Shopping is Exhausting

Just ask Miles.


We just had to pick up a few things from Wal-Mart when I decided to look at the rugs. I looked over and Miles was completely out. Poor kid.

Thanksgiving Point

We've been pretty busy around here. Gerrit's youngest sister was staying with us for a few days last week, Gerrit's mom is in town for a few days right now, my family comes into town on Wednesday, and then Gerrit goes out of town for five days right after my family leaves.

I'm tired just typing it.

Anyways, Marinda and I took Miles to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point last Tuesday. I am torn as to whether or not to recommend the $2 Tuesday special. On the one hand, tickets are usually $10. On the other hand, it was super busy, so Miles didn't get much time on exhibits I know he would usually enjoy because they were so crowded and he wasn't big enough to get past the other kids. Oh well. It was still definitely two dollars worth of fun...

They had a special exhibit called Notion of Motion about the physics of motion that I promised Gerrit I would take Miles to. Gerrit is obsessed with Miles learning physics.

The exhibit was very hands-on and very well done. I don't think Miles is a physics master yet, though, so Gerrit will have to keep trying.

It was a really big museum. Miles's favorite part was a hallway that you walk through that looks like you are walking through outer space. My camera can't handle that, so here's a selection of his other favorite parts:

These little guys were on an episode of Dinosaur Train, so Miles was excited to recognize them.


You could Velcro parts onto a cloth dinosaur form. That was really cool.

The live fish was one of his favorites, until some older kid just randomly walked by and flicked him on the head. He dissolved into tears and was just done with the musuem from that point on. I don't blame him. From that point we had to go into repair mode.

Nothing says repair mode like a 50 cent ice cream cone.
Or like a giant awesome fountain. He was a little hesistant at first, but ended up getting completely soaked.

Yesterday

Yesterday would have been my little brother's 24th birthday. Here's how the day would have gone in other years. I would have called him to sing Happy Birthday and ask him if he liked the present I had spent the past few months searching for, a trivia book or a movie or a Disney soundtrack. He would have loved it. He always did. He would have told me all about his life and what was happening in San Jose. We would have done a few of our special "echoes" together. He would have asked me how his favorite nephew was doing, and also how his favorite brother-in-law was doing. He would tell me that he loved me, and I would tell him how much I loved him too.

Here's how yesterday went instead. I tried so hard to make a conscious effort to celebrate my brother's life instead of feeling sad. It mostly worked, but I was kind of a mess that morning. I decided to set up a family tradition of taking our family to see a movie and having pizza for dinner, and also telling a story or two about what James was like. My kids won't know their uncle, so I want his birthday to be something they can look forward to. We took Miles to Cars 2 the night before. He loved it, so that part went well. I showed Miles some of my favorite pictures of James and told him how much his uncle loved to play peek-a-boo with him. We had pizza for dinner and it turned out pretty well.

I still missed my brother so much. There are days that I just wish so much he was back and I could call him or get one of his hugs, but I draw peace from knowing that I will see him again. It gives the strength and encouragement I need to pull myself together, remember the wonderful things about him, and try to live my best so that our family can be together forever.

My sister posted some wonderful pictures and memory of James here on her blog. I'm going to just add a few more pictures of James that I have from when he was younger.


I'm pretty sure that this is his first Halloween. We both dressed up like cats that year.

After we moved to California. He was such a cute little boy, and so smart!

Family picture from a Christmas party in 1990. I'm so grateful that I got to be James's big sister.

Ah, Christmas caroling...maybe 1999? James loved doing activities with our family and was a really great sport about them even when they coincided with something he would rather be doing or later, when he was in a lot of pain.

This is us at the Sacramento temple open house in 2006. I'm so glad that families can be together forever.

Pioneer Children

Groupon has served us well this summer. We went to Red Butte Gardens, tried British food, and bought some neat cookbooks from Barnes & Noble that have been giving us delicious recipes, all for about half price. This past weekend, we used yet another groupon to go to the This is the Place Heritage Park. I didn't even really know there was a park there. I knew there were statues, but that was it.


Miles was so excited to ride on a horse. He told me about it for the next three days!

He also really loved the sheep. He also liked the pigs, mostly because they were asleep and couldn't run away when he tried to pet them. He was less delighted with the goats, because they were taller than him and tried to eat his shoes.

Mmm...nothing says historic village like candy sticks.


There were three trains: this wooden one at the playground, a big one that went all the way around the park, and a little one that went pretty fast around a pond. That meant triple the fun for Miles.


They had all sorts of historical activities and houses open where you could do a craft or watch a demonstration.

At the schoolhouse.

If only he did my laundry at home...

Here's Miles in a hogan. (This one's for you, Grandpa Larsen!)

I don't know why, but this was Miles's favorite activity. He would run up the hill to the tepee, run around the tepee once or twice, and then come down the hill saying "go slow." It's debatable whether or not he understood what "go slow" actually means. He did this probably about 20 times.

Doesn't Like It

That's Miles's favorite phrase right now. All day long, I hear a never-ending chorus of "Doesn't like it." I don't really like that phrase. I'm sharing these two activities because he actually enjoyed them, and that's saying a lot right now. Maybe a picky toddler you know will too...

We've made pasta necklaces before, but this time I followed a tip from Family Fun and died the pasta with a mixture of 2 teaspoons of vinegar and some food coloring. It was instantly about a hundred more times than playing with plain pasta.


I got down cookie cutters to cut his sandwich out of desperation. "Doesn't like it" extends to just about everything I try to feed him, so I thought that cutting it up might entice him. I didn't realize I had a tow truck cookie cutter, or that he would think it was Mater from the movie Cars, or that he would love it quite so much. He actually ate lunch without saying his favorite phrase once!

