Sunday Ramblings

Moments that probably made people question my sanity today:

-I hit save instead of publish on a post I was starting for my month wrap up that I typically work on all month long... soooo, for those of you who get email updates... I am sorry for the lack of background that was supposed to be given to that snippet, but you're welcome for the laugh that the randomness surely had to give you ;)...

-At our church potluck today  I realized... my life is not normal to other people. As I filled my 14th plate of food. During my 5th time in line. #ipromisemostofthisisnotmine

*me as I see a young mom trying to juggle two plates and a baby* she might like some help.
*looks down at my two plates and all the little people around me* she would probably be able to get done faster by herself. Oh well, haha!

Our day got off to an interesting start when we barely got out of the door on time and then had to immediately turn around for the serving spoons we forgot... then our van started making an atrocious grinding noise! Thankfully, Daddy can figure out almost any problem within minutes, and after stopping to pick up some power steering fluid, the noise immediately stopped. But Mama noticed the car needed fueled, and after taking the time to fill up, we made it to church just as service started. Oh, what a morning! But still, we were able to enjoy good teaching (finishing up the 11th chapter if John), the wonderful reminders of communion, and some fellowship with others, and it was a good morning/early afternoon regardless!

Our later afternoon was spent preparing for some special guests we have coming tomorrow (!), and this evening we settled in for a family movie night. While preparing for it, I managed to break a pan lid (and do you know how terrifying it is to have to fish a pan lid screw out of a pot of hot oil with kernels ready to pop at any time? Leave it to me), but we survived ;). JoJo, who never finishes his popcorn (or... like... food), finished his cup tonight, crawled onto my lap, and started to eat out of the bowl Andrew and I were sharing... and then, not too long after, gives a little "wow" sigh, and says, "...I didn't remember this movie was so long..."
We were just over half way through. Lol!

Now we're ready for a new week of projects and plans and learning, whatever it may hold for us... and, despite feeling like this is a rambling, pointless post, I am ready for bed, and, honestly, couldn't write anything more concentrated until I have had a chance to journal and chronologically catergorize if I tried, haha. I spent my afternoon catching up in my bible reading instead of writing, because that was my priority no matter my "routine"! And that is as it should be... but it also means I will have to find some other time to sort my thoughts ;). And hopefully get some pictures taken for some post ideas I have (and maybe blog on my computer instead of my phone for once, because why don't I do what's best instead of convenient? Haha...)

What are your plans for the upcoming week :)?

Rejoicing in Hope,
Bri <3

Ice Cream v. Tooth Fairy

We went out to lunch with several members of our church this Sunday. Along with our family, and the visiting Pastor's family, there were about a dozen others there... we made up over half of the business in the three hours we were there, haha :). Daddy at one point asked the waitress, "Is the cook pulling his hair out yet?"
Look of "why would you think that": "Oh, no!"
Continues, very sincerely, "He doesn't have any hair to pull out."

While we were enjoying our lunch, we hear from the other end of the table(s -like, six, haha!) that Bethi had pulled a tooth. After we left, Tori told us that the conversation between them and a couple little boys who were there went something like this after the incident:
Little boy: "You'll have to remember to put that tooth under your pillow."
"We don't do the tooth fairy."
"Oh. Well I know the tooth fairy isn't real. You just loose a tooth and get free money for I don't know what reason-"
Abbi: "We get to stay up when we loose a tooth."
Little boy: "No. Fair."
Abbi hadn't even told them "we get to stay up and watch a movie and eat ice cream", she simply said "stay up," and he was so impressed, heehee :). It was cute!

Yes, we like cheese.

We went to the store the other day, and as we were checking out, our cashier had to go look at a younger cashier's register. While she was gone, he rang up our stuff for us, and came upon our cheese. (Mind you, we had went to stock up, haha!). He rings up a large block... "That's a lot of cheese."

Next were a couple of smaller but still large blocks of sharp cheese. "Y'all must like cheese," he continues. Then he picks up the block of Mozzarella cheese. "You guys must eat a LOT OF CHEESE!", he says in consternation. I nod my head and mention that we eat it ever day, as he spies bags of cheese sticks. "Oh my word, cheese STICKS?!" He gasps. I just laughed and nodded my head... and then he sees Mama throwing more items on the conveyor belt, and he asked "Um, is she with you?"

"Ya..." I answered.

