I Guess He Was Hungry...

Tonight was one of those nights were you have to make something quick and easy for dinner. Our home teachers were coming over, and I only have a few hours at home each night as it is. So I decided to make frozen pot pies. Not the most appetizing dinner, but quick and easy. I got the frozen pot pies out of the oven and cut a slit in the top. Then I turned on the oven to let it preheat. While it was preheating I decided to check in on my facebook account. There wasn't too much going on in facebook though...I was only on for about 3 minutes. When I came back to the kitchen this is what I found...Owen digging away at his frozen pot pie! He must be one hungry boy. I found him a banana to hold him over until his dinner was fully cooked. He is such a picky eater though...so I'm sure by the time it is cooked he won't touch it!

PS...Owen was just looking at the picture saying "Owie (that's what he calls himself) and ice-cream" I guess he thought the pot pie was ice-cream. That's an easy mistake to make...I'm always mixing up pot pies and ice-cream!

Thank Goodness for Neighbors

Look into the face of a toddler. The face of a toddler who likes to make my life as complicated as possible! OK, I'm sure he doesn't do it on purpose, but he does a good job of it sometimes.

I had today off work because Owen had a doctor's appointment to follow up on his kidney ultrasound from January. The appointment was at 9:15. I got the kids dressed and in the car by 8:25. The doctor's office is about 30 minutes away. I like to arrive places early. I put the key in the car, turned it, and nothing happened. Then I remember a few weeks ago when Scott had the same problem with his car when he was getting ready to go to work. Then I remembered last night when Scott noticed the light in my car was on. Then I remembered that Owen loves to play in the car, and while he is in the car he switches the light on and off. I think it's time for Owen to find a new hobby when he is playing outside!

I called the doctor and told them we wouldn't be there at 9:15. They said they could switch our appointment to 10:40. So I called Roadside Assistance to come and give my car a jump. The best they could do was to get somebody out 2 hours later! That wasn't going to work. Then I noticed my neighbor driving into his driveway in his big blue van. Our neighbors are Russian. They don't speak a lot of English. They seem nice enough though. So I ran over there and tried to tell him what I needed.

Me: "My car is dead, can you give it a jump?"
Neighbor: "You need car? Take my car! Go to work!"
Me: "No...I don't need your car, just a jump"
Neighbor: "Huh? Jump?"
Me: "Battery dead!"
Neighbor: "Oh"

Then he put his hands out and started shaking them like he was being electrocuted....YES! So he drove his big old van down our narrow drive-way, and thankfully he had jumper cables because ours are in Scott's car. He got my car going again! YAY!!!

Me: "Thank you SO MUCH! You saved the day!"
Neighbor: "I save you today, you save me another day."
Me: "Of course!!!" (Thinking: How the heck could I ever help him? I guess I'll find out some day.)

So I spoiled Owen's attempt at getting out of the doctor's appointment. Maybe I shouldn't have though. Our appointment was at 10:40. We didn't see the doctor until 11:25. It's not easy keeping a wild toddle entertained for that long. Then all the doctor said was that his kidneys were improving and she'll see us again in 2 years. WHAT! She couldn't have told us that over the phone? And I'm sure for the 3 minutes she saw us she will be milking our insurance company for about $150...and me for a $10 copay. You gotta love doctors!

Cranky Biscuits

I love the Buttermilk Buscuits that they sell at The Crackerbarrell. The only reason I ever want to go to the Crackerbarrell is to get their buscuits. So a few weeks ago I decided that if I could make the buscuits at home, we wouldn't have to go to The Crackerbarrell! So I went online and did a recipe search. I found a few different variations. Most of them just used Bisquick. I tried them out, they were good, but not quite right. I found one recipe that was posted by somebody who worked at The Crackerbarrell. Here is the recipe:

2 cups Lily White Self Rising Flour
1/3 cup shortning
2/3 cup Buttermilk

Blend Shortning and Flour together. Add in the buttermilk...roll out, cut, and bake at 450 degrees for 8 minutes.

I looked for Lily White Self Rising Flour at the grocery store, but I guess they only sell it in the south. So I looked for just Self Rising Flour...I couldn't find it. So I decided to try making them with just regular flour. That was a mistake. They were flat little hockey pucks! I guess the flour makes a big difference.

Yesterday Holly and I went to Walmart to do our grocery shopping. While I was there I noticed that they had Self Rising Flour....the Walmart brand. So I bought a bag, and today I tried out the recipe with the Self Rising Flour. They turned out much better than the first batch I tried. They weren't quite as good as Crackerbarrells, but they were still good. Maybe someday I'll be in the south...and I will buy that Lily White Self Rising Flour and we'll see if I can't get my buscuits to taste just as good!

Holly was very cranky today. I don't have any clue why. She was fed, changed, warm...she just kept crying every time we put her down. She is getting close to 6 months though. That is when Owen started getting his first teeth. Maybe she's got some coming in???? I didn't have to deal with teething too much with Owen, he never seemed upset about his teeth coming in. Hopefully Holly will be happier tomorrow. I hate to see her sad.

