Baby Ivy & Snow caves

This week the very precious and beautiful baby Ivy Selamawit joined the Workman family! She is truly such an adorable girl. I have only seen her once, but I cannot wait to see her again! I love her sucking of her two fingers. She is so chocolaty that I want to gobble her up!!! Wow she is cute!
Congrats to Betina and Kenneth on the arrival of such a sweet girl!
(This is the view from the window between the two caves.)
Yesterday after shoveling a bunch of snow, Oscar and I made snow caves! We had a great time and he loves to be outside playing in them.
(cave #2, or the second one we made)
Today Ricky gave him and his friend Austin a couple of bottles filled with food colored water to decorate them with...I don't have pictures yet, but I'll post them when I take a pic.
Cave #1, this one was experimental and it seemed to not be the favorite...but we made a nice little window between the two. I was going to make a snow tunnel but Oscar wanted caves, not a tunnel.
The snow was too fluffy for a snowman so hopefully tomorrow the snow will be mushy enough that we can get one to stick together...maybe we could put Mr. Snowman on top of the cave??? We shall see...

Shorthanded Sunday!

For Christmas Oscar got the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day" This was me this morning at church.

Note: I Planned on being short two members of the presidency...leaving me and the secretary to do the Sunday tasks.

Phone rings 7:15, Sr. Primary chorister will not be attending church, snowed in.
Phone rings 7:30, Substitute teacher for one of our classes is ill and will not be able to help out.
Phone rings 7:45, Primary president calls and will not be able to make it has to drive daughter to Seattle. (this was not too surprising, I was mainly planning on it, but it would have been nice if she was there)
Get to Church sacrament meeting went well...
Shortly after the Jr. Primary chorister informs me that she is leaving and will not be able to teach singing time for the Jr. primary! (I was hoping she would be able to do both Jr. and Sr. but no)

Primary begins...Pianist is late, I am panicking scrimping to find someone to play the piano. Find someone, but then regular pianist shows up...she does however, struggle playing the piano and all of the songs I pick she doesn't know! We end up singing acappella and I only know half the words!
4 teachers are not there, and there are no substitutes...luckily we combined 3 classes into one and a kind man in our ward agreed to teach a combined class of 2 other classes...
We had a January birthday to give a present to, but we haven't yet put all of it together...I end up giving him the poster part and I will have to figure the rest out later!

The lovely CTR6 class did the Jr. sharing time (and did a great job from the little bits I saw), which was a saving grace because I was then able to get the manual for the teacher who was going to fill in for the two other classes.
Another blessing was that a kind wonderful woman named Sherry came to the piano Rescue during Sr. primary singing time (the Jr. primary chorister is the Sr. Primary pianist, I know confusing)...this time we had a piano to sing along with! Still, I didn't know the words very well and was quite horrible directing...but the kids were very kind and forgiving!
I then taught my sharing time, which given the craziness of the day went really well until the last 5 minutes when we found out that we would have to do closing exercises in the primary room (which barley fits all of us, and we had already put away the sunbeams chairs!) So, out come the chairs and we re-shuffle kids to make it work.
Next, closing exercises...Krissy was conducting for her first time and sis a pretty good job, I was directing closing music, and we ended having too much time left over and so I had to do an extra song to take up the time.

Seriously this was a weird crazy Sunday!
I am pretty much venting here the frustrations of trying to be in the position of making things work! I feel sorry for others who find themselves shorthanded every Sunday! Gratefully, I only have to experience this every so often, but truly I get so annoyed with unreliable and fickle people!
I then try to remind myself that this is a volunteer organization! Everyon is voulunteer (including me!) So why do some feel a more sense of duty and responsibility while others can put it all off so easily????
Now, I'm going to go take a nice nap and will wake up much happier and ready to prep myself for the Primary activity next Saturday! Hopefully ALL of the teachers will be there!

Christmas...

