Month: October 2011

14 Hours, 1400 Miles


On Saturday N and I left the house at 6 am at flew to Seattle. It felt so strange to be flying without any luggage or carry-ons. From the airport we headed straight to the funeral. It was a really lovely service and afterwards there was a lot of catching up with family and swapping funny stories about Grandpa.

After the graveside service and a quick family lunch we headed back to the airport and few back to Salt Lake. Incredibly enough we were back home in time to put E to bed.

It was a surreal day in a lot of ways but I’m so glad we went. It was very comforting to be able to pay our respects to Grandpa.

Hearing people talk about him was really inspiring. He had a lot of good qualities that I want to emulate, especially the ability to find the funny aspect of any situation. Things that would bother most people didn’t annoy him; they amused him. Whomever he spent time with left feeling better about things than they did before.

How awesome would life be if more of us were like that?

So You Think You Can Dance?” Tour


For my birthday N gave me tickets to the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour. The performance was on Wednesday night and it was AMAZING. Those kids are incredible athletes. It was a really fun night out with N and was the highlight of what has been kind of a hard week for us.

During intermission we were chatting and I asked N why so many Mormon kids are really into dance (we were seated in the middle of a big crowd wearing “Team Caitlyn” shirts). His face got that lawyer-ish look it gets when he’s getting ready to launch into a long explanation of something.

“Well,” he said. “It goes back to the 60s and 70s. There was this bishop in Lehi who was against dancing…” I interrupted him by smacking him in the arm.

He had me right up until “in Lehi.” (Ha-ha, I love this guy.)

(By the way, the mill is only 10 minutes from our house and you should check it out if you’re ever in town. The cookie, pancake, and cake mixes they sell in their gift shop are supposed to be super yummy.)

I hope you have a nice weekend. N and I are gearing up for a whirlwind visit to Seattle for his grandpa’s funeral on Saturday. We leave the house at 6am, fly to SEA, go straight to the funeral and a family lunch, and then leave for the airport to fly back to SLC. It’s going to be a crazy 14 hours.

Goodbye, Grandpa

Grandpa and E, August 2008

We just found out that N’s grandpa passed away last night.

He was a wonderful man. Until his health went downhill we would see him once or twice a year when he stayed with us to attend local genealogy conferences. We loved having him around.

My own grandfathers died before I was born so he was the only grandpa I really knew and I loved spending time with him. He was a Grandpa straight out of central casting–funny and caring but with an ornery streak and the tendency to say slightly scandalous things and the self-awareness to enjoy saying them. Every once in a great while he would drop an outdated racial epithet in a conversation but I think he mostly did it to get a rise out of us and so we would chide him, “Grandpa, you can’t say that anymore!”

Being in his company was like being plunged into an ocean of Grandpa-y-ness. It was awesome.

He was always unfailingly kind to me and went out of his way to make me feel welcome as a member of the family. I will miss his humor, his wit, his kindness, and the example he set as a man devoted to his family and the Lord. We will miss him but I know that he’s with his wife and other loved ones now. I believe that families can be forever and that I’ll see him again.

Grandpa, we love you.

Olliegraphic Custom Bowls

Last week the custom bowls I ordered for E and some of his cousins came from Olliegraphic! I love how they turned out.

They’re normally $21 a piece + shipping but I had snagged some discount vouchers at Zulily which brought them into niece-and-nephew-Christmas-present range (we have a lot of them). I still have one voucher left which I’m going to use to order Mimi a bowl, but I’m holding off until we have a better idea of what color the little baldie’s hair is going to be. 🙂

If you’re interested in ordering, there are a few things you should know. The bowls are dishwasher-safe but not microwave-safe which makes them great for cereal but bad for, um, foods you might want to microwave. The custom plates, which I assume you also can’t put in the microwave, might be more inconvenient.

