Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was fairly normal.  The one thing out of the ordinary was that we went to the Cheese Festival in Arthur IL.  It was fun.  Alice was on three separate cheese curling teams, and one of those teams (not ours) came in third place over all.  They were tied for first until the sudden death tie breaker round.  After that we went to the park and had a picnic.  It was a lot of fun, except for the heat.  It was 95+ degrees.  Sorry no pictures in this post,  Susan is downloading the pictures from our camera to the computer, so hopefully the will show up in a post soon.  

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been a long week. My birthday was this week, but because we have had so much going on each day, we have celebrated it some what piecemeal. We went out to dinner on the day itself, because Susan had so much going on that day she didn't have time to make the requested birthday dinner. Later I made my birthday pie.

And finally we made my birthday dinner. We had everything for it, just not a lot of time for dinner.

Yesterday was a very busy day. We are getting our house ready to put it on the market, and would like to put it out in about a week. So we spent Saturday getting some things ready. We panted Robert's room. It hasn't been painted since we moved in, and it wasn't in the best shape when we did move in. I also installed two new light fixtures in the halls. Wow it makes a big difference with the light level in there. And then just a bunch of general things around the house. The whole house is starting to look ready. We still have a lot of clutter to remove, and a few more minor things to finish up, but it is very close.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Monday I had the day off so I was able to spend it finishing the floor in the kitchen. That project is now officially done. There are still lots f other things to do through out the house, but that part is now finished. The rest of the week felt fairly normal. Like we are finally getting back into our lives now that the holidays are over. There really isn't anything else that happened this week.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week I have several videos. The big news this week is.

Yes that's right he is walking, sort of. Mostly he just needs more confidence that he is not going to fall over, so he is not doing it on his own without a lot of encouragement.

Alice has felt a little jealous. Whenever we applaud Robert for walking she wants to get applause for doing the same thing, or having her dolls do the same thing.

But for the most part their relationship is very good.

And another video of Alice playing/Dancing this morning just for fun.

And yes she wore the outfit to church. She likes to dress up fancy.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

A lot happened this week. Actually a lot happened Saturday and today. That is the way it seems, almost everything happens on Saturday or Sunday. Alice got to go to a friend birthday party on Saturday. The most difficult, and depending on who you are funny, part of the day was when I showed up with the present to wrap for the other little girl who turned two. It was a baby doll from the dollar store with a doctor's kit that came with it. Alice saw it from across the room and instantly wanted it. I tried to pick something that she already had to reduce the possibility of this happening. But she really wanted it, and she was really tired too. She was ready to trade all of her dolls and her doctor's kit in to get this one new doll. After we had refused she fell apart into a pity party. We heard things such as "I don't want to be nice I want to be mean and nasty" or "She gets all the nice things the only thing I get are rusty old clocks". The last one was yelled from the bath room where about the only thing you can see is a clock, and she does not even really know what rust is. The good thing is she calmed down and had one of the best times of her life at the party. There was dancing and candy and fun.

Alice also gave her first talk in Primary today. She did a very good job with it. And just for fun here are some random spinning videos from this week.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been a lot like last week. More home improvement. But much more slowly this time. We are trying to do some of the finish work on the floor which is a bit slower then just laying down the large expanses. Robert is betting bigger and more desirous to walk. Every chance he gets he will grab our fingers and throw himself on to the floor to try and finger walk. He also has an amazing reach. He will tuck his feet under him and lean forward until he is almost on his knees to grab something. he he will go back to siting. This leads to a few face plants, but he is surprisingly good at knowing his boundaries.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was very busy. I was in California all week for work. I left early Monday morning and didn't get home until late Friday night. Susan spent the week at home with two sick kids. At least the second half of the week was with sick kids. On Friday our friend Julia showed up for a week end visit too. So it was an eventful but tiring week end as well. Happily everyone seems to be mostly better. Susan still has a cough that will not go away. But we are still going to be very busy. We are doing some touchups to the house, so this week will be filled with painting.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been mostly normal. Susan has had a lot of things in the evening, but Susan has already talked about that. At work there have been some reorganizations going on, but we still don't know any details about exactly what our next project will be. There is no fear of me being laid-off, hey need people too desperately for that to happen. Just curious what I will end up doing.

