The Official 1st Blogiversary

I don’t know what possessed me to start this blog on February 29th, 2008.  It was probably not intentional.  So, while it has been around for a handful of years, now I can officially say, Happy 1st Blogiversary to me!

Seemed like a good time to come out of hibernation. You laugh but I really do hibernate….

So since this only happens once every four years, I’ll give you four updates about each one of us.

LILY:

1. Is pretty much potty trained! Well, 95% but still, hooray! She has the funniest i-need-to-go-potty dance, reminds me of Elvis.
2. She is a talker.  She likes to lay on compliments to others but gets mad when you return the compliment (um, girl?).  She will say to you, “I got to tell you a question” and you say what? and she will say “What is your favorite color?” to which you will reply and most likely you would be wrong, it is always the color you are currently wearing.  She also likes to tell made-up stories, usually involving a pony named Fluttershy who wants someone to play Angry Birds with her.  All the ponies seem to be too busy doing more important stuff like making cupcakes and laughing. Finally Spike the dragon agrees to play Angry Birds with her and saves the day. Hear it for yourself:
   
3. She is almost 2 1/2 yrs old, she knows how to navigate my phone pretty well, she loves Disney Princesses, My Little Ponies, Little “Ein Skeins” (Einsteins), and Dora.  She can read most of the alphabet too, and loves going to the library and kids museum.
4. Still has curly red hair.  And two cowlicks which make styling it all the more difficult.  Her hair is growing out funny in back and a few sections look almost mullet-esque so I think I’m going to have to chop it to even it out.  She has discovered that she likes to play with mom’s hair.  She loves to brush it and put clips in it and try to braid it… It has been funny because Aedan has wanted to get in on the action too and now knows how to braid my hair…

AEDAN:

1. This boy got so many Lego sets at Christmas and of course no sooner than when he finished building them all he starts getting excited about Star Wars and Star Wars Lego stuff.

Aedan in the Robots exhibit, Rockford Children’s Discovery Center Museum.

2. He is a great reader.  He is so funny with his writing and drawing lately.  Apparantly he was fed up with our rules so he made up some of his own:

Rules: 1) never close my door 2) don’t distroy my legos 3) keep hands and feet to self 4) never mess up my bed

3. He plays really well with Lily but knows how to get her to do things he knows she shouldn’t do.  And of course she is just thrilled that he is giving her attention so she happily obliges.  He has accepted the fact that he will have another little sister and tells me he is so excited.  He’s been super helpful.

4. We still have a hard time getting him to eat most meats and foods that are mixed.  He is SO SLOW too.  It doesn’t help that Lily is super fast and eats just about anything, makes him even crabbier.

Aedan fussing about eating his food and Lily’s impression of Aedan fussing about eating his food.

JACKIE:

1. 33 weeks now.  Still a girl.  Baby has been breech for a while now and is VERY active so of course my bladder is loving it.  I sure hope she turns.  Had some contractions yesterday but if she is like my other two, she will be fashionably late.  Is it crazy to say I almost hope I can schedule an induction again?  It is so nice to be able to plan it and I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I went into labor on my own.  Oh well, looking forward to that epidural! Below is me sometime early January. That jade bracelet I put on in my first month of pregnancy and my wrists got swollen quick and could never get it off.  Had to break it off shortly after this picture.
2. I usually get a burst of energy now but sadly it doesn’t seem to be happening.  I’m slowing down, physically and definitely mentally.  My short term memory is shot. I’ve been trying to get things ready despite myself, mostly worried about freezing meals and getting kids ready for Spring and such, not so much about gather baby stuff.  I hate the term nesting.  I’ve also become hateful of undeserving things.
3. Being creative seems to take a lot of brain power but I do have my moments.  Aedan once commented that he wished I could come to his Kindergarten holiday parties so I decided I would find a sitter for Lily and surprise him by coming to his Valentines Party.  I signed up to do a game and thought a VDay game of twister would be silly.  So going for minimum cost and effort, I cut out paper hearts and machine stitched them onto a unused white shower curtain of ours and made a spinner out of cardboard.  It was fun.  I also made Neal a VDay present, again low $/effort, and decorated some recycled jars to make personalized snack containers for his desk at work.  Gotta push my mind somehow people.
4. Things have been busy for me in my church assignments these last few months.  Inspite of my swollen fingers, I decided to play my cello for Christmas Day and it went ok.  It was more for me and my kids, forcing myself to not forget how to play and my kids needed to know that it is ok to be brave and do  things that make you nervous (or maybe in my case, embarassed).  There have been some Sundays where I’ve found myself playing the organ, teaching a Primary class, teaching Sharing Time, and teaching Singing Time, all back to back.  It has been crazy. 

