Children of the Corn

We had the opportunity to go to the church farm this weekend and pick as much corn as we wanted. Neither of us have ever picked corn before so we had no idea what to expect. We packed up some gloves, tubs, and sunscreen and hoped for the best. The farm "opened" at 8am and was first come first serve, so we loaded up early and made the hour drive out there. We were worried on the drive there that it was extremely foggy, but it turns out that was in our favor. The fog made for a nice cool morning and perfect for corn picking!
We were both surprised just how easy picking corn really is. We took turns going into the field and picking while the other one watched the kids and husked corn. (better to husk the corn there because we could leave the garbage!) Even Emmaline and Liliana got into the action and were husking corn. They are so good at destroying things, it shouldn't have surprised me that they would be good at ripping leaves off the corn! When it started to get too hot, around 11am, we headed out.
When we got home, we put Liliana and Imogene in naps, and let Emmaline put on a swimming suit and play in the sprinkler. Meanwhile we finished husking the corn. It turns out picking and husking are the easy parts! After we finished husking, we worked until 11 at night blanching, cutting, and freezing the corn. We did take breaks to handle kid issues and eat dinner of course. What a job though! One tip that my sister told me was invaluable. She uses an angel food cake pan and uses the center hole to prop the corn in and then she uses an electric knife to cut off the kernels and they fall into the pan. GENIUS!!! I can't imagine having to do it on a cutting board with a regular knife!

Anyway - a few stats:

We picked 330 ears of corn
We threw away about 20 ears that weren't good
Set aside 20 ears for us and to give to neighbors
We husked, blanched, cut, and froze 290 ears of corn.
Ended up with 81 quart freezer bags of corn - each holding about 4 cups each

The bad news is that I brought my camera with me but forgot to put the CF card in it - so no pictures from the corn field! I did take pictures of our haul when we got home though!





Rating: 5 Candy Corns (of course!)

matters of business...

Just out of curiosity - when you look at the header of the blog - is the title centered in the pink rectangle or is it off to the left? For me it is centered but on AJ's computer it is off to the left. Strange. Feel free to leave a comment and/or vote.

Thanks

Louie has passed

Please, let's have a moment of silence for Louie. He came to live with us about 5 days ago. He was constantly buzzing about the house and entertaining the kids. Emmaline became so enamoured that she named him Louie and followed him all around.
Sadly, I was finally able to get Louie within arms reach of my flyswatter and he is no more.
good-bye Louie the Fly. The children will miss you.

Rating: 1 Lollipop or 1 Fireball (depending on who you are talking to)

Blood Test Results

Emmaline has an appointment with the allergist coming up on September 8th. In preparation AJ took her to get her RAST testing done. They called with the results today. They said that her levels were too high on milk and egg to do any challenges, but that her levels for peanuts and tree nuts were low enough that we should do a challenge. So that is good news. When we hung up, I realized they forgot to tell me the status of her soy allergy. I'll probably just ask the doctor about that at her appointment. Anyway, at her appointment, we'll schedule a day to challenge the peanuts. It takes most of the day so we have to schedule it a couple months in advance.

Rating: 2 Lollipops and 2 Fireballs (good news and bad news of course!)

Preschool a la Carte?

Well I'm really excited! I decided to not put Emmaline in preschool. However, the city offers a great variety of recreation programs on a month by month basis so I opted to sign Emmaline up for a few of those instead. It's a win-win situation. Emmaline benefits because she will learn good skills about listening to teachers and working in groups, as well as getting to try a variety of things. I benefit because I don't have to commit her to one single activity and then discover that she doesn't like it, and it is cheap since it is through the city. If I discover that she really takes to something, then we can reevaluate from there. So thus far I have her scheduled for:

Sept/Oct - Beginning Ballet and Tumbling (all one class) (this one is compliments of Grandma!)
Nov - Sports Sampler (basketball, tee-ball, soccer, and tennis)
Dec - Ice Skating

I think she is going to really enjoy herself and I am excited to see her try new things as well!

Rating: 1 Lollipop

A Parking Lot for the Birds

As mentioned previously, I work in Boulder. It's a fairly good sized city, in both land area and population. Hardly what I'd consider "rural" or otherwise, though it is surrounded by a lot of open space (which is great!). But what I saw today in the parking lot was just cool!