Today I decided that I wanted to make scones for breakfast. But just so you know these are Utah Scones. They turned out a lot more like fry bread then the big puffy fried bread balloons that I remember growing up. If you happen to know a good recipe for them please let me know (Dad). We will probably not try them again until next year though.

Alice wanted to include that we read lots of books this morning. She is starting to get into chapter books a bit more. Not that she reads them herself, but that she likes to listen to a story that is a bit longer then a picture book.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has felt really crazy, but I think it was all yesterday, most of the rest of the week was fairly normal. We have been trying to get our house fixed up a bit lately. Part of that is getting new flooring in the entire house. Well in the bath room where we ripped out a wall we started taking up the old floor, so we could put down a new floor. well after taking up some of it we found out that there are what look like asbestos tiles under it all. So we had to go get a special face mask, and cover the floor in thick plastic. It is not really that dangerous if you don't pulverize the tiles, so it should not be a big deal for us to take the rest of the tiles out, it will just take a bit longer then usual, and we will defiantly not be doing that in the kitchen, which probably has them there too. Just means a bit more work, and money then we originally though.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a bit of a busy one. At work I was finishing up a project. We managed to finish it up Friday at about 12:30, which was just in time. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up some things and passing off knowledge to other people on the project. That was a big stress reliever when it was over.

Friday night we drove down to St Louis to go to the temple. Alice was very happy to be able to stay in a hotel. We were initially planning to stay at a friend's house there, but their AC broke, so they all were sleeping in a single room together with a window unit. We decided it would probably be best not to add another 4 people to that room. It was kind of odd that night because both Susan and I distinctly hear Robert moaning in his sleep that sounded exactly like mmmmmmmmmohhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyy. After the temple we went to hang out with our friends and in Alice's words, with some prodding we "played, and go to a nature center where we saw toys and fish. " It was a very enjoyable trip over all.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has felt kind of crazy, but I think it was all yesterday. Yes I know that this sounds a lot like last weeks post. Yesterday we spent several hours freezing 100+ ears of corn that we bought. Last week was blue berries so it was very different. It did not involve nearly as much heat as this one did. We created a make shift blanket door in between the kitchen and the rest of the house. We then spend several hours trying hard to boil enough water to make it hotter and more humid in our kitchen then outside, which had a excessive heat advisory. Let me say we succeeded with flying colors, we even opened the window to try and cool things off.

We also decided that we were going to try and have a bar-b-queue with some friends last night. It turned out really well. We made pulled pork, corn on the cob, and veggies. Our friends brought cake for dessert, and a really tasty salad. But today I am exhausted.

The rest of the week was good too. Susan already talked about Robert's 100th day and I really don't know if there is much more to talk about. Sorry no pictures or videos of the fun yesterday.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a very long week. Susan is still pregnant, and she has been doing as much as she normally does so she has been very busy. As the days go on some things get more difficult to do, but she still does them very well, and before I get angry comments about why I am not helping this poor pregnant woman out, I am, but this week has been very stressful too. We have a big deadline coming up on Monday. On Friday what we were working on still was not operating properly. So I had to spend a few hours on Saturday to debug it and get it all working. I am glad that we managed to get close enough that it only took a few hours, but it was still very frustrating that it did not work out as well as I had hoped.

