Happy Days

Annie and her North Carolina crew spent nine weeks with us, beginning the week of Thanksgiving. Annie needed surgery and Edwin was deployed, so it seemed like a good plan for them to stay with us so that we could help out and (score!) get some good bonding time with the three littles. Annie found a wonderful surgeon to do a disc replacement in her neck, which was another bonus.

I picked some of my favourite photos of the good times.

For some reason, the day they arrived Victoria decided to put herself in time out. We laughed and laughed...and this was the last time that this corner looked so good until they went home!

The weather was still autumn-y for a little while so we went for some walks/scooter rides.

And then winter arrived and we still went for walks but not as many because it was too cold and wet. 

Not long after their arrival, Elsie started nagging asking if I had an umbrella she could use. I said yes, but it wasn't raining yet. Then I found her some free rain boots and it rained and she was outside all on her own and having a terrific time in the gigantic puddle that surrounds our shed when we have downpours.

And she stomped in puddles until she was wet from top to toe.

And then later I found Gabe some used boots and he was happy.

And Toria was happy all the time, except for two o'clock in the morning when she liked to wake up and yell for Mommy, only I would have to get up and talk her back to sleep because Mommy couldn't pick her up.

Fun times. 

I miss them terribly.

Luckily, Jeff was off work for three weeks over Christmas or I wouldn't have survived. Annie had her surgery the Monday before Christmas and then stayed with a friend until Christmas Eve. Jeff and I often looked at each other during those few days and asked each other, "How does she do it?" Those kidlets are adorable, but they start at 6:30 a.m. and don't stop until they go to bed.

One cold day, Papa and I took them to a couple of parks. It was a little colder than I anticipated, so we were all freezing but we had a good time.

Annie went back to her friend on the evening of Christmas day and then came home a couple of days later. On Sunday we went out to the Ranch. We woke up the next morning to a good covering of snow and some very cold temperatures.

The kids were excited to play in the snow, but it was so cold that they would only last for about thirty minutes and then they would all be crying.

Toria was so bundled up she could hardly walk!

Annie's recovery went well and we took this photo for her doctor.

We were all very excited for Edwin to get home and then fly out to us. 

Annie prepared some posters for his homecoming.

 She met him at the airport and they spent the night in Portland.

And these kids...

...were so happy to see him the next day.

Sitting in boxes, watching TV.

One afternoon, I took the girls for ice creams at Jac's.

Miss Elsie.

Madelyn and Toria adore pomegranates.

Daniel is twelve now, so some of the family members went to the temple together while I watched the littles.

Gabe's birthday was a couple of weeks before his daddy got here, so he had two parties. He liked his snazzy new outfit. He is a funny kid; he gets himself dressed as soon as he wakes up every morning, shoes and all.

Annie and Edwin took the kids on a couple of outings, to the Japanese Gardens and to Gilbert House in Salem.

Cousins. I love this photo, they all look so gleeful. 

Gleeful is good.

Jenny took these photos at Gabe's second party.

And before we knew it, it was time for them to go home.
So we all got up at an unearthly hour of the morning and drove to the airport.
And sadly said goodbye.

People have asked me how I did it, because it was, quite frankly, exhausting. For most of the nine weeks, Jeff and I had the main responsibility for the care of these three darlings, in addition to carrying on with the rest of our lives.
Sometimes, like in the middle of the night when Toria was awake for the umpteenth time, or Gabe was having a whiny day, or the messes and noise seemed to be never-ending,  I would long for some peace. But every time I walked into the house after being gone I would hear three little voices yelling "Nanaaaaaa!!!!" and my heart was full, and their hugs and smiles were treasures to tuck away in my memory.
And after they left, every time I walked into the house I heard faint echoes:

Nanaaaaaa!!!!!

Gluten-free Banana Bread

I decided to give up eating gluten for a month or so to see if it would help with a couple of health problems that I have been experiencing. The final straw was when my knee became so painful with inflammation of some kind that I could hardly walk. There comes a point when the deliciousness of fresh bread is not more enticing than being out of pain, and I was right there.

