Merry Christmas to all who read my blog

For your consideration: my latest favorite breakfast, crancakes. It is a creation from a cranberry pie gone wrong. I made the pie later and I prefer the cakes. Here's the recipe, now perfected.

Crancakes:
2 cups white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tps. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
8 cups cranberries
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup orange juice concentrate
2 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Sauce:
1 cup full fat sour cream (low fat is sour)
1/4 cup OJ concentrate
sugar or light corn syrup (optional)

Combine in large bowl flour, salt, baking soda and powder. In a blender, puree half the cranberries and half the sugar. The sugar will draw out juices from the berries to make a very thick, bright red puree. Add 1/4 cup of the OJ concentrate, eggs, vanilla, and blend till just combined. Dump on flour mixture, do not stir. Blend remaining cranberries and remaining sugar. Add to flour, stirring just till combined. Cook on griddle in batches. Batter will be very thick, so flatten a little in the pan. Because of the super-high fruit content cakes will take longer to cook than regular pancakes. I use two pans, to speed up the whole process. While the cakes are cooking, mix together the sour cream and 1/4 cup OJ concentrate. Taste, add sugar or light corn syrup if you prefer it sweeter. (If you've never had sour cream sweet, try it, you'll love it. You can thank me later.)
Serves 4 hungry adults.

I invite you all to try them, improve on the recipe and comment. This is my Christmas gift to you all. If I was more ambitious I'd do cards with update letters included, however, I spend too much time eating for that.

Thief

On Sunday after church, we came home to our back door broken. It was a thief. And they did take stuff. Oh no, have they found my stash of horribly expensive jewelry?! Have they found the vault of original paintings?! What about the safe of unmarked bills? Why would a thief come to our house? Well he took Paul's back pack, but threw out his scrubs. (Thank goodness or Paul would have to go to work naked. Last time that happened it didn't go over too well.) In the back pack was Paul's favorite $40 ICU book. The thief also took our Wii, one controller, and our bluetooth on the printer. We called the cops, made a report, put cardboard over the door, and then went to our friend's house for dinner. Next day I got more educated about home insurance, called a few handy-man businesses, a guy came out, and we determined that I could do it myself.


So I unscrewed the insert, which made a HUGE mess. Sweep, unscrew, sweep, unscrew. Cover empty hole with cardboard. Drive down to pick up new glass for $68 - I thought that was a great deal!
Unfortunately you have to have someone hold the glass on the outside when you screw in from the inside, or else I could say that I did this job completely without my husband's help. And wouldn't you know, even though I did all that work beautifully by myself, he was still coaching me on how to screw in properly. Anyway, due to his wonderful input, our new door looks great.Here's all the glass. Kinda pretty.
So, the good news is, they caught the guy who did it. Apparently, later that day the kid stole a suburban, while the owner was watching. The owner jumped in his brother's car and chased the thief down, crashed into him, pulled him out of his car, punched him and called the police. Well the police found that he had a backpack with a Wii in it. So we got our Wii and controller and backpack back, but the ICU book and bluetooth are gone forever. Paul went to court to testify today and he'll be locked up for 6 months. The kid was only 17. The cops say he does this stuff all the time and needs to learn his lesson. Crime doesn't pay. So remember that next time you want somebody else's Wii.

Twilight

Thank you Jen and Annie for this memorable photo.

