January 22-31: A Mission Call!

On Wednesday January 22, we had a neighbor friend over to play.  We made some Valentine's decorations and the kids invented a new way to make a fort on the couch.

I think it's actually pretty clever.  By using the cushions for the walls and ceiling they can make a small cave on each side of the couch.  Add some blankets and it's the best fort around!  We actually makes forts like this quite often now.  Why haven't I thought of this before?  #smartkids

January 23.  We all met at Charlotte's how to open my parent's mission call: the Oaxaca Mexico Temple Mission.  Yay!  It's what they had requested.  I love my mom's expressions in the pictures below.

January 26.  Abby got pigtails.  It only cost us a few screams and one or two tears.

January 31.  We visited the train museum in Ogden with Grandma Hansen.  Cyndy loves to have outings with the kids and we try for once a week.  The kids always have a blast with their Grandma and I enjoy the time with my mother-in-law.

January 15-21: Hollywood Connection

Below is a picture I posted to Instagram, but since it's pretty much a daily occurrence at our house I think it should be included here.  

I had to exchange one for the other. #homeeconomics #cleankitchen #messyhouse

I liked Charlotte's comment to the post: #truth.  Haha.  I think most moms have had this experience.

My other project for the week was putting together a bigger bookcase for all the kids books.  Here is the before and after.

Before

After

It's an improvement, but I could have used an even bigger book shelf.  I had no idea we had so many books.  I think, however, it's supposed to be a good thing.  Makes kids smarter.

January 17.  We had a fun outing with Grandma Hansen to the Clark Planetarium.  The kids had a great time but the star show made me sea sick.

On Monday, January 20th we went to Hollywood Connection with my mom and the rest of the Norman gang.

We had the mega blocks out this week and Kimball started assembling a bunch of small guns.  After which, he declared, "Welcome to our weapons factory.  It's like Wonka candy factory only weapons!"  Obviously we have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

January 8-14: Seven Years Have Flown By

Bryce and I were married seven years ago on January 12, 2007.  These have been the best years of my life.  I have never been happier than as Bryce's wife and the mother to Kimball, Stanford and Abigail.  I wanted to celebrate this year with a fun night out so Bryce and I dressed up and went to the symphony on Friday January 10th. 

We ended up staying at the Marriott Hotel in City Creek which is right across the street from Abravanel Hall.  It was such a nice evening.  We were able to hear a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with Israeli pianist Inon Barnantan.  It was one of the most amazing live performances that I have been to.  Mr. Barnantan was absolutely riveting to watch perform.  Both Bryce and I were on a bit of a high after the performance.  We ordered chocolate cake and ice cream to our room and then slept soundly.  The whole evening would not have been possible without Grandma and Grandpa Hansen who graciously took the kids so we could enjoy ourselves.  

The view from our room.

Obviously our anniversary celebration was the most exciting thing we did all week, but since I can't stop taking pictures of our kids, here are some random ones from the week.

Abby with a new hairdo.

Stan and his tower.

This is a snowman Stan built with Grandma Hansen.

January 1-7: The First Week of the New Year!

It seems fitting that if I am going to start this project late that I play a little catch up.

We celebrated the new year Ukrainian style at the home of some neighbors of Bryce's parent's, Liz and Alex Kopaigora.  Alex is from Ukraine and Liz is sisters with the wife of one of Bryce's cousins.  It was super fun to try duck and Ukrainian dumplings.  We made some new friends and had a nice time even if we called it a night long before the the actual new year.

Two of my monkeys on New Year's Day.

The second of January is Abby's birthday.  It's so hard to believe that she is ONE!  We celebrated by taking her to have a photo shoot at Camera Shy in Lehi.  They turned out so darling.  I wish I could post them all.

We waited until Sunday to have cake and ice cream for Abby's birthday so we could do it with some family around.  My parents and Charlotte's family were able to make it to Ed and Cyndy's.  Abby was so funny.  She didn't know what to do when she saw that brightly colored cupcake in front of her.  After a small pause she finally stuck her mouth on it.  I think she enjoyed it more after I cut it into small pieces.  (And yes, I bought her cake rather than making it.  What can I say?  She's a third child.)

My parents gave Abby a box of tissues.  She thoroughly enjoyed taking them out one at a time.  What a perfect gift for a busy one year old.  Ed and Cyndy had already given Abby the cute blue jumper with the hot pink accents that she wore to her photo shoot.  All in all, it was a good birthday.  We feel so lucky to have Abby in our family.

