This Month in Marc and Sarah History

Feb 2nd- Marc and Sarah go on their second official date. After dinner at a Peruvian restaurant they head to Marc's cousin's house to watch a movie. During the film, Marc holds Sarah's hand for the first time. How could he resist? "The Three Amigos" is such a romantic movie! Marc and Sarah become hand-holding fiends after that.
Feb 3rd- Marc takes Sarah to meet some friends who are in town. He introduces her as, "my friend Sarah". His friends tell him later that night that he needs to do something about that. Sarah did not seem like just a friend. Later that week Marc and Sarah decide that they are officially a couple.
Feb 8th- Marc and Sarah go to Marcus and Rebecca's to watch the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics. On the way there, Marc invites Sarah to Disneyland later that month. Sarah invites Marc to come home with her to Ohio in April. When Marc drops Sarah off that night, they kiss. It's Sarah's first kiss ever. Marc is a player. He's kissed one other girl before.
Feb 10th- Marc comes over to Sarah's apartment. She has a feeling he wants to talk about something serious so she makes excuses about why they can't talk right now.
Feb 11th- Marc comes over again. This time, Sarah agrees to listen. Mostly, she is just out of excuses. Marc lets her know that he is serious about her and hopes to marry her someday. He realizes she is young, so he won't bring it up again until she's ready to talk about it. He just wanted her to know where he stood.
Feb 12th- Sarah decides that if Marc is that serious then she better figure out if she is serious too. She spends the day fasting and praying when she is not in class. By the end of the day, Sarah decides that she wants to marry Marc and if they both feel that way then there is no point in waiting. She calls him.
"Hello?"
"Yes."
"Yes... what?"
"Yes, I want to marry you."
Feb 14th- Marc brings Sarah flowers for Valentines Day and a book, "Ella Enchanted". Marc and Sarah start reading it together. Sarah loves to listen to Marc reading. He does all the voices.
Feb 15th- Sarah's friend, Mary Smith, arrives from Ohio for the winter Olympics. Marc plays chauffeur. Sarah and Mary enjoy Olympic hockey and the sights and sounds of Salt Lake City. Marc keeps dropping to one knee and pretending to propose. Unbeknownst to Sarah, Marc has already purchased a ring. Mary gets to see it before she leaves.Feb 18th- Marc surprises Sarah with a cozy romantic dinner in what will be their first apartment. It is still under construction. The dinner features Sarah's favorite, chicken caesar salad, and there are rose petals everywhere. Marc gets on knee again, but this time he has the ring. He asks Sarah if she will marry him. She says yes, again.Feb 19th- Marc and Sarah celebrate their officially engaged status with a road trip to Disneyland with Marc's family. He reads to her all the way. Like Ella, Sarah feels her life has become enchanted.

Fun February Fotos

Okay, I confess that three of these photos may be from January... but most of them are definitely from this month. Enjoy!

I like this picture of Elijah. I feel it embodies the chaos I experience on a day to day basis.

Since October, the boys have decided that our main front window needs seasonally appropriate decorations. Elijah traced his hands to create winter gloves to hang in the window, and Gabriel drew these adorable anime style snowmen.
Benjamin is getting bigger and oh-so-expressive. He offers more smiles than he used to, but still gives plenty of stink-eyes. Oh, and see that picture in the middle? Yes, that is a chocolate chip. He was storing it in his ear for emergency snacking purposes. That was the day he had his first, and possibly last, chocolate chip cookie.

Aren't these pretty? They are kale chips (Thanks for the recipe Molly!). David John loved these "green chips" but my other boys weren't as impressed. I liked them initially, but found the aftertaste too strong for me. February has been a depressing month in the healthy food arena. I am discovering that I do not like so many things that sound delicious and are good for my body. This month I tried and eliminated the following items from my "Healthy Food Sarah Likes" list: kale chips, sweet potato chips, Greek yogurt, salmon and white bean salad and cauliflower soup. In good news, after years of not getting along with brussel sprouts, we are on speaking terms.
I guess heart cookies are becoming a tradition because we made them again this year and the boys were gung-ho about decorating. We used the cookies to give some of our neighbors "heart attacks" which included a plate of heart cookies, a note about how awesome the neighbors are and several decorative paper hearts. The boys loved sneaking around at night and doorbell ditching. They called themselves "injas" (aka ninjas). They also loved getting to eat some of their own creations. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the sugar in these sugar cookies was on top and not in the batter.

Here is David John in his favorite shirt. He can read it himself, "I am master of disaster!" Yes, yes you are.
While at my mom's house, Gabriel decided he wanted to knit. My mom gave him some yarn. The other boys wanted some too. Boys + yarn = giant spider web. This poor pull-toy caterpillar was the first victim to be caught. The web was massive starting in the kitchen downstairs (it even went in the fridge) and going up the stairs to the hallway on the second floor. It made moving about the house very exciting. I confess to pretending to be Catherine Zeta Jones in the movie Entrapment when negotiating the strings.
"Say cheese," I said. This is what I got. Maybe they didn't know they should smile while saying cheese?
Valentines Day flowers from the hubby. Marc's favorite flower + Sarah's favorite color= Awww. They smelled great too. I sure love that guy.
For our final picture, here is proof that Benjamin is indeed a Ricks. He is eating popcorn off of the floor. He will get popcorn anyway he can, even if he has to steal it, climb on top of the table for it or crawl away while getting his clothes changed. Apparently the popcorn addiction gene is a dominant one.

