Silent Scream

Today is Fast Sunday and tradition in our house is to have homemade beans and tortillas for Fast Sunday dinner. Alan also makes fresh salsa that is nice and spicy just like mom and dad like - but the kids don't of course. Too hot!

Well, Katherine saw us dishing up our plates and putting some of that nice green, fragrant salsa on our beans and wanted some for herself. Mom tried to tell her she wouldn't like it and that it would be too spicy. She wouldn't hear it though and insisted, pointing and grunting and ready to put up a fight.

So, mom put a teensy-eensy dab on her plate for her to try. I thought she was going to yell at me for not giving her more but she looked at it, picked up her spoon and tasted it.

The look on her face as soon as it hit her tongue was priceless! I wish that I'd had a camera.

Her eyes popped wide,

She gave a big shudder,

And her mouth opened wide for a scream.

But she didn't scream. She definitely looked like she thought about it but I think she was too surprised to scream. Or cry. Or something. But she just stood there stunned. And her parents were cracking up. We did offer her fresh tortilla to chew on.

Alan said it was what they call the "silent scream".

A minute later she was fine, recovered and eating her dinner well and mom wiped the rest of the salsa off her plate. But that was priceless! I don't think she'll be asking for salsa again for a while.

B!!

We have one of those refrigerator alphabets that has a base in which you put a letter. Upon doing so the base will tell you the letter name and sing a little ditty about the sound the letter makes. Samantha and Katherine both enjoy playing with it.

Well, this morning as Katherine and I walked into the kitchen for breakfast, Katherine ran over to the bench and yelled "B!!" When I looked over to see what she was yelling about, because I didn't get it at first, I saw she had picked up the little plastic "B" that she found sitting there.

Way to go Katherine! That's right! You're learning your letters!

And she's barely 2 (mom grins).

Our Yard

We spent a little time after dinner in our backyard, all of us. The girls played while Alan and I marked the locations for our fruit trees, three of which came by UPS today.

The girls really like to play outside. Especially Katherine. We have a nice spacious back yard and a beautiful playset. But I hate going out there. Not because I don't like to be outside, but because of the state of our yard.

First, it's not fenced in except for an akward chain link fence around the pool area that blocks off the backyard from the back door and cuts the yard in two.

The area the kids are allowed to play in is not fenced in allowing them to run through neighbors backyards and making mom and dad chase down the youngest one. And if we weren't chasing kids around, there's no nice place to sit down and watch the kids or to read and enjoy being outside. I'm sorry, a plastic lawn chair just doesn't suffice it for me. Will do in a pinch but it's not inviting.

There's a lot of junk that is sitting around the yard and by the garage and driveway because Alan has been really too busy to put stuff away and to throw out junk. We have thrown a lot out already though because the lady who lived here before us left plenty to get rid of.

Our trash cans are just tossed to the side of the house and just don't look good. Last year's solution of putting gravel along the side of the garage to set them on in order to try to make it nicer seems to have failed.

We don't have proper storage for our garden supplies so they end up sitting out and rotting (or getting lost in our garage that also needs help).

And speaking of rotting, our storage shed has rotted out and is being eaten by termites.

Our wood pile is in two different places and has grass growing up over them. And we just don't have a neat solution for our woodpile yet.

Plus we are still dealing with years of overgrown brush that needs cleaning up and just keeps on growing. Although we have made some great strides in that department.

Yes, we have lots of work to do. Lots and lots. In the meantime I feel like we must be the junkiest people on the block. Maybe if we just cleaned up the area by the garage and driveway I wouldn't feel like that so much.

My dreams for our yard:
To have the brush cut down to a minimum with all old stumps gone and some pretty flowering shrubs and flowers planted around the foundation of the house.

A nicely fenced in back yard. I love a fenced in yard. It gives a yard order, a great border and a sense of this place being our place to retreat to. Not to mention it corrals the kids.

A privacy screen for our trashcans.