Cowboy Oscar!
Oscar is loving his new walkie/talkie watches...if only he could get the ear piece to stay in his ear, he has started wearing the big head phones over the top of the little ones in a effort to keep the little one in. The Grandma's and grandpa's once again spoiled our little ones.
He is also very much loving the new spider man attire and the socks o' plenty that came his direction.
Princess Poppy, as I'm sure you are not surprised, is decked out in princess/pinkolicious attire all of the time. Notice her new favorite book, which I am certain we have read at least a hundred times in the last three days...She has even now requested, when getting her hair done in the morning, to have her hair look like pinkolicious. It usually is that she wants Cinderella or Sleeping Booty hair. But no, not any more, I now have another hairdo to add to the daily routine.

Tonight while Poppy was saying her prayers she said "thank you for sleeping booty (four times), thank you for Belle, thank you for Cinderella, thank you for Snow White and finally thank you for Jesus..." (who knows how she learned about all of these princesses since she has only seen cinderella???)
Oscar has even discovered that he too, loves the dress up box. After pulling out his daddies old boots from his childhood, he put on the cowboy/girl hat that was in the box and told me he was going out to get some wood for the fire. I said "make sure and put your coat on so that your clothes don't get all woody". His response was (with a grin on his face) "why are you calling me "woody" mom??". Yeah, he now is loving his cowboy alter ego to go along with spiderman.
Our house was pretty much a disaster for the entire day and the day following.
Ricky and Oscar participated in the HBJ run, that I would have loved to do, if my cold hadn't been sucking the life out of me.
Rick said it was a lot of fun and Oscar even ran some of it. They were one of the first to finish and were too cold to wait around for the awards, Oscar was hoping to win one, but was happy to keep moving.
Ricky has now broken in his newest running tool, the Garmin. I love finding something that makes him track his workouts better! Seriously, I don't know anyone who exercises as much as him, and we all know that the engineer in him loves to track all of his progress!
Overall, it was a very fun Christmas season with so much love and happiness around us. I feel great with having so many great opportunities to share our life with others this season. We really have been overly blessed!

On a side note, and only to be posted for the note of noticing, was the absence of some yummy Cumming's thin mints and mint M&M's...(no guilt intended) just the fact that the Ghirardelli dark chocolate mint squares that Santa left in my stocking, are not as delicious.

Christmas Eve Party

After a delicious Mexican Fiesta of a dinner(too bad I didn't get a picture of the food)...Jen's Blog even cooked up some REAL traditional Mexican food, as opposed to my americanized 7 layer dip. We then painted ornaments and had a fun white elephant exchange.
We had so many wonderful friends who came to celebrate the birth of our savior! Our friends came from many different places and although some did not know each other, they all seemed to get along great and had a good time.
I was really feeling lucky to have so many wonderful people under our roof. And although they weren't family, it felt like we were all one big family celebrating.
Oscar was fortunate enough to get some fortune Cookies (we all know how much he LOVES them). Poppy was the lucky recipient of the lovely silicone body bits (yes they are as disturbing as they sound!). I got a pretty Christmas chips and dip tray, and Ricky (after having his chocolate stolen) ended up with....a bottle of laundry soap???
To end the night in a super celebratory way, Rachel and Rob were kind enough to serenade us with some piano music.
Seriously, we had such a great time and it was a picture perfect evening (aside form my cold that kept me from singing some of the beautiful Christmas songs).

Christmas Morning!

Christmas was wonderful and there is so much to post about that I have neglected posting at all. Even at this very moment I am going to leave you with a very short blog entry, because I want to get all of it together to post.
I will just say this...Poppy is a perma-princess these days and Oscar is busy at every moment playing with his new swords(yes i gave him swords for the first time ever) and his walkie-talkie watches. My kids have been in this constant state of over-stimulation imagination play. I love it! We are having a good Christmas break.

Wonderful christmasy week...

The week before Christmas and all though our house, our children are mischievous and exploring like louse (lice?).
Oscar discovered as you have now too, that razors are sharp and are not for hairdo's.
Poppy is now short a few strands of hair, but believe it or not she doesn't seem to care.
Sharing heads together they seem to find, that one is better and a lot less confined.
School craft day was fun, with lots to do. Poppy ate her marshmallow draidle before we were through.
My sweet Visiting Teachees were able to meet, as Helen and I served them a soup lunch and a treat. Together we had a wonderful time, sharing the Christmas spirit and some treats divine!

