Help for Haiti

I am riveted to TV, tweets, radio, FB,.. and I know you are too. Don't just be an armchair quarterback. Even the littlest bit helps.

Some links:

CRS. Yes, I'm biased. I can tell you first hand that all but a little of that money goes to the people it's intended for,..(the rest goes for very small salaries, and overhead) http://www.crs.org/.

Some of my favorite sites are doing their part - like Cakewrecks.

http://www.mercycorp.org/ is another favorite NGO of mine - and HQ'd in Portland, user of GIS software, .. what's not to love? Why not shower them with donations,...

http://www.oxfam.org/ , HQ'd across the pond is another amazing organization.

There are many. Pick your fav and donate.

Kudos to the geospatial community as they come together to assist the emergency responders, and I know, the rebuilders later, to see the land, the assets, the people, and coordinate efforts to the best of everyones' abilities. Here is a great list of organizations and resources, by no means exhaustive by Vector 1 Media, one of my favorite sites to write for and read since it deals with using GIS for sustainable living - something that is so important. Everyone deserves food, water, shelter and safety. Understanding the earth and our connectedness is so important in ensuring this happens.

Holiday Reloaded

I won't bore you with a "What I did for my Christmas Vacation" blog. I'll just give you the highlights. But before I do, I want to hit a couple of things that are more serious than my normal blog fodder.

First, please keep a relative of mine in your thoughts and prayers. Not everyone likes to be blogged about, so I'll just say this relative had a medical emergency a couple days before Christmas and is still in the hospital. She will be there or a rehabilitation facility indefinitely.

She's a wonderful person and the mother of four. She's served in a war (as if that's harder than being a mother of four). She's always there for you, no matter waht. She's been there for me when I certainly didnt' deserve it. She drove many hours to come take care of me and my family (TWICE!) when I was unable to; she sent care packages when I was pregnant (we'll all agree - that's a lot of care packages!); brought gifts when she visited; provided hand-me downs when they were needed. But most of all, she shares my same sarcastic sense of humo, and also being the mother of a large brood, she understands how it is. I miss her right now, but I know she will pull out of this. Her amazing family, husband and incredible kids are there for her.

My second bit of serious also involved an extended family member. I just want people to remember, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And rememer that what you perceive to be reality may indeed not be the same to everyone involved. There are other perspectives. I think we all live our lives trying to help others. That was the impression I was under, anyway.

Okay,let's get on with it:

Finding Kyle in the Space Needle is Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack

I've gone twelve years without losing a kid. Which means I was due, right?

Since we consider ourselves Washington state natives, the fact that we'd never taken our children to the Seattle Space Needle wasn't something we thought about. But then the oldest complained and so we packed ourselves, a grandmother, an aunt and uncle and four cousins into a couple of cars and headed north.

The Needle was excellent fun, except as I get older, I get more paranoid about totally stupid things. Like when the two oldest boys pointed out that Fifi was small enough to fit through the wires on the viewing platform. To which I then envisioned terrible things happening for the rest of our stay and hung closely to the walls of the Needle or just went inside to put myself out of my misery.

This prompted my boy children to ask if I ever relax.

Kid: "Do you worry all the time?"

Me: "Totally."

Kid: "What about when we are riding our scooters?"

Me: "I worry you'll get hit by a truck."

Kid: "Swimming?"

Me: "You'll knock your head on the side and drown."

Kid: "Shopping?"

Me: "Someone will steal you when I'm not looking."

Kid: "Riding in the car?"

Me: "You'll be eating a jolly rancher, choke, and I won't hear you hitting the back of the seat for help because I have the stereo up too loud."

See? ARGH! I drive myself crazy.

So, I was feeling pretty jolly what with the 'frost your own rocket cookies' for the kiddies activity (Space Needle - it's a theme.) and the picture with Santa in his rocket ship (theme, ya'll) We were down in the gift shop trying on hats and silly sunglasses. We were milling outside the the gift shop. We were milling on the way to the parking lot. We were milling in the parking lot. The kids did a massive Chinese fire drill, ending up in cars, and we hit the road.

As we were turning out of the parking lot, hubby (ever the more intelligent of our partnership) turns to me and says, "Kyle is in the other car, right?" To which I say, still feeling that 'I-am-totally-relaxed-and-not-freaking-out-about-anything" holiday glow, "Yep, I think so."

