No Matter How Hard I Try, I Will Never Be Si Foster!

I know I am not supposed to covet what people have or what they look like, but is it against any commandment for me to wish I could cook like Si?????

I have this friend Si, who I have known for several years. She is beautiful, funny, a great Mom, a kind friend, tall and slender and a fabulous cook!!!! She can cook anything and make it taste wonderful and look excellent as well. I bring this up because I have this idea in my mind that I am a good cook. I really enjoy cooking and I like to try out fun new recipes. The problem is, I can't ever seem to get anything right.

I don't quite read all of the directions and so when friends arrive for dinner the meat needs another 1/2 hour of cooking. I forget that the mint brownies need cooling time in between so they are not ready when it is time to leave to a party. I make a yummy chocolate cake while the Elders Quroum presidency is meeting at my house and don't put the cake in a big enough pan and it spills out of the oven and the whole house fills with smoke and the fire alarm goes off.

You get the idea. Last night I had book group and I was in charge of the food. All week I had been thinking about what fun and tasty things I could bring. I made a spinach dip without any complications. I then looked through a cupcake recipe book I have all afternoon with my friend. I decided on lemon poppy seed butterfly cupcakes. They looked so cute in the picture. I read through the ingredients and directions and felt confident I could pull this off. I started around 4:15 with the recipe. I knew I would need to double the recipe so there would be enough. I get started on the lemon filling and realize that I will need 12 eggs in order to make this recipe. I had 4 eggs in my fridge. I am always borrowing eggs from my neighbors and really didn't want to do that again. I called my friend Tiffany in a panic and we decided to just not make the lemon filling part. So off I go with the rest of the recipe. It goes well until I am cutting the tops off the cupcakes, making the whipping cream topping, cutting the bread for the bread dip, trying to encourage Jacob to do his homework, listening to Jonah whine at my feet.....the list could go on. I realized at this point that I am not in the stage of life where I can put the time I want to into my cooking adventures.

I ended up getting done with all of my food projects at 6:30, just in time to leave. Everyone at my book group loved the food and thought the cupcakes were so cute. By the time I got there I thought they looked fairly descent, unlike when I put them together and I thought they looked terrible.



When Bryan got home from work and I was in the midst of all the food confusion I told him to never let me try to be Betty Crocker again....if I try to do something a little complicated stop me before I get to this stressed out onry stage. He agreed with me. And good thing for me I didn't say don't let me try to be Si!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do I have to?

That is what I am thinking today. Do I really have to clean up all of the messes I made yesterday? I am looking at the vacuum in the middle of the kitchen, piles of papers on the computer desk, dishes in the sink, toys all over the floor....the list could go on.

I made my first trip to IKEA yesterday. It was fun and overwhelming. I came home with a few items to help me get my crap organized. As of right now I have a few half put together organizational items. I need to make a list and get started on the first thing. I tend to start a lot of projects and not finish them.

O.K. I need to get going. My best friend Tiffany is about to pop out her 5th child and I need to have my house in order so I can help her keep hers in order. Why am I still here typing??????? Because I just can't bear the thought of cleaning up all of these messes!!!!

Alright, I have my itunes playing my running playlist so I can keep moving. Jonah is crying at my feet because he wants to be on the computer. Ready set here I go........

Neo Clinic

Yesterday I took Jonah baby to the neonatal follow up clinic. This is a state program which follows premature babies and probably other disability children from 6 months until they are 5 years old. The goal is to make sure they are on track for Kindergarten. We see lots of different specialist and it makes for a long day.

Yesterday our appointment was at 8:15 a.m. which meant I pulled Jonah out of bed and off we went. We always seem to show up with him in pajamas and then I get him dressed once we are there. I looked around at the other kids there yesterday and no one else was in their pajamas. I was thinking to myself, do these other kids wake up earlier than Jonah or are their Mom's anal about having their kids dressed before they go somewhere? I obviously do not have to have Jonah dressed, or myself for that matter before we go somewhere.

Anyways back to the appointment. I will give a run down on his progress, not really for your sake, but for my own so I don't forget to write it down somewhere.

Measurements: Jonah weighed 18 lbs. 9 oz!!!!! That is huge, I think the scale weighs a bit more than the nutrition clinic he goes to. His height was 29 inches and something, which is gaining on hitting the bottom of the growth chart!

Pediatrician: This cute old man is the ped at the clinic. He thinks Jonah is so cute, really who doesn't? He played ball with him and checked him over. His lungs sounded great, his ears and eyes looked great, he pretty much looked great everywhere. And boy isn't he social the Dr. said.

