TO pay a bill

1. Open bill.
2. Notice extra charges. Decide to call for clarification.
3. Put on desk.
4. Shuffle around on desk for a week.
5. Open bill folder to find past bills with notations.
6. Notice that bill folder contains 5 years worth of old, unneeded bills.
7. Sort out old unneeded bills.
8. Shred bills until shredder jams.
9. Empty shredder. Spill shred papers on floor.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 until finished.
11. Call phone company. 
12. Wait on hold.
13. Start paying another bill while on hold.
14. Talk to phone company about confusing numbers including credits, misapplication of the credits, late fees resulting from misapplication of credits, etc. 
15. Repeat steps 12-14 until new balance is received.
16. Pay bill. 
17. Refile bills
18. Total time spent--1 hour?

This is why I never get ahead!

Rebecca's way of keeping a secret.

When I ask Rebecca to wrap a present for our friend Becky, but to keep it a secret, this was what she did:

1) "Becky, I have a secret for you, but I'm not telling you what it is!"
2) Planning to wrap the present uninterrupted: "Becky, don't go downstairs for awhile, OK?"
3) Walking past Becky with the present: "This is just a box I'm holding. This box that I'm holding really close...it's not special."

Rebecca's bedtime regret

"I never get the dream I want."

A new drinking method

Dump the milk out of the sippy cup onto the high chair tray, then slurp it up like a cat.

Quick Single Pan Brownies

Quick single-pan brownie recipe.

4 oz (1 stick) butter
2/3 C 100% chocolate mass (5-5 1/2 oz, of Chocoa chocolate liquor buttons).
4/3 C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 t salt
2/3 C flour
1 t vanilla (I enjoy Nielsen Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Paste)


Melt butter & chocolate together. Add sugar & salt, mix.
Add eggs, mix. Add flour, mix lightly. Add vanilla.
Pour into an 8x8 square pan lined with foil.

Cook: 350 for 24 minutes @350.

Mixing the eggs, sugar, salt together in a mixer tends to generate the "crispy" top, where the one-pan technique does not.

---

Other Recipes

4 oz butter (1 stick)
7 oz bittersweet chocolate (or about 5.5 oz unsweetened chocolate + 1/3 C sugar)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla


Melt butter and chocolate over a bain-marie. Water should be hot but not boiling. while this starts to melt, Combine eggs, salt, sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Stir well together. Go back to the chocolate & butter. when chocolate and butter chunks are small, take off bain-marie and stir until melted all the way. You want the mixture warm, not really hot when you mix into the egg mixture.

Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Whisk or sift the flour and add to all the other ingredients and fold in with a rubber spatula until fully mixed.

Bake for 20-24 minutes at 325 F until done.

A six-year-old's formula for a mood changer

When we read about grumpy Mr. Grumps in Lyle the Crocodile, I asked Rebecca what he could do to cheer up. I'm thinking about prayer, service, walks outside, focusing on gratitude. This was her answer: "He should go to Pump It Up."

Grateful For

For this small fraction of my many, many blessings, I give thanks:

My kitchen, whose scratched and dented wood floors still reflect the light from my oversized windows.

The way my Jenny giggles when she sees me, and sometimes waddles over to me to plop down in my lap.

Feeling sunshine on my cheeks as Alex and I walked by the lakeshore yesterday afternoon

The way that my children are learning to hold the melody, letting me soar above and below them with a harmony line--or they way they’re learning to do it themselves.

Playing the piano for Alex’s choir, and watching their amazing teacher singlehandedly lead 90 children into making music

The way Katherine thumps up the stairs every day after school--surprising me every time--because she’s old enough to walk home by herself. She’s also old enough to manage her homework!

The molten chocolate lava cake recipe my husband has been perfecting over the last three weeks, with lots of test trials

The baby gift from a former ward member of a purple fuzzy blanky has become my baby’s number one calming device and feel-good drug (when combined with thumb sucking)

The melodic strains of “Count your many blessings” that floated up from the basement yesterday when Rebecca sat down to pound out melodies at the organ--all in bass range, because she was experimenting with the pedals

The times when disagreements with my husband bring us closer together (and, lest you think I am betraying marital confidence, you would also have MANY disagreements if YOU had to choose bathroom fixtures)

The conference talks I download at random, which--whether they be from two weeks ago or twenty years--always seem to hit the mark

The peace and fellowship I experience each Sunday at church, leading a stressful hectic morning to a meditative noon release

For the gospel, and the foundation it provides

(This list was compiled from a recent talk I gave at church.)