I saw Twilight last night. It was fun. Edward was much more attractive than I had expected from the previews. Good girls movie. I may even read book #2. Someone in our stake reserved a theater; more than 500 women (and a few men) showed up. The theater even let us in early at 10:00. There was lots of screaming and howling when Edward entered, and it made me miss being a teenager, with all its forbidden passion, and o so distant and unknown future. I don't often miss being a teenager.
In high school my friends and I would go to 'town' and find all sorts of things to do. Once I ran with Marshal Wiebe across a train bridge that was really really long. We actually only made it half way and then I chickened out, and we ran back. On New Years of 1997, I was at a church dance where my virgin lips kissed about 8 handsome strangers. My friends and I had a competition to see who could kiss the most. What hoochies! My first date ever was a octodate with my brother's friend. We had a scavanger hunt, knocking on doors of our town of 1000. Later we ate spaghetti with our hands tied behind our backs. Kim Drewery's Dad fixed pallates for a living. One cold winter about 12 of us piled on top of eachother on a pallate, and held on for dear life as he pulled us behind his truck. We were freezing, but it was so fun. Benjamin Bickman. What a hottie. I had the biggest crush on him. I was a sophmore, he was a senior. He asked me on a date once and brought me a red rose. I melted. He went on a mission and I dreamt he would miss me. Nope. One of many earth shattering heartbreaks. Oh the agony of heartbreak! I can remember giving boys 'the look'. The look that said, "You are so crazy about me you can't help yourself." I smile. My eyes say, "Too bad you'll never get any closer than this look. I'll be happy to torture you as long as you want to suffer." Oh the evil pleasure of heartbreak!
As fun as all that is, and as unfun as my life is so often now, I'm happy I am here, and not in high school. I am fulfilled in unselfish motherhood. I feel peace in my steady self-betterment. I am wildly in love and have security in its unending warmth. (Now I'm getting cheesy).
Sometimes it's nice to be reminded of the sweet sting of new love.
Speaking of love, mine is gone at work. Mundane, but necessary. I really like eating, so I'm glad he's there. He sure is handsome. He has big lips. You ever notice that? He's nice too, and funny. He picks his nose a lot. He says boogers don't have germs, they're just dirt that got stuck in your nose. He likes playing with the kids and is a sucker when they want a drink at bedtime.
Twilight was good. I may make him watch it with me.

Update from down south

This is what I should be doing right now, because I am post-call:
But instead I am going to make a massive post. A blog log, so to speak.

First off, I just want to remind everyone how tough my kids are:
Yes, those are live snakes my kids were handling. Live POISONOUS snakes. Like pythons or something. And my kids loved it. Yep.

And now, I'd like to tell everybody about one of Axel and I's favorite new past times. Golf. Frisbee Golf. There is a totally amazing course pretty close by that has 18 holes + 3 bonus holes. Axel is getting pretty good at chucking a frisbee. The only problem is that he is always trying to swap his semi-lame frisbee for my high-power frisbee fairway driver. That's not going to happen until Axel is tough enough to take his dad to town. Chinatown. And it is HIGHLY unlikely to happen while I am wearing boy scout pants.
Alisha and I took the whole family to a corn maze the other day. It was my wife's idea, and I have to give her credit, it was pretty fun. Axel and Maggie took turns leading the way, and we pretty much made it straight through.

Here's an aerial shot of the maze:
I took that shot from our helicopter ride. No wait, I mean our family hang-gliding ride.

OK, so I just got it off the Gentry Farms website. But you can imagine...

OK, now to talk more about my kids. Isn't Maggie so cute?
Little do you know that she sometimes is cranky and needs to do time-outs. The funny thing is that she really likes time-outs. She can be so INCREDIBLY cranky, and I'll say (very firmly), "Maggie, go do a time-out right now!" and she'll just say, "OK" and go to the nearest corner and stand in it. When I tell her she is done, she comes out of the corner and is the sweetest little girl again.
Lucy is quickly growing up, and we are all hoping she takes after her big sister. I think she will. Look at this cute smile:
She gets her good looks from her mom...
and not from Axel.
Last but not least, I just wanted to show off that my family took a little vacation to the one and only original Jack Daniel's distillery. You might have to click on the picture to zoom in and read the sign for proof.

I was in the basement watching and enjoying conference and the kids were messing around upstairs. Suddenly I notice that all was quiet upstairs and I'd remembered hearing Maggie drag a chair into the kitchen a few minutes earlier. One of two possibilities could have occurred: 1 - Maggie had gotten into the cookies and eaten all 12 of them. 2 - Maggie got bored of the kitchen and had fallen asleep. She was really tired because she went to a sleep study last night where they analyzed her sleeping (we think she has sleep apnea and needs her tonsils removed). Anyway she got less sleep than usual and she was tired. It is not uncommon for Maggie to fall asleep randomly if she is left alone. Usually I find her in her bed, or Axel's top bunk, or on the floor. However, I was pretty certain she'd eaten all the cookies and was revelling that Mom was busy and hadn't found her. Muahahaha.
Please scroll down to see how I found her.


























Option 1 and 2 happend. Besides being horrifyingly dangerous for Maggie to fall asleep on the stove, it's also pretty cute. I really do watch my kids.

She was covered in snickerdoodle crumbs.

