Domestic Goddessness

Here are two of my latest projects:

 Libby's Razzleberry pie.  It wasn't as great as I was hoping, but I learned a lot about making pie.  Jay is a total pie person, and I'm completely a cake person, but on our past trip to Mass to visit Jay's family, his mom may have single-handedly convinced me to perfect the art of the pie.  I have never had better crust in my life, than on her new favorite pie crust recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook  - a book that has been on my wishlist for quite sometime now...  Sadly, my crust wasn't as good as hers, but I am driven to figure it out.  I'll let you know when I get there...

I also finally finished Peach's quilt!  It was supposed to be ready for Iris to use before she got here, but it took me a couple extra weeks to find time to finish the binding.  Luckily it's hot enough still that she probably won't actually need it on her bed for awhile.

My sister-in-law's mother so so SO generously offered to machine quilt it for me.  Doesn't it look amazing?!!

Thanks Iris for patiently holding it up until I could get the lighting good enough :)

Peach's First Scary Bloody Injury

Doesn't look so bad now that she's cleaned up, but when I responded to her screams her mouth was full of blood and after I had to clean up a trail of blood on the tile and change my clothes and hers to get out the bloodstains.

Basically, The Frog tackled her on the tile and it didn't end well...

Peach's Hair Products

The Frog, like all babies, was a messy eater.  (Who am I kidding, he still makes a mess!)  But Peach out does him on one particular front- she always seems to end up with so much stuff in her hair!  

 On this particular occasion, she thought her hair needed a shine boost and what better to do it than macaroni and cheese with peas.

She always applies her product with great care.

Outings with Iris & 1st home-cooked Japanese meal

Iris made the Timpview Volleyball team!  Hooray!

However, this also means that she spends (usually more than) 4 hours a day at practice and her time will only be more limited once school starts.  So, we're trying to take advantage of her relatively free schedule (and lack of homework) to see some of the biggies before school starts.

First off, we took advantage of Thanksgiving Point's $2 Tuesdays and took her to the Dinosaur Museum.  (The Frog's favorite)

I'm finding it to be less picture-worthy every time I go (I already have a picture of The Frog playing in the water/sand/etc etc), which saddens me.  Nevertheless, I did manage to take a couple shots.

Believe it or not, this is one of many pictures I tried to take here, and this is the best one...

I took complete advantage of Iris's love for cooking and asked her if she wanted to make a Japanese dinner one night.  To my delight she seemed eager to do so and I discovered there is actually an Asian market pretty close to my house (and very close to BYU campus).  It was fun to look through there and have her see certain snacks and say "oohhhh" or laugh.  I wish I had taken pictures of the ingredients before she put them together.  This picture is half of a "his and her" set of chopsticks she gave us.

This is her miso soup.  It smelled so good and was very tasty too!  It's basically water, this miso soup paste stuff, very cute-looking and very tall, skinny mushrooms, green onion, and tofu.

This is hard to tell what it is, (I'll take a picture of it frying next time...) but it's tofu wrapped in seaweed, dipped in egg and fried, and sitting in some kind of... sauce?  broth?  It was good.

This is one of the snacks at the store that she stopped and said "OH! I like these!" So I thought we should get them to try.  That was Peach's favorite element of the meal.  We also all had large mounds of sticky rice.  I really like that stuff!  I can see how they can eat so much of it plain.  I love how light, yet filling everything was.  I didn't love how when you eat sticky rice with a baby on your lap, you end up with it permanently plastering the lower half of your body.  They don't call it sticky rice for nothing!

Saturday we went to the Hogle Zoo- Everyone's first time except for me, and I can't even remember the last time I went.  They have this Zoorassic Park thing going on right now where there are all these robotic dinosaurs that move and roar or spit water at you and The Frog LOVED THEM.  He was much more interested in looking at the fake dinosaurs than the real animals.

I took too many animal pictures- mostly because I wanted to practice manual focus.  I'll only include some of my favorites- I really like elephants.  There's just something about them that makes them seem so lovable.  Perhaps I should blame Snuffy.

This is a Lynx that I just happened to catch yawning.

The giraffes are sooo cool.  I love watching their tongues and they just have such interesting features.

These two were kind of giving each other a hug- rubbing up against each other, but not anymore by the time I tried to take a picture.  Still, aren't they just beautiful?

Had to get the classic drinking fountain shot.  The Frog thought it was really cool to drink in it's mouth and felt like he needed to reassure us that it wouldn't close on us.

I don't think I ever realized how long kangaroo's front arms were.  Cartoons always draw them to be so short!

The Frog was really really excited by the carousel and just HAD to ride it.  I was very surprised by his choice in seats.

Peach was content to watch and was a really really good sport about being in the stroller practically the whole time.

I don't even know what these are, but I love that one is feeling inside the other's ear. It reminds me of Dr. Seuss.  (One Fish Two Fish anyone?)

By the time we left, it was very hot and we were all worn out.  I sat in the back of the Honda, squished between two carseats and I don't think we had been in the car more than 5 minutes when I turned and saw this.

More Pics From My Phone

 I think this picture is so funny, thought I can't really pin-point why.  For some reason, The Frog and Peach really like hanging out in the shower in the morning.  The Frog likes to hand down the supplies to his sister.  Whether or not she likes it, is unclear.

 My little diva playing dress-ups with daddy.  haha.

 This is my lap-top case that The Frog loves to carry around and tell me "I'm going to work, mom!  See you later!"  If I'm lucky, he'll put on Jay's hiking boots and drape some wrapping paper ribbon around his neck too.  On this particular occasion, he somehow managed to take off down the street.  (daddy usually walks to work too...)   Also, I keep a USB memory device in that pink bag and he likes to walk around the house and use it as a whistle.

We moved the kids into the same room after we got back from vacation.  Bed-time instantly became very very very painful.  (as opposed to semi-painful)  Then, The Frog discovered he could climb into Peach's bed.  We don't really care too much, as long as he stays in his room and he's not making her cry.  Sometimes we can hear wild laughter from both of them on the monitor- it's awesome.  And every few nights we find this: 

 (Side note: I took this picture in pitch-black with my iPhone.  I couldn't believe a) how well it turned out and 2) that the flashes didn't wake them up!)