I pulled into work and just as I was shutting off my car, I saw this HUGE red tailed hawk come in for a landing on a car. A few moments earlier I had seen a squirrel scamper by, so I assume the hawk was stalking the squirrel (RUN SQUIRREL!). But the hawk landed on a car and just sat there, for nearly 5 minutes. I got out and just watched it. Its size alone was mesmerizing. Eventually another coworker parked nearby, and he had a camera capable of taking some nice pictures. It flew away moments after this shot.

Rating: 5 Squirrel Nut Zippers

Organic is "good"

Here in Colorado, every once in awhile PBS airs this new show that is locally produced called Big Green Rabbit. It is usually about dinosaurs or healthy eating or that kind of thing. Admittedly I find it to be an incredibly annoying show (and I even can stand Teletubbies just fine!) but today I think they took things TOO far.

The episode was about "organic". They had Charlie (the big green rabbit) talking to a cow. Here is how the conversation went:

COW: I'm no ordinary cow, I'm a cow that lives on an organic farm and makes organic milk!
CHARLIE: What is organic?
COW: Organic is a word that describes how food and animals are raised - naturally - without a lot of chemicals that aren't really good for you. Organic is SPECIAL Charlie, and it is GOOD.
CHARLIE: Oh I see. You do seem very happy, for a cow I mean.
COW: Oh I am VERY happy Charlie. Being organic means I was able to grow up NATURALLY - like I was born to - without a lot of chemicals and other things that are just not, well, natural.
CHARLIE: So organic is natural? Organic sounds like a GOOD thing.

Now - I'm not saying organic is a bad or terrible thing. Here is my beef (hahahahaha - beef..cows...beef...). It isn't the place of a children's show to give an opinion on whether something like that is "good" or "Bad". I mean, I have no problem with then educating about what it is - but to put a label on it as "good" and thus implying that the alternative is "bad". . . I'm sorry, but that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Rating: 5 completely chemical ridden inorganic Fireballs

Strawberry Smiles

Imogene wore an adorable strawberry dress to church today. One of the few things that she has brand new and isn't a hand me down from cousins and/or sisters! When we found out she was a girl, we bought it for her. It also has a cute little pink sweater with pockets that look like strawberries too - but that isn't in the picture.


Anyway, we decided it would be appropriate today to take her picture in our strawberry patch. The plants look great of course, but the birds have eaten all the berries, so this is the best we can do.


With AJ's help, we were finally able to catch her smiling!


Rating: 5 chocolate covered strawberries

Mommy Moments: Barf and Eyeballs

How's that for a title?

Let's start with the barf shall we? I decided this morning I would actually take care of myself. Instead of my usual uniform of capris and a tee, I put on my nice pair of jeans, a nice shirt, and even put on a little make-up! I should have known better - one should never tempt fate! Imogene of course projectile vomited on me (having NEVER vomited before until today). So much for dressing up.
Funny story? Maybe not. Story dripping in irony? You bet!

Now let's talk eyeballs! Emmaline has a set of animal finger puppets that I got at a craft fair a couple of years ago. Yesterday, Liliana came to me holding two googly eyes that I assumed had fallen off of one of the puppets. Well apparently I was wrong! Today I caught Liliana BITING the eyes off of a puppet! I stopped her of course, but tonight, when tidying up the family room, I discovered a LOT of the puppets were missing eyes. I started to get nervous that I was going to have to start watching for eyes in her poop. (Never thought that would be a sentence I'd write!). However, I soon discovered a whole stash of little eyeballs hidden away in the Little People Farm set. As you can see from the picture, poor mouse puppet lost more than an eye and now we have a whole zoo of blind animals.

Needless to say, the puppets have been put away for now.

Rating: 2 Sour Patch Kids

The Dish Fairy

The number one household task that I hate with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns would be doing dishes. HATE. IT. I joke a lot that "maybe the Dish Fairy will come tonight and do all the dishes." Well good news everyone - it turns out that the Dish Fairy is a HE and he came!!! YAY!!!


I came downstairs this morning and discovered the kitchen was sparkly clean. AJ stayed up until 3:30am doing it. Thanks honey! I give you this little thing that is supposed to look like a rose only sideways: -<-<--@ (see? kinda?)

And to polish off this post, I'll share some random adorable photos I took of the kids yesterday. Emmaline and Liliana playing "car" and Imogene giving us a pleasant look though she refuses to display her new found smiling skillz for the camera:

Rating: 10 Sweetpops (get it? - cause AJ was sweet and is a pop!)

