" Now all I need is to color coordinate my outfit with my airplane. "
On Saturday as Mark was preparing to go out and play in the rain, he grabbed his spider man umbrella and attempted to put it up. You can see the result. His comment:
"Mommy, my umbrella went all Mary Poppins on me."
On Saturday we had a down pouring of rain. Lauren and Mark decided after having a bath in the morning that they needed a shower in the afternoon. 
Pretty soon the umbrellas disappeared and their shower really began. 
Although everything is still pretty green, they managed to find a few fall leaves, that were wet of course, and put them in Ziploc baggies. Now the question is, how long does it take wet leaves in a zip lock bag to ferment?
Lauren, not to be outdone by her younger brother, had to have cookie making time with mommy too. Her cookie of choice, the classic oatmeal chocolate chip.
Yes she licks the beater too.
A new tradition, a scoopful of cookie dough on a paper plate and a spoon. Again making cookies is ALL about the dough, not the cookies.
A small amount of the dough managed to find its way to the oven and turn into yummy cookies.Last Friday when I picked Mark up from pre-school the first thing he wanted to show me were two peanuts Miss Mangum had given him. He kept saying "Mommy I got peanuts!" He immediately wanted to go home, crack open his peanuts and eat them. (I can't for the life of me figure out why Miss Mangum did not want the mess of freshly cracked peanuts at school, with 12 three and four years olds????)
The letter for the week was "E" so Mark proceeded to inform me that elephants eat peanuts and which is why Miss Mangum gave them peanuts.
Mark decided to honor the elephants by eating his freshly cracked peanuts like an elephant.
On Friday I made cookies for the week-end and all the family activities related to Matt's mission farewell. Mark willingly agreed to help me, imagine that???? He wanted to be in charge of putting everything in the mixer and turning the mixer on. The problem was Mark only knows one speed, full force, and thought the mixer should be whipping the cookie dough as opposed to mixing the cookie dough.
He was a little miffed the firmly packed brown sugar did not easily come out of the measuring cup.
Here he is "stealing" a lick. I honestly have no idea where he gets that from???
This would be an "authorized" lick.
He demanded to roll the cookie dough balls in the sugar, and actually did a really good job.
The finished cookie. For those of you interested in the recipe here it is:
Here is her scraped up elbow.
Never fear there were scrapes and road rash on the other arm too.
With Matt's mission farewell this weekend there is a whole lot of craziness going on, and lots of family and cousins. On Saturday Linda, Lindsey, Leah, Krista, Allie, Lauren, Morgan, Addy, and Savannah came to my house to practice a song to sing in Church on Sunday. Mark was already at our house, having taken a break from the craziness at Grandma's. When all the girls loaded up to leave, he decided he wanted to be the lone male in the Suburban, and return with them.
The driveway at Linda's new house is rather steep, no lets make that really steep, as in winter scares me. Anyway the girl cousins started this tradition of raising their arms up as Grandma drives down the driveway, just like they were on a roller coaster. Mark, unfamiliar with this tradition said to the girls in a sarcastic deep voice:
"Very funny girls. Very funny."
Yes Mark girls are funny, get used to it.
Lauren decided to play Polly Pockets and set them up on the coffee table in the family room, so she could multi-task and watch TV while engrossed in the world of Polly. It did not take long for Katie to find the Polly Pockets. She of course immediately determined this was a FUN girl toy that involved dolls, clothing and furniture.
Katie's idea of playing Polly Pockets is to pull objects out of containers and throw found objects on the floor creating the biggest mess possible. I have to admit she is really good at her job. Apparently she read the handbook on how to be a good baby/toddler.
It did not end until she removed every item from the Polly Pocket container. Unfortunately Lauren was not too amused at having to clean up the mess....
We have a secret suppressed desire in our house, we all want to be the next singing sensation. Quit laughing, I realize that some of us, me in particular, have no musical ability what so ever, but that does not stop me from dreaming of being on stage with lights, full musical accompaniment, and adoring fans. Ok, I guess I will settle for my well lit family room, music coming from the television speakers, and children who at the moment think mommy is the "bomb."
Well to fulfil our fantasy, Rick purchased this American Idol playstation game. It has been a huge hit. It came into our house on Saturday, and despite our best efforts Lauren basically determined possession is nine tenths of the law and refused to hand over the microphone all week-end long. Her favorite song: "My Cherie amour" which is now my least favorite song. The game grades you on pitch, tune, singing the words, etc and you get a critique from Randy, Paula and Simon. You can compete against other people. I have to admit for not being a video game fan this game is REALLY fun.
