new hobby!

i have found a new way to spend my time and waste, i mean, spend our money wisely- making cookies!!!!!!

our new renters just moved in on saturday, and i wanted to welcome them with some cookies and flowers. and coincidentally, most of my cookies ended up being flower-shaped. i wish i had a house-shaped cookie cutter, but alas, i didn't.

so, here's the awesome thing about cookies decorating! it's fun and "easy". but time consuming. maybe it would go by way faster if i didn't have two hungry-for-sugar-24-7toddlers constantly lurking over my shoulder as i am decorating. and it would be nicer if my kitchen was bigger than most people's guest bathrooms. but whatev. you do what you can with what you got.

so i got an awesome sugar cookie recipe from foodnetwork.com, from alton brown. if i were fancy, i would add a link RIGHT HERE. but i don't know how to do fancy things like that. just google 'alton brown sugar cookies' and the recipe will pop up. so that was easy enough, and i iced with royal icing (to make the borders and write and draw stuff) and regular ol' powdered sugar and water icing for the 'flooding' (all cookie decorating terms i learned on line. oh internet, how i love thee!!!) the best thing about using royal icing is that you can put it in icing bags, or ziploc bags, and write and decorate, without using icing tips. i mean, you can, especially if you are going to be fancy and do things like make leaves and flowers, but if you're just drawing, a little hole at the end of the bag is all you need.

fun times!

lily plays favorites

the above is a picture of a bunch of crap that i had shoved into lily's toy pack and play. cause i am a 'shover' and a 'piler' and not a good housecleanerupper. whatever.

yesterday i was hollerd into lily's room, by the queen herself, and i was really surprised to see what i saw. i had put the kids down about 30 minutes before, but i was not surprised to hear that lily was still up. but when i walked in, all i saw was the pile of crap that had been in the pack and play, on topher's bed. so i automatically assumed that topher was in bed with lily. wrong. lily was sitting all clean and pretty in her bed. so where was topher???? under the crap. i looked a little harder at topher's bed, and lo and behold, there he was, burried under a blanket, an assortment of lily's stuffed animals, dolls, tea set pieces, play food, lily's tiara, play clothes, etc, etc.

i started digging my poor son out from under the rubble. i don't know how he didn't wake up when lily dumped the junk on him, or when i was taking it off of him, cause i was just laughing so hard that i was kind of shaking. i put some of the stuff back into the pack and play, much to lily's chagrin. "NO MOM!" she said. i took the stuff out that i had haphazardly redumped in there, and this is what i saw:



ah, jun-lee. what poor topher had to suffer for lily's baby's comfort.

what they're saying

here's another post dedicated to my crazy kids. they've lately been saying the funniest things, and saying them in the funniest ways. there's some not-nice things that come out of their mouths, and some that come out in a not-nice way. and we are trying to correct those things. but when the nice things come out- oh man. so nice!

so the other day lily was in the living room with her dad while i was in the kitchen. regular stuff. then all of a sudden i heard her scream out in her sassiest voice: "i don't want to talk to you right now!" lily is a 16 year old trapped in a 3 year old's body. she has been all about her privacy lately, saying things like "stop following me!" "go away!" topher does not care for lily's rantings and ravings. he just keeps following, keeps lurking, keeps on annoying. such a great little brother!

prayer time is a favorite time of day for so many reasons. 1. it marks the end of the day. 2. i love seeing the kids talking to their heavenly Father 3. they really speak what is on their hearts and it is AMAZING! right now the kids are all about giving thanks, which is great cause i want the kids to have hearts full of thanksgiving and gratitude. lately topher has been thankful for a wide variety of things. and the cutest thing is to hear his intonation, cause he always starts: "thanks for OUR..." and he waits for us to repeat. so here we go:
"thanks for OUR foods, thanks for OUR shirts, thanks for OUR hair, thanks for OUR white (his little pull-toy dog that he named), thanks for OUR dad, thanks for OUR lindsay, thanks for OUR robert, thanks for OUR gabe, thanks for OUR corban (he loves that family!), thanks for OUR Jesus..." so precious!

lily also prays and says "thanks" without adding "for", so her list recently was: "thanks dad, thanks brothers, thanks sisters (which she does not have, but is still thankful for)...etc... thanks bathing suits, thanks papa's bathing suit, etc etc... thanks mom's cookies, thanks mom..." WOW. i made it after papa's bathing suit, and my cookies... oh lily. you were a giant baby and i can't believe i birthed you. one day i will very explicitly explain to you why i should appear much earlier on your list of things you are thankful for!

