Fasnachts!

In my little corner of the world, the Shrove Tuesday pastry of choice is the Fasnacht.  It's pretty much a doughnut with a varying degree of brickiness.  Some of the makers seem to think it should remain in your stomach until Easter, when it may finally be done digesting.  Since I can't exactly hop down to the market here in Tucson and get some, I decided this year to make them.  It was better than yet again having to be grumpy that I wasn't noshing on at least one.

I used the recipe from my trusty Mennonite Community Cookbook.  I did it just as is, but made only 1/3 batch (one egg worth) since I didn't want too many staring at me tomorrow.

They turned out quite tasty.  I tossed half in powdered sugar and the others in cinnamon sugar.  I liked the cinnamon sugar better, but I'm a total sucker for cinnamon toast, so maybe that's it.

I also managed to clean up, dust, and vacuum my family room and do a load of wash.  Imagine how productive I will be tomorrow when I'm off the rest of the interwebz!

Living Lent

For Lent this year, I'm giving up alcohol, which I've done before.  I'm giving up Facebook and all but a few blogs, which I've done before.  But I'm also going to try something new.  I'm going to give up myself.  I'm going to give up the part of me that says I need the approval of people on Facebook for how I live my life.  I'm going to give up the part of me that feels like this life is beneath me because I used to get paid a lot for the work I did.  Truthfully, if I approached my real job as halfheartedly as I've been approaching my work at home, I would have been fired.  

Jesus spent 40 days fasting and praying to prepare Himself for the Passion.  He was blameless and yet was persecuted and put to death for our sins, for my sins.  And yet, if I'm not careful, I will spend this time of fasting and preparation feeling persecuted because I am asked to deal with never ending piles of laundry, little boys who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, much less a toilet, and a baby who STILL won't take the bottle.

I'm going to try to document some of this, to remember a little joy and a little progress from each day.  For now, I will start here, with a load of laundry to fold, a baby trying to chew a tooth through, and a floor that is at last Lego-free and safe for her to squirm on.

Organizing Uniforms Quick Fix

One consequence of not posting anything for two months is that I've actually accomplished a few things! 

 

This is one easy fix I came up with to take care of Christopher's school clothes.  He's lucky enough to have started a school where they wear uniforms, and I didn't want to fight with him every morning about why he couldn't wear his Ninjago shirt and elastic waist shorts from his drawer.  One of those pocket organizers would've worked but I didn't have one.  I did have clothespins and hangers, though, so this is what I came up with.

 

Shorts and socks (with no logos or animals) get pinned to a hanger

Shirt goes on top and everything goes into the closet

Now it's easy to see if he has clean school clothes and he knows to just take out a hanger with his preferred shirt color and get dressed.  This has also taken care of the navy shirt and navy shorts combo I see some kids wearing to school!

Shirts are sort of boring - here's a shameless cute kid shot of Christopher being a great big brother!

Year of Faith

Two posts in one day, this is insanity!  Just go with me here...

On the subject of new beginnings, Pope Benedict just kicked off the Year of Faith yesterday. The focus of the Church this year is to be helping its members grow in understanding of their faith.  Along those lines, I decided to sign up for a wonderful Flocknotes group that aims to Read the Catechism in a Year.  Each morning they send an e-mail to your inbox with a few sections of the catechism.  I'm a repeat Bible in a Year dropout, but I'm hoping to be more successful with this!  I'd love to have you join me.

Thank Goodness It's Spring, I Mean Fall

Wow, I didn't realize it's been two months since I posted.  I always struggle the last few weeks of summer, but it seemed worse this year.  Summer for us in AZ is like winter everywhere else.  The heat sucks the life out of you and makes you hide inside, running from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned school/store/wherever.  The downside of all this inside is that like winter in the north, I get a little stir crazy and very unmotivated until it's finally below about 90.

This week it has cooled down somewhat and in a fit of downright pleasantness the high today is below 80.  Be still my beating heart.  I took this opportunity to crack open our gardening in the desert books and decided to clean out the garden and the sad little rosebush in the back yard.  Here our big vegetable growing season is winter, when the days are cool enough not to burn the plants, so I'm going to try carrots, broccoli, lettuce, and some herbs again.  I don't have any seeds yet, though, so I contented myself with cleaning out the old stuff, breaking up the baked soil, spreading the compost bin over top and watering and raking it all together.  Hopefully some of that compost goodness will leach into the surrounding soil before I get the seeds in a few days.

Here we have the before - with two helpful men adopting their best supervisory pose and a photobombing toddler trying to walk on the gravel without falling.

 

Our super-expensive compost setup.  Actually we wanted it to be pretty incognito since I'm sure it's against HOA bylaws to be composting in your backyard.  This bad boy was pretty much full.

 

The after, all cleaned up, composted, and watered.  It looks like I missed a piece of paper when I was cleaning up the compost - there's always a bit that doesn't get broken down well.

I also pruned, cleaned up, and fertilized my little rose.  I had put it under a tree next to the wall for the hottest part of summer when I saw it was burning badly.  I think the lack of sun made it go a bit dormant, but hopefully a nice feed and some clean-up pruning will perk it up.



{pretty, happy, funny, real} - End of Summer Edition

We've been hanging out around home more than usual lately.  While I was so excited (for me and them) for school to start, now that it's close, I think I'm going to miss them :-)  The up side of all this homebodiness is that I've actually taken pictures!

{pretty}

I cleaned the kitchen within an inch of its life yesterday.  That makes it pretty, or at least a lot prettier than it was.  Goo Gone is my friend.  It took care of a lot of the greasy mess on the microwave underside.

{happy}

After the pantry cleaning last week, I got out the easel for a long overdue (read: it's been many months) painting session.  Little E was not quite paint-eligible, but she was happy to color chalk on the other side.

{funny}

 It's funny, and maybe a little sad, but my kids are such desert rats that one good afternoon of thunderstorms produced some awesome puddles worthy of about 45 minutes of running and jumping in.

{real}

I suppose this is to be expected since she only has big brothers, but here is Elizabeth "peeing" in the potty.  She picks up her shirt and pushes on her belly button and is SURE she's going just like the big boys!  I've started putting her on the potty before bathtime in the hopes that we might not have too big a mess (or struggle to get her to sit down) when we actually start training her!

Quick Lego Manual

We have QUITE the collection of Legos since Christopher had his birthday a few weeks ago, and with all those legos comes a lot of little building manuals.  Many of ours were in really bad shape, having been lovingly touched and taken in the car to "read" more times than I can count.  So today I took an old binder and some page protectors that I was no longer using and made a little Lego manual. 

I put a few booklets in each (after extensively taping some back together) grouping by category - Cars, Ninjago, Lego City, etc. 

I think it will be much easier to handle and they'll stay in much better shape this way.  And anything that means less Lego mess on Christopher's bedroom floor is a good thing!