He is risen!

Happy Easter! Conference is really adding a great spirit to the
holiday. As I write I am waiting for Music and the Spoke word to start
here in the conference center before the Sunday am session starts. Ben
is with us and Davids brother Mike. More later. Starting!

Chick time again!

It's time for a real update but for now let's just say I'm a master
chicken murderer, it's seed starting time and I caved in and bought 4
americaunas because they lay blue or green eggs. Even tho I have a
broody hen sitting on 11 eggs herself. But green eggs! That's worth
too many chickens. More later.

Something to think about

Happy Family Birthday (our marriage has almost reached adulthood!)

David was 17 when we met (I was 16) and now we’ve been married 17 years.  I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure it is something.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, on our wedding day video David’s message to posterity was “We thought it was a good idea at the time.”  I ask him each year if that is still the case.  This year he said something like, “It still appears to have been a good idea.  Further studies will be necessary.”  What a romantic.

 

We did our traditional “family birthday” bowling party and birthday cake.  Sophie chose the “Domino Chocolate Cake” from the Cake Bible complete with a full half pound of butter—all the ingredients of the butter cream frosting are in the cake, so it only needs powdered sugar.  Ben was excited about the “Times New Roman” letter C.  Since when is he such a typeface expert? 

 

My iPhone camera doesn’t do well in low light, but you get the idea.  The feet are mine, since I realized I didn’t have any pictures of myself bowling.

 

David’s traveling so we spent Family Night on Monday with Mommy’s Mom and Granny at Village Inn for dinner.  It looks like Granny will live well into her 90s (she’s 90 this year, believe it or not from the pic) but I still want to play it safe and take LOTS of pictures with her and the kids.  She was so sweet and loving all night, with lots of hugs and “I love yous.”  Memory issues are obvious, but living in the now is a gift also, right?

 

I love my family and pray everyday that I end up doing right by them.

I love common sense

And I hope one day I’ll learn how to apply it to my own life.  Check out some more excellent, simplified advice from one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan, in new book. 

 

I love the “S” Rule: 

 

“No snacks, no seconds, no sweets — except on days that begin with the letter S.”

 

I think I might try that one . . .

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02brod.html

 

 

This was supposed to be my Christmas card picture.  But then I remembered that I don’t send Christmas cards.  J

 

 

 

Pics

First, for those of you I added to my email distribution, feel free to tell me to take you off.  Don’t worry Elaine, I’m done with politics—in more ways than one.  J   Things have settled down now so that I can start actually using my blog again.

 

I am so bad at reading blogs that I was thrilled when Doris and Jen added me to their distribution.  Also, if any of you have a blog you can feel free to put me on the email distribution (I’m looking at you, Gina).  I do have a Google reader, but I’ll be darned if I actually ever take a moment to open it.

 

Here are some pics of our trip to CA, I don’t know what order they’ll come in, so maybe later I’ll come back and add captions.

 

 

 

 

 

Tour de Cure!

It's time again to sign up!  Before I start hitting my friends and family up for donations, I thought I'd first hit you up to join me.  Things to consider:

 

·         It's a bike RIDE, not a race

·         It's very cheap if we sign up soon—just $15

·         It's easy to do with a friend because we can chat

·         It’s just 25 miles, which ends up to be around 2 hours if you’re chatting.

·         AND we have plenty of time to gear up, so to speak. 

 

Here's the info.  If you decide to sign up, please hit "join a team" and select Team Access so we can be on a team together. 

www.diabetes.org/utahtourdecure

California Dreamin'

How many blog posts do you think have that title? My guess is quite a few.

Well, I had a fabulous trip to California. My time with Doris (as discussed below) was precious and too rare. The funeral was bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter, with good memories and many old and dear friends like Di and Megan. I got to sing with my dear friend Michele, whose daughter Addy was with Ben in those wonderful three years with Nancy as a primary teacher.

We played a lot, did Chuck E Cheese with sweet Shauna, saw Tasha and Yuka's beautiful new (and both long awaited for) little baby girls. I smelled the ocean air from the Getty hilltop, I gazed up at the Pasadena mountains from the park bench at Lacy Park, I smelled the oranges in the groves at the Arboretum. I ate yummy cottage cheese pancakes with my good friends the Chamberlains on a sunny Sunday morning. I enjoyed the company of my bro and sis in law in Vegas while driving to and fro.