then today, coming home from our morning outing, topher was asleep in his car seat, so lily and i were having some serious bonding time. we sang some songs in english and korean. then lily said: "songs all done. no more talking." yowsers! sassy little bossy lady. so i obliged my daughter, quite happily, cause i prefer to be quiet in the car anyway. then lily remembered that she loves to hear that she makes me laugh, so she said: "mom, i make you laugh." so she made her dinosaur noise, that she has been making since she was a wee little baby. and it really does make me laugh. always has, probably always will. i said: "lily, you make me laugh!" and that made her happy. then it was my turn to make her laugh. so i made my snake noise. and that made her laugh. more a pity laugh than anything else, but a laugh nonetheless. this game continued for some time, and then lily said: "mom, i had a great day with you. you make my heart SO happy." now, if you watch 'Ni Hao Kai Lan' on nickelodeon, then you know that is a straight-up plagiarized line, down to the stress on 'So". but guess what? i don't care! it was the best compliment of the day. possibly top 5 of my life.

lions, and daniel, and Jesus... oh my

this week at church, the kids learned about daniel in the lion's den. this month's theme was 'do the right thing!', and daniel did the right thing by praying to God, even when he wasn't allowed to.

anyhow, i usually ask the kids, when we are in the car going home from church, what they learned in their classes. lily and topher are in different classes, but all the preschool and special needs classes have the same story (as each other, not the same actual story repeated) every week. and since i hang out with the special needs kids at the 11:59 service, i have the inside scoop of what my kids are hearing. chris and i go to the 10:30 service, and then serve at 11:59, so our kids are in church all morning, and hear the story twice. therefore i have great expectations for them to give me some really biblically accurate answers.

so, on sunday, i asked the kids what the story was about. silence.

"was it about a guy named daniel?" i asked them.
"yeah!" they replied in unison.
"was daniel in a den with some chicken?"
"no!"
"giraffes?"
"no!"
"lions?"
"Yeah!!!" they were pretty excited to have gotten every question i threw at them correctly. so was i.
"so what happened to daniel? did the lions eat him?" this was a harder question, but i was positive they would get it right. i could practically hear them recite the story word for word from the Bible: "My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight..." (daniel 6:21) but these thoughts were interrupted by a very loud and excited topher...
"the lions ate Jesus!"

silence...

i'm gonna have to talk to topher's teachers next week. that's not the same story i read in my classroom. and hopefully none of the other classes read that either.

smash this

as i mentioned in another post, july is a crazy birthday month. last saturday, i had the pleasure of making a smash cake for precious little (gigantic) greyson, my lovely friend erin's baby boy. erin created a cute circus themed birthday party for her lil' one year old man, and it was amazing! she asked for a chocolate cake with colorful dots. easy enough...




except that i am on a 'new kick' where i am trying to make more stuff from scratch. so the first thing i tried was fondant. i usually use the ready-made wilton stuff which is SO EASY to use, but it does not taste very good at all. so i found a recipe to make marshmallow fondant. it tasted good enough, but it was SO HARD to work with. so sticky. not easy to cut. not easy to form. basically, what's it good for then, right? ironcially, with my making things from scratch, i have bought more supplies so that i am free-handing less. strange.

anyhoo, erin's 'order' sounded so simple, but working with my new fondant was a pain in the butt. and i wanted to make a small, but not cupcake-small smash cake for greyson, so i used a meatloaf pan for the cake, cut the cake in half, and piled it up.it made for the perfect sized cake, but i should have cut the sides more to make smoother edges. and it didn't help that it was over 110 degrees here, and that i had to transport the cake to greyson's party. some of my dots were quite a few centimeters lower on the cake when we got there. it didn't look as pretty and polished as i had hoped up-close, but from afar, it looked ok. it probably looked the best smashed up on greyson's face though. he ate the whole thing up, so i am going to take that as a compliment from him :)



then today, we had a 'little' family party for my nephew corban. lindsay's been calling her little boy 'prince' because he likes what he likes and he really let's you know if there is something that he doesn't like. for instance, food. apparently he's a bit of a picky eater. and he doesn't like it when adults leave the room. and i feel like there's another reason she calls him prince, but i can't remember it right now. anyhoo, you can call him 'prince' or 'typical one year old.' 'prince' is kinda cuter. so we went with a prince-themed cake and cupcakes.



(the crowns on the cupcakes are made from melted white candy wafer-things that i bought at michael's, piped into crown-shapes, put in the fridge for 5 minutes to harden, and then they were ready to go. that was pretty easy.)

again, i had a vision for the cake and cupcakes, but using my new fondant that i hate to work with, made the process VERY VERY VERY annoying. and then i couldn't get the smash cake to cooperate with me while i was trying to ice it, so i legitamitely threw two cakes in the trash. fortunately they are pretty small cakes to begin with. i really wanted to have a fondant circle on top of the cupcakes, with a 'quilted' pattern, and then a crown or little dots on top. i thought i could roll out the fondant, cut circles, and place them on top. oh no. that would have been too easy. instead, i had to roll the fondant into a ball on my shortening-smothered hands, smoosh it ever so slightly, then place it on top of the cupcake, and then get my shortening-covered little rolling pin and roll the ball out to be a circle. if i could have taken video footage of the ridiculousness of the whole thing, i would have, but i didn't want to get shortening on my camcorder.

anyway, corban LOVED the icing (from betty crocker. so much for my trying-to-go-homemade stint) and got some in his hair, and on his face, but i think very little of the cake was actually consumed.