Hubby calls the other car. Kyle is not there. I don't think I waited for the car to stop before I high tailed it back to the big Needle. Then, the awful moment when you have to decide which fork in the road to take - Needle or parking lot, Needle or parking lot, Needle or parking lot - when did we lose the kid? Every orange coat I see I sprint towards, every call of "mom" I turn and stare,...

I turn into the bottom of the Space Needle and have almost made my way around when I spot said lost child leaning against a pole with a small posse of armed security guards. Thank goodness he was smart in his thinking and went DIRECTLY to a security guard to tell them he was lost. As we were leaving there were lots of guards, cashiers, janitors, etc,.. telling us they were so happy he found me, and yes, thinking, "Boy, what a slacker mom."

Don't miss the next installment of 'What I did on my Christmas Holdiday' - Scrabble with Elementary school boys, or, did you know there are 20 different ways to spell poop?

Gee, it's so good to be home,...

Only the second day of school and I'm notified of this happening at my kids' school:

From the RES principle:

"Today at about 12:50PM, a woman from the mobile home park adjacent to Ridgeview spoke to the children and threw gum balls to them over the fence. This was during 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade lunch recess. The woman was dressed in a Santa Bikini and spoke to the students about religion as she danced on the porch. I was alerted by the yard duty adn we immediately moved the students away from the fence. The woman was gone by the time I arrived at the fence,..."

Gawd,.. need I say more?

Date Nut Balls

I think this the recipe my mom uses to make these cookies. They aren't too sweet and are a good foil to all the chocolate fudge and frosted sugar cookies rolling around during the holidays.

1 cup soft butter
2/3 cup sifted confectionary sugar
2 Tbsp water
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
pinch salt
1 1/3 chopped pitted dates
1 cup chopped walnuts

Cream butter with sugar. Stir in water and vanilla. Add flour and salt, mix well. Gently add the dates and walnuts. Roll into 1 inch sized balls. cook. Bake for 20 minutes in 300 degree oven.Roll in powdered sugar while still warm.

Two and a bunny, or "Fifi's on Fire!"

Fifi, the smallest of the clan, turned two years old yesterday. NO MORE BABIES in this house. At the moment, and seeing as I'm a woman of a certain age ohmygawd i turned forty this year, I don't see any happening along in the near future. Unless a stork gets lost or something.

The Feefster got everything every little two year old girl wants: babies, bottles and convertibles, a sit n' spin and a very large bear.

The balloons adorning her crib, doorway and chair at the dinner table, scooter and ice cream for breakfast didn't phase her. She acted like 'yeah, I get this stuff all the time. I'm the princess." (do you think it would kill me to wash the kid's face before taking milestone pictures? Sheesh,...)

\

That's right folks, only the birthday girl gets to lick frosting off the naked barbie torso. You don't turn two everyday, ya know.

So, yes, in my family (extended and otherwise) I hold the highly esteemed title of 'world's ugliest cake maker' and there are plenty of posts on this blog and my other one to exemplify this fact. So, a barbie cake? Well, that's the pinnacle for me.

I can't do the fondant thing. Besides the fact that it's 6$ a sheet, and doesn't taste all that great, where's the sport in it? It's like placing corn on the back porch and waiting for the deer to come while you sit in a rocking chair sipping hot coffee. (you know who you are). You roll it out, drape it on and voila - beautiful, non creased, non crumbed frosting.

I have to do the buttercream frosting thing. I'd say that the picture I took above of this cake was taken after Fifi sampled the cake (which is true) and declared it 'yummy', but it really doesn't matter. It didn't look much better before that, actually.

I totally cheated and bought the packaged deal - cake pan and naked barbie torso, plus instructions to make six different elaborately decorated barbies including a mermaid. Which I should just throw away now write an apology letter to the company for wasting all that effort on me, and stop my suffering.

It's the big day. The cake pan needs to be assembled. I actually follow the instructions since it includes a screw. When I'm finished with it, I can't figure out how the heck the pan is supposed to balance. It doesn't balance with me. So, I hand it to the twelve year old who is unsuspectingly wandering through the kitchen. He figures out I've connected the bottom plate backwards, turning it around (duh) makes the pan stand straight. This never even occurred to me.

I tell hubby this is the reason he can't die before me and that he needs to write into his will that when he's dead and I'm still kicking around, Jared has to completely take care of me. Because I am seriously helpless. And obviously a true blond and no matter what my relatives say, more than a 1/4 polish.

