Store-bought vs. Home-made

I usually buy most of our milk at the corner store. It's more expensive that way, but I think it saves money in the long run because we don't pick up other extras (unless you count the cider and donuts, chocolate bars...). When you buy a gallon of milk, you can get a loaf of their bread for $0.40. Now, this bread is not high quality at all, but I figure it makes toast or sandwich bread when I don't have any quality bread or home-made rolls. The other morning, I decided to use one of these loaves to make french toast. I pulled a stack out of the bag and placed it on the stove-top near my bowl of egg & milk mixture. I could make three slices at a time in my frying pan. By the time three had cooked, the top slice on my pile was already drying out!

About a day later, I sliced up a loaf of home-made bread. I gave a piece to Brigham as a mid-morning snack. About an hour later, we went for a walk. Brigham had left most of this piece of bread on the table. By the time we got back, about an hour and a half later, I figured his bread would be dried out. I was surprised to find that the bread was as moist as when I got it out of the bag.

My favorite bread baking book is The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. It was introduced to me about eleven years ago by a friend. I love the methods uses for whole grain bread baking and the recipes are wonderful! I'll be using it more often!

My favorite consequence for fighting kids

They have to sit on the couch with their arms around each other if they've been fighting. If they've been really bad, both arms go around each other (adorable)! Then, they have to say ten nice things about the other person. Alternatively, I've also told them to sit there until they are friends. Great stuff!

Various things I'm liable to trip over

The other night I was having some trouble sleeping and so I decided to come out to the couch to sleep. That sometimes helps me. I noticed that the computer was on and came over to turn it off. As I was walking back to the couch, I tripped over the rocking chair. There really isn't anywhere to keep the rocking chair, but we don't want to get rid of it. It tends to just sit out in the middle of the room. I gave myself a pretty nasty bruise and rather than yell (all were asleep), I started thinking creatively. "I should make a list of all the things I trip over, " I thought. And it kept me going until the pain subsided.

1. Books. My library card which allows 50 books to be checked out is always maxed. My kids all have a card and will usually have between 5-10 books checked. That's a lot of books. They get spread all over the floor.

2. Hot Wheels cars. Brigham loves these things and is usually carting 2-5 cars around with him all the time, leaving them here and there when he picks others up. Definitely something I trip over.

3. Shoes. Our side entryway comes in on a landing. Just to the left, there are two steps up to the kitchen. We use this place to dump our shoes. There are usually anywhere from10-20 pairs of shoes sitting around that area. It can be deadly when I'm carrying the laundry basket downstairs to sort laundry!

4. Clothing. Do your kids just strip their socks off and leave them all over, or change in the middle of the living room and just dump the cloths there waiting for the laundry fairy to pick them up?

5. Cello. Oh no! We have no where safe to keep Nathan's cello. I keep it on top of my bed during the day, but at night we have to set it on the floor. I'm constantly saying, "Be careful of the cello." "Watch out for the cello!" One day I was finishing making my bed and placed the cello on the bed as Nathan was walking in the room. "What?" he said, "Why was that on the floor?" "Do you want me to sleep with it on my bed all night?" I asked. Never, never trip over a cello. Costly mistake.

6. Rocks. There will never be enough rocks in my house it seems. With our crushed limestone driveway and occasional trips to look for and collect rocks and fossils, the kids are constantly bringing new piles of rocks in the house. I will find piles of rocks on the floor of the living room, bedrooms, on top of dressers, on the bathroom counter, kitchen counter, washing machine. You name it, every surface has been home to a rock at one time or another.

7. Train tracks and accessories. Being a two year old boy, Brigham loves that stuff. I try to keep this only to his room, so I only have to trip on that when I take my sleeping boy up to his bed each night in the dark.

8. Basement storage room....Don't even get me started on that!!

So, what do you trip over at your house? :)

Quotes for Political Inspiration (or not)

I am very tired of all of the rhetoric and sparring that is going on over the upcoming elections. I'm turning to some other inspirational thoughts.

