Brynne's Birthday Part II

We had a birthday party with our extended family last Friday night at my sister's house in Salt Lake.  (I let my girls have friend parties every other year and Brynne doesn't get one this year.) She and Blythe have been into Smurfs lately, which I think is kind of funny because I played with Smurfs when I was about Blythe's age.  My Mom had saved my old Smurfs and I was able to find them in the basement and now the girls play with them, as well as some new ones that they have acquired.  In fact, I even dressed up as a Smurf the Halloween that I was in 4th grade. So anyway, I'm only mentioning this because Brynne requested a Smurf cake from Brittney for her party.  Brynne and I both envisioned a rectangular sheet cake with Brainy Smurf, Smurfette and Baby Smurf (as requested by Brynne) depicted in buttercream frosting.  Brittney had a more elaborate vision.  .  .  .

She decided to make an entire Smurf house!

Britt made the Smurfs herself out of fondant.

Notice the brick chimney with the smoke curling up.

Here is a close-up of Brainy Smurf.

He is holding a book titled, "How to be like Brynne."

Here are Baby Smurf and Smurfette.

Can you believe the detail on these Smurfs?

This was Brynne's reaction when she saw the cake

for the first time.  We had kept it sequestered inside the

house so she didn't see it until we were ready to sing to her.

Brynne with her fabulous Smurf cake.

Brittney refused to tell me how many hours 

she spent creating this cake.  

Brittney, the cake artist extraordinaire,

about to cut into the cake.  The inside of 

the cake was devil's food that my Mom and I had

made and I made white chocolate cream cheese

frosting that is incredible that Britt used to frost

the cake and make the grass and path.

Claire, Brynne's second cousin who was visiting

from Texas, cousin Hannah and Brynne.

Brynne turns Seven!

Brynne had her 7th birthday last week and we celebrated twice.  On her actual birthday she took some fancy pencils to school to give to her classmates.  (Her school is a peanut free school and has a fairly strict policy about no treats for birthdays.)  I made her favorite dinner, which is Chicken Poppy casserole.  That morning before she left for school I asked her what she wanted for dinner and she said, "Mooommmmy, you know!!"  I did, but I thought I'd double check just in case.  My parents came over and ate dinner with us.  I made a chocolate sheet cake with sunbutter frosting.  It's supposed to be peanut butter frosting, but I substituted sunflower seed butter instead.  Justin was pretty shocked at how closely it resembled peanut butter frosting. It was a good cake!  So we did the usual song, cake and presents.  Here are some photos from that evening.

Brynne with her birthday cake and her new dog Sprocket who

belongs to her American Girl doll Nikki.  It's obvious here 

that when I make a cake I'm going for taste, not looks.

Brynne ready to open some presents.

Brynne with Samantha's birthday dress.

Brynne, Justin and Barrett.

Live and Learn

We took Barrett to the movie theatre for the first time on Saturday night.  Big mistake.  Prince Caspian just came out and I was excited to see it because I love the Chronicles of Narnia.  My parents and Peter and Brittney were both busy and since we don't leave him with anyone else it was take him with or not go at all.  I deluded myself into thinking that since Barrett watches a lot of movies here at home, that he would do fine in a theatre.  The first place I went wrong was in the length of the movie at 2 1/2 hours including the previews.  The second place I went wrong was he had just woken up from a 3 hour nap.  I got him a big Sprite at the theatre hoping desperately that it would keep him busy.  So it went well until the lights went off when the previews start.  At that point Barrett started shouting, "Too dark.  Too dark.  Lights back on." The first preview was for "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" which he thought was pretty hilarious.  Then the next preview came on  and he started complaining, "Where did the doggies go?"  Long story short, he basically kept up a running commentary through out the entire movie or at least until I finally took him out, about 45 minutes before it ended.  

Here are a few more choice comments.  

"Too loud!  Too loud!"  

"I burped!  The Sprite made me burp."

"They're muddy! Need a shower." (When the centaurs first make an appearance)

"Them's naughty.  Need time out."  (King Miraz and some of his men arguing.)