The cake turns out fine once it's taken out of the pan, the barbie gets placed in with no problems. It's when I've got the naked barbie torso in one hand and a spatula with pink buttercream frosting in the other, knowing that I'm feeding this cake to three little boys, that I wonder if this is where Tiger got his start. But it's either slather the frosting or leave the cake topless. I'm such a prudish American girl, I opt to frost the boobies.

But, I do draw the line at doing my cake's hair. So, no pretty braids, no frosting flowers in those pretty burnette plastic strands.

I meant to put a little 'Happy Birthday!' banner in her upstretched hands but didn't quite get to it. At least with the cake's limbs extended they were out of the way of the fire hazard. I can't say the same for Fifi's hair - she bent down for a picture and between seeing hubby launch at her and the sound of sizzling, I completely attacked her, shoving her head into my side and wacking it, scaring the living daylights out of her.

B yelled, 'Fifi's on fire!" Fifi screamed her head off because I attacked her. All the while my in-laws were on speaker phone waiting to sing happy birthday to their beloved grandchild.

She did live to see her second birthday come to an end. Everytime we ask her how old she is, she shows us a few fingers, says 'two' then tries to make bunny ears and says 'and a bunny.'

Happy Birthday Fifi!

The Sights and Sounds of Christmas

This is the tree topper I got for, well, the top of our tree. Notice it isn't on a tree. It's on a table.



This is the topper the kids elected to put on the tree - it's a picture of an angel J made when he was in 4th grade. When we lived in Banda Aceh, Indonesia for a year while hubby did tsunami reconstruction work. In a land where there are no decorations for Christmas because it is shrouded in Islamic Sharia law. So, we improvised. We bought some sort of shrubbery, put it on top of two moving boxes covered in green sheets and used some wacky string as a garland, seashells and corals as ornaments (along with toilet paper tubes wrapped in festive looking wrapping paper),.. and this angel. Which is partly designed with a toilet paper role. This was done three years ago. The angel is still carefully placed by the kids on the top of the tree, taken down and stored for the next year. Here, in the land of plenty. Just goes to show you, I guess, that it really is the simple things in life our kids remember and crave. That time and effort. Or mine are just weird. Go figure.




In the spirit of children, I made this massive Christmas tree cake for a potluck tonight. Two pounds of frosting, sour gummy lifesavers. It almost makes up for the fact that I should have just left the cake in a square shape and not mess with it. Oh well.

Here are the gingerbread blobs the B and Fifi made yesterday and decorated with frostng placed in a ziplock bag with a hole cut in the bottom. What a great way to teach your children that everyone matters, who cares if they look different? That guy doesn't have a head? It's okay - he deserved to be frosted. Three legs? One arm? A weird growth sprouting by what should be an abdomen? Frost him! They all taste the same!

We love to listen to Christmas music, as any family probably does. K's favorites? "That one about the baby in the manger and Silent Hill." (er,.. translation: Away in a Manger and Silent Night."

The girls are fascinated by the Nutcracker Ballet, so we listen to the music during dinner. Hubby is trying valiantly to teach B who wrote the music. When asked tonight she responded: "the nutcrack guy."

Happy Holidays!

My Kingdom for a Star Cutter

I LOVE to bake and cook. The more creative I can be, the better. I don't have time, however, what with the five kids. Nor do I have open silver palettes waiting for me to whizbang them with delectable dishes. So, Christmas is the time to go all out - what kid ever said no to a cookie, especially when I have to make about ten different varieties?

My problem? Cookie cutters. I don't have any. I can kind of remember maybe buying some (or was I dreaming that? Or was it my friend telling me about those awesome stackable snowflake cutters and I just thought it was me?)

Okay, I do have some. I have a rocking horse, a snowman with a hat, a tree and a gingerbread androgynous person, a heart, a heart with an arrow through it, a hammer, the state of Michigan (?????), a really big leaf from some deciduous tree that resembles maple, 10 ghosts, a handful of bats and a crescent moon. Or a banana. Depends on how old you are, I guess. And how you look at it.

It seems that I forget which holiday I actually have cookie cutters for, and keep buying Halloween cookie cutters and turning my head away from the display at Christmas time.

So, it looks like for the past decade I have talked myself into the fact that I don't have any ghost cookie cutters, the last five years I included a bat, and for some reason last year I needed a banana. I mean crescent moon.

The funny thing is - I haven't made any cookies at Halloween. We are so inundated with candy, I can't bring myself to make a single cookie.

The cookie cutter syndrome seems to have gotten progressively worse with the amount of children running around. Coincidence? I think not.