Luckily, we have been doing a lot of this kind of cooking for years in our family, so I already have some tricks up my sleeve. I am hopeless at any kind of weight-loss diet, but if I want to eat healthily, all I have to do is prepare a pot each of soup and soaked oatmeal and I will be good for a whole week..

I scored a bagful of over-ripe bananas at the Senior Center last week and knew that there were lots of grain-free recipes for banana bread online that were heavy on bananas and light on other ingredients. I modified one to come up with this delicious loaf that even Jeff likes. It is moist and sweet and yes, I did throw in a handful of chocolate chips. 

Grain-free banana bread

3 ripe mashed bananas
1/3 c butter or coconut oil, melted
5 eggs
2 tbs raw honey
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c coconut flour
1 tsp B. Soda
1 tsp BP
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c chopped nuts
handful of chocolate chips or raisins

Mix ingredients in order given. I used a large whisk, as the mixture is very wet. Bake in a loaf pan for  an hour at 325. I lined the loaf pan with waxed paper, as the first loaf didn't come out of the pan very well. The original recipe called for baking at 350 for 45 minutes, so take your pick. Test with a toothpick; it will come out clean if the loaf is done. Leave in pan for 5 minutes before cooling on a wire rack.

In a perfect world, all the ingredients would be organic and grass-fed and free-range, but I say, do your best. I actually prefer this to my old recipes for banana bread. It is so sweet that Jeff said, This tastes like dessert!

The divine Miss M

 Meet Laree and Moe, future companions of the infamous Shirley Bird.

Madelyn was loving holding Laree until Natalie freaked out, so then Madelyn had to join in.

Bethany, on the other hand, provided a lap and unlimited cuddles. She is a frustrated wanna-be chicken owner.

Miss M had her first ever on-her-own sleepover at Nana and Papa's house on Friday.

All went well at first. We read four books before bedtime, all about frogs and wombats and Fly Guy, who is, I think, her favourite book character ever. Then she lay on the couch for an hour or so until I took pity on her and let her come and sit with Jeff and me and watch Toy Story. Halfway through she stood up and put herself back to bed, so we did the same.

At 5 a.m. she puked all over herself and the bedding and the couch. We cleaned her and the couch up and put her back down with a bowl next to the couch in case it happened again. 

Which it did.

Twice, before seven o'clock.

Not in the bowl.

The next morning she seemed better and ate a scrambled egg and wanted more, but I said we had better wait and see how her stomach was feeling. So she talked me into a fruit roll-up with tongue tattoos.

Then we went to Newberg Bakery to redeem one of her Nana coupons for a treat and she got a gluten/dairy-free brownie.

She didn't eat it all, which seemed odd because it was delicious, but I figured she was probably tired from the late night and early morning.

It was a beautiful day, so we walked to the library and I checked out Saint Odd, the last book in the Brother Odd series by Dean Koontz.

Best. Series. Ever.

And Miss M sat on the hilly bench and laughed and all was well with the world.

When we got home, we took Laree and Moe out into the back yard to play with Shirley, who did a good job of ignoring them.

Shirley, ignoring them.

I have no idea what the white blob is doing in the photo.

Later, we took Tommy and Jeff to Champoeg to work on one of Tommy's Cub Scout requirements. Which didn't happen because they closed at four and we got there fifteen minutes before that. 

But we looked around the visitor's centre for a while and then Jeff took the kids for a walk while I sat in the car and read my book. And young Jeff couldn't stop talking about our campout with the cousins last summer and that made me happy.

Madelyn liked the wooden cow cutout.

And the beaver pelt.

She didn't eat much all day and when her mommy came to ukulele practice that night she threw up again. On the kitchen floor. Right after I took the bowl out from under her face.

And how I love that little face. 

