Arbor Day 2013

I think this was the first time in nearly 20 years that I did anything to recognize Arbor Day. The only other time I remember was in elementary school, and I only remember that because they sent all the kids home with oak tree saplings. Well, sapling may be too strong a word: oak sticks with stringy roots. So when our friend Jacob made arrangements to get together and plant trees near the Y trail head, I figured why the heck not. It sure didn't hurt that I knew Chad would be the only one in our family who did any real work.

Alongside his friends and family, Chad dug holes, removed rocks and debris, planted trees, and hauled water buckets. Way to represent! Charlie really wanted to help. At least he really wanted to use all the cool equipment the adults were using.

But he's learning that he doesn't always get what he wants. So instead of helping the adults, Charlie got to watch and play with some toy shovels with his friends.

I'm glad Natasha thought to get these to keep the kids occupied. Of course they did a lot more filling in holes than digging, but alas no one fell off the mountain so I consider the day a huge success!

Emmett got away with spending the majority of the day sleeping.

And I spent the majority of the day holding Emmett.

All in all, we had a really good time, and hopefully those trees will do some good up on Y Mount.

Also thanks to Jacob, we had awesome matching shirts to commemorate the day. They have a picture of the Lorax and some Truffula Trees and say Unless. Chad insists that on first glance they say Useless, but we were anything but useless this Arbor Day!

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Today my little boy turned two years old! We had a nice day with just the three of us. We started things off with opening presents. Chad and I got Charlie a train set. We wrapped the expansions and set up the basic set so Charlie would know what he was getting.

It took some doing to convince him to stop playing and start unwrapping.

Once he got started, he tore through his gifts pretty quickly.

And then we all had a good time setting up the tracks, and playing with the trains. (We bought everything a month or so ago, and I've been wanting to bust it out ever since!)

Charlie spent most of the day playing with his train set. He loves Thomas & Friends and knows all the engines by name. And since his train set has a black engine, a red engine, and a green engine, they instantly became Deisel, James, and Percy. While playing, Charlie would frequently shout things like, "Bust my buffers!" He also thinks it's good fun when the engines fall off the tracks.

We ended the day with birthday cake, of course! Charlie also loves all things Mario. He will beg me to play "Mario Kart" and "Mario's videogame" (Super Mario Bros. Wii) at least once a day. So I made him a goomba birthday cake.

He was pretty excited. When he saw the cake, he wanted to "bonk the goomba!" I said no. And suggested we eat it instead. Charlie said that would be ok.

The cake is a chocolate layer cake with chocolate mousse filling and chocolate frosting. Yes, it is delicious. My thanks to my grandma for her chocolate mousse recipe. I also learned a couple things: 1. Successfully applying a mousse filling is trickier than I originally thought, and I think I will seek further advice before attempting it again. And 2. Chocolate frosting only gets so dark. I wanted the goomba's mouth and eyebrows to be nearly black, but adding more cocoa only accomplishes so much. As it turned out, the goomba's mouth and eyebrows (and all my leftover frosting) are death by chocolate rich. Which I'm ok with. But I think next time I might just buy a little tube of black frosting.

Charlie at age 2 is a ton of fun. He loves to go on walks, play at the park, watch tv shows, color with crayons, play with playdough, "play" videogames ("play" means hold a dead remote and watch), play with toys, and help me with whatever I'm doing. But most of all, Charlie loves to talk, especially on the phone. Give him a call and he will talk your ear off. Full sentences. Asking and answering questions. He'll give you a real conversation.

Something we do need to work on though is smiling for the camera. When I asked him to look at the camera and smile big, this is what I got:

Precious.

He really is a kind, sweet boy, and the last two years have been wonderful. I'm excited to share many, many more with him!

Carving with Charlie

I was thrilled when I got to my local Winco and discovered pumpkins were only 9 cents per pound! Charlie and I (mostly me I admit) picked out a huge one and brought it home. For the last couple weeks, Charlie has taken great pleasure, despite my protests, in climbing all over our big pumpkin.

But the day finally came when we got around to carving it. I think Charlie was pretty surprised when we took the big knife to the pumpkin, and I really hope he doesn't get it in his head that he can start carving into things--we'll see.

Since carving does involve large, sharp knives, the most that Charlie could really do was watch, but we gave him the big bowl of pumpkin guts to take care of. He was enthralled with stirring the slimy goo and seeds (which he kept calling coins) for a surprisingly long time. When the fun was gone, we gave him a cookie. He was happy til we were done carving.

Charlie did pick the triangle eyes and the diamond nose. And when we were finished, I asked him what we should name our jack-o-lantern. Quickly and decisively he said, "Mark!" I don't know where he got that name. I don't think he knows anyone named Mark. (PS: When asked what we should name his baby brother, Charlie said, "Lewis!" Again, Charlie doesn't know anyone named Lewis. Weird.)

Mark now sits outside our front door and receives many a "Hello" and "Goodbye" with our comings and goings.