Pizza Pasta

Today for lunch I decided to be a good mom and actually cook some lunch for the girls (mostly because all my pots and pans are actually clean - thanks AJ!!) I opted to make some Mac 'n Chreese. You read that right - Chreese NOT Cheese. Chreese sauce is a little allergy-safe gem made out of nutritional yeast flakes and a variety of spices to make a yummy sauce that mimics cheese sauce. You can either buy it in box form from Road's End Organics (found at most health food stores) or make it yourself using the recipe from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.

I like to make a big canister of the mix and keep it on hand for whenever I need a "cheese" sauce for pizzas, grilled cheese, etc. So today I opted to make the Mac 'n CHreese from scratch! Go me! In a moment of clarity, I had a fantastic idea. I spotted some leftover pizza sauce and half a bag of pepperoni in the fridge! "That could be yummy!" I said to myself.

So, after making the pasta and the sauce, I dumped in some pizza sauce and cut up pepperoni. I plopped it in front of the girls and Emmaline declared: "OH! it's PIZZA pasta!!!" took a bite, and said, "I think this is kind of tasty!"

Success!

Rating: 3 Lollipops

Bring Your Kid to Work Day

It's funny working in Boulder (aka East Berkley; aka The People's Republic of Boulder). Our office is very "pet friendly." And by that, I mean... "dogs walking the hallway" kind of friendly. There are a set of dog feeding bowls that live permanently in our kitchen at work. When folks get together for luncheons and the like, there's not much talk about kids but a lot of talk about dogs. I've been on project teams where folks have had to call in sick... because the dog was sick. Yeah. So, Bethany and I have always joked that "hey, if they're that friendly with dogs, why not with kids?" Today was the first official Bring Your Kid to Work Day.

It worked out pretty well. Bethany packed Emmaline a lunch (and me! woohoo!), I gathered up a couple of choice movies (Clifford and Charlotte's Web) and Bethany's laptop, and we trucked off to work in "Daddy's Green Car." The ride to work was event filled! We saw... fields of corn! And cows! And cars! And lots of "Daddy, why are we stopped?" and "are we almost there daddy?" At the office, I setup Emmaline next to me on my desk, got her hooked up to our network and she happily played at the PBS Kids website. (Emmaline has taken a real liking to that site - without any direction from us, she's figured out how to navigate the site and how to play most of the games - impressive!) She did have to go to one meeting with me, where she just colored on the white board. She loved it. Who wouldn't be happy with 8 markers that you can write on the wall with... and then erase it! SCORE!

Emmaline spent an hour or so on the PBS site, then it was time for some Charlotte's Web. But we had to have a snack (a pluot). And then came the big question: "Where are your bugs, daddy?" You see, I'm a programmer. But Emmaline doesn't really understand what that is, because when she sees me using the computer at home it's usually playing games or just dorking around. So, we've taught her that "daddy fixes computer bugs." Emmaline is always sure to point out that they aren't mean bugs "like ants, or spiders - those are mean bugs." I had to reexplain to Emmaline that the bugs are IN the computer, and that I have to type lots and lots to help make them better. She accepted that answer. For now. :-)

Then we had lunch (that mom made! woohoo!). Emmaline was very polite when coworkers would stop by. She'd tell her name, and what she was allergic to ('atta girl!), including boys. As the afternoon began, though, she wanted to get on to the REAL purpose of me bringing her to work: lab work at the hospital. It's time for her yearly checkup, and we needed to get in to have some blood drawn for her RAST and other tests.

She's always a trooper having her blood drawn. I think this was the first time she's actually shown fear. She very patiently sat down on my lap, and was very intent on watching what was going on. She really started to get a little panicky when they cleaned her arm with alcohol. They stuck the needle in and she didn't squirm, but did exclaim "Ow Ow Ow!" and whimpered a little bit. She really is a trooper. The tech didn't hit the vein when she put in the needle, but she was smart enough not to pull it back out but just jabbed around gently for the vein. And once Emmaline realized the pain was pretty much gone, she just chatted away about her day to the techs.

So, all in all a good day. Emmaline got to go to work with dad, and we got some blood to be tested for allergies. Hopefully that results in a change. We'll see.