Our wood pile in one place, away from the house and kept neat and grass trimmed.

A new shed that has shelves and cabinets to store our garden and pool supplies in.

Our garage and sunroom cleaned up.

Some pleasant flower beds bordering the new fence and our vegetable and fruit gardens thriving well.

Our pool area cleaned up and organized with potted flowers and a comfortable seating area. And the hole in the concrete repaired.

That old and akward chain link fence removed to create more space to run and play and so we can get in and out of the house without having to run to the front door every time.

And a nice place for mom and dad to sit and watch the kids, read a book, and enjoy some fresh air with the rest of the family.

I just hope we can take care of all this this spring and summer because I really want our yard to be a nice backyard haven for all of us and in plenty of time for us to enjoy it.

What kids are learning these days!

We were out for a drive the other day and as usual Gabby's mind was churning. She was thinking about the shapes she was learning about in school.

Side note: She's in 2nd grade.

So, suddenly she chirps out from the back seat of the car:

You know, I was thinking about a screw being an incline plane wrapped around a cylinder but really I think it is actually an incline plane wrapped around a cone!

Her parents:

Uh...yeah Gabby, that's right! The other would actually be a bolt!

Man do kids learn some advanced stuff in school these days! I don't remember learning about the shape of a screw ever and in 2nd grade no less!

Plus, me thinks we may have a little engineer on our hands!

New Cleaning Method?

It's hard to keep up with the house with 3 young kids running around and one who especially loves to undo what I've done in the name of "helping mom".

It's frustrating when I am cleaning up a room and have to pick up everyone's stuff that they've left out. I usually just put things into piles and then have everyone put their piles away. But the piles didn't always get put away right away and sometimes I would forget to follow through. That led to piles still sitting around and the kids would just scatter them again.

A lot of the time I would also just put things into a bin or laundry basket, unseparated by who's-who's, to put away when there was more time but that also led to bins and baskets full of stuff sitting around. And I was usually the one putting everyone's stuff away eventually. Or hiding it in my room or a corner of another room. Out of sight, out of mind.

I was just having a hard time. (You'd think I'm really not very good at housekeeping....It's okay, I think that too.)

The binning usually works pretty well for me as long as time is taken to clear them out because it gets stuff picked up fast. I had an inspiration the other day and ran with it. It combines the binning with accountability of each person in my family.

First, everyone now has their own muck bucket.Anytime someone cleans a room and picks up stuff that belongs to someone else they can put it in their bucket instead of having to track that person down. I think it will eliminate arguments about people's things being in the way of their cleaning a room. Something I remember from growing up and have started to see already in my own kids.

The second part to this is everyone has an envelope taped to the refrigerator and a card with their name on it in their bucket. Whenever someone puts something in a bucket, they take that person's card and stick it in their envelope on the fridge. Since everyone is in the kitchen several times a day, those cards are hard to miss. Everyone is accountable and if they see their card in their envelope, it means they have stuff to put away. Once they empty their bucket, they can put their card back in their bucket and stack it up with the other empty ones.

The great thing about this is it holds parents accountable as well as kids so if the kids see one of our cards on the fridge they let us know about it and mom and dad can see quickly who still hasn't cleaned their bucket out and can keep on top of it!

The other great thing is I think it will make it easier to get the kids to tidy up more rooms than just the toy room now that they know what to do with stuff that's not theirs. I can ask Gabby to clean up the living room or the dining room and she'll know what to do with everything now.

I put this to the test yesterday after tidying the house. It made tidying fast and everyone of us had stuff in our buckets so all our cards were on the fridge. I introduced the plan at dinner and then had to dash off to a doctor's appointment. When I got back, everyone had put their stuff away and mine was the only card left on the fridge. Of course, the kids held me responsible and of course I had to put my stuff away.

I can actually see this working! And I'm excited about it. Fingers crossed!

Expired Car Seats...