Is it too late for a new year's resolution?

I realize that it's March 5th.  I realize that if I start today the project that I am about to tell you about, that I will essentially be doing so 64 days late.  I am not the planner.  I leave that to my husband.  I am a follow your whim sort of person.  So here goes.  No regrets.

For the past several years I have put together a photo book of my little family using Shutterfly.  I have loved doing it.  It's very satisfying to see a full year of photos all organized in chronological order.  The down side is that I don't spend a lot of time journaling the pictures.  There may come a day when I will wish I would have spent more time talking about the pictures and the memories attached to the visual reminders.  But, no regrets.  I am so happy to have the books that I have made.

Another thing you should know is that my dad has been keeping a blog as a kind of journal for the past several years.  He did a great job chronicling his and my mom's mission to the Cochabamba Bolivia Temple.  For Christmas some of my siblings and I gave my parents a book of all their blog posts from their mission.  It was a lovely book and made my dad cry (which is not that difficult).

You can find my parents blog HERE.  My dad has also managed to keep his updates going since they have been home.  I love reading the summary of each week.

My parents are off on their next adventure to the Oaxaca Mexico Temple Mission in May.  I have been thinking about them leaving.  I look forward to reading my dad's blog posts so that I can stay in touch and know what they are up to.

What if my parents could have the same insight into the lives of my kids?  (Do you see where I am going with this?)

I'll spell it out:

1.  I blog and post pictures.
2.  My parents get to read it (and so do you, if you want to).
3.  I turn it into a book at the end of the year.

Now you can see why I have a bit of anxiety about starting on March 5th.  Oh, well.  No regrets.

How To Calculate Bread For A Year

In an effort to get some food storage in order I decided to figure out how much I would need to store of the ingredients necessary to make my homemade bread for an entire year.  (You can find my homemade bread recipe HERE).

I did this based around how many loaves of bread I want to make in a week.  Right now I make about two loaves of bread a week.  I am sure that would be more if we were living completely on what we store, but you have to start somewhere.

Below you can see the spreadsheet I created.

Change the Number of Loaves Per Week to Calculate the Amount to store for a Year
	1 Loaf		Loaves Per Week
			2
Wheat Flour	6.50	cups	676.00	cups	2,704.00	ounces	169.00	pounds
Gluten	0.25	cups	26.00	cups	130.00	ounces	8.13	pounds
Yeast	0.09	cups	9.75	cups	52.00	ounces	3.25	pounds
Honey	0.41	cups	42.64	cups	511.25	ounces	31.95	pounds
Oil	0.25	cups	26.00	cups	208.00	ounces	13.00	gallons
Salt	0.04	cups	4.33	cups	41.60	ounces	2.60	pounds
Water	3.00	cups	312.00	cups	2,496.00	ounces	156.00	gallons

The first column shows the ingredients based upon one loaf of bread.  In the second column you can put in the number of loaves per week and it will calculate the amounts needed in cups, ounces and pounds/gallons.

I found this to be helpful because some of the food storage calculators I have used had estimates that were too low for the honey, oil and yeast and none of them have recommendations for gluten.

If you think that it would be helpful to play with the spreadsheet to make your own calculations you can access it HERE.  You could even modify it to fit your own recipe by changing the amounts in the first column.

I would love to know what you think, even if you think I'm a bit nutty for putting this together.

Bountiful Basket Freezer Meals

A few weeks ago it occurred to me that a great way to use all the vegetables in my Bountiful Basket would be to create freezer meals.  I often don't get a chance to use all the veggies when they are at their freshest.  Creating meals and freezing them seems like a win win.  Fresh vegetables and meals that are ready to go. 

Not all the veggies in a bountiful basket will freeze well.  So here are the ones I am planning on using:

Spinach

3 Zucchini

Cabbage

I think I will create a freezer meal for each of them.

Spinach artichoke dip chicken

Pork chops with zucchini casserole and stuffing

Cabbage burgers

Spinach artichoke dip chicken

For this one I think I will just wilt the spinach in some garlic and butter.  I will add that to a spinach artichoke dip recipe like this one.  Before cooking it I plan on freezing the mix.  When I am ready to cook I will probably place several chicken breasts in the crock pot, cover them in the dip and cook until the chicken is done.  

