Summertime I: Ella Shakes It Up

So, I was recently chastised for my lack of blogging lately (come on, it's only been... 2 months?!) and I can only plead SUMMER! Holy cow, what a crazy summer it has been. We just got back from a three-week trip to California and Utah, and school starts tomorrow. Of course, it's still 100 degrees out, but let's not talk about that, okay?

Ella had her annual dance recital at the end of June. She takes tap and ballet and performed in two numbers. She prefers ballet (ask her--she'll tell you ALL about it), but she did a lovely job in both. She especially enjoyed watching the older kids perform in the dress rehearsal--they are amazing! I was mostly just glad that the costumes were both feather-free this year. (The first year both costumes had feathers and after I removed them from their protective plastic wrappings it looked like a pink and red chicken had exploded in my living room.)

Like A Fish!

Ella has just finished her first season of swim team, and she has LOVED it! By her first swim meet she'd only had a few practices, so she only competed in one event: the backstroke. Can I just tell you how crazy swim meets are? I didn't grow up doing swim team, so this has been all new for me, too. Let me tell you, these meets are LONG and so hot, and there are screaming parents all over the place. I was intimidated by this first meet, and was just praying that Ella would be able to get in the pool without crying and make it to the finish line. Well! She jumped in to the pool like a pro, took her mark, and swam to finish first in her heat! The look on her face when they handed her a blue ribbon was worth all the time and heat and crazy parents. It gave her the confidence to keep progressing and yesterday, at her third and last meet, she swam freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke in five different events, including two relays. We are so extremely proud of her.

Swimmers take your mark, get set, GO!

Go, Ella, GO!

Ella with our pals Tressa and Brian Reading

Swimmer of the Week--WOO-HOO!

Now We're Cookin'!

Both my girls LOVE to help me cook, and if you have been around Natalie lately, you can imagine how very helpful she is in the kitchen. Any time I get the mixer out, she comes running from wherever she is, yelling, "Chair! See! Hep!" She has to stand on a chair at the end of the counter and I have to make sure the mixer is beyond what Greg calls "The Drool Zone". She has a way of tipping ingredients before I'm ready for them, causing me to dump flour on the floor and add a bit more vanilla than was called for. When she senses that a concoction is ready to taste (and she has a real knack for this) she scampers over to the silverware drawer, grabs a spoon, and demands a scoop of whatever is in the bowl.

This is the look I get from her when I ask her to say "cheese". Not QUITE a smile...

One day when she wanted to "help" cook, I gave her a bowl of ice and a few random cups and spoons. It kept her occupied longer than anything save Elmo, and that's saying something! Now she often requests "hice" and a "poos", which is to say ice and a spoon.

We made our own pizza (which Natalie calls "pee-pees"--charming, I know) one night for dinner. Nat's was pretty much a pile of mushy goo by the time she was done with it, but she was ever so proud of it. Here she is again, saying, "Cheese!"

Ella Turns 7!

Seven years old! Can you believe it? Ella is ever so grown up these days. For her birthday party she decided to have an American Girl tea party, although the guest list was not restricted to American Girls--various other dolls and stuffed animals also made an appearance.

I really had fun preparing this one. I went to Goodwill and bought a dozen random punch cups, the ones that look like little clear teacups, and for Mother's Day I chose a set of stackable cake plates. The food that you see at each place was a doll-sized potion on doll-sized plates. I've always had a thing for miniatures.

The Menu:
frozen lemonade
fruit kebabs
cheese cubes
mini bagels with strawberry cream cheese
pigs in a blanket
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with frilly toothpicks

Greg was in charge of the piñata. My mom thought it was HILARIOUS that Ella wanted to have a piñata at her tea party, but hey, this is San Antonio--ALL birthdays include piñatas. This one WAS an ice cream cone.

The girls were invited to dress fancy for the occasion: Kira, Rachel, Ella, Avery, Emilee, and Kaitlin.

Ella's big surprise gift was and American Girl "Just Like You" doll--see the resemblance? Grandma Kathie made several gowns for her, including a knock-out bridal gown. Ella named her Bella, and she sleeps with her every night.