"Oka- OHHHHHHHH! Okay..." he said, with a hint of understanding in his face as he noticed all the little ones around Mommy. It wasn't until then that I realized that he thought Tori and I, with two toddlers, were buying all that cheese, hahaha!

I think I'll have to "eat" my words...

I have told people many times that "I don't like any cake, except some chocolatey cakes, and only if they are done right". In my mind I was thinking of a chocolate cake or the gingerbread cake we make once a year as the only edible cakes out there, and only when they had chocolate frosting on them.

Well.

Tori gets out the dictionary this morning and her eyes fall upon the word cookies. I hear, "Cookies are cakes?!" from the kitchen, and I was like "What!?". She explained, "It says right here cookies are "a small flat or slightly raised cake"."

In my mind is running, "Oops. I can't say I don't like cakes. I love cookies..."

"Let's see what the definition of cake is... "A baked mixture of flour, eggs, milk, and sugar"", she announced. That would happen to fit the definition of brownies, cinnamon swirl bread, cinnamon rolls, and many other things. All of which I enjoy immensely.

In other words... I like more kinds of cake than the kinds I dislike. And I might want to know completely what a word includes before I say it's not high on my list of favorites. Haha!

Cookie Conversations

Peter, our little cookie monster, had been begging for cookies all.day.long. Mommy ended up looking online at cookie recipes after he asked about an hour ago, and he was staring at the Pinterest wall full of baked goodies... "Oooo. Yummy! Cookie! Cookie!".
Mommy finally stated,  "Bri, I think you're just going to have to make him cookies.". Peter took a flying leap off his stool and ran out of the room, calling, "Come on! Come on!".
While we worked on them, Emmi said they were yummy. I asked her how she knew, since we hadn't had any yet!
"They look yummy, so they are yummy!", she answered. Peter nodded. "Yummy!"
"Peter knows they are yummy, because he made them with you and they are his," Emmi continued.
"They're not mine?" I teased her.
She answered, "No, you made them too, so they *are* yours too!"
"Oh, is THAT how it works?" I questioned.
"Yep!", she said, "Because it rhymes!". Haha... okay! Thanks for telling me, I didn't know ;)!

As Emmi was saying...

I was sitting in Mommy's arm chair a couple days ago with Josiah, and Emmi came up and started talking with me. "Do you know I love you?" I asked.

"Yep!"

"How do you know?"

"Because God told me!!!"

This is actually a normal conversation, and I *love* this answer, but what she followed it up with this time was hilarious...

"Do you know how God told me? Because he can talk. Abbi said he can't talk because he doesn't have a mouth, but that is *not* true! He *doesn't* have a mouth, but he *can* talk!"

One of our catechism questions is "Who is God?", and the answer is, "God is a spirit and does not have a body like man." This has, so far, been the most confusing for the two little girls ;). 

Haha :). I love her (frequently, though not always), sophisticated way of wording things... the other day, someone interrupted her when she was talking to me. When Emmi could get a word in edgewise, she exclaimed, "AS I was saaaaying...". Haha :).

It Was Quite the Day Yesterday...

Hahaha. Since I ran out of yarn (one inch from the end of the stripe! Do you KNOW how annoying that is?! Haha...), and couldn't work on the baby blanket, I spent my free time catching up on emails... and helping Mommy destroy reorganize the house.

Which resulted in a whole lot of laughter. And cries of fake (and maybe not-so-fake) terror. And hammers and nails and vacuums and mess. That actually made something pleasant when it was completely done. Heehee :).

Mommy decided that the library would work better as the craft room, and vice versa. (It's hard to sew in the former craft room, because it doesn't have an over head light, making it difficult to, umm, see crafts, but you can just sit by a lamp to read if it were to become the library. Enter plan.)

Mommy called me upstairs and I found her on her knees doing what appeared to be ripping the floor up. I told her that I thought her nesting this time might be just a bit obsessive if she was pulling the floor up just to vacuum under it ;). She responded with "This is nasty... I wonder what I'll find in the walls?..." She was really removing the floorboard connectors so that we could scoot the shelves out of the library. We started moving shelves. Slowly. Oh, so slowly. Of course the first one we picked to move, the back needed nailed back on. It just stands to reason, haha. We thought we would nail it back when we got to the craft room/new library. And we did. But we now believe it should have been done a bit sooner, due to the precarious tipping of the shelf there at the end. Then we started the rubik's cube shifting of putting stuff from the craft room in the hall, so that we could get the rest of the library items in the craft room, so that we had room to put the craft room stuff away. Haha :), Confused yet?