Yesterday Alice picked play an instrument from the star sticks and Susan decided to play the drums with Alice. It turned out to be a lot of fun.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This was a long week. As Susan mentioned we had a guest with us all week, and no matter how nice a guest they are it can be rather stressful for an entire week. She left saturday morning at 5:30 am. Susan and I decided to spend the day together. We ran some errands. Went to the library and had some quiet time at home. After that it was movie and popcorn time. Alice picked out a tomas the train video at the library and she seemed to really like it. That evening was our ward Christmas party. It was a lot of fun. I even got a candid shot of Susan performing. All in all it was a wonderful day.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Apparently if you hit enter in blogger after just typing in the title of a blog, it will publish the empty entry. I just found that out, so any of you who are fast at reading this may be a bit disappointed, because I do not plan on finishing it right now. I have stake conference in about an hour, so check back later for an update.

This week has been a very interesting one. We have had a guest staying with us some of this week, and she will stay until next Saturday. She is a very nice surrogate grandmother to Alice. Alice loves her lots and lots, but sadly she is with us because she is moving to Nevada and needed a place to stay for a week after leaving her old apartment. It was especially odd last night as Susan is off on her final birthday celebration, another opera in Chicago this time, so it was out guest, Alice and me last night.

It was almost even odder, because I recently dodged another trip to California. Two trips in fact. This week two people I work with will be in California giving some training on what we have built. The next week two more are going out to give a presentation to our new management, yes we got moved around again, about exactly what it is that we do. For some reason I always seem to get picked for these types of trips so I have ended up going to CA three to four times a year. Well if I were going on the first trip then I would probably be flying out this afternoon, so it would be one more thing in an already crazy schedule for today, with a guest in our house, Susan coming home and me leaving for a week. I just don't think that would work.

well look at that, because Alice is eating oatmeal with her friend I actually managed to get enough time to finish this, reducing that chances that anyone will have to check back later to read the actual entry.

Raking Leaves Again

It was another one of those days at home where the only time-sensitive item on my to-do list was "Soak beans overnight" for our church's Trunk or Treat Chili Cookoff tomorrow. Days like this don't often happen, so I delved into a few more "home projects" and spent a lot of time playing with Alice:

• "Raked" the leaves in the front yard. I used the lawnmower to chew up the leaves and dump them into the lawn and leaf bags. Alice generally hates the noisy lawnmower, so she ran inside and watched from the screen door. Every time the lawnmower bag would get full, which was quite often, I'd have to turn off the engine and dump the chewed up leaves into a paper bag. Every time I stopped the lawnmower, Alice would shout through the screen door, "All done?" When I finally said "Yes!" she gleefully skipped outside asking for a pile of leaves she could jump into. Fortunately for her, it was a windy day and leaves were quickly gathering on our lawn once more. We piled and played until she came across a patch of sticky brown stuff and asked, "Is that mud or poop?" Game over.
• Took Alice's red Fisher-Price car for a drive on the street for the first time.
• Played with sidewalk chalk on the driveway.
• Packed a picnic lunch to eat at the church building while I did administrative stuff for the Family History Center. We were pretending the church was our "school" and she got to carry the lunches in her spiffy new-to-her backpack. With the right angle, almost any errand/chore can become exciting fun for this kid. I like this age.
• Posted several large items on craigslist. All part of the cleansing ritual that started with the bathroom remodeling. A nice bathroom and freshly painted kitchen makes the rest of our house look like crap. Most of my time at home this week has been spent de-crapping our house. I now have a literal truck load of perfectly-usable-but-not-worth-storing-anymore stuff that's headed to Goodwill tomorrow.
• Made a spectacular dinner, laid out a splendid table, then crouched with Alice under the table for 10 minutes waiting for Bobby to get home. This girl loooooves to surprise Daddy.

 

Yes, she's wearing a huge rubber band around her head. She found it at the Family History Center one day and decided it was a helmet. It cracks me up, but she's totally serious about it.

Also, while I was preparing our amazing dinner, Alice was preparing a feast of her own for all of her friends and family. I made her pose next to the table she set, which is why she looks so awkward standing there. The clothespins are pretzels, there's one pear, and everything else is either a bagel or a brownie. "Baby Taydoh" and "Baby Tiger" have already been seated.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week feels like a long one. About a year and a half ago we bought about quarter of a cow. We are not huge beef eaters, and had 5 filet mignons so in celebration of my brother passing his qualifying exams we decided to have them over for a filet mignon cookout. It turned out fairly well.

