Christmas

We had a good Christmas. I always love going to church the Sunday before Christmas, and this year church was great. The bishop and a counselor spoke and did a great job.There was also lots of singing. I especially enjoyed singing in the choir this year. Christmas was a lot more fun with Camille, even though she didn't know what was going on. It snowed several inches Christmas Eve, and we decided to go sledding. We packed up Camille and went to Rock Canyon. We didn't stay long, but it was a blast. I would like to make it a tradition, but I don't know if we can count on having snow every Christmas Eve.

In the evening we went to Brian's aunt's house for a party. Santa came, but we didn't get a picture of Camille with him. Maybe we can get one from someone else? The activity included visiting Brian's Grandpa in a physical therapy center where the kids dressed up and did the Nativity. Camille got to be Baby Jesus. She did pretty well until about this point when Brian took the picture.

I kind of thought Camille would sleep in on Christmas morning since she was up much later than normal, but she was excited and woke up earlier than usual. It was okay though because I was excited, too. I know people complain about how Christmas isn't special because it's too commercial, but it is still my favorite holiday. I really enjoy the Christmas spirit of charity, peace, and love. Maybe that's why I start Christmas shopping in September. 

Camille opened this present pretty much all by herself. It only took 10 minutes.

After we saw what Santa brought and opened presents here, we went to Kaysville and spent the rest of the day there. It was a nice relaxing holiday.

Camille Giggling

Here's another video of Camille giggling. Just a simple rattle is all it takes sometimes. When she starts to get really tired or hungry, this is what happens...

Cookie Bake-off

Janet and Jacob came over for FHE Monday night to make cookies with us. Brian had to take some to work for the student Christmas party, I had to take three dozen to the RS meeting Tuesday night, and we needed some just to eat. We made chocolate sandwich cookies, spritz, and chewy ginger cookies. I also got stuff to make peanut blossoms, but those will have to wait...if the kisses last that long.

Spritzing

Janet masterfully handling her KitchenAid

We ended up with an odd number of cookies, so we made a triple decker.

Yum!

To lessen the effort of rolling them into balls, we made some huge cookies. Those big ones are probably like 500 calories each. Yum!

The Royal Baby

As you all probably know, Prince William and Kate are expecting. If you didn't know, this post probably isn't for you.

It's exciting news. I feel a little bad for Kate; she can't get her extreme morning sickness treated without the whole world going nuts about it, and I'm sure they didn't want to announce it yet. Despite that, it's still exciting. Why? Maybe it's exciting because it's something happy in the news rather than normal depressing stuff. Or maybe watching the royal family is a form of escapism. Maybe we're just hopeless anglophiles.

In honor of the royal baby, I'm setting up a contest. Leave a comment with what you think the royal baby will be named. You can guess one girl name and one boy name. I've included a royal family tree to help. The winner gets a piece of gum.

Thanksgiving Trip

We really enjoyed our trip to California. It was nice to get away and visit with Brian's extended family. Brian enjoyed seeing his old haunts and showing us around. I enjoyed seeing where Brian grew up. Camille did NOT enjoy sitting in her car seat all day, having her feet in the cold ocean, or sleeping in the pack'n'play.

Brian in front of Castaic Lake

My Thanksgiving turkey

Camille enjoying the Porsche tractor

Waiting for the Bellagio fountain show

Camille spent most of the car ride looking up at us from her car seat.

She usually had this look on her face.

Will someone please tell me what these dirt ramp things are?

