Pioneer Day

Our branch celebrated Pioneer Day today, even though it was yesterday. The Elder’s Quorum decided they wanted to have an activity for Pioneer Day, which meant that Andrew and Brent were in charge of planning the activity. Essentially this meant that plans were solidified on Thursday evening and food sign-ups were passed around in church yesterday morning.

Andrew was assigned to come up with some pioneer games for the children to play. He decided on stick pulling, three-legged races, and shadow tag. We had recently purchased several inexpensive scarves at Tarek’s and decided we’d use those to tie up legs since we had no idea where we’d find bandannas or anything else suitable for tying up legs. For the stick pulling, Andrew went out and purchased some broom sticks. You can buy broom sticks here for 50 cents a piece!

Shadow tag requires no equipment so we were well prepared for that game.

When Andrew and Rachel came home from running errands, Rachel picked up a broom stick and started experimenting. She quickly turned violent.

For as wild and crazy as she is, she’s still a girl at heart. I don’t know if you can hear it in the video, but she tells Andrew, “No getting me!” What a girly thing to do, all the while attacking him with all the energy she can muster.

Later, after we dissolved the sword-fighting to preserve our dream of having more than two naturally born children, the broomstick turned into a horse and she galloped around the house shouting, “Giddy up! Giddy up! Giddy up!” I’m half-temped to make a little horse head to put on the end of one of those broomsticks…

(Note: we now think she said “I’m riding both!” instead of “I’m riding boat!” since she kept galloping. Boats don’t gallop.)

After filming Andrew and Rachel goof off, and after I botched the salad I was taking for the potluck, we loaded into the Cannon’s van and drove off through Cairo to get to Zamalek. We hadn’t been to the Tueller’s house since November; if you remember, Brother Tueller is the Deputy Chief of Mission, and is basically directly under the ambassador. When the ambassador is out of the country (like she is now), he becomes the acting ambassador, which is pretty cool. He lives in an awesome mansion of a house owned by the US government and we like to have parties there because, hey, why not?

Anyway, I hadn’t taken a car ride into downtown in so long since we always use the metro. It was neat to see how well I’ve come to recognize Cairo. I could point things out on Manial Island and downtown and in Zamalek, even. We’re seasoned Cairenes now, kind of.

Everyone was in the pool when we got there, so we hopped on in as well. The kids were having so much fun in the pool that they didn’t want to get out to play the games that Andrew had planned, not that he minded because he wanted to stay in the pool, too!

Rachel was a goof at first. She wrapped herself around my neck and every time I tried to pry her off she started screaming. I don’t know why it always takes her so long to warm up to the idea of swimming; she loves swimming. We finally got her off me and into a little inflatable toy that the Cammocks left behind. She relaxed a bit but was still rather nervous.

We even managed to get her to smile.

Want to know where she gets that cheesy grin? Her dad.

Andrew had fun toting her around the pool, creating tidal waves for her, and doing other crazy things with her. I was much more gentle.

She was crying in that last picture with me because she wanted to “See Baby Sarah so bad!” So we took her out and got changed and let her play with Sarah.

Two seconds later she almost jumped back into the pool with her clothes on, so we stripped her down, put her suit back on, and gave her to Rebekah (who is almost twelve) to play with. Rachel stopped being clingy and started having a blast.

We supervised from the sidelines, sipping freshly-squeezed lemonade with fresh mint, flinging other people’s children into the pool, and encouraging questionable tricks to be attempted. Technically I did the sipping and supervising while Andrew did the encouraging and flinging. We believe in division of labour; it gets more things done.

Rebekah put Rachel on an inflatable bed thing, which she enjoyed…until too many other children (ie: one) climbed on board and it flipped over making her fall off. Rachel blew bubbles, kicked her legs, and moved her arms, bringing her back up to the surface where Rebekah scooped her out, following Andrew’s harried directions of,

“PICK HER UP! GET HER OUT! REBEKAH!! PICK HER UP!”

It took a minute for Rebekah to right herself after the flip over, let alone get Rachel out of the water, but Rachel didn’t seem to mind. She came up smiling. I was about ready to jump in, though the whole ordeal took less than 30 seconds, I’m sure.

Then Rebekah passed Rachel off to Lissy and both Andrew and I decided we had better watch a little more closely, since Lissy is only eight. Not that all eight-year-olds are more irresponsible than twelve-year-olds…they’re just smaller.

Elisabeth made the mistake of encouraging Rachel to jump to her from the side of the pool.

She was in and out of the pool for the rest of the time we were there. After Bekah and Lissy and Chloé had all taken turns and were plenty sick of catching her, I stripped back down, got into the pool, and took over. She must have jumped to me at least 100 times, which means she must have said, “Jump ‘gain!” three to seven times that number because that’s what she would chant while climbing out of the pool. I have no idea how many times she jumped to each of the other girls, but it came as no surprise to me when she fell asleep on the ride home.

It was a good, tiring Pioneer Day, even if we didn’t play any pioneer games.

What Rachel did today

[Editor's note: We asked Rachel what she did today when we were putting her to bed and this is what she said.]

• Played [with] doggies [editor's note: she was terrified of the two little dogs the Tuellers have and didn't play with them at all, although she did do a lot of running away]
• Played [with the] Houses
• Went [to the] swimming pool
• Taxi[ed around Maadi] with Daddy
• Hit Daddy [with] sticks

[Editor's note: And there you have the highlights of a 2 year-old's day.]