Reel Life

Some days, I feel like I'm living in a movie. I wish the movie was a fairytale like Ever After or even an action babe flick like Tomb Raider but alas I am living in one of those naughty kids movies. You know the kind I'm talking about. The basic premise is that a person, usually of the male persuasion, who is categorically unqualified to care for children ends up in charge of a brood of highly-spirited kids. There is inevitably a montage of crazy child behavior in which the house is trashed and the babysitter collapses in exhaustion. I could write these movies. In fact, I could produce these movies as a documentary. The events which I am about to describe are all true. They all occured today. If you would like to envision how this would play out in a movie, just imagine it all happening in fast forward with wacky music playing in the background.

Dear Hollywood Filmmakers,
As a mother of four active boys I would like to submit the following ideas for your next inept babysitter genre film. I have to say that I highly recommend the combination of four boys aged four and under. I find that they are able to produce maximum chaos which I'm sure audiences everywhere would enjoy.
Scene: morning; the babysitter is trying to get the four-year-old twins ready for preschool
In stead of getting dressed, the twins are running around in their underwear, whipping each other with articles of clothing. The very fussy 10-month-old, who is cutting three teeth, is following the sitter around clutching at her pants and crying. When she tries to intervene in the clothes fight, the twins dive at her ankles yelling, "Get her! Yeah! Trip her!" Meanwhile, the 2-year-old calls out from the kitchen where he is still eating breakfast, "I peed!" The sitter spins around, nearly tripping, and catches the baby just before he enters the kitchen where there is a waterfall of urine cascading down the booster seat, onto the chair and then down to the kitchen floor. (NOTE: if this scene is in the beginning of the movie, this might be a good time for the sitter to just pass out and fall backwards. If this scene is occurring towards the end of the movie then I can give you the details of how I handled this situation with great aplomb. I felt like super mom... until the afternoon.)
Scene: afternoon; the babysitter has just picked up the twins from preschool and has fed everyone lunch. The baby has just been put down for a badly-needed nap and the sitter decides to use this opportunity to give the other three boys haircuts.
The sitter is half-way through cutting the 2-year-old's hair when she hears the baby crying. She runs into the room to find a guilty looking twin standing next to the baby whose face is covered in what are unmistakably cheeto-dust kisses. The holwing orange-faced baby is put in his highchair and the haircuts resume. She finishes the 2-year-old and moves on to the cheeto-lipped twin. Partway through his haircut, the baby wiggles out of the highchair restraints and attempts a nose-dive onto the floor. While the sitter rescues the baby, cheeto twin escapes, runs to the bathroom and tries to use the shower curtain to remove all of the hair clippings from his body. The sitter finds him by following a trail of hair on the floor. When she returns, twin in tow, to the kitchen she discovers that the baby has crawled right through the pile of hair cuttings and now resembles nothing so much as baby Bigfoot or perhaps a well used Swiffer pad. She quickly finishes the second hair cut and decides she may as well keep going despite the messes. The third hair cut is accompanied by cries and screams and requires wrestling holds and packages of fruit snacks in order to get it done. She bathes all four boys who throw tantrums about taking a bath and cause tidal waves of water to splash all over the bathroom floor. At last they are cleaned and dressed and she turns on a show for them to watch. (This may be a good time for a brief sappy moment before any additional chaos. You may wish to have her gaze at the four of them all sitting together on the couch, arms on each other's shoulders. They really are adorable boys.)
With the boys thus occupied, the sitter gets to work on cleaning up all of the hair messes. While she is busy vacuuming the hair off of the shower curtain she hears wild laughter from the living room. She rushes in to find all three of the older boys crawling around with a crayon in each hand, drawing as they go. The wood floors are completely covered in red, blue, green, purple and orange crayola. The baby is laughing too, a crayon dangling out of his mouth like some kind of bizarre cigar. She confiscates the crayons, gets out tissues and demonstrates how they can start rubbing the crayon marks off the floor. Two of them agree, but one twin refuses. She sends him to time out with a glitter-jar timer made out of a plastic peanut-butter jar. Thirty seconds later she hears a suspicious sound. Somehow, the twin has managed to throw the jar with such force and at just the right angle that the brittle plastic of the lid shatters. Glitter, water and karo syrup ooze down into the cracks between the wooden floor boards. Bedding is splattered with the sticky, glitzy concoction. She sends the twin back out to help clean the floors and starts cleaning up this new mess when she hears splashing from the bathroom. The baby has discovered the toilet! and toilet paper! Delightful! She cleans up baby only to turn around and find the second pee puddle of the day. After cleaning and sanitzing the floor, she takes a load of laundry down to the basement to be washed. When she returns the baby is brushing his hair with the vacuum hose brush attachment (There are many possible endings here. The babysitter could have a mental break and start hysterically laughing or crying. The three older boys could pull together and offer the sitter some much needed love and appreciation. The parents could arrive home and the sitter could run away and never return. There is potential for everything from feel-good family movie to horror film. I won't tell you what really happened except that everyone went to bed. Early.)