Globe Willows No More

When we bought our house, it came with two fantastic looking globe willow trees. They had a beautiful half-globe shape which, I think, is pretty unique for a tree. The unfortunate part was that they would constantly drop branches, mostly year-round. If we had some strong wind, we’d go out and find 20-30 branches of varying sizes on the grass out front and that many also on the grass out back. Then, when they dropped their leaves in the fall, it would take forever to go through raking the leaves, multiple times because of how slowly they would fall. Add into the mix all the branches that would also fall. It takes a lot longer to bag leaves when they are almost as many small branches in the mix. So, needless to say, we didn’t enjoy maintaining the trees. They were beautiful trees and provided lots of great shade, but I guess that didn’t overcome their neediness.
The night of November 9, we had a very wet snow for a few hours. Then it turned into a regular snow for the rest of the night. About 10:30, shortly after I had fallen asleep, Sarah woke me up and said we needed to check what had just happened out front; she had heard something loud. I was in one of those incoherent modes, so Sarah went and checked and told me to come look. I went to the front window and noticed that a third of our front tree had split off, right from the trunk and fallen over into the street. I had to be to work at 7am the next morning, so I decided that I would have to wake up at 4:30 to work on cutting the tree out of the street (with my hand saw). I set my alarm and went back to bed. We woke up to probably 10-12 inches of snow on the ground. We checked the windows and found that the front yard tree had once again split off a third at the trunk, right over our driveway and partially hanging from our roof. Then we checked the backyard tree, and saw that it had basically split in half and fallen over into our yard and was resting on the fence. YIKES! I got busy cutting and successfully removed all branches from the road and sidewalk and also from the driveway. Sarah helped by shoveling the foot of snow from the driveway and sidewalk. I went to work a little late, and when I came home, the Elder’s Quorum/Ward had already cut down the tree. They came back the next Saturday (a few days ago) and chopped down the backyard tree. What a help that was! Also, I went and bought a chainsaw, so I could help out with the second round; tree #2. Here are the pictures:

It may not look like a lot branches, but it was.

Pictures make it hard to see scale, but those are some pretty big branches that split off the trunk of the tree.

Backyard tree

Our house, now, without a tree. The backyard tree hadn’t been cut down, when this picture was taken. The snow has now all melted too.

Dinner in a Pumpkin

Because I'm all domestic, I made dinner in a pumpkin today. I was inspired by Emily and the fact that we got a few pumpkins for a dollar each. The dinner was...AWESOME. I was a little nervous because I've never actually cooked a pumpkin before, and we didn't get sugar pumpkins, just regular. I read a few recipes online and then made up my own.

Here's what I did:

1 pumpkin, cleaned
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 green pepper chopped (It could have used more, but that's all I had.)
1 carrot, sliced
1 lb ground turkey
1 can cream of mushroom soup, I used low sodium
1 T soy sauce
about 2 cups of cooked rice, I used a mix of brown and white
pepper
garlic

Saute vegetables in a little bit of oil until tender. Add ground turkey and brown. Season with garlic and pepper. Add in soup and rice; mix. Fill pumpkin and replace lid. Cook for about an hour on a baking sheet at 350 degrees.

I also sprayed the pumpkin with a little bit of cooking spray. I don't know if it helped anything. I try not to use condensed soups too much when I cook since they are on the expensive side for a dinner and they are high in sodium, but in this recipe, it was perfect. If I had more time, maybe I could have whipped up a different sauce. A big plus was that there were lots of leftovers, especially of pumpkin.

I didn't know pumpkin was so similar to spaghetti squash. Now I feel bad that I bought squash at the store for $.99/lb when I could have been cooking up dollar pumpkins.


Bonus! Here are our obligatory Halloween pictures:

At the ward Halloween party. She had a blowout in the turkey costume. Maybe that's why she looks so alarmed.

At the Halloween 5k

Ready to go trick-or-treating

The (almost) disastrous trip

This picture has nothing to do with this post.

I went to visit Mom last week. We had a great time. Everything went well at the doctor's visit except for Camille laughing at the doctor's Chinese accent. (It was rude, but how do you keep a baby from laughing?) We got to see Joanna, Ben, and Russell, Dad, and Ben, Shannon, Macey, and Sadie. Camille became an expert roller while we were there. When she wasn't rolling around, she enjoyed being held more than usual. And she enjoyed waking up about 30 times a night before I would finally bring her to bed with me. I picked up a little virus while we were there, but by Thursday when we left, I felt a lot better.

