• She thinks the teddy bears all are poopy because they have little puff ball tails.
• She likes to take her arms out of her shirt through the collar…
• If you ask her question like “Madeline, are you a Pumpkin” she answered “No, I not a pummkin” and then giggles hysterically.

I totally have the pre-election day blues because it saddens me how this race has become so intensely personal between friends, family, acquaintances, that people have stopped talking to one another.  I know in light of recent events, I’ve had to work through a lot of this emotion myself.

Jonathan shared this post from one of his favorite blogs, Mirror of Justice, this morning and I think it sums up the sentiment that I wish we all could agree upon.   Enjoy.

http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2008/11/taking-a-breath.html

Taking a Breath

A couple of weeks ago I was in the middle of an email exchange with a friend, and our discussion of campaign issues was becoming pretty heated. Before pressing the “send” button, something (Someone?) inside suggested that I take a breath and ask whether my email message would build up or destroy our friendship. As a result of this, I suggested to my friend that we bracket a part of our conversation until we could continue it in person. The following week, my friend walked into my office with a hug and a chocolate bar, saying “this is a peace offering, I am sorry for being intemperate.” I pulled out some homemade chocolate chip cookies, saying “I’m sorry too,” and we picked up where we had left off. Looking each other in the eyeballs, the conversation took a completely different turn. We’re not done with our conversation, and we still disagree on significant points. But I am sure that this friendship will last beyond November 4th.

This was the conversation Claire and I had during the car ride home from Church on Sunday.  My nieces Megan and Jane were also in the car with us and they couldn’t contain their laughter.

C:  Mommy… Daddy was SO annoying during Church.

M:  Really?  What did he do?

C:  He was screaming and yelling and dancing around and being all crazy.

M:  Really?

C:  Yeah. It was SOOOOOOO embarrassing.

Who knew our little Claire was so observent.  From my watch at the piano, it didn’t seem like Daddy was dancing around, but hey you never know.  Liturgical dance might just come back in fashion thanks to him.

It’s been an interactive week at the Watson house.  After being inspired by Kelly’s Blog, and knowing that I needed to make snack for 10 hungry soccer players for this weekend, I decided to give Rainbow Cupcakes a shot.  Knowing that 4 and almost 6 year olds, namely Claire and Michael, and maybe even an almost 3 year old Jacob would find this project totally exciting, Erika and the tribe came over to help.

Here is the recipe, sans frosting of course.  I did double it so we would have enough batter for everyone and it made just under 4 dozen cupcakes. The batter filled the bowl on my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer up to the tippy top and was very very thick - which made it perfect for filling the different colors.

The colors we started with….I probably should have used more food coloring for a brighter result, but these turned out just fine.

The kids filling the cupcakes — we dropped a spoon full at a time in each cup with a different color

Before they hit the oven!

From October November December

The finished product

From the inside

They matched the twin rainbows at soccer practice yesterday too!

Taken from Ali

That is super funny…I wanna doo it:

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME (first pet, current car): Spot Grand Caravan

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME (fave ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Cookie Dough Crocs

3. YOUR NATIVE AMERICAN NAME (favorite color, favorite animal): Navy Sloth

4. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME (middle name, city where you were born): Margaret South Bend

5. YOUR STAR WARS NAME (the first three letters of your last name, first two of your first name): Annwa

6. SUPERHERO NAME (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Purple Diet Coke

7. NASCAR NAME (the first names of your grandfathers): Frederick Stephen

8. STRIPPER NAME ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Happy Butterscotch

9. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME (your fifth grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Jurgonski Jacksonille (ha!)

10. SPY NAME (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Winter Tulip

11. CARTOON NAME (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now): Pear Yoga Pants

12. HIPPIE NAME (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Yogurt Dogwood

Chicken Soup, of course!

Monday I decided to make homemade chicken noodle soup.  Most everyone who knows me well know that I am not a very good cook.  I try, I really do, but frankly I have more failures than successes when trying something outside of a few good things that I make well.  I can’t make grilled cheese to save my life because I either burn it or it’s soggy and I can’t make french toast.  Scrambled eggs?  Forget it..inedible.  And I usually don’t like to cook any sort of meat unless it’s ground, because really, who can screw up browning meat?

Needless to say, homemade Chicken Soup was WAYYYYYYY out of my comfort zone.

But anyway, I was inspired and so I decided to do it.  I picked up Claire from preschool on Monday and the girls and I headed to the grocery store to get all the necessary items.  I realized that a lot of the ingredients started with the letter C, so I turned it into a letter hunting adventure for Claire in the grocery store.  We walked into the vegetable area and I told her to go look at all the signs on the vegetables and find all the vegetables that begin with the letter C and pick one to put in the soup.  I figured she would pick carrots, or celery…but no, my child went for a nice big head of cabbage.  Yum.  So we picked up the other veggies..carrots, celery, a really big onion, an ear of corn that Claire picked out, and of course the giant cabbage and moved through the store.  I let Claire pick the chicken to be roasted….yeah I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to do this right….and she picked a 4 pound, Amish Chicken that was roughly about $14.  Organic chicken = highway robbery.  I was going to put it back and get the National brand chicken that was like $4, but then I had visions of a happy chicken frolicking on an Amish farm and I had to buy it.    If it was that happy running around with kids in bonnets, it would probably be really good in my soup.