Levitation

Lucy has been exhibiting some strange abilities: she can levitate herself and objects. I brought her into a specialist to have her analyzed.
Now, if I can only get her to levitate herself to me for the 4:00 a.m. feeding.

Anniversary

Paul and I had our 5 year anniversary. It was one of the better ones. We do a big breakfast on our anniversary for two reasons: 1. I love love love delicious breakfast and search for excuses to have them, 2. Paul asked me to marry him in the morning and we had breakfast afterward. I know, I know, reason number 1 is more romantic. We had toasted sourdough orange craisin bread with your choice of honey or brown sugar-cinnamon cream cheese, grilled plums with spiced walnut yogurt sauce, basil scrambled eggs, and blueberry lemonade. No wonder Paul married me.

He bought me bouquets of 5 different flowers. He's a charmer. Here are the ones on our table.


Paul and I wanted to do something great for our date out. We have very different dating styles so we compromised on a two part date - 1 part scavenger hunt, 1 part movie.
We scavenged at the mall for:

• the ugliest shirt
• the best tie
• the best perfume
• the best makeout spot

Here are the results...... Ugliest Shirt

Except Paul somehow still looks hot in it. We found another shirt that I thought was possibly uglier with a pink skull and gold shimmering teeth on it for over $100, but Paul thought it was cool, so he vetoed it as an ugly shirt. But he does wear WEEKLY (washed it in the laundry every week for 5 years) an old blue T-shirt -now paint spattered- that his brother Bob got at youth conference at least 14 years ago with a tiny temple on the front and above it the words 'Beyond This Moment'. He will not let me throw it out.

Best Tie

We disagreed on which ones were best and neither could narrow it to one, so we each chose two. I'd appreciate your comments on which ties you like best.

Yes, I realize that I look hideous in this picture, but please note that the picture was taken at the mall, and everyone knows that the mall purposefully uses light to make you look fat and ugly in hopes that in a fit of depressed compulsion you'll buy overpriced clothes. Which I did. I'm the proud owner of the red ugly shirt, and I look like a supermodel in it.

Best Perfume

Paul knew all about this perfume. He read a book called 'Emperor of Scent' about a guy who has a heightened sense of smell and has become infatuated with perfume. His book is about perfume. Paul tells me its a good book. I remain unconvinced. Now he takes note of new and famous perfumes. At first I was unimpressed. It smelled too musky for me. But on the second smell I liked it a little more. Then I put it on. The more I wore it the more I liked it. I think it's the best perfume I've ever smelled. Definitely the sexiest. Try it out next time you're at the mall. Beware, you might be thronged by hot Italian guys who can't figure out why you're so mysterious and unattainable. FYI - it's the number one perfume in France.

Best Make-Out Spot

Paul picked the elevator. Though it is private, elevators lack romance, and can be stinky, though ours was not, still a good choice, Paul. My choice was very romantic. Paul agreed.

The chocolate was maybe even better than the 'Dark Knight'.


5 years. 5 good years.

Well, I've been waiting until something blogworthy happens in my life, to post. It's been a while since I posted. I have come to the conclusion that my life is pretty mundane. But I'm still happy. I think that's a skill. Being happy with a mundane life. That may be a more useful skill than blogging even. But don't go pitying me, there are occasional colorful bursts of excitement. Like this morning. I had to go to the dreaded stake primary training meeting. I usually go with joy, but this meeting happens to fall on our 5 year anniversary - today. So I went with cranky obedience. I put Maggie in the nursery, and took Lucy with me to the meeting. Of course she got hungry immediately, no problem, get out the trusty feeding blanket. 5 minutes later I feel warm goopiness. Oh no. I take a look. I'm dealing not only with a blowout, but with a nasty puddle of little Lucy BM cupped in my skirt. How do you even manuvre around this kind of a situation. Well, long story short, I got out of the meeting. I figure it was like a little anniversary present from Heavenly Father to me. Unfortunately I'm the one who has to do the laundry involved with the present.
So now I'm home with my two girls asleep, Paul and Axel at a birthday party. And I'm thinking of all I have to do:
clean the kitchen
laundry - 3 loads and I already did 5 loads this week
plan for tomorrows singing time in primary
clean up all the things I threw into the storage part of basement when I cleaned the house for a showing yesterday with 1 hour notice
prep the chicken for Sunday dinner

and all the things on my dream list:
finish the frame I'm making
sew some slings for dear friends
cut out a dress to sew
get a haircut (it's been a while)
do crunches until I get a marathon runner tummy (I keep hoping I don't actually have to run a marathon to get that tummy)
watch an episode of Arrested Development - Paul and I started watching them on hulu
take a nap

