Fireworks and Wagons

I can't believe summer is almost over. July flew by, and I'm kind of panicking right now. August will be here in less than two hours! And then comes autumn! I feel like I'm about to be robbed of warmth and sunshine and there's nothing I can do about it! 

Anyway, here's how we celebrated the holidays in July.

For Independence Day, our friends invited us to the Midland Country Club. They had a huge party there with bounce houses and slides, water balloon games, pool games, dance contests, a ton of food, and of course fireworks if you stayed until dark (which means 10:00 pm here). We had a such a great time that we stayed later than planned, and ended up pushing our other plans for the night later and later.

When we got home, we grabbed a plate of s'mores cookies and rushed over to our neighbor's house to catch the end of their barbecue. We met a bunch of interns and Josh learned to play corn hole.

After that, it was getting really dark, so we walked a few houses down to the Smiths' to see if they wanted to light sparklers and glow sticks with us. They had already done fireworks and were in their pajamas, but we dragged all the kids back outside to have some more fun. I have no pictures, but it was a really fun night. Josh's favorite part was the party poppers.

After that super late night, the boys slept in every morning for weeks. There were days when I had to actually walk into their room and get them out of bed after 8:00! It was like magic! 

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A few weeks later, our church had a Pioneer Day picnic. This is a Mormon holiday, when we celebrate the day the pioneers made it to the Salt Lake Valley, after being forced out of their homes in Nauvoo and other places in the east. 

The party was so well organized! We played games like the pioneers, dressed like the pioneers (some of us), and of course, ate a lot of pie. Josh did not want to leave, he was having so much fun.

Josh and Sam played "stick pull" quite a few times. Josh didn't win every time, but I happened to get a picture of him in a victorious moment.

They also played with these little toys made out of jar lids, streamers, and string. After spinning them in circles for a few seconds, the boys quickly figured out how to use them like nun-chucks and start a good old fashioned street fight.

Matt took part in the stick pull tournament, but lost after a couple rounds. I guess the baby sunglasses weren't as intimidating as he thought.

Sorry, Shannon. For the record, Clark beat Matt right after this.

They also had a table to color pictures of covered wagons, or decorate a paper patchwork quilt. They had a button game, a balance scale game, three-way tug of war, a scavenger hunt, dance instruction, and a program that we couldn't stay for. Again, it was so well done! I can't remember the last time I actually had fun at a pioneer day event, but this one was awesome.

There was live pioneer music,

and a children's parade. They got a few young men to play trumpet, saxophone, and drums while the kids (meaning mostly Mimi the primary chorister) sang "I Will Be Valiant".

Matt and Jude bonded over pie on the sidewalk.

And this is what happens when I try to make them sit still for a good picture. One or both boys revolt.

I promise I was there too. I'm just never pictured. Just imagine a giddy, sweaty mom running around with pie in both hands, and that's me.

Juderonomy

My boys are cute. I should just leave it at that, but allow me to elaborate, at least about Jude today.

 Jude is becoming more stubborn and independent all the time. He learns new "words" every day. He's already a very strong personality in our house. 

Let me illustrate with a few examples of some of his favorite things to do lately:

- Piling as many shoes in his arms as possible, standing at the doorway of different rooms, and throwing them with all his strength. Whenever I can't find a pair of shoes, I can usually be sure to find one in the pantry, and its mate in the laundry room.

Helping Daddy and Josh poke holes in a box with screwdrivers. Man stuff.

- Taking all the baby cups and bowls out of his cupboard and throwing them directly into the garbage, which he can now open. He does this quickly and spastically, usually sneaking more cups in even as the garbage drawer is closing.

- Bringing me food from the pantry all day long and begging as if I never ever feed him.

- Opening the Sharp Drawer in the kitchen, reaching his hand up and feeling around in there until someone comes running and screaming to stop him, at which point he either screams back or laughs hysterically.

- Helping me water the plants, pulling up the weeds I point out, and plunging his hands into fresh warm mud at every opportunity.

Pondering how many grains of sand there might be in that vast, open sandbox.

- Bringing me books, one at a time, getting settled on my lap, reading two pages excitedly in baby language, pushing it to the side angrily, and getting up to grab another book. Repeat for twenty minutes. He can never seem to find the one he's looking for.