Also, I found the skin tones to be a little lighter than they looked on my screen. I picked the lightest shade (“fair”) for E and the next darkest shade (“light”) for his half-Korean cousins but with them side by side I have a hard them telling the difference and while they look super cute I think the next shade darker would have been better.

All and all, I’m really happy with how the bowls turned out and can’t wait to send them to my nieces and nephew. As gifts go, they’re cute and a little out-of-the-ordinary. Since they’re custom-made it takes about 3-4 weeks to receive your order so don’t procrastinate if you’re want to give them as Christmas gifts.

Quilt Binding

This Remix fabric by Ann Kelle was a major inspiration for my zigzag quilt. There are already so many bright colors in the quilt that throwing in this fabric as the binding may be little much. But I love it so much that I couldn’t resist. More is more, right? 🙂

Since this is my first quilt, every step in construction is new (and intimidating!) to me. I took a look at a couple of tutorials online and was psyching myself up to give binding the quilt a go when my mom arrived in town last week to visit my sister Jan. She’s an expert quilter so I, um, had her help me/do it for me instead. (I know, I know…but at this point I just wanted to get it finished. But I now that I’ve seen how it’s done I am totally going to bind the next one myself.)

So the quilt is finished and I’m really happy with it. I can see all of my mistakes (of which there are many) but both of the kids love snuggling with it which was the whole point. I’ll get pictures up as soon as I can.

Letter to Mimi: Month Eight

Dear Mimi,

I’m not going to lie, this month was a little hard for me. You, the baby who was basically sleeping through the night at two weeks, started waking up 3-4 times a night. You would wake up crying at 2 am, 3:30 am, 4:30 am, 5:00 am, and then be all smiles and and ready to start the day at 7 am. It was WRECKING me.

Fortunately the waking-4-times-a-night thing lasted only a few weeks. Now you’re getting up 1-2 times a night which, while far from ideal, is doable. I haven’t given up on getting you to sleep through the night, though. Your pediatrician told us that you’re physically capable of doing it so we’re trying to figure out how to help you do so. I just checked out a few books on sleep training from the library so we shall see, my friend. WE SHALL SEE.

During the day you continue to be a wonderfully pleasant baby. You’re interested in everything and laugh easily. I’ll sit you on down on the carpet with a few toys and you’ll happily play by yourself for 10-15 minutes at a time.

You’re still fascinated by your brother. He’s better at making you laugh than anyone else and is (usually) very gentle and kind with you. This last month you’ve been going through a hair-pulling stage and when E gets too close you grab his hair with your tiny fists and yank hard. You’ve actually pulled some of his hair out but he just laughs and doesn’t listen to me when I remind him not to get too close. He thinks you’re hilarious.


Watching the two of you together brings me joy in a way that I didn’t really anticipate. The other day I was listening to the radio and they were talking about sibling relationships and about how they’re the longest running relationships we have since your siblings are in your life before your spouse enters the picture and they’re there after your parents pass away. It makes me glad to think that you and E will always have each other.


Sweet Mimi, we all love you so. I wouldn’t change a thing about you (except for that pesky little waking-at-night habit–work on that, won’t you?)

Love,

Mama

Kitchen Remodel

(Click to see larger)

So for some reason I decided that this was the ideal time to start the kitchen remodel that I’ve been wanting to do for years. I’m doing as much of the work myself as I can because 1) our house isn’t fancy to begin so it doesn’t make sense to spend the $$$ it would cost to have it done professionally, and 2) I am under the delusion that I enjoy doing things like this myself.

I was really gung-ho to get started and have already taken down most of the cabinet doors to start sanding and painting them. But along with the “I am woman, hear me roar!” enthusiasm sometimes I feel overwhelmed and wonder what on earth I’ve gotten myself into. To tell you the truth it largely depends on how well Mimi (and I) slept the previous night. 🙂

But I’m already past the point of no return so I better just buckle down and get it finished. The goal is to have things largely put back together by Thanksgiving (fingers crossed).