Saturday's Fun

I love Mexican food. I think I grew up eating Mexican food at least 4 times a week. So when I moved to Massachusetts and discovered that there was no good Mexican Restaurants, I was quite disappointed. A few years ago Scott had a coworker that told him about a good Mexican Restaurant in Connecticut, which is about 20 minutes away from us. We didn't try it out though. People out here really don't know good Mexican food. But then last week my coworker Martin told me that he had heard of the same restaurant as being good. So we decided to try it out.

So yesterday Martin and my family took off for Connecticut. The restaurant looked like a Mexican restaurant should. They actually made their own tortilla chips, which is always a plus. The rest of the food was pretty good. It was definitely the best stuff I have had since I moved out here. So overall we were all pretty happy with the restaurant. I'm happy that I will have somewhere to go get some good grub at when I'm feeling homesick! (I want you to know that I just ran the spell check, and every time I spelled restaurant it was spelled wrong! I don't know why I can't spell that right without the spell checker.)

After we got home I decided to take our children out on a walk. It was a beautiful day yesterday! I loaded them up in our stroller (which was the biggest one the luggage handlers at the airport had ever seen) and we went out for a nice long walk. Before we had kids Scott and I use to go on 3 hour long walks at least twice a week. We don't have that much time anymore, but we still enjoy getting out there and strolling around the town.

While I was out on the walk I saw something that made me very happy....buds forming on trees! It won't be long now until we get some green on the trees to color up all the gray!

Blog Neglect

I know...I have been neglecting my blog for the last few months. Ever since I went back to work I keep thinking I have nothing to write about. My days are pretty much the same, I get up at 5:00 to start getting myself ready for the day. Then at 7:00 I wake up Holly and feed her. At 7:30 I wake up Owen and get him feed. From 8:00 - 8:30 I get the kids dressed and lunches made. I leave the house at 8:30 to drop the kids off at daycare. Then I go to work from 9:30-6:00. I get home at 6:30, make dinner, eat. Then I spend a little time with the kids reading or giving them baths. At 9:30 we all go to bed. I've been getting so set in the schedule that I'm not slowing down to see what is new and exciting about each day, so I haven't been blogging too much.

I really want to journal each day though. I want my kids to be able to read about what they did as kids. So I'm stealing an idea from my friend DeDe. She is a digital scrapbook designer. She came up with a project for this year where she would take one picture each day and journal about that picture. Then she puts one week worth of pictures and journaling into a two page spread. I'm not planning on scrapbooking my pictures and journaling, I just want to put at least one picture and a little journal entry up for each day. I think this will help get me out of my rut of a schedule. You might be bored reading about all the little things that go on in our lives, but that's OK. This is mainly for my kids (and myself) as they get older. So, here are a few pictures from the last few days to get me started...

Wednesday, March 25

Today Scott was able to participate in a Comic Book signing for a comic book he helped to write. So we all went along with him to watch him being famous. Scott is really into comic books, and he loves to write comic book scripts. A few years ago he took a class at New York University in NYC once a week that was all about writing comics. Once a week he would jump on a bus and travel to NYC for the class. So it was fun to hang out in the comic book store with him and his comic book buddies. We were worried that Owen would go nuts in the store, but he behaved himself quite nicely!

Thursday, March 26

Today I was trying to capture the look on Holly's face when she sees something new. I was emptying the dishwasher and she saw the colander. She got so excited. She always opens her mouth and wiggles around a little when she sees something new. It's so dang cute. I just wish I could capture the expression better. Maybe I'll have to have Scott video tape her doing it so we can get to full effect.

Friday, March 27

This is what Owen looks like in the morning. He has awful bed head! Every morning I have to get his hair wet if I want to have any hope of making it look decent. Of course, if he got a haircut that might make things a little bit more manageable. Holly and Owen have been having a problem with cradle cap lately.....which is mainly just dandruff. So I started using Head & Shoulders to wash their hair twice a week. Not only is the dandruff problem being solved, but their hair is so soft and shiny! Maybe I should use Head & Shoulders!

Overalls

This morning when I dropped Owen and Holly off at daycare I noticed a little girl that wasn't dressed correctly. She was wearing pink overalls, and they were on backwards. At first I thought there was a new style in overalls where the front looks like the back use to. But when she turned around and I saw the front pocket on her back, I knew she was not dressed properly. I said something to one of the teachers about it and she said, "We know, we are going to turn her pants around in a minute. Her father dressed her, and we didn't have the heart to tell him."

I was pretty amused by this. It was something I picked up on right away. But her father, a man, had no clue. He would have had to turn her around to button the straps on the overall in the back! I would think that would tip somebody off to something being wrong. It must be a man thing. I could see Scott doing the exact same thing. Why is it that men can't figure out simple overalls, but can fix complex things, like spark plugs? I guess their brains just work differently than ours.

He Bounced!

"Owen jumped on a pile of mats and bounced into the plastic doll house."

