Public Service Announcement

Attention all those within a quasi-reasonable distance of a WinCo foods. It is imperative that you get in your car, go to WinCo and get yourself a Jaunita's Fiesta Bag! of tortilla chips, like so...

Then you need to head on over here and make this salsa.

Then, if you're anything like me, you'll eat chips and salsa for dinner.

And lunch the next day.

:(

I miss cooking with flour.

Would you believe me if I told you that these were supposed to be chocolate chip cookies?

Vital Wheat Gluten

I remember shopping at the Macey's fantastic case lot sale a few years ago and running across a carton of Vital Wheat Gluten. Over the years, I had met a person here and another one there and another one there that was, in one way or another, affected by Celiac Disease and therefore, I was aware that there was a certain portion of the population that couldn't process wheat gluten and that it actually made them very sick and prevented them from becoming properly nourished.

At that moment in Macey's, I found the term "Vital Wheat Gluten" to be somewhat ironic.

Now I find it extremely ironic.

Before Christmas, Brent found out that he's gluten intolerant. What this means for you is that you will no longer have to listen to him share way too much information about his digestion process, nor will he likely feel the need to tell you about his awesome, uber toilet that will wash you, dry you, do your laundry and vacuum your floors. It also means that if you plan to dine with us any time, ever, for the rest of our lives, you will have to listen to us ask about every ingredient in every dish and then tell everyone that he can't eat it and possibly bring our own food along.

What this means for me... is a lot more.

As a wife and mother, I'd say that I spend a cool 50% of my life thinking about what to make for dinner, shopping for food for dinner, making food for dinner, baking goodies for after dinner (or before) and cleaning up the dishes from dinner. And now, none of this involves flour. Excuse me, none of this involves WHEAT flour. I can use lots of other kinds of flour. Observe...

In my pantry, I've also got potato starch, xanthum gum, sorghum flour and brown rice flour. And maybe a couple others. I'd have to check.

I'm learning that no matter what kind of flour/starch cocktail you manage to come up with, you really can't recreate the texture and flavor of good old all purpose wheat flour... but sometimes we can get close, and we can get creative. And its completely worth it, because it's not just Brent that can't eat wheat. Of course, Lizzy's test came back positive as well.

She's been a total trooper with it. She loves rules and structure and seems to be thriving on her new dietary restrictions. We took her to a bakery last weekend to get a special cupcake, she was so excited.

And now, I'm that mom following her to school and church and birthday parties explaining that my child has "special dietary needs" and bringing along her own snacks and treats. I don't like it very much. I'm hoping that eventually, people will just know that she can't have wheat and I won't have to hover so much. Or that she'll be self regulating when it comes to her diet. She's pretty uptight and tends to enjoy self deprivation, so I can see that happening before too long.

Isn't life funny? So here's to curve balls and gluten free cooking and a healthy family!

Getting back to reality

So... Christmas came and went. So did New Years. School has started again as well as dance and work and everything that comes with real life. I'm half relieved and half disappointed. I didn't take a single photograph of our Christmas festivities, partly because I'm embarrassed to show how over indulged we all were. Brent got some cute videos, but they're on Brent's phone, not my computer. I went out of town for a week and didn't even bring my camera. Life has passed me by and I've got nothing to show for it.

Apparently I've been on autopilot for a while now and it's time to kick myself and start functioning again... hence the blogging even though I've got nothing to blog about.

Since I haven't got anything to blog about, I thought I'd show you a little Christmas present that I got myself. I'm so thoughtful and I knew exactly what I wanted. I buy myself the best presents.

I'm referring to the red poster on the wall.

The one that says "creative minds are rarely tidy" (as opposed to all the other red posters on the wall)

Basically, I bought this because it made me smile.

It made me smile because my house is ALWAYS messy.

I have said many a time that my house is always messy because my mind is just too free and creative to be restricted by silly conventions... like cleanliness.

I've always said this in jest, but apparently I'm not the only person to have had the thought, which is why I smiled when I saw the poster.

From now on, when you come to my house, I will no longer be constantly apologizing for its current state and will, instead, be hiding behind the guise that I am "a creative mind."

I find the whole thing to be very pleasing.

As you can see from the photo, I've got some room left for another poster and I intend to fill it with one of the following.

or

They are, of course, both parodies of the ever popular...

...that the whole world seems to have a copy of.

Anyone wanna weigh in on which one I should get. I like the one referring despondency, but, I don't know, it kinda makes me just want to sit around. I wonder why.

It will be my own little wall of cynicism. Actually, it's technically a backsplash, so you can call it my backsplash of cynicism. If you're in to that kind of stuff. You know. Technicalities. I'm too creative for them, myself.