- Shaking his head "no" to everything, even when it's clearly something he wants, like a fruit snack he thrusts into my face or a remote control.

- Stomping around the house yelling "Daaah-aaaw!!" This is how he says "Josh". I know because whenever I yell for Josh, I use the same intonation, and Jude has got it down. I know I say this about something different pretty much every day, but it is the cutest thing ever.

- Dressing up in little girl clothes! Okay, this one isn't as frequent as the others. I've had some baby girl things around the house lately (giving them away for a friend). He loves all shoes, but pink must have been so new and pretty that he couldn't resist. He cried hard when I took these off his fat little feet and handed them to another mommy.

Sorry Jude, that might be embarrassing later in life. Good thing you're so tough. In a cute way.

The Evolution of Foodies

Allow me to share with you a love story. The love story of a young girl and a young boy, and the development of their passionate relationship...with food.



When Matt and I were in college and had no money, we went out to eat a lot. Our first year of dating, we lived in the dorms and we both had cafeteria meal plans, which meant if we were hungry after the Cannon Center closed, we had to fend for ourselves. Being young with new-found independence, we would rather sleep in (or through) class than set a bedtime for ourselves and miss prime smooching hours.

Ergo, just about every night at midnight, when the dorm lobbies kicked out everyone of the opposite sex, we hopped in Matt's Explorer and found a warm place to hang out. Which usually meant a ghetto fast food restaurant, IHOP, or our favorite open-all-night cafe, Vermillion Skies (may she rest in peace). Provo was too cold between November and April to do much else.

Matt falling asleep playing Clue at Vermillion Skies

That, and the fact that my boyfriend had a bottomless pit inside his twenty-one-year-old, six-foot-four body, meant we paid for a lot of restaurant food. I think the total amount spent on food that year by Matt (who usually paid for his hungry, moochy girlfriend) was over a thousand dollars. In college money, that's a huge amount of cash.
  

Matt visiting me in California that first summer. Can you see him laughing at that recipe card? The smile was to hide his confusion.

The next year, we both had apartments with roommates and kitchens, so we were able to cook for ourselves sometimes. This often consisted of Rice-A-Roni-type packets, with a little chicken and broccoli added for nutrition (which was considered fancy food.) Grilled cheese, canned soup, cereal, and ice cream were also basic staples.

Eating cereal from a mixing bowl. This is a young man who often refused to even make cereal because it involved "too many steps".

One night, we decided to be ambitious. Matt and my roommate helped me make my mom's chicken and mushroom pasta, which she calls "chicken creole". It is not a difficult recipe, but for young people who had never really cooked, twelve ingredients was a lot. Matt was a good helper, but he could not understand why we would spend so much effort making dinner when it wasn't even saving us much money. We could go to Wendy's or Gualbertos for the same price! Plus the dish, when finished, didn't even have any bright colors to make it look flavorful. In his mind, it looked like a bland bowlful of BLAH.


Then he tasted it. MIND BLOWN. He suddenly understood.

This is the kitchen in Matt's Provo apartment. And this shows how much he loved me when he tasted that pasta.

At that point, his reaction should have given me a clue of what was to come. My next hint came shortly after our wedding, when he admitted that his favorite gift was the spice rack. He has been obsessive about spices ever since. It's an addiction. He even makes his own chili powder now, and has a special blender reserved just for that because you can never fully wash the heat out of the crevices. It smells amazing.

These are most of the spices we have right now in our kitchen. They require several locations.
Blender and chilies pictured at bottom right.

Enter foodie phase, beginning in the winter of 2006-2007.  After we got married and had a nice warm place to watch TV together (uninterrupted by gross roommates and their boyfriends giving each other oil massages in their bathing suits on the floor right in front of the communal TV), we started watching food shows. They were good to have on while I studied because I could only pay half attention. And I was always studying.

We began with cakes, since the cake competitions were the most impressive to us. Over time, we learned about fondant and made fancy, time-consuming cakes for birthdays, baby showers, and even weddings.

We would watch food shows late into the night, long after dinner, until we got hungry again for whatever we saw on TV. The first big involved recipe we tried was by Emeril Legasse, called Lemon and Rosemary Marinated Grilled Chicken with Couscous and Sauteed Balsamic Cremini Mushrooms. It was a kick in the tush to make, but eating it was a whole new experience of flavor and texture, to which we quickly became addicted.