NEAL:

1. He’s been travelling a lot.  He just got back from a trip to Japan, Korea, and China.  He goes to Colorado, Wisconsin, and I think Chicago this month.  We survive without him but barely.  He is so busy with this new position and seems like he is constantly having work added on to him.  But we are so thankful for this position and will be even more thankful once we can cash in on all the flight and hotel rewards racking up….
2. He is busy with doing school part time too.  My mushbrain can’t even comprehend doing all he does now.  He is doing well there too.
3. He’s been spending some good quality time with Aedan these last few months.  Before Christmas he made a goal to build every one of Aedan’s lego sets with Aedan before Christmas came.  That turned out to be a hard goal to meet.  Since Christmas they’ve been busy playing Lego Star Wars together and they’ve started reading Hugo together.  They even got to go on a Daddy/Son outing to see Star Wars I in 3D in the theaters opening day. 
4. He’s had a bit of a break from doing major home improvements these past few months which has been nice.  We are far from done with this place but that is ok for now.  He decided recently that it would be good to refinance our home with rates being so very low now and so we just got an appraisal done.  It feels weird to refinance after only 2 years of being in the home but rates have dropped enough that it was very worth it.  Next on his honey-to-do list is put the crib back together.

Right Now

Right Now the kids are downstairs wrapping Christmas presents for me and Neal.  Aedan’s is apparently something he made at school today (his last day of the year) and Lily just “shops” around the house for things and wraps them.  There is a large assortment of boxed pudding and cake mixes wrapped with “snappy tape” and “oh so beautiful” bows from her under the tree, each carefully labeled by mom for their intended recipient (one even says To: Lily, From: Lily).

Can I just say this is the kindest looking Santa ever? Love Lily’s Santa Phobia. Our little village has a BIG Christmas party.

Right Now the baby is kicking me a lot.  I have to go back for another ultrasound in two weeks because the baby was positioned in such a way that they couldn’t get all their measurements.  We are a bit worried that I am getting a fair amount of swelling at this point in pregnancy, having low iron and such, and I am just hoping and praying I don’t wind up on complete bed rest. 

Neal and Lily on the Holiday Train at the Illinois Railroad Museum

Right Now Lily’s pants are riding low as we have been working on potty training this month and she is out of diapers.  She is not quite 2 1/2 yrs and if I was feeling up for it she might have been trained earlier but my goal was by the end of the year so not too bad.  My limited experience doing potty training has led me to believe that potty training is more training for the parent than the kid.  We just go straight to underwear, no diapers (except overnight) and while there are accidents, it works pretty well and quick.  I am THRILLED to have a handful of months without diapers!

Right Now the house is a mess.  What’s new.

Right Now Neal is working hard so that he can take time off  for the rest of the year (starting tomorrow!).  We are looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home.  I can honestly say I am so thankful to not have to be dealing with the stress, money, time, and more stress of travelling for the holidays.  But we do miss family.

Daddy is good for making the kids smile when they don’t want to.

Right Now I am organizing my to-do list for the weekend.  We have two sets of missionaries here for Christmas Dinner (so much for quiet) and we are trying to figure out menu.  So far Vichyssoise Soup, Beef Wellington, roasted veggies, rolls, salad, homemade applesauce, and maybe some pie. Most can be prepped ahead of time. What are you having for dinner?

The kids perusing the toy catalogs, marking up what they want for Christmas.  We used to do this as kids, it was kind of funny to watch them do it.

Happy Halloween!

People have been anxious to see what we are wearing for Halloween this year.  Well sorry to disappoint but nothing new.  This week I am 16 weeks into pregnancy and, well, I only have one costume that I could easily fit into.