Head grabber

We realized that the reason the baby keeps clapping her hands to her temples is that she's playing peekaboo but missing her eyes.

FHE

Tonight's FHE activity: air hockey tournament! With really short games because we started so late. Also, we had to play with yogurt cartons and a yogurt lid (good thing I saved a few before they were discontinued about 5 years ago) because we couldn't find the real pieces. Luckily my clever son remembered seeing them on a shelf. Game on!

Rebecca's new career choice for when she grows up

Flag-evener

(i.e. someone who checks the crosswalk flags and make sure that there are some on each side of the street)

On pens and memory

This is the second Inside Story I've attended--a bookstore event featuring lots of local authors--where I forgot pens. I had to ask three customers if I could borrow theirs, and then sneak one from the cash register to sign store copies. I wasn't alone, either--the authors on either side of me had also forgotten pens!

I kept telling everyone that I didn't have my pens because I'd forgotten my purse at home. When I got home, it turned out that I had forgotten my purse--at the bookstore! The purse (with pens) had been under my seat the whole time.

Rebecca counts beats

After drilling extensively on the long three-beat note at the end of All Creatures of our God and King, our six-year-old played her violin solo for her grandparents. The final note was extra long, and I congratulated her on remembering the 3 beats. Apparently she was working so hard to get that long note right that she told me, "I actually counted four!"

On progress

Why was I so excited for her to learn to walk? Now she can pull things off of counters!

Mornings

Picture me working this morning--toddler sitting on my lap with me combing her hair (the only way to keep her quiet) while I scroll through snippets of Viking epics looking for scenes with axe fighting so I can write a martial arts essay

Why is she wetting the bed more?

"Because the nights are getting longer!"

Conference sunday

This is how we celebrated conference today:
1) turned on conference on our TV
2) mopped up the water leak downstairs bathroom
3) saw even more water dripping from the ceiling
4) tore out the plastic shower shell to find the leak
5) propped a plastic cutting board under the leaking shower handle to direct the water into the tub instead of the wall
6) separated our children who were squabbling about fort building
7) wrestled with our son who was throwing a tantrum
8) finally calmed everybody down in time to hear the prophet's last sentence, the closing hymn, and the prayer.
Boy, do I feel more holy!

As I reported to the Hulterstrom Highlights

We spent about every September Saturday swimming at the lake. Lucky we had a few extra warm days!

In September, Katherine started middle school, Alex started 4th grade, and Rebecca started 1st grade. They are all at different schools, but luckily each school is less than a mile from our house. Katherine is in a small school program that's connected to a bigger school, so she will have a small-school environment and excellent education with lots of field trips (they've already done 3) but also be able to do regular middle school programs like badminton and orchestra. Alex and Rebecca are playing soccer.

Baby Genevieve is working on walking, complete with inventing her own walkers.

We just started taking professional music lessons at a nearby music studio. This is quite an endeavor, as I take all four children. Everybody has a lesson, and Katherine and I take turns with the baby (who is not formally taking lessons, but no doubt will absorb all she hears and become a musical genius).

I just got my advance copy of Candy Experiments 2, and it's beautiful! Katherine is disappointed that I didn't give her credit for inventing one of the best experiments--how to turn a red and white gummy worm completely blue.

R prays

"Thank you that I could make my own alliteration: Peter Piper picked a piece of pepper while playing with puppies."

if only

"I want new PJ's," my 6 year old sighs. "But, sadly, I don't have any."

Free fruit

Out in the dark with a headlamp clipping grapes for freezing. Can anyone say FRUIT GENE?

Fruit gene

Out in the dark with a headlamp clipping grapes for freezing. Can anyone say FRUIT GENE?

Steps for ironing letters

Steps for ironing letters onto a soccer shirt the morning of the game: 1) Lay the shirt on the ironing board. Arrange letters on top. 2) Read instructions: "Wash shirt." 3) Gather up a load of laundry to wash with the shirt. 4) Wash laundry for 70 minutes. 5) Sort wet laundry to find shirt to put in dryer. 6) Realize shirt is still on ironing board, unwashed. 7) Iron on letters anyway.

Bedtime??

Just found my 9 year old in bed with the door cracked open so he could draw compass circles on the card from the orthodontist.

Housework

While I'm cleaning the kitchen, my little girl is carpeting the living room with baby wipes. She works her work, I mine.

cause and effect

Q: What's the natural consequence of bathing your baby and dressing her in a brand-new outfit?