"I have to go potty."  Then as Justin is walking him out.  "Stop the movie.  Make them stop the movie, Daddy."

He also made a fuss if the girls tried to take a sip of his soda.

As Justin commented later, it was usually during a lull in the action at a crucial point of dialogue when he would pipe up the loudest; which makes perfect sense to me because that's when the movie wasn't keeping his attention.  So I'm sure everyone sitting around us was annoyed and we heard a lot of  SHHH!!! but I learned my lesson and I won't be taking him to movie for a least another year, and then it will be a dollar movie.  I'm still trying to figure out if he comments that loudly when watching movies at home and I've just never noticed or if he just was in rare form on Saturday night.  So I still don't exactly how the movie ends, especially since I saw enough to know that the screenwriter made a drastic departure from the book.   I don't think I can wait until it comes out on DVD so I guess I'll have to buy another movie ticket.  Serves me right.

More Stress

Just in case anyone is interested, Barrett had a minor episode with his allergies last Friday night. Of course, once again it's about impossible to pinpoint what caused the reaction.  He has an appointment with the allergist next week to see if we can figure anything out.  I was being lazy and bought some frozen pizzas for dinner that night.  I read the labels as I always do and the label on the pizza he ate said "Made in same facility with milk, eggs, soy and wheat."  There was no mention of nuts whatsoever.  

About a half an hour after after we ate Barrett started coughing  a little, so I checked on him and asked him if he was okay.  He said, "The pizza hurts my teeth." I looked him over for hives and checked to see if his lip was swollen.  Everything looked fine but I gave him some Benadryl just in case.  He then pronounced himself, "I just fine, Mommy."  He went upstairs to his room to play Lincoln Logs with Justin.  About 15 minutes later I heard Justin shouting for me so I grabbed the Epi-pen and ran upstairs.  Barrett had thrown up and was screaming, "My tummy hurts."  I told Justin that I thought we needed to give Barrett the Epi-pen and he said, "How we do know it's from his food allergy?  Kids just throw up sometimes."  We decided to give it a few minutes and by the time I got Barrett cleaned up he was acting fine and wanted to keep playing with his Lincoln Logs.  I was pretty stressed out and on edge and one of us stayed right with him for the rest of the evening.  

At about 10:30 p.m. our little night owl started coughing again, so I looked him over and he had hives all over his back.  That verified that the vomiting episode was due to something he ate that he shouldn't have eaten.  I gave him another dose of Benadryl and then called my allergist's office and got the on call Dr. because I wasn't sure if I needed to inject Barrett with the epinephrine at that point.  After talking on the phone with her for at least 15 minutes I decided to give him some more Benadryl and to hold off giving him the Epi-pen unless he got worse.  The thing that really decided it for me was the fact that Barrett was happily playing games on the computer.  He wasn't acting at all distressed.  The second dose of Benadryl cleared up the hives and he didn't cough again, so we didn't have to use the Epi-pen after all.  We did stay up until 1:30 a.m. in case he had a relapse.  Needless to say we didn't get a great night's rest.  Barrett woke up crying a few times during the night as well, but quickly fell asleep again each time.  

The allergist said that we did the right thing and in retrospect it all worked out well, but when we were in the middle of it all and I was trying to decide what to do it was so hard.  In my attempt to educate myself about food allergies I've done a lot of reading and I've read several times that the Epi-pen works the best and is most likely to prevent serious anaphylaxis and death when given within 20 minutes of when the symptoms occur.  I kept thinking, he seems fine now but what if he all of a sudden collapses and I've waited too long to give him the Epi?  I can't decide which is worse: 1) He has a new undiagnosed allergy.  (This is what the on call allergist suspects.)  OR 2) I can't trust the labels on any processed food and will have to make all his food from scratch from now on.  