I actually stole these quotes from another website. I liked them so much that I wanted to think about them some more, so I'll publish them here on my blog (I had to look some of these people up):


Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges...even when there are no rivers.

--Nikita Krushchev


If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

--Joseph Goebbels


Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.

--Thomas Jefferson


When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.

--George Washington


You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

--Abraham Lincoln


Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or Al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands.

--Osama bin Laden


Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

--William>Proxmire


All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

--Adolf Hitler


Those who stand for nothing, fall for everything.

--Alexander Hamilton


Guard against the impostors of pretended patriotism.

--George Washington


The more laws, the less justice.

--Cicero


Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberties have eroded.

--Friedrich August von Hayek


Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people trying to be important.

--T. S. Eliot


The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

--Louis Brandeis


Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

--Ronald Reagan


Fear is the foundation of most governments.

--John Adams


Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

--Abraham Lincoln


I hope our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.

--Thomas Jefferson


Politics is when you say you are going to do one thing while intending to do another. Then you do neither what you said, nor what you intended.

--Sadaam Hussein


I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended on to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

--Abraham Lincoln


Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.

--John Adams


If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.

--John F. Kennedy


We the people are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.

--Abraham Lincoln

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither.

--Benjamin Franklin

Vicious snake under influence of resident charmer!

Laffy Turkey

Brigham has lately decided that he likes to eat beef jerky and will ask for a stick of it when I'm packing the kids' lunches. He says, "Can I have some turkey?"

This afternoon, I wouldn't let him go outside because there are so many mosquitoes out there and he seems particularly allergic to the bites and gets them even with repellent on. He was feeling sad about it.

I asked Joseph if he would go to the corner store and buy some milk and bananas and maybe a treat for Brigham.

Joseph came back with two of those long skinny Laffy Taffys, one strawberry and one grape. Brigham chose to eat the grape one first, but hasn't forgotten that he still has one more.

He just told me, "I want to eat the Laffy Turkey later."

Interpretation: I can only assume that because the beef jerky and the Laffy Taffy are the same shape that instead of hearing Laffy Taffy when I said it, he heard Laffy Turkey.

Fall Color

For some pictures of the beginnings of our fall color, click here.

The Cat Concerto

For my kids.

Lang Lang says that he saw this cartoon when he was two or three years old and that it provided him with inspiration throughout his childhood. He would often imagine Tom and Jerry with him as he played the piano. Here it is, Tom and Jerry in "The Cat Concerto":

Single-Serve Brownies

The idea here is if you don't make a whole pan of brownies, you don't have a whole pan of brownies at your disposal to eat!!

You can view the simple recipe plus nutritional information here.

1 TBSP whole wheat flour
1 TBSP sugar (do not substitute)
1 TBSP unsweetened cocoa
a pinch of baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 TBSP of low fat vanilla yogurt, add more if needed to blend the mixture


Mix it all up and microwave for one minute.


I did make a few alterations. The recipe calls for whole wheat flour. I tried it that way and it tasted like chocolate bread. I decided that since it's a dessert, I'll allow myself to splurge with white flour. I didn't have vanilla yogurt, so I added plain yogurt and added about 1/4 tsp. vanilla. Then, I really got crazy and decided to add a little coconut and some diced pecans. I actually really like this!

Note: Once you have all the ingredients in your container and begin stirring, it seems like the dry ingredients will be too much for the yogurt. Rest assured, if you keep stirring, it will all mix up. If you have to add more yogurt, that's o.k. Play around with it until you get the consistency you like.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of the process:

Small reusable container (9.5 oz) works great!

Dry mixture before yogurt

Just before microwaving

Just after microwaving

YUM!

Now, for a real splurge, I wonder what the recipe would be for a single serving of frosting!!

Lang Lang: Playing with Flying Keys

A few weeks ago, I decided that I had been wasting a lot of time. In the morning, there was the time after I dropped all the kids off at school until I got home again. In the afternoon, there was the time before I got to the school. I decided to fill this time with a book on CD of my own. I can't believe how much I enjoyed having a book of my own in the van!

