Variety, A Necessary Ingrediant

You see this beautiful jello?

(Here's how you make this).

This jello represents an astounding victory for me.  I don't think I have ever mentioned it in here, but I have never really developed my skills in the kitchen.

My mom did try to teach me how to cook, but I had zero interest in learning how to.  Instead of seeing it as something I could enhance my life with, I saw it as another way to keep me tied to the kitchen instead of outside playing with the boys.  Watching them play out the kitchen window while I washed dishes was bad enough. I might add that doing dishes was the only chore besides sometimes dusting and vacuuming that was expected of me.  My mom even did my laundry for me until I moved out at 21 (my own kids started helping with laundry as little tots).   In short, I had moments of indignant spoiled brattery, and some of the effects and residual thinking from those days are still with me.

My stand on the issue has been this: 

1.  Food does not equal love, and just because I don't cook fabulous meals doesn't mean I don't care about you.

2.  Studies have shown that a lack of variety in diet (not including fruits and veges) is not necessarily a bad thing, and people are better able to maintain weight when not always presented with new foods.

3.  I am a creative person, but not when it comes to cooking, so deal with it.

So, for years, I have made my standard fare: spaghetti, tacos, beef stew, shrimp parmesan linguine, and a few other meals thrown in there is add a little variety. My list doesn't sound SO bad, except for it never has really changed.  Same ol' thing, day after day.

My family has recently began to protest.  Some of their points were:

1.  The way to a man's heart really is through his stomach (or it is a close second... haha). Please care more.

2.  Food is one of the best pleasures of life, and you are the preparer of most the food we eat.  Please care more.

3.  Variety is an actual human need (not exactly the words used, but it's what I heard).  Please care more.

 In response, I have kicked it up a notch in the dinner arena.  I may not enjoy all the steps it takes to get a meal on the table (Like making out new grocery lists with ingredients I actually have to search for in the store instead of all of my old standbys, paying for stuff that will basically soon be a waste product, finding room for all of that stuff in my cupboards, actually trying to cook something on a hope and a dream that it will taste right, and then cleaning the whole thing up), but I have determined that I need to care more.  Maybe food doesn't equal love, but doing all the work to make a nice meal does show that you care a great deal for the recipient to the meal.  And I do care a very great deal for my family.

SO, Pinterest has become my best recipe friends, and I am happy to report that we have not had spaghetti even ONCE in the last two weeks. 

I even made meatloaf for the first time ever!!  It was met with gagging and crying from one of my children (guess which one), but it got a couple of thumbs up too.  I still don't think I will be making it again any time soon.  It was just not worth the drama.

I made a Ranch Chicken dish that taught me that even if the directions hint that it's okay to use frozen chicken while baking, it will guarantee runny sauce and about an hour longer to cook.

I made chicken enchiladas that, while being declared as a new favorite my one of my children (Guess which one.  Hint:  it's the same one who gagged at meatloaf), also had about four pounds of cheese and other delicious fatty stuff.  It lasted for two nights, which was awesome.  The increased risk of heart attack for all of us, however, has made me aware I need to rethink this recipe.

I definitely gained weight during the first month of trying new foods.

The kids have begun to make other culinary requests of me.  Both have requested treats for their classrooms this year.  At first I was not fazed.  Kloe just wanted brownies, so no big deal, right?  I carefully made two sheets of brownies, and they turned out beautiful.  When I went to cut them into kid size pieces the next morning, I ran into a snag.  They were so hard my knife couldn't even make a dent.  I had to grind and saw before I could break any bits off.  Kloe, being the thrifty chocolate lover that she is, still kept the giant hard-as-rock pieces to gnaw on later.  Unfortunately, she put them in giant plastic baggies, the kind that are easy for a 'dog left on her own' to grab and snack on.  Those brownies may have been too hard for my knife, but they were no match for Jessy's insatiable hunger for all things forbidden and chocolate.

That same week, I attempted round two of brownies for Kloe's class.  Still traumatized by the other brownie incident, I over compensated with extra eggs and oil (not that much though).  These brownies also looked fabulous.  The next morning, however, the middle of one of the pans was nothing but goo.  A spoon was the only thing worth using for that section.  I was almost in tears (over brownies!) when Kloe came out of her room and said she wanted to use these gooey brownies anyways.  SO, I cut around the goo, put the half baked brownies in a container, and sent her on her way.  She later reported that they got all thumbs up.  What I learned from this is that 5th graders do not care so much about quality, as long as they are permitted to ingest sugar during school hours.

