some way.)

The End (again)