Camille modeling her winter hat in Wisconsin

The disaster part was the trip home. It started with a storm that rolled in the morning I left. At the airport, we ran in from the parking lot in pouring rain, so I was wet for the next few hours. We boarded the plane, and we sat on the runway for about 20 minutes because of the weather in Minneapolis. Then we deboarded the plane, and we sat in the airport for about 30 minutes. Then we got back on the plane and went to Minneapolis. By then, most of us had missed our connections. The flight attendant told us we would automatically be booked for the next flight to our destination. That was fine--there are flights to SLC every 2-3 hours. At Minneapolis my gate-checked bag didn't show up on the cart. A guy said the pink tag had come off, so they couldn't give me my bag, but they would send it to Salt Lake City. There went the extra diapers, extra clothes for both of us, and Camille's blanket. Then they gave me my new flight itinerary. They booked me for a flight to Atlanta the next morning at 5:30, then to SLC at noon. And they gave me hotel information to stay the night. Ahhh! I couldn't stay the night with Camille in the airport, and going to a hotel would be ridiculous since I would have to get up at 3:00 AM to get to the airport. And I didn't have my carry-on bag, so all I had in the diaper bag were two diapers (we had already gone through four), some toys, cheese curds, and a cracker pack. Thank goodness I am nursing Camille! After waiting in line for an hour to talk to someone at the help desk, the agent said to hurry to the gate the next flight to SLC was leaving from. I ran through the airport with Camille in the front-carrier, where the desk agent for that flight laughed at me when I asked if I would be able to get on the flight. Several hours later, the last flight to SLC that day started boarding. A kind agent spent five minutes on the phone working his magic to see if a frazzled mother with an infant could get on the overbooked flight. I was glued to the monitor watching the standby list, where I was fourth. Somehow after everyone else had boarded, the agent paged me to tell me I could have the last seat on the plane. What relief! Camille was great on the flight and we made it home. My carry-on bag went to Atlanta, but it was delivered the next morning.

I put in a compliment on Delta's website for the gate agent that got me a seat on the flight home. The next day I received a $50 voucher from Delta :)

Videos

We've been having a lot of fun with Camille lately.

Photo dump

Brian is supposed to blog about his trip to Washington DC. Until he does, here are some pictures of what's up in our neck of the woods.

Up Hobble Creek Canyon

This is what I do to keep Camille quiet while I make dinner. Don't judge. I do usually  precaution against falling out of the bumbo.

I thought Camille would love this since she always wants to stand. I was wrong.

Halloween preview.

Why anyone bothers buying baby toys is beyond me.

This one's for you Dad. This trailer was parked across the street. 

Brian imitating Camille's facial expressions.

Summer Squash Recipes

This summer we planted two zucchini plants, and we got a whopping four zucchini from them. Luckily, Brian's parents had an overload of crookneck squash, so I almost got my fix of summer squash. Out of all the squash we had, I never once made zucchini bread, which is too bad. I really like zucchini bread. If by chance you had a bumper squash season, I will share some new favorite recipes to use up some of the bounty.

Corn and Zucchini Melody

4 slices bacon
2 cups chopped zucchini (or other summer squash)
1 1/2 cups corn
1 small onion, chopped
1 pinch pepper
shredded cheese (I used parmesan because that's all I had, the original recipe calls for Monterey Jack)

Fry the bacon until crisp. Take out bacon and chop. Reserve 1 T drippings. Add zucchini, corn, and onions to hot bacon grease. Season with pepper. Saute for 10 minutes. Add in chopped bacon and cheese.

I also added in halved grape tomatoes (we have an abundance), and I used some extra seasonings. This was gooood. That bacon flavor really adds a lot.


Sausage, Squash, and Rice Skillet

1 c brown rice
2 c water
1 lb bulk sausage
1 green pepper, chopped
1/4 c onion, chopped
2-3 c chopped squash (I used zucchini and crookneck)
1/2 c beef broth 
salt and pepper
shredded cheese

Cook rice in water until all the water is absorbed, about 50 minutes. Meanwhile, brown sausage in large skillet until cooked through. Add in green pepper, onion, and squash. Saute until tender. Add cooked rice and broth and stir. Season to taste. Top with shredded cheese.

I made up this recipe, and Brian and I both liked it a lot. I don't know how much squash I used, but it could have used more. The leftovers were just as good.


Potato Squash Cakes

2 cups shredded potatoes
1 cup shredded yellow squash
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 egg
4 tablespoons self-rising flour
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup cooking oil


In a large bowl, combine potatoes, squash, onion, egg, flour, garlic salt, salt, and pepper. If the batter is too thin, add more flour; if too thick, add milk. Form batter into 3-inch patties. Cover the bottom of a large skillet with just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, and heat over medium-high heat. Place patties in hot oil, and cook until golden brown on each side; drain on paper towels.

