Lunch making

It is no secret that I do not love making lunches.  Of course, I am down to five kids at home now, so it is not as big of a chore as in the days of making seven lunches. I just know how gross the school lunches are, and the kids are very appreciative of the lunches I made for them. So despite my negative attitude I go through the repetitive motions every school day to make five lunches.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about this. My friend is an interesting person--very mystical and eastern-thinking. She told me that every time I use my hands to make lunches for the kids, I am sharing my energy and love with them, and it is transferred to them through the food, and the kids will feel that love. Sometimes she says some weird things, but she is usually right. She went on to tell me that when mothers use their hands to do everyday things for our kids, such as laundry or helping with homework, we are literally transmitting love through our hands to them.  Let's hear it for Chi!

Anyway, it got me thinking.  Does Noah realize that I have always squeeze mustard onto his sandwich in the shape of a heart? Do the kids know how much I love them because I make homemade chocolate frosting for their graham crackers? Sliced cucumbers and ranch, fruit snacks, pudding pack, applesauce, a sandwich, Capri Sun, and graham crackers with frosting. I don't do anything cute or fancy, but I came to realize that I was sending a lunchbox of love with them out the door each morning. 

But did my kids care? Do they have a clue? Savanna answered that for me quite unexpectedly a few weeks ago. She came home one day and said, "There is this one girl at lunch, and every time she opens her lunchbox, I can just tell that her mom doesn't love her." 

I asked what she meant. I didn't expect her answer. 

"Well, her mom fills it with ORGANIC this and ALL NATURAL that.  You just let us have good food. Her mom would never let her have graham crackers with frosting."

Girls Party 2013

Last weekend I escaped to sunny southern Utah for the annual Bradley girls party.  It did not disappoint.  I suppose I was too busy knitting and talking to take any of my own pictures, so I stole some from others.

The weekend is always filled with lots of good food, crafting, talking, knitting, and quilting.  It's pretty much my kind of party.

Two of my favorite quotes from the party this year:
"If it's cute and fun, I just buy it!"
"I didn't know I was going to make a quilt today."

Lindsey made the most delicious chocolate bowls filled with chocolate mousse.  Maybe the best dessert ever.  I mean, you get to eat the bowl.... how cool is that?  AND it's chocolate.  Genius.

 Crafting and chatting.

 Always a lot going on all over the house.

 One thing is for sure about the craft projects, is that they exponentially explode in quantity and complexity.  This family is very good as mass-producing a craft, that is for certain.  And if you need something knit, look no further.  We've got you covered.

I tried a new cookie recipe this year, Salted Caramel cookies

• 2½ cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, sliced
• 1¼ cup dark brown sugar
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon plain Greek yogurt
• 1 cup caramel squares, cut into ¼’s (or a bag of caramel chips if you can find them)
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• Coarse Sea salt

Instructions

1. In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cream of tarter, cinnamon, and set aside.
2. To brown the butter, heat a medium saucepan to medium high heat. Add the sliced butter, whisking frequently. You will notice the butter starting to become frothy on the top and brown specks will start to form along the bottom. You have to watch it closely because the turn happens quickly and you don’t want it to burn. You will start to smell a nutty aroma and once it turns to a brown color, remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature.
3. While the butter is cooling, cut the carmel squares into ¼’s.
4. In a stand mixer, combine the brown butter and brown sugar, and ½ cup granulated sugar. (The ¼ cup sugar will be used for rolling in the cookies). Mix until blended and smooth.
5. Beat in egg, yolk, vanilla and yogurt and mix until combined. Slowly add the dry ingredients until combined.
6. Form the dough into a ball and cover with plastic. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or overnight.
7. Once you are ready to bake preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Measure about 2 tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the ball and place 1-2 caramel squares inside (I suggest 3-4), wrap the cookie dough over the caramel and roll back into a ball. Make sure it is completely covered so that the caramel won’t stick to the pan.
8. Mix ¼ cup sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and roll each cookie in the mixture. Place cookies on a parchment lined cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. (I used course sea salt)
9. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges turn lightly brown. The centers will be soft. Allow to cool for 2-3 minutes, and transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Monumental Marathon

We have returned from the great state of Indiana.  I was not necessarily excited to visit Indianapolis.  When I would tell people we were going to Indianapolis, they would say, "Why would you want to go there?"  I would answer, "That's a good question."  I would then explain that when we look for a marathon, we have 4 criteria, each met by the Monumental Marathon:
1) It must be flat
2) It must be near sea level
3) It must be on a Saturday
4) It must be  BIG race----thousands of runners.