Thirty Minute Menus

Random thing about me that I don't blog about all that much: I love developing recipes and entering recipe contests. I think I've entered about twelve in the past year and a half, I have one that I need to get typed up and submitted, and two more that I'm thinking about and planning for some upcoming contests. I've come up with a lot of different kinds of things, from a pumpkin cream cheese bundt cake to coconut shrimp salad to the Thai chicken zucchini rounds I just posted about last week. It's pretty fun to figure out something for each different contest theme.

Now that the background for this is out of the way, let's flash back to February...

I got a notice from the post office saying that they had a certified letter for me and I needed to come in and sign for it. My mind went through a lot of possibilities, and most of them involved us being audited. I was not excited to go to the post office that day. My mood turned around really fast when I opened the letter and saw that I had won third place in one of the contests! I had entered three recipes as part of a 30-minute menu contest, and I won two cookbooks and a set of copper cookware as my prize.

The recipes just went to print in the August/September issue of Simple & Delicious. It's so fun to see them styled and photographed. They don't really look that fancy when I make them.



Here's a little bit about the three recipes I submitted:
-Cornmeal Wheat Pancakes with Cinnamon Honey Butter: I adapted my family's favorite pancake recipe to use a mixture of regular flour, whole wheat flour, and cornmeal like one of my favorite breads, and I served them with honey butter because the Cougareat has made me a fan forever.
-Ham and Avocado Scramble: Gerrit and I both love scrambled eggs a lot, and I am a California girl at heart who loves to put avocado in anything.
-Berry Breakfast Smoothies: Smoothies are one of our go-to things here to make Miles eat. He's really picky, but he loves anything yogurt-based. This smoothie has cranberry juice, raspberry yogurt, blueberries, and raspberries. It's what I had in my fridge and freezer that day and it turned out pretty well!

I have wanted to blog about this for six months, so I'm glad the recipes finally printed!

The Happiness Project

Every now and then I like to share something I've been reading:



I really loved this book. The author divided her life into twelve areas (including health, work, marriage, parenting, leisure, friendship, etc.) and then spent a month working on goals to improve her happiness in each of these areas. Not only was the subject really interesting, but she writes about it with so much humor and honesty. Some of the specific things she did aren't really for me (hypnosis, writing a novel in a month, reading memoirs of catastrophes), but other things made so much sense to me that I sort of had to smack my head and wonder why on earth I haven't been doing them all along.

Some of the happiness goals she set that really resonated with me were to make a point of treasuring and storing happy memories with your family, make 3 new friends, not wait for a special occasion to use something or show love, and to be enthusiastic. I also really resonated with having to make a special effort to not leave popsicle wrappers all over the house. It made me feel a lot better than another adult has a problem with that.

In the preamble, she talks about how the best way to make your own happiness project is to figure out what brings you joy, satisfaction, and engagement and then to try to shape how you spend your time around that. She gives her specific examples, but points out that any project you do on your own would be based on the things you love. It inspired me to make my own list, so here goes :)
-Quality time with Gerrit and Miles
-Personal prayer and scripture study
-Cooking, baking, and developing recipes
-Consistent exercise
-Having a project (It can be a craft, it can be something to plan, data to analyze, but I love having a project)
-Learning something new
-Crosswords and other word puzzles
-Spending time with friends
-Reading
-Having a clean and organized home
-Going on "adventures" (That's why you see so many records of things we go out and do on this blog. I just really love getting out of the house and going to fun and different places.)

It was interesting to make this list. It made me think about how much of my time I actually spend doing this things, and how much time I spend browsing on the internet (which does not really bring my joy, satisfaction, or engagement.) I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Even if you do already feel happy, it's a good way to consider the things in life that matter to you. You can find more information here or here.

Going on Safari

I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to bring it up again. Taxidermy kind of freaks me out. Gerrit always points out that the animals cannot possibly hurt me, but I can't entirely get over being surrounded by that many dead animals.

Why bring this up?

Because I actually set foot inside the Bean Museum (BYU's life science museum) for the first time in my life on Monday. I resolutely avoided it for four years of undergraduate and two years of graduate school, but I finally gave in. They were having a party for the grand opening of their new Africa exhibit, and I knew Miles would love to see the animals.

Ta da! The new African exhibit. I can't speak from experience, but Gerrit says that it is a big improvement.

That particular piece of taxidermy rotates in the center of the room.

Miles really loved the animals. He loved the animals so much that he kept trying to slip under the velvet ropes, which totally gave me a heart attack.

My favorite exhibit. Nice, safe, seashells.



This is the kind of taxidermy that creeps me out a little.

Miles also really enjoyed the craft project (drawing "cave animals" on sandpaper) and eating the mint brownies. The live animal show was also a highlight. We saw a reptile show with a live snake, blue-tongued lizard, and the cutest terrapin ever. It kind of made me want a pet turtle. I'm a little bit better with live animals than dead ones, but only a little.

On a totally unrelated note, have you seen the new dorms that they are building at BYU? They are about a hundred times nicer than Heritage, the dorms I stayed at, and about a million times nicer than Wymount, the married student housing. I'm a little bit jealous...

Why Not?

I've been finding a lot of tasty appetizer recipes recently, but it seemed like I never had any occasion to make them. So, ta da! The Tuesday night dinner party! For absolutely no reason than that it was Tuesday, and without any guests. We just had a bunch of different appetizers for dinner.



Here's the menu:


Caramel Toffee Fruit Dip

Avocado Salsa Cups

Stuffed Mushrooms

Thai Chicken Zucchini Rounds. This one is my own recipe. You grill slices of zucchini and top it with a mix of peanut sauce, shredded chicken, carrots, red onion, and cilantro.