Please contact me if you have any questions or would like some sample footage.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Compelling stuff, right? If only I could get paid for my starring role...

What's Cookin'

Benjamin is a difficult eater. He has never seemed to get on the solid foods bandwagon. Foods that most babies love, i.e. bananas, evoke such horrible facial expressions that you would think we had given him a pickle or a lemon. I think I've finally figured out the problem. Despite the fact that Benjamin is a Hebrew name and both his middle and last names originate in the British Isles, he seems to believe that he is Italian-American. There are six foods that Benjamin truly loves: 1. crackers 2. chips 3. hot-dogs 4. pizza 5. baked ziti 6. risotto. You read that right, risotto. It's like I'm catering to a mini food critic. Rice? No thank you Mom. Unless you had to stand right by the stove for at least 30 minutes to make it, it just isn't up to my standards. I'll have the risotto with truffles, please.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is twofold. First, I wanted to post these pictures of the picky eater himself. Notice the less than thrilled expression about the apple slices and pancakes I am offering for breakfast. I couldn't resist a second picture just so you can all admire his amazing good-morning hair. I love it!
Secondly, it is a good segue into posting some recipes that I love but can't pin on a pinterest board because the websites I got them from don't have pictures. Seriously? Pinterest can't find a work-around for this, like pinning the site and then adding your own picture? Anyway, it is just too much work to go to my bookmarks menu, find the recipe folder and then click on the tab for the recipe I want. Instead, I decided to actually make the recipe, photograph the results, post the photos and recipes to my blogs and THEN pin it. Much easier.
Baked Ham With Bourbon Brown Sugar Glaze (from Reader's Digest)

Ingredients

• 1 fully cooked, bone-in, shank-portion smoked ham (8 1/2 pounds)
• About 40 whole cloves
• 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup bourbon or beef stock
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

How to make it

• Preheat oven to 325°F. Remove skin (if any) from ham and trim fat. Score remaining fat and stud with cloves.

• Place ham, cut-side-down, on a rack in a shallow roasting pan lined with several layers of aluminum foil. Insert a meat thermometer in center o f ham, making sure it does not touch bone (or test later with an instant-read thermometer).
• Bake ham, uncovered, until thermometer registers 130°F to 135°F, about 2 hours. Meanwhile, combine sugar, bourbon or stock and pepper in a small bowl.
• Remove ham from oven and brush one-third of the sugar mixture over the ham. Increase oven temperature to 375°F and return ham to oven. Every 10 minutes, apply one-third of the glaze, until all glaze has been used. If ham browns too fast, tent lightly with foil.
• Ham is done when the internal temperature rea ches 140°F. Let stand at least 15 minutes before carving.

The ham is pictured here with the aforementioned risotto. The risotto recipe can found here. I already have it pinned and it requires so much attention I may only be making it for Benjamin's birthday every year or something.

I also love a good baked ziti. I use this recipe from food network, but I often vary the cheeses depending on what I have and I always add a can of petite dice d tomatoes with chilies to the sauce for a little kick. Mmmmm.

Ingredients

• 1 pound dried ziti pasta
• Kosher salt
• 3 1/2 cups QUICK MARINARA SAUCE, rec ipe follows
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, divided
• 1/4 cup grated pecorino romano
• 1 pound fresh mozzarella, half cut into 1/2-inch cubes a nd half thinly sliced
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch of crushed red pepper or to taste

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt generously, and boil the pasta until al dente, tender but still slightly firm. Drain.

In a large bowl, toss the cooked pasta with the marinara sauce,

1/4 cup of the Parmesan, the pecorino, and the cubed mozzarella pieces. Season with the black pepper and red pepper to taste, and mix until well combined. Transfer the pasta to an oiled 9- x 13-inch baking dish. Cover the top of the pasta with the sliced mozzarella, and sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan. Bake until lightly browned and hot, about 30 minutes. Serve immediately.

• QUICK MARINARA SAUCE
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 medium onion, diced (about 3 tablespoons)
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 3 1/2 cups whole, peeled, canned tomatoes in puree, (one 28-ounce can), roughly chopped
• Sprig of fresh thyme
• Sprig of fresh basil
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.

Saute the onion and garlic, stirring, until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the herb sprigs and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

Remove and discard the herb sprigs. Stir in the salt and season with pepper to taste. Use now, or store covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 2 months.

Yield: about 3 1/2 cups.

Okay, last cooking-related item. David John LOVES to pretend to cook. I am always finding little plastic dishes or plastic pieces of food in the refrigerator and freezer. David John explains that his food was too hot and he was just cooling it off so it could be eaten. His recipes usually sound very interesting like "Pepperoni Soup" or "Hamburger Cake". He is much more relaxed about cooking than I am.

If only I could recline with a leisurely smile on my face while preparing a meal. That would be the life.