Anne's Birthday

"Anne, what do you want for your birthday?" I asked last month.
"Pwesents," she said.
"What kind of presents?"
"Ones with wed wapping papow."
I love it when kids are so easy to please.


Damon and Anne painting her pinata:



Some of the guests at Anne's party, held at Grandma and Grandpa F's house:

Thoughts on Food

I read too much and that's a fact. Recently I read The China Study by some guy who's probably never heard of the Word of Wisdom, yet wrote a whole book with scientific studies supporting it. So now I'm making some radical changes to the way I feed my family: we're slowly eliminating animal based foods and processed foods from our diet (except beef--what do you think I am, a heretic?).

About a week ago we had our last gallon of milk. Last night we ate our last egg in what might be our last batch of chocolate chip cookies. (I don't really mean last--we'll still eat stuff like that for birthdays and when we're guests at other people's houses.)

I think our cheese will hold out for a few more weeks, but we're down to our last few sticks of butter. I'm pretty sad about that. Hot, homemade bread will have no meaning for me anymore. Unless I find out how to make those fancy Italian breads you get at Macaroni Grill and dip in olive oil. Then we might be saved. If something as good as that bread can be made without butter.

Thanks to my mom we've been trying some new vegetables: tomatillos=good, Swiss chard=blech. I took a bite of raw Swiss chard. It tasted the way cow manure smells. It was better cooked with apple juice, garlic, and onion, but it still had a hint of dirt flavoring. No doubt it's very good for you--anything that colorful and that disgusting must be, right?

random quotes

Damon, sounding a little too expectant: Mom, if you and Dad die before we grow up, how big of a fortune will we get?

Claire on Jake's birthday: Dad gets the first [actually "feast"--insert 'ee' for 'ur' and 'oy' for 'ore' sounds] piece of birthday ["beefday"] cake, because he's older than all of us.

Anne while pointing to my nose: You have a big nose, and Dad has a big nose, and we have little noses.

Uhhh...

We had the missionaries over for dinner on Monday. Things went pretty well. Damon and Anne behaved (once I finally got them in the house anyway). Claire cried intermittently and insisted on sitting on the floor instead of at the table, which is actually a big improvement over the last time she ate with the missionaries. We were at my parents' house that time and she cried and screamed the entire time, including when one of the elders gave a brief message about how we should all be like little children--humble, meek, patient, full of love...

Anyway, during dinner on Monday I was distracted helping one of the kids and heard one of the elders say, "Do you guys have some black power?"

I wanted to be helpful and said, "We have a black man in our ward. He's a good guy and just lives down the street."

Awkward silence.

"What are you talking about?" Jake asked.

"I thought they needed some black power."

"He said 'black powder'."

Jake and the elders laughed hysterically for like five minutes.

When the laughing stopped I asked, "So what do you need black powder for?"

"We're going to blow up the [insert name of our city] dam and say a prayer. Then we'll get in the record books for most baptisms."

Oh. Personally, I think they'd be better off with black power.

Easter

Sorry about the dark grainy picture, folks. My camera batteries were dead, so I took a photo with the video camera, which obviously doesn't take good pictures.

This morning (Monday, the day after) Damon woke up crying because Easter is always terrible, bad things only happen to him, etc. We hoped he would be over the the disasters of yesterday, when the Easter bunny didn't bring any chocolate bunnies, Anne kicked his basket and broke his hard-boiled eggs, and then Jake made his hard-boiled eggs into egg sandwiches--no such luck. I tried to be sympathetic for a while, but finally told him that if he was going to focus on things like this, instead of the Resurrection, then we wouldn't do fun things like Easter egg hunts anymore. He cried for a few more minutes sans the whining, and he hasn't mentioned his ruined Easter since.

Tangential subject: how much do you/would you encourage belief in things like the Easter Bunny? When Damon asked me if there was really a Santa, I made sure he really wanted to know and then told him Dad and I were Santa but he shouldn't tell other kids, because it's not nice to ruin their fun. And with Easter, I didn't make it much of a secret that I was the one who had hidden the eggs. Jake is horrified at how I've ruined the fun of the holidays, but I just don't feel comfortable selling fabrications to my kids. I'll have to ask my friend Cindy W. about this sometime--I know she'll back me up, and her kids seem happy enough even though she's told them the truth since they were little. Do you think I'm a monster?