My Kind of Marriage

Remember that scene in Father of the Bride where the bride calls off the wedding because her fiance gave her a blender as a gift?  And how that is a common no-no in a variety of sitcoms and Shine articles on Yahoo?  And possibly in real life for some people?

Lewis and I are nothing like that.

We celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday.  Sure, I love me some chocolates and flowers are always a welcome thing to get for me.  But Lewis got me a couple of much more personal gifts; two items that I have been wanting and he showed his undying adoration of me by getting them.

He got me a kettle and a tortilla steamer.

Ooh baby, yeah.

I on the other hand was a lot more stereotypical with one of my gifts.  I got him some chocolate turtles.  But that is mostly because I have gotten him chocolate turtles for every Valentine's Day we have spent together.

His real gift was a new kitchen scale.  Something he almost bought for me.

Mmm hmm.

I'm having a difficult time coming up with a holiday since we have been married where I have not gotten something new for my kitchen.  Lewis has hooked me up with a waffle iron, a mixer, two rolling pins (marble and French), a pastry blender, a pastry knife, a bundt pan, and springform pans, among other things.  He has recently rekindled his own love of baking and cooking so gift-giving holidays will be including more kitchen accoutrements for him too.

Next up on our list of things to buy include a tortilla press (available only online as far as we can find, or else I would have gotten that for Valentine's Day), new whisks and spatulas (Mothers and Fathers Days?).  I also want a proper set of sauce and frying pans.

We may not have much, but we have a pretty darn awesome kitchen.

Someday our kitchen will look as awesome as the food that comes out of it tastes.

Now if we could just avoid getting fat off of all this deliciousness...

Papa Lewis Pizza

Over the past couple of months, Lewis has worked hard to develop the ideal homemade pizza.  He researched on the Interweb to learn the tips and tricks of the trade (how to move it from the countertop to the pizza stone, how to make sure the middle gets cooked, etc.).  He found a decent crust recipe and a okay sauce recipe, then experimented with both until they were perfect.

Now that he's got a fabulous basic pizza under his belt, he is ready to experiment with variations.  A couple of weeks ago we bought a 45-pound tub of wheat to grind in our blender.  Lewis is hoping to figure out a top-notch whole wheat pizza crust.  We tried it once and it was pretty darn good, but there is room for improvement.

Last night, however, Lewis' grand pizza experiment was a stuffed crust.  This was an especially worth undertaking because there is always leftover sauce, and we could dip the crust in that.

He started out by making a recipe of crust.  This recipe will make two pizzas, but he used all but a little of it for this so he would have enough to fold over the cheese.  We cut string cheese in half, lengthwise and widthwise for the stuffing (this was my single contribution to the meal).

Lewis then folded the crust over the top of the cheese.  He anticipated that as it cooked, it would bubble through the crust so he was very careful to seal it as best he could.

Next came the sauce and the shredded cheese for on top.

We normally do veggie or chicken pizzas, but Lewis decided to do pepperoni for this one.  Pepperoni tends to be really greasy, though, and we prefer it crispy, so Lewis also learned how to fix that.  It involved soaking the grease out through paper towels in the microwave.  It didn't get all the grease, but it definitely helped.  I'd never enjoyed a pepperoni pizza before this one.

Brushing the crust with olive oil, for good measure.  It's not perfectly symmetrical, but it's not bad for a first attempt!

Ready to put the pizza in the oven.  Lewis makes his pizzas on parchment paper so they slide from the pizza peel to the pizza stone without any fuss.

Lewis also put two cookie sheets on the bottom rack to catch any cheese that bubbled out of the crust.  He's a smartie.

Pretty good looking pizza, huh?  It was still greasier than usual, but thank goodness it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Looks good enough to eat!  Good thing we did.  Oh my, it was so good.  I never thought I would like a stuffed-crust pizza before, but Lewis changed all that with this treat.

All in all, it was an epic pizza success.  I couldn't help but have seconds, which was bad news bears since we had just returned from a dessert contest when he made the pizza.  I felt fit to bursting when dinner was over.  Worth it.  I only feel bad for Jack cause he's too little to have any.

