{ musings }

Wednesday Morning Griddle Cakes

As a reward for sleeping in (a bit) on the morning after the sleepover, I rustled up some home-made griddle cakes for the punks and their cute friends.  The recipe is from my Great Grandmother's 1930's Grafton Ladies Lutheran Church Auxiliary cookbook which was passed down from her to my Grandmother to me.  The recipe book has tons of delightful, chicken-scratch notations throughout (by four generations of women in my family!), lots of bent, torn and grease-splattered pages....and I love it!  My girls refuse to eat packaged-mix pancakes or waffles because of this recipe, so be warned: if you try it, you may never be able to look at another box of Bisquick again!

 

• 2.5 c all purpose flour
• 5 tsp baking powder
• 6 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 6 tbsp melted butter (in the batter)
• 2 c milk (or a little more)
• 2 eggs
• (add fruit or chocolate chips, if you like!)
• Oh...and did I mention you MUST butter the griddle generously or, if you're really lucky, use the bacon drippings from the bacon you just cooked!!

I just *luuurve* it when the blueberries burst and oooze all over!

Oh, and did I mention that my punks also refuse imitation syrups?  Only pure, 100% maple for them.  Little food snobs!  Wonder where they get that?!

Babies = Good Therapy!

And these two little cuties were JUST what I needed today!!!  Clearly, my punks loved them, too (even Alexis, who normally isn't a big fan of babies!!)!

Here is Olivia smooching Miss Teagan...

and here is Alexis having a good chuckle with Miss Boston...

Hey Teague....it was awfully nice of you and M to make such adorable and HAPPY babies for us Kwanettes to enjoy!!  Love you muchly!!

Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum

Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum is a 6-syllable mantra I've been chanting for several years now. I even have the Tibetan script version of it on my computer monitor and tucked into my wallet. As I understand it, this 6-syllable mantra (mantras are spoken words) is the "speech manifestation and the wisdom energy of all the Buddhas."  When chanted, it has the power to purify our impure perception of sound, protects the mind from deluded thoughts, cuts off ignorance and opens up wisdom. By chanting it, you are supposed to be given immeasurable blessings and peacefulness. It's healing and purifying nature is supposed to alleviate sufferings and difficulties.   Man, do I need some of THAT kind of help!!

The mandala representative of this mantra is shown to the left...isn't it gorgeous?!  SO POWERFUL!

 Lately, I've been chanting this a LOT throughout my day.  I even chant it quietly in my bed if I wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety or stress. I've been chanting it so much that my littlest one apparently caught on and last night I overheard her chanting her version of it in her bed after I tucked her in!  What a blessed little spirit she is!  I went in and explained it to her, chanted it with her a few times and this morning she was pleased to report that she was up to 231 times! 

Gotta love that!  My children are SUCH an amazing blessing!!

Doubly Blessed!

After an insane roller-coaster ride of a pregnancy, Lindsay & Michael welcomed their beautiful and perfect daughters to the world on Sunday afternoon.  The girls are healthy, the delivery went flawlessly and the new little family is getting to know each other!

It killed me to wait, but I finally went down to meet these two precious little princesses yesterday.  AH-MAZING!  I'm no stranger to babies, but man, they are SO TINY!!  Here are a couple quick snaps I got while visiting...hospital room lighting is pretty much the definition of CRAP, so please forgive.  Thank goodness for shooting in RAW, or these would have been really horrific!

Teagan...

Teagan's teeny, tiny piggies...

Teagan and Mommy...
 

Boston...as seen through the window of her little isolette where she was soundly sleeping...

(yes, since I insisted, Michael let me lie and tell them I was Lindsay's sister so I could get into the NICU and peek at her!)

Blessings.  SUCH AMAZING LITTLE BLESSINGS!  And already so loved and cherished by so many!  "Auntie" Sam (such a sweetie!) is guest blogging all about them on Lindsay's blog...so be sure to pop over there and take a peek!  Can't wait to see this girls grow up!!

Sing, baby! Sing!

And sing she did!

Last Tuesday, after about 8 weeks of auditions and then pre- and post-school practices, Alexis and seven of her fifth grade pals (one was missing from this photo) sang in the Scottsdale Unified School District's Honor Choir performance.  We are so proud...she worked very hard for this honor and the kids and their choir director, Rene Suderman, did a fantastic job. 

Kids were chosen from every school in the district, and they performed in three groups:  Elementary, Middle School and High School.  Our kids performed three beautiful songs...don't they look impressive up there on stage??  I tried to get a decent video recording, but since our seats wer in the rear third of the auditorium, all I got was sound and a very VERY distant image of some tinly little heads.  Oh well.  It was great...trust me!

AWESOME!

In the last of the marathon of photo sessions this weekend, this morning I met with my very favorite little baby-sized person, Miss Hannah and her Mom.   Hannah is quite possibly the prettiest little girl EVER BORN (yes, including my own) and I've been lucky enough to capture her cuteness many times over the past year +.