Today was a wonderful Sunday all day through. We each had a special church assignment to do. My talk went well, I made it through, Oscar gave a great primary talk too.

This evening was dinner fun friends with us to eat, then yummy home-made ice cream as a yummy treat!
One and a half days till Christmas,we are not quite through. A Mexican Christmas party tomorrow, with a bit of work left to do.

Why all of the crazy fun and excitement about? It must be the season for reaching out...
Outside of ourselves, to all of our friends, Christmas is about the great love we can send!

Poppy

Poppy, Poppy, quite controppy...
I seem to find you so contrary lately! First you want juice, then water, but no... no... chocolate milk instead! And a song, you plead for a song, but while mid-way through the first sentence you want a different one. I'm not sure if this is a phase, or once again your way of establishing your queen bee status??? All i can say is that you seem to be acquiring these manipulative female tactics from somewhere...but not me! Truly I do not attempt to manipulate the world around me to my every whim...and yet, here I have this sweet looking, innocent, pinching demanding bitter/sweet girl.
Which leaves the question...how does one go about curbing such dominating tendencies???
Meanwhile when i look at this sweet girl i almost can't help but squeeze and kiss her to death!
All I can say is, I fear for the male population when Poppy is a teenager!

Note to self

When deciding to walk Oscar to school with an abundance of snow on the ground. Be sure to leave at least an hour of grace time to get there on time...Otherwise, your not-so-nice mommy self will rear its ugly head and demand that he and little sister WALK like a real boy/girl and not like a cat. You may also be forced to put Poppy in the stroller crying, because she will inevitably want to lie down in a giant pile of snow and not want to get off.
Yes, you may find it a better choice to wait until the afternoon pick-up time to let the little ones doddle along until their little hearts are content!

Sweet boy!

Here is Oscar back in the early days of boyhood (off on some adventure). I wish I had had a good digital camera back then. He was such a cute kid, still is.
Last night while telling stories and such in his bed, he told me about a girl in his school class and he said her Mom didn't have any money and that this girl didn't have any snow pants. He asked me if we could give them some money so that she could get some snow pants.
I was so touched by his sweet sincerity and his genuine desire to help her. I told him we would talk to his teacher and see what we could do.
Then today when I dropped him off at school he slid down this big hill on his bum, only to climb back up to remind me that "we didn't get her any snow pants!" I assured him we would work on it today and maybe tomorrow we could get them for her.
I began thinking about how often i find him concerned about another, or sensitive to the mean things other kids do. I can't help but be emotionally filled by the sweet goodness of his heart.
Truthfully throughout this holiday season (other than when we were at grandma's and she had toy magazines) he hasn't asked for anything, unless we ask him what he would be interested in. Even then, he says things like, he wants a space tent and a rocket ship. Yesterday in the grocery store we walked past the toy isle and he said, "We can't get any toys now or Santa won't bring us any. Right Mom?"
Wow! I have been so blessed with such a great family!
I think I've already been given my Christmas present this year!

Bethlahem Feast

My good friend Reem who is from Palestine taught me how to make this yummy dish last Monday. She doesn't use "recipes" so the following information is my interpretations on how to make yummy Baba Ganoush.

Two fresh pretty egg plants(above you see four because I was doubling the recipe)
1 large container plain yogurt ( I like Nancy's and that is the kind Reem uses too)
1 bunch Parsley finely chopped (not mushed in a food processor)
1-2 Tbsp dried mint
4-5 Tbsp olive oil (to taste)
Salt (to taste)
Pepper ( to taste)
1-2 cloves garlic finely mushed

Take eggplant and place on cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until cooked through.
Remove from oven and place in a bowl and fill with cold water. Let sit to cool.
When cooled peel off the skin and remove top part of plant. Finley chop or blend up the cooked eggplant. (I used our magic wand and it worked great, you could also use a food processor)
Next add lots of yogurt...this it the main ingredient. Then add the parsley to taste and remaining ingredients.
When it is all combined you should have a nice whitish looking dip that has a light soft taste of parsley, mint, olive oil, garlic and eggplant.
This is very delicious on pita bread!