Anyone who is anyone is invited over to try Lewis' pizza.  He'll whip one up for you in no time at all.

Oops, He Did It Again

Apparently Jack has simply determined that he is going to spit up some time between four and five PM every day.

At least it didn't get on my face this time.

When the Stars Align

I was very blessed to get a baby that does not spit up very often.  For the first five months of his life he only spit up, at best, occasionally.  Very rarely did he spit up on us.

The past couple of weeks, however, he has spit up quite a bit more than usual.  My suspicion is that it's because he is teething.  It hasn't been a big deal, we've just been careful to have lots of washcloths handy to clean up any messes.  Plus he usually gives a warning before he does it.

But not today.

I was lying on the couch when it happened.  I held Jack horizontal and flew him over my head when - SPLAT!  Spit up, spit up everywhere.

It was all over his pants and onesie.  It was all over the front of my shirt and cardigan sleeve.  But most disgustingly, it was all over my face.

Thank goodness my mouth was closed.

After recovering from the shock, I held Jack at arms length and raced to the kitchen to assess the damage.  Jack sat in his Bumbo while I wiped down my face and dabbed at our clothes.  But the smell and stickiness on my face lingered.  A shower was in order.

Since Jack got the grossness on his clothes, and I didn't want transfer any from me to his new clothes, he got to hang out in just his diaper while I showered.

When I was all clean and spit up free, I pulled back the shower curtain to discover a tiny detail I had failed to observe in my haste - it's Wednesday.

I wash our towels on Wednesday.

And they were still in the dryer.

Jack spits up rarely.  I wash the towels once a week.  The fates had it out for me on this one.

So I dripped my way through the bathroom, into our bedroom, out to the hall, and into the laundry room only to discover that the towels were still damp.  So as I continued to drip, I went back out to the hall and into Jack's bathroom to get a fresh towel out of the linen closet.  Finally able to dry myself, I made my way back to my bathroom to get Jack who may or may not have been a bit chilled in his clothe-less state.  I dressed each of us in fresh clothes, and all was well.

He tends to be proud of his shenanigans.

In other news, Jack went straight to sleep when I put him in bed tonight.  Word.

Lime Green Love

I love Valentine's Day.  I always have, even when I was a moody teenager and wore black on February the 14th to commiserate my lonely existence.  I mostly did that to be "edgy' or something, but I probably looked pretty lame.  Let's face it, I could never be edgy.

My mom always taught us that Valentine's Day is a day to celebrate all kinds of love - not just romantic love.  On Valentine's Day we should celebrate the love we have for our families, friends, teachers, colleagues, and anyone and everyone else.  True, I'm not going to out and buy each of you a new kkkkkkk sssss like I did for Lewis, but that has more to do with a lack of funding than anything else.  I still love all of you, and I celebrate that love today.

With that in mind, let me tell you a funny story.

A tradition we had when I was growing up (one that I hope to continue with my children) was to host a Valentine's Day breakfast for people in our lives that we love.  Each of us would invite one person to dine with us.  The person we invited had to be an adult, like a teacher or family friend, and someone who was special to us.  I think one year I wanted to invite the old man who ran a newsstand outside of a London tube station that we frequented, and who always called me "Sweetheart" and gave me free candy, but my mom wouldn't let me.

My senior year in high school, my mom was our seminary teacher, so she decided to host this breakfast for our class.  She had each of us pick three people (two back ups, in case of scheduling conflicts) and she sent out formal invitations.

Something you should understand is that a lot happened for my family in 2004.  I was getting ready to graduate and move out to Utah for college.  Andrew was preparing to go on a mission.  Later that year, my sister got engaged.  My dad had just gotten is new assignment with the Foreign Service - Romania - and he and my mom planned on selling our house before they left.

The housing market was up in 2004, it's true, but my parents still wanted to fix up our house a bit before they put the "For Sale" signs up.  This included redoing the carpet, updating the fake wood panelling in the basement, stripping off the abundance of paper that covered the walls, and painting them a nice, neutral white.  Or maybe eggshell or something.