Flattering I know.  Aside from a TON of ironing out wrinkles, I had to make a new costume for Aedan.  Lily does not like dressing up at all and it was a fight to get her costume on.  No way was she going to let us do hair or makeup.  She was a little scared of me once I blew up and has been concerned that I need to wash my face every day to keep the blue away. 

 

And other misc Halloween fun.  Scary Monster pancakes at IHOP,

and pumpkin carving with the missionaries.

Turkey Cake Tutorial

As promised, here is my set of instructions on how to build your very own Turkey Cake just like the one I made for our April Fool’s Feast. 

First you need to bake some cake!  I made a Vanilla Cake and baked it in two round cake pans (1 recipe’s worth) and then made an Applesauce Spice Cake (with brown coloring added to darken it) and baked it in one round cake pan (also 1 recipe’s worth), recipes at the bottom of the post.  They are both yummy and better than box mixes but if you must, you can do a yellow or white cake mix and a spice cake mix. You really only need three levels max. 

When the cake has cooled and removed from the pans, take a bread knife and cut off the rounded tops off of all but the one you will use on top.  Save what you cut off as you will use it for “stuffing” later on.

Wrap up the cakes in a couple layers of saran wrap and stick them in the freezer.  This makes the cakes infinitely easier to carve into your desired shape without have crumbs all over the place.  This step is a must.

I just froze mine overnight but you might be able to get by with just a few hours.  Pull your cakes out and unwrap them.  Layer them with buttercream frosting in between, spice cake on bottom (for your “dark meat”) and white on top with the rounded cake on the very top. I don’t know why I did it but don’t use foil underneath while you are cutting. 

Carve away! If you need to look at pictures of roast turkey on the web so you can get the general shape. 

….. carve….. carve…. carve…

Resist the temptation to eat those scraps.  The kids might sneak some though…

Clean it up and put it on your platter.  I used a little frosting underneath to sort of glue it to the platter but it may not be necessary, it is weighty enough.

Make your buttercream frosting a nice brown turkey skin color.  It took a good mixture of brown and yellow and orange to get it looking right. 

Frost that beast.  To get a nice smooth surface I took my spreader and dipped it in a cup of hot water until it gets hot, take it out and shake off excess water, and work the spreader over the frosting.  This way it will sort of melt it a little bit and smooth it out beautifully.  Go back and forth dipping in water and working on cake.  Or you could do fondant if you are into that.  The frosting was pretty yummy though.

Make a batch of rice krispie treats. I don’t know why but I can not get consistent results with rice krispies, weird huh?  Maybe I shouldn’t have used no name brand rice cereal…. Either way, make them, and grease up your hands so you can mold them into drum sticks and wings.  Mine kept falling apart but in theory it should work well.

I used several toothpicks to secure these appendages onto the body.  Then frost them like the cake. 

Have an insane amount of patience, you are almost done.

Once all is frosted and in place, I used some spray on food coloring to kind of give it a real cooked turkey skin look.  I could only find red and orange (no brown) so I used a little, here and there, mostly on spots you would expect to brown first like the top and the drums, etc.  Don’t do it all over and don’t do a heavy coat.  It probably wasn’t too noticeable but oh well.

Now it is time to make the platter more presentable.  Add your “stuffing” by using cubed cake leftovers (both light and dark) and mound them to look like they are coming out the rear.  Dress up the platter.  I used real parsley, orange slices. I had hopes to do cranberries as well but that didn’t happen. 

To have fun place it in your cooled oven and close the door.  People can peak in if they must.  Carve it like a real bird, let people choose their light or dark meat, drums or wings, and you’ve got an awesome “dinner”! 

Holiday Backtrack

April fun in the wake of the April Fool’s event (btw turkey cake tutorial coming up next…):

Pretty fingers. First finger nail polish for Lily and she LOVED it!

And Easter Egg decorating.  We didn’t get to spend last Easter together as a family because Neal and I (and baby Lily) were house hunting at the time.

And we even celebrated Earth Day in our own way.  We had the missionaries over for dinner and for dessert we each had to decorate our own earth cookie, doing our best to be as geographically correct as possible. Neal won the best looking globe award.