Rating: 5 Payday Bars (because the payoff for being a dad comes every day)

Hair Extraordinaire

A mind for useless trivia and quick-witted sarcasm will only get your so far in life. Luckily, I was blessed with at least one truly useful talent. Admittedly it won't get me very far in life either, but at least it benefits someone other than myself! For some reason, I'm pretty good at doing hair. Not grown-up hair - but little girl hair. Ponytails and braids. I was able to french braid my own hair at 10 years old (of course that stopped for awhile after the unfortunate Bangs Cutting Affair - don't remind me to tell that one another time...) Anyway, I was blessed with three beautiful girls that get to reap the benefit of my ability to successfully get a ponytail holder into hair.

I was surfing some blogs today and came across one devoted solely to hair styles for little girls called: She Does Hair. She did an adorable "smocking" effect so I had to give it a try. Emmaline was such a trooper. She was so patient and forgiving (when I pulled her hair one too many times!) Here is the result!

I'm curious to see how long it'll hold ...

Rating: 3 Pixie Dust

This gives me hope...

I read this article on CNN.com today: Mom Shocked by Teen's Modest Clothing

It's worth reading but essentially it hits on the fact that layering and vintage are the new trends for teenage girls. That looking "proper" is the new in. Hallelujah! Hopefully this trend is around for the next 20 years to get my girls through their teenage years. Then again, I have at least one child that adores dressing up like this:

Custom Towel

We were sent a check for a baby gift for Imogene (thanks Dad and Mom!) and instructed to get something for her with it. The problem of course is that Imogene is our third baby and not just that, but our third girl - so we have everything we need! After polling all my friends, I came to the conclusion that Imogene needs something personalized, fun, and yet still practical. Thus we decided on a hooded towel. The ones we have are so tiny and thin. We found a lady on Etsy that makes customized hooded towels. Her store is Tricia's Treasures (go check her out!). It came today and I absolutely LOVE it. It is nice and big and fluffy so Imogene will be able to use it for a long time to come.

Rating: 3 Lollipops

Allergy Frustration

It is days like this that I feel frustrated about Emmaline's food allergies. I have some sausage that I want to use for dinner but all I can think of to make or find yummy recipes for are breakfast things. Particularly, everything calls for eggs. That is easy to substitute in something like a pancake, but I don't want to make something sweet - I want to make something savory. However, you can't exactly substitute the egg and cheese in omelets, breakfast casseroles, breakfast burritos, quiches, etc. Not to mention the fact that my kitchen is a disaster zone so anything that looks too complicated to make is quickly discarded. If anyone has a fantastic savory breakfast type food that involves the use of sausage, but not of egg or cheese and can let me know about it in the next 30 minutes, that'd be great.

Rating: A vegan candy (those don't have eggs or dairy in them!)

**Update** Well sadly nobody came to my aid in time for dinner. Luckily the weather turned and started getting overcast and breezy. Even a little bit of rain fell - so I decided that even though it is August, that we would have soup. I decided to call it Stockpile Soup:
1 lb. sausage -free
1 bag mixed italian style veggies - $1.00
2 cans stewed tomatoes - free
1 can condensed tomato soup - $0.20
1 box rotini pasta - free
water, parsley flakes, dehydrated onion flakes, salt, pepper, beef boullion - $1.00 (at most!)
Total Cost: $2.20 (and there is plenty left for another meal!)

Giggle Box

Well what I really intended to blog about was that we finally have *something* from our tiny garden - a cucumber!!! However, instead of getting a decent picture of said cucumber, I got lots of great pictures of two giggle boxes (you can spot the cucumber in Emmaline's hand). I particularly love this one because it looks like they are singing in a musical together!




Rating: 4 pixie dust!

The Magic of the Dinner Hour

Something happens in my house - about 4:30 each day. Imogene starts to cry, Liliana hangs on me, and Emmaline begins to whine. Each and every one of them communicating the same message just in different languages: "I'm HUUUUUUUNNNNNNGGGGRRRRRYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!"

Of course the irony is that I am standing there pulling things out of the fridge, getting out pots and pans - just as though I'm making dinner! Apparently though, none of those non-verbal cues mean anything to my kids. All they see is that there is nothing on the table and their food of choice isn't being presented to them on silver platters and covered in Hershey's Syrup (preferably!)

By the time AJ gets home from work, the kids are practically (and sometimes literally!) writhing on the floor in utter starvation. And when we finally serve up dinner??? "But mom - I don't want THAT!"

Rating: 1 Liver and Onions Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean

9 to 5

What a way to get a good night's sleep!