Oh, The Yumminess

So, one day a few months ago my neighbor, Geri, dropped by to pick her daughter up from a play date and found me right in the middle of some cooking project or other. Geri, who works full-time outside the home, said, "Huh. So is THIS what stay-at-home moms do all day long?" Not every day, certainly (somebody's got to clean the toilets and make sure no one runs out of clean underwear), but on a good day, yes! What I failed to mention to her is that most of the time when I bake, it's for some event or other--for a Young Women event, a ward party, gifts for teachers or friends... I'm always volunteering for the cooking jobs, and especially the baking jobs. I'm not as good as I would like to be, and everything I do is copied from somewhere or other, but I enjoy it. Here are a few things I've done lately that were fun:

Valentine's Day Cupcakes: In February I did something I'd never done before: I bought a Martha Stewart Living magazine at the check-stand, which led to ordering a subscription shortly thereafter. She may be a convicted felon, but that woman has some great ideas! I saw these filigree hearts in the magazine and thought, "I can totally do that." And I did! There were many flops that didn't make the cupcakes, but these turned out okay.

Faux Popcorn: I got this idea from the book Hello Cupcake! Ella thought they were HILARIOUS. We made them for April Fool's Day and gave them to her teacher, our bishop's family, and other friends.

Brynn-cess Cookies: A good friend recently adopted a baby girl and named her Brynn, and some friends and I threw a gala baby shower for her with a princess theme--"Brynn-cess", get it? We made these cookies as party favors. The style of the "B" combined with the pink and green color scheme make me think of Barbie. I'm still learning the "flooding" technique using royal icing--my first efforts were... very strange indeed. Kind of fluffy. I'm getting better, though.

Becoming Butterflies: Our theme for a Young Women leadership training meeting was "On Becoming", so I jumped at the chance to try out these butterfly cupcakes I'd seen, again, in Hello Cupcake! They scored big points for the WOW factor, but they were deceptively easy. I'm looking for an excuse to make them again, so let me know if you need some!

Howdy, Flat Chloe!

So, I started to describe what Flat Stanley is all about, and then had a thought: isn't this what Wikipedia is for? So if you've never heard of Flat Stanley, here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley

My cousin Chloe, a third grader in Fresno, California, sent me her Flat Chloe to visit our family and San Antonio for a few weeks. I was so honored! Natalie took to her immediately, as you will see in the pictures. I was alarmed that Flat Chloe had no feet, much less shoes, so I made her a pair of cowboy boots to match her outfit. We took her all over the place--downtown San Antonio (including a stop at Schilo's for their homemade root beer... mmm...), IKEA, Austin, the Hill Country (yes, she was with us on the ill-fated wildflower drive fiasco), Five Guys Burgers and Fries, my triathlon. At home she helped me sew, and we made hootinanny pancakes and crepes together. Unfortunately a bout of the stomach flu knocked us all down (well, all but Flat Chloe) midway through her visit, so a few of our plans were canceled. Still, I think she had a pretty good time.

Here's Natalie giving Flat Chloe loves at the Alamo.

No visit to San Antonio would be complete without dinner at Rudy's, home of the self-proclaimed worst barbecue in Texas. (Don't you believe it.)

Flat Chloe even got to go on a field trip to Seaworld with my friend Valerie, a dolphin and beluga whale trainer. (It's nice to have friends in high places.)

And here we are at the state capitol in Austin. Again with the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_State_Capitol It is the largest state capitol in the nation, thus proving that everything truly IS bigger in Texas.

Thanks for the visit, Flat Chloe! You were the perfect guest.

One Wild Day

First of all, check out these pictures:




Ugh, aren't we just so cute that you want to throw up? Smiling and hugging and wearing color-coordinated outfits, all wrapped up in wildflower goodness? Uh-huh. Here's the true story of The Day of The Wildflowers (I'm lifting the following story from an email I already sent because I don't think I can relive it all by writing about it one more time):