That is what was written on the "How did the injury occur?" line of Owen's accident report from daycare. I'm sad that he got hurt (not badly, just two slits in his lower lip), but I wish I could have seen him bouncing into a plastic doll house! That must have been a sight.

It sounds like something Owen would do too. Two year old boys are so much fun!

Sweet Potato

Holly turned 5 months old last Friday. It's hard to believe she has gotten that old! I'm expecting wrinkles to show up on her face any day now. When she was 4 months old we decided to start feeding her rice cereal. She never seemed really excited about it. A week ago I decided to try oatmeal out, and she seemed to like that a lot more. To celebrate her 5 month anniversary of being alive we decided to give her some veggies!

We stuck her in Owen's old high chair, and her little head barely poked up over the tray! She was happy about the new experience though. We decided on Sweet Potatoes for her first vegetable. I know some might think this is child abuse, but we bought Gerber Sweet Potatoes...and not the organic kind, just the regular every day sweet potatoes.

After her first taste she seemed to like them. A little got on her tray and she started sucking them off the tray when I wasn't feeding them to her fast enough!

She definitely liked the sweet potatoes better than the rice cereal! I don't blame her though, that rice cereal doesn't look or smell good!

Overall the sweet potatoes were a success! We have to wait a week now until we try something new, which I have already decided will be carrots. Now if I can only keep her excited about vegetables past her 1st birthday I will be excited!

Lots of Pictures

This is a picture of me. On my birthday...my actual birthday. We have been asked to bring a picture of ourselves on a previous birthday to our Relief Society Birthday Party this month. As I was looking through pictures of myself as a child I realized that this is probably the only picture taken of me on one of my birthdays. Actually, I'm just guessing it was taken on my birthday...it could have been a day or two later. I'm not saying that I don't have pictures of myself as a child, I just don't have a lot. I don't blame my parents for not taking a lot of pictures. I was the 3rd child. I'm sure the excitement of having children had worn off by then. There are more pictures of me as a child then of my youngest brother. I just couldn't find any that looked like they were taken on one of my birthdays.

Another thing has changed since I was a child too. Cameras have changed. There is no more buying film, taking pictures, taking the film to get developed and seeing in 2 or 3 days how they turned out. Now we have instant gratification thanks to digital cameras. I can take pictures and instantly know if they are good or not. And I have gone crazy taking pictures of my kids. I have taken about 6300 pictures of Owen and Holly since the day Owen was born. I'm not a great photographer, but my kids will never have to wonder what they looked like as children.

Here are just a few of the pictures I have taken in the past few days....

We were sitting at the table, eating dinner. Holly was sitting in her swing watching us. I grabbed the camera and took a picture...

Owen is a nut! It's hard to get a picture of him these days because he's always on the move...

Holly was having so much fun in her exersaucer the other day. She was looking at all the toys and getting very excited. I grabbed the camera and took TONS of pictures...

She was making some seriously funny faces and noises...

Then she noticed me and gave me a smile....

Last night I found the Sepia setting on the camera...Holly looks good in Sepia...

Then I found the Black & White....

And I couldn't help myself from taking a picture of Holly's cute little feet.

Making an Entrance

Yesterday was the start of Daylight-Savings Time. Losing an hour never bothered me too much, but yesterday I really missed that extra hour. My weekends are jam packed with cleaning and taking care of kids. Who knew that two kids were so much more work than one? Of course, being back to work full time doesn't help. I am so jealous of all you moms who get to stay at home!

Because of our lost hour yesterday we were an hour late to church. Not that we've never been late before, but if we hadn't lost that hour we would have been right on time! So I was walking into the foyer with Holly in her car seat on one arm, my Relief Society Role books in the other arm and the diaper back slung over my shoulder. I was trying my best to keep Owen under control, but my best wasn't good enough. The next thing I knew he was making a victory lap around the chapel, announcing to everybody that we were an hour late! So I put down Holly and the role books and went after him. We went down one aisle, across the front of the chapel and back up the other aisle before a wonderful sister reached out her arm and caught that little rascal! Owen sure does know how to make an entrance. I guess that will teach me to be an hour late again.

Mystery Solved

I've always wondered how I got so lucky as to have two very happy babies. Well, I found an article the other day that solved that mystery:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4854-chocolate-in-pregnancy-keeps-baby-happy.html

One of my main food groups during pregnancy...and lets face it, everyday...is chocolate! So if you are pregnant and you want a happy baby too, eat some chocolate! It will make you and your baby happy. And, it taste better than carrots.

Hands

Holly is very fascinated with her brother. Every morning I lay them out in front of the TV so I can get them dressed. Without the TV Owen would be squirming and trying to get away. This morning Holly wasn't very interested in the TV though.

She was more interested in Owen and his hands. Owen kept pulling his hands away like she was an annoyance, but she kept on looking at him and his hands. I thought it was pretty sweet. Of course Owen's hair needs to be combed and his face needs to be washed...cameras don't lie do they?