We invited Courtney, Brian and Linda over to join in our fun, and trust me it was FUN.
You don't even have to know the words to the song, they flash across the television screen, and you read them. You can also see your pitch meter so you know how well, or um, bad you are doing.
On Monday Rick went to work, Lauren and Mark were at school, which meant for the first time I had the game AND the house all to myself. YES!!!! I spent about two hours lost in the fantasy that I was an actual singer, and the only person to truly know that I am not was Katie, and she is not talking.
However while lost in my fantasy, Katie left to her own devices, decided to empty the box of wipes all over the kitchen floor.
Ok, back to reality and chasing my 16 month old baby around the house cleaning up the wake of her damage......
I will say one positive thing about the cold I have experienced, the congestion can be a blessing. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, I was checking my email before I went to bed. All of the sudden I heard Mark crying. I found him at the top of the stairs. I was trying to determine if he had a bad dream or what exactly was going on. In a state of half consciousness Mark told me that he threw up in his bed. I went to investigate and sure enough he was correct, a lovely site awaited me. As we entered his room another wave of nausea hit him, and I was able to grab his bath towel he had left on the floor from early in the day, thus preventing me from having to get out the carpet shampooer. A bath was in order along with a full stripping of his bed. Good news, he has two beds in his room, so at least I did not have to make up a bed for him. After getting him cleaned up, teeth brushed, and back in bed he kept saying “Thank you mommy,” and I could feel that he was truly grateful that I was there to help and comfort him. As I was tucking him back in he started to get tears in his eyes when he realized I was leaving. So I lied down on the bed next to him for about 10 minutes and rubbed his back and head until I was convinced that he had calmed down enough to go to sleep.
So why is congestion good? Well I did smell a thing, which is always good when dealing with any substance deposited by Mark.
In addition to making me the Beef & Stout Pie, Rick also made apple pie for desert. Now as much as I would like to claim the pie was for me, it was actually for Mark. Mark had been bugging him for pie for about two weeks now. Apparently Mark looked at the calendar and determined it was September which means fall and apple pie.
Again you can see it looked great and tasted even better! 
Calorie wise, not a good weekend, but well worth the great food.
WARNING: If you husband likes to cook, intercept all catalogues that come in the mail entitled “Williams Sonoma.” Failure to do so can be costly.
About 10 days ago on a Friday to be precise the new fall Williams Sonoma catalogue arrived in the mail. I should have known better than to leave it sitting on the kitchen counter, where it was quickly devoured up by Rick. After he looked at it I skimmed through it. For those of you not familiar with the Williams Sonoma catalogue it not only contains good food photography, which makes their cookware look incredible they also include recipes. Well I happened to notice a recipe for a beef pot pie that looked particularly enticing, because the crust had blue cheese rolled into it, and I am a huge fan of blue cheese. I commented to Rick on the recipe and how good I thought it looked. That was all the permission he needed to decide we needed to make the pot pie. 
Now in order to properly make the pot pie, one must have the proper equipment, otherwise it just isn’t going to turn out right. What were we lacking? A small cast iron pot. One $179 cast iron pot later, we now had the proper equipment. Ingredients, stew meat, $4.17, blue cheese, $8.26 (granted it was two pounds and I only needed a small amount, but the best quality is at Costco, which is not known to sell in small quantities.) gold potatoes, $1.96, mushrooms $2.49, pearl onions $2.79, organic carrots, (Rick insisted I buy carrots with the tops on, and the only ones to be found were organic) $1.59 and Irish stout???? Now technically Irish stout is a dark beer, and in cruising the beer isle at my local supermarket, no dark beer was to be found. Apparently the alcohol content of dark beer is too high to be sold in the supermarket in Utah and it can only be purchased at the liquor store. Having Katie with me I elected not to go to the liquor store and instead opted to return to Williams Sonoma for a substitute suggestion. Well Williams Sonoma makes just the product for those who want to avoid the liquor store it is called Yankee Roast Base and set me back $16. (Liquor store probably would have been cheaper, but that is questionable, I do live in Utah and they tax the hell out of alcohol here.)
The last six weeks at work have been pretty brutal. Although the economy in Utah is still fairly strong we have had a back log of cases that needed to be transcribed. Well they all got transcribed and during the last six weeks we have been working through the pile. I have had a very heavy case load with this last week being the largest, ickiest, yuckiest Board I think I have ever had. I could hardly wait for Tuesday to come and get the dang thing over with, because I couldn't stand to look at it any more. Well Tuesday has come and gone, and I am now paying the price for my late nights and early mornings. I am coming down with a nasty cold. So I might be a little light on posting for the next few days because I need some R&R.