We took all our purchases, went home, had some lunch and the girls went down for a nap.  I put the bird in the oven (alas poor Yorik), and chopped a ton of vegetables.  I added them to our trusty stock pot, with the chicken stock and boiled away.  When the chicken was roasted (Perfectly I might add) I added the meat to the soup nd let it simmer most of the afternoon.  Yum.  I added the noodles at the end and we enjoyed it!

The first report from the taste testers was that it was “delicious”.  Madeline even ate it without complaining.  I suppose my first venture into chicken soup was a success.

And yes…I took pictures.  Enjoy the slide show.

Oh and 3 days later….we still have a ton left over.   Jonathan just heated up a bowl for a snack.  I think I’ll be doing this more often as the weather gets colder!

What do you think?

I’ve been staring at this skein of bulky, hot pink, ridiculously soft wool/mohair blend yarn that I got in a yarn swap for about 3 months now wondering what the heck I was going to do with it.  I saw this pattern on Ravelry and, well I couldn’t help myself.  All of the other hats people had done with this pattern were in Shrek green, but I decided we needed to step out of the box.

Pattern:  Ogre, My Ogre by Gunilla Levitt

Materials: 1 Skein Brown Sheep Lambs Pride Bulky in Hot Pink (I only used about half the skein)

Size US 15 16″ circular needle

Claire’s reaction is that the hat is “soft, fuzzy and has really silly ears on top”.  Works for me.  It has enough stretch to it that it fits well on her head, and on mine too!  Maybe I’ll be a pink Shrek for Halloween

As rendered by Claire, Age 3 years, 364 days.

Last night I sat outside on the deck and looked up at the moon and the stars on a beautiful crisp and clear night and took a moment to ponder all that has happened in the last few months.  Listening to the crickets chirp and the faint sounds of a quiet neighborhood at night, I took a deep breath of the cool air and closed my eyes.

The first thing that came to mind was my Faith and how blessed I am to have it, when so many others do not.

I thought of my beautiful family…..Jonathan and the girls….and how much love and strength they give me every day

And my friends — especially for all the wonderful times we/I’ve got to spend with Keith in the last couple months, despite getting absolutely soaked at the game this past weekend.

And for my new job.  Most of you already know this, but I started work at St. Pius as the Assistant Pianist/Organist recently.  In so many ways this is my dream job.  It came about in such an unexpectedly wonderful way - and to know that I get to do something I love and yet still get to be with the girls is a blessing in so many ways.  I’m growing in confidence every day and I know this is the first step in a life long career in music ministry for me.

Thanks be to God indeed.

…apparently isn’t fond of playdough.

Its a rainy day, so I got out the playdough this morning.

Madeline says

“ooooooh play dough…I eat it.  mmmmm. I hungry”

And proceeds to take a big bite out of the blue hunk of playdough that I gave her.

Apparently she didn’t like the taste because she spit it back out and said

“ew.  I no eat it.  Yucky”

Usually It’s Jonathan that posts more “political” things on this blog. Usually I try to stay out of the conversation.  However, I am incredibly excited about John McCain picking Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and I can’t hold it in any longer.

I could go into many many reasons why I am thrilled by her nomination, but rather than list them all, I thought I’d share an article published in the First Things blog just today:

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1161

It’s a worthwhile and somewhat emotional read, but it hits on the majority of the points as to why I’m all about Sarah Palin and her being our next Vice President.

As of today…

• I am officially employed again…part time anyway.
• 50% of our household has braces, and 25% of our household is really pissed about it 
• Sarah Palin still rocks in both of the voters of this household’s eyes
• I’m hungry, yet, I don’t feel like chewing
• It is 4 days until Notre Dame Football kicks off for the season…
• 10 days until ND vs Michigan (yay)
• Claire starts preschool tomorrow
• I succesfully have played 3 Masses at our parish, and in only one of them did my child bolt to the altar…

John Mayer was FREAKING AWESOME.  It was the best concert I’ve ever been to and we had absolutely fantastic seats thanks to Keith’s friends Amy & John.  The rest of the trip was equally as fantastic….the best birthday/christmas/birthday/christmas present ever I think!

Claire really surprised me today when she announced that she wanted to play up in her room with her new dolly that Grammy bought her at Target today.  She’s never wanted to play in her room by herself, but I told her it was ok.  In the 10 minutes she was upstairs, she came down no less than 10 times to tell me/ask me something.  And shouted a few things from the top of the stairs.  One of the things she announced is that she “cleaned her room” (I haven’t checked it out yet for validity) and that she had to go potty, to which I told her just to go.  After I heard the toilet flush, she announced she wanted to come downstairs and watch Diego with Madeline (a good thing, since I need to cook dinner).  She stood at the gate, ready to be let into the living room looking like this:

I asked for an explanation as to why she was wearing my glasses and she said “Silly Mommy, my baby needed me to see so I could feed her”

Go figure.  I guess Claire was full of surprises today.