Helping Hands: Part IV
(Hopefully) Last, but not least, and in honor of my dad’s birthday, the final installment of the Helping Hands series. This entry has taken me the longest to put together mostly because my dad was here for a month. If you know my dad, you know that it wasn’t a month spent relaxing!
I have compiled a condensed version of some of my father’s activities while he was here. There is no stopping my father. When he first arrived I was worried about his shoulder injury, but apparently, he would let nothing stop him! It’s almost embarrassing how little I did while he was here.
I was a little worried about having my dad here for a whole month, but it was great. It really took the stress off of the final weeks of the pregnancy. My dad pretty much ran the house, including teaching the kids how to swat flies! The day after my dad left, Samuel came out looking for his clothes, because for a month my dad laid out the kids’ outfits every morning! he also made sure that the boys were bathed which is something that I don’t take too seriously!
So, here is an idea of what to expect when Bill Frank comes to stay:
2 – vacuum cleaners
1 – mop
1 – ceiling fan
20 – trips to Sonic
100 – Buddy Bucks received
1 – trip across town in 100 degree heat, with two toddlers, to find sheet metal
1 – car detailed in preparation for sale
3 – meals of grilled steak
4 – evenings babysitting so Doug and I could go on dates
1 – citizenship swearing in ceremony attended
1 – shelf installed in master bath
3 – light sabers purchased (plus one for Jason Hunt)
1 – complete day watching three boys so I could deliver my baby in peace!
1 – new iron (plus much, much ironing!)
1 – office chair (apparently doing work while sitting on a kiddie chair isn’t cool!)
1 – alarm clock
5 – people flown in from Seattle
1 – grandma flown in from Halifax
1 – yard tended to for large item trash day, plus a hedge trimmer
- Countless groceries and cans of Fresca
- Hanging of pictures and curtain rods
- Driving Doug to work and therapy almost every day
I am noticing a trend toward cleaning supplies. I’m wondering if dad is trying to tell me something?! Every time I try o finish the list, I come up with something else, so know that this list is incomplete. He took my boys on errands every day, and he sacrificed a month of time with his wife. Thankfully, grandma also got to come out when Christina was here.
I know at the end we were wearing on my dad, but I hope he knows how much we appreciated everything he did for and with us while he was here.
Happy Birthday Dad!
Before and After: the Car Seat
A seat fit for three boys!
To Whom it May Concern,
Apparently you didn’t appreciate my husband’s sense of reduce, re-use, recycle. Or maybe you just knew that I had asked my husband for a new car seat because I thought 3 kids per car seat was enough. You knew my husband’s response was something along the lines of, “Plastic doesn’t go bad.” Or maybe you thought that the blue circus theme wasn’t appropriate for our new little girl.
Whatever your reasons, I was very pleasantly surprised to arrive home from a date with my husband to see this on the front step:
We asked the babysitter if she saw who dropped it off, but she said whoever it was ran really, really fast. Doug wondered what was inside (appearances can be deceiving!). Then he wondered who would do such a thing. Who thought our car seat wasn’t good enough?! His first thought was my dad, but I told him that my dad hadn’t commented on the car seat, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t him. I asked around on Facebook, and someone suggested that it might have been Greg, but that didn’t ring true either! I thought it was a particular friend. Doug decided to do some detective work the next day at church. Who would look at us funny for not bringing the new car seat with us (it was very late, and church starts very early)?!
When we got to church Doug agreed with my original hypothesis. All I can say is, thank you so much for being so thoughtful. We love the new seat, and even though I know plastic doesn’t go bad, I think the baby is all the safer for being in the new seat.
Love,
Me
Afton's new ride!
Giving the People What They Want
I have a received a few requests for more picutres of Afton, so I am obliging with a few shots from our recent trip north. These are the results of Afton’s first photo shoot with my extremely talented sister, Christina. If you’re in the Seattle area you should have her take your pictures!
Christina was taking pictures for the baby announcements, and these were some of the extras. I don’t think I’m too biased to say that she is the cutest thing ever!