With any luck, I'll get two of the things on my have to do list done today. I could probably do more, but I'm choosing to blog right now. I keep thinking if get some sort of awesome system down for the kids they'll be able to practically take care of themselves and I can get all of my chores done on one day - like a preparation day - and then I'll have the other 5 days to devote to my hobbies. So far I have devised many failing systems. I've tried the pretend-your-kids-aren't- there-system. Usually ends in yelling at the kids and I feel guilty. I've tried the pretend-I-don't-have-chores system, which usually ends up in a hungry family and a husband who looks exhausted by the mess in our home. I've tried involving my kids in my hobbies, but that usually ends up in all of the pins stuck in my bed, all my fabric unfolded and thrown around the room (I have A LOT of fabric), me moving all the cans of harmful wood finishing chemicals out of reach so many times it seems as if my job is actually to move cans. I've tried the doing-my-hobbies-only-when-the-kids-are-sleeping, but I can never seem to get all the work done I'm supposed to while they're awake and we get the yelling/guilt conundrum going on again. I have come to the conclusion that perhaps there is no such system and I should instead teach myself to be content with taking care of kids, house, and husband. (Thank goodness we have no pets!) I'm sure as we have more kids, I will have less free time. We want 7. We want 7? Ask me at 5 if we want 7. I think we do. Anyway, I always tell myself, "You can't have kids and then expect them to raise themselves." So I am learning to be happy with the mundane, and I think that is a useful skill. Plus my husband is hilarious and hot and super fun to be with and I love to make his life just as good as he makes mine. And my kids are loving. They love me. Is there anything sweeter than two small sticky hands on your cheeks and a little face so close to yours your eyes can't quite focus on it, and a small voice that can't enunciate all the words telling you with peanut butter breath, "Mom, you have my heart". Yes, Axel does say that to me. But I did teach it to him, as a survival skill. It completely melts me. Sewing can't do that. So here are some videos of my perfect mundane life.

Sorry the sound isn't that great.

The last word is 'hassle'. Get your mind out of the gutter.

чорний хліб

Behold. Ukrainian Black Bread.

When I was a missionary in Ukraine, I fell in love with the food. Delicious, earthy, healthy food. One of my all time favorites was their black bread - round rye bread. I knew someone who worked in a factory where they made the bread (you could buy this delicious treat at nearly every corner). He told me how to do it, but the recipe seemed too simple to me. It seemed there was a secret he wasn't telling me. Well, when I got home, I made my family a Ukrainian dinner and tried out the rye bread. Not the same at all. I searched the internet and tried two different recipes, both were sadly disapointing. Not even close. Really, not even close.

Well, it's 6 years later and today, I finally made it. The secret: it's sourdough rye bread. Paul, who loves bread and loves me to cook bought me the bread bible: Tassajara bread book. Everything we tried has been heavenly. I decided to get brave and try my hand at sourdough bread. This was my first. It turned out beautifully. I made two big round loaves. They are perfect. I ate a quarter of one already.
I love it with sour cream. This bread is the perfect accompaniment to borscht.
And a little side post: Paul made smoothies. The kids can't drink them without the mustache and we thought that the smoothie probably tastes better with a 'stache, so we tried it. The kids had it right all along.

The Truth About the Reynolds

While downloading pics from our camera, I discovered that Axel had taken some pictures when I wasn't looking. He actually got a few cute ones of Maggie.

and Lucy.
But mostly, he took pictures of things I try to hide about our family.
Maggie eats crayons if there are any around. She likes to throw away dirty diapers, and sometimes gets sidetracked from making it to the trash can.
Sometimes clean, wet laundry sits in the washing machine so long that I have to wash it again.My sewing table and bedroom is most often a disaster.

Our storage area is so messy and unorganized you can hurt yourself looking for something in the stacked piles of boxes around our table saw.What my house looks like when I attempt to do the laundry, organize the kids clothes, do the budget, make bread, make phone calls I've been putting off, return swim suits that didn't work and squeeze in some fun time with the kids, all in one day.

