We gather together

I find that the older I get, the more I enjoy Thanksgiving--a quiet holiday with family, lots of good food, time off of school: what's not to like? This year, even the extensive preparation sometimes associated with Thanksgiving was lessened because my mom asked everyone to pitch in by bringing something.

I also appreciate the extra imperative to remember to be grateful: and there's nothing like gratitude for inducing a sense of humility and wonder at the richly blessed lives we live. I know it could so easily be different, and I'm grateful for so many things: family, friends, a home, employment, health.

We spent the bulk of the week with my parents. We ended up going north earlier than expected, since the university president closed campus in anticipation of the blizzard that wasn't. I hear it was a pretty intense storm farther north, but the most we saw of it was maybe half an inch or so. The quieter storm that moved in earlier this morning (and continues still) has brought much more snow in its wake. And so I suppose I should add that I'm grateful to my mom for chivvying us into heading home last night, so we were able to drive on clear (if crowded) roads.

And yes, my mom and I ventured out in the wee hours of Friday morning for Black Friday sales. But since we didn't bankrupt ourselves and it wasn't the highlight of the week (although I do like shopping with my mom), that's all I'm going to say about it.

I hope that you and yours all enjoyed a warm, restful, fulfilling (in more ways than one!) holiday.

Staying busy

Another busy week--only a few more days until we're off for Thanksgiving, and then one more week of classes and we're done for the semester! Can you tell we're looking forward to it?

To be perfectly honest, I can't remember very many individual details from the week. We had some gorgeous weather mid-week, so I took the kids outside and we raked leaves. (Last time, if you'll remember, we had just raked leaves when the big tree next door apparently dropped all its leaves overnight).

By the end of the week, the weather was decidedly colder. When Saturday dawned cloudy and blustery, we realized this might be our last chance to get those piles of leaves off the lawn before rain/snow came. When we started out, it was a family effort, but it didn't take Evelyn and Andrew very long to decide that putting the leaves in garbage sacks wasn't much fun if they weren't allowed to jump in them, so they abandoned us for the swing set. Some 17 or so bags later, we finally finished. (I don't remember there being nearly so many leaves last fall--we must have kept on top of them better than we did this year.)

Inspired by that burst of productivity, I decided to try re-canning the pomegranate jelly from two weeks ago, which still hadn't set. This time, I followed the directions faithfully (did you know that there are actually directions on how to reprocess jellies if they don't set up properly?). This took us a couple of hours--and I'm not sure that it worked this time either. Sigh.

I took the kids to a birthday party that afternoon--them brought them home worn out and they both (!) took naps. (This meant that Andrew got to go to the basketball game that night, much to his delight).

While they napped, I started on yet another canning project (my mother-in-law loaned me her big canning pot, so I thought I better make use of it): this time, we made pear jelly. And this time, I followed the instructions scrupulously--the pear jelly has already set beautifully. (Sidenote: I don't think I ever realized how much sugar goes into jam and jelly!)

Needless to say, when evening finally fell, we were all pretty exhausted.

Our sole picture from the week was of Evelyn--I went up to check on her one day during naptime. Apparently, she didn't go to sleep right away, but sat up playing. (There were books in her bed and she was wearing different leggings from what she wore going to bed). This is what I saw when I peeked in: a sleeping baby in the corner right behind the door (at first, I couldn't figure out why the door seemed stuck). Funny girl. I put her back to bed--but only after taking a picture, of course!

Oh, and I should probably explain one of Andrew's cryptic messages in the previous post. A new Jo-Ann's store opened in town last month (to much rejoicing, since our small town has limited crafting resources). I've been meaning to go, but didn't get around to it. This weekend, I had a coupon for 50% off and so I wanted to go check it out. What I'd failed to process in the mailer, however, was that this was their official opening weekend: which meant that half the female population in town was there.

And, I had both kids with me. I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea--having the kids with me is *never* a good idea when I just want to browse, because I spend most of my time trying to keep them with me, or chasing after them. What sealed the deal, however, was the line stretching from the front of the store all the way to the back of people waiting to make their purchases. We left the store approximately 10 minutes after entering, without (as Andrew says) buying anything.

A guest post

I asked my four (almost five) year old if he wanted to help me with the blog this week. So, here's his recap of the eventful stuff this week:

We went to Xander's party. We made pear jam-jelly. Me and my dad went to a basketball game. And we also went to a store. We didn't buy anything.

Funny conversations

Yesterday, as we were driving back home in the early evening, the kids could see the moon above the treeline.

Evelyn said, "Mommy! The moon is coming to our house."
Andrew, her ever pragmatic brother, said, "Silly, the moon can't walk."
Evelyn: "But it can drive!"


And today, while I was changing her stinky diaper, Evelyn told me (with all seriousness): "Mommy, we don't eat poop."

I sort of thought that went without saying.

The Great Pumpkin

To compensate for my tired post earlier, I should add that this week was also a week of culinary experimentation (not all of it successful, alas). I decided on Monday to roast some pumpkin seeds so my kids could enjoy the experience, so we "butchered" the big pumpkin on our steps (it was probably a good 16-18 pounds). That was probably my first mistake, because once the seeds were roasted, I was left with *lots* of pumpkin, and a husband who doesn't really like them. (Let me just say that I got probably 12 cups of puree out of the 3/4 of a pumpkin that we've used so far.)

First, we made pumpkin soup, since Dan had said that he wouldn't mind pumpkin if it were combined with cream and bacon. The verdict: it would have been better with the chipotle cream, but we didn't have enough cream on hand or the requisite chipotle. Plus, pureeing fresh roasted pumpkin is time consuming. (Note to self for next time: I found it was just as easy--and faster--to steam the pumpkin as to roast it).