So I spent my afternoon looking to see if some baby items we have are recalled, you know, just in case. And because I was bored.

Well, in the process I discovered that two of our car seats are expired!

Did you know car seats expire? I'd heard it before but thought it was a ploy from the manufacturers. I mean, mine still look really good!

Turns out though that they do. There are a couple reasons, one being that research and developement is always improving on the safety (and look and comfort) of the car seats.

The other more selling, in my mind, reason is that the plastic, much like a plastic toy left outside, wears down. The extreme heat inside the car in the summer and the cold of winter causes the plastic to become brittle over the years. This can cause damage that you can't see just by looking at the seat. So, an older seat is considerably less safe in an accident.

One thing that can happen is the harness can break away from the shell.

Here's a video that shows that: This is a car seat that is 10 years old.



It's a bit scary actually. I would hope that we never will be in an accident serious enough to cause that but just the same why risk it?

They say not use your car seat after 6 years past it's manufacture date. That should be on a sticker underneath the seat. Many car seats also have the expiration date imprinted in the plastic shell on the back.

Katherine's is 2 1/2 years past it's expiration. Samantha's 2 years past. Unfortunately, I can't graduate Gabby from her booster and move Samantha into it because: a. Gabby is still only 60 lbs and not quite 8 and Samantha isn't yet 40 lbs and can't use Gabby's booster.

So, I guess I'm in the market for a couple car seats. I'm going with new too rather than handed down. I have another up-and-comer that I'd like to have them last through.

So, have you checked your seats lately? :)

Invention Convention

Our school district each year hosts an Invention Convention where the kids from K-12 can submit an invention for judging and to display to the public one evening in the year. This year Gabby really wanted to participate so we did.

She had a hard time thinking of an invention but I was thinking into the summer months and how much work our pool is to keep clean and that I am the one who maintains it each year. Also, the fact that we're having a baby this summer really made it important to find a way to make my job quicker and easier.

Plus we have this really enormous yet beautiful tree at the corner near our pool that through the summer drops tiny blossoms and berries into the pool. It gets so bad that I can skim it out at night and by morning sometimes the pool surface is covered in them again.

So we developed a thought we'd had previous summers to create a skimmer net that will let us skim out the pool in one fell swoop instead of the spoonfuls (it seems) of debris we get with the little skimmer net.

So, together with Gabby we developed a plan. We did a demonstration in the bathtub - because of course it's winter and our pool is covered. We made a survey and took them to businesses and pool owners - and got rave reviews for it too! And we assembled a (hopefully) working prototype.

Then Gabby got to take it to the Convention, speak with judges, got videotaped for sending to Ellen DeGeneres and Jay Leno and spent the day there during school to see presentations from people in the community. It really was a fun thing for her.

Well, except for keeping that log book! What a bear that was! Of course when you're inventing something that might someday end up with a patent you need extreme documentation. Make an entry every time you even think about your invention. Date it, make drawings, have someone witness each entry. It got really old really quick for Gabby. Of course we don't think her invention will go any further than our own backyard swimming pool but this was a learning experience for her and for mom.

Here are some pictures from the whole process:

Here's her demonstration. She wanted to show how much work it is to clean out a pool with a little scoop of a net. And to show that things escape from the sides of it as she sweeps it through the water.

Going out to do surveys:

Solving the problem of attaching the big pool poles to the skimmer. We gave our skimmer handles with the button clips just like the smaller version has.

Assembly: Gabby got to use the sewing machine for the first time! She was so excited about that! Plus she's becoming a real pro at straight stitches. Also, she said something really remarkable and unexpected when the machine started doing zig-zag stitches after she played with the knobs.

"Oh, we can do zig-zag stitches because triangles are strong!"

There's an engineer for you!

Even Mike got into it! Literally!

The finished product:

She didn't get 1st, 2nd or 3rd place for her invention and she was disappointed but there were lots of great inventions there.

