Conference & Croissant

I have a new semi-annual tradition: Conference & Croissant! I had a lot of fun cooking this weekend. I made pot-au-feu, ham & cheese croissant, pork tenderloin in a salt crust, whole wheat rolls, and lemon tarts! Three days of culinary fun = Deliciousness all around.

My plan was to make croissant Saturday during conference. I started first thing in the morning. However, with all the interruptions of motherhood and the fact that this was my first solo attempt, I didn’t pull the croissants out of the oven until 11:30 p.m.! Josh was still out after the priesthood session and the girls were in bed, but I was in desperate need of sharing my triumph. The croissant turned out looking so wonderful. I called Alan and told him to get on iChat. I hauled up the tray of croissant fresh out of the oven to the computer room and did a victory dance showing off my achievement to a very appreciative audience of Alan, Mom, Dad, Shannon, Greg, Carrie, and some of my darling nieces. When you spend all day cooking you need someone to tell you it looks great. I was honestly almost giddy. I literally did a jig in front of the computer. Josh came home shortly thereafter and we had a delightful midnight snack together. The next day Kate ate a croissant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I thought we would never eat two dozen croissant by ourselves. I shouldn’t have worried.

Conference was great. Service was my personal take home message. I can’t wait to read all the talks. That’s when I get the most out of them.

I have had a lot of fun with Kate’s preschool lately. One of the advantages of living in a big city is having so many resources at your fingertips. A couple of weeks ago we learned about the Wright Brothers in preschool. I found a video on youtube showing the Wright brothers’ first few flights that we watched after the lesson and then we walked over to the Franklin Institute and saw one of their actual planes! Last week we finished a unit on art. We walked over to the Museum of Art and saw paintings by all the artists we had talked about, mobiles, sculptures, stained glass windows, etc. You don’t have to learn from pictures in a book here, you can walk a few minutes and see the real thing. Kate loved the ballerina sculpture by Degas. It is in her preschool book, but once she saw it in real life with the fabric skirt and the silk bow she was in love. All day long when we would pose her and Makenna for a picture she would assume the ballerina pose. So cute.

We found a brilliant new babysitting strategy last week, almost as effective as the iPhone sitter we hired for Valentine’s Day. Last Sunday after the morning church rush, letter writing, and visiting teaching I came home, put Jane down for a nap, went directly to my own bed and crashed. Sometime after I was lost to consciousness, Josh also came and fell asleep. Meanwhile, Kate was on iChat with Alan. They talked for over an hour! Kate read Alan some chapters from Cowboy Sam. I’m sure they talked about indians, cooking, the Please Touch Museum and whatever else rules the world of a 4 1/2 year-old. Then Kate told Alan she wanted to watch Pocahontas. Alan talked her through the process of sharing her screen with him, opening the internet, and pulling up youtube. As I walked downstairs I heard him saying, “now type just-around-the-river-bend.” There was no turning back from that moment on. Alan said that without any instruction she figured out how to pick out videos and play them. He called my phone about 10 minutes later in a panic. The iChat connection had failed so he was no longer sharing her screen. He said, “Your 4-year-old and your 2-year-old are upstairs watching youtube unsupervised!” I went upstairs and found them both mesmerized by a Pocahontas II clip. A few minutes later when I made them get off youtube, Kate pulled up the instant message part of ichat and sent Alan a message: “thank you for helping me find pokahatis”. It is amazing how these kiddos grasp technology. Every day now Kate asks to iChat with Alan.

Josh bought a membership to a gym near our house. He is determined to be HUGE by graduation. All I know is that he comes home completely exhausted and shaky and our egg consumption has skyrocketed. In fact, I bought eggs at Costco this week--7 dozen--because we are going through them so quickly.

I was with my girls at the house of some of our dear friends the other day. We needed to get home for dinner, so I gave the girls a two minute warning. Kate responded with, “Can we have a Dad two minutes because it is much longer than a Mom two minutes!”

Outside of culinaria and conference, the best part of this week was the release of Tangled! It was delivered to our house the day it came out on DVD and we had a great Tangled party: picnic dinner, popcorn, chocolate, & painted toenails. Then we had a Tangled party with our friends: pizza, costumes, ice cream, & a dance party. I don’t know if the girls or I like it more, but I’m just about ready for another Tangled Party. Who’s in?