A look at our past newlywed kitchens.

We soon established our favorite cooks on TV, knowing who to go to for what. We loved Duff's style for cakes. Emeril always had unique ideas. Alton Brown explained the science and technique behind everything. And for some reason, Matt still hates Rachael Ray and Giada to this day. We don't say those names in this household. Don't ask me why. Maybe he thinks women don't belong in the kitchen?

The first recipe that came purely from Matt's brain was his meaty nacho dip. Every time he made it, it came out a little different in a new delicious way. Then he started experimenting with smoothies. When I was pregnant with Josh, all I wanted all the time was Jamba Juice's Caribbean Passion, and my Matt figured out how to make it pretty spot on.

Then we had a baby and things in the kitchen slowed down for a while. I was worried about eating certain things that might affect Josh through breastfeeding. We moved to Arizona and ended up eating with Matt's family a lot. We started P90X to melt our baby weight, and Matt did the accompanying diet that limited our meal options. Also, as a new mom and a student trying to finish my degree from home, I had pretty much no time to cook.

At that point, the most we cooked was when we'd visit family.

A year later, we moved to Chicago so Matt could get his MBA. While in school, we started really stocking up on food from Costco and Aldi, worried that we would never ever want to leave our house for groceries in the cold Chicago winter. We didn't live very close to great restaurants, and didn't want to walk a block to our car and drive in traffic, then risk having a bad night trying to control our baby in a restaurant. And most importantly, we were trying to save money since we were living on loans.

So we cooked more than ever before.

Chicago cooking. Note all the food boxes stored above the cabinets.

I couldn't stand preparing full meals for just the two of us, so for a while we ended up having the missionaries over every Monday night, often six of them at a time. A few of them were really gracious and laid the praise on thick, so that encouraged me. They were often my guinea pigs for new recipes, and whether or not the food turned out well, they'd finish every last bite. We also had dinner with friends a lot. Cooking for others is always more rewarding than cooking for myself.

Once in a while, we got bold enough to branch out and spend a little money experiencing some of the amazing restaurants of Chicago. There, we discovered seriously good food. Until then, we had never understood why people would pay so much money for a meal. It was just food, right?

Wrong! It was special. It was an experience. It was The Capital Grille. It was Fogo de Chao. It was Prosecco! Ohhh, Prosecco! It was literally the best food we had ever eaten. And we not only wanted more of it, but we wanted to know the secrets to be able to make it for ourselves.

Kick Matt's obsessive food phase into high gear.

Now we live in Midland, where there are no restaurants that tempt me. I don't find anything nearby to be worth the money besides maybe Jet's Pizza and Grand Traverse Pie Company, so eating out is more of a social thing now. Never in my life have I cooked so much! Never in my life has it been so fun as in my own big kitchen. And never in my life has it been so difficult as with two small kids pulling on my legs or wanting to "help".

That on the left is Josh in our Chicago apartment, "helping".

I used to not like eating out because of the cost -- everything was so expensive, I could make something similar for less. Now, I don't like eating out because I'm usually unimpressed. My husband has spoiled me.

When we cook at home, I can mix ingredients to get exactly the taste that suits my liking. I can control how much fat, meat, alcohol, salt, butter goes into each meal, so I know how bad I should feel about eating it, or what portion size to stick with. I can control how much food is wasted in the cooking process -- something that irks me about restaurants. I can know whose fingers and germs have touched my food. I can know how clean the plates and utensils are.

The trade off: cooking at home costs me more time and all the clean up.

However, I cannot honestly say that cooking at home costs me less money. Since Matt has found this passion for food, it seems like we need to buy a new piece of cookware or special kitchen gadget for every new recipe -- like a gigantic stock pot and colander, a candy thermometer, a heat resistant silicon whisk. Then there are the new cook books, and new fancy ingredients that get expensive -- like whole vanilla beans or Mexican brown sugar cones only available through the internet. It is FUN, let me tell you, and it is all more than worth the cost. I just can't for sure say that it's less expensive than eating out.

Case in point: "Mims, we need a blow torch so I can make creme brulee."