A: The biggest diaper blowout in months.

cleaning

My plans to totally clean up the kitchen and living room today got reduced to decluttering one square foot of space on the fireplace. It had about four things on it. I am not feeling very productive!

Need to know

This is the burning question my son must ask me as he rushes out the door late for school: "Mom, how often does the Potomac river flood?"

A summation of summer

We've worked really hard this summer to get out and have fun. Drove to Utah, where we did boating and swimming; stayed at the coast; swam at the city pool; kayaked on Lake Washington; hiked to Scout Lake; visited the library; played at Grasslawn and other parks; had outdoor barbecues by a mountain lake; drove to Pullman for grandparent time; and saw all the extended family here when my sister got married.

So what does my six-year-old say when we're writing her talk about family fun and I ask her what fun thing we did together as a family this summer?

"We saw a movie."

The book you can't put down

What is my nine year old reading under the covers by flashlight at 10:30 pm? The exciting final chapter of the Not So Big House!

beach "trip"

I figured out a way to enjoy the beach and the heat in a way that even my dermatologist sister would approve of--take your family swimming at sunset! (Because it takes a lot longer to finish the laundry than you thought it would.)

But don't trip on the dock and split open your eyebrow like my son did.

Who's the boss?

Telling my six year old daughter to get dressed has led to her sobbing in the bathroom because, she says, "It feels like you're bossing me around!"

Heel

I slammed the screen door on my heel right before church today, which hurt like the dickens when I put on my organ shoes. (The F to B flat jump in The Day Dawn is Breaking was especially bad, with me cringing at every high B flat.) We should have been singing Come, Come Ye Saints--I was really feeling today for the footsore pioneers, some of whom probably walked 1200 miles barefoot, and sure that sacrificing my heel for the cause was almost as much effort.

Chairs

Since it's been so hot here, I bought the children some bungee chairs to use downstairs in our book room. I envisioned three children, peacefully lying back on their chairs to read (after all their piano and chores were done). Instead, what I ended up with that very night was a fort! Sometimes I just don't have the vision.

Music

R says "What do you call this again? A vionil?"

On Marriage

Joel Stein, "Anything Gwyneth Can Do..." Time April 14, 2014, on staying together: "It turns out that part of what keeps a marriage going is the pretense that it always will."

This spoke to me because so much of marriage is effort, is meeting halfway (or going all the way), is working together or working towards the same goals when apart. It's deciding that the marriage is important, and working to keep it that way.

It should have been Mommy's prayer

Becca prays: "...Please bless me to be a good fighter and to be very good at writing..."

Critiquing Make Way for Ducklings

We're reading the page "She taught them how to swim and dive" when Rebecca breaks in and says "No, they're dabblers!" and shows me the page in the beginning of the book with the ducks feeding, bottoms-up.

The Muse

Who knew that the next thing my subconscious wanted to tackle was writing a melody for "Gather Ye Rosebuds"? Not even me, until Garrison Keillor recited it on the radio and a song popped into my head. Huh.

On Parenthood?

Rebecca, obviously upset: "Alex won't let me be a mother!"
Me: ???
R: "When we grow up we're going to live in the same house. But we're not going to get married. But I want to have kids, and Alex doesn't want to!"
Me: ??
Alex: "I don't want to raise kids. They're too much work!"
R: "I like babies. They smile at you, and they're so cute!"
Me, to Alex: "What work do you have to do?"
A: Long list
Me: "What do you get when you have kids?
A: "Joy?"

Ethnic night

Ethnic night for baby, who tried vietnamese noodles, spring roll filling, piroshky filling, and the avocado off of our dragon roll sushi. Hey, that's what she gets when my oldest and I end up at Crossroads and decide to turn it into a tasting night--without any baby food!

The Battle

Why is my 8 year old son not in bed? Because he's in the bathroom narrating a battle between Particle Man* and Triangle Man.**


*who can shoot single particles, causing a whole pile of particles to explode

**We had a They Might Be Giants tutorial during the recent drive home from Seabrook. Topics covered also include the Blue Canary In the Light Switch, the reference to Blue Canary in a Mercedes Lackey Novel and its relation to the alchemical White Eagle, a recap of Jason and the Argonauts (narrated perfectly by said 8-year-old), a debate as to whether or not the violin in Istanbul can be called a fiddle, proper verbal responses to displays of racism in conversation, the foolishness of fashion trends such as prosthetic foreheads, and a quiz on the musical time signatures used in "Women and Men."
Topics reserved for a later date: the history of Constantinople, the marking of grocery pull dates, and the politics of the minimum wage.

