Eureka!...?

I've been craving some pumpkin bread lately --need something "healthy and sweet." So today, I finally got to make some. I would have made it yesterday, but I only had two eggs and would be going to the store Saturday (today) to get some stuff anyway, so I waited. Well, I got everything mixed together and threw it all in the oven, quite excited for some pumpkin bread. However, during the one hour that it takes to bake, the house smelled different. I determined it was from the burned stuff at the bottom of the oven (probably rice from the casserole earlier this week). I also noticed that instead of filling out and rising into a nice dome-shaped curve, the bread was dipping inward and sagging. I have never had a problem making pumpkin bread before, so I figured that this new development was simply bad luck. We all can't be perfect chefs all the time, you know. Well, after the hour bake time was up and the bread came out of the oven, I discovered the actual problem with my pumpkin bread: in my haste to bake and eat it, I had forgotten to actually put pumpkin in the pumpkin bread. I know --what an idiot! Who does that? Who leaves out the main ingredient to which the recipe was named for? As Tyrone put it, "it's like leaving the chocolate chips out of the chocolate chip cookies." So, no pumpkin bread for me. Instead, I have sweet, cinnamony-nutmeggish bread that actually doesn't taste bad with a good amount of butter. It also actually makes for a good brick. The loaves came out hard and crunchy/chewy, and instead of bouncing off the cutting board and attempting to roll around like bread normally does when removed from its pan, the loaves fell with a hard, prominent thump --and did not move after that. What fun we have in the kitchen here!

Big Mistake!

So, I thought Elizabeth --being about 16-months-old, would be able to handle sleeping without a onesie on. It's been pretty hot here at nights and we can't just open our windows. The place we live at has an auto-sprinkler system that hits the windows and house, and I'd rather not have a wet floor or window area to wipe up everyday. So, in order to help Elizabeth stay cool, lately I've been skipping the onesie when dressing her after her bedtime bath and just putting a fresh diaper and pair of pajamas on her. She seems to do just fine with it, however today's nap time proved otherwise. I don't get Elizabeth dressed for the day until after her morning nap --I think it's more comfortable to sleep in pajamas than in a pair jeans and a t-shirt. Well, I go in her room after she wakes up and start going through her dresser drawers to find her some clothes for the day, and she chats about whatever in her crib. I pick out her clothes and look up and there it is in the corner of the crib: Elizabeth's diaper. I go over to her and lift up her nightgown and see a bare bottom mooning me. She'd taken that stupid diaper off at some point during her two-hour nap time, and you can imagine the dread. What is wet?--the sheet, blankets, what clothes she has on, etc. So, out she goes to get a new diaper on and get dressed. Then, I go back to her room for damage control. Everything must go into the wash. Turns out she wet the bed in two places, so I washed her mattress up with some 409 cleaner and let it air out. Such a poptart for a daughter! The diaper she took off wasn't even very wet, so it wasn't like it was an uncomfortable super-soaker one. Oi. As punishment, she lost her blankie for the remainder of the morning (it needed to be washed anyway since it too was in the wet crib).

Picture Time!

We took Elizabeth's 1-year photos earlier this summer, but because they took so long to print, we never got them out to the grandparents until a week or so ago. (If any of the grandparents read this and still haven't gotten the pictures, let us know. They were supposed to be delivered.) Technically, Elizabeth is 14-months-old in these photos. We wanted outdoor shots of her, because she is a spring baby. However, the weather here in Rexburg is too cold in May and then it rained all June. So, we did the best we can. She wouldn't stop moving, and in half the photos there's a motion blur going on with her hands or feet. We decided that that was just Elizabeth's personality showing through though. She is always on the go. I'm only posting two of her four portraits here. We put her in blue so it would contrast the outdoor colors. (I know pink would do the same job, but she looks so nice in blue and it matches her eyes. Some people think girls should always wear pink in pictures, but I disagree.) We had a difficult time getting Elizabeth to smile, because she didn't nap that afternoon thanks to Church. She was tired and the pictures were taken at sunset in order to avoid too harsh of lighting. So, the photo of her on the bench was the biggest/only smile we could get. She's just a good-looking little girl.