On Tuesday Susan had a genealogy class that she taught, on Thursday she had enrichment, and Saturday morning she went to a class on green building. So in reality Susan had a busy week, while I watched Alice for a lot of it.

Saturday I decided that I was going to make ribs as Susan had found some on sale. As I was making the rub I mistakenly grabbed the rock salt instead of kosher salt. I thought that it would not be that big of a difference, especially because it did not look like that much salt. Boy was I wrong. Those are some very salty ribs, but still delicious.

My 30th Year

I don't like to celebrate my birthday on the actual day (something about impossibly high expectations that only meet with disappointment). I generally have more fun when the celebration is spread out. This year, I made a conscious effort to actively celebrate it ALL YEAR. One only lives her 30th year once, right? Here's how I celebrated my birthday this year:

• It started in February with a semi-spontaneous trip to see an older (*wink*) friend in California. We had made plans to visit them almost as soon as we knew they were really leaving, but it takes guts to actually pick a date and buy a ticket and drop in on someone you haven't seen in a year. I'm counting it :)
• I took a class on Entrepreneurial Farming. Veeeeery insightful.
  
• Purchased my own copies of a few books I have loved and lusted after for some time: Story People by Brian Andreas, Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons. One of these is not like the others :)
  
• That amazing dinner with Heidi at Prairie Fruits Farm *sigh*
• My friend Michelle surprised me with a garden-themed birthday cake at Orpheum Museum. How did she know I like to garden? LOL
• My friend Denise constructed a raised bed for my raspberry bushes AND gave me a nifty square and indoor/outdoor extension cord that has come in handy for numerous projects since then.

Today was my literal b-day and it was just about perfect. Instead of trying to make it "the perfect day", I ended up with a great regular day that I actually paid attention to. I found myself looking at the day's activities as a cross-section of my life. It was AWESOME! Here's what happened:

• Alice was playing with a folding chair when she tripped and fell on it in just such a way that it collapsed on her finger with her on top of the chair. It looked awful, but no broken skin. Big, puffy bruises clustered all around the tip of her finger. She asked for a band-aid, gagged down some pain killer, and snuggled with me on the snuggle chair for half an hour. We dozed a bit, which was nice. I realized that I really do enjoy being a mom. I am where I want to be.
• We were beginning to get ready to meet Kristin, Will, and Kayla for a play date when my friend JulieAnn called to invite us to the park. I hopped out of the shower and my friend Rachel called to wish me a happy birthday. I literally hung up with her (pulling out of my driveway with the cordless phone in my hand, not a cell phone) when my friend Jessica called about canning peaches with her this weekend. I had to turn around and drive home to get better reception :) This flurry of phone calls from friends NEVER happens. I don't consider myself a popular person and most of these people don't call me on a regular basis. The fact that it happened today, when at least half of them were not conscious of it being my birthday, helped me appreciate the good friends that I do have. I sobbed when Michelle left yesterday. It sounds cheesy, I know, but I really felt rich with friends today. Near and far. A good feeling. Better than any number of people at a surprise party.
• My time with Kristin, Will, and Kayla was sweet, too. Kristin made me my favorite pie (pumpkin!) with homemade crust and everything. Wow! Then we spent the morning at the Winfield pool and toy room until the kids got too tired to play together any more. It's a shame when the kids get enough before the parents do. I realized today that it's good to have family nearby. I have enjoyed getting to know the Evanses better and seeing Alice come to love her cousins. These are friendships that will persist a lifetime, no matter what.
  