Ground Peas

You know that the ground peas aren't a hit when baby would rather spit them out and eat the clean-up cloth.

What I Like to Hear

My kids arguing about who gets to finish off the broccoli.

New Game

The One-Handed Diaper Drop. Holding a baby (so that you can't bend over), try to drop the dirty diaper into the diaper pail slot so it doesn't fall on the floor.

(Necessity is the mother of game design.)

What my kids have learned from Grandparents

K, looking out the kitchen window: "What's that big bird out there in the tree?"
R: "I think there's an owl over there. I saw some gray. No, it's a woodpecker."
A: "It's a towhee. A female towhee."
R: "I see a chickadee. Chickadee, chickadee."
A: "I see a spotted flicker. Three flickers!"
A: "There are so many birds around."

When there's a buzzing noise in the other room

R: What's that?
Me: Daddy doing the drill.
R: A lockdown drill?

First World Complaints

Rebecca: "I want a better life!"

Lar: "What would make it a better life?"

R: "I want to ride in a hot air balloon RIGHT NOW!"

A surprising week

Day 1: Lin Oliver tells me that I need to start a new project, whether I get up early (like that's going to happen!), stay up late, hire a babysitter. Whatever it takes.
Day 2: My agent tells me that my publisher has requested ANOTHER CANDY EXPERIMENTS BOOK!
Day 3: With a deadline of May 1!

A Long Absence

It was hard to leave one of our beloved family members in Utah after a Christmas car accident, not knowing whether recovery was even possible or if the insurance would even kick in. But after weeks of uncertainty, waiting, and insurance-wrangling, all was finally settled, and Lar flew down to collect our missing piece. Welcome home, minivan!!

Rebecca diagnoses a headache

"My brain is bad!"

Rebecca on haircuts

Rebecca does not like my new short haircut. "It makes you not look like Mommy!"

Rebecca on affection

"A kiss? And a hug? I love these thingies!"

Becca complains

"You just woke me up. You woke me up badly!"

Rebecca and the dentist

When Rebecca goes to the dentist the day after her fall to get checked for her split lip, her stitches, and her lost front tooth, the dentist finds a tooth fragment which must be removed. Except during removal this tiny piece turns out to be an actual, full-sized tooth--an unnoticed EXTRA BABY TOOTH nearly completely embedded in her top gum, which has been pushing aside that snaggly front tooth for months--and the whole thing has to be pulled right then.

That night Rebecca prays: "Thank you that I could have a really good day...Thank you that I could go to Grandma's house. Thank you that I could have my tooth pulled."

What a trooper.

Tragedy!

Emergency #1: Running around outside of church, Rebecca tripped over a doorstop and split her upper lip so badly against the concrete that she required handfuls of paper towels, ice cream, and 5 stitches (Dr. Aunt Katie injected the Lidocaine block, numbing the network of nerves on each side of Rebecca's upper lip, while Dr. Grandpa sewed the lip closed).

Emergency #2: We ran out of sugar.

Rebecca's CTR picture on the topic "Our Happy Family"

The boy who hates movies so badly

that Lar had to carry him out by his ankles to take him to Frozen

was singing "Let it Go" the next day. Also narrating battles with ice pillars and exploding ice bombs.

And his pre-Herbie "I don't want to go" turned into a post-Herbie "That was really funny!"

For my sanity

I propel Becca towards her little white bed, forgetting that we've just barely switched her instead to the big bunk bed. In her prayers, she asks, "Please help Mom to recognize where my bed is!"

Formal attire

When I lower Becca's white PJ shirt over her head, Becca ends up with one arm in a sleeve and one arm underneath the shirt, with her neckline pulled sideways over a bare shoulder. "It's like in a wedding!" she exclaims.

Football

When the victorious Seahawks dumped tanks of Gatorade over their beaming coach, Rebecca asked, "Why don't those guys like him?"

Becca says

Do you turn around to make the world spin?

The Ideal Home

Becca says: "I want to live in the internet. I could have internet everything! Like cookies. And you wouldn't be my mommy or daddy, but you would still be my best friends."

Temperature

Becca says, "You colded me!"

A Post-Season Fan

Becca says: "I want to rewind the world so I can watch a football game!"

Legs

Becca says: "I like my long legs. I like to run with them. I can run pretty fast!"