I had been trying to check out some music of the famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang and accidentally got his memoir instead. I'm not sorry. It was wonderful! The dedication of both Lang Lang and his parents to his success is amazing. But, it also includes information about how difficult this was and how he suffered under the sometimes dictator-like style of his father. I cheered at his successes and felt sad when things didn't go well for him.

It was interesting to hear his perspectives on America and also his ideas about how East and West can meet. It left me wanting to see him play in person. Thank goodness for YouTube!



Now, I need to find something new to inspire me in my free, driving time!

Henri Maillardet's Automaton

I just finished reading a book with my kids called "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," by Brian Selznick. It was fascinating and took me into a world I had never entered before. I never even knew it existed. It was the world of the automaton. Never heard of it? Here's an explanation from The Franklin Institute's website:

During the 18th century, people were in a state of wonder over mechanism. The first complex machines produced by man were called "automata." The greatest and most fascinating mechanisms were those that could do things in imitation of living creatures. This Automaton, known as the "Draughtsman-Writer," is one such machine.

So basically, these automata were the first robots. In the case of Henri Maillardet's automaton, it had been ruined in a fire. The people who had it thought it had been made by another man. The true history of this automaton was only learned after it was fixed and wound up for the first time. The automaton signed Maillardet's name at the end of one of the poems that it wrote!

Here are a couple of videos that demonstrate what the automaton can do (the second video is a little long, but it includes the author of the above-mentioned book at a presentation demonstrating Maillardet's Automaton), but you really should visit this website where you can see copies of the pictures and poems that he draws. From there, you can also read the story of this particular automaton and see pictures of the complexity of the machine. If you are as amazed as I was, there is also a link at the top of the page that allows you to vote for the automaton to be inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame.

Trying out different emotional responses...

The other day, Brigham was crying about something. Though he turned two in May, he didn't become a "terrible two" until about a week ago. But, if you are like me, you scoff at terrible twos and think about just how much worse it can get later on...

Back to Brigham. After a while, his cry turned into that annoying sort-of fake crying. Finally, I asked him what was wrong. He told me "I crying now." He intermittently does that now and also makes a lot of comments about other people crying or feeling sad.

A few days later, he was being chased around the house by older siblings and was having a pretty good time. Suddenly, he started shrieking/screaming. I asked him what he was doing, "I screaming, Mommy."

Sariah is "The Monkey of the Day"

Sariah's kindergarten teacher (same as Elijah's 1st grade teacher) celebrates each child in her class by giving them the title, "Monkey of the day" (monkey is their class mascot). Sariah has been so excited for her day to come up. She helped me choose pictures of herself from when she was a baby and from current photos too to share with her class.

I made rolls so she could share them with her class because that's one of her favorite things and since I made Elijah a t-shirt, I had to make one for Sariah. She was all smiles with excitement about that part.

She also picked out two books for me to read to her class. First, Manfish, a book about Jacques Cousteau. I was truly surprised that she chose this book because it seemed to me that it was a little above her level. She is a girl after my own heart!


Second, He Came with the Couch by David Slonim. This one got the kids laughing. It's a fun book. You can read it here. Your kids will love it. The Lookybook website (previous link) is fun because you can read books online. You can search for books by keyword, look through lists of authors and illustrators, or choose from a list of subjects to select a book to read.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog

This is the sweetest, most beautiful film I have seen in a long while. It's a look into the life of a Mongolian family(yes, it is sub-titled) . One of the best things about this movie is that the family is an actual family. The three children are adorable and I learned a lot while watching their loving parents. It does have a slow-moving story line, which is both simple, yet full of wisdom, but is similar to a documentary because we see into how this nomadic family really lives. Since I'm more used to the American style movie I kept waiting for something to "happen." It does have a dramatic conclusion. Well worth seeing!