Category: General News

Jan. 28: No real news to report today.  Andrew and I attended our first-ever story hour, and I sat around feeling big and somewhat uncomfortable.  I also re-arranged several dresser drawers in my continued effort to have the house completely organized before the little one arrives.  The weather has warmed up significantly.  It looks like it doesn’t even matter that we never shoveled the walk ways after last weekend’s snow fall since it all melted off today.  I realized this morning that I can now legitimately tell people that the baby is due next week (Feb. 8 – a week from Friday).  Wow.  I think I want her to wait until February, but I also really want to get this show on the road!

Jan. 24: I’ve been having fun spending time in the kitchen this week.  I love to cook or bake, but normally, I just have no time for it!  So this week, I’ve had fun doing all sorts of things that require one to be able to check in on the kitchen over the course of the day.
I’m on my third loaf of bread for the week, I made yogurt, and yesterday I made a lemon-strawberry pie in honor of national pie day.
I imagine that once “little sister” comes I won’t be cooking quite as much, but right now it sure is fun.

The bread I’ve been working on this week is just a white sandwich loaf.  I hope to move on to French and whole-wheat and sour dough and rolls once I get the sandwich loaf down pat.  For those who are interested, here’s the recipe that I’ve been working with.  The loaf I made yesterday was wonderful.  Reminded me of Mom’s bread:

From James Beard:

Ingredients:
1 package active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups 110-115 degree water (I found that I’m having much more success when I measure the water temperature instead of guessing!)
1 heaping teaspoon salt
around 4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

Warm the bowl you’ll use for rising by filling it with hot water.  In my house, I don’t have a good, warm place for the dough to rise, so I’ve also been turning the oven on warm for about two minutes, then opening the door a crack while the dough is mixed.

Combine all the ingredients in Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook and mix for about five minutes.  I  start by adding about 3 1/2 cups of flour and add more until I get the consistency I’m looking for.  It shouldn’t be sticking to the sides too much and should form a nice smooth, elastic ball.

Oil the bowl, put your ball of dough in, and turn it around several times so the surface is slightly oiled.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, cover with a towel, and put in a warm, draft-free place (in my case, the oven) to rise.  Andrew likes to blow it a kiss at this point and to tell it to have a good nap.

I a couple or a few hours later, the dough should be doubled in size.  Punch it down, give it a couple kneads, re-form it into a ball, and let it re-rise for another couple hours, until doubled in bulk.  James Beard says that this second rising makes the dough finer in texture and better in flavor.

After the second rising, punch the dough down, and take it out of the bowl.  Lightly flour the counter, and shape the dough into a square about 1 inch thick.  Cover with a towel, and let it rest for five minutes.  Meanwhile grease your bread pan well with butter.  Fold the dough into thirds, and fold and pinch the seam together.  Fold the ends and roll and pinch them in as well so you end up with a well-shaped loaf.  Pop this in to the bread pan, seam-side down.  Press down so the loaf fits well.

Cover the loaf with plastic wrap, put in a warm place to rise – for me it’s been around an hour and a half.  When the bread has risen just over the edge of the pan, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Bake the bread for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 30 minutes.  You can turn out the bread and knock on the bottom to see if it’s done.  It should have a hollow sound.  Cool the bread on a wire rack and devour with butter and honey or jam.

Jan. 23: Andrew and I went over to Dad’s house this morning so I could photograph some of Dad’s Christmas displays.  This year, he created an enormous gingerbread castle as a surprise Christmas present for Maretta.  Pictures from Dad’s displays are in the gallery.

As we started to walk up to the house, Andrew asked me, “Who will be there?”  I told him that Grandpa would be there.  He said, “And Grandma too?”  At that point, a weird flip-flopping thing happened in my heart.  Andrew easily points out his Grandma in pictures, and he knows that I miss her, but other than that, he hasn’t ever brought her up.
It made me feel both good and sad that he remembered that this is where she is supposed to be too.  So I told him that, no, Grandma isn’t here.  “She’s sick,” Andrew said.  Yes, I told him, Grandma was sick.  And now we miss her.  And then I reminded him about the books Grandma liked to read him like Quick as a Cricket and There’s a Train Going By My Window.  Then we went inside and he played with his toys like normal.  Sometimes the reality of our reality just throws me for a loop!

