Welcome 30!

I had a great birthday yesterday. People keep asking me if I'm having a hard time turning 30, but actually I've been feeling the opposite. I'm ready for the thirties. The 20's were fun in a lot of ways, but really hard in others. It was 10 years of moving constantly and having a million firsts. First baby, first house, first "real job," first marriage (I'm so funny), for me it even included a first kiss (that's really embarrassing to admit). With the 30's will come stability. I won't be a poor college student anymore. I will most likely only move once. I won't have to experience being a first time mother again (that was not fun!). The twenties were full of excitement and new things, and I must be getting old, because I'm ready for the calm after the storm. Being settled doesn't sound all that bad.

And on to my birthday fun...I actually had several days of birthday. I deserve it, I am 30 after all. On Saturday we got together for dinner and games with some friends (this actually had nothing to do with my birthday, but I'm going to count it because I didn't have to make dinner and it makes my list that much longer :), on Sunday my Sister in Law invited my family over for a delicious dinner so that I would get to have another night of not cooking! Lucky me! On Monday some friends took me out for dessert. And on my actual birthday John took the morning off so that I could sleep in. Although, sleeping in like this hardly counts... (please ignore my crazy face and greasy skin and just admire my courage for posting this picture.)

John made me breakfast pizza for breakfast and had it ready the minute I stepped in the door from the gym. I had an easy morning, visited with friends in the afternoon, and I got to assemble my yummy, same as last year cake, (John even baked the cakes for me the night before).
John made dinner. My family visited. John got me a sewing machine, which I am totally excited about! I didn't get a picture of it but I will be sure to post all of the amazing things I make with it....when I figure out how to thread the darn thing. Luckily the machine came from a specialty shop and so I get to go to a free beginners class.

But I think the best gift of the night was probably the frame that Syd gave back to me. It was a hideous frame that John and I were given for our wedding.

I had forgotten what had happened to it and thought it was gone forever. But no, Syd had been hanging on to it all these years, and now I can do something special with the weird hairpin frame!

And just to keep the party hoppin' John will take me out on a date this weekend, since it just didn't work out yesterday. Weekday b-days can be sort of a bummer that way.

Thanks for all the calls and cards and such! They all made my birthday great!

Silence

We had a RARE occurrence today. Okay, more than a rare occurrence, a first time occurrence that will never happen again (is there a fancy word for that that I'm not aware of?). Today as the kids and I were eating lunch there was a distinct moment of silence. There was no TV, no music, both children AWAKE, and yet there was a moment of no sound. I looked at Ains and she looked at me, I started counting because I knew this moment was special and I wanted to time it. Our moment of silence was for about 10 seconds. It was amazing!!!! I don't expect it to ever happen again. Awake children and silence are like oil and water. In order for them to mix there must be an outside force such as TV. How's that for scientific?

Bread

I've been making my families bread for about a year now. The other day when I was pulling out my ingredients to make a batch of bread, I realized that I had the recipe memorized...and that I was getting pretty good at it. My kids now prefer my whole wheat, homemade bread to store bought. (John is insane though and will forever prefer white store-bought bread.) So, since I'm so great at it :), I decided to share my recipe and tricks, Pioneer Woman style! I do however need to apologize for the quality of my pictures however. What can I say, it was a cloudy day...so they all look dark. (Although, I'm pretty sure my tricks are common knowledge to most.)

First, make sure you have a mixer...I'm not sure making bread is worth the effort if you don't have one. I wish I had a Bosch, but I don't. After you have your mixer, fill your bowl with 5 1/2 cups of hot water (tap hot, not boiling hot). Then add 2 1/2 Tbsp. dry yeast and a tablespoon of sugar and wait until the water gets all frothy.

Then start adding your wheat flour. Start with 6 cups of wheat flour and 1 cup gluten flour.
Now let your mixer start doing the work. Clean the sides of the bowl if needed, but just sit back and watch. Let it go for a while.

I let mine mix long enough that I had time to do the dishes in my sink.

Seriously!

When the flour is mixed well, add 2 Tbsp. of salt...

2/3 cup Oil

And 2/3 cup honey. Be sure to add the Oil first and then the honey will just slide out of your measuring cup!

