Someday

Someday I will update this again. Not today though.

German

I'm in that honeymoon stage with German right now. You know, like when you understand a language but aren't fluent in it and everything sounds better and more profound in that language? The meanings seem purer, unadulterated by the relationships and connotations you've made to the words themselves. What would be cheesy or cliché in a language you are too familiar with is touching and profound in the new one. I feel a bit like an pre-teen with a crush, doodling the words to cheesy love songs and poems over my notebooks because they, "speak to my soul" but really, I feel like the meanings behind the clichés are always profound otherwise they never would have become cliché, only the words got stale.

Therefore,

Doch ich bleib stumm, sag dir nichts davon
denn sonst lauf ich Gefahr, dass du plötzlich verschwindest
Es fing so unverbindlich an, jetzt haben wir beide Angst
wir spielen dieses Spiel schon viel zu lange

Ich tu so ganz unnahbar als würd's mich nicht interessieren
was du gerade machst und mit welcher Frau du so lange telefonierst
Ich bleib bei mir, ich hab es mir versprochen
es gibt so viel zu verlieren auf dem Weg zu dir

doch manchmal, manchmal wünsch ich mir, dass du einfach sagst
manchmal, manchmal wünsch ich mir, dass du einfach sagst
wie sehr du mich magst


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRp9W68_b0

Back to School

When I started blogging I promised myself that it was not going to turn into another source of guilt but still I feel very guilty for not being better about keeping up with it.

Anyway, where did I leave off? Christmas!! Christmas with a four year old is awesome! 4-10 are the golden Christmas years. The Christmas season was so much fun, we went to Santa’s wonderland, decorated the tree, made Christmas cookies, visited family, sang songs and counted down the days to Christmas. He loved seeing the presents pile up under our tree and would have me go through each one and tell him who it was for until he knew most of them from memory.

Our Christmas plans were to go into the woodlands on Christmas Eve, spend the night with my parents and do Christmas morning there with my family and then at 1pm go over to Jack’s dad’s and spend have Christmas dinner with them. Corrie came too. 

So, on Christmas eve Jack and I spent the night snuggled together in a twin bed in the woodlands. Christmas got off to a rough start. Jack woke up sick :( :(

I tried to cheer him up by giving him the special present first, the one he had been asking for and hoping for the most, but he couldn’t even open it; he just lay on the floor next to it. 

He couldn't even eat grandma's delicious Cinnamon-rolls. 

Everyone was pretty bummed, but luckily he started feeling better. IT WAS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! He was well enough to finish presents at my parent’s house and get to his dad’s in time. He got tons of presents there, played with his cousins, and ate turkey like nobody's business. You would have never known how the day started.

Back to reality:

The holidays are over. School has started. My schedule (which was suppose to be light) is packed. The best part of the holiday was getting to say “yes” so often.

Can we go to the park? 

Yes. 

Right now? 

Yes.

                                                       You wanna jump on the trampoline? 

                                                       Yes.

                                                       You wanna play me CandyLand mom? 

                                                       Yes.

                                                       Will you build my lego ship? 

                                                       Yes.

 School has a way of turning a lot of my "yes" answers into "hang on, in a minute, just let me finish this real quick" answers. I love school, but I don't love that. 

Jack's Christmas List

1. Cars in a box
2. A Puppet Show
3. a balloon
4. A picture of me Jack
5. mickey mouse angel
6. a pillow
7. Ironman
8. A real live rabbit and carrots for the rabbit to eat
9. A real live penguine
10. A rain shield (I have no clue what that is, but it is NOT an umbrella!!)
11. "A potato so I can eat it"

So, there you have it, though I doubt it will make your shopping any easier.

Update

Finally, it’s December. I am so glad it is no longer November! Life becomes barely manageable in November. Professors love to pile on the work in November; that’s when all the papers are due. It’s also the month of my birthday, Meredith’s birthday, the beginning of Sinterklaas and Thanksgiving. There have been times that I have wanted to blog but the thought of having to bring it up to date was just too daunting.

Here are some highlights:

I got this in the mail and it made my day week. I got a card last year too, how does he remember birthdays without facebook? How did anyone remember birthdays without facebook?

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We ate delicious food, took naps, went to the park, and then Meredith, Jack, Jenn and I piled in Mom and Dad’s king sized bed to watch a Pumpkin chunkin’ show.