I look at it as a hobby. Is my husband spending hundreds of dollars every week on golf gear and course fees? Is he buying expensive cameras and lenses so he can pursue photography? No, even though that would be perfectly fine. But I have to say how much I appreciate that he often chooses to spend his spare time cooking delicious food for me, in our home, with our family, where I can enjoy the end result as much as he does.

Something New: Weeks 28 and 29

July 8 -- Made another recipe from the Our Best Bites cookbook: Bacon artichoke penne bake (p. 159). Pretty easy and quick, and really delicious! If you've been reading my blog all year and still haven't checked out Our Best Bites' site or ordered their cookbook, I'm telling you you're missing out!


July 9 -- Cleaned my vacuum filter. Apparently I should have been doing this at least once a month. It's been a year. That's what a good housekeeper I am.

July 10 -- Got lunch from Panera, which is brand spanking new to Midland. I tried the drive thru, and ended up waiting 30 whole minutes from start to finish. Thirty minutes in a drive thru?! With hungry, tired kids in the back seat, that could have been disastrous! I'll have to wait until the newness wears off and people are less excited about it before I go back.

July 11 -- Had some brown bananas, so Josh suggested we make banana bread. I tried a recipe from a Mormon cookbook, but it was pretty unclear and I ended up over-baking it. HOWEVER, that same day, my friend Melissa happened to bring over a piping hot loaf of her homemade banana bread to share, AND my neighbor Lyndi also sent some yummy banana bread over with her husband to thank us for lending them our lawn mower. So, I was lucky enough to sample three different recipes in one day. Such a funny coincidence! Josh loved it, and always wanted to know whose loaf he was eating from.

July 12 -- Watched the first episode of "Justified", a TV show that involves absolutely nothing I'm interested in. Guns, blowing stuff up, cops, cowboy hats... no thanks.

July 13 -- Two things. Ordered a strawberry slushie at the the country club pool (our friends invited us) and it was so good I had to force myself to share with my thirsty boys. Also, Matt downloaded an Associated Press app on my phone so I could become more politically aware by at least reading through news headlines. I have to say, I felt pretty cool when an Obama ad came on TV and I actually understood what he was bashing Romney for. (Yeah, that's how bad I was.)

July 14 -- Tried an Edy's pineapple popsicle. (Edy's = Dryer's if you live out west.) These fresh fruit popsicles have been our favorite since I was pregnant with Josh, and we're always really excited when we discover new flavors. I think pineapple is my new favorite.

July 15 -- Had a bunch of new people over for dinner. They just graduated from BYU and came here to be trained in Dow's CDP program (translation: sales). Such nice people! They're all younger with no kids yet, so I knew the only way I'd get to know them was to invite them over. And people took good care of us when we were new to Midland, so I've been trying to pay it forward.

July 16 -- Bought a used bike trailer from Craigslist! I've been looking for one of these for months. We have already used it three times, and both boys love it. I get a little workout, they get to be outside, and it's an easy way to keep them contained without involving a electronic screen of any kind. That first day we tried to ride all the way to Larkin Park for play group and a picnic, but sadly we ended up turning back because it was insanely hot outside. We came home and had our picnic in the family room instead.

July 17 -- Brought the net to volleyball and learned to set it up. Heather is out of town for a couple weeks, so I'm sort of filling in.

July 18 -- Got a copy of "Keep the Commandments" in Spanish from Lyndi. Thinking about working it into the Primary program this year, but we'll see.


July 19 -- Watched the 1985 version of Clue with Matt. It's nostalgic for him. Pretty funny, too. It's hard not to laugh at a movie made in the '80s.

July 20 -- Picked ten pounds of blueberries at Russell's Blueberry Farm. This place is great! I heard about it from someone at Dow Gardens and was not disappointed. These are the biggest, most delicious blueberries I've ever had. Most of the farm was planted back in the 1940's, so they have amazing root systems. Most importantly, the boys had fun. Jude could not stop picking and shoving the berries straight into his mouth, and Josh was talking to himself the whole time about how "awesome" and "delicious" they were, reminding himself to only pick the blue ones. Nobody wanted to leave.

July 21 -- Magic Milk Straws. Matt's mom sent some to us, and they're actually pretty cool. You pour a glass of milk and suck it up through these straws. Flavor balls are stuck inside, so as you drink they kind of disintegrate and make it taste like strawberry or chocolate milk. Magic! Come on over and try it out. We have hundreds of them!