Pork Chops with zucchini casserole and stuffing

This will be another crock pot meal.  I found this recipe that looks easy and yummy.  I think it will be easy to mix the soup, sour cream and the veggies together and freeze them.  When I am ready to cook I can mix the stuffing and the butter together.  Then layer half the stuffing, pork chops, veggies and soup, and last the other half of the stuffing.  Cook until the pork chops are done.

Cabbage Burgers

This one is a favorite.  I found this recipe some time ago and have made them two or three times since.  I like to use my pizza dough recipe, but am sure the frozen bread dough would be good too.  They freeze beautifully and make great lunches on the go.

There you have it.  Three freezer meals from the Bountiful Basket veggies this week.  

Halloween Candy Fail

My very small children collected their weight in candy last Thursday.  Determined to get some it out of the house I decided to make cookies with chopped up candy in place of the chocolate chips and then give them away to neighbors.

First, I selected the candy I was most likely to eat myself: milky ways, crunch bars and m&ms.  Then I mixed up my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and threw the candy in at the end.  I have made this recipe more times than I can count.  I barely need to look at the recipe to know the amounts of the ingredients.  You would think that this would be fool poof.

However, the cookies melted quickly and came out thin.

I don't know if the candy changed things or I just messed up.  Bryce claims I needed more flour.  Those pictured look ok, but the more I made the worse they got.  Now I am stuck with ugly, flat sugary things with too many calories.  I can't give them away; they are just too embarrassing. 

I finally gave up and froze the rest of the dough in balls.  I can now make more ugly, flat cookies with too many calories on another day.  Oh, goodie.

You Can Be A Mom And One Other Thing

I wrote this some months ago.  Today I was finally able to hit the "publish" button.


I have been trying to write this post for a while.  But it's hard to tell a story when you are still in the middle of it.  The short version is that it appears that my life is not turning out the way I planned, the way I dreamed.  I once wrote a post that I never published about how I had found the one thing that I had always wanted to do: to be a mom.  I never published it because it's easier to talk about what we ate for dinner, or what we store in our pantry.  Mothering is a sacred.  Talking about the holy makes me cry.

I love being a mom.  And I love being a full-time stay-at-home mom.  But that is changing.  Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am returning to the work force.

The hardest part has been to think of myself as something other than a mom.  To think of myself as a lawyer again.  I no longer wear stylish suits.  I now wear frumpy jeans and comfortable sweaters.  I no longer eat out at fancy restaurants for important business meetings.  I try to find tasty crock pot recipes so I can make a quick and healthy meal.  I no longer think critically about anything more than trying to help my boys grow up to be happy and independent.  I no longer represent interests before a judge or jury.  I am the judge and jury and if you don't do what I say, you will get time out!

My own mom tells a story about when my sister and I were little.  We were talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up.  I think I said I wanted to be a mom and a ballerina.  My sister, who is much more ambitious than I, said she wanted to be a mom, an astronaut and a scientist.  I told her that she could only be a mom and one other thing.

My mom loved this little bit of wisdom I spit out without thinking.  You can only be a mom and one other thing.  Haha.  How true.

Being a mom takes a lot of work.  If you can focus all your energies on that one calling then you are blessed.  If you have to do something in addition to being a mom then you might want to take the advice of my wiser, younger self and stick to only one other thing.  That's what I plan on doing.  I am going to work on being a mom and something else.

Slow Cooker Coconut Chicken Curry: Review

Would it surprise you to know that I didn't take a picture?  Oh, well.  Life is busy and I am mostly happy that I managed to make dinner and blog about it.  How about another moving picture instead?

 

What I put in my crock pot:

1-2 lbs chicken, cubed (I would lean towards more meat, just sayin')
1 whole onion, diced
1 t. garlic, diced
1/4 c. dehydrated bell pepper (use 1 whole green pepper diced)
1 6 oz. can of tomato paste
1 15 oz. can coconut milk
1 1/2 t. salt
1 T. curry powder
1 T. garam masala (I made my own with this recipe)

I cooked it on high for about 5 hours.  It smelled wonderful.  I served it over white calrose rice.

What I thought:

This one has by far been one of the best slow cooker recipes I have made.  I loved it.  The flavors were wonderful and my 5 year old had seconds.

In addition, this one would work really well as a freezer meal.  I will not hesitate to make this one again.  And again.