Jan. 21: Andrew and I are enjoying our first day of my new job as stay-at-home mom.  Well, were I still at work, I would have had today off, so may tomorrow will be more like the first official day that I won’t be reporting in to the Gathering Waters office like normal.  I had a really nice last few weeks at work.  Mike Carlson took over all my policy work, and I think he’s going to do a great job.  Liz is going to be taking on some of the more administrative parts of my job.  I sense is that they’ll all miss me and that it won’t be the same without me (so that makes me feel needed), but that they’ll get along alright without me (and that makes me feel like it’s OK to go).
By working part time the first three weeks in January, I was able to get all the loose ends of my work wrapped up.  My co-workers threw me a really fun going away party last Wednesday.  Activities included toenail painting, eating yummy food, watching a cool slide show about reasons they will and won’t miss me at work, reading a flow chart that describes how to get two children out of the house and into a car in summer or winter, and generally being silly.  I just simply love my co-workers.  So it’s a good thing that I’ll still see them lots in my new life.  We’ve got lunches planned:)
Last Thursday (my last day), we had a board meeting and a fancy Stewardship Fund celebration reception in Milwaukee.  I liked having the opportunity to say goodbye to our board members.  And it was fun to have my last work event be a party!  Some pictures of my going away party and the Stewardship event are in the gallery.

Jan. 21: I got a really sad phone call last week from one of my co-workers.  Her dear friend has been dealing with breast cancer for a couple years, and Karen just received news that Cindy only has weeks left to live.  Although I only know Cindy slightly, my heart just aches for her family.  To know that another group of loving, supportive people are in the process of switching gears from treatment to maintenance to saying goodbye.  The worst part is that Cindy has two young kids.  That makes me so sad and scared.  It makes me cry to see again the strange twists that life can take.  No matter how much we all try to do the right things in our lives, sometimes things just don’t work out how we would like them to.  I keep trying to live life the best ways that I know how, but I think that the last year has encouraged me to hang on to the current moment more than ever before.
Oh, and I so want to be around to see my babies grow up.  Everyone should have that.  The alternative is just far too sad…for everyone.

Jan. 17: It’s a wintry Thursday morning, and I’m sitting in my office for the last time.  Today is my last day at Gathering Waters, and we’re all getting ready to head to Milwaukee for a board meeting and Stewardship Fund celebration event.  I’ve wrapped everything up, so weird!  Andrew’s having his last day at Karen’s today too.  It’s almost time for some big changes!

Jan. 12: Could it get better than this?  Andrew and Bryan are outside playing in the falling snow.  They are having a great time going, “woohoohhwowooooo” and then falling down.  Andrew has his Curious George ball ready to kick down the street.  It’s a quiet, gray morning, and the snow is falling softly.
These last weeks, Andrew wakes up in the morning and climbs in bed with me for a cuddle.  His sleeper is usually unzipped, and one of his legs is hanging out.  He likes me to smell his feet and say, “STINKY!  Ahhh choo!”  Then I zip him up, and we cuddle for five minutes or so before he gets up and goes back to his room to play for a bit.  Sometimes we both lie quietly, but this morning, we were looking at each other nose-to-nose, and he whispered, “I have dark brown eyes, Mama.”  Before he climbed out of bed, he patted my tummy and said, “Hi little sister.  She is coming soon.  Then it will be Daddy and Andrew and little sister and Mommy.”  He seems to be catching on to the idea.

I think I’ve entered some new nesting phase.  I decided in the last couple days that we needed to have more things ready for the baby, so since she won’t have her own nursery, I have plans this weekend to clear out one of our bookshelves and organize her dresser and pull up more of the baby items from the basement.  I also bought baby announcements when Joe and I went shopping yesterday, and I have a strong urge to address them.  I also have a strong urge to finish Andrew’s sweater.  But I just discovered last night that I haven’t ever done normal increases before, so first I need to learn how to do those so I can finish the sleeves.

We have nearly zilch scheduled for the weekend.  Wonderful.  I’m hoping to help Bryan prep the bathroom so he can paint it and then I can put up my little wall stickers and put out the new towels I got.  That will be a good project to have checked off.

Yesterday Joe and I made a shopping run to Target, and while Joe amused Andrew (fixing the cart with pretend super glue and racing around), I was able to get all sorts of random items that I’ve been wanting for a long time.  All day, I’ve been happy that Andrew’s craft drawer is better organized because of those new plastic tubs! And we got a new coffee maker.  It’s replacing Bryan’s from college, and it’s red, pretty, and doesn’t seem to spill coffee when you pour a cup.   Brilliant!

Jan. 6: As I look at 2008 and try to envision life as the mother of two children and in my new upcoming role as stay-at-home mom, I find that the future appears exciting and daunting and more than a little nebulous.  Since I tend to be an overly-organized person, I think that one of the things I am the most worried about with staying home is that home life doesn’t really require progress toward goals or plans or order.  But I think I need those things.  So at some point, I plan to sit down and begin to create a series of goals for myself over the next year.  One of the things that I know I want on my list is learning to easily and consistently make a good loaf of homemade bread.
Becky made some yummy bread for us at Jack’s and that inspired me.  So tonight, I made a loaf of bread, and I am still up at 11pm waiting to wrap it up for breakfast tomorrow.  I snitched a bit, and warm with a pat of butter, it was amazing.  I think it is the first loaf of bread I’ve made that has risen well ever.  Ahh, success!  I will sleep well tonight with the taste of bread on my tongue and the promise of bread with butter and strawberry jam for breakfast tomorrow!
Photos from the last week are in the gallery.