Mom is a crazy-talented graphic designer, so she and I jointly schemed on a vision for this shoot...and the cloudy, overcast skies blessed us this morning and made it MAGICAL!  There are probably 100 shots I love from the session (yes, it was one of those where it all WORKED) but here is my FAVE (so far!).  I'm sure there will be many more that tickle my fancy, but I have to pack for our T-Giving road trip and don't have time to proof or edit any more right now....

So now you know how a 1 year old will react to being placed in the middle of 400 candy canes!!! 

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

xoxo

Bursting With Pride!!

This beautiful girl, my eldest daughter, Alexis, went to school quite anxious about her day today.  Today was Math Olympiad test day in her gifted math class.  Almost weekly they take "practice" tests to prepare them for the Olympiad - and even those are super challenging...but today was THE Olympiad.  They do these a couple of times a year, and it is a really big deal to the kids.  The questions are HELLA hard word problems (for 10 year olds, and probably for most adults!) and the kids have limited time in which to answer them.

Today when I picked Miss Alexis up at the bus, she was grinning from ear to ear....she had scored a 4 out of 5 (really, REALLY awesome...the teacher is usually happy if they get 3/5 right!) and was tied for first place with her math nemesis, the geeky brainiac boy who always kicks everyone else's butt at EVERYTHING academic.   TIED!  YAY ALEXIS!  And, not only that, but she was the ONLY one of the fifth graders to correctly answer one of the super hard questions.  She was SO PROUD!

(But not nearly as much as her Mama is!)

Here are some examples of the types of questions on the sample tests:

1.  (5 minutes to answer) One Day Kevin counts 50 cars that pass his house.  One-fifth of the cars contain more than one person.  Of the cars containing only one person, 3/5ths are driven by women.   How many cars are driven by men?

2.  (7 minutes to answer) What is the smallest prime number that is a divisor of the following after all the arithmetic is completed:  (13x17)+(19x23) ?

Spooky!

corpse bride 3, originally uploaded by bebe beaux.

Ok...Yes.  It freaks me out not just a little bit how much these two got "into" their Halloween roles.

The little one (not yet seven years old, mind you!) and the 'tween (almost eleven, going on 21) chose to be a "corpse bride" (hey Teague...recognize that dress?!)  and a "midnight faerie" respectively.  Loved the ideas...and loved the fact that they indulged dear old mom in helping them MAKE their costumes.  They were both VERY pelased with the end results...and I think the make-up was their favorite part, without a doubt!  More photos to follow, later! 

Charity Served In a Cup With Ice

One of our dear friends recently lost their father/grandfather to lymphoma after a long, hard-fought battle and tomorrow night I am taking my girls to his memorial. He was a great guy, and I think it is important (and they are old enough) to learn about what it means to support friends in tough times and what it means to honor departed loved ones.

Last night, while reading our bed-time chapters, our youngest asked me if she could have a lemonade stand. While not crazy about the idea of standing in the hot sun for several hours for personal gain, once Daddy suggested that the girls donate the proceeds to a charity, I warmed up to it and the logical choice was to donate the money to aid lymphoma research and present it to the family at tomorrow's services.


charitable lemonade stand-1, originally uploaded by bebe beaux.

The plan was met with overwhelming enthusiasm:  signs were made and decorated, big words were spelled and re-spelled, we talked a little about what lymphoma was, and what "charity" meant.  We talked about sales tactics and etiquette and we decided that $.25 was a really good and fair price, and that we'd also offer some bottled water ($.50) and yummy cookies ($.25).

So, today at about 10:30 I took the little ones, armed with sunscreen, hats, a card table, several home-made signs and about 2 gallons of lemonade down to one of the bigger intersections in our sleepy little community.  We were joined by the little girl whose Grandpa just passed and another sweet neighborhood girl and together, over 2 hours, they drummed up about $22 and change.

Not a lot of money, but considering they only sold about 10 cups of lemonade and a few bottles of iced water, not a bad collection, I'd say.  More importantly, they earned an experience in how good being charitable feels.

They worked hard for their earnings, and we had a lot of discussion about how it's a good life/karmic policy to try to ALWAYS buy a cup of lemonade or a box of Girl Scout cookies when a kid smiles and politely asks you to.  They thought it was SO cool how people would give them $5 for a cup of lemonade.  We even offered a few sips of cold water to a few hot pups who strolled by!

I have to say, I have a to-do list about a mile long that I probably SHOULD have been working on instead of mixing lemonade and sitting for two hours on the corner, but I now think the  opportunity to get these kids thinking about how GOOD it feels to GIVE was one I'll cherish! 

(the instigator...love this kid!)

Mini-Me

Nothing warms a Mama's heart like seeing one of her offspring follow in the Mama's footsteps.  Here is my eldest in her "on screen" debut reading the morning announcements at her Elementary School.  Today, CCTV...tomorrow, the WORLD!

Grandma & Papa...this one's for you!