Psychologist: This not so nice older lady walked into the waiting room, she stepped over Jonah looked at me and kept looking around. We were the only ones in the waiting room. She finally said, I am looking for Jonah. I said, that would be us. We sit at a table and she follows a standardized test and has Jonah do things with different toys. She wasn't thrilled that he kept trying to tip her table over and threw everything on the floor. She may have not be thrilled with him, but she said he was right on track for his age.

Speech Therapist: Oh my he can say 38 words and then said 3 more new ones while we were there! She was very impressed. She didn't mind that he threw all of her blocks on the floor, she just played right along with him. On her chart his language was between 18-20 months, which is perfect because his adjusted age is 18 months.

Neurologist: Another very cute old man neurologist. His only concern was that Jonah is not walking yet. Everything else looks good with his brain. Jonah had a mild grade 2 brain bleed in the first few days of life. He has done remarkably well and we haven't seen any effects from this. So he wants him to come back in 3 months. He said socially he has no problems.

Physical Therapist: We spent a lot of time here while the PT observed Jonah and tried to figure out if there is a reason he isn't walking. He had to stretch to come up with a reason, but he maybe has a little weakness on his left side which could cause him to have a balance problem and could be why he isn't walking. So we will be following up on that and having a PT come to our house. Other than that he thought he was so cute and doing great.

Nutritionist: Our last event and by now it was 12:00 and Jonah was so tired. We go to a nutrition clinic at Primary's so we didn't have to spend too much time there. She was impressed with his weight gain. She said to not be discuraged because SGA (small gestational age) babies tend to not like to eat. Jonah sees eating as a waste of time and is not something he enjoys, I can't relate at all!

Well now if anyone read all of that you are probably bored out of your mind. We have been so blessed with how well he has done. He could have so many problems and really he is almost perfect. Along with being perfect he is so dang cute, some of my young friends tell me I did the world a service by having such cute kids, I would have to agree with them!

My new van

I gave in to waiting for a color other than silver and now am the owner of another silver minivan. I kept thinking I could keep waiting for another color to come available, but it is hard to not have a car. I borrowed a car from several people on different occassions, but it is much nicer to have your own car.

Now if I lived somewhere else I could have just used public transportation. One day when I needed to go to Dick's market I told my friend Tiffany I could walk there, but the hike back up the hill might not make me very happy. She said can you ride the bus to Dick's? Unfortunatley the bus doesn't have direct routes or any routes from my house to Dick's, Costco, Target or Tiffany's house, and those are the places I go most often.

I do wish I could walk to the local market, I think that would be fun. My Dad and his new wife recently bought a house in downtown Bountiful. Judi is so excited to be able to walk to the library, main street, and my kids are thrilled that they can walk to Iceburg from their house. I love where I live so I won't be too sad when I have to drive to the store today. I am so thrilled to have a car again I might just drive around all day!

A tasty lunch

On Wednesday as I was enjoying my third day without a car I told my friend Tiffany to come to my house. Now Tiffany and I have been friends since 1990, we met our junior year in high school. Upfront you have to know that we sometimes do things that others would see as strange. I could write at least 100 entries about funny things we have done, but back to my story.

Tiffany said she couldn't come up until she picked her daughter Ellie up from preschool at noon, so she said "I will be right in time for lunch". We try to hang out at each others houses at least once a week. Now whenever we are at her house for lunch she always seems to have something tasty for us to eat, and when we invite ourselves to her mom's house for lunch we ALWAYS have very tasty food, at my house not so much tasty food. So at 10:15 I thought to myself, I should make something yummy for lunch. I had some asparagus and a zucchini in the fridge so I thought I could make my friend Si's recipe for springtime quiche. (the above picture is not mine, but with a prettier dish that is pretty much what it looked like)

I quickly got to work on the crust and the rest of the quiche. Tiffany is kind of picky with some foods and likes her quiche to be cold. I knew it wouldn't be cold cold, but maybe by the time she got here it would be lukewarm instead of hot. So I cooked the quiche and made a yummy salad. I then thought, we need to eat this in the dining room. My dining room table is my dumping ground for everthing I don't have a home for yet. I pushed everything to one side, put on the table cloth and set the table for our tasty lunch.She got here a little late, which was O.K. because that gave the quiche even more time to get cold.

We weren't smart enough to take a picture of us in my dining room eating our lunch, but later she called me and said, "we should have taken a picture so you could blog about our fun lunch". She then reminded me about how we used to hide Lucky Charms in my dining room, this was when my house was my house growing up and not my house now as an adult. I would buy the Lucky Charms and hide them behind the curtains so my brothers wouldn't find them. We would then eat them in the dining room, why in the dining room, I don't remember. I was able to dig out a picture of us eating them in the dining room. This was on my birthday in 1996 and we had probably just gone on a walk, well maybe we had slept out on the trampoline, I don't remember, she will remember what we had just done.