Proof that I shop at Walmart and buy cookies.
What was I doing when Axel took all the pictures? Well he took a picture of that too. Slinging Lucy, receipts on the floor (thanks Maggie), us bank on the computer, probably talking to someone on the phone straitening out some health insurance mess-up. This is how our family really is.

I went to see MamaMia last night at our local theatre with a bunch of girls from church. I loved it. I loved it because of the sparkling costumes, the dancing, the muscular shirtless guys, and because I dressed up. What I mean is, I wore jewlery. I love jewelry and have very little, but the little I have, I forget to wear. I forget that jewlery is something I like and should put on, until I get to church and see everyone elses beautiful accessories and think, 'I should have put on my dangly earings.' Well yesterday I put on some sparkling, dangling earings and a necklace that almost touched my belly button. With my newfound glamor, I may just venture into colorful eyeshadow.

Durtschi reunion

It's been a while since I posted anything - reason being that it would be a huge post. I went to my family reunion. There are now 129 people in the Durtschi clan. My grandma had nine kids and they all came, and most of their children and spouses and their children came as well, so there were loads of Durtschi's running around. Sadly, Paul could not come. He started his residency, which kinda means he fell of the planet and into hospital hell. So I packed up the kids and we flew to Jackson Hole. They were fantastic on the flights and layover. I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing the kids did was play on the new 'playground' with Pappy.
At my family reunions we camp. Thankfully my dad pitched the tent for us. I was worried the kids wouldn't do well in the tent, but once again, pleasantly surprised. They were tuckered out every night and slept like rocks.

It was a lot colder in the mountains of Wyoming than in humid Nashville. It got down in the 50's at night, so thank goodness for my mom's stockpile of bedding.
This years theme was 'Survivor'. We divided into teams; every team got a colorful bandanna and had to name themselves and make a cheer. Axel's team was 'Mellow Yellow', and Axel danced during their performance of the cheer.

One of the challenges was to make a sculpture of Grandma using only what you could find in nature. This was my team's:
On the second day, Heidi came! I haven't seen her since Christmas and now she's 5 months pregnant. So I was REALY excited to see her, and so were the kids.
Every year Driggs has a 4th of July parade where every politician politicizes and every good float throws candy. Axel and Maggie caught on pretty quickly. After about 10 pieces of candy I told the kids no more eating and that we would save the candy for later. Maggie, however tried to get uncle Ralph to open some for her when I wasn't looking.
That day we had a canoe trip, and I didn't take a camera, so no pics, but it was beautiful and eventful. The water was much higher and faster this year and we probably should have all stayed home. But, we were anxious to relive one of our favorite family memories. So this year we made new memories, when 10 of our 14 canoes tipped over. It was pretty scary actually, but everyone made it back in one piece with my cousin Rick as everybody's hero.

Doesn't he look heroic!?

My Dad got sick and had to sit out a lot of the reunion. Terrible. Your whole, huge family gets together that you are so excited to see and you get sick and can't bond. Terrible. I felt sad for him and wished that he was there, so that night when we had our family auction I bought Dad a present. It was a shirt that said, "Don't be so open minded, your brains might fall out." Dad and I frequently disagree about politics with me being the more liberal one and Dad being more conservative. I tell him I'm not liberal (I really don't see myself that way) I'm open minded. So I thought this would be a funny present. He loved it, and wore it the next three days in a row. Love ya, Dad!

Last Day of the Reunion - everybody packed up their tents and left. I was sad. The last reunion I came to was 4 years ago, and there were so many new people in my family since then. Lots of new spouses and children. Plus some of the cousins I hadn't known very well because they were older than me. Well now that we're all adults the age difference doesn't seem so big and I got to know them for the first time. I really love my family. Here's a few pics of the Durtschi's:

Dad and Jim.

Uncle Ralph and Heidi.

Zach (Melissa's husband), Brain, Melissa, (Zach's brother, sorry don't remember your name), Whittney.

Cousin Amy. Beautiful, even in blurry.

Mike, Sandy, and Olivia inside.
Lots of cousins to run with.

Camping babies.

Cousin Sam and his family. His wife's name is Alisha Dawn Durtschi. Which used to be my name exactly. Crazy. His kids are Tristan and Grace.

Reynolds + Durtschi