Slacking

Ethan is very proud of his Thomas Undies. Here he is having a pizza party with his teddy bears.

So much for 3-day potty training. I guess 3 weeks...3 months...3 years old sounds a little more realistic.
Oh well.
In the defense of the lady who wrote the method we used, we might have been able to figure things out in the last 3 days if I had a nanny, a cook, and a maid to take care of everything else in our home while I followed Ethan around waiting for "teachable moments."
This was a good start though, I think. Our formerly bare sticker chart now has 5 stickers on it. Progress!

Relief

Ahhh...Levi is home! His 10-day trip only ended up being 9, because he and David (Pillers...coworker, neighbor, and fellow camp recruiter) drove through the night last night to get home. Hooray! They arrived home at 5 this morning and both went straight to bed. So, really, our day hasn't been a whole lot different than when he was gone, because he's been sleeping most of the time. But isn't it funny how everything just feels right when everybody's home? It's just like a big sigh of relief.

So, to go along with all that relief, we are adding a little chaos to our lives. Potty training. Oh, horror! I have been nervous about it and putting it off for quite a while, but Kara recommended a method that she's been using with Aydin, and it seems like a good time to do it. We'll see. If we all totally fall apart, I will give up and try again when he's...oh, maybe 7 or so. Just kidding.

And with that, here I go to dust off the potty chair.

Losing It

The kids and I are staying with my parents while Levi is on his annual recruiting trip. It is hard to have him gone, and ten days seems like a really long time to us! Neither one of us is really wild about talking on the phone for extended periods of time, but we are good about catching up and saying goodnight every night. Or so I thought.
I put the kids to bed last night and fell asleep with them for a while. Around 11, I woke up, looked at my phone, and realized that I hadn't called Levi. And he hadn't called me! Panicking, thinking that something must be really wrong, I ran upstairs to call him (we sleep in the basement, and I didn't want to wake the kids up).
He sounded a little confused when he answered. After a minute, he said, "You do know that you just called me an hour ago, right? We talked some and even prayed together."
I have no memory of our conversation. After thinking really, really hard, I vaguely remember sitting on the couch with a phone, and saying "Amen" at one point. But I have no idea what we talked about. I don't even remember going back down to bed.
I usually pride myself on being fairly lucid at night when I am up with the kids. Looks like I am not as with-it as I thought.

Teeny Tiny

Emmaline got her first ever pair of snow boots yesterday. They are size 3. Wow. She is so tiny.

Quinoa?

I'm sorry that every post this year has involved food. But that is kind of my only creative outlet right now, and it is easy to get excited about. Anyway...

Could I have found the perfect food? I am terrible at planning side-dishes, and Levi hates frozen vegetables, which were always my mom's quick-and-easy sides. So I often find myself standing in the kitchen 20 minutes before mealtime, with two hungry, grumpy kids clinging to my legs and two hungry, tired gentlemen on their way home, with a lovely pan of chicken in the oven, and nothing else. Now, if I had double the chicken, I am pretty sure the hungry gentlemen would not object to an all-meat dinner. But that's expensive. And not very good for us.

Salad? Oops...forgot to get lettuce. Or the lettuce is frozen (my fridge is a little finicky). Better check the cupboards. Hmm, rice? Nope, that takes an hour to cook here, if it ever cooks all the way. Potatoes? Basically the same story.

But there it is, in all of its shelf-stable glory. Quinoa!

It's apparently super-good for you. It's ready in 25 minutes. And the real test? Last night, Levi said, "Man, this quinoa stuff looks really funny, but it's fantastic!"

I'm sold.

Pie

Oh, this mountain weather. I love it. I hate it.

Yesterday, Levi went to see True Grit (a new Western) with some friends. Our little Woodland Park movie theater only shows 2 movies at a time, and that was not one of them, so the guys had to go down to the Springs to see it. It was a glorious day, and if it's 40 degrees here, it's usually 60 down the hill, so we had a big afternoon planned for the kids: a trip to the park in the Springs, maybe go and play around at Garden of the Gods for a few minutes, and then dinner at IHOP (does any kid not like pancakes?) before the guys went to their movie and I brought the kiddos back home for bed.

But then about 10 minutes before our scheduled departure from home, it started snowing. Like crazy. Dumping. This was NOT in the forecast! I decided I didn't want to drive the kids back up the pass by myself in the dark and in the raging snow, so we stayed home (The guys don't care what the weather's like, so they went).

This probably sounds ridiculous, but after a weekend of planning for an evening of glorious fun in town, the prospect of staying home alone with the kids was a bit depressing. To make it worse, we didn't have a shred of junk food in the whole house. Not one bit. Aww, man...

30 minutes later, I went outside to feed the dog, and lo and behold, it wasn't even snow, it was just some hail, it was a freak storm, and the sky was now blue. Sigh. Oh well, too late now.

So we made pumpkin pie.

Heaven on a Bagel

My parents got some smoked salmon from my uncle for Christmas and let us take it home. Bagels and cream cheese have met their perfect companion. It is glorious. That's all.