Falafel!
Here are the mini falafels (I'll post this recipe later) I made to take to our ward party...this is the pre-fried photo.
I was going to make sure to post a list all of the fun items I had on the ethnic tables and I will do so now. I forgot to take pictures so you will just have to link to some of the recipes since I pulled them off the internet...

Pita's
1 cup water
2 tsp dry yeast
1 TBsp Sugar

2 tsp salt
2 TBsp olive oil
2 1/2 Cup Bread flour (or combination of wheat/white)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees- remove top rack and place remaining rack on lowest setting, covered with tin foil.

Combine water, yeast, and sugar in mixing bowl. let rest until bubbly.
Add salt and olive oil
Mix well
Begin adding flour 1 cup at a time. Knead bread until soft, moist but not sticky. You will want the dough to be pliable and a little moist (like a babies bum)

Next knead all of the dough into a disk on the counter, cut it like a pizza into 8 equal parts. Roll each part into a nice round ball and set on floured surface. Cover balls with moist cloth or paper towels to avoid drying out. Let raise for 30-40 mins.
When pre-heated roll out 2 balls into nice disk(pita shapes) not too thin about 1/8 inch thick. Place both disks evenly on the tin foiled rack. Bake for 4-6 minutes (Mine are usually done by 4 minutes). Roll out next two disks while waiting for the others to cook.
Remove finished pitas from oven( I use a spatula to pick them up so that I don't puncture the pocket) and stack on top of each other to cool (this will help them to collapse). Wait for oven to pre-heat back to the 500 degrees (I watch my little light to tell me when) then add the next two pita disks. Cook for 4-6 minutes and keep repeating.

Store in zip lock bags after cooled. Can also freeze to remain fresh.

Hummus...
2 cans Garbanzo Beans (drained, reserve some liquid)
1/3 Cup Tahini (you can find this usually by the peanut butter...or health food section of store)
1-2 Cloves Garlic (minced)
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1/2 tsp Cumin
1-2 TBSP Olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Take ingredients and place in a blender or food processor. Blend until it is nice and smooth. Add some of the liquid if the consistency is too thick. Add more lemon juice or oil to taste.
Make some Pitas and enjoy!

Tabouli Salad-

• 3 cups of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1/2 cup of finely chopped fresh mint
• 4 or 5 finely chopped spring onions (with the green parts)
• 4 ripe, medium size tomatoes, chopped into small cubes
• 1 cup of medium bulger wheat (cracked wheat)
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 5 TBS good olive oil
• Salt and Pepper

Grape leaf rolls-

Reem made these and they consist of rice with lemon juice, broth, olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped in pickled grape leaves...very delicious.

Lebanese cookies- Click Here for recipe

Iraqi Cardamom Cookies -Click Here (these were my favorite of the three)

Date almond balls Tam'r ab Loze-Click Here

So there you have it...My week bundled up into a menu! I am grateful that I will not bee cooking as much this week. Although I am very grateful that it went really well and I had a lot of compliments on the food. It just goes to show that people do like GOOD food, they just need to try it!
I have also gained a better appreciation for the the story of Christ feeding the 5,000! Truly amazing! I suppose I need to sharpen up my faithfulness and maybe next year I will be ready to test my faith and only make one batch of pitas and other stuff etc...
Let me know if you try any of the recipes and if you like them!

Charred pita anyone?