"The wildflowers have been outstanding this spring, following a couple really rotten years, so I did lots of web-based research and found a great drive for us to do together. We set aside a promising Saturday at least a month in advance, because our Saturdays fill up like crazy, as I am sure yours do, too. I looked forward to it for weeks and when the day came... I set off with such a good attitude. An hour out we stopped at our favorite bakery for cookies, then pressed on to "The Willow City Loop", which was really, really beautiful. Bluebonnets all over the place, and even some very picturesque longhorns grazing in a field. ("Look at the beautiful flowers! Oooh, don't they smell nice? Oh, Nat, look at the cows!") Ella was bored the whole time, and highly vocal about it. Natalie was ultra-grumpy, and threw fits every time we stopped the car and got out because she wanted to sit in the front seat and "drive" the car. After a couple hours of this, all I wanted was a family picture so we could prove we'd been there. We found a likely spot, with a little bald patch in the midst of the flowers, good for sitting. I sat, Greg brought me Natalie, and she she arched her back and threw her head straight into my nose. Yeah, it's all fun and games until Mom gets hit in the nose. We did take a picture, finally, and luckily I was wearing sunglasses so you couldn't see the tears streaming down. Then, as we were shoving children into the car, I heard Greg say, "Don't step on the flowers!" I turned and saw a kid just stomping the heck out of a patch of bluebonnets by the road. His mother immediately whipped around and yelled, "Don't tell my child what to do!" which sparked a big long argument. Meanwhile, I had detected that Natalie's diaper was full to overflowing and had to change her on the trunk of the car while Redneck Mama continued yelling and Greg defended his (shaky) ground."

"Then we went home. Oh, wait, we also stopped at some port-a-potties and after getting Ella settled in one ("Don't touch that, and EW, don't touch THAT") I opened the door to the neighboring one and there was a man inside, LUCKILY facing away from me, who bellowed in a very shocked way. Um, hello? That's what the lock on the door is for. I got back in the car, told my family that I was DONE making fun for them, and sulked all the way home."

I have since recovered and once again found myself on the "Let's Have Some Family Fun" bandwagon last weekend when we drove up to Austin to see Ralph (Of the Disney-affiliated "Ralph's World"--ever heard of him?) in concert. More on that to come. I'll just say that as no noses were nearly broken, I called it a success.

Triple Wheeze

So, in the 5th grade I was diagnosed with activity-induced asthma, and I spent at least the next 15 years wheezing. After I got married I finally saw a specialist who helped me get things under control, and I can now do most anything without any medication at all. Really, it is a miracle. I can remember dreading having to run "The Mile" in middle school because by the end I would literally be on the ground, gasping for air. (You would think that the oh-so compassionate PE teachers would have noticed something amiss, but nooooo...) But today I did a freshman triathlon--200 meter swim, 10 mile bike ride, and 2 mile run. And I finished! When I signed up my cavalier attitude was something along the lines of, "I know I'm slow, but I'll do it just for fun." A couple days ago, though, panic set in, and I was sure I'd be the last one to cross the finish line. I had a nightmare at 2:30am about running before swimming and therefore messing everything up. I woke up at 5:30 this morning thinking, "Why am I doing this again?"

But you know, I did it! Here I am plugging along in the swim. The pool sure didn't look that big, and I only had to do 4 laps there and back, but wow was I glad when it was over. I think my swim cap is super chic.

Here I am leaving the transition area with my granny bike. I love it--it's super-sturdy and comfortable to ride. Also super-heavy and slow, but oh well. The ride was by far my favorite part, but the whole time (as my lungs adjusted to life after the swim) I couldn't stop thinking, "And they expect me to be able to RUN after this?!"

And I'm off! I didn't make it very far before I had to walk (oh, and readjust my $5 shorts so they wouldn't fall down around my ankles) but I did run on and off the rest of the way. I ran the last 200 yards to the finish, of course.

And here I am with my babies, who cheered me on with their daddy every step of the way. I came in 197th overall (out of 250+)--not bad for the little wheezer that could!

Allergies and the hookworm

It's allergy season in San Antonio. Which means that everything is covered with green powdery pollen from the oak trees. It is everywhere and my body is not happy about it.

Last night while driving home I heard Act II of This American Life episode 404 about a guy with terrible allergies and asthma who learned that those diseases basically don't exist in the developing world. The reason for this, he learned, is a parasite, specifically hookworm. According to the program, having a hookworm calms your immune system response so you don't develop that condition where your immune system is trying to kill you. (my exaggerated non-scientific language, but still, you get the point)

So this guy goes to Africa and walks around barefoot in yucky places to intentionally infect himself with hookworm. He returns to Santa Cruz and the next time allergy season comes around he has no issues. His eyes don't swell shut. He is not sent to the hospital because of severe asthma attacks. He is cured. He drives down the highway with his windows rolled down shouting for joy.

Fascinating stuff.

Hmmmm hookworm...