In my mind I saw a 2-year old Ben swinging at Hamilton Park as I watched my big 10-year old sat swinging intently in the same swing in just the same way. I drove by the house where Noah was born, by the hospital where Sophie and Eden were born, by the townhouse we brought the tiny 5-lb Lucy home to and by the one home I ever owned. I was taught yet another major life lesson by Patti Jones--not the first time, hopefully not the last.

At 37, a third of my life was spent in SoCal, and probably two thirds of my life's lessons thus far. Time and place hold such significance for us nostalgic types. At the same time, I am very aware of how hard it was to live there on many levels, and a brief visit in the glory of January is not an accurate picture of things. I did have moments on this visit where I thought, "This is the place of my undoing"--there were some ridiculously difficult times. Still, I just hold a lot of room in my heart for the people and places down there.

Now I'm home, and working full time this week to make up the lost hours. I am lucky to have a good job that I enjoy and people I enjoy working with, and most of the work I don't mind so much either. But I do feel an increasing pull back home and see things in my family that make it clear this can't go on forever.

I went to the temple last night because I was feeling a little bummed. Although I was exhausted from the trip and could hardly stay awake I still had a distinct impression that I was to lift up my head and rejoice and love the Lord for all He's done for me. I feel God is working in me to help make changes I've been unable to make on my own, and I feel a quieter, more peaceful feeling than I've felt in a long time.

A week at "home" in CA

All you have to do to have your life perfectly and beautifully
catalogued is hang out with my sweet Doris 24/7. I'll fill in a few
details when i get back to Utah but for now you can enjoy Doris and
her version, which is just lovely. Today I am driving from Vegas to
Utah and it is supposed to snow a bit. Wish us luck! (yes I took a
road trip with four kids and no husband, but it actually turned out
great.

http://dorisandsam.blogspot.com/2010/01/hanging-out-with-val.html

Sent from my iPhone

Noah at lacy park

The Borowitz Report

As a mother who works out of the home almost entirely for medical coverage, and who can't get her family approved for any individual plan, I am both laughing and crying over this one.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=7083

I don't remember it being this cold last year.

Single digits in the night here.  Craziness.  It’s just not right.  I have to feed the chickens almost hot water so they can drink a bit before it freezes.  I have 9 chickens in my chicken prison for egg eating that need to be harvested on Saturday for the freezer.  I guess a nice warm egg is just too tempting in freezing weather, but once a chicken gets a taste for raw eggs, they are useless. 

 

We had a snow day yesterday.  School wasn’t cancelled, but I was stressed because David is out of town this week, I’m working to get work settled before my surgery (it got postponed two weeks, so now it’s next Wednesday).  Our heat went out in the house Sunday night and there was a rush because of the cold snap so they couldn’t come fix it until Tuesday afternoon. Our van is in the shop and David’s car has no heat.  I stayed up too late working on my projects, got up too late and got everyone bundled up in blankets in the car with 20 minutes to get to school, let alone drop the little kids off at my moms.  Then it took 20 minutes just to go 3 miles—there was lots of snow on the ground, it was coming down hard and the kids were complaining about numb toes.  I realized I had at least an hour to get the kids to school and I would be even later to work.  So, I turned around and went home.  I felt lame about copping out, but when we got home I realized we had a flat tire in back, so I’m glad I didn’t get stuck in the snowstorm on the freeway with all the kids.  I used to complain about the blandness of California weather and missed the seasons, but I meant I missed spring, fall and the first snow.  Can I sign up just for that somewhere?

 

The holidays are upon us.  I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves.  It will have to be low-key by necessity this year, too much going on and the surgery, but maybe that’s for the best.

 

Trying to stay warm,

 

Valerie

A time to be opinionated, a time to chill out.

This is the former.

Thanks for sending this, Doris! And yes, I know it, but I still haven’t thrown out all the 3,6 & 7 plastics in the house. Good advice for us all.

From: Doris Hernandez
Sent: Sunday, December 06, 2009 3:55 PM
To: 'Valerie Christensen'Subject: you already know this...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=2


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
www.dorisandsam.blogspot.com

Theo the Thankful Turkey

One of our Thanksgiving traditions, here's our thankful turkey exploding with feathers of gratitude. Mine: heat vents, fireplaces, hot baths. See a trend?

