Glue Guns, Food, and Family

I have a knack for being crafty, in spurts. The spurts are mainly due to the fact that children like to pick up small things, move them, and/or put them into their mouths. Children also like to touch things that tend not to come off themselves or whatever they touch easily. I also have a tendency to make crafty gifts for people, like them too much, and keep them for myself. A terrible habit to have, especially when the gift you are making is for a party an hour away and you can't seem to bear to part with it. The pressure to produce a second, equally fabulous item wears on ones soul with a vengeance. Any wise person would simply not admit to taking the intended gift for themselves and run to the store to buy something. I flood myself with guilt.
The last time I was spuratically crafty was in creating my Mother's birthday gift. I purchased some flowers and was going to use this great glass jar for a vase. I dressed it up with vintage buttons I had been saving for awhile now. Needless to say when I finished it, I simply couldn't part with it. The pressure was on! It's amazing what you can pull together when you really need too. I had used my only clean jar, so I dumped out the spaghetti sauce and cleaned the jar. Karma bit me in the ass and the label wouldn't come off. I scrubbed it for 20 minutes straight and finally gave up with a little bit of sticky still left. I was a hot gluing mad woman, burning my fingers affixing doo-dads with lightening speed. It turned out to be not that shabby but I learned my lesson, at least until I forget again.


Food is a driving force in my life. It's what I work with everyday. It's who I'm married to. It signs my paycheck. So it should come as no surprise that food will take me to great distances geographically, searching for the best, tasting my way throughout the day, seeking a rare jewel in the sea of so many choices. Recently the perfect Mac n' Cheese has become my obsession. It's something I've longed to find. Just the right balance of tender noodle, creamy sauce, and a little crunch on top to brighten the texture of it all. I tried a recipe by a famous television personality the other day and I was sure it would thrill and delight me. I was so excited when I pulled it from the oven, I could barely let it cool enough to take the first bite. It looked deceivingly delicious. It called for a small amount of diced onion in the Béchamel sauce, not much cheese, and seemed dry going into the oven. Sometimes you should trust your instincts. I choose this recipe because there was no American cheese in it, something I detest. I know... It makes my credibility as an American citizen questionable, but I just don't like it. There was also bay leaf infused into the sauce which I can appreciate. I prefer a caramelized onion to a raw onion added to a sauce because the flavor is night and day. When trying a new recipe I think it is important to follow the recipe exactly so you have a bases to start from. You may like it just the way it is. Or you may hate it, but think that with some adjustments you could fall in love with it. Sadly, this Mac n' Cheese wasn't the ultimate find. The good thing is I have a strong notion of what to change to improve it. I've yet to find time to give it another go but am hopeful that next time it will satisfy my tongue.


Sunday is the most delightful day of the week. A day to be lazy, a day without pressure, a day of family. All the kids are home as well as my husband and I. We try not to make any plans for the day but to be together. Breakfast on Sundays is my idea of a good time. Even if I'm the only one eating it, a hot breakfast is worth the effort. You'd be surprised how taking a few minutes to treat yourself can turn your day around and lift your spirits. During the week I brew a double shot of espresso, pour milk over it, and voilà... breakfast. Sundays I steam the milk, let it sit for a bit so it gets a nice thick foam on the top, brew my espresso, and have a real Latte that I've put some care into. French toast is my favorite simple breakfast. At work we have Challah bread on Fridays and by Sunday it's just the right texture to soak up a little egg mixture with a generous touch of vanilla. You can't rush French toast. You've got to let it brown a little before you flip it. I like it with warm blueberry syrup and dusted with powdered sugar. It makes my Sunday complete and carries my good mood on throughout the day.

I found out later on that Sunday French toast has a limit to how far it can cheer the soul. I went to dig my car out that had been parked at work all week during the blizzard only to realize it had been hit by the person who plowed the lot. Weeks later I am now eating my five hundred dollar deductible in order to keep my car in good shape. You see, I may drive a 1999 Buick Regal but it is paid for, has only 60,000 miles on it, purrs like a kitten, and feels like I'm driving a sofa... So to me, it's a great car.

It's seems like the kids have had one thing or another since the weather turned cold. At least one child has taken some medicine or another for the last 2 months straight. Our latest run has been fighting off ear infections and the dreaded pink eye. Those drops you put in their eyes do burn and you have to do it four times a day for at least a week. That's a lot of pain for a child to endure. How do you explain that Mommy hurting you will actually make you feel better? Eliot tends to be overly concerned for the well fair of his siblings when it comes to them receiving medicine. He insisted that everyone held Liam's hand while he got drops in his eyes. I love my kids.