Then give it another mix, but not as long this time.

Now it's time to add the final amounts of flour. This is where things get less exact. You will eventually add another 3-5 cups of flour. I'm pretty sure the weather effects how much I end up adding. Usually I add about 3, but on this batch It got closer to 5. So start out by just adding 2-3 cups to the bowl.

Let 'er rip until you can't add any more flour. (If I had a bosch mixer with a bigger bowl, I would continue adding flour until the dough didn't stick to the edges, I have to stop when my bowl gets too full and knead the rest by hand.)

So if you are like me and will be kneading by hand, place a decent amount of flour on your counter. I'm not sure why but I like to knead in white flour better than wheat. So the last cup or two of flour are always white flour for this family.

Put some flour on top of your dough, and start kneading....and kneading...and kneading.

Until you have a nice ball of dough. When the dough is done you should be able to put your thumb in the side and have it bounce back. When in doubt...overly moist bread is always better than overly dry bread. So if you're questioning, hold back on the flour.

Cut the dough ball into four sections.

Knead the smaller balls a little until you have a shape that looks like a loaf. (You might need to add a bit more flour once you cut the dough to get to this point if your dough is still too sticky.)

Cover your pans and let rise for about an hour, or until you remember that you are making bread and need to get it in the oven. I have forgotten more than once and my bread has always turned out.

When you're done grab a spatula and scrape off your counter. Do not use your kitchen rag. You will be left with a gooey, gluey, mess. I use the spatula to scrape most of the flour into the garbage and then do the rest with paper towels. Seriously, save yourself some time and use some paper towels.

When the dough has doubled...
Pop it in the oven for about 40 minutes. And, Voila!

Take it out, add butter to the top if you want to, and enjoy! I usually take my bread a step further and slice it with electric knife. I freeze my bread in bread bags (bought from my local Great Harvest) and this way we have sliced bread ready to go instead of having to cut it at every meal.

So give it a try...I jumped in a year ago and haven't been able to go back. I buy all of my ingredients in bulk and so they are always on hand. It's nice to know that I'm able to feed my family a hearty filling bread for less than a dollar a loaf.

Terrible two's, terrible five's????

I have great kids. Really I do. But, at times they drive me CRAZY!!!!


The phrases that currently (and commonly) come out of our 2 year old's mouth are...

"STOP IT!"

"NO!"

"(Insert any other phrase here to represent something wanted, such as, I want a gummy bear)!"

Repeat this phrase over and over, at least 100 times.

All are said very loudly and with great expression.

A few phrases from our sassy and full of attitude 5 year old are...

"ARE YOU SERIOUS!!!"

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME!"

"WHAT DO YOU THINK!"

(The above questions are not asked in a questioning tone. They are yelled in a "surely you have no idea what you are talking about" tone.)

What parent doesn't love to hear things like that on a daily basis?

Budget

I try really hard to keep our family on a budget. I allot money for necessities and unexpected expenses. But something seems to come up every pay check that throws me for a loop. This pay check it was having to get the carpet restretched. (I really shouldn't complain about that, what could have been a BIG expense was only $85 bucks...and they said we did a good job of drying it out. :) But that $85 really threw me off. Suddenly all of our spending money was gone. I could have dipped into savings (which we usually do for bigger unexpected expenses, like car repair) but I really hate doing that and was hoping we could just absorb the cost. Well we did, but after all was said and done for the last week we've only had $10. Nice huh! We cheated a bit and when we got our tax return left a bit of the surplus in our checking account to help us out instead of transferring it ALL to other accounts. But most of the time we just go without.

Why is it that something like this always happens? Am I the only one that experiences this. Last check it was the heater breaking. Before that, Ainsley's b-day. Before that Christmas. Before that car trouble. John and I always think we have a good plan going. We save money every month. And then our savings just seems to go out the door. (Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, we have a decent amount of savings(we've never had to carry a credit card balance)...I just have a goal set in my head that we can never seem to reach.)