Jan. 6: We’re back home from a really nice weekend at Jack’s house.  As we prepared for it, I was very aware that it was our first trip to Jack’s since Mom died.  In fact, as I was getting ready to go, I kept having sort of flashbacks to our trip last summer.
It was a few days after our trip to Mayo where we were told that Mom’s cancer had most likely returned and was not treatable.  Mom wasn’t feeling good, but she supervised the cooking, and in retrospect, it was one of the last fun things we did together as a family.  I still can’t believe that only two weeks later we were starting to work with Hospice and four weeks later she was gone.  I really still don’t feel like I can get my mind around all that.  But that background was  the undercurrent of my thoughts as we planned for our winter trip to Jack’s this year.
One thing that I haven’t been sure about how to approach is how to recognize or acknowledge Mom and the fact that she’s not here as we get together for family activities.  Our mode of operation thus far these last months has mostly been to try to get through milestones without melodrama and by trying to make evens as fun as possible.  I find so much comfort in being with my siblings.  When we’re all together, things just kind of seem OK at the same time that our togetherness makes it that much more obvious who is not there.
But there’s something about all of us and the parts of Mom that we all bring to situations just by being ourselves that makes the tightness in my heart soften and my worries about how we’ll move forward seem less relevant.
And our winter weekend at Jack’s was a lot of fun.  Andrew had a blast, and Bryan and I so appreciate having a house full of people who love and help to care for him.  On Saturday, we took a long walk on some roads near Jack’s house.  Andrew had fun throwing snowballs, getting thrown into snow banks, running fast down the hills, and getting carried about half the time.  Even so, he walked for perhaps a couple miles, and he had a good time about 98% of the time.   Jack mad a big bonfire, and several of us enjoyed sitting near it and watching the fire burn.  There was a lot of Trivial Persuit and a poker tournament, which Becky-who-has-never-played-poker won:)  I made a chocolate cake last night.  I love baking cakes!  Bryan enjoyed some sauna time this morning interspersed with a jump in the snow.
Overall, it was a relaxing, fun, and feel-good kind of weekend.  Photos are in the gallery.

Dec. 31: I feel like this vacation just keeps going on and on and on.  It’s lovely!  We flew back home to Wisconsin on Friday afternoon in the midst of a big snow storm.  Fortunately (surprisingly, really) our flight wasn’t delayed in the slightest.  Uncle Joe picked us up at the airport, which was good, because Andrew really wasn’t too keen on the idea of leaving Texas.  His refrain most of the flight home was “Let’s go back!”  Knowing that Uncle Joe was going to be at the other end provided enough of an incentive to keep him OK with the idea of leaving.  I don’t think he could have had a better time during our trip.  Being at Granny and Grandad’s house is everything a little boy could want.
Our awesome neighbor, Jenni, snowplowed our driveway for us as the snow fell thick and heavy, and we enjoyed getting back to our home.  The kitties, who had been cold and lonely for a week, were a little psycho, but at this point, they have had their kitty love-tanks filled, and they are feeling back-to-normal.
On Saturday, Bryan took Andrew duty most of the day while I jumped into Maretta’s wedding planning.  We enjoyed a cake testing at La Brioche, went to a couple alterations places to find someone who could help us bustle her gown, and spent the afternoon at a bridal shower hosted by Maretta’s maid-of-honor, Laurie.  It was a fun-filled day!  Maretta, Kyle, and Kyle’s mom, Marilyn also came over yesterday, and we spent a couple hours going over lots of wedding details together.  The conversation continues at 1:30 today.  We have lots to pack into the short time that we’re both home!
Last night we had my whole family over for a Christmas-time get-together.  Becky volunteered her mom to make us a lasagna, and it got rave reviews from all who tasted it.  It’s crazy that just immediate family makes for a party of 12 people!  Andrew got to open a few presents, and he was in 7th heaven, playing with all of his aunts and uncles.  This morning he woke up and said to me with a wistful voice, “Uncle Kyle played with me.”
Andrew was a stellar flyer, and he’s been in a really good mood since we got home.  Bryan and I have both been unsuccessful in putting him down for naps, but when Uncle Joe or Aunt Maretta go in to do a “closing,” he goes to sleep just fine.  What gives??  I think we just need someone else to live with us to put Andrew down for naps.
Hope you enjoy a happy New Year’s Eve!
Photos from the last week are in the gallery.