She’s a little upset in this one, but that might be because it was cold, she wasn’t wearing clothes, and we had her propped up in an Adirondack chair!
And, lest you think that I’m the only sister who males gorgeous girls, here is Christina’s daughter:
Why we serve
This is part of our groupbefore we began. It's about 7:30am, and the two girls on the right ha been up all night with the Breaking Dawn book!
A couple of months ago a sign up was passed around RS for Habitat for Humanity. Since I’m always looking for new things to blog about, I signed up. It was going to be a full day of manual labor … in August … in Texas. The sign up was only for the ladies so I didn’t have to worry about embarrassing myself too badly. It was on a Saturday, so I didn’t have to worry about finding a sitter.
Because we’re oh so environmentally friendly, we carpooled to the location south of downtown. At least I think it was south of downtown, I get turned around without the gps! It turns out that this location was a whole Habitat neighborhood. There mut have been at least thirty houses; some long finished, and others just begun.
It turns out that we showed up for landscaping day. I had kind of been looking forward to building walls, but it is probably better for the people living in the house that I only cleared rocks and laid sod!
This is the fancy checkerboard sod pattern.
Because we were landscaping we were finished at lunch. While we were eating we got to talk to a family who was volunteering their hours because they were actually getting a house. They told us about the different requirements, and a gentleman told us about how Habitat had changed his whole life.
The whole thing was a really rewarding experience for me, and I would encourage you all to go and try to serve in a new way. You might pick up a new skill, or just enjoy some new company. It also doesn’t hurt the eyes to be working with these folks:
I'm just saying, no one at my high school looked like this!
Maybe next week I’ll share why I like to tour the fire station with the play group!
Mon mari, le gourmand/ Jam Brulee
I have written before about my husband’s lack of exaggerated compliments. Sometimes it works out well for me. For example, the first time I made the plum pie he was very impressed. Sometimes however, it does not work out so well.
Case in point: Spaghetti. I make spaghetti fairly often. I make a big batch and I stick it in the freezer so that we can have easy meals when I don’t want to cook. A couple of years ago I made a batch and Doug got a weird look on his face. I couldn’t taste anything wrong, so I asked him what he was thinking (I should know better!). He said, “Oh, it’s fine, but do you think you could get your father’s recipe?”
Now, I’m not pretending to be a better cook than my dad, but I know for a fact that, in my family, we all use the same recipe. “No,” Doug assures me, “your dad’s is better.” At this point I am new wife, and am easily taken to being insulted, but whatever, I just keep on making my sauce. When my dad was here last week though, he offered to make spaghetti one day. So, I pull out all of my ingredients and I take notes. What is it that he does differently? He uses everything I give him, and does it the way I do it, so what is going on? And then he leaves! He heads off to the store for some extra ingredients. Aha … this is it! I will finally know the secret. I’m on my way to finally satisfying my husband’s spaghetti sauce needs. What, you ask, does my father bring home from the store? Some Italian seasoning, or maybe it was Oregano (clearly I should be taking better notes!), and some Ragu! Apparently my Wal-Mart brand seasoning wasn’t cutting it (I think my dad mentioned something about being frugal), and the Ragu was just for adding volume. So, for all intents and purposes I feel the sauce was the same, and yet when we sat down to dinner that night, Doug knew that the sauce wasn’t mine! Grrr!
Case in Point #2: Jam. I have, on a few occasions attempted to make freezer jam. For the most part I think it’s usually turned out well. I use it in a lot of cooking, plus for sandwiches. However, Doug is no fan of the freezer jam. I don’t know what experience in his youth made him bitter against the freezer but he has made very clear that he doesn’t like the jam.
So, after berry picking on Saturday I decide to make some actual cooked jam. I go over many recipes and finally settle on one that has many good reviews, and that requires no extra ingredients. I pull out my candy thermometer and my big pot and I get set to go. I put three plates in the freezer so that I can check the consistency. All is going well. The jam is boiling, and the thermometer is reading 210. I know that I have to go to 220, so I stand at the pot and I stir. I know from the comments with the recipe that it takes a long time to go from 210 to 220, so I’m not worried. I’m heating up my jars, and I wait. The mixture hits 220 and I start arranging my jars. Here is where I encountered my first problem. I should have just turned the stove off, because in the time it took to arrange the jars, the temperature of the jam sky-rocketed to 230!