Bread Recipe

Here's the link to my post with the fantabulous, easy bread recipe. It sounds complicated, but once you've done it once, you realize it is super simple.

http://loveisthespin.blogspot.com/2008/12/quick-note.html

Love!

Christmas is here!

I'm here in my living room surrounded with the white Christmas lights Ben enthusiastically strung all around the room the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Karen Carpenter is serenading me with "I'll be home for Christmas." As a family, we are deeply offended by Christmasiness anytime before pie is served on thanksgiving, after that, there's no holding back. Thanks to Ben, decorating is a snap, especially if I'm not very persnicketty about how things are done.


Thanksgiving was nice, we were at pa/ma-in-laws with all but one of David's siblings. David brined our home-grown 21 lb turkey for 14 hours with Alton Brown's recipe, cooked it breast-down and turned out turkey perfection. He's always been good, but this was the best. This turkey was seriously fat. There was a layer of fat a half an inch thick on some parts of the breast, which made for amazingly moist meat.


When I poured the drippings into the separator to make the gravy, there was 2 cups dark brown broth and two cups golden turkey fat. Two cups!! Insane.


I made Great-Grandma Anna Sophia Smith's potato rolls, every roll dipped in butter before being folded over in the pan. The kids had a ball with their cousins.


Kid updates.

Lucy has been so much more vivacious since her surgery, it is obvious she can hear so much better. Her pronunciation is amazing, every T is crossed with her. She has such a sweet, distinct little personality and her and Noah play (and/or fight) wonderfully. She loves to "do TaeKwonDo" on people, screaming "Hi-YA!" and leaping about with knife strikes and kicks. She's ready for the Little Tigers class over at Master Kim's TaeKwonDo, but I'm not about to pay for that, so we're going to put her and Noah back into "Monkeynastics" in January.

Sophie has been asking for some time to start TaeKwonDo and I've balked, in part because of the price and in part because I thought she was being competitive with Ben. But after a sufficiently long waiting period I realized she really wanted to and we took her to meet with Master Kim for her initial private lesson. He was excited and felt she had great natural talent. In fact, she was able to kick well above her head at first try. That, combined with being crazy flexible, made him think she'd do well if she applied herself. He gave her a fervent directive to work hard and not waste her talent. So, we're a TaeKwonDo family now. They are both 2x a week, but will switch to 3x in January because it's not that much more. It is just a few blocks up the street, really builds self discipline and self esteem and provides good exercise for the winter.

Ben is continuing to do very well in school and just got his TKD brown belt. He's doing great in Webelos and is just all around growing up. We went to dinner with my aunt (my dad's sister) and cousins from that side of the family and there was much comment about how much he looked like my dad as a kid and how his personality and brainpower were very much the same. I take both pride and terror in this, and always use these comments as an opportunity to remind Ben to use his superpowers for good and not for evil. Kidding, I just explain that with great abilities come great responsibilities, and that intellect alone gets you nowhere without focus, hard work, and goodness as a person. The other day I asked him if he was ready to talk about where babies come from, and he said, "Do I have to know? I have a feeling I don't want to know." Hilarious. I gave him a reprieve of a few months.

Noah is crazy, cute and wonderful as always. He also wants to start TKD but I told him he needs to stay dry for a month before he can be a Little Tiger. He is the one person that seems the most impacted by my working. He really acts out for attention and seems desperate for mom love, complete with wetting his pants. He is over five but seems like a young four to me. He has simple tastes--cold cereal, oatmeal, toast, cooked carrots, and anything with sugar in it. He hates everything else I make. He loves cars and blocks and carrying the poor cats around like luggage. Our poor cat Spike that got hit by a car last month is actually very recovered. He's a little slower and still limps, but he's almost back to normal. No thanks to Noah, who apparently trimmed his whiskers, again, this past week.

David is working like a crazy man. We've set some goals for this coming year and they require that he start billing as much as he can, so he's taking tons of jobs and working nights and Saturdays. He's a great provider and I'm really grateful that he works so hard. I have a surgery again on Wednesday (a laparoscopy to see if the endometriosis is still alive) and he's trying to get work in so he can be available for that. I am so lucky to have my Grumpilicious.