Carless

We have been talking for a few months about selling our minivan and getting me a new one. We have been looking the last couple of weekends at cars. I had about a day debate on whether to get a crossover or another minivan. After thinking about one more kid in preschool and the automatic sliding door on the minivan I was done making my decision.

For two weeks I had asked Bryan to clean the car up and put it for sale on KSL.com, well Saturday I decided to clean it up myself and put it for sale. I was thinking it would take about a month to sell so I would be able to find what I wanted in that amount of time. So at 5:00 on Saturday I post a listing on KSL. At 8:00 I get a phone call wondering if we still have the van. I was laughing saying, yes we still had it. This man, Lyle told me how much he needed it and could he come right now to see it. At this point I remembered to tell Bryan that I had put the car for sale on KSL. So here comes Lyle and he looks and drives the van. The van had a little oil leak so we told him we would get it checked out, we were planning on doing that anyways. He leaves and at 9:20 a lady calls to see if her family can come from Brigham City to look at the van tomorrow. At 10:15 Lyle calls again, but we didn't answer it.

I was blown away by all of the attention my van was getting. Sunday after church was a mad house as Bryan went to show the couple from Brigham City the van, I had 3 texts about it and a voice message. That night we had about 3 other calls and several offers. I was laughing so hard everytime the phone rang.

So Monday morning we take it to our mechanic, get the oil changed and the leak checked on. I get another e-mail and message about the car. Bryan calls Lyle and tells him the oil leak is nothing that has to be fixed and he says he will be there at 6:30 to pay cash!

Wow what a whirlwind of a car sale. It took 3 hours for that thing to sell. As I finished getting all of my stuff out of it I got a little emotional. I had been driving that thing for 6 years which is the longest I have ever had a car. The boys were sad to see their DVD player go, but I wasn't so sad to see the 121,000 miles go.

Now we are looking for my perfect car. I had two requirements, I wanted a sun roof and heated seats. Well I am not getting either of those so I am being picky about the color. I don't want a grey or gold Toyota Sienna, which is what I decided I wanted. If a Honda Odessey comes along in the right color and the right price then I might get that. In the mean time Jonah baby and I are stuck at home. Yesterday he kept saying "bu bye, bu bye" he doesn't like being stuck at home either!

What do we teach them?

There are so many things I think I have taught my children, but really they teach themselves almost everything! Jonah is becoming quite the talker when he wants to be. If he is in the right mood he will try to say whatever we tell him to say. Last night Bryan was putting him to bed and as they neared his crib Jonah shook his head and said “no”. The shaking head thing has been going on for awhile, but the “no” was a new thing! Of course we think it is funny now, but soon we will not think it is so funny. Another word he has started to say is “mine”. He says it when he wants you to hand him something. Instead of saying “please, may I have that” he has found that it is easier to just say “mine”. Once again we think this is funny now, but it may not be so funny after hearing it a lot. I was trying to think if I say those words a lot.

Jonah’s favorite person in the world is Da Da. He gets a big grin when he sees him in the morning and when Bryan gets home from work at night. During the day he will pick up the phone and say “da”. It is really cute. Jacob was a huge Daddy’s boy also, Brandon, no he is a Momma’s boy through and through. Even though Jacob and Jonah like or liked Daddy more they still want to be on my lap if the opportunity arises! I bring this up because I have not taught any of my kids to like me as much as they do. My friend always jokes about how Brandon and Jacob want to be with me if I am in the room. I guess I didn’t teach them this, but they just can’t help to notice how cool I am. We thought Jonah wouldn’t have this, I have to be with my Mom behavior because he was in the hospital for the first 3 months of his life. Nope didn’t matter he acts the same way Brandon and Jacob did and still do.

We are trying to teach Jonah how to walk. I actually don’t mind that he still crawls, but one of these days I think the Dr.’s are going to want him to show that he is developing normally. He walks along furniture and with his push toys, but if we try to get him to stand alone he immediately sits down. I think he is being stubborn about it and as long as we try to get him to do it, he isn’t going to. The other week we watched him pick up a piece of paper off the floor and crawl with it in his hand to the garbage can. He opened the cupboard and reached up to throw the paper away. See, I didn’t teach him that he just has been observing.

We always say a blessing on the food when we eat dinner. Jonah used to laugh at us, I think he thought it was funny to see us all close our eyes. A few weeks ago we noticed him trying to fold him arms when we did. He know folds him arms whenever he sees someone else doing it. I was talking to a friend outside and she had her arms folded, he immediately folded his. It really is cute.

I really have no point to this post. I guess I am just reiterating that whatever we try to teach our children they will learn the most by example. I don’t know whose example they are following when they want to always sit on my lap, Bryan doesn’t usually do that!