67 x 87 squares

Jeff and I are on an anniversary getaway to the coast. 

Thirty-five long and sometimes glorious years, thank you very much. 

I found a Living Social coupon for a fun motel in Garibaldi, down on the dock. It is an older motel but has been recently renovated and I really like it. The decor is tasteful. 

And Jeff thinks he needs one of these for his four fishing rods.

I wanted to know why he has four rods when he never goes fishing, let alone catches anything.

But he is tolerant of my many quirks, so I didn't press the matter.

Which is just as well, because later on we walked around the docks and the town and I ran across this treasure in an antique store.

Each square is one inch, and all 5,829 of them are hand-stitched together and then hand-quilted.

It was $75 and I wanted it.

Look, I said to my darling husband, can you imagine how many hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours went into this quilt and here it sits, all unwanted. Except for me.

And he understood.

We can use it out at the Ranch, he said. Let's get it.

So we did.

The store owner told me it was from the late 1800's and had been stored in a chest owned by a 90-year-old man who had just gone into a retirement home. She claimed most of it is flour sack cotton, but if that is true, it's from the 1930's or 40's. I am hoping that one of my quilting friends will know something about it. Either way, it kills me that some family member didn't love it and want to use it. 

But now it is mine.

And I love it and will use it until I die. 

And then one of my kids had better love it and use it or I will haunt them in nasty ways until they do.

The end.

Oh, and if you want a lovely peaceful and not too expensive place to get away from it all, try the Harborview Inn and RV Park in Garibaldi. They have lots of nice little extras such as cookies and hot chocolate in the lobby and a fire pit with s'mores and good company in the evening.

Really the end.

I cry "Uncle!"

I attended an excellent couponing class last Thursday evening and it led me on a little trip down memory lane. You see, I was a master couponer for thirty years. Let me tell you what couponing used to look like for me.
Every Tuesday morning, the highlight of my week was walking down to the mailbox to get the Food Day, a free publication from the Oregonian. I would eagerly peruse the pages for recipes for real things that kids would eat, like chicken casseroles and chocolate desserts.

These days, it is more likely to be kale pizza or quinoa milkshakes, combining foods that God never meant to be friends.

There were columns that gave tips for cooking, gardening, home improvement, mothering, and everyday life. I was fondly remembering some of those personalities this morning. Do you recall Tamera Smith Allred, she of the constant angst and riveting family stories? Did you know she still makes a living telling those stories? You're welcome. I was gratified to see that she has aged right along with the rest of us!
And then there was Nancy Strope, the food editor. She was a lovely, down-to-earth woman who gave eminently practical advice for life in the kitchen. I clipped many of her recipes and learned much of my kitchen know-how from dear Nancy, who has long been dead. You can still buy her cookbook on eBay. I have half a mind to buy it.

And then there was Dulcy Mahar and her gardening column that was written with a zesty sense of humour, and who kept writing and making us laugh until cancer carried her off in 2011, after 22 years of columns. Her columns had titles like "20 ways to pimp your yard." How could you not love that?

So. 

Coupons. 

My main victims in the Food Day were the coupon inserts. I made an art of quickly flipping through the shiny pages and ripping out coupons I deemed to be possibly useful.
No scissors for me. Scissors are for wimps.
I always had a pile of coupons that needed filing and would take them with me to gymnastics class, where I would sit and file coupons in The Box while watching my three adorable children performing their backward bends and cartwheels.

I always had a box, where the coupons were divided alphabetically by brand names. It was my lethal weapon against the grocery industry. Combining sales at about four different grocery stores with these coupons saved thousands of dollars on groceries over the years. Sometimes it was for survival, and other times it gave me extra money for fun.
The Box was worth more than gold to me and we had some adventures together. One time, I was driving our old Colt Vista and forgot that I had placed The Box on the roof. I happened to look out of the back window as I drove down the street and saw coupons fluttering in my wake. Luckily, it was a quiet street, so I pulled over and made the kids help me salvage as many coupons as we could.
Yes, I was that avid.

