Sorry if I poisoned you on Christmas

True confession time. As you know, Christmas fell on a Monday this year. The Friday before Christmas, Blake woke up with the stomach flu. I didn't think too much of it and figured it would be a 24 hour bug. I was careful about what he ate and he seemed to feel better as the day progessed. Saturday morning he awoke hungry and happy and full of life. I assumed he was better. I spent the entire day in my kitchen making Christmas treats to share with friends. Frosted sugar cookies, fudge, toffee, you get it. Anyway, on Saturday night we delivered these treats to 15 friends. We came home and I put Blake to bed. Well, around 11pm he awoke throwing up. And in the middle of the night, I woke up and had to throw up. My first thought was "oh great I just poisoned half of our ward." So the debate raging in my head was, do I tell my friends to throw away the treats or do I just hope they don't get sick. I must admit that I did not tell the 15 treat recipients that I may have spread the flu to them. I don't know, does the stomach virus get passed if you give someone cookies you've frosted the day before you got sick???? Anyway, to anyone who might be reading this who was a recipient of my treats I would like to offer my sincere apology if I did indeed poison you. And to everyone else, I'm curious to know your thoughts about what you would have done. So Merry Christmas and happy barfing.

Welcome to our Newest Family Member

I would like to announce the arrival of our newest family member. Although she was unplanned and not exactly what I wanted I am getting used to her being a part of the family. Parked in our garage is a GOLD 2003 Honda Odessy, our new car. Yes you read it right, I now own a mini-van and a gold one at that. It all started a few weeks ago when Mike's 20 year old truck decided it had had enough. Fixing it cost more than it was worth so we decided to just junk it We hadn't planned on purchasing a minivan for a few more years but seeing that we were left with only a small civic and a new child on the way we took the plunge. I about died when Mike informed me that the one he thought was the best deal in the classified ads happened to be GOLD. Identity crisis. I'm 31, I'm having my second child in a month, and I now drive a GOLD minivan. There really is no turning back. Middle Age Motherhood here I come.

Watch Out !!! We just might stop by

On Sunday, we made the drive down to Mom's for an early Christmas dinner. Taking advantage of having 3 of her children and their families at her home, Mom enthusiastically suggested that we go Christmas carolling to 3 of her neighbors. Now, ever since I can remember, Mom has cajoled us into going carolling each Christmas. Please note that we are not singers. We usually go to some of the elderly people in the ward, but this year Mom had the idea of going to the neighbors' homes instead. After many attempts to find excuses not to go, Mom won and she whipped out the box containing scarves, mittens, and hats. I couldn't stop laughing at Mike all night with those sexy ear muffs on.

Mind you, it was almost 9pm by the time we headed out the door. The first attempt was the house next door. No one came to the door, even after my niece and nephew shouted very loudly, "open your door right now" . (they were definitely home) At door number 2 the neighbor finally opened up after 2 songs and gave us kind of a perplexed look. At door number 3, after singing 3 songs, without opening the door, the neighbor simply turned off the porch light. Ok, hint received: game over. (Mom is convinced that the light was a motion sensor light which simply "timed out" but we know otherwise. )

Moral of the story: Some of us just weren't made for singing. Next year we should simply drop off the treat without opening our mouths.

Is everyone happy now????

Apparently many of you are very concerned about my lack of rotation skills. Unfortunately, I don't care so much whether or not my pictures are rotated because I am too lazy to figure out how to do it.

I am anal about clean bathrooms. So maybe you guys can teach me how to rotate pictures and I will clean your bathroom for you.

so here is the rotated picture.

By the way the tamale party was really fun and the tamales turned out to be very tasty.

Manteca Anyone??

Tonight I am having a tamale party at our home. I have always loved tamales and so last year I decided to take a Tamale Making cooking class to learn how to make these savory treats. You can imagine my horror when the instructor brought out the bucket of lard and told us that the secret to "authentic" tamales was the lard. I have a hard enough time eating chewy red meat such as steaks and I always cut off any hint of fat on my meats so lard is something that isn't really in my vocabulary. To demonstrate the difference between "authentic" tamales and imitation tamales the instructor made 2 different masas, one using lard and the other using some sort of vegetable shortening. I have to say the lard tamales WERE better and I was sold.

A few weeks later my sister Carol and I had a little tamale making fest at her house. I made her purchase the lard and she bought Farmer John brand which is nicely processed into white bricks. It didn't look so bad.

Unfortunately, Carol is in Spain and cannot buy the nicely packaged lard this year and so I got stuck buying it. I went to the Mexican market to make all of my purchases and when looking for the lard I was directed to the "taqueria" section. There sitting on the shelf in all of its glory were buckets and buckets of "pure" fresh lard. I cringed, but took the plunge and bought it. I wasn't really sure what to do with it when I brought it home. Did it need to be refrigerated or could it simply stay out? I decided to put it in the deepest cavern of the refrigerator so I could forget about it until absolutely necessary.

Wish me luck. I hope the tamales turn out. (and yes my sense of smell did come back. Thank goodness)

Anosmia

Has anyone ever heard of this word? Maybe it can be Alyssa's word of the day on her next post. Anosmia is the condition I find myself in currently-that being the loss of the sense of smell. I really like to smell anything and everything I come into contact with. I also really like food. I love to cook and I love to eat. About a month ago I signed up for a cooking class and I was looking forward to making and tasting all kinds of delicious treats. Well, I got a cold last week and when Tuesday night came my sense of smell and taste left. The class was excellent and I am sure the food was too but I couldn't even taste it. How ironic is that. Now losing my sense of smell has happened before, but never for such a prolonged period of time. Last night they had a Christmas Enrichment party where you were supposed to bring your favorite Christmas treat. Once again, I had been looking forward to this activity because it involved 2 of my favorite pastimes, cooking and eating. I made a yummy almond bread to share which went on a table filled with tasty treats. But alas, my smell and taste were nowhere to be found. What's the point of eating sweets when you can't even taste them? So now it's been 72 hours since I've been able to smell or taste anything. This really is torturous for me. There is, however, one advantage, I can't smell the poopy diapers that I change several times a day.

Please tell me my sniffer will work again. In the back of my mind I am terrified that I am going to be like the lady I met at the doctor's office several months ago. She told me that she went to Europe on vacation and picked up some kind of flu that has left her unable to smell and taste in the 2 years since. How horrifying is that. So the moral of the story is, don't take your sniffer for granted because life really is dull and boring without it.

How to have your hair and clothes and pretty much everything in your house smell like a campfire without going camping!!

Today I smell like a campfire as does my husband, child, and whole house. How did we achieve this amazing feat without actually going camping you ask?? Well it's called living in a place that periodically gets threatened by wildfires. I should have known we were in for trouble when I was awakened by the howling wind several times early Sunday morning. By 11:00 am there was a thick cloud of black smoke above our home and ashes falling out of the sky. We were advised to evacuate and we left 5 mintues later. I was scared as our home nestles right up to a very large hill with tons of brush perfect for fire. Luckily our neighborhood escaped any damage, although 5 homes in our city were destroyed. We are also fortunate to live near my sister and she took in the smelly refugees.:)
It's weird to think that every temporal thing we have can be destroyed in the blink of an eye. What would it be like to loose everything in an instant? As we hurried and left our home we didn't take much but I had what was most important, my baby and my husband.
We later returned to find all was well but it will take some time for our house to rid itself of the smell of a smokey casino in Las Vegas.
Now our city's claim to fame can be to have a fire named after it. Want to move here?