Lucky me!

Today is our 10th anniversary!

May 12, 2000

Our Personal Paparazzi!

In April, my friend Rebekah stopped in to visit us for a week on her 3 month tour of the USA. I knew Rebekah and her fabulous family when I was growing up in England I'm sure glad that I got a chance to reconnect with someone so amazing 15 years later!

As an added bonus, Rebekah has her own photography business that she does on the side. I happen to think she has an amazing eye for detail and have enjoyed viewing her photography blog for a while. She was so gracious and kind to take hundreds (maybe 1000's?) of pictures of our family while she was here. I wish I had taken a picture of her HUGE camera. It took a while to get used to it following us around--I really felt important!!! The next several posts are dedicated to the cute and memorable moments that she was able to capture for us and that I will always treasure.

Thanks Rebekah!!!

Easter Eggs

I completely forgot that I had uploaded Easter egg pictures to a post a month ago....and never posted it. That's what I get for becoming a seldom-blogger!

Happy Easter anyways!

Cabbage Soup with Italian Sausage

I'm always checking cook books out from the library and flipping through them as I watch kids play. Once in a while I find a real winner that gets added to the family recipe book. This one was gone far too fast and I'm still craving it...I may have to make it again this week! (and the best part is the low-cal info at the bottom--eat up!)




Cabbage Soup with Italian Sausage
½ lb bulk sweet Italian sausage
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
4 cups firmly packed shredded green cabbage
5 cups chicken stock
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 pound redskin potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite size pieces
2 Tbl chopped parsley
1 tsp Italian seasoning
½ tsp salt, or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Heat a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook, breaking up lumps with a fork, for 3-5 minutes, or until sausage is browned.
2. Add onion, garlic, and carrots to the pan, and gook for 3 minutes until onion is translucent.
3. Add cabbage and cook for 2 minutes until it begins to wilt.
4. Add stock, tomatoes, potatoes, parsley & Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil then reduce to low and simmer, covered, for 20-25 minutes. Add salt & pepper

Info:
Yield: 6 servings
Prep time: 20 mintues
Prep time with cooking: 45 minutes

160 cals
31 from fat
3.5g fat
1g sat fat
9.5g protein
25g carbohydrates
674mg sodium

(From $3 Make & Take Meals by Ellen Brown)

Now you see it....

...Now you don't!
(I'm going to miss all those perfect, tiny baby teeth!!!)

Hayley survived a whole year of kindergarten and most of her first grade year thinking that she would "just die" if she didn't hurry up and lose a tooth soon! Poor kid. It's tough to be the last!

This is the tooth fairy pillow I made when I was a kid. Amazingly I still have it in my memorabilia (thanks mom!) It was fun to pull it out and show it to Hayley. Plus the idea helped us pass some time during the looooong week of waiting for her tooth to go from "loose" to "out"!

She even got to learn a little about using a sewing machine even if she was crazy excited and silly!
The finished product!


And the adorable note that she wrote to the tooth fairy (I remember writing one that was almost exactly the same...it just made me so sad to give my beloved tooth away!)

I should be flattered...

...that Alice spends her days and nights with my purse on her arm.
...that Alice is responsible enough to check that my wallet, keys and cell phone are all in the purse (no tricking this kid!)
...that I have to ask my 2 year old for my credit card when we are at the store. (If I even think about getting it myself, from the purse on her arm, she lets the world know that her space is being violated. So the store clerk and I wait patiently while she finds the right card and allows me to use it, as long as I return it right away!)
...that my little shadow loves to be stylin' by wearing my sunglasses even if they are just used as a convenient headband while mom squints into the sun.
...spends her days pacing the house with a notebook and pencil--no-doubt making endless to-do lists!
...doesn't forget to lodge the cell phone between her neck and ear and has pretend conversations with plenty of laughter as she writes in her notebook (what a multi-tasker!)
...that there is always a fingerprint on the camera lens and very few pictures to be found these days that are taken from my vantage point!


I should be flattered...and it's much easier to remember that since I went out and bought a new purse!

I'm lost!

I'm lost and wandering in the world of record-keeping and communication: journaling, scrapbooking, blogging, facebooking and emailing!

I just thought I'd say hi because I know I'm not being very consistent on my blog. I guess it's not meeting the same need for me that it was in the beginning. I used to picture printing my blog and having it replace our family scrapbook/journal idea--so I was motivated to keep up to date and write a lot. But now I'm changing my mind so it is starting to seem less of a priority.

I joined face book (finally!) this last month and took it for a spin. My conclusion? It's a fun way to find friends that I've lost contact with but I'm going to stop wasting so much time by having it up in my browser all the time. Even though it's addictive, I really don't care about all the mundane things everybody is doing right this minute and yet it sucks me in and I waste a lot of time reading about them! (no offense intended--you think the same!) So--I'll wait for the email alert that tells me that someone actually said something to me before I log in.

Here's my list of things I would like to be recording somehow:
1. Family pictures in an annual scrapbook.
2. Other special event scrapbooks for the kids--like I'm working on making them each a book about their birth--including development stories up to about 2 years old.
3. Personal journal--the kind that is private with no audience but me!
4. Family journal--recording fun facts about the kids on a regular basis, funny moments/stories we don't want to forget.
5. Family traditions and customs.
6. Favorite family recipes--somehow food memories is something I want to record.
7. Blog--new purpose: to update family and friends on our life--and give me a public voice once in a while when I really need it.

I think I've figured out solutions to most of these.

#1 & #2--Using Heritage Makers now to scrapbook. My plan is to actually print some real books this year so the kids see pictures in their hands not just flashing on a computer screen! I am planning on really scaling our pictures down from scrapbooks that I've made in the past. Just a "highlights" book each year--2-4 pages per month tops! Since I'm not going to do individual scrapbooks for each kid I won't be fitting as much journaling and storytelling in--thus the need for a family journal.

#3--this is new but I just signed up for an account on ldsjournal.com. I'm liking it so far. We'll see if I keep it up. I haven't consistently written in a journal since before I had kids but I love reading the sporadic journal entries that I have made. It's fun to remember who I was then and see how I've improved (or digressed!) It's definitely therapeutic to journal especially when there is no audience to worry about!

#4,5,6--I'm still trying to figure out. I've had various methods in the past of recording all those cute stories. But I've done next to nothing for the past 18 months. I'm thinking about trying to use a separate account on ldsjournal.com to record all of these in and just print them as a family journal? I'd love other methods and ideas.

#7--I'm toying with the idea of going private. Pros? Cons? Maybe I'll streamline things by only posting portions of journal entries and not the millions of pictures of the past? I don't know! Or perhaps once I get all the other goals up and going I'll want the public voice again?


Thanks for listening to me ramble. You are a great audience, my friends, and I'd love your input--especially those of you that are also juggling all of these things! How do you record your family and not drown while doing it???