(My beautiful batch of perfectly puffed pitas made yesterday)
Today's post was hoping to read "Super-mom makes lots of pitas and cleans house at the SAME time!" Alas, this statement was almost true. That is, until the final two pitas were cooking (they only bake for 4min at 500 degrees) and I simply forgot that I had one last batch of pitas in the oven!
(Look how puffy that black little pita is!)
You see, this Saturday is our ward's Christmas party and I am in charge of the ethnic Middle Eastern food tasting table. As many of you may already know, I definitely have a passion for this sort of food...especially pitas, not the store bought nasty kind, I'm talking the yummy home made variety (not incredibly complicated, but one must keep an eye on the time!) I therefore decided that our ward would have home made pitas to eat the other (I will elaborate more on this tomorrow) yummy stuff on. I have enlisted a few friends to also help cook them, but I have been making a double batch each day to make enough to feed our church's 5,000. Just kidding, it's more like 200-300 and they will be tasting portions.
The up-side to the burned pitas (you know I'm an optimist!) Is that I now have a beautifully clean 1986 oven! You see, we often make yams which when baked, get the bottom of our stove all gooey and yucky. In fact, I was just saying a couple of days ago that I was going to go buy some of that nasty smelling oven cleaner to try to get our oven clean.
After the initial plume of smoke and the opening of all windows, I finally dared open the oven door to find that nearly all of the nastiness had been burned off! Yeah! Our oven doesn't have a self cleaning cycle and yet all it took was burning a couple of pitas! A couple quick swipes with the wash cloth and I now have a sparkley stove.
Other fun notes of interest is that we are still getting fresh tomatoes from out tomatoes vines hanging upside down in our shed! Yes, you may be jealous. They are not as delicious as when they are actually on the vine outside, but they are much tastier than the store bought zero taste variety.
Tonight, to try and get rid of the charred pita smell in the house, I made some yummy summery pizzas to make our house smell a bit better. (My hair still smells like I have been in a chimney, not suite as stinky and mom and Oscar when sitting by the fire pit when it is burning cotton wood, but stinky none the less!)
This my friends is the joys of being a supermom...or maybe not so super!

What's a mom to do?

"Mom my bed is all wet!" (Oscar is still wearing "buzz undies" aka pull-ups to bed)

"Well, then we will change the sheets. Tonight we will need to make sure you don't drink as much water."

12 hours later (Currently)
"Mom I really need a drink"...repeated over and over again...
"my belly is alllll driied upppppp!"
"I'm going to die without a drink!!!!"

Oscar you may not have a drink. You will wet through your pull up again. Sorry...

"Mom I really need a drink"...repeated over and over again...
"my belly is alllll driied upppppp!"
"I'm going to die without a drink!!!!"

As much as I would like to give my child a drink, I know that he will wake up all wet! What would you other, more loving and kind mothers do?

Wintery Week

Snow, snow, and more snow! I think it is safe to say that we have entered the winter season!
Oscar was determined to roll over his giant snow ball. Eventually he asked me to help. This kid LOVES the snow!
Poppy decided to taste the white fluffy stuff...she told me she was eating ice cream.
I love having a small but fun hill in our back yard!
After shoveling the driveway Oscar and Poppy discovered they could slide down it with just their snow pants on.

This week we have shoveled the driveway 4 times. It is currently snowing outside (pretty, big blustery flakes) and so I anticipate that we again, will be shoveling tonight or in the morning.

It has been a really pretty start to the Month of December. Although I don't particularly care for being cold, I do enjoy some of the winter specific activities.
Yesterday we took the kids ice skating. Oscar wasn't very good but he kept at it, by the end he was able to stand up and shuffle a bit. Poppy was more excited about having skates on her feet, rather than actually "skating" on them. After a few rounds on the rink she decided she was done. This definitely brings back some de ja vu to when Oscar was a two year old.

Lastly, we began our Christmas Nativity Advent calendar that was so generously given to us by our good friends the Lord's, when we lived in Riverton. Already today, Oscar was asking me if we could move Mary and Joseph one more step. I assured him that we would tonight, after we read the little dialog that goes along with each day.
Now the next thing to do to get ready for Christmas is to remove the moldy squishy pumpkins from the front porch...Oh, and I suppose we will need to get a tree (too bad this year we don't have one in our yard that needs to go).