The only other things he ate that night were some Stonyfield Farm yogurt smoothie and I can't imagine that it had nuts in it and at about 4 p.m. that afternoon he had eaten some soy ice cream.  The ice cream label states that there are other flavors that do contain nuts processed on the same equipment, but that they take allergens very seriously and  have stringent measures in place to prevent cross contamination and test all their frozen desserts for traces of allergens. He has eaten this brand of ice cream several times, but it was a new carton that he ate from on Friday.  I think it was the pizza mostly because that's what he was throwing up and then once that was out of his body he seemed fine.  Hopefully the allergist will be able to figure something out, but I'm not counting on it.

Bubba's 'Lasses Cookies

My Mom is famous for making cookies that she calls Molasses Crinkles.  They are the cookies that she would have waiting at our house when my best friend Beth and her brother Richard arrived from Connecticut to visit us when we were in High School.  They are the cookies that she has taken to countless open houses and baby showers and has delivered as Christmas gifts and to say thank you.  They are a legend in our neighborhood.  Well at my house they are no longer called Molasses Crinkles.  Barrett has re-christened them "Bubba's 'Lasses Cookies." 

To explain the name we need to go back a few years.  When he was a baby we started called him "Bubba."  I think Brynne was the first one to call him by that name.  We would call him "baby", then "bayba" and then it morphed into "Bubba."  So now for the most part Barrett refers to himself as "Bubba."  He will occasionally call himself Barrett and if asked what his name is he will say Barrett, but most of the time he's Bubba.  

Due to Barrett's nut allergy I am now baking all of his cookies, muffins, baked goods, etc. from scratch.  So I'm usually baking something several times a week.  Barrett loves to help me and his favorite cookie is of course, "Bubba's 'Lasses Cookies."  So one morning last week he had repeatedly asked to make some of his cookies.  I kept putting him off because I was trying to get some housework done.  I was busy in the laundry room for a while and when I walked into the kitchen this is what I saw . . .

Barrett had taken matters into his own hands and had assembled what he thought were the ingredients and measuring cups we needed to make his 'lasses cookies.  I had a good laugh at the taco seasoning, which to his credit looks almost identical to my bottle of cinnamon.  He did well with getting out the baking soda, salt and shortening. However,  we didn't need the vanilla extract and we would have been better off if he'd gotten out the ground ginger rather than the dried basil.  He also mistook the powdered sugar for flour, but considering the fact that he just turned 3 I think he did pretty well.

So I of course relented.  

How could I NOT make cookies with him after he 

went to all that effort.  He loves to operate my stand 

mixer for me.  If I ever forget and turn it on myself he freaks 

out and I have to switch it off and let him turn it back on.  

Here's Barrett snitching dough out of the mixer. 

He definitely takes after his Daddy and his Grandpa Chuck 

because they all prefer raw cookie dough to the finished product.  

Is this a boy who feels comfortable around 

serious kitchen equipment or what?

My job is to roll the cookie dough into balls 

and dip the tops in sugar.  Barrett is responsible for pressing

 the balls of dough with a drinking glass.  While I'm rolling 

the dough, Barrett always grabs some dough out of the 

bowl and states that he his going to make a snake. 

 He then rolls the dough forabout 2 seconds before eating it.

A baking sheet of "Bubba's 'Lasses Cookies."

They are much better baked in my opinion.

This ended up being only the first of 3 batches I made that week.

Barrett enjoying one of his cookies.

A Tiled Fireplace at Last!

This all started about five years ago when we were still living in our house at 15th and 15th.  It was a 1938 brick bungalow with original gumwood moldings and arches and lots of lovely details.  The fireplace however was a bit of a disappointment.  It just didn't live up to the rest of the house.  The 6"x6" tiles were a simple cream color with some ridges and most of them were cracked.  The tile framed the opening to the fireplace in a single row around the opening.  The tile on the hearth was larger white squares that had obviously been added later and didn't match.  I would go into other houses in the neighborhood and check out the fireplaces and many had gorgeous bas relief tiles depicting flowers or various scenes. 