For the 100th day of school Liam wrote 100 things he likes. It's too good not to share. Goldfish crackers, chicken legs, graham crackers, The Happy Birthday Song, Mrs. Guikema, friends, games, class, granola bars, apples, bananas, corn pops, Mario kart, Mario, princess peach, toad, volcanoes, boxes, magic tricks, spinning, toys, hugs, whispering, quiet, boots, socks, coat, bookbag, counting, Samuel, dancing, snow, crystals, Legos, movies, kites, butterflies, pictures, painting, singing, M, writing, sleeping, licking, Andy, Grandma, bookfair, Mrs. Wandless, silly squirrels, FUN, sleepovers, park, playground, jumping high, pirate ships, Nana, ice cream, cupcakes, flowers, Santa, hop, shake, Happy New Year, Earth, home, exercise, blankets, S, T, U, V, Z, W, A, B, C, D, G, H, I, L, J, O, X, clapping, cutting vegetables, making cake, looking at bones, rubbing my knee, and I like to go to the moon.

My husband and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary in April. We went to Europe for New Years as our pre-celebration. It seems we went straight from honeymoon to procreating and are just now getting a taste for traveling by ourselves again. Way back when, before kids and bills, when there was little to no care in the world, my husband would buy me gorgeous peach roses. Now I balance the check book and tell him they are too expensive to buy, so flowers are rare unless the are growing in our yard. I was surprised to open the back door on Valentine's Day and see a bouquet, just for me. I know there are a lot of people who think Valentine's Day is just a bunch of commercialized garbage. To me, it was special and I felt loved. This is a great time in our lives. It's like I'm dating my husband for a second time but without all the crappy stuff that happens when you are young and concerned about things that really don't turn out to be that important.

Lucien will turn five in May which means Kindergarten is just around the corner. I took him to Kindergarten preview night at Owen Marsh last week. He feel asleep in the car on the way there, a sure sign to me that my child couldn't possibly be ready for Kindergarten yet. We were sitting in the gym waiting for the event to start when he pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket. I had no idea he had them. He laid them out face down and told me it was my turn. On Wednesdays Lucien and Lily go to Grandma's house for the day. She plays memory with them with decks of cards. It blew me away. He is so smart and I had no idea! We got a few good games in then went to visit the three Kindergarten classrooms. Two were very full so we hung out in Liam's classroom with Mrs. Guikema. Lucien made good use of the counting blocks and didn't want to leave when it was time to go. The school was holding a bookfair that night as well. Lucien picked out a book called, "The Hot Rod Hamster". We went for ice cream afterward and got sprinkle cones. I even took him for a Happy Meal too, I know it was probably overkill seeing how I was more upset than he was. I don't get much one on one time with each of the kids. I've got to really take advantage of it when I have it.

There is more to tell... but the day has run out. Tune in next time for a tale of our adventure in St. Louis!

Snow Days

Like most of the country, we have spent the better part of this week snowed in. The kids went to school Monday. All day Monday the talk was, "The Blizzard is Coming! Buy Milk and Groceries! We're all going to loose power and be stuck in our homes for weeks!" The media in trying to prepare people for the onslaught of bad weather created a panic that was spreading like wildfire through the city streets.


Being a mother of four children eight and under, I was a little concerned but not overly so. When I was seven and a half months pregnant with my third child Lucien we survived a Tornado that took off a portion of our house and knocked out our power for eight days, then we had an ice storm and it snowed. Understanding how unromantic candle light is(it flickers so much you wish you were blind)and how cold a house can get without heat I was not digging this upcoming blizzard.

Let me take you way back to January 1999. A blizzard stirred up a lot of trouble the day before my eldest brother was to be married. Being a fierce tempered red head, I recall digging my mother's car out while three or more fully grown men sat in the warm comforts of home watching some terribly important sporting event. You can release a lot of frustration by shoveling snow. I knew just how much snow a blizzard could bring and wasn't really looking forward to it.

Monday night the streets of Springfield seemed like a ghost town. Funny actually because it was quite lovely outside. We had drizzling rain. Not freezing rain. Not sleet. Drizzling rain. All of Springfield was hunkered down already so my husband was home from work drastically early. I wanted to see The King's Speech and took this as a sign from God that he had maneuvered all the elements of the earth to allow me to go see a movie that night. I was about to walk out the door alone when my son Eliot decided to tag along. Not a single person was driving on the very clear streets that night. Eliot and I were the only people at the theater. After getting the proper snack-age, the girl working the counter warns me that this movie has vulgar language and my son probably shouldn't watch it. I assured her that he has already heard everything and knows what happens when he chooses to repeat those words. I don't think the people who worked that night were too happy to see us. Halfway through the movie Eliot says to me, "I know why we are the only ones in the theater!" I ask why and he replies, "Because this movie is so long."

Tuesday was a School Improvement Day so the kids had no school. By noon the snow had started falling and it was incredibly beautiful. The lunch business was dreadfully slow at work that day. My work isn't really affected by the weather. People tend to still have birthday's and get married even if there is a blizzard. So I stayed at work until around 2pm. When I went out to scrape my car I noticed a couple things. This blizzard that was pretty from indoors was ugly outside. It wasn't snow. It was tiny ice crystals whipping horizontally at your face. The drifts had already started to build up around the wheels of my car and it had only been snowing two hours. I forgot my gloves at home and had to retreat to the car shortly after beginning to scrape the windshield because I could feel the frostbite on my fingers already. My efforts didn't matter anyway. The wind was so strong my windshield had iced over again already... and then my wipers quit on me. I had to call my husband to come pick me up.

