North Star

Although the ages ebb and flow
around the axis dreams may flow
the spindle of the compass fixed upon
a most unlikely mix;
at least I thought it so.

But as the miles flowing fly,
the shore comes closer by the bye,
I see my goal extended.
How wise a hand the tiller holds,
How bold a breath the sails unfold,
How great a plan brings me to land.
Unmeasured treasures of the shores.

peppermint marshmellows

So, I have always wanted to make marshmellows and since I got my Bosch for Christmas I can, (mwahhh ha ha ha). Having no vanilla is a hardship (I am holding out for a Penzy's spice order I'm putting together) so I went with pepeprmint. Note to self. Add only 1/2 A tsp. of peppermint for 1 tsp. of vanilla. Strong little marshmellows. Also note. Marshmellows need to sit for four hours or overnite before being cut to shape. DO NOT PUT PLASTIC WRAP OVER THE MARSHMELLOWS before dusting them with the mixture of powdered sugar and corn starch. messy, messy, messy. Luckily I only had it halfway down before my brain kicked in.

We will be cutting them when we get back from the church (when you talk to your friend and you know she is prepping for Relief Society Meetings that evening beware asking 'do you need anything? You know where that is going). LOL I knew where that was headed. OK and the gym first. If I am going to bake I had best be going to the gym.

My girl looks so cute today. She is finding her own style and it is gorgeous. I will try and post pictures. I do have one of the lemon rosemary cakes.

-Eea

March 2010

I read in Oprah, in a glancing view, that 'people say that they love to eat but that is not true, they need love in other ways in their life and it comes out through eating'. Now, I may need more love in my life. I like love. But I argue that I do love food. I love to bake. I love to feed people. When my children refuse to eat it drives me crazy!

My food day:

breakfast two cutie tangeries, yummy

lunch, homemade pizza. An olive oil, wildflower honey white wheat crust with a evoo pesto sauce base (dried herbs from my garden last fall) sun dried tomatoes (from my garden last fall), part skm mozzerella,portabello mushrooms, orange and yellow bell peppers, feta and a little more basil and some fresh cracked black pepper. YUMMY!

dinner, Greek swiss chard pie with the rest of the portabello mushrooms and feta wrapped in layers of phyllo dough touched with evoo.

then we made little rainbow muffins with lembas flour (a fresh ground mixture of wheat, barley, oats, lentils, white beans) colored in six colors and placed in layers with pink sugar on top.

Then the kids helped me make lemon rosemary cake. We stopped and smelled all of the flavors as we put them in. Now I just need to make the lemon glaze.

The sad part is I put too much salt in the muffins and forgot the salt in the cake so... it's not perfect, but oh, it still smells so yummy in here.

I am working on only eating when I am hungry...Kylee is so good at that. I try not to mess with my kids hunger signals. (I have to watch Dylan though. The other two are such good eaters that I forget that he ate NOTHING for lunch and is holding out for something with sugar in it).

I am reading the biography of Hillary Bell and all of the great things that she accomplished in her life and I want to be doing those great things. But I admit that most of the women I can think of that have done those very big things have been denied motherhood or have sacrificed a large part of their motherhood. I believe in the power of mothers. I don't want to give up on other dreams and aspirations but I want to hold strong to the idea that what I am doing right now is just as important (actually more important) than my other goals. I want to be confident in my decisions. I want to be a great mother. I think I will have to earn that. I know I will have to earn that. It is not just given to me.

Good night, another day is won.

So its been a fun month.Buddy turned 5 and we had a little family party. He likes being five but he will tell you he is seven because he counts from the ground up and every five inches or so he gives a number. ankles 1, knees 2 etc. He hits seven at his head. I am ten years old. I laughed and said no, I am 35 years old and he grabbed his head, fell down and the floor and laughed, no way mom.



Princess had a field trip to a reenactment 1800s village. I got to go. The lady who showed them the spinning wheels was very scary.






Buddy 'graduated' from the HIPPY program (it's an acronym and I can't find anyone who knows what it fully stands for but its a Home/Parent/Educator prepare your kid for kindgergarten thing. Our co-ordinator brought lessons every week and taught me how to teach them to Buddy, then Budddy and I spent 15-40 min. a day working on the curriculum. It was great for me because I knew he wasn't ready for kindergarten and I didn't know what else to work on. He knew all of his letters and the sounds they made, colors shapes, a few blends and was reading simple words. He would not color or hold a pencil or write his name... Our very first lesson we worked on vocabulary. There were two squares on a page and you put two identical cups on each square and asked 'are these items the same or different? ' and the answer is 'the same'. Then you place a fork in one square and a cup in the other square and ask 'are these items the same or different?' and the answer was 'the same!'. I realized that the program was going to help us out. Our coordinator also helped us get in touch with the school district's other programs and we now have speech therapy and occcupational therapy once a week. We also got to make a video for the national school board about our experience with the program. I hope they got what they needed becasue the program has been great for us. We entertained princess and little buddy with the digital camera during graduation.

A new day

Hi friends,
If you haven't listened to President Bednar's CES fireside talk I highly recommend it. It can be found on the front page of www.lds.org. It is definitely applicable to me and my spouse but it is a good warning for our children as well. As in many things they need boundaries and I am the boundary creator, or enforcer I suppose. We have nice things like advice from apostles to help create valid boundaries.

I've been meaning to put some baptism pictures on here. So here is our little princess. Better late than never, yes? yes.

I'm going to go check and see that my pictures uploaded. Hmmm, nope. The file I want is not listing as a publicly accessible file, even though I think I fixed that on Picase web albums. I will ponder this more. Let me see if I can upload a few pictures..

So apparently, yes I can put the pictures on, but I can't put them where I want them, they float to the top. I get very frustrated with software that thinks it is clever. I suppose one reason I have avoided blogging is that this used to be my job. I programmed over 200 webpages for LANL DX division one summer. And when I say programmed, I mean programmed. This was before there were any good webpage design software. I typed it all by hand. If I wanted a picture somewhere, I put it there and it stayed there, until you tried to upload existing pages into new upcoming software packages and it would hash everything. ARghh. I think I'm perfectionist. I just want things how I want them. OK, that's enough frustration for now. I'm going to go read someone else's blog now. What does blog stand for anyway?

-eea



eea

So, here I am

So, here I am, blogging. It is something that I have debated and started on and off and filed under 'another thing to take up time' so why am I posting now? and will anyone ever read this? To answer the first I read Sabrina and Brett's blog. I feel like I know Sabrina. I like her a lot. I have always liked Brett. I don't think I have met her more than once, but see, I feel like I know her well enough to know that I like her, a lot. I have read her blog.

I would like my relatives and friends to know me well enough to know if they like me or not. I would like them to kn0w how wonderful my children and family are. SO, Since I am not a big talker I am willing to crawl out of intentional digital obscurity (yes, it has been intentional. Try and find us digitally sometime, we don't exist. Or at least we have been very hard to find on the www without a little personal guidance).

As to answer the second question. I don't know. My other reason for not writing a blog is the belief that no one really wants to hear my rantings or musings and a blog kept by me will contain at least some of that because I am not a great biographer. So, here it goes. I will send this to Kerri too because she seems to be the keeper of the signposts of who is where.

Ode to a Dozen Daffodils

Ode to a dozen daffodils
that lay dying on a
sun dappled lawn

Overpowered by shadows
of orchids, blood-red
in the light of a waning dawn.

Their time come too soon.

The iris rose up to bloom
controlled by a primeval
power too true to turn back.

Truth too blooms as a flower,
too harsh a reality to control.
The power of living is that
dying comes
and the time between is where
the flowers bloom.