Part of The Family?

Lately I've been wondering if our family tree may have some roots that run back to the Gambino Crime Family. Our Jude has quite a deep voice for such a little guy. Jude also seems to be picking up some mafioso type lingo and his voice only makes his words sound more authentic. He can often be heard throughout the day saying "Paulie. . .Joelie," as he wanders around the house looking for his brothers. Jude "Baby Face" Macduff

Jude has the physique to back up his baritone voice too. The kid is solid and he's not one bit afraid to take on his older brothers when he thinks he's been short changed by them. He's also not above picking a fight just for the sake of letting a couple of good punches fly. I'm going to have to keep an eye on my little Jude. He just might be recruited by The Family. He's a natural--except for the fact that he's tow head blonde, blue eyed and fair skinned.

A Girl & Her Camera

Grace's camera was stolen last October. She spent a couple of miserable months without a camera, but all four of her grandparents and her mom and dad chipped in to get her a new one for Christmas. She's been tickled pink, snapping hundreds of photos ever since. What follows is only a small sampling:

Feeding the Crowd

This past Wednesday evening our family attended our church's Lenten soup supper and worship service. During dinner, Matt and I got to talking with a couple who attends the early service on Sunday mornings (meaning they're a couple we don't see much, since our family does not attend the early service.)

At one point during the conversation the man's wife commented, "I can't imagine how you feed them all [your kids]." I replied, "Well, I cook big." Really, I come by it pretty naturally. When Matt and I were first married, I consistently and notoriously made too much food. That's just how I was used to cooking. All those summers cooking on the farm, I guess. I've finally reached the point in my life where my cooking big tendencies are actually a plus.

I've always wanted to get into the Once A Month Cooking thing, but I've never gotten off the launching pad with it because it just takes too large of a chunk of time to put together 30 meals in one sitting. Instead, I double (and even quadruple) recipes as I'm able and stash the extras in the freezer for another day.

Taco soup, enchiladas, pizza dough and sauce, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth, muffins, quick breads, waffles, french toast, pancakes, roasted shredded chicken and browned hamburger are all things that I freeze regularly.

I have added two new elements to my cooking routine this year. One is the lunch time burrito. I've been making these in big batches and freezing them in zip lock bags. The kids can grab one and nuke it for their noon meal if they don't like the leftover choices of the day or they don't want pb & j. I just cook a big batch of pinto beans in the crockpot all day, then brown up a couple of pounds of hamburger with taco seasoning and mix the beans with the meat. I then spoon the mixture onto large flour tortillas, add a little shredded cheese and roll them up. I flash freeze the burritos on a cookie sheet before transferring them to zip lock bags. Viola! Our own convenience food.

The other item I've added to my cooking routine is a big Sunday breakfast. I've found that if the kids' stomachs are good and full before church (especially since late service runs past our normal lunch time), they behave much better during the service. So on Saturday night I preassemble and egg casserole or an overnight french toast and put some sausage or bacon in the fridge to thaw so it's ready to be cooked on Sunday morning. If I decide to make pancakes or waffles, I'll assemble the dry ingredients the night before so that all I have to do is add the wet team in the morning. I always quadruple waffle, pancake and french toast recipes.

For example, this morning I made my dad's buttermilk pancake recipe. I used a whole half gallon of buttermilk, eight eggs, eight cups of flour and two sticks of butter. We ate some of the pancakes along with eggs and sausage this morning. Some of the pancakes will be stored in the fridge to be used for breakfasts this week. (We'll spread peanut butter on them to add some protein). The rest of the pancakes will be stored in the freezer and I'll pull them out in a couple of weeks for another week of easy breakfasts.
Matt bought me a huge electric griddle for Christmas. Most wives would have thought this was a really tacky gift, but I actually wanted it. Now we can use our old stove top griddle in conjunction with the new griddle and empty a big tupperware bowl of pancake batter in no time (well, sort of). Same goes for french toast. I'm considering getting another waffle maker for the same reason.

If Matt is the one doing the pancake flipping, he always uses the last of the pancake batter to make a giant pancake. It's hard to tell from the picture, but this one is the size of a dinner plate. It took two spatulas to flip it. Since Matt is the Daddy, he gets the privilege of eating the Big Daddy pancake.

St. Patty's Day Field Trip

We don't celebrate St. Patty's Day in a big way around here. However, the kids all made sure to put on green clothes today and they even dressed baby Isaac in green. I grabbed a green shirt to wear this morning only because it was the first thing I saw and I was in a hurry. It wasn't until I went into the kitchen and heard all the green clothes hubbub going on that I realized I had made the right choice in my own attire.

The kids and I went about our day as usual, but then I received a call from Matt who said he planned to take the rest of the day off of work so that he could take the family on a little impromptu field trip. I got off the phone and announced that Daddy would be taking the family to a surprise location. Cheers erupted. I never miss an opportunity like that to get a little chore mileage out of the kids. They gladly picked up a few messes, cleaned out the van, ate their lunches and packed snacks while they waited for Daddy to come home and pick us up.

