Today WILL be a good day

So I feel like blogging. I think its because I got 7 consecutive hours of sleep last night. Ah, sweet sweet sleep. Its been a long week. A long stressful week. I even got a cold sore. I haven't had one of those since I was in pharmacy school. I got them at the start of every semester like clockwork. Too, too stressful for me. The most recent one is a result of waking up every couple of hours to a baby crying/yelling "Da!" because she can't breathe out her nose. Followed by torturous nose irrigation and nose suckage. I detailed it all previously.

But, I slept from 11pm to 6am. At 6am, Alice wanted to nurse, and kept pulling off to breathe (a sure sign that nose irrigation is in the near future). After some torture, and her being very slippery, but not as powerfully strong as usual, we sucked the nose and left her breathing almost properly. Within 10 minutes of completion she was asleep. And I realized I was awake.

Man, my punctuation in this is horrible, and I don't even care!

So my goal is for the kid to get well enough we can go to mommy and me music time at the church on Friday. She has 24 hours to start eating food again.

My boobs will thank her.

And, maybe she will even eat more baby crack. Her appetite has consisted of "Ooo baby crack! I want some" to within 2 minutes, lets feed Daddy the baby crack. Daddy of course lets her and say "Yumm" Even though I think all those baby puffs are pretty yucky and strangely sweet. I mean, it says sweet potato, but it tastes like sweet potatoes covered in brown sugar. She still sees the container and is all excited about it, but doesn't care to eat.

Here I was all excited that she was nursing less and less often. Then, KABAM!, she got sick and if she could breathe, nursing was all she wanted. She probably has lost weight. Or at least hasn't gained any this week. Even though she ate cookies. (go figure, the only things she wants when she is sick is baby snacks and cookies)

My cooking plan has been modified to deal with all the sickies in our house. Partly because its hard to remember to get thigns ready for the next day. Take last night. I put a chicken and veggies in the crockpot around 12. The chicken had been out of the freezer and thawing in the fridge for 24 hours and was still rock hard. And perhaps people will say, I shouldn't have tried cooking it when it was totally frozen, but I don't feel like arguing about temperatures and cooking food properly in crockpots.

Well come dinner time (6 hours on high later) it looked pretty not done. So I cooked up a vegetarian risotto. Only, we didn't have any corn in the freezer. Shocking I know. I mean, we still have 6 bags of frozen broccoli, but no frozen corn. So I used peas. I also didn't have any garlic cloves, so I used garlic salt in the water (no broth). Lets just say, it was ok, but daniel was pretty sick of it after he are most of his bowl. Just a hint, if you are supposed to use parmesan and mozerella cheeses together, don't switch out the mozerella for sharp cheddar. Its really not the same.

Ok, my brain has been flushed of all thoughts. except i think there is a woodpecker outside attacking the neighbors trees. I would look, but its the east side of the house, and who knows opening curtains might be enough to wake babies. We want her to sleep another 4 hours. Then wake up eat baby cereal, and go back to sleep for another couple of hours. That would be my idea of a good day.

Friday Night Date Night!

So the ward has started something freaking awesome in my opinion. The service committee got people to sign up to sit the kiddos while the parents can go out for an evening. Like from 6pm-10pm. As in, if we wanted to we could have gone to dinner somewhere nice, AND seen a movie.

So we looked to see what was going on in town. And I found out some odd info. Our movie theater doesn't post show times online. Now granted we probably wouldn't have actually gone, but I wanted to see whats in theaters. You know just in case there was some amazing movie that we would want to see. So that idea went out the window.

Daniel told me about "Get Downtown." You know musicians, shutting a street down. Promoting people to wander the 6 block strip that is our old style down town. We looked up the musician line up.

Um lets see there was a guy whose music was described as rock and roll that moved you below the belt. What the heck does that mean? Upon further investigation that means hard rock. I honestly don't get that at all.

The second guy is some amazing trombone/trumpet/something brass player. Sounds better than getting moved below my belt, but I don't know if it would really be enjoyable.

We also had a gift card for Chili's. Its the gift card I won by winning a chili cook off back in January. Yeah, we don't get out much. Partly cause Daniel is really not excited to eat at Chili's. He feels that most restaurants are rip offs and after looking up the menu online he didn't see anything he wanted. Even a little. So we are saving that for Christmas (which is in like 7 days people, so get pumped!).