 I somehow learned about Ernest Batchelder who created tiles in California beginning in 1909.  His tiles were the ones I felt epitomized the Arts and Crafts movement and the ones I loved the most.  Then I found out about a woman in Seattle who runs the Tile Restoration Center where she both restores original Batchelder tiles and makes new tiles that are almost indistinguishable from the originals.  I located a tile shop on 300 West that carries the reproduction tiles and I went there to check it out.  It was a tiny little place and the woman there was very nice and let me look through a catalogue of all the tiles, made some photo copies for me and priced the tiles I was interested in.   It was a bit of a shock.  The plain 6"x6" tiles were $50.00 each and the 6"x9" tree with stones bas relief tile that I fell in love with was (GASP) $200.00.  This was WAY out of my price range.  I discreetly wrote down the address of the Tile Restoration Center in Seattle and decided to pay a visit there next time we went to visit Justin's family.  

So in July of 2003 Justin and I went to the TRC after first calling and making an appointment and explained our mission.  As it turned out they keep boxes of tiles that they consider to be seconds which they will sell at greatly reduced rates.  It was like a treasure hunt.  Justin and I were both digging through boxes looking for tiles that would fit our fireplace.  We had brought along the dimensions of the hearth area and number of tiles on the face of our fireplace.  An extremely nice woman named Sue asked us if there was any tile in particular that we were interested in.  I pointed out the tree and stones tile.  She said she would go check the unfired tiles to see if any had already been marked as seconds.  She came back a few minutes later with two of the tiles.  She told us that we could choose the color and they would finish the tiles and mail them to us when they were finished and that we could have them at the seconds price of $29.50 each.  I was ecstatic.  Thinking back on this I doubt that there was truly anything wrong with those tiles and that she just took pity on a young couple who had fallen in love with their tiles and who had made the effort to come from so far away on the chance of finding some tiles they could afford.  We chose pewter as the background color and boxed up the tiles that we had found, including two smaller bas relief tiles to use on the hearth.  

Two months later we had a drastic change of plans when we bought our lot in High Meadows.  We then had to decide if we should keep the tile to use on our new house or put it in the old house to help it sell.  It wasn't hard to decide that we would save it for our new house which was to have an Arts and Crafts feel to it.  Fast forward to October 2004 when our house is about halfway complete.  I realized that we were going to need some more tile for the face of the fireplace, specifically some trim pieces to make it look more finished.  The girls and I flew up to Seattle for UEA and Justin's mom took me back to the Tile Restoration Center.  I was able to find some quarter round tiles for the inside edge and some larger trim pieces for the outside edge.  I remember being very rushed and trying to do all the math with only a pencil and piece of paper and worrying that I was going to mess up.  I ended up with two boxes of tile.  I was afraid to check the boxes with the airline in order to get them home in case they got damaged in transit and I couldn't carry them on either.  I ended up leaving the tile with Justin's parents with the plan that they would drive down with the tile the next time they came to visit.  The time came to tile the bathrooms in our new house and Justin's parents hadn't been able to bring the tile yet so the fireplace didn't get tiled.  Justin's parents came down in May 2005  to meet our new baby Barrett and brought the tile then.  It sat in four boxes next to the fireplace for 3 years until last Friday when we finally got around to hiring someone to install it for us.  I still can't believe I finally have the fireplace that I have been dreaming about for over FIVE years.  

The hearth was tiled first.

This is how it would have looked if I hadn't 

gone back for the additional tile.

This photo shows the quarter round installed on the

inside edge and a few of the outside pieces installed.

The finished masterpiece.

As it turned out I was a little short on the outside 

trim pieces so we solved the problem by leaving 

room for a baseboard, as on the left side.

A close up of the Tree and Stones tile.

The Castle tile on the hearth.

The Cottage tile also on the hearth.

Now we just need to figure out what to do with the rest of the fireplace.  The white needs to go. I think it needs to be textured like plaster.  Justin thinks it only needs to be painted a different color.  We are taking suggestions if anyone has any good ideas.