*Edited to say... I often talk about a time when I was a teenager and I cleaned my room and kept it clean for like, an entire month, which was an accomplishment for me. After a while, I got so sick of it that I messed it up on purpose. A while ago, I related the story to a friend of mine in my ward. She's probably about my mom's age and I we were talking about how hard it's always been to keep things in order. I thought that she was a kindred spirit and would understand my plight. When I told her my theory about enjoying the mess on a certain level, she said

"no, I don't think that's it. I think you're lazy."

I like her even more now.

Adventures in parenthood

Charlie... might be the death of me.

Seriously, if he doesn't kill me, I'm not entirely sure what will. The upside of that is that if he doesn't kill me, I will believe myself to be invincible, which could come in handy from time to time.

Not a single one of you who has boys every accurately communicated the amount of energy and patience that's required to manage a two year old boy and I hold you all personally responsible for my current state of emotional instability.

To anyone who might, at some point in their life, find themselves responsible for managing a two year old boy, I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that he might be the death of you. There, I warned you. Don't blame me.

Case in point... The other day, Charlie was quietly upstairs playing with his sister while I visited with a friend downstairs. I should have know. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! Never, I repeat, never let your two year old boy play quietly upstairs. Two year old boys don't play quietly. They play very loudly and get into mischief quietly. This is a fact of life.

He finally came downstairs covered in his sister's special order, not cheap eczema cream.

It was deluxe.

First, I gasped, then I may have cried a teeny bit, then I just started laughing and grabbed my camera. I figured it was the healthiest way to deal with the whole situation.

And considering the amount of shame he displayed, I imagine he probably didn't need me to get mad at him. Look at him, he knows what he's done.

Let us pray that he's learned his lesson because he generally uses up all the patience I've got for him and the girls before we get to the end of Monday. This week, I've cleaned up wet dog food out of the heating vent, taken him to the ER when he fell out of shopping cart at Costco, prevented him from running out of Wal-mart into traffic (again) as well as all the little things like cleaning up mud off my wool rug, waking up at 5:30 every morning and dealing with endless temper tantrums.

Lucky for him, he's got his looks to fall back on.

Think Pink!

Lizzy was invited to a Pinkalicious birthday party today, so we got her all dressed up in as much pink as we could find...

It suits her well, if I do say so myself.

It's dancy dance time!

So, I believe that during the summer, you all were tortured with my rants over dance - my dance rants, if you will - and how my unnecessarily strong opinions would ultimately effect my daughters and their happiness.

Well, I finally got over myself and signed my girls up for dance. Funny how that worked out.

Actually, it's worked out really well for us. I mean, we had to get over Jane being determined that she wasn't ever going again and that she hated ballet and Lizzy screaming and crying and spitting and hitting and crying and not getting out of the car and not letting go of my leg for several weeks, but ever since we pushed through that, it's been great.

Last week, we finally made it to their winter recital and I had to post our pictures.

I haven't been the biggest fan of our costumes in the past, but this year, we totally scored.

Jane got in the car and said "mom, my costume is the most beautiful costume I've ever seen!"

There were a lot of princess costumes at the recital, so we're thinking that the spring recital theme is something princess related.

Buster had to get in on the action.

Lizzy has a Cinderella costume this time and although I had to fork out a small fortune for the Cinderella costume, at least it will make an awesome dress up or Halloween costume later on.

I think that she liked it too.

Aw. Sisterly love. We don't see much of that around here, so let's take another picture to remind us that it exists.

There we are. I'll pull this up and look at it next time they are upstairs pulling each other's hair and screaming for my intervention.

This is Jane with her buddy, Abby. They did so great in their dance together. They are getting old enough that they can actually dance and do it well instead of just adorably stumbling around on the stage.

Lizzy also did great on the stage. I was fairly certain that she wouldn't even put that costume on. And if she DID, I was very certain that she wouldn't let me do her hair. If she'd let me do that, I was positive that there was no way she'd keep those ribbons around her neck and head and if she would, I knew I'd never get her to go backstage peacefully. If somehow I managed to get her backstage, I was prepared to be called back to get her because I knew she'd throw a Lizzy fit. If by some miracle she got on the stage, I was expecting to watch her curl up in the fetal position or stand there staring blankly and sucking on her fingers.

Shockingly, none of the above happened. She trotted up and did her dance like a pro. I knew that she knew the whole thing because she would tell me all the choreography. She wouldn't show me, she'd just tell me.

"you put this arm up in the air and then you turn around and then you put your hands by your tummy and shake"

I never saw her do a single step until the recital.

Leslie and Ben came. Ben is a big fan of dance recitals and likes to come if he possibly can. I forgot to get a picture of him, but he was also very proud of the girls. I let him pick out a rose for each of them and Leslie brought them candy. The dance studio gave them a little gift bag too, so I guess no one noticed that I didn't really actually do anything for them, you know, other than all the stuff I did.

That's kind of a weird photo, girls. Let's try again. Look at mom! Say cheese!

No, Lizzy. Look over here! One, two, three....

Oh never mind. I give up.