When Daddy arrived, we all loaded into the van and after the obligatory three or so trips back into the house to get things we'd forgotten (at least we hadn't left the driveway yet), we were off. We traveled to the Whitman Mission. I haven't been there since I was in sixth grade. Honestly, I don't have any memories of the mission itself, just all the build up in our social studies course weeks before my class made the field trip.
Flash forward almost thirty years. I now can see why I don't have any memories of the place. There just isn't a whole lot to see. When we arrived at the mission this afternoon, we watched a short video and toured the one room museum. We then went outdoors and walked the grounds. No actual buildings remain, just brick laid in the ground to outline the dimensions of the original buildings. The signs along the path certainly look like they could have been there thirty years ago and the audio that accompanies each sign wasn't as PC sounding as I expected, so I surmised that they are pretty old, too.
The last couple of years, Matt and I have stayed at the Marcus Whitman Hotel in Walla Walla for our little annual getaway. On the second floor of the hotel, a series of paintings hangs on the walls which describe the life of the Whitmans. I think having this history in our minds was helpful to us as we toured the grounds of the mission today and I wish our kids would have had the benefit of that history as well.

However, Daddy, as always, was a good historian. He asked the kids many questions and got them thinking. Near the end of the tour, he asked the kids if they thought that Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were martyrs for Christ and they all answered in the affirmative.Something that really struck me today was how the Lord redeemed a tragic situation which occurred very early in the Whitmans' work at the mission. They lost their 27 month old daughter when she drowned in the river that ran through the property. However, several years later, the Whitmans adopted seven children (including a 5 month old baby) whose parents died as the family was traveling West. Yet, tragically, two of those boys were killed by the Cayuse in the massacre (and 1 died of measles) and the other four were obviously orphaned yet again when the Whitmans themselves were among those murdered.
At one point I commented to Matt that if they replicated the buildings on the property (similar to Ft. Clatsop), the mission might be a bit more interesting. Of course he said that all of that costs money. I countered that then they could charge more than $3 per adult (kids 16 & under are free). But then again, the whole place is kind of a downer and maybe having buildings to explore wouldn't help that.
Our kids had a great time, however, and didn't want to leave, or at least they didn't want to go home so soon, so we loaded into the van and Matt drove us around the countryside. At one point, we came upon a feedlot and one of the kids exclaimed, "Oh look! A ranch!" to which Joel replied, "I hope we see a cowboy! Oh! I bringed my cowboy hat!"

We drove on Stateline Road for awhile, then Matt stopped the car so that the kids could run back and forth between Oregon and Washington and so that they could spit from one state to the other.

Then we drove home and ate the beef stew that had been simmering in the oven all afternoon. I had to ditch my plan of making Irish soda bread as we got back to the house too late, but we did have Tillamook mint ice cream for dessert. Daddy asked the kids questions about St. Patrick and I thought about how St. Patrick and the Whitmans were similar in that they both sought to bring Christ to those who didn't know Him. So, in fact, our little field trip ended up being an appropriate activity for St. Patrick's Day.

Quotable Quote

Joel leaned into the baby's face this morning and put his nose on Isaac's. This is not an uncommon occurrence and so far, Isaac has been very clear about his dislike of this practice. However, this morning, instead of crying, Isaac licked Joel's nose. At ten weeks old, I know that this was not an intentional act on Isaac's part, but Joel's reaction to it was priceless. He giggled and said, "That Baby Isaac gives kisses like a dog!"

A Rare Bird: Conversation

Sunday evening Matt and I needed a few minutes to talk--without interruptions. We've learned through many years of experience that having a conversation without interruptions just doesn't happen around here. Usually we save subjects that need more than a few one-liners to address for our weekly date night, but Sunday we really needed to talk about some things related to Matt's job and it really couldn't wait until date night.

So we tried anyway. To have a conversation. With. Out. Inter. Ruptions. We told the kids, "Mom and Dad need to talk. Don't bother us." We went into our bedroom and locked the door. Implied, though not expressly stated was this command: "Don't scratch, knock or kick the door unless the house is on fire or someone is bloody."

Safely inside our locked bedroom, Matt and I began our conversation. Then we heard the fire alarm in the kitchen go off. Matt went to check it out. All was well. Something on the bottom of the oven was smoking, but things were otherwise under control.

We went back to our conversation. Then someone came to the door and started banging on it. Matt asked, "Who is it?" "Me!" was the reply. It was Jude. Then he began yelling, "Open!" "Open!" He wasn't crying. We figured he wasn't bloody, so we just ignored him. Now, where were we?

We got our conversation back on track. Then we heard the noise of a saw cutting through wood. Noises in our basement can easily be heard through the air vents in our bedroom. We paused our conversation for a minute--hope no one gets bloody. Then, once again, we resumed our conversation.

A few sibling spats, a few tears, a few door slams later and we gave up. It was a valiant effort.

So Sunday's little experiment did prove once again that it is indeed impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation in this house. The upside--the house didn't burn down and no one got bloody (although I have yet to give the basement a thorough inspection).