We left our five kids at home in the charge of my 17-year-old son.  He insisted they didn't need a babysitter, and I figured between tracking his iphone and monitoring our home alarm system from my phone, I could keep pretty good tabs on where everybody was.   This picture shows me being a good stalker-mommy making sure the kids were where they were supposed to be.



We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and Mark got busy putting germ-free barriers on everything in our hotel room.  He also wore a mask on the plane.  He had trained hard, and he didn't want any microorganisms wrecking his race for him.  I think if you wear a mask on a plane, that is the best way to get EVERYONE to stare at you.  I think if he had been naked, he wouldn't have attracted as much attention.

We flew into a pretty awesome storm in Indianapolis, but that didn't slow me down.  I was out walking the streets, and I was absolutely shocked to discover a beautiful, clean, awesome city.  There are historical monuments and statues EVERYWHERE.  The capitol building is smack dab in the center of 

downtown, too.  I loved walking the streets and getting to know the city a little bit.

Mark's brother Stephen met up with us the next day and had the hotel room next door.  It is always fun to travel with Stephen, and we were so glad that he had decided to come run the race as well.  The three of us went out to see part of the city so that I could show them some of the cool monuments I had discovered.  This one in the very center of town is huge!  Fountains, statues, a very tall tower, and lots of steps to climb. 

Mark and Stephen mostly rested their legs in the hotel room while I explored the city and brought back lunch and dinner for them.

In my exploration,  I found this statue of young Abe Lincoln, and I fell in love with it.  It represents the age that Abe would have been when his family moved from the back-woods of Kentucky to the back-woods of Indiana.  Bare feet and a book in his hand.  I love Abraham Lincoln, and I wished so much that I could find a miniature statue of this to bring home with me.

 Friday night was the traditional pinning-of-the-bibs photo op.  We got all dressed up to race, and I pinned the bibs on (which is my official job every time).  We decided to go to the canal on the backside of our hotel for the pictures.

 Race morning came, and we were up at 5:45 to eat our breakfast and get moving.  The race began at 8:00, and it was a very cold morning.  Luckily, our hotel was just a block from the starting line, so we stayed in our nice warm hotel room until it was just time to head to the starting line.

I loved seeing 13.1 miles of the city.  It was beautiful, and the time actually went by quickly.  Miles 4-7 are usually hard for me, because I get bored, and there is still so much longer to go.  But I ended up chatting with a guy for those miles until he split off for the full marathon, and it made the time go so quickly.  The whole pack around us was amazed when I told them I had 7 kids and had gained and lost 350 pounds over all those pregnancies.  After mile 8, time just whizzed by, and before I knew it, I was in front of my hotel with 1/2 mile to go.  I kicked it up and sprinted to the finish line.  I guess that means I saved a bit too much for the end, but I ran 2:08:36, and I was happy.  I hurried back to our hotel and got the camera and some warm clothes on, and then headed back to the finish line to get pictures of Mark and Stephen.

Mark ran the best race of his life.  I was so happy to see him come down the road with a big smile on  his face and a kick in his run.  He felt great, and was so happy with his 3:03:28.  That's a 7-minute-mile pace!  He didn't even see me there with the camera, but he posed for me anyway.

 Stephen came down the road about 20 minutes later with a smile on his face.  He had also met his goal of qualifying for Boston again in 2015.  He was happy, but he was hurting.  He was 3:23:37.

 It took me a while to find these brothers at the end.  This is a very big race, and all the finishers were wrapped in emergency blankets and had the same hats on.  I found them, and they were both so happy.  They will be running Boston together in 2015!

Catching up

The kids are busy with school, and I have been subbing a bit too much.  I blocked out this week so that I could just hang out at home and do some things that need to be worked on.  I have been painting, moving kids bedrooms, sewing, baking, cleaning, and organizing.  It is fun to be in the high school, but it is more fun to be home.  I love jobs on days where I am actually busy teaching English, math or French for a teacher who knows me and leaves actual plans for me.  However, I had a couple of jobs recently where it was just babysitting and showing a video, and all I could think about was how much I could be getting done at home.  Those days are usually torture for me.  Some days like that are good because I can take my laptop and catch up on my accounting and get $160 for it, but most days like that I go crazy.

Yesterday I made Halloween pillowcases for my kids.  I also mailed off packages to Abram and Aubrey.  It was a fun day.