Birthday Weekend

I didn’t find my ring but we still have a lovely weekend complete with three (!) birthday dinners.

They sent me a coupon for a free birthday meal so on Friday night we took the kids to Tucano’s. It’s a Brazilian steakhouse where the servers walk around with skewers of various grilled meats and they bang on bongo drums and sing “Happy Birthday” to you in Portuguese. It was kind of crazy but E loved all the spectacle and stuffed himself silly and even ate a grilled chicken heart. I was so proud!

On Saturday night N and I went to The Copper Onion, one of my favorite places in Salt Lake. And then on Sunday we went up to my in-laws’ house for steaks and cake and ice cream.

As a treat I ordered a birthday cake from City Cakes, our favorite local vegan bakery. It was lemon with raspberry filling and “cream cheese” frosting and DELICIOUS. It was super moist and tasty and didn’t taste “off” at all.

E really got a kick out of the weekend’s festivities. When he got up on Friday N prompted him to wish me a happy birthday which he did by saying, “Happy birthday, Mama! I got you an umbrella!” It’s probably a good thing that N kept E out of the loop on the other presents he got me. N was so thoughtful that I felt a bit spoiled. And fortunately none of his gifts is small enough to be lost in the shag carpeting 🙂

The reason I can’t have nice things

It’s actually not my kids, it’s me. (Sigh.)

Yesterday I lost the lovely little diamond band N gave me for our 10th anniversary earlier this year. I was using some serious chemical anti-mold stuff to clean under one of our bathroom sinks where the faucet had been leaking so I took off my rings (I wear two stacked on my ring finger) and put them in my pocket so they wouldn’t get gunky.

HOURS LATER I realize in a panic that I’m not wearing my rings and they’re not in my pocket anymore. I find one of them lying on the couch but I can’t find the other one anywhere. I’ve been looking all over the house but half of our house has this thick shag carpet that hides dropped tiny things really well. And I can’t remember if I took them off before or after I made a quick IKEA run. I think it was after, but eep.

N was really sweet about it. I would have been a little bit upset if he had lost something expensive/sentimental that I gave him because of carelessness but he took breaks from cooking dinner to help me look and after I went to bed I heard him looking some more on his own.

I’m going to try and not let this cast a pall over the weekend but I keep worrying about it. Right now I’m going to go give my bedroom the most careful vacuuming it’s ever had and then my sister Jan is taking me out to lunch for my birthday. I’m hoping that it will eventually turn up, but even if it doesn’t things will be okay.

More than okay, even.

Faith vs. Food

Winner Round One: Faith!

I followed through and made a galette with the pears from the co-op. I used this recipe for the crust and it worked well (you normies can substitute real butter for the vegan margarine).

I have totally fallen for galettes. Less fussy than a pie, they’re great for a quick weeknight dessert. Plus saying “galette” makes me feel kind of fancy 🙂 I have two pear trees in my backyard covered in fruit so we’ll probably be eating a few more of these this fall.

Winner Round Two: Food

Yesterday I decided that shrimp cocktail and garlic bread sounded like an awesome lunch. I had picked up a shrimp ring at Costco on a whim the day before because I love shrimp cocktail and I was shopping hungry and my birthday’s later this week and hey don’t judge.

Anyway, so I enjoyed my tasty-but-weird lunch but a few minutes later my face starts feeling flushed and itchy. I look in the mirror and see this. And my heart just drops.

I’m sorry, but what the hell?!! Did I really just developed an allergy to shrimp? I had it a few months ago and was fine. But this time my face got really itchy and I had a few scattered hives on the rest of my body. I downed some Benadryl and the hives went away in about three hours.

Shrimp is pretty easily avoidable but I’m freaked out by the idea that I’ve developed a food allergy at thirty. I didn’t know that could happen. Am I going to develop other allergies? Maybe it was just a weird one-time thing. I’m scared to try shrimp again because if I have another reaction and it confirms an allergy I’ll be bummed.