I should have just left well enough alone. I should have cut my losses, but I decided to continue with the canning process. I bottled all of those slightly caramelized jars of jam. Everything sealed up nicely. Then I went upstairs.
Doug wasn’t home for any of this. I heard him come in and make his way over to the little bowl of extra that I set out. Then I hear him come up the stairs. What do you think his first words to me were? I’ll tell you, “Sarah, you let that jam get to soft ball.” That’s right, soft ball. He’s killing me with candy making terminology! Worst of all, he was right. I made strawberry candy that I couldn’t get out of the jar!
The next night Doug tried to fix the problem by re-doing all the jam. It turns out that my candy thermometer was way off, so I don’t feel too bad. Doug used three thermometers to properly calibrate! After a couple of hours, Doug got everything to the proper texture, but there was no getting rid of the slight burnt sugar taste of the first night.
Ah, what will I experiment with next. I have to find what I’m passionate about and good at soon!
Makes Me Feel Better
Do you ever look at pictures like this and think, it’s not fair. How do people look this perfect?
Well, do I have the site for you. The San Antonio paper has something called office time wasters. Every week they have something bizarre or fun to waste your time on. One of my favorites is this photo retouching site. Just click on the portfolio section. Double click one of the pictures and scroll back and forth over the picture. It’s pretty crazy the stuff they do
One caveat: don’t click on Halle Barry. I think she really does look that perfect!
I love food!
I’m not sure if I qulify as an emotional eater, but good food definitely makes me happy! Do you ever just sit down to a meal and smile when you take the first bite? This has happened to me at the following places:
- Chocolate Mousse at the Phoenix Ritz
- Wild Mushroom Tart at the The Metropolitan
- Duck at the, now closed, Dijonin SLC
- Mushroom and Chicken Ravioli, in Halifax, at Il Mercato
- Poutine, which is normally only available in Canada, but which I found last year at the Utah State Fair. Heavenly!
- Fish and Chips at the Tavern in Dartmouth.
Alright, now I’m craving some food. I need to find so go-to restaurants for San Antonio!
I’ve been trying some new recipes lately and I found a couple that were quite successful at my house. It takes something special to get Doug to compliment food, but he loved this Plum Tarte Tatin that I found in Bon Appetit Magazine.
This recipe was so easy. It takes a bit of time for cooling, so if you want to have it for dinner dessert you need to make it early. Very yummy.
I also got a good recipe for whole wheat bread from Taylor. I made it, and it turned out. I used whole grain flour instead of whole wheat, so it was a little heavier, but my kids asked for extra bread instead of extra flan cake the other night!
2 packages dry yeast
2 cups warm whole milk
!/4 cup honey
2 eggs
6 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. soft butter
dissolve the yeast in a bowl for about 5 minutes
whisk in the honey and eggs, then add the other stuff and stir it together or use the dough hook on a mixer.
Mix until it all comes together, then knead for 5-7 minutes.
Form into a ball and put it into an oiled bowl–cover with plastic and let rise until it doubles (1.5–2 hours)
Punch it down, divide it two balls and form loaves by pressing them flat and rolling them up. Place the loaves, seam-side down into prepared pans and press them down slightly.
Cover with a towel and let them rise until they double (45-60 minutes)
Dust the tops with a little more flour and place them on the middle rack of a preheated (375) oven and bake ’til they sound hollow when tapped (about 35-40 minutes)
That’s another winner for Taylor!
I Dare You Not to Smile!
On our recent trip to Florida, we attended the Pirate and Princess Party at Magic Kingdom. I would highly recommend it. You go to the park after closing, and they have treats and dancing and special fireworks. My nephew loves to dance, and I thought he was the star of the Tomorrowland dance party! This video makes me happy every time I watch it!