Are we the only ones that live this way? Here is my question for you....how do you cover unexpected expenses? How do you budget for things like summer clothes and new school clothes? What do you do if you run out of money unexpectedly, live without or use up savings? Maybe that's too personal. Maybe I shouldn't be posting this question here. But I'm really curious, and I don't think there's anything wrong with talking about money, how else do we learn? Although things are WAY better than when we were in school, I guess I just had this false vision that when you were "established" things got easier. But I feel like I still focus on budgeting and saving all the time. So if it's not too much to ask...tell me what you do!

Words to live by...

We had stake conference today. Elder Costas (?) of the seventy was visiting the area and spoke to our stake. I loved his talk. I think I loved it so much because his message hit home. He was such a happy person. You know, the kind of person that you can just tell are perfectly content and truly happy.

He spoke of growing up and being newly married. Being POOR and having faith. He spoke of spending time with family. He told about the hours that his family would spend in the kitchen, just talking and being together. I think that the thing that hit me the hardest was when he made the list of all the things that we replace family time with: sports, movies, TV, internet...and the list went on. Why is it so hard sometimes to focus on the people we cherish the most. Why are the relationships with our families often overlooked. Okay, maybe I shouldn't include others in this, but I know it definitely applies to me. I realize that I'm often more willing to go out of my way for friends and ward members than I am for my own family, and shouldn't it be the other way around?

He also talked about how even as a poor boy, he knew he was rich because he had love in his family, he knew his god, and he knew he was loved. It all seemed so simple. I guess it is all that simple. We really don't require much in order to have true happiness. So that is my post, nothing exciting, maybe even kind of boring. But, something I want to remember.

And now here we are...

The flood was a bit worse than I thought. The hall closet was wet too. So now the carpets are pulled back and I've been listening to the hum of 6 fans for hours. Hopefully it will all be over soon. *****Update: I just had to pull up the pad as well. When will it end! Let this be a lesson to you all to never overfill your washer!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

It all started last night.

Owen had been sick for a couple of days with a nasty cough and a bit of a fever. He asked to go to bed around 6:00 last night. He looked miserable so I just put him to bed.

At 10:00 John went to check on Owen noticed that the room smelled like urine. I, being the genius mother that I am, had put him to bed in his underwear. After giving him a lot of juice to drink. Need I say more.

Poor Owen had to be woken up, given a bath, and then put back in a make shift bed.

John threw a load of sheets into the washer and we went to bed.

This morning I woke up early to go to the gym and realized I wasn't feeling to hot. I went back to bed.

Owen and I slept in until 9:00 this morning while poor Ainsley had to fend for herself.

I finally got around to finishing Owen's laundry around 11:00. I shoved his comforter into the washer, even though I knew it was too full.

Ainsley asked me why the floor was all wet.

I spent the next hour trying to get up all the water that I could out of the carpet.

I eventually ran out of towels, even though the carpet was still wet.

I had to pull out the washer and dryer and clean behind them...all by myself.
I still have no towels, my carpet is still wet, Owen still has a makeshift bed, I still feel crummy, but the floor under my washer and dryer are clean.

New

Remember how I mentioned that I was overwhelmed by this. Well, guess who just got called to be the provident living specialist? Our ward takes this calling pretty seriously. Today I was informed that I would need to attend the Relief Society presidency meetings. I think I've got my work cut out for me. Isn't this all just a little ironic?!

On a complete side note...Owen has only had one accident in the past 3 days. All I have to say is that Owen has been A LOT easier than Ains to potty train, and Ainsley was pretty easy.

On a completely other side note....I keep having incidents with the men's restroom. A few weeks ago at church I took a boy in my class to the bathroom. When he didn't come out for a while I opened the door and called in for him. He called back that he needed help. I walked into help him, assuming that if a man were in there he would have spoken up by this point. Apparently I was wrong, as I turned the corner into the bathroom a man was USING the urinal. I left very quickly. I'm not sure who was more embarrassed. Luckily his back was to me. And then last week we made our first diaper free outing to Ainsley's preschool field trip to Chuck E. Cheese. While there Owen told me he had to go to the bathroom. In my mind I was thinking that I was taking a boy to the bathroom and I walked right into the men's room with Owen. Thank heaven's no one was in there this time. What's my problem???