Quality Control

Avery and I were having some one -on- one Mommy time this afternoon, and we decided to make chocolate chip cookies. While Avery was excited about dumping the flour, salt, sugar, etc. into the bowl all by herself, her favorite job was quality control. About every 30 sec.(and I'm not exagerating) she would say, "I need some more 'chuppa chips'". After SEVERAL taste tests, they passed her rigorous standard. Then before we put the cookies on a sheet, she felt it was important to test the cookie dough to make sure it was up to par. She looks pretty happy with the results!

This Space for Rent

so, no, i did not think that adding stickers to my blimp would make it look cuter. this was the work of my two year old Avery. i have two theories about what went on in her mind. theory one, apparently she had stickers and no place to put them so when spotting the round orb that used to be my stomach she automatically thinks "wide open canvas". theory two, she knows the baby is going to be born soon and is advertising the soon to be vacated apartment. real estate is a pretty good investment i hear.

One Month to Go!!!

that's right, baby! only one month left. my due date is sept. 27, and while i have no delusions of actually going into labor on or before that date, it's nice to have a light at the end of the tunnel. it's been a fairly easy pregnancy, and i don't have too many complaints. however, i will say that i'm looking forward to not being so scatter brained-you know, forgotten loads of laundry half started, putting the cheese away in the spice cupboard, forgetting about appts. and meetings...i'm a little worried about eden starting school next week. i already scheduled one dr. appt. during the time her bus will be dropping her back at home. i think i'll just hang close to home for the next few weeks. that way i won't have too far to run/drive when i realize that eden's bus came 5 min. ago.

anyways, i thought i'd post a belly picture for kicks. still no name. i'm thinking about offering a reward for a name ben and i can both agree on. regardless of what we end up calling the little guy, we are so excited to have him in our family and can't wait 'till he's here!

Haste makes waste (Part II)

I think my Dad knew from the time I was very young that I was likely to get myself into plenty of messes as a result of my hastiness. The phrases "haste makes waste" and "look before you leap" as well as "if your best friend jumped off a bridge, would you?" were regulars in my childhood. Unfortunately, I can't say I've fully learned the lesson.

Today's lesson began before church. Stephanie and I usually have a Family Home Evening planning session on Sunday's right after church; we plan out what we are going to do for our Monday night family time and involve the kids in the planning as well as the execution of our Monday nights. To keep the kids interested we make sure that a snack is part of the planning meeting. Steph had mentioned earlier this morning that she wanted to do something more healthy (than popsicles, animal crackers, or even popcorn) and that homemade bread was what she had in mind. As time before church was getting short I decided I would help out by putting the ingredients in the bread maker.

I grabbed the recipe book for the breadmaker out of the cabinet and started tossing the ingredients into the breadmaker pan. We've followed this recipe so many times that it was almost second nature. Steph noticed I was taking care of the bread and said thanks as I started. When I was done two minutes later she said, "Wow! Are you done already? Did you measure everything out?" Now, it's only because of 7 years of experience together that she would need to ask that question. My response: "Yes. Why do you ask?" Of course I had used measuring cups and spoons! True, some of the ingredients spilled over at times, but I did measure. Mostly. Stephanie wisely replied, "Because I'm worried that the bread won't turn out and then the girls would be disappointed." I asserted that everything would be fine as I used a spatula to push the excess flour down the sides of the pan into the doughy ball the breadmaker was kneading. Seeing me prod the dough Steph exclaimed, "What are you doing?! You're going to ruin it!" I gave her a confident smirk and again asserted that my poking the dough was in no way going to ruin the bread. [While this last bit may have been true, the scientific method wasn't completely followed and this hypothesis will have to be tested at a future date.] I quickly added some more flour as I noticed the dough ball looked a little more sticky than it should.

When we got back from church, it took us a few minutes to get unloaded and settled before I thought to ask Steph from the bedroom how the bread turned out. Catching Steph off guard, she responded, "Oh! Just a second let me check." Seconds later I hear laughter break out in the kitchen. "What? Did it turn out?", I ask somewhat nervously. Surely this must have been a ploy. When I got to the kitchen to check on my creation I was greeted by an odd sight. It looked like the bread had taken a meteorite right in the center and a shield of shrapnel had formed up against the lid of the breadmaker.