So, the things we learned about moving shelves without taking the books off first: when you are moving a shelf full of books, you must push near the bottom, otherwise the ONLY thing that moves is the top. This one thing you must remember. And Mommy firmly believes that when shelves are involved my name is "Oh ye of little faith". (I told her I had complete faith... that a disaster was forming ;)....) Oh, and make sure the back of the shelf stays ON the back of the shelf. And make sure that the bottom stays connected. The shelves staying in is a good idea too, if you think about it.

Because the second shelf we moved, we moved oh-so-carefully. The bottom plank fell out, but it does that all the time, we have often moved it without a problem and then replaced that plank, hahaha ;). It was working fine, until the second shelf up, which we later discovered must have been missing one of it's pegs, decided to tumble down, and hit the side, pushing it apart, making it next to impossible to move, haha. It took a bit of, um, propping to solve that one, but it's stable now. Heeheehee ;). Really, it's fine, but we were worried for a while there ;). The next shelf was also pulling apart at the side before we even started (I don't think  those screws know what they are supposed to do, hahaha!), but Mommy fixed it with a push, and viola! Done... until I realized that a shelf peg was on upside down (that sooooo could have fallen like the last one, scary thought!), and went to fix it. Mommy tells me to be careful sticking my head under the shelf, it could be dangerous for the shelf to land on my glasses... um, ya... and then she lifts her arm up, as I sit up, and somehow my glasses ended up on the back of my head...these glasses have been a blessing, but they have caused several laughs as well, Tori, for one, cracks up when I stick my head in the oven or dishwasher too quickly and they fog over, haha!

Then Mommy wanted to move that second shelf, that had caused us so many problems, over, and of course the Encyclopedias were back on the shelf, making it terribly heavy! She was trying to do it with the least moving of books as possible, since she just finished organizing the books last week, heehee. At one point I looked at her and asked "Is this really any quicker?" She laughed and said "If we have to fix every shelf that we move? Maybe not...  but this is quite entertaining!".

We finally got that third shelf in  place, and Mommy's victory cry was, "We made it! And we didn't break anything this time! Well... it did kind of fall apart, but it was already broken! So that doesn't count."

The other shelves were moved without a trouble... although one shelf made a lovely little snapping noise where the shelf hit a floor board that was slightly higher then the rest. Mommy stopped and asked  "WHAT was that?!" I glanced at the shelf and then down the stairs that we were perilously near, and answered, "I don't know. Just keep moving. If it collapses, we don't want it falling down the stairs...". Nothing bad happened, and Mommy then announced "Woohoo! We finally got one in without breaking it!!!" Tori answered "Umm... isn't that what you said last time?" Mommy replied, "Ya, but since it was falling apart before we started, I don't count it..."... And by the way, a shelf full of magazines is heavy. Just saying. Mommy and I worked so hard to pull that shelf, but once we took the magazines off the bottom shelf, I was able to pull it out from the wall alone, haha!

We were done in here! We thought ;)... We then moved two shelves over again, when Mommy decided that they would look better on the other side of the room. And then she noticed that the two we had just moved didn't match each other. But we left them anyway. Heehee :).

And then we started moving everything from the hall to the new craft room (knocking a clock off the table in the process, but, "That isn't any more broken then it was to begin with, so that doesn't count either!"), and Mommy organized it to her hearts content (and a little beyond...), while I made a pie (chocolate, for medicinal purposes), a maple twist for breakfast today (gotta love Mommy's pregnancy cravings!), and browned hamburger for supper. Which we did eventually eat... and then collapsed, after cleaning the lovely little mess that supper, and some toddlers who were reveling in our being busy all day, created. Haha ;). But it does look so much better today, and I think it was worth it, now that I'm not staring in fear at a shelf full of books wavering over my head ;). Heehee :).

Love This Little Girl :)...

(First, side note: My apologies for the long periods of silence around here lately. I have been waiting for a time after I was "caught up" blogging to get back into really blogging again... and I give up. Haha :). I don't know if formerly promised posts will show up or not at some future date, but I'm hopefully back to stay anyway :)... Okay, you can proceed with the post ;).)

This afternoon, Mommy said out loud to herself, "Hmmm, should I clean the closets, or the kitchen?..."