I didn't love these because I generally hate frying things in oil. Everything and everyone smells like oil, and it splatters everywhere. Despite that, I made them because we had all the stuff and they looked quick. They were okay. If you don't mind frying things in oil, you might really like these. Maybe in the future I'll try again, but I'll just spray a pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Zucchini Brownies

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded zucchini

6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup margarine
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract



Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
In a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup cocoa, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Fold in the zucchini. Spread evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until brownies spring back when gently touched. To make the frosting, melt together the 6 tablespoons of cocoa and margarine; set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, blend together the confectioners' sugar, milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in the cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.

I've made these twice. The first time they turned out really bizarre. I think the squash I used was too dry. The second time I used a nice moist zucchini, and they were awesome. And this could be a positive or negative depending on who is consuming the brownies-- I couldn't see or taste the zucchini.

Cloth Diapers

Some of you know that I'm using cloth diapers with Camille, and a couple people have asked how it's going, so I thought I would blog about it in case it is helpful for anyone else.

I started putting Camille in cloth diapers at about eight weeks. I waited till then on the advice of others because newborns poop often, and the diapers I had wouldn't fit our little seven pounder. I'm not a fanatic about cloth diaspers. We use disposable diapers occasionally.


Pros
-Saving money. I'm extremely cheap frugal. This is the biggest reason I decided to cloth diaper. I spent about $100 on cloth diapers and supplies, and Mom gave me a bunch of stuff. The kind of diapers I got are one-size, meaning they'll fit from 8-35 pounds. If I take care of them, they hopefully will last through another kid.

-No blow-outs. I hadn't expected this benefit, but every blow-out Camille has had was in a disposable diaper.

-In Peru I often saw dogs eating dirty diapers in the streets, and it made my stomach churn. (In Peru my stomach often churned.) I spent a lot of time thinking about how gross that was and how to stop it.

-Other people feel like they are saving the environment, or keeping their baby healthy by not putting chemical-filled diapers on their babies. Those weren't reasons for choosing to cloth diaper for me. I don't buy into the chemical argument, and the environment issue is just a nice added benefit.

Cons

-Laundry. Even if you have a huge stash of diapers, you still need to wash them every 2-3 days. I get a little tired of always doing laundry.

-Poop. Breastfed baby poop is water-soluble, so I just do a rinse before I wash the diapers. The problem will be when Camille starts solids. The options are to dunk the diaper in the toilet, use a sprayer or something to get the solids off, or use disposable liners where you can just lift out the liner and flush. I don't know what we'll do yet. If you think that's gross, did you know that even if you use disposable diapers, you're supposed to knock any solids into the toilet? I don't know anyone who does that except Mom. If you do, kudos to you. Water treatment plants are made to handle human waste. Landfills are not.

There are a couple other things I've had to figure out. One is what to do with the dirty diapers until laundry gets done. What I did was to make two big zippered bags made of pul, a waterproof fabric. Th dirty diapers go in, and when I do laundry, I just dump the diapers into the wash and wash the bag along with them. The other thing was what to do about wipes. For now we're using normal wet wipes, but what do you do with the dirty ones when there is no diaper to put them in to throw them away? We put them in a grocery bag that gets thrown out every few days. At some point we'll use cloth wipes that can be laundered with the diapers.

I was worried that Camille would always have to wear a size up in baby clothes since cloth diapers are inherently bigger than disposables. She doesn't.

This is what her cloth diapers look like on.

Here's how a pair of pants fits.

This is how a romper fits over the cloth diaper. I'm also a little worried about Camille's cannibalistic tendencies.

Overall, I'd recommend cloth diapers. Brian doesn't. He thinks it's too much work and too gross. Usually when he takes care of Camille she wears disposable diapers. There are cloth diapers that are easier, but they are also more expensive, so I didn't go with those.

So now you know.

Community Education VI

Sometimes I get a little jealous that everyone else's community education options are so much better than ours. I thought they would never get past computers, cooking, dance, and photography classes.Well folks, UVU community education classes kicked it up a notch this fall. (There are still plenty of computer, cooking, dance, and photography options.) Here are some of the options in the Hobbies & Special Interests section. Anyone in the Provo/Orem area is welcome to take a class with me.