Now, while I can't say exactly what cause this formation, my current theory is that a massive gas bubble formed in the middle of the bread dough which burst during baking and collapsed in on itself creating my unique "inverted cone shaped loaf" as Steph called it. The story could stop here, but of course it doesn't. Steph began asking me if there was anything I didn't measure exactly.

Well, I wasn't POSITIVE that I got exactly 1 cup and 2 tablespoons of water; it could have been a little more.

Steph asked if that was all I hadn't measured.

Yeah, that was all. Well, and maybe the honey too. You know how the honey sticks to things. I couldn't get it all of the tablespoon so I guessed that only about half of what I measured made it into the pan, so the second tablespoon was a heaping tablespoon... or possibly two. But that was it.

Steph probed through her laughter if there was anything else I didn't measure.

Come on! Of course I measured everything! (pause). But, then I'm not 100% sure about the butter. It was kind of spread out on the wrapper, but it LOOKED like it was about a tablespoon. Surely a little extra butter couldn't have cause the formation of an inverted cone. But that was it; everything else was measured accurately.

Was I sure? (More laughter)

Yeah. Of course. ...I did use the tablespoon to measure out the salt. I needed 1 1/2 teaspoons which anyone who bakes knows that this is the same as a half tablespoon. I didn't want to dirty another measuring spoon, so I just half-filled the tablespoon. And I guess the powdered milk did come out of the pour spout a little fast and overflowed the tablespoon just a *little*, but that couldn't have caused the bread disaster.

At this point Steph asked me why I told her that the only thing I didn't measure correctly was the water. I decided that this was the point when complete and total honesty was my only option. "I couldn't admit to all that up front; I have an image to maintain!" At this point Steph lost it in a fit of laughter. I can't say I blame her. I'm sure the image I was maintaining wasn't worth much even before this bread fiasco.

So, not only am I a hasty button pusher, I am also a haphazard measurer. But I would like to point out that at this very moment there is not a bit of my inverted cone shaped loaf left to prove that my bread wasn't every bit as tasty as a normal loaf. You know, it's too bad that inverted cone bread loaves didn't catch on. I'm sure they would hold a lot more butter and jam than any regular loaf of bread.

Mom Saves the Day!!

Thank goodness for mothers. Even when we've grown and left home, mom's keep their mothering instincts. Today proved that her's is fine tuned.

I called my mom this morning and told her about how I crippled my blog and erased content that was irretrievable. She was happy to report that she just happened to have copied that content last night and sent it in an email to friends! Vwa-lah! Content restored!! I couldn't have done it without my mom! Thanks Mom!

Haste makes waste

I broke the blog....................................

I am a button pusher and I pushed the button. It was more than that actually. I committed the cardinal sin in programming/development: I tested a new template on a production instance of the blog! Everyone who does any kind of computer development and testing knows you always use a separate enviroment to test changes before you apply them. That way, if it breaks your environment, you don't loose your data.

Heh.... heh.....

The new third party template I tried to upload was seriously incompatible with blogger and destroyed the blog. My side banner items were erased, and now that I've reloaded the previous template, I have broken links all over the place. Ughhh.... The part that kills me was that before I applied the new template I had the thought that I should copy all of the girls quotes into a blog posting rather than leave them in the side column.

Blogger doesn't have a "help desk"; instead they have frequently asked questions and discussion forums. I couldn't find the question "How do you restore a blog that you've obliterated without having to recreate it?" listed anywhere, and I was too chicken to post that in the chat forum. I realize that I can't hide what I did from my readers, but I'm not going to expand the circle of ridicule un-neccessarily.

the Laundry Room - revisited

In our last post I included an impromptu shot of our laundry room.  Since then we've made three trips across the street (I love that it's this close) to Lowe's for shelving.   The laundry room already had one shelf above the washer and the dryer.  Both were overflowing with stuff, so we decided to augment.  We added a couple of hanging shelves and then added a rack higher up that lines three walls.  We effectively tripled (almost quadrupled) the shelving space and got everything up off the dryer.  As you can see, we haven't filled up the shelves after a week.  That's a good sign.

The dryer had been covered in items that prevented us from reaching the knobs without extraordinary flexibility.  Now things are up and away.

The laundry room is now one of the cleanest and most organized room in the house.

Next up:  Remember the picture of our closet?  Steph was so impressed by how much storage space we created that she's eager to do the same for our closet.  Heh, heh.  Say no more!  I'm off to Lowe's!