Yeah we ate Wendy's. The justification? We never eat out, so even eating at Wendy's is a sort of big deal. Yeah for less than $5 we got dinner. Instead of getting dinner for free with the gift card. (Feel free to snot laugh here.)

Then we wandered around World Market followed by Hobby Lobby. FYI anyone that sews, or wants to sew, or knows people that sew: Hobby Lobby has McCalls patters for 99 cents right now! Considering most of their patterns are in the $15 range, this is a streal. I got a pattern to sew my own diaper bag. The free one from the hospital isn't cutting it. And I want a bigger one. One that will actually hold all the cloth diapering junk I have for the day of planes in T - 4 Days, followed by a second day a week later. And speaking of diapering stuff, there is someone stinky trying to climb into my lap.

Churchy things and evil water

So yesterday we had the missionaries over for dinner. Yes, again. We are trying to work on churchy things, so why not have the Elders over once a fornight or so (the plan was once a month, but they were just here 2 weeks ago, so yeah). I made spaghetti. I didn't know what to make, so first I made hummus. It turned out mroe lime tasting than I had planned. Lets just say lime is a stronger flavor than lemon. Its not horrible, but not what I was going for. I also have to brag about the fact that I am trying to incorporate more forms of protien in our diets than meat. So I have been soaking, cooking, and freezing my own beans. Its really handy for pulling out a container and having a cans worth of beans on hand, but without all the salt. Plus, its cheaper. Dry beans and legumes are like the cheapest form of protien. I finally found chick peas / garbonzo beans at Checkers (our usual store) in the "Mexican" section...you know the imported food. I bought 3 bags. Then when I was at Dillons on Mass the other day, they had them on thier shelf. You can so tell that people in East Lawrence are more likely to be vegetarians by the vast number of bean types. They didn't have red lentils (which supposedly makes some killer Indian Lentil Pate) but they had most of the typical beans as well as other varieties in different colors.

So anyway, I cooked up some garbonzo beans. They take alot less time than most of the other beans. And YUM. Everyone likes chick peas. So I made a ton, and when I say ton, I mean a 3lb butter container full, of hummus. Even though its slightly more lime flavored than I wanted, its still yummy. Of course, I told Daniel about it when he called on my break and was implying that he would rather cook a frozen pizza than have a meal that consists of hummus and veggies to dip in it. So I continued on in my cooking ways...

I made a cake in a crockpot. I should have cooked it 2 hours like recommended, but it was so done on the edges, I didn't want it to overcook. It sank in the middle, making Daniel laugh, and causing me to heat up some frosting and pour on chocolate goo. He said it tasted like the Aussie version of "pudding"which is pretty much undercooked brownies. The actual definition is a mass usually containing flour. He says that technically raw ground meat is pudding. Its just not in the usually category...um yeah, thats not pudding.

I finally decided on spaghetti, which ended up beign one of the Elder's favorites. I would say his name, but I really really try and not learn names. Ok, fine its Nielson, but he has been here for about 6 months, so its excuseable. In fact this might be the only area he has ever served in...I'm not sure. So i used up the leftovers in the fridge and wala, spaghetti and sauce. I also discovered we have no serving dishes. We have plates and cooking pans, but no serving dishes. Have you ever served a really big plate of spaghetti as the food in the middle of the table? I have. It was sort of messy, but the tablecloth needs washed anyway. Speaking of which, Tablecloths make ghetto tables look much nicer. We just need cloth napkins. Those are an expensive investment though, so thats an eventually thing.

I paid bills today. I hate the water bill. Not just because it keeps going up, but because the "Sewer" charge has been more than twice the water charge. So annoying. Thats what happens when they base the sewer charge on the water use for December, Jan and February and you have a baby at the beginning of that. Water use was more than twice December's use in January, and in February, while it was lower, it was still higher. I think we are currently using less than that though. Its silly considering we wash cloth diapers all the time, and I have watered the garden (though not in the last 2 weeks) and still its less than when everyones mom and all sorts of relatives I never see come visit. But within 4 weeks or so it dies down because babies aren't as cute once they start being awake, but still can't smile. In the future I say things have to be different, but whatever. No one knows whats going on, or what things will really be like once they have a baby.