#7

I decided to do a recipe today. This is not the best recipe I have ever eaten, or the most important. I am doing this one simply because Clover asked for the recipe yesterday, so it is already typed up. I am so shallow! Anyway, that being said, this is an awesome recipe!

This is a recipe I first made in Alaska, from the back of the Alber's cornmeal packet. I don't even know if they sell Albers out here. But this recipe was friendly to me when I had no recipes (or very few anyway!) so I have remained faithful to it. I have made it for about 7 years now and see no reason to change. It is scrumptious! And it goes with most everything! This is a very moist and sweet cornbread, so if you like your cornbread dryish and more corn than sweet, don't bother.

Cornbread

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 c sugar

1/2 c cornmeal

1 Tblps baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

 

Mix together.

In seperate bowl, mix:

 

1 1/4 c milk

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/3 c. vegetable oil

3 Tbsp butter melted.

 

Combine the flour mixture and the milk mixture, stirring just until blended. Make 18-20 muffins or an 8 inch square pan (greased!). Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes for muffins, 35 minutes for pan.

 

Try it. You will love it.

#6

We had a lovely weekend and a lazy Monday! We went to Whites as planned and came home at 10:30 Sunday night, completely exhausted. As you should be after all good weekends. Unless it is a good weekend where someone else is watching your kids. 

I am just going to put up pictures and you will get the general gist of the weekend.

Alright, I can't resist captions

These pictures are from Friday before we left. This is the new rototiller in action.

These rocks are from a 3x15 section of the garden. This is why people went west. And why there are stone walls all around New England.

Dirt is a beautiful thing. Accomplished in about 20 minutes what it would have taken Justin days to do.

Dad getting out the big rocks. The sky was so blue and the grass, so green. But it doesn't look it in this picture.

GORGEOUS day

Caleb being young and tough (also avoiding studying for his finals)

Alex and Tori not overly impressed with Caleb's efforts thus far

I LOVE these daffodils! They are double or something. Clover has a patch of them.

I love this picture. He must have been singing or something.

Orianna's skirt after a fun afternoon!

Violet!

A cute little flower that Whites have a lot of on their lawn. They bud bright pink and blossom white.

Picking flowers

Elliott making sure he gets the swing

Gilbert. and mud. They go together.

Cheyenne improving her mind

Spotting and decorating the dried eggs

Oh the focus!

Clover has pretty bowls.

Primrose

Easter egg hunt

Tyring to keep them busy while the daddies hid the eggs in the back yard--Showing their dirty feet

I told them to hug, meaning put your arms around each other. This was cuter.

Mud was a big player through the weekend. It has been a wet, wet spring. And cold. Not pleasant, really.

I don't know. Eggs are exciting!

Evan and airborne Lincoln

So Rilla had to try it too!

Muddy legs

Chocolate egg hunt in the family room.

This was Gilbert with his oatmeal on Monday.

Orianna looking sweet

Lily chilling with her "fat" swimsuit (she wore this all day), a cushy rubbermaid, and goldfish. Life is good.

And now, we need to go to town and get some rubbermaid totes to put Winter things in. After a lowkey day yesterday, I decided at 6:30 to get the winter stuff out of the closet, as well as all the clothes that we don't wear. Clothes that never really suited the kids, things that never coordinated with anything I owned, things that I never was in love with, but that seeemed a shame to throw out, things that we have too much of (Lily had 12 jean skirts and 10 white t shirts, 6 of which had a spot somewhere). Laundry is my biggest bug-a-boo, requiring a lot of will power and motivation. So I decided to make it easier on myself by making room to put clothes away and by decreasing the number of clothes that the girls could theoretically pull out in the course of the day and get dirty. So now my living room looks like a bureau was disgorged into it. Actually several bureaus. And I need to get it all put away or in bags before the kids mix all my semi organized piles together.

#5

 I took a walk this morning--gorgeous! And then came home to a yummy omelet (Justin is so nice!) and a phone interview with SSI for Gilbert. They asked me all the same questions the long application they sent me, (that I filled in and returned) had on it. And they took an hour and five minutes to do it!. I was glad Justin wasn't working today. Seriously, I bet the government could save billions if they cut out redundant paper work. We need an efficiency expert.

After Gilbert's speech therapist, Dad came over to pick up Justin to go to Malone to buy a rototiller to attach to a tractor. (That is a lot of "to"s.) We all had to go out to see Grandpa and his truck and listen to Dad and Justin argue about who was actually going to be allowed to pay for the rototiller. And then we stood there waving them off, feeling a bit like a 1950's family. This was when, unlike that 1950's housewife (who was organized!) I realized that the door to the house was shut. And locked. After toying with the idea of chasing Dad's slow behemoth of a truck with three kids, I spent the next 20 minutes trying to break in our house. Fortunately, Orianna knows how to unlock the door, so once I managed to pry a window open with the help of a grill brush, I just boosted her in. Well, Lily too. She never misses an opportunity to climb through the window. Orianna and Lily always think it is a hoot when we get locked out. Probably because they get to climb in windows. Which happens more than it should. I should get one of those fake turtles to put a key in. Otherwise, they might become addicted to window entry and spend their formative years in juvi hall for breaking and entering. The problem with fake turtles (besides the obvious kitcshyness of them) is that I would lay asleep at night wondering if someone was about to steal our key and open the door. Or if they did just a few minutes ago and that squeak was not just the house settling (I think this means "go to sleep and leave me alone, honey"), but actually the footfall of a psychopathic, door-opening murderer. I don't think my imagination could bear the turtle.

Here are some pictures of my walk this morning. Such a scrumptious morning!

I just noticed the telephone pole making a cross here....

We are heading to Clover and Evan's for the weekend, so we need to get packing!