shakin' it up

The year supply, that is.   And quite literally.  I (with lots of little hand help) canned 17 lbs. of butter today.  The little hands were very welcome because the last part of the instructions is: "shake cans every five minutes for three hours", which easily stretched into four (and one stubborn batch even made it to five!).  Shake and shake and shake on down the line.  It's a task that holds far more glamour at 4 than thirty plus 4.  Still.  My rows of yellow do have me smiling.  They will be a welcome delight should disaster strike.  Because I'd be hard pressed to live without "the real thing".

spt

Me & him & what I gave him:  round cheeks, chubby fingers, and maybe (fingers crossed for a no) weak lungs

over, but not done

Saturday was our last soccer game of the season.  We lost every stinkin' game, but it was fun for Aidan and he improved and he tried.  This last game was particularly fun because of all the family support.  A had his own cheering section.

But his favorite fan was not one of the three grandparents who trekked out all the way from Mesa to see the game (thank you!)....nor was it the dad who practiced tirelessly with him for months (thank you!)...and it was definitely not the mom who lovingly washed his uniform each week (um...do any of you really think I did that?!). 

Miss Reagan was the only fan who got his attention between quarters:

And at the post-game party, it was all about his friends.  We loved being on a team with Bret and Kaylee, who are in our ward.  And I loved cheering (and laughing!) on the sidelines with their parents (who are saving my marriage during this ASU football season, but that's an entirely separate post).

Aidan's comment on the way home:  "Me and Bret are just sooo into each other lately."  Jim and I broke into wild laughter and didn't know what to say to Aidan's "What? What?  What does that mean?".  How do you explain something to a 5-year-old that's more of a nuance than literal oddity?

Anyhow...back to soccer.  It was good.  And now we're gearing up for a (perhaps) Winter season with a (perhaps) Coach Scott.

Check back in January to see if it's so.

cake first & new friends

last week I made my first fondant roses:

and gave a cake to D's new friend and her sister:

who happen to be the daughters of my old friend...college roommate...Vella...who is on the list of my all-time favorite humans...and who accomplished an inhuman feat last month by moving and giving birth within one week.

I stole her girls away today.  And Marie (above) cracked me up.  Let me start by saying I have a pretty average joe house.  But she walked in (through my more than averagely messy garage) and immediately began to "ooh" and "ah".   "Wow...this is amaaaazing."  And when I gave her apple juice: "Oh, this is just soooo excellent."  Sure, the enthusiasm might be byproduct of two weeks as shut-in with a newborn brother, but this girl was a delight. 

And she even managed to charm Aidan.  When the Kindergarteners piled into the car at pick-up, he immediately dismissed the two "baby seats" and hopped back to the last row.  But that dismissal was soon reversed.  Marie is a verbal child and when she spouted off some complex sentence, Aidan was suddenly alert with this response:  "Wow, I guess that's not a little girl up there.  She can sure talk."

Anna is a quieter sort, and Aidan spent much of the afternoon worried that "her face won't smile".  As an infrequent smiler myself, I knew she was just fine.  Perched on the cusp of sliding was her favorite spot.

I'm sentimental.  A few days ago Jim and I discussed our hugely opposite levels of sentimentality.  Merged together we might make a normal human.  Maybe. 

No surprise that this scene got to me today:

When Vel & I used to spend hours..days..years dreaming up our futures, I never imagined I'd have a 5-year-old boy who'd jump up to put shoes on her two-year-old girl.  Or that he'd catch her again & again coming down our very slippy slide.  Or that we'd have 3-year-old's born one month apart...who gently vied all day to be in charge, but both willingly gave in "enough".

It's a double-layered friendship.

And I just might have to steal these two away again. 

And soon.

my weapon of D's choice

On any given day, my Davyn draws a picture, or two, or twenty, of me.  "This is you going to the store."

"This is you going to the store."

"This is you going to the store."

You see the pattern.  And can I just say that I hate going to the store.  Ardently. 

But, this morning he came to me with this:

"This is you throwing a boomerang." 

That's definitely more like it.