Derrin was the kid who requested jello.  Now, you may be thinking why in the world was I intimidated by the jello request.  Mostly, it was from residual scarring left from the brownies incident.  SO, I turned to my friend Pinterest, and found the most  complicated jello recipe I could find (which still wasn't that complicated because, hello, it's jello).  I very carefully followed the instructions (I have finally begun to internalize how important that step really is when dealing with food projects), and voilà!  A masterpiece!  Of jello!!

Who ever knew life would ever get this exciting? *And I am rolling my eyes, but really, I am pleased with this turn-about*.  But, we all eventually have areas in life we need to grow in.  Apparently, this was the area that my family voted for me, and that's okay.  Now, off to find new recipes.

14 Years Together

"We were together.  I forget the rest".  Walt Whitman

This last weekend Derrick and I went out of town for our anniversary, as we try to do every year.  The last four years we have went to Whitefish for our anniversary, so this year we decided to shake it up and go to Spokane instead.

The one commonality of our anniversaries throughout the years have been the monochromatic way the December sky decides to present itself.  As we headed out of town on Friday, it looked as though we were heading into the usual grey but happy weekend, but somewhere around the middle of Saturday, the clouds opened up and gave us blue skies.  They stuck around for the rest of our time out of town, and even now it is blue skies and sunny.

This was one of my personal favorite anniversary trips.  Our motel was really close to downtown Spokane, so we pretty much walked to most of the places we wanted to go throughout the weekend.  There was the usual shopping that goes along with a trip to Spokane, but we spent a lot of time walking, hanging out in our room (which was very nice), and going to some of the fun restaurants and pubs in downtown Spokane.

I love anniversary weekends.  We always make the effort to have that weekend to ourselves, and without fail we have the best discussions together of our year.

We talked about getting older, and our fears we have attached to it.  My fear (as I'm sure it is for a lot of people), is that of being devalued as a person by society.  Derrick's is mostly just the fear of being sickly or not being able to do what he once did.  Other than that, he's looking forward to being a cranky old man with no pressure from society to follow rules.  He's preparing for a reign of obnoxiousness :)  Getting old wouldn't be so bad as long as I could do it with him, because I know he will always see me as I really am.  Hopefully, though, we will never have to get old.

Of course (!) we talked about the kids.  Like most parents, we talk about them a lot.  You know how when you love someone, all conversations have a way of leading to that person?  That principle must apply to parents with their children.  Our hopes and dreams for them equal and surpass the hopes and dreams for ourselves.  The sum of our kid conversations are mostly how to keep them safe and sound but also give the tools and freedom to create happiness and dreams for themselves.  As they get older, we are seeing what a tricky road this may be.  We will just have to try our best, like our parents did for us.

We talked about our longstanding dream too, and decided it's time to make our trip to Europe a reality.  We saved for a trip we are going to take later this winter, and realized that if we are careful, saving for travel doesn't have to be crazy hard (as long as nothing too extreme happens in the meantime).  It might not be an immediate trip, but just knowing we are in the process of making it happen is a happy thought.

Fourteen years is a long time to be married.  We've had plenty of growing pains, and lots of wonderful times too.  We've been through a scary pregnancy and birth where Derrick almost lost both Derrin and me.  We've parented babies, toddlers, little kids, big kids and now teenagers together, with all of the struggles and joys that entails.  We've been through cancer in our family and the loss of a parent together.  We've battled depression and health issues together.  We've had the opportunity to travel to far away places we'd never been before together.  We've build a house and home together.  We've decorated the inside of our marriage with love.

Winter Has Arrived

It turned into winter last night, as predicted.  It is supposed to get below zero this week.  We'll see.  I haven't been too impressed with any weather predictions this year.

It is still early in the season, but so far I am enjoying the colder weather much more than usual.  I think a very big reason is that Derrick installed the pellet stove late last winter, so even though it is cold outside, I am very warm inside our house.  For the first time in the seven years we have been in this house, I am not huddled up in a blanket, wearing a sweater, and drinking hot tea just to keep myself from being tense with cold.  :)

On a different note, I am missing the camera on my Galaxy 3.  The phone itself started giving me grief, so Derrick let me switch over to his old Motorola.  The phone itself works great (I can actually enter my number code in to check my voice mail!  Whew!), but the camera doesn't work much better than the plain jane dumb phone I had before the Galaxy.  Oh well (and I know I sound like a complete spoiled whiner here).  You can still get the idea from these pics.  Snow has been officially documented.

