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.