Something else you should understand is that we had some pretty high-brow guests coming to this Valentine's Day breakfast.  One girl had someone flying in from Arizona.  Another was bringing the principal of our high school.  Kind of a big deal.

The night before the breakfast, my parents decided we were going to strip the wallpaper off the walls in the living room, where the breakfast would be held.  We wouldn't have time to paint the walls, but it would be dark outside and the lights would be fairly dim, so it shouldn't be a big deal.  No one would (hopefully) be able to notice the wallpaper goop we missed.

And they were probably right.  No one would have noticed, had the walls underneath been a lovely, normal shade of white.  Or even taupe.

Lime green was a little more noticeable.

And it's not like you could just put the wallpaper back.

So we all pulled together and worked all night to get the wallpaper and leftover goop removed, and then painted right over that garish hue.

The breakfast was a hit and love was felt by all.  And the walls looked lovely.

Happy Valentine's Day, readers.  I love you.

I made these for Lewis to give to his fourth graders today.  Another Valentine's Day tradition from my great mom.

Lies!

When I was in fourth grade, I attended a small, private school in London.  And when I say small, I mean small.  There were two kindergarten classes, one first grade class, one class for second and third grade, and one for fourth and fifth.  Each of the classes was probably under twenty students.

Anyway, this school had a lot of money.  Which meant that we got to go on numerous super awesome field trips.  On these field trips, my teacher, Mrs. Whitlock, would always remind us to keep our arms and other such appendages inside the bus at all times.

I have a vivid memory of her explanation for why this was so essential.  She told a story of a time that she was traveling in a vehicle behind a school bus.  One little boy was hanging his arm out his window.  As the bus rounded a corner, his arm got stuck between the wall of a building and the bus and was ripped clean off.

Gruesome, right?

It wasn't until today that I realized that this story probably was not true.

It Sucks

When we learned that a sizable chunk of money was coming our way in the form of a tax return, we decided to spend a portion of it on a new vacuum cleaner.

Our old vacuum (which was given to us for free when we got married) recently decided to give up the ghost.  This came at an inopportune time: Jack has recently decided that it is his dearest wish to roll from our back door to our front, picking up and attempting to eat whatever he encounters along the way.

Research was done, advice was solicited, prices were compared.  We ended up purchasing a Shark Navigator from the Costco.

An immediate and heavenly difference was noted in our home as soon as our dear new vacuum produced its first suck.  Jack's rolling aspirations were suddenly more acceptable.

I feel it necessary to point out that this is one of those fancy-schmancy vacuums with a canister for the sucked muck, instead of a bag.

See?

Fast forward to yesterday.

My newly created chore charts indicate that on Mondays I am to dust and vacuum the master bedroom.  Before vacuuming, I realized that the vacuum canister needed to be emptied.  Lewis made it look so easy to remove the canister when he first learned the ins and outs of our new Shark, so I felt confident I could figure out how to do it without looking it up in the manual.  I was wrong.  I fiddled around with a few buttons for a couple of minutes, but nothing happened, so I decided to leave it for when Lewis got home.

Lewis, being the dear that he is, was perfectly willing to show me how to empty the canister.  I was very grateful for his assistance, even if he did ridicule me the whole way up to the bedroom and was somewhat condescending when he pointed out the maybe a little bit obvious release button.  He pushed it, pulled the canister from where it sits

and dumped all the grossness out onto the floor and my foot.

Apparently when I was fiddling with it to figure out how to remove the canister I had flipped the buckle that keeps it closed at the bottom.

Whoops.

Luckily our Shop-Vac came to the rescue.  Lewis' dad found it on sale at Lowe's a year or so back.  The deal was too good to pass up apparently, but since he already had one, he gave it to us.  Thank goodness.  It cleaned all the disgustingness from the floor and my foot right up, and even sucked all the residual grime from off of the Shark as well.

Crisis averted.