Happy Birthday Dad!

Love you Dad!  Hope you had a great day!

Homemade Wheat Bread

I'd just like to say that after 10 + years, I think I have finally perfected my homemade wheat bread.  I have found that the ingredients and the equipment are equally important in making a perfect loaf of wholewheat bread.  Here are the secrets that I think make all the difference:

1.  Freshly ground wheat flour (just bite the bullet and get a wheat grinder)
2.  I use 1/3 c vital wheat gluten and 2 tbsp. of Dough Enhancer
3.  Sometimes I also add some flax meal which makes it even softer
4. Maybe it's not necessary, but my wheat bread has been vastly improved since I got a Bosch for    Christmas one year.  I let the Bosch knead it for 8 minutes before I put it into the bread pans to rise.
5.  And the final touch was the right pans to cook it in.  I had been using pans that were too big, and as a result the bread wasn't baking well.  Thanks for those aluminum bread pans, Mom, they are PERFECT!!!

Daphne

This girl of mine makes some very funny faces.

All she wants for Easter is her two front teeth.  I love the way she talkth with her mithing teeth.  :) I'm not in a rush for them to grow in, although she does say that it makes eating apples more difficult.

Spring Break Stuff

As I mentioned earlier, we didn't go anywhere for Spring Break this year--just kind of hung out at home, which was really nice, I thought.  Some days we went and did stuff, some days, we just stayed home.  Here's some of our doings that week:

playing with friends--They all got friends to play with, but one of Daphne's friends has a very fun mom who planned a craft for them to do.  So that's why she has pictures. (Thanks Amber!  What a cute idea!)

St. Patrick's Day Party--just read the post about it

Zoo--this time the most entertaining exhibit was the polar bear who kept swimming right up to the glass.  I've never seen him do that before, and the kids LOVED IT!

Haircuts-- for everybody except me since nobody in our family cuts my hair.   Daphne keeps reminding me that I need a haircut, but I just never have time to go get it cut!  Someday soon, I will get a hair cut . . .

Baking-- bread, cookies, cupcakes, lots of treats.  The kids like to help (i.e. eat the dough and lick the bowls) whenever we're making treats.

Family Home Evening--not unusual to have family home evening, but since they had recently filled the "warm fuzzy jar" by doing good deeds and obeying the first time, they got an outing for Family Night. We went and saw "The Princess & the Frog" at the dollar theater (on Mondays groups of 3 or more get in for 75 cents each!) And then we went to IHOP for dinner.  My kids LOVE breakfast foods--there wasn't a scrap of food left on anybody's plate!  Didn't think to bring the camera, but here's a picture of our warm fuzzy jar.  :)

Playing outside on the nice days, movies, chores, reading, And that's basically it.  Pretty ordinary, but fun to have everyone home for a week.

St. Patrick's Day Festivities

This year, St. Patrick's Day fell during Spring Break, and since we didn't go out of town that week, the kids and I decided we should do something fun on St. Patrick's Day.  So we sat down and planned out a St. Patrick's Day party with crafts and games and green food.  It was a little crazy, but lots of fun.  :)

Here is Dallin showing his leprechaun puppet.  He made it ahead of time so there was a sample for the other kids to copy.

Daphne displaying her rainbow craft.

Our crafting supplies

Lots of kids working on their Leprechauns

The big kids were big helpers.  Thanks girls!  You guys were good sports.

Here are pictures from one of the games we played.  Technically it's not a St. Patrick's Day game, but it's an Irish tradition that I read about and thought it sounded funny.  In Ireland, there is a race on a certain day of the year (I think it's the day before Lent starts) where all the housewives line up in the street with their aprons on and a pancake in their frying pan.  Then they run and toss their pancakes while they are running.  Whoever makes it to the end without having dropped their pancake wins.  

Apparently, it's a centuries old tradition based on a funny story about a woman who was late to mass and when she heard the church bells ring, she ran all the way to the church still in her apron and flipping her pancake as she ran.  

Since we live in New Mexico, (and also I didn't want to make pancakes) we used tortillas.  And since I didn't have a frying pan for everyone (or room for everyone to race at once,) we went in age groups.

Here are the 7-8 year olds

5-6 year olds (Daphne passing behind the kid standing in the middle of the race course just begging to get clocked with a frying pan.)

Hayden kept lining up with every age group to run his race, so he had his own special run.

Here are the 3-4 year olds

We also did the 9-13 year olds but I figured you get the picture.  :)  

Anyway, fun times.

We also had a wide variety of green foods--everyone brought something to share, so that was fun, and actually quite healthy--lots of fruits and veggies.  I made some shamrock cupcakes that didn't really turn out how I envisioned, but happily, the kids didn't care--the cupcakes were all eaten by the end of the day even though they didn't look like shamrocks.  I think the kids' favorite part might have been the green kool-aid.  I got a lot of comments about the "green drink."

I didn't do anything creative with green food for dinner, (in fact, we ended up getting rotisserie chicken from Boston Market)  but we had green cups and plates and napkins, listened to my Irish Folk Music that I bought just for that day, and then watched "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" afterwards.  (I think that may have been Sean Connery's first film--he looks so young in it!) All in all, a very fun, and very green day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Reminder to self

This morning, Arthur found me crying before I'd even gotten out of bed.  (well technically, I had gotten out to get Hayden dressed, but then I got back in to read my scriptures.)  At any rate, I was in bed when he found me and I could tell he was thinking, "Oh, this is NOT a good way to start the day."

I've been crying a lot this pregnancy--just about anything can set me off.  I was a mess during the Olympics, with all the tear jerker commercials and special stories about various athletes who overcame all odds . . .

Anyway, this morning I was crying because my children surprised me.  I heard them downstairs clanking around dishes and stuff, and I was impressed that they were doing their chores without being reminded.

Then Daphne came upstairs to tell me that they had a surprise for me.  I could tell she was under instructions not to tell me what the surprise was, but she couldn't help herself.  She said they brought down their laundry baskets, took out the laundry in the dryer and folded it, and moved the clothes in the washer to the dryer and started it!  They also cleared out the dishwasher, and put all the dishes away instead of putting them on the counter like they usually do.

She said, "We're doing all of the things in the song!"

"What song?"  I asked her.  So she went to the boys' room and turned it up really loud so I could hear it in my room.

It's from the album "A Woman's Heart" and it's called "Who You Are."  The part she was talking about was the verse that starts, "I know you wonder if you'll ever have a day, when the kids stay calm, the laundry's done, and the dishes are put away, and sometimes it seems like the day is spent and gone, and the question running through your mind is 'What have I gotten done?'  . . ."

Evidently, that song was on a CD that Dallin & Sean have in their room to fall asleep to.  It was playing that song when he woke up and he was inspired!  So he rallied the kids together, even had a prayer with them that they could really help their mom today and "stay calm" like it says in the song.  Then they proceeded to put the dishes away and get the laundry moving for me.  He encouraged Daphne and Sean to get dressed without me asking them.   (Those two take lots of reminders . . .)

So this morning my tears were tears of gratitude for my children; for their thoughtfulness and goodness.  It made me think that I really need to remember their goodness more often, because we certainly have plenty of times when it's easy to forget!  I've recorded this so the next time I need a reminder, I can come read about their "surprise" and remember.