The Box was an escape artist, often hiding away in the grocery cart instead of coming home with me. A panicky call to the store would follow and, strangely, there was only one time that it went completely missing.
I may have been more than a little obsessed with my bargain hunting and couponing, because one night, when Jeff was angry about something I had done, he threw all of my coupons in the wood stove to annoy me.
True story.
Not to worry, it only took me a couple of weeks to get back to speed.

Store clerks either loved me or hated me. The former would congratulate me on all the good deals I had found and didn't mind using my homemade denim bags. The latter would scowl at the pile of coupons presented to them and wrestle with the denim bags as if they were a personal insult. You read it here: I was using fabric bags decades before it was fashionable.

I loved the challenge of couponing and often visited stores at night when everyone was in bed, just to wander the aisles and see what deals I could find. My friends all thought I was crazy, but I swore that no matter how financially comfortable we became, I would always coupon because I enjoyed it.

Well, here I am, eating my words yet again. I have almost, but not quite, abandoned couponing forever. Not because of our finances, or because I have grown tired of it, but because, like almost everything else these days, it has become overly complicated. It has become fashionable, taken over by bloggers and Extreme Couponers. It is no longer my private battle with grocery conglomerates, but a very public enterprise that requires a smartphone, numerous apps, a large binder, and the ability to read very small print. Nowadays, when I attempt to do battle with the Grocery Machine, I almost always get something wrong and end up having to return items to customer service or shamefacedly run back through the aisles to exchange an item for the correct one while the line behind me waits patiently.

So here it is. The end of an era. I pass the baton willingly to those who enjoy such an enterprise.
You know who you are.
But my denim bags are still going strong.

Christmas Part 2

If you're keeping track, Christmas Part 1 hasn't been posted yet. We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in September as their Christmas gift from us. I am woefully derelict in my postings so that might happen next week year.

Bethany and crew up and went to Texas for Christmas this year, so we had an early celebration. Annie and her three littles are here for a couple of months while Daddy is deployed, so life has been busy and crazy and I have no time to do anything, let alone think of a menu for yet another family dinner, so I made an executive decision to take them all out to Jac's Deli.

Jac's is a favourite with this crowd, because they cater to the gluten-free, the dairy-free, and the just-plain-picky eaters amongst us. The girls behind the counter did a terrific job taking care of all our needs and the bill was much less than I anticipated. Win for Jac's! 

I foresee a possible tradition in the making.

There were sixteen of us (ten of them children) and Jac's is a small establishment, so I called ahead and gave them our orders so that we wouldn't have to wait forever or overwhelm them with orders when we got there. We commandeered their back room and the kids had a blast hanging out together and playing games that are kept in the drawers of the tool chest seen above. 

Jac's used to be a garage, and the theme pops up all around. Bethany swears she remembers waiting in this room as a child for our car to get fixed, but my memory is sadly lacking.

Natalie and Jenny are best buds.

Miss M was sick and not very happy, although she did perk up a bit at the ice cream.

My girls. Aren't they lovely?

Well, one of them is, anyway.

After dinner and much shenanigans, we went to the Portland LDS Temple Visitor's Center and listened to a storyteller/singer tell some stories of Christmas. It wasn't a big success as the littles were antsy and didn't want to sit still (strike 1), but we made it through and then went for a walk to the reflecting pool, where the nativity statues I was expecting to see in the pool we noticeably absent.

Strike two.

The kids rampaged around the pool until it became embarrassing and then we went home.

We had a short recital of Christmas piano pieces while the kids misbehaved and Nana became grumpy, so Annie kindly offered to read the nativity and then we opened pyjamas form Nana and Papa and a few other presents.

And everyone became suddenly angelic.

And at the end of the evening I noticed something very strange under my tree.

I know, most people have railways or kittens or stockings under their trees, right?
I have a Daniel, 'cause I'm lucky like that.