My New Ride

As many of you know my Dad is a bike fanatic.  He loves to road bike and mountain bike and road bike and ride his indoor bike trainer and road bike and ride his single speed bike and road bike. You get the picture.  He wants everyone to join him in his love of the bike.  My Mom, however has not been known for her love of the bike.  Especially in the summer when my Dad disappears on his bike as soon as he gets home from work and doesn't show up until dark.  Last summer my Dad went out on a limb and bought my Mom a new bike.  It's not the first bike he's ever bought for her, but had been quite a few years.  So he picked out a Breezer Townie.  It falls in the category of "comfort bike."  It's one of those bikes that you see people riding on the boardwalk by the beach in Southern California.  Surprisingly, she likes it.  I wouldn't go as far as to say she loves it, but she does ride it.  They go on bike rides together in Moab and a few of my Mom's friends have also gotten similar bikes and have formed what my Dad refers to as the "Tour de Grannies."  The last couple of times I was in Moab with my parents I got to try out the Townie.  It is super fun to ride because you sit up really straight and it's just really comfortable.  So I started wanting one of my own and when I decided to join my parents and Peter and Britt in Moab last weekend (without Justin who was committed to a Boy Scout Overnight) it was decided that I should hurry up and get a bike to take with me.  So last Thursday we went to the local bike shop and of course it was snowing, so I only got to ride the bike inside the store for about 45 seconds, but it was very cute and that was enough for me.  Justin went all out and decked my new Specialized Expedition out with a basket on the front, a kick stand, a water bottle cage and even a flowered bell.  The last day we were in Moab, my Mom, Dad and I managed to leave all the kids with Peter and got away for a 45 minute bike ride from their house to Rotary Park and back.  It's a fun ride because about half of it is on a bike trail and you ride over bridges and through tunnels.  I wish I'd thought to get a photo of me on my bike, but I didn't. My Dad says that I can ride my bike to grocery store now instead of taking my van because I have a basket.  I don't think he's ever seen me unloading my car after a trip to the grocery store.  I'd have to take about 20 trips.  Actually, that's probably what he has in mind!  

My new bike.  I love the gray, black and brown color scheme.

It's got a nice cushy seat and 

I could ride it in a skirt if I ever needed to.

A close-up of the basket and bell.

Time Flies By

I didn't post anything last week because I couldn't think of anything to post about.  When I uploaded my photos of  the snow today I saw these photos of Blythe that I had forgotten about. At Barrett's birthday party Blythe and Brittney took turns doing hairdos  on each other.  Britt did a fancy French braided up-do on Blythe that she ended up wearing for about three days.  The next morning I was puttering around my kitchen and glanced over at Blythe and then did a double take because she looked SO grown up.  For a moment I couldn't believe that I was looking at my little girl.  I think it must have had something to do with her hair being up.  Now I think I understand why in the not so distant past a girl couldn't wear her hair "up" until she was old enough to be considered grown up.  Blythe sure didn't look like a nine year old to me at that moment.  Here are some photos so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.  The third one down is my favorite.

Where is Spring?

Today is the first day of May, commonly known as May Day and this is what I woke up to this morning.  It looks  more like November than May!  Justin is attempting to grow some vegetables in his raised beds.  He has constructed cold frames to keep his broccoli, spinach and romaine lettuce from freezing.  I'm not convinced they are going to make it though this abrupt return to winter.  Justin is confident that they will survive, as a long as they don't get eaten by the pocket gophers (known locally as "potguts") first.  But I have a feeling that the potguts are going to need their own post before too long.  I do have a few hardy daffodils blooming in the front yard, but they aren't quite enough to keep me happy on days like today.  On Monday it was warm and sunny and I took the kids to the neighborhood park for the first time in about 6 months.  I was surprised to see how well Barrett did climbing on the playground equipment that he hadn't even attempted before.  I guess 6 months will do that to a toddler.  

Our snow covered backyard.  

This was completely melted earlier this week.

Justin's garden beds.  The bed on the left has strawberry 

plants under the cold frame.  The middle bed has broccoli in it 

and the bed that is entirely covered has the spinach and lettuce.

The hillside by our house.  

Is it possible that the trees will be in leaf two weeks from now?!