• Alice and I stopped at KFC/A&W for a special lunch treat. This activity was hard to find any significance in. I don't think I'll try.
• Quiet time at home...I relaxed on the couch while Alice played naked in her room again. She is a neat little personality to have in our home. I am a mother.
• The Jarvies came over for a little play date. We picked the rest of the green beans in my garden. Actually, Marianne did most of the picking (9.5 months pregnant and all) while I wrestled with an exhausted Alice. I shared some beans and portions of my CSA produce with her, which reminded me how much I love to share things I love with people I love. Alice was fighting every vegetable gift I gave, wanting to hoard the rest for herself. I peeled her a medium cucumber and she ate it whole. Then she ate a raw patty pan squash just because I was giving them away so freely. Then she ate a baby carrot from our garden. It balanced well with the french fries, Teddy Grahams, and lemonade she ate for lunch :D
  
• Alice fell asleep in the car while I ran an errand about 6pm. I toyed with idea of waking her up and wrestling with her sour mood for another hour until bedtime, but then I got smart. I put her straight to bed. She barely stirred. Heck, if she wakes up early tomorrow, Bobby will be around. This experience revealed how I like to make decisions for other people sometimes (mwah ha ha haaaa).
  

Technically, my 30th year ends this week, but I've extended it to the whole 2009 calendar year. It took me some time to build up the courage to actually start doing these things. So! Here's what's in store for the rest of this year's celebrations:

• "Introduction to Genealogy" course through Parkland College Continuing Education
• "Building Your Home Green" course...a bit of a fancy of mine
• A more mature wardrobe (i.e. shirts with buttons or some sort of shape to them, maybe a pair of Sunday shoes that will actually fit)
• TWO operas with my opera buddy, Julia: The Merry Widow and Tosca
  

CSA Share---August 12th

Big, big haul today. Enough to freeze for later and attempt making pickles.

6 ears sweet corn
9 summer squash
2 large cucumbers
4 pounds green beans
1 large bell pepper
1 large sweet and spicy pepper
1 small bunch red leaf lettuce
1 large bunch green leaf lettuce
1 huge Italian eggplant
1 medium bunch of fresh dill

Alice snarfed one ear of corn on our way to the restaurant for dinner, then she started rooting around in the bag for more. She discovered the corn silk and asked me what it was. When I told her it was "corn silk" she promptly shoved it in her mouth and almost gagged herself into vomiting. When I opened her door to get her out at the restaurant, there was corn milk dried all over her face and hands, and she was covered head-to-toe in corn silk. She handed me the fistful of soggy corn silk that almost made her barf and stated, "My no yike it."

Squash may get frozen for minestrone in the winter. The cukes and dill will suffer my first attempt at making homemade pickles. Peppers and eggplant will definitely be chopped and frozen for fajitas and/or Indian curry later this year.

Girls Night Out

Alice treated me to a surprise "girls night out" this evening. After we picked up an enormous load of produce from our CSA (to be posted next), she directed me to Noodles and Co. where I cashed in my "Free Birthday Meal" coupon for a surprisingly tasty Bangkok Curry with beef. Alice opted for the mushroom stroganoff. She pointed out all the most exciting features of the restaurant: lighting, exposed pipes on the ceiling painted burnt sienna, table condiments ("Spicy! No spicy."), the soda machine, plastic lids and straws, and the restrooms. She almost ate her entire meal, which surprised me to no end.

We came home, mixed up a batch of brownies (partly to rid the kitchen of that rotting produce smell I have generated with all my silly compost scraps...ugh), and, throwing caution to the wind, we licked the bowl clean. Coated in chocolate ("cah-coh-yit"), it was obviously bath time for Alice. I put my feet in and she washed them over and over again, which is *almost* like a pedicure, right? ;)

The brownies were done by the time she got out of the tub. We played and talked again over chocolate and milk. It was there that she shared her innermost feelings, "C is for cookie. D is for Daddy. B is for baby. A is for A-yiss. Eth is for 'nake."

She says my name with a lisping "s" like "Thoo-then", but she completely drops the "s" sound from the word "snake", which makes it a very interesting word to represent that letter's sound.