I was sitting nearby, with Emmi on my lap, and Em promptly answered "The Kitchen!!!" Mommy giggled, and asked "Why do you say that?".

Emmi, figuring that she had given the wrong answer, answered "The closets, then?!" She then glanced out the window, turned excitedly back to Mommy, and announced, "Every time it snows, we have popcorn and hot chocolate!"

"But it didn't snow today," Mommy replied.

Emmi gave her a very knowing look, such as only Emmi can give ;), and answered, "Ummmm... that's why we're not having popcorn and hot chocolate today!"

Heehee :). She also has a very unique sense of fashion...

:)

It's hard to believe that she's about to have two little ones under her! I thought it was ironic that she, as my "buddy", was calling my butterfly necklace a "buddy-fly" earlier, especially since she *knows* how to say butterfly, haha. She is so funny!

An Epic Tale of the History of the Evolving of the Muffins

(A light, long, true, yummy and humorous post about this family's association between muffins and aspiring cooks...)

Our family has this thing for muffins. We love muffins. They are a yummy, memory filled breakfast. They are the first "involved" breakfast that young cooks make by themselves in our family. And they are down right humorous.

My memories of muffins go back to before Bethi was born. Mommy would make a batch of Muffins every Monday for "Muffin Morning Monday". Tori and I always begged for a spoonful of the batter. Which Mommy thought was absolutely disgusting, but let us have some anyway ;).

When Mommy was expecting Bethi, I took over the muffins when Mommy started having morning sickness. This was great fun for me, and I traded in eating batter for snitching some of the dried blueberries in the mix. Heehee :). Daddy taught me how to cook, what can I say? I fondly remember a Christmas in Indiana when Daddy and I made the peanut butter balls while Tori helped Mommy with some of the other treats, and Daddy gave me some of the filling, telling me, as he did so, "That's what makes cooking with Daddy fun, isn't it ;)?". Mommy didn't find out about that philosophy until just recently, haha :). 

After I had mastered those simple mixes, Mommy got a great idea. She bought a mix with canned blueberries instead of dried! It also involved adding more than eggs and water to the mix. And that became known as one of the worst muffin making experiences I ever had ;).  After the egg rolling off the counter and cracking on the floor (and Tori promptly running to the bathroom when she saw it, heeheehee ;) ), the jar lids all jumping out of the cupboard at me when I opened it ("No worries Mom! This time it was just a lid!"), and the juice stains that were left on the counter from the canned blueberry juice (which were finally taken off with a magic eraser), we finally had muffins. But we never bought that particular kind of mix again ;).

Once we started making more foods from scratch, muffins also changed. I now made them from scratch every week, and Daddy spent a good bit of time helping me convert all our recipes to be used with whole wheat flour. He worked through our chocolate chip muffins with me, and we spent an evening making blueberry muffins from scratch, using all the tips Daddy had collected to make delicious muffins :). Don't over beat, only grease the pans halfway up the sides, do not over fill, don't open the door until at least 3/4s of the way into the baking time, get them in the oven as soon as you are done putting them in the pan so that they don't fall. Most of which I had not known before ;).

And then I made these. I changed the recipe slightly, and they became a favorite! (One thing you must remember, though. After we found out that Andrew was sensitive to cinnamon, I cut that down, so they now have a stronger ginger flavor. So, although they are, officially called Cinnamon muffins, Daddy asks for Ginger muffins when he wants them. And Tori calls them Cinnamon Sugar, due to the topping. And Abbi and Emmi call them Brown Sugar, due to the color of the topping. But Mommy continues to call them Cinnamon. By the way, I make muffins that are called Brown Sugar muffins. And they are not these. Can you remember all that without reading through it a second time? Heeheeheehee :).)

I can't think of too many mistakes Tori has made while making muffins (to which, if she was reading over my shoulder- where is she, come to think of it?!- she would say "That's because... I'm perfect. *evil laughter*." She did stir some blueberry muffins she was helping me with one time so hard that they turned green... but I go on...

Bethi is our newest little muffin maker :). When she woke up early today, I asked her if she wanted to make the muffins today :). She eagerly said yes, and the next thing I knew, she had called Andrew in to help her. And Abbi. And Emmi. Yes, four people under the age of nine made breakfast together. She's much braver than I am.

Amid navigating between multiple stools, and eating quite a few apples, they worked on making the muffins. 

All was going well.

Until all of the sudden I heard "Ummm... Bri?"

"Yes?"

"Were we suppose to grind the wheat?"