Then, we tried making some pumpkin bars, a la Paula Deen. I substituted apple sauce for most of the oil, and they were still delicious. We also cooked them as cupcakes, instead of bars, and I took them to department meeting where they seemed to go over well. (I even got asked for the recipe!). This one is definitely a keeper. Dan didn't like them, but if you like pumpkin cookies or spice cake or anything of that ilk, you'll like these moist cupcakes with the rich cream cheese frosting (the texture and flavor reminded me of carrot cake).

Finally, we tried making pumpkin pasta, a la Rachael Ray. This was less successful--the flavor was bland and the texture was strange (and it made enough to feed a small army). We ended up tossing the leftovers.

To round out our culinary experiments, Dan made dinner on Thursday and cooked up some green apple risotto. I know it sounds strange, but it was actually quite tasty. It wasn't until Saturday, when we were enjoying some corn chowder (recipe courtesy of America's Test Kitchen), that we realized that the only meat we'd eaten all week was bacon, and not very much of that. But we did have some nice fall flavors. (And Dan's mom tells us that we have good leftovers--she often gets to sample when she watches the kids for me.)

Waiting for the End

I know we're supposed to try and live in the now--but there are some weeks when the end can't seem to come fast enough. Right now, as I slowly dig myself out from under a pile of papers (seriously, why do I assign so much stuff to my students? Oh, right, I want them to learn something), it's starting to feel like the end of the semester can't come soon enough. Thankfully, we have Thanksgiving in a little over a week, and then only one week of classes after there. I can do this. We can do this.

This week was Evelyn's turn for croup. She started showing symptoms on Wednesday, but wasn't bad until Thursday night. We didn't have to go to the ER, but we did call the doctor, and we (I) got up several time at night to calm her down. We spent a nice cold 10 minutes hanging out on the back porch at 3 a.m. It's amazing how quiet the world is then. She got a steroid shot the next morning, which seemed to help a lot--now she's mostly back to normal except that she starts getting whiny an hour before naptime--I think she's still recovering.

Aside from that, there's not much to report. I had book group on Wednesday for a book I hadn't quite finished--it was fun to get together with other grown-ups, but I wish I would stop getting intimidated by the state of their houses. Sure, I can manage the clean look, but my house will never quite carry off that contemporary design look that seems to be all the rage among chic young (and not so-young) Mormon moms.

And it snowed this week, replacing the warm weather of last week with a decidedly chilly atmosphere. The only good thing about the snow (aside from the moisture) is that it was actually cold enough to be of some help in keeping Evelyn's croup under control.

I think I must be tired--this post is too much about me and the tone sounds off. I'm sorry! We'll try for better next week.

Finding Balance

I'm over at Segullah again today (new time slot). Please come visit.

Adventures at Home

The theme for this week seems to be experiences: some good, some bad.

Our biggest adventure for the week was an early Friday morning (2:30 a.m.) emergency trip to the ER. (We're glad we don't have to report these very often!) We'd noticed that Andrew was a little raspy before bed--we thought he might be getting sick, but it didn't seem very serious, so we let it pass. Just after 2 we were both awakened by the tell-tale barking cough of croup (we've done this before), only this time Andrew was clearly struggling to breathe. Dan took him outside, and the cold air helped some, but not much. What made things worse was that Andrew was clearly upset and frightened because he was struggling to breathe, and his crying only intensified his struggle. So I took him to the ER. It was pretty apparent that he was struggling; as soon as we walked in the nurses got us settled and the doctors appeared only a few minutes later (it helped that the ER was quite that night). They gave him some steroids (breathing treatments), which, although he resisted ferociously, seemed to help. Within half an hour or so he was breathing more normally. Of course, since they'd given him steroids, they had to keep him under observation for a while, so it was 5:30 before we got home (by which time Evelyn and Dan were both awake). I went back to sleep (for an all-too brief hour), but Andrew never did. Let's just say that Friday is a day better left unremembered, between a tired mom and a tired, whiny, sickish boy. (Although you'd never know from his behavior quite how sick he'd been).

The funny thing about the ER visit--I'd been into the hospital earlier on Thursday, for a doctor's appointment and some blood work (no, not pregnancy--I'd been having some chest pains, which the doctor finally determined were caused by a pulled muscle, not, thankfully, anything worse). But because I'd just been there (for the first time) and submitted all of my insurance information, we didn't have to mess with paperwork when I went in later with Andrew. A small mercy, I suppose, but one I'm grateful for!

Aside from that dramatic down, the week has actually been pretty good. We had some unseasonably warm weather for the first of November, which we thoroughly enjoyed (as you can see below). We raked leaves several days this week--ironically enough, the only big tree near our property didn't dump its leaves until yesterday afternoon, after we'd already finished with our outside chores.


My camera doesn't really *do* action shots, but these pictures (even if blurry) can give you a good sense of the kids' enjoyment.


Incidentally, our car was parked outside of our carport most of the week because we finally got the cement replaced in our old, crumbling sidewalk (and under part of the carport). We're thrilled to have it--but we have to wait a few more days until the cement is completely dried before parking our car back in its usual spot.

On Saturday, I tried something I've never done before: canning. Oh, sure, I helped my mom growing up a few times, but I don't think I ever really paid attention to what she was doing (sorry mom!). We made pomegranate jelly--five batches of it! Dan's mom kindly came over and helped after I called with some clearly novice questions about what I was doing (we also borrowed her pressure canner and a juicer to juice the pomegranates--they're much easier to juice than to actually peel and de-seed.) They do look lovely, don't they? (However, I'm not sure if they're setting right, so don't be surprised if you later get gifted some pomegranate syrup. :))