Plus, it was  Monday, which means I get to read Abram's email.  It's the day I live for all week long.  I just love knowing that my kid is still alive and well way up in the mountains of Mexico, and I love it when we are both online at the same time and can go back and forth for a little bit.

We have also been busy running.  Mark and I have a race coming up next weekend.  Last week we ran a local 15k, and Savvy ran the 5k.  It was a fun family event.  We made the boys come be our cheerleaders.

 I was so happy to finish.  I wasn't super fast, but I kept my 9:30 pace steady the whole race.

 Mark ran 11 miles before the race, and then the 15k to make a 20-mile long run.  Crazy marathon man.

 Savvy is the toughest girl I know. She doesn't ever give up.

 She marched right up to the front of the starting line!

Zack ran a 1k kids run, and he was in heaven.  He is always smiling, and everything is fun to him.

Farenheit 451

I somehow escaped all my years of school without every having to read Farenhheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  Joel came home from school the other day with the book, and as soon as he had finished reading it, I started reading it and I couldn't stop.

I was amazed at the description of our modern society, with everyone more concerned with what's buzzing in their earbuds than the sounds and conversations of real life.  The characters knew and cared more about their "TV families" than they cared or knew about the people they actually lived with.  The whole book was just awesome, and eerie in the way it described our society today.

And then I got to the end.  It was still awesome, but my mind totally switched from analyzing the societal parallels to something much more personal.

The book perfectly described my feelings of grief about the loss of my dad this past summer.  I really think I am doing OK with my dad being gone (if there is such a thing--it is still horrible), but every now and then some memory will pop up, or I'll see something that reminds me of him and I cry. This part of the book made me cry.  Sometimes things that remind me of him make me laugh.  Like today when I happened to have an extra stylus in my computer bag at a school, and a teacher next door desperately needed one, I laughed.  And I think my dad was smiling from heaven.  My dad kept everyone he knew well-stocked with styluses.

Anyway, here are the beautiful words I read last night that made me think of my dad, and how lost I feel sometimes without him here.  He made his mark on the world through the things he did, and I am so glad to have many things I can look at to make me think of my dad.

"When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on."

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

"Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by

God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He

touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor.

Geology field trip

Savvy's class was heading to central Oregon for a 2-day field trip to see some awesome things I have always wanted to see.  I normally shy away from field trips, because parents come out of the woodwork for them.  But this one was too tempting, and I jumped at the chance to go.

The teacher who planned it didn't do the best job.  She drove the route twice this summer, and used her time frame to plan the trip.  However, she forgot that a bus goes 55 miles per hour rather than 70 or 75 on the freeway in a car.  She also forgot that stopping somewhere for 150 kids to use the restroom takes a bit longer than it does with a single carload of people.

The first day was way too much driving, and too much time at boring museums, which left not enough time for the real reason I went on the trip--the Painted Hills.

The first day we stopped in Fossil, Oregon to dig for fossils, which was awesome.  Sadly, we were so behind schedule that we only had 30 minutes to do this.  I could have done it all day.

 Bugs trapped in amber.

 Fossils!

 I was loving the hammer and chisel action splitting rocks in half to find treasures.

 We got to the Painted Hills just before sunset.  It really was the most beautiful place in Oregon.  I wanted to spend hours there, but I wasn't in charge.  I am seriously taking my family back there this fall to thoroughly explore.

 Red, green, yellow, white, blue.  Every color of soil and rock formations here.

We made it to the town of our overnight stop about an hour and a half late.  It was pitch black, and we were all starving and dying of thirst.  I inhaled two slices of pizza, and then went to check out the sleeping accommodations.  I knew the plan had been to stay on the gym floor of an elementary school.  I came fully prepared to do so.  But when I saw that the boys and girls were sleeping right next to each other in the same gym, and that the gym was not air-conditioned, I was not doing that.  And I wasn't making Savanna do that either.  I called the Best Western down the road.  Savanna and I had the best night's sleep ever in a huge, comfy, cool room.  We were asleep by 9:30.

We walked the 1.5 miles back to the school the next morning to join the group, and after many delays getting kids up, packed, fed, and lunches made, we were off to Smith Rock State Park.

It was magical.  I loved everything about it.  One teacher and I took a group of adventurous kids on a trip up a steep trail to see Monkey Face.  It was awesome.  Smith Rock is a caldera, with steep walls and rock columns remaining from an ancient volcano.  It was simply incredible.  I can't wait to take my family back to spend more time in this beautiful place.

 Just a 500 foot drop.  Of course, Savanna had to lie down and spit.