Although, as the mom I have to wonder what the criteria the judges used to base their judgements on because some of the ones that did win were, well, not as good as my daughter's! But, you know, I'm the mom. I'm partial.

One that won for her grade was a movie box which was just a box that you could put your popcorn and snacks into and hold them on your lap. Yeah, okay, that's kinda cool especially for keeping your kids from spilling their snacks in the dark movie theater but as I recall, I've seen them already.

Another that won was a recycle marking method in which they simply marked the raised recycle code on the bottom of the plastic recyclables with a marker so you can see them more clearly.

Not to be down on those kids. Great thinking. But what about those judges?

But Gabby did get the

Best Backyard Pool Innovation Award

Thank you to Mrs. Mendelow for making an award for each kid who invented!

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Relief Society Birthday Cake

Here it is all finished! It's a Neopolitan (strawberry, white, and chocolate layers) frosted with a fluffy white frosting and sprinkled with jumbo rainbow sprinkles.

I made fondant daisies for the top of it. Those were actually kind of a pain. The instructions said to use thinned fondant to glue the wires to the back but I couldn't get my wires to stay in it. So I ended up using balls of fondant to stick the wires through instead. Plus the little petals kept wanting to fall off. The other thing is when I was placing the flowers, I discovered they were too heavy for their wires. So I had to twist more wire around them this morning. Thank goodness I checked before leaving this morning.

A couple things I'm worried about. First, I didn't use a separater plate between layers because it just wasn't looking right. The cakes weren't flat enough. So I used only wooden dowel rods. So I'm worried about the layers sinking too much.

Second, I'd never used the fluffy white frosting before but it gave me the look I was after. The only thing is it's fluffy and a little slippery. So while I was transporting it in my van the layers shifted so that it looked like the leaning tower of cake! I surprised the RS presidency who were at the church in a meeting when I started shaking the cake to one side a little to get it to shift back. Yeah, who shakes a cake? I don't usually.

Needless to say, I'm going to be worried about it all day and can't wait to get back to the church tonight to see if it survived. I'm saying lots of prayers.

But, in all, it turned out pretty cute I have to say! (fingers crossed that it stays cute!)

Update:

Okay, it didn't fall over or fall into itself but by the end of the night it was definitely listing to one side. Oh well. It was still cute and I got some nice compliments on it.

I hated cutting it in front of everyone. It was such a mess. The frosting is kind of like marshmellow cream that hardened a little tiny bit on the outside. That combined with soft cake, minus the seperator plates, it was a little squishy, difficult and really messy to cut. I think also there is a reason wedding cakes are cut in the kitchen... I'm never very good at cutting cake.

Plus, I made way too much. I've never been good at figuring out how much to make either. I have a better idea for next time.

But, Mike was really happy that I brought some home again. I told him he can have all he wants but don't get sick on it.

Mike (and probably my girls in the morning when they see it): mmmm....cake....

Me: ug....cake....

Cake and Cupcakes

Here is the cake I made for Samantha and Katherine's birthday party. I assembled and frosted it and Gabby and Samantha decorated it.

The finished product:

I thought it looked really cool with the candles glowing on it too!

I should note that the idea for the cake came from an issue of Family Fun Magazine. I love that magazine!

And here are the cupcakes for the Great to Be Eight fireside. I made the "8s" by rolling the back end of a large tip in fondant to make an 8 shape and cut holes in them with a large dot tip. Then sprayed the fondant with the Wilton food coloring spray and sprinkled edible glitter over the tops.

I had no place to store them at home before the fireside because we were set up for the party and I was worried Katherine would get into them. So I had Alan take them to the church Sunday morning. He left them in the kitchen and I put a note on top saying "Don't touch if you value your life!" Of course ending it with a friendly smiley - or a threatening grin. However you might interpret it. Mike Bramhall was helping to set up the refreshments that night and saw my sign. I think it scared him. He wouldn't touch them to set them out. Too funny! :P