Photo Tag

My brother and his wife were photo tagged on their blog. It was interesting to see what was going on at the moment with them, so I'm passing it on (in all it's rawness).

The rules are you have to take pictures of the following things. And you have to do it right away. No straightening, cleaning or wiping your child's nose. Then you tag five others. So here it goes:

Kitchen Sink

We just ran dishes after dinner which is usually hit or miss. Until two days ago there were also white latex paint drips all around the sink from refinishing the bunkbeds. The plate and knife were from me - herb bread with butter.

Fridge

We just stocked up at Costco, so you may see 3 dozen eggs, 4 quarts of strawberries, too many grape tomatoes, Costco milk, and a huge bag of cheese sticks. No leftovers in our house!

Toilet

Our bathroom is pretty plain. It's one of the few rooms in the apartment that we didn't paint. Most days there are hair accessories on the counter. There is some nail polish remover in the basket from the girls' nail polish time earlier this evening.

Closet

This is where we begin to reveal what goes on behind closed doors. My wife and I treat our room (and our closet) as a "staging area". Basically, it's the storage space for everything that doesn't have a place in the rest of the house. It's where unfinished projects end up. Last weekend we set this aside as our major project for this upcoming weekend.




Favorite Room

This is my favorite room for two reasons: (1) it's finished! (2) it's where my sweet girls are at the moment. The bunkbeds were finished a couple of weeks ago, and the bedding sets were provided by my wonderful aunt! Stephanie and I refinished a yard-sale dresser (visible on the right) and we painted the room to bring it all together. It's late and everyone is asleep, so this is the best I can do at the moment.

Laundry Room

This is another room with a pending project. Our 3 bedroom apartment has limited storage space, so flat surfaces behind closed doors are all used! We plan on installing another shelf above the existing shelves behind both the washer and dryer. Until then, the cat crate, the baby chair, and several other things remain on top of the dryer. You have to be somewhat of a contortionist to get through the pile to set and turn on the dryer.

Stephanie picked out the hanging racks from IKEA a year ago. They were originally marketed as a kitchen spice and tool rack, but Steph saw past that to their current use as a craft station.

Also, witness my awesome plaid shorts in the pile to the right.

(I skipped "Favorite Shoes" cause come on, that's dumb)

Kid Photo #1
It's Eden's turn on the top bunk tonight (as it seems to be 75% of the time). Eden rarely gets her head to stay on top of the pillow, and all our kids prefer to layer on blankets than get under their covers. Sweetly asleep.

Kid Photo #2
Britta is like me and is often warm. She likes salsa, tangy food, and savory flavorings. She has the cutest naturaly curly hair and the sweetest, tender heart. Britta is always smiling, and sometimes she just needs some time on her own. Whenever she is grumpy it's usually not too hard to coax a smile from her.

Kid Photo #3

Avery tries hard not to act like she's two years younger than Britta, but sometimes she just can't keep up. Her new favorite game is hide and seek, which we often play inside the apartment. Avery is brave beyond brave and repeatedly jumps off the pool steps into deeper waters regardless of whether Steph and I are there to catch her. Avery has a purse fetish, a lip gloss fetish, a nail polish fetish, and loves to water plants.

If you are reading this, consider yourself tagged! Don't clean the house first, get out your camara and get real.

7 weeks to baby boy

Stephanie has 7 weeks left to go and we still don't have a name for the baby. Stephanie still favors Afton; I at one point had liked Grant or Garrett, but thought better after realizing that the T's of Garrett and Taylor would run together and sound like D's. Stephanie proposed Wesley as a compromise. Nothing has sounded exceptionally fitting. I don't want to give our first boy a potentially wimpy sounding name. Both Stephanie and I have crossed plenty of boy names off the list based on their association with unpleasant people we've known. Isn't that funny that one person can ruin a name for another person?

With Eden, she was going to be Kaitlin up until we were in the hospital for delivery and we were told that Kaitlin was the 2nd most popular name of the year. We didn't name Eden until two days after she was born, right before leaving the hospital. It just kind of came out of the air and really sounded good.

(By the way, I haven't posted pictures of Steph because she has to approve any pictures of her before I can post them, and she typically doesn't blog herself. Just thought I'd put that out there since there were bound to be questions.)