"Ummm... are you telling me you didn't?!"

"No."

"How do you forget to grind the wheat?!!!"

"Well, the recipe doesn't say to grind it..."

(Neither does it say to pour the wheat in the bowl, my darling. It says flour...)

"What else have you put in the bowl?"

"Umm.... the baking soda. And the rest of the flour. And the last of our baking powder."

And she wasn't joking in any way, shape or form.

After much debate, we settled on using a mesh strainer to sift the wheat out of the rest of the ingredients. And put it through the grinder ;).

All fixed, they went back to work. Happily, they stirred all the ingredients together. And remembered they had forgotten to stir the ground wheat into it. So they stirred it again. And started putting the muffin batter in the pans (after eating some of said batter). And found a mound of flour in the corner of the bowl. So they stirred it again. And broke the spoon.

A spoon that we have been using for as long as I can remember making muffins. That they then had to dig the bottom out of the batter. And find another spoon. Fare thee well ye ancient spoon. Hahahaha!

By this time I was starving (I don't eat apples in the morning unless there in a fruit salad... Tori doesn't either, but leaves the complaining to me, anyway), so I plopped on the couch next to Tori and started my most professional "humorous dramatic starvation jokes". You can just imagine that part. But Tori was laughing pretty hard. Hahaha :).

The muffins got put in the oven, and Mommy came downstairs, and got to hear the whole story. Daddy came down in the middle, and was very confused, so we had to back the story up.

By that time, the muffins were ready to come out of the oven. We pulled them out, mixed up the cinnamon sugar... and Bethi sprinkled it on as I looked for a pastry brush to brush on the butter. When she saw the brush in my hand, she couldn't believe herself. Heeheehee :)! I brushed the butter on, and she put more cinnamon sugar on the top, so that it would stick ;). We called Tori down for breakfast, and she asked "Did you put the butter on them before the sugar?" To which Bethi answered "Not at first..."

We were laughing so hard! And they were yummy, despite it all :)! We'll make a wonderful muffin baker out of her yet... with plenty of memories of her own ;)!!!

Who Would Have Thought?!

Supper is cooking, the little ones are finishing cleaning their room, and I'm taking a little break from my current, self-imposed, "nothing but trip posts and Thankful Thursdays until trip posts are all posted" posting habit of late. I thought I'd share a tiny update, and a humorous removing "paint" tip I gained this afternoon. :)

Daddy left for a business meeting last Monday, and is arriving back on Friday. It is a disappointment that he had to leave again, seemingly just after we got here together, but we are looking forward to him getting back :). We're taking this time to finish some of the little things that are still waiting to be done from our move. Things like unpacking the miscellaneous box, and reorganizing the library shelves and the girl's room closet (and, like any other time we do any cleaning, folding laundry and cleaning our bedroom, haha ;)!).

Poor Peter did something to his little knee earlier, and we were afraid at first that it was sprained, but he is using it wonderfully at the moment, so either it was a very slight sprain or it was just such a bad bump it hurt longer than you'd think it should. Why does it always happen when Daddy is gone?! we are just thankful he is okay :).

While working in our room earlier, I was contemplating going to get some paint from our garage, and painting over the big white mark that has glared at me from my bed every night since we moved in (on the fourth, mind you). The spot has bothered me, but I never felt up to getting the paint out, finding the brushes (I'm not sure where they are!), and laying down plastic. So, I've left it. Today I was trying to decide whether I should paint and then do the closet, or just paint tomorrow. I was staring at it, and thought to myself, "That is the thinnest layer of paint I have ever seen! If they were going to use white instead of yellow, they could have at least made it thick so that it looked finished." I really thought it looked odd, so I brushed it with my finger. And realized that that said finger was now white. I got really excited :P, and ran for a wet rag. I started (gently!) rubbing the wall.

"Tori, come look at this!" I exclaimed in excitement.

She came and looked. "Great. Now all we have to do is keep it wet," she replied rather drily. Haha!

"It isn't because it's wet," I assured her. "Whatever is on here comes right off. Just- brushes off."

45 seconds later, the white splotch was gone. I don't know if it was chalk (that's what it felt like!), or what, but it's gone. (And, thanks to a magic eraser, so are the black marks from our vanity hitting the wall). 

And I waited a month and a half to get rid of the stuff.

So my painting tip just happens to be... make sure it really needs painted before you go through the work of painting.

Haha!