As for me, I'm fine. I'm writing a lot, thinking a lot, praying a lot. Trying to sing more. Trying to figure out my purpose in life.

Tonight I'm making that fabulous 5 minute bread I posted a while back to go with Ben's lasagna and we're cutting out Christmas cookies. Yay food!

quotes of the day

John F. Kennedy: “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

 

Molly Ivins: “The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.”

 

Meg Greenfield: “Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing givesrise to stiff objections.”

So, it was short lived, but at least I have pumpkin

Whatever that feeling was, it’s gone now.  I guess it was the eye of the storm.  I’m still happy, but stressed to the max.  

 

Dave’s traveling, a campaign I did at work is blowing up in a good way but causing TONS of work/stress, Ben took a paper route (ie, I took a paper route, at least that’s the way it feels after the first week), money management seems like a part time job and for the past two days I have gone until 6 a.m. to midnight or 1 a.m. non-stop to get everything done, and that doesn’t count much housecleaning, and I’m not even touching my own projects.  This schedule may be normal for some of you, but arg, I need my beauty sleep.

 

And speaking of beauty, I need to give my testimony of Weight Watchers yet again, the “church for fatties” —I love it and am resigned and committed paying that $40/month WW “tithing” the rest of my life.  I got my 5% award last night and for the first time am finally living the program and feeling great.  It makes such a huge difference that I’m doing it with a friend (Kim from work).  It is exciting that I’m keeping it up under all the pressure.  Well, I accidentally discovered an amazing (cheap!) secret that’s helping me do that, more later when I have time.  (NO, it’s not meth, silly.)

 

So, even if you aren’t on WW, you should try this cake—the name is longer than the recipe!

 

Fast, cheap, easy, low-cal, fat free (but doesn’t taste like it) yummy snack cake:

 

15 oz can pumpkin

Any cake mix (spice, carrot and chocolate are my faves.)

 

It’s fine alone, but you can add a little cinnamon if you use chocolate or yellow mix.  Chocolate chips are always good (1 point per T!).  It takes a second to mix together and at first you’ll think it is too dry, then you’ll think it’s too thick.  You’ll be tempted to add eggs or oil or something—DON’T!  Spread it in a PAM’d 9x9 pan and cook at 350 for 25 or so minutes, cut in 12 pieces.  Dust with powdered sugar if you want.  They are less than 100 cal a piece (2 points!) and SO moist with a soft texture--you won’t believe there’s no fat in it.

 

Give me some pumpkin love…

What is this quiet?

When life calms down after what seems like a seven-year biblical
plague of chaos, every quiet moment comes with the natural worry that
there must be something that is being neglected. The last week has
been like this several times--no doctor appointments, nothing extra--
just the regular schedule. Drop off kids at 8, go to work, pick up
kids at noon, go home and do chickens and chores. Then there are big
gaps of time where there is no pressing thing until dinner.

Weird. Of course, there are the ever-present things--bills, more
cleaning, the writing projects. I could always log in and do more
work, and sometimes have to. I teach voice on Wednesdays and then,
after Dave gets back from EQ meetings I have pie-n-cry with Elaine in
the late evening at 9 (highly recommended!). I have WW (my AA) on
Thursday nights with friend and co-worker Kim.

The kids fight and make messes and are loud, but for the most part
are rather low maintenance. It is hard to remember to put active
parenting on my list, but I'm trying to. They're fun to hang out
with most of the time.

I'm so lucky, because both Ben and Sophie do their homework after
school almost entirely independently. Chores take some daily
cajoling, but usually it doesn't take too much bellowing. Ben just
got a paper route and is about to go from blue to red belt in Tae
Kwon Do--I'm really proud of him. Sophie has demanded singing
lessons of her own, and though I don't do hardcore training, she
learns songs so well, sings on pitch and has the cutest smile as she
sings. Noah has just started with his own formal chores and is
busily building with blocks and driving little cars around it seems
half the day. He and Lucy love their little preschool and she's
identifying letters and talking wonderfully. Probably helps that she
can hear now. She's still dealing with some pain, but that surgery
for tubes and adenoids was definitely a good idea.

I feel happy, and that's weird. I feel peaceful. I don't recall
taking any drugs. What is this quiet?

NOTE: Hey, since I write only sporadically these days, if you don't
use a reader and want an email each time I post, please email me and
let me know.