Toothbrush, snuggle, story, and a couple songs later, she went to bed. Now I'm off to do a little more family history research. I had a recent breakthrough with one of my most interesting mysteries so I'm itching to move ahead again. Woo hoo!

Heidi's Visit

My sister Heidi and her son Atticus arrived in St. Louis last Thursday where Alice and I picked them up kinda late. Curse you, Google Maps! We largely filled the week with mundane tasks and regular life:

but threw in a few twists as we could :)

The best twist, I feel, was the perfect evening when Heidi and I took off to Prairie Fruits Farm for one of their "Dinners on the Farm." It couldn't have been a more perfect evening, nor could I have imagined a better dining companion (sorry, Bobby, but you kinda have to be into the whole "small farm" thing to REALLY appreciate this experience)! Here's the menu. We arrived at 5 for appetizers only to learn that appetizers started at 4. Oh well. We enjoyed a few appetizers, selected our dinner seats, and caught up with everyone taking a tour of the barn. No biggie. Heidi and I had toured this exact farm a few years ago and we knew our way around.

The newest baby goat, only 2 weeks old, was eager to be loved so we got to hold him a bit.

He had just pressed his hairy, milky lips into my neck when Heidi took this picture.

I was surprised by how much joy I felt overlooking the green pasture and alfalfa fields. There's just something about self-sufficiency and hard work and green land that brings me joy. Doing it without packaged fertilizers and pesticides makes it all the more satisfying. Satisfying enough to do it myself? I don't know that yet.

When it was time for dinner, we took our seats. Turns out we were sitting next to the ranchers who raised the cow we were about to eat. I thought this dinner would be filled with hippies and yuppies, but I was wrong. Pleasantly wrong. One of our hosts, the goat cheese entrepreneur herself, sat across from us and I knew then that this was going to be an unforgetable night. I could barely keep seated!

We pestered that poor woman about everything. We asked her about cheese-making, raising chickens, and how she found her way into this profession. We marveled how she happened into this perfectly situated parcel of land and networked her way into selling her goat cheeses all over Illinois. We discussed the sad state of fruit trees this year, the seasonal qualities of honey, harvesting alfalfa, and leasing land from neighbors. I hung on every word. This was fascinating to both of us, of course, because Heidi and I have secretly had this shared dream of owning farm land and turning it into something not unlike this woman and her husband have. I remember a few boring speakers at church that got me to doodling the ideal farm for Heidi and me. I wish I still had those drawings. Heidi balked at the pool on her house's roof, but I think the rest of the plan was satisfactory. She would handle portions of the garden and the animals (goats, chickens, maybe alpacas) and I would handle the rest of the garden and any orchards, vineyards, and brambles I could manage to squeeze onto the land. Later versions of the plan included beehives, wildflowers, and children running barefoot in green pastures. We haven't yet figured out how our spouses' own careers and dreams factor into this ;)

Back to the reality. The veggies were phenomenal. The beef, the goat cheese, the fresh herbs and veggies. I loved it all. The good news was, each course was timed and presented in just such a way that we didn't get overfull, just gleefully satisfied.

Between the main course and the cheese plate, Heidi and I scouted out the veggie garden. Rows and rows of REAL food were just ready to be picked and dug. There were weeds, a few rotting veggies, bugs, and everything else that happens in a REAL garden. Awesome! The herb garden was pristine, though we could see where they had plucked and cut back the herbs that went into our meal that night.


May I never forget that "salsa verde" they served: cilantro, basil, flat leaf parsley, olive oil, fresh garlic, salt, and a splash of red wine vinegar. Finely chop/puree the ingredients and serve at room temperature. They served it with the beef, but I'm willing to try it on ANYTHING.

After our sweet corn gelato and blackberry cobbler, we all applauded the chef and our hosts. Heidi, who is far more brave and impulsive than I am, actually asked our hostess to take a picture with us. Woo hoo!

We drove home at dusk and the fireflies were out full force all the way home. I was glowing all evening. What a treat!