A Long Weekend

It's a lazy Sunday morning here.  Kloe and Derrick are playing Mario Brothers (both yelling intermittently at the screen and each other), and I am laying here in my new bathrobe (Derrick says it looks like baby seal skin... excellent) rereading my old blogs and realizing it is time to get back on the horse of writing in here.  Derrin is at a sleepover in Dixon with his friend Lewie's house (Derrick insists on pulling my socks off as I write... apparently interrupting me while I write helps his Mario game...).

It was Thanksgiving this Thursday, so we had a four day weekend from work and five day weekend from school.  We managed to spend a lot of time with various friends, but still had some down time together at home.

Our Long Weekend Included

• The kids spent Wednesday geocaching with the Taylors.  All reports from them indicate it was an awesome day.  Derrin especially loves geocaching, which doesn't surprise me.  I had to work that day, but that night I went to Lyndsay's house for an all-girl 'spa night'.  I had imagined that our 'spa night' would include drinking some wine in her hot tub and talking until the wee hours of the night, which sounded awesome to me.  Instead, Lyndsay created an amazing spa atmosphere in her house with soft music, candles, snacks, and wine, and then had us all get into our robes while she sat out tubs of hot water with bathsalts for us to soak our feet in.  She did this for all eight of us, while bringing sugar scrubs and glasses of wine and hot towels to wrap our legs in. After we were all soft and scrubbed, we sat around her table and painted finger and toe nails while having some serious girl talk.  It was a really great night.  Lyndsay is a generous and amazing person... I learned a serious lesson on giving that night.  

• Thursday morning I woke up early, and met Shannon at body pump.  Usually the class is insanely full on holiday mornings, but it wasn't as crazy full this time.  Later that day, the three Sturgill kids came over to hang out (they were visiting from Washington this weekend), and they ended up playing outside and in their rooms most of that day.  Amanda came over to visit a bit before taking Jalen and Lilly and Audrey stayed to spend the night with Kloe.  

• Friday.... aw, Black Friday.  Normally, I shun all shopping on Black Friday.  As an opportunity to hang out with the girls (as in Shannon and Lyndsay and her friend Cassandra), I actually ventured out for this Black Friday.  We didn't meet until ten, so most of the crazy door busters were over, and therefore most of the crazy crowds were gone.  We hit Murdock's (bought a skiing hat), Goodwill (Weird, right?  But everything was 50% off, and I bought a bunch of summer dresses and wine glasses and still came in under $30), then we hit Huhot's for lunch, and we had just ventured into the mall when I decided to call to find out what time we needed to show up for our dinner plans at Steve and Sabrina's.  Turned out that our early dinner had changed into late lunch, and somehow we'd fallen through the cracks of dinner time awareness.  While I had assumed I would have until around 4 or 5 to get there, it turned out that we were supposed to be there at 1 and everyone else was already there.  After a mild heart attack and some deep breathing exercises, I called Derrick to tell him Kloe's sleepover needed to end early and Audrey needed a ride back to her folks, and then I gathered my girls from the four corners of the mall and gave them all a ride back to Murdock's where we'd left their cars.  

• The dinner/game night resulted in a lot of fun, regardless of our tardiness.  It was full of lots of my favorite people (Diefenbachs, Leeflangs, McArthurs), good food and drinks, and happy atmosphere.  We played poker (I lost the first game, but then won a later game- important to note that detail...), and also Liar's Dice.  The little girls (the McArthur girls, Alana, and Kloe) all spent the night with Darby, and by Kloe's account no one went to sleep until around 4 in the morning. Party Animals.

• On Saturday, Derrin went over to Lewie's house after service, and we picked up a very tired Miss Kloe.  Derrick wasn't feeling well, so we tucked ourselves in for the rest of the day/night, and did very little.  It felt great.

•  I started writing this Sunday morning (it is now Monday afternoon).  Derrick pestered me into getting off of the couch mid-blog, and going on a walk with him, Kloe and Jessy.  It is getting windy and damp out there, but we had a nice time.  Kloe started feeling icky later that afternoon, so I stayed home from meeting with her.

• And now it is Monday.  The long weekend is over.  This was one of those fairly busy/crazy weekends where even though we had a lot of fun, the normal quiet routine of regular life wasn't all together an unacceptable reality.

And that's about it for the weekend rundown.  This week is supposed to get super cold.  Sounds like real winter is just around the corner.  *sigh*  I guess it was bound to get here eventually.