Now here is the thing about men. They tend not to believe you when you suggest they do something sooner than later because later is going to be too late. The weather was bad by now, really bad. Nearly white out conditions with people trying to get home from work early or make it to the store before they closed.

Now here is the thing about women. You are always going to have womanly things happen at the most inconvenient of times. Say like needing a tampon in the middle of a blizzard and not having one.

My husband finally makes his way to pick me up and I walk a block to meet him on the corner. He is trying to clear the windshield and it's just a mess. Meanwhile all the kids are at my mother in laws house and we still need essentials from the store. Essentials I should have picked up say last night during the drizzle. We make our way across town and he drops me off at the store while he goes to pick up the kids. I had been white knuckling the dash board the whole car ride and was glad to be walking into the store until I realized that it was still a really inconvenient time to be a woman, really!

Sometimes it's really embarrassing being a woman. Scratch that, it's always embarrassing being a woman. You have parts that either jiggle too much or not enough and you have all these contraptions to keep them in place, boost them up, or minimize them. Sometimes it's a combination of all three. Inevitably, whenever I have to make an embarrassing purchase for say lady products I always get the boy who is 14 and way to eager to give great customer service. The boy who hails me down across six checkout lines so I don't have to wait in line for the nice lady to check me out. The boy who is stunned when he has to scan my box of tampons. The boy who now can't make eye contact but feels like he should not to be rude which then leaves him in a sort of eyeball spasm searching for something to look at that is neutral. Not the tampons, not my face... so what does every man look at when they are unsure of what to look at? Boobs.

Longer story short... I got all the essentials including TP, milk, and beer. My husband picked me up with the kids in tow and it was just a few blocks to home sweet home.

Tuesday night was a blast. I knew I wasn't going to have to work on Wednesday. The blizzard was like manna from heaven! Josh made dinner(did I mention he went to culinary school but I never get to eat his food because we are always on opposite schedules?). I spent the night eating ice cream, drinking Tequila, and started a ongoing marathon of Bones. Special Agent Seeley Booth, Yowzers! If you are around my age you probably watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as Angel. Excellent TV, great story lines that focused on kick ass adventures and saving the world. What girl doesn't like that?!

The whole house slept in on Wednesday. There wasn't much point in doing anything but being lazy. I made cinnamon rolls(busted open one of those Pillsbury canisters and baked it off)and reactivated the Bones marathon. Sometime in the afternoon Josh's step father came over with a snow blower and help dig us out. By now it was too late for Josh to make it to work so he was home again which meant dinner!

Thursday morning came with a sobering reality. Work. Yuck! School was canceled yet again because the temperature was something like -15 degrees. The only thing that got me through the day was the thought of watching more Bones when I got home. I made brownies and did a little housework to justify the time that I intend to sit on my butt eating brownies and watching Bones.

Friday... Kids still out of school. Honestly this is getting to be a little ridiculous. We live in a two bedroom house. Six people can't get along that well with this much time spent together in so little space. Today I had the unfortunate experience of being bit by the unhappy bug. I tried to shake it off as best as I could by pouring myself into my work. I had a fun Leopard Handbag cake that I was working on for a good friend of mine. It was his wife's birthday and she is over the top but the cake was for a small gathering so it had to be dramatic but small and simple as well. It turned out well, not bad for my first handbag.

Then my mood dipped. I had a lengthy conversation about happiness with someone and just couldn't shake off the cranky. After work I was so glad to come home to my awesome kids. I just happened to read an article on my homepage 5 Habits of Happy Families. It broke my shell. I could see clearly for the first time in weeks. It's me. I'm choosing to be unhappy. It's an article worth reading. http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/new-year-new-you/article.aspx?cp-documentid=27521994

I went to bed anxious last night about work today. Since I came back from vacation every Saturday at work has been a nightmare. If something could go wrong, it would. I went in a 5am with the hopes that this Saturday would be different. I needed a good day. It turned out to be a Fantastic Day! I nailed it. My timing was on, my artistry was good, nobody yelled at me, and I had many surprise visitors that kept my spirits high. I choose to be happy with the work that I did and walked away feeling good.

I came home hungry but too tired to make anything but a Latte. I mentioned breakfast sounded good and my wonderful husband began whipping up Belgian Waffles from scratch. He amazes me. I'll admit it. I'm not the easiest person to live with and yet he still carries on.

It's my weekend. Saturday night with my kids and all day Sunday with my husband. Tomorrow is my Mother's Birthday. I hope she knows how much I love her. She is really something else! I think I get my crazy funny caring wild inappropriate humor from her, more than she will probably admit too. I get my stubborn nature from her as well. She is fantastic and I'm proud to be her daughter. Happy Birthday Mom!