Imogene didn't just sleep until 5, she slept from 9:00 to 5:45. That is just shy of 9 hours!!! I'm pretty sure I have the coolest baby there is!

Rating: 5 pixie dust (or should that be sandman dust?)

Rice Milk Maker

After almost three months of being on back order, our rice milk maker finally arrived yesterday! Technically it is advertised as a soy milk maker, but it does pretty much any kind of milk you can name (except for cow!) in just 15 minutes. We saw the UPS man pull up in front of our house and we gleefully took the package from him and rushed into the kitchen to give it a try. Here is the verdict:


Bethany: "Pretty easy to use and only takes 15 minutes. It's a pain to clean though. I like that it uses a lot less rice than I thought it would - but I am disappointed that it only makes a quart at a time. Luckily Emmaline doesn't go through it that fast. Also frustrating is that it heats up the rice milk as it makes it so you have to wait overnight for it to get cold. As for taste...YUCK. It just tastes like watery rice. I need to find out the secret formula Rice Dream uses to make theirs so yummy. I'm thinking sugar might help."


AJ: "The taste leaves a lot to be desired. The overall cleanliness of the product is low - in that it is messy to clean up."


Emmaline: "I don't like this rice milk."
AJ: "Why don't you give it one more sip just to be sure."
Emmaline: "Why? - when I don't like it?"
AJ: "sigh"

UPDATE: Today instead of just reading the instruction manual, I watched the cheesy instructional DVD that came with it. Mostly it was like an infomercial and had instructions on how to make your own tofu and tofu burgers (ewww!) but I did catch a helpful tip where the person said that they personalize the taste of their soy milk with 1/2 tsp. salt and 3 T. sugar. I decided it couldn't hurt to try it with the rice milk! The verdict is that it tasted MUCH better - even palatable! Emmaline commented that the rice milk still tasted "different" but was willing to drink a cup of it and requested rice milk for dinner. *phew*

Rating: 1 bag of mixed Halloween candies - (for mixed reviews with good and bad stuff!)

Hand and Foot

We were thrilled to have some friends of our visit us yesterday. They spent the last year living in Taiwan and normally live in Pennsylvania so we rarely get to see them. We date back to our newlywed days when Jenny and I both worked for DCFS. We had our first babies just 6 weeks apart from each other. It was great visiting with them and of course the highlight as always was being able to play Hand and Foot with them. We reminisced about the olden days before kids and how we could play for hours without interruption from kids.

We've had an ongoing rivalry for years of the boys against the girls. Jenny and I are of course much more skilled at the game, but AJ and Kyle seem to have all the luck no matter what dumb moves they make! It has driven us crazy forever. However, in a twist to the saga, Jenny and I actually won a round last night! Amazing! Then we felt bad that the boys lost so we let them when the next round....
That's the kind of good wives we are.

Rating: 5 Lollipops (always great to see friends - we're glad you guys could drop by on your travels!)

That explains why the clothes don't fit...

Imogene had her 1 month check up today and has grown quite a bit already.

Weight: 9 lbs.
Height 21.5 inches

That means that in just 3 weeks (since her last check) she has put on 2 lbs. 5 oz. and has grown 1.5 inches! No wonder we're having trouble strapping on the newborn diapers and why her little jammies seem tight.

My baby is growing up so fast already!

Rating: 4 Pixie Dust (excellent growing Imogene!)

Another Fabulous Snack Weekend!

Well I dare say a good time was had by all!

On Thursday, we went bargain hunting which is always fun.

On Friday we canned 22 quarts of peaches and pears. I have never canned before and was pleasantly surprised how easy it was (even though we had to call Grandma twice for a couple of tips!). I will definitely be giving it a try again. Next attempt will be pickles! Of course they did take ENOUGH work that I won't be letting the family open them any time soon. What's the point if you are just going to open it immediately? I need time to sit and admire how pretty they are!




On Saturday, we went to Boulder and walked the Pearl Street Mall and window shopped and enjoyed the ambiance of the street performers and local liberal collage students. It was just like being back in Provo, UT at BYU - only with Democrats all around instead. ;-)


Sadly Saturday was our last full day and everyone left here today. Now onto planning for next year!

Rating: 1 pan of 7 layer dip, 2 boxes of popsicles, mozzarella sticks, bowl of fruit with fruit dip, and 1 box of chocolates