Zach, Jack and I got to celebrate a night of Hanukkah with Jack’s Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. We had originally only intended to drop off Hanukkah gifts at the doorstep anonymously and run away. Jack was super excited about it and it was a great lesson on selfless giving…until we got caught! Jack and his older cousin Silas played with Nerf guns most the time and I got to hold baby Josiah. It was also strange doing something with Zach, Jack, and I together, but it was a good strange and Zach and I didn’t argue or get on each others nerves.

I finally organized my craft/FS closet and I’m working on the room as a whole. There is no before picture…it’s just too embarrassing.

I found the bookshelf at wal-mart and it fit the space perfectly. In an attempt to make it look more Elizabeth and less Wal-mart I covered the back part with wrapping paper. Choosing which paper to use was the hardest part, but it doesn’t really make a difference anyway since you can’t see it. Oh, well.

 

I found out that the hardest things about organizing my craft stuff is not getting off track. As I go through my stuff a million and a half ideas for new projects pop into my head and it takes a lot of self control to not start a new project. Sometimes I don’t have that much control and I took a break to make this:

And two of these:

And then I crocheted a scarf for Jack's bear:

It did finally get organized though and I'm so glad it did... just please don't ask me about my fabric stash.

A cold front decided to come in Thursday and it got really cold! There is an ice storm north of us and the weather channel was saying that power could be knocked out for days (in the dallas region). I guess that Picnic Katie and I were planning for Today is going to be indoors! I hope the power doesn’t get knocked out here though (although we are prepared to hunker down if necessary) The cold front did give me an excuse to make it a Wassail and Soup night (as if I needed an excuse).

I actually first heard of wassail a few weeks ago at a Relief Society function and since then I've made it more times than I'm willing to admit. 

Thursday was also pakjesavond, the last night of Sinterklaas. Jack got this Smurf mushroom and we ate kruid noten. No more putting a shoe out at night, no more singing Sinterklaas Kapoentje (and Jack finally has all the words down). Jack seems to be taking it better than I am though.

Lekker!

I decided that Jack could stay home from school yesterday because it was so cold and I just wanted to hunker down with him and have a snuggle day.

How could I resist more of this?

birthday

This was a birthday weekend. Here, have some pictures; I'm feeling lazy.

This is a cake.

 This is a card

 This is a present.

 This is a Silly String fight

 This is a Silly String clean-up photo op.

 

 This is family

 This is the craft we didn't have time for.

Candy Corn

Halloween is just not Halloween without candy corn, and this year I decided to make my own. I learned a lot from this experience:
1. Candy Corn is bad for you, really bad for you. If you had the choice to eat a handful of candy corn or a handful of fondant, eating the fondant would be the healthier choice. Yikes!
2. What store bought candy corn is trying to be. There was this ah-ha moment of "oh, so that's what they were going for, that's what it's suppose to taste like." 

I used:
This Recipe: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/mighty-appetite/2007/10/getting_handy_with_candy_corn.html

You Need:
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup non-fat milk powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light corn syrup
5 tablespoons salted butter*
 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Red and yellow food coloring

* original recipe calls for unsalted, but I used salted at the advice of Cakespy at Seriouseats (Her recipe didn't call for additional salt though) and I'm happy with the results.

Sift Powdered Sugar, powdered milk and Salt together. Set aside. 

In a heavy bottomed pot* bring butter, granulated sugar, corn syrup, and vanilla to a boil. When you start seeing bubbles, reduce to medium heat and bring to 225-230 degrees F, (right before it reaches thread stage)** Then remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar/milk/salt mix being sure to it's fully incorporated. ***

* Recipe says to use a wide shallow pan, but that makes it harder to get an accurate temperature.
** Recipe suggested this would take 5 minutes, It did not! After about 3 I was there, but this could be due to my ignoring the side bubbles.
*** This is the worst part! It starts to getting really hard to stir after you just add the first half of powdered sugar mix, and you really can't "get in there" because it's so hot. I couldn't seem to get the right leverage because it's so hot and you have to hold the pot in place as you try and stir the stuff in. I made a second batch and instead of mixing in the pot I transferred it to the Stand mixer. It was so much easier that way.

After it cools and firms up a bit (but not too much) divide it into 3 parts. Leave one white, dye one yellow, and one orange. (or really whatever colors you fancy)

After this point my hands were constantly covered in food coloring and candy dough so I stopped taking pictures. Sorry.

Roll the dough into snakes and line them up in the color order you want. Use a rolling pin to flatten them out a bit.

 Cut out the pieces.

You're not even confined to making the traditional triangle shape.

Enjoy!

Some P.S.es

1.) This exists!

2.) Jack and I are doing trunk-or-treat at the Church tonight... and this is how his costume looks:

I gotta get on that!