 

My Best Pasta Salad

Salad:

1 lb. uncooked pasta, ditalini or macaroni
1 1/4 cup frozen green peas, thawed
12 oz. cherry tomatoes, halved and lightly salted
1 1/4 cup cheddar, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2.25 oz can sliced olives, drained

Dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk
3 T. dill pickle juice
1 tsp. mustard
1 1/2 T. mint
1 1/2 T. parsley
seasonings to taste (onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper)

1. Cook the pasta in 1 gallon of water with 2 T salt. Drain. Do not rinse. Cool and dry in cookie sheet. 2. After all salad ingredients are prepared, cooled, or thawed, combine and refrigerate. 3. Make dressing and whisk until smooth. Refrigerate. 4. Toss salad and dressing 15 minutes before serving.

I created this recipe after talking to my friend Natasha, who always makes delicious pasta salads, and reading a very informative article online. The article does not give a recipe for a salad (it links to two dressing recipes), but it gives guidelines for ingredient ratios (how much pasta to how much fruits/veggies/nuts/meat/cheese to how much spice to how much dressing) and suggestions on how to prepare ingredients prior to adding them to the salad. This article was exactly what I was looking for. I don’t mind following recipes, but I like the freedom of being able to throw whatever I like, or have, together and creating my own meals. If you like to do that, too, then read this article.

I’ve dabbled with making my own pasta salads before, and they were ok. Really, just ok. But I took this one to a pot luck gathering, and I got so many compliments and so few leftovers. Honestly, I feel quite proud of myself.

One step the article recommended that I did not follow the first time is to cool and dry the noodles in a cookie sheet. (I didn’t have a clean one and took the lazy route.) I just left my pasta in the colander to cool and dry. When I went to combine the salad ingredients, my noodles had cooled and dried into one big mass. It was a bit of a pain. I tried breaking it apart, but the noodles started falling apart. I left the noodle mass alone until I was ready to mix in the dressing, because the article informed me that if your noodles stick together a bit, the dressing will help them separate. So after about 5 minutes of very gentle stirring, my noodles were separated and the salad was lightly covered in dressing.

I was also very reluctant to add the mint. The article suggests using a combination of dill and mint. I knew I wanted the dill pickle juice in the dressing because Natasha had recommended it, and I figured I ought to give the article’s suggestions a decent try. So I slowly, reluctantly added a bit of mint. I smelled and tasted. I added more mint. I smelled and tasted. I added more mint. Honestly, I feel like the mint took the dressing from mediocre to fantastic. That said, when writing down this recipe, I had to guestimate on how much mint (and parsley) I actually used. So, if you try this out, proceed with caution. And check out the article I used, so you can make your best pasta salad.

Charlie's First Haircut

We finally did it: we cut Charlie’s hair! Despite his having a mullet for the past few months—eww, mullet, gross—I’ve put this task off. Why? Because I loved his beautiful baby hair, and for a long time I couldn’t think about cutting his hair without getting close to crying. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

So here Charlie is before the haircut:

Immediately before I cut Charlie’s hair, I cut Chad’s and let Charlie watch. I had hoped that watching his dad get a haircut would help Charlie see it was ok. Not so much.

I started Charlie’s haircut using scissors to remove the mullet—which is the majority of the hair I saved—and the hair at the top of his head. He did not like it. I think I may have tried to cut too much at once causing the scissors to pull his hair a bit. I’m not sure (I am not a trained beautician), but he did fine for the first snip and freaked out more with each subsequent snip.

We had a brief interlude while Chad introduced the electric clipper to Charlie. Charlie was interested but ill at ease.

Then came the tears. Oh so many tears. Charlie did not like the electric clipper. When he spoke, between sobs, he’d try to point to the clipper and say, “vacuum,” or “big noise.” But for the majority of the haircut, Charlie pressed his face into Chad’s chest while he wept and screamed—which is not a position I’d recommend for giving a kid a haircut, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I was not going to leave Charlie’s hair half cut; I’d prefer the mullet and that’s saying something.

Anywho, Charlie’s new haircut didn’t turn out awesome, but it’ll do. We’ll end with some side-by-side comparisons:

Unfortunately, you can also see that he was happy before and not so much after.

Blueberry Muffins

Blueberries, which we don’t eat very often, were on sale, so I bought some to vary our nutrient intake. I got enough to have some fresh—yum—and to use some to make blueberry muffins--yum yum! I had never made muffins with real blueberries before (the box mixes are all I had done), so I got a recipe from a fellow butter-lover, Paula Deen:

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 egg, slightly beaten

3/4 cup whole milk

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

1/2 cup granulated brown sugar or white sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and sugar. In another bowl, combine butter, egg, and milk and mix well. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and with a spatula, stir until just combined. Do not beat or over mix; it's okay if there are lumps in the batter.
3. Gently fold the blueberries into the batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the muffin tray, filling each cup about 2/3 full. Bake for 10 minutes and remove from the oven.
5. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with the granulated brown or white sugar and return the muffins to the oven to bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
6. Cool for about 10 minutes in the pan before turning the muffins out.

The only thing I did differently was use a 6-cup jumbo muffin tin (because I had it and who doesn’t love jumbo muffins), and as a result, I had to bake my muffins a bit longer. I measured my ingredients carefully and instead of producing a “batter,” I ended up with more of a cookie dough consistency. It still worked out, and my muffins tasted pretty good.

Yeah, just pretty good. Not amazing. Sorry Paula. The muffins just weren’t as sweet as I would have liked. So if anyone has a better recipe, please send it my way.

All in all, however, I consider my first batch of homemade blueberry muffins a success. Hurray me!