I Think I'm All Caught Up

After two months without updates to our blog I spent the better part of two evenings uploading pictures and describing them. I uploaded the pictures in reverse order and thought I could fix that by what order I posted the entires, but that didn't work out. So, everything is in reverse order starting with Daniel's homecoming through the girls' homecoming to VA. I guess it will just make reading the blog more of a challenge for you readers. (Be careful what you ask for!).

With this I am calling the blog good (for now). Did I miss anything?

Perfect Park Weather

We had some amazing weather yesterday and today. I'm talking high 70s and low 80s and breezy all afternoon. It felt like we were in California!

I took the girl to the park after dinner on Monday before FHE. The playground was PACKED with kids of all ages. The girls and I stayed out for over an hour and just enjoyed the pleasant temperatures.

Avery likes to play tag and go down the slides. Sometimes she just likes to sit and watch the big kids doing their thing.
Eden is trying to learn how to climb the fireman's pole. She's not sure she has the strength, but she's determined that she'll keep practicing.

Britta has found new confidence on the zip line! She still needs some help getting back to the starting platform, but she's not afraid to drop if she needs to.

Eden!

Avery!

Britta!

Eden spent some time getting used to her scooter. She still doesn't get too far with each scoot, but she's making progress.

Britta came out of her contemplative mood enough to chase off all the boys with Eden.

Daniel is HOME!

July 3, 2008. Daniel Anderson arrives at DFW airport!

The Anderson family was well represented at the DFW airport! Everyone was excited to have D back at home!

WELCOME HOME!!

Taylor Night Spa

One night while in Texas with my family I took them to my parents house. I spent a couple of hours out back with my mom and Avery planting in the garden. Avery got so dirty she ended up needing a bath.

And after a bath every girl in our house requires two things: (1) lotions and (2) painted fingernails. Eden decided that she would provide the manicure for Avery.

Avery opted for the "Hollywood package" complete with rhinestone settings on her nails.

Avery was completely relaxed by the time her spa session was complete. I think she was even offered chocolate pudding on the way out.

Summer at the Anderson's

Stephanie took the girls to Texas for an entire month (June 20 - July 18). Her younger brother Daniel got home from his mission to Rexburg, ID on July 3rd. I came into town from July 2-8 to spend time with everyone. As soon as the girls arrived they attacked the grandparents with all the enthusiasm and love they could muster.

Britta is our sweet and tender heart!

After the first week, Avery was running ragged. It appears that she didn't inherit Stephanie's super-power of being able to stay up late night after night with no apparent affect.

Once Daniel got home from his mission, each of the girls staked a claim and got in some quality time.
All the girls loved every moment of Pugga time!

Mom made the most AMAZING carrot cake! It was so memorable that Eden asked for it for her 6th birthday on August 2nd.

When it was finally time to come back to Virginia, the girls and their grandparents both decided that even a month wasn't really long enough for either of them.

Grandma and the girls have a special bond. The girls knew that grandma really understood them, and they were always ready for anything she suggested.

At the Pool

The girls made a list of things they wanted to do this summer. Top of the list was learning how to swim!
The girls enjoyed swimming at the neighborhood pool in Texas about4 times a week. Eden and Britta are really picking up on how to stay above water. Avery thinks she can go straight to diving. She kind of scares us with her fearlessness.

Eden has been practicing swimming with goggles and staying above water without touching the bottom.

Britta loves the diving mask so she doesn't have to bother with plugging her nose. Britta recently discovered that she can do somersaults under water!!

We are thinking that by the beginning of next summer the two older girls should be independent shallow-water swimmers. I think once they get the basic strokes down we'll get them flippers and see how fast they can go!

Taylor Time

Stephanie took the girls to my parents house several times before and after I was in town. A common issue with Avery was her tendency to misjudge how much leadtime she needs to get to the bathroom before she looses control. We generally keep a spare set of clothes in the car, a backpack, or under our arm just in case. Avery managed to catch us unprepared one evening and had to suit up in a grocery bag while her things were laundered.

I'm not sure how water tight the solution was, but fortunately it did the trick until her clothes were dry.

Britta takes to projects and games with intense interest. Grandma Taylor has a great gift for knowing what interests kids and how to keep their hands busy!

A favorite activity at Grandma Taylor's house was beading. Grandma Taylor keeps a wide variety of colors and shapes of beads and strings for the girls to create necklaces with.

The girls didn't have many dress-up clothes to choose from, but Eden managed to find a pair of Grandma's silver shoes!

Grandpa Taylor gave piano/organ "lessons" to the girls.