(ah, my beautiful nephew!!!! how i love this little guy.)

anyhoo, for all the hours and love and 'stress' (it's icing-a-cake stress, not i-can't-afford-to-feed-my-family stress) that went into these smash cakes, i had tons of fun, and i want to thank erin and lindsay for letting me and my sugar-offerings be a part of your sons' big days! love you guys!

and now i am thinking that maybe i should just make a little cardboard box cake-frame, and frost and decorate the heck out if, and that way it will look clean and crisp, and still do the job of overloading young children with way too much sugar. something to think about...

renters are just horses

i'm feeling kinda poetic with all my metaphors these days...

so, i just need to share our 24 hour journey with renters. we've had renters for over two years now. well, two years in one house, and one year less a month in the other. i find the whole 'landlord' thing a bit stressful, and i don't technically do anything! but should we be able to keep these rentals for years and years and years, that would be great. and if not... then, not.

anyhoo, we had these renters in our mesa house. nice folk. they own a tattoo parlour or two here in the valley. the guy is also a photographer on the side. two businesses that don't exactly thrive in a recession. they were late with their payments once in a while, but always paid, so we were just fine.

but then came The Text, and panic reallyreallyreally wanted to set in, but chris and i tried (prayed) to keep all that at bay. we knew God had a plan. we really really hoped and prayed that God had a plan. we got the text message that our renters had already vacated our property at about 5pm on monday. monday night chris and i sat at our kitchen table and did our psalm bible study. so glad we did, cause we happened to be on psalm 20:

"May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!
May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!" v.1

that's how it starts out. so great. then comes verse 7, a personal fave:

"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."

staying on the horse theme, it reminded me of another favorite psalm which goes a little something like this:

"A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.
We wait in hope for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,
even as we put our hope in you."
Psalm 33:17-22

renters are a vain hope for deliverance! as is money! we said that if we had tons and tons of money, this wouldn't be our issue- but we would certainly have a ton of other ones! we read these verses, gobbled them up in fact, and we decided there were lots of roads to take, we just needed wisdom to know what first step to take.

the next morning chris went to the house, took pictures of it (everything was left in great condition. those texting fools really took great care of our house.) and then posted them on craigslist. if you are looking to rent out your house- craigslist is your best bet! last year we paid to have our places on apartments.com and another site that i can't remember, but both our renters came through craigslist. so chris posted the house at about 12:30pm. he went to meet a buddy for awhile. i laid low at home, still trying not to worry about having to possibly prostitute myself, and my husband (but not the kids! that's just wrong.)

at 3pm, i got a call from a very nice lady who is living out of state right now. she was interested in our craigslist post! we chatted for about ten minutes or more and she sounded so nice and perfect! she was moving out aug 1st, she had 5 kids, her husband had gotten a job at the hospital 5 minutes away from the house, and she had a job at a hospital 10 minutes away. i told her to call chris when she started to ask specific questions about the rental procedure (remember- i am not really a landlord! why am i so stressed then???). chris was out, but as soon as he got home, he e-mailed the lady a rental application form.

at 5pm, we were eating pizza with barb and jerry, and the lady called back. she had filled out the form and e-mailed it back. she asked if it was crazy that she hadn't seen the house but was willing to take it. that's not crazy woman- that's prefection!!!! and she is renting it for the exact same price our previous renters were paying us. yipee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so, that was one of the more eventful 24-hours we have spent in awhile. and unfortunately it was probably one of the most God-saturated 24-hours we've had in a long while too, cause we were in a bind and needed Help. Divine Capital-H Help. we are so weak and pathetic and even insincere in our faith sometimes, and yet, somehow, the creator of the universe still loves us, knows us, cares for us, and helps us out, even when we don't deserve any help of any kind.

thank you God, for being the one who gave the horse his strength and for clothing his neck with a flowing mane. (Job 39:19) i could not have done that. and thanks so much God, for sending us a horse. and in 24 hours to boot!

garbage men and obgyns. same thing?

so i had my annual check up the other day ago. it went fine. once they were able to find my ever-shrinking bossom, i got checked out and no breast cancer. thanks kimchi and all the other garlic-infused foods i injest daily!

anyway, when the exam got to the seriously uncomfortable part, and the doctor had to call her assistant in, i thought about these two women who were doing something i would NEVER EVER do in a million years. and i really really really wanted to ask them what the heck they were doing in this profession. but i couldn't, cause i am a wimp.

all i could come up with, was that their job is much akin to that of a sanitation engineer, aka garbage man. these hard working folk deal with some foul junk, but i'm sure every once in awhile they come accross some serious treasures that people haphazardly toss in the trash. so, even though obs have to do gross things like annual exams, they do have the amazing responsibility of bringing new lives, little treasures, into the world. but that's just ob's, i really do not know what the deal is with the gynecologists then.