Gold Prospecting for Fun or Profit
With gold currently trading at over $1500 an ounce, panning for gold has made a real comeback. Only 5% of the world's gold has been discovered. [How in the world do they know that? How do they know there is 95% left if it hasn't been discovered?] This class will focus on new methods of panning for gold that you can use all 12 moths of the year. Fee includes prospecting equipment to take home with you.

How to Raise Chickens I
Achieve the freshness you have always wanted by raising your own chickens. This class will focus on information to help you acquire chicks and raise them with proper diet, health and regulations in mind.

Wild Edible Plants
Identify native, edible plants growing in and around a river ecosystem to satisfy your curiosity or prepare for an emergency or natural disaster. This course will be taught on-sire at one of the local rivers, and teach how to identify poisonous and toxic plants. You will be emailed the exact location of the meeting place prior to the beginning date. There will be moderate hiking involved.

You're on the Air (How to Make it in Voice Overs)
Discover an exciting new way to get around the competition and actually turn voice-overs into a thriving full or part-time business! This class will focus on  voice-over techniques, available opportunities, potential income, and producing a demo. Then you'll step up to the microphone to do some practice recording of your own.

Foundations of Fly fishing
Build your fishing foundation with knowledge of equipment, casting, entomology, reading water and all the skills necessary to have success no matter where you fish. Then take a field trip to a local river.

Technology and Stakes by the Same Name

So, for young men’s next week, the boys wanted to play ultimate frisbee. The biggest field nearby is over at the stake center, where there’s also a pavilion. The young man in charge tasked me with reserving the field. So, I went to the calendar tool on lds.org, found that there was a listing for the stake center pavilion, and sent an email to the three people listed as being in charge of reserving it. Here’s our email conversation, with locations removed, for our own privacy. Keep in mind two things: the grass field I’m trying to reserve is almost 3 acres and is on the same lot as the stake center.

ME:
I am checking to see if the grass field next to the pavilion at the stake center is available on Wednesday August 22^nd, from 7pm-9pm. We need a field to play some games with the YM that night.

RESPONSE:
No one has reserved the "grass" by the pavilion with me....nor have they reserved the Pavilion for Aug. 22.  I didn't know there was grass by the Pavilion. I'm a little confused by your message.  What I think of as the Pavilion is not next to the _____ Stake Center building.  When you say "at the Stake Center" do you mean by the Pavilion itself or by the Stake Center Building? Do you want to reserve the Pavilion and just use the grass?

ME (at this point, I’m wondering how they don’t know about the grass field at the stake center—it’s huge):
I'm referring to the large fenced-in grass field directly north of the stake center (separated only by part of the parking lot). I wouldn't need to use the pavilion...just part of the field.

RESPONSE:
The ______ Stake Center is NOT next to the Pavilion.  There are two chapels near the Pavilion, neither of which is a stake center.  Go ahead and use the grass area.  I have no way to reserve the grass area for you or anyone else.  IF someone else is using it, you'll have to solve the problem. 

ME (now I’m really confused at what’s going on here):
Where is the stake pavilion located? I assumed that it was located next to the stake center. Maybe I'm confusing it with a different pavilion. I'm thinking of this <grass field>(link removed to google maps). How would I go about reserving that field?

RESPONSE:
The address for that grass field is in Provo, UT.  I live in ______ Stake in St. George, UT.  I think that is our problem.  What Stake do you live in?  Try them. :-)  Nice visiting with you.

Ha! That would have been quite the drive to go play frisbee. Kind of funny how our stakes have the same name...and how I got contact information for them.

Olympic Fare

I had a whole menu of Olympic meals planned out, but due to a few things (the dairy elimination diet, not wanting to use the oven in the 97 degree heat, and having Camille around) I didn't get all the things made I wanted. But here is what I've done so far:

Olympic Rings Pizza

Bangers and Mash
The bangers are sausages and the mash is...mashed potatoes. The  salad is my addition since none of these meals seem to have many vegetables.

Cornish Pastie
This was surprisingly not very good. But I learned all about the history of the pastie (pronounced pass-tee) while I looked at recipes. And this isn't authentic since I used carrot instead of rutabaga.

I also wanted to do fish and chips, cottage pie (fun fact: shepherd's pie is made with veal, cottage pie with beef), Yorkshire pudding, a whole slew of English desserts, and a day of Michael Phelps' diet, but those meals haven't gotten made.

And for those of you here for pictures of Camille, here you go.