Desserty Salads

When the dilemma of whether to bring a dessert or salad to a potluck event is presented, Mormons have come up with the perfect solution: a desserty salad. I know of no other religious culture that has a deeper connection to Jell-O salads. At my own family reunions potluck dinners usually end up being about 50% Jell-O. We just love the stuff, I guess.

Since we were having a potluck of sorts to celebrate Pioneer Day this afternoon, I had Andrew sign me up to make a desserty salad on Friday at church.

My grandma Conrad made the most delicious lemon pudding salad. I know I’ve mentioned it more than once…it’s just so good. In North America it’s pretty easy to assemble. All it requires is fruit, lemon pie filling, and whipped cream. Usually my grandma would use the instant pie filling you buy by the Jell-O and a container of Cool Whip. Make up the pie filling, cool it off, add Cool Whip, mix in fruit.

It’s basically a no-fail salad.

Except for here. Here you can fail making anything, I’m pretty sure.

I made the pie filling this morning, while Rachel and Andrew went to get some last-minute things for the party, so that it could cool off while I took a nap.

I don’t know what my problem is this pregnancy. I think it might just be because it’s so hot, but I still feel faint all the time and never seem to be able to recover (read: stand back up without falling over) until I’ve had at least a little nap. I almost tried to talk myself out of having a nap today, but then I almost died making the pie filling (okay, that may be a slight exaggeration) so decided napping was worth it.

Making lemon pie filling from scratch is just about as complicated as making it from a package, I think. Except for trying to separate eggs while not fainting. I threw the last one in the pot half-separated and completely unbeaten so I had stringy white stuff all through the pie filling when I was finished. I couldn’t help myself; I had to sit down, quickly, and had to put the egg somewhere…

When Andrew got home and I woke up, I had him whisk up some whipping cream for me. Whipping cream by hand is no easy task, but it certainly is doable. We perfected our method at Christmastime last year when we were whipping and whipping the darn stuff for what seemed like hours and nothing was happening.

If you hold the whisk between your two hands and twirl it like you’re rubbing sticks to make a fire, you’ll be done in a matter of minutes. Seriously, like 3 minutes…that’s about as fast as an electric mixer, right?

Andrew overdid the first batch of cream, so it was a little more buttery than we wanted, but still creamy enough to work. The second batch went a lot smoother.

We mixed the salad up and it was beautiful…but then after a half hour ride in the car it was less than beautiful. The cream was starting to separate from the pie filling and it was really watery and gross-looking. Andrew put it in the fridge right when we arrived, but when we got it out and put it on the table with the rest of the food a few hours later it still wasn’t looking so good.

And then it sat in the sun for about a half hour while we tried to round up the kids from the swimming pool so we could bless the food.

By the time people started heading through the food line it looked like a bucket of puke.

I took some and Andrew took some, but I really didn’t think anyone else would.

But remember how I said this salad was a no-fail recipe? Apparently it was more fool-proof than I thought because when I went to the line for seconds, Charlene stopped me and asked,

“What’s your recipe for the fruit salad? I have to have it! It’s delicious!”

“Are you serious?” I replied, “It looks so gross! It’s just whipped cream and lemon pie filling, but the cream separated from everything else and it’s not supposed to do that…”

“Still tastes the same!” she said, “I love it!”

And then we talked about how cooking in Egypt always yields interesting results. Things just rarely turn out how you expect them to. Like this salad.

It’s actually supposed to be quite a pretty salad—a creamy yellow base with colorful bits of fruit peeking through—but mine wasn’t pretty at all. But people still ate it, which I wasn’t expecting, and they loved it, which I was expecting…until I walked through the line and saw that the Egyptian sun had transformed it into vomit.

At least Grandma’s recipe is still pleasing crowds, despite the ghastly presentation I made of it.

Flashback Friday: The Big Hole

I spent my early childhood on the Canadian west coast and I still consider that home for some reason, even though I haven't been back for over a decade. The combination of ocean, mountains, and trees is perfect; there's a reason the province boasts the slogan "Beautiful British Columbia." The only downside was that it rained a lot but, truthfully, I hardly even minded.

While it is true that it rains a lot there, it seemed normal to me. Wet is what weather was supposed to be. There was no such thing as an event being "rained out" because if we postponed anything for something as trivial as a little rain, nothing would ever happen. Recess, track and field day, ward picnics, trick-or-treating, fireworks, Christmas caroling, and hiking were all things that happened in the rain at one point or another.

Some rainy days were spent indoors, when the weather got too wild and crazy, but as a general rule every child owned a raincoat and a sturdy pair of rubber boots and would gladly play outside in the nearly constant drizzle. That isn't to say the sun never shines there--it does; but it seems to be overcast and rainy more often than not.

Our backyard was impressively swampy on the most sunniest of sunny days. When it rained, however, it morphed into the perfect backdrop for plastic dinosaurs to come to life. Swamp grass grew much more readily than any lawn seed that we tried planting, mossy rocks speckled the ground, our gutters collected rainwater and transformed it into dangerous waterfalls (at least for plastic dinosaurs), which in turn created turbid, rushing rivers and deep, muddy lakes. We even had a few ferns. I love ferns.

I don't think it's even possible to guess how many dinosaurs are lost in that little plot of land...or how many other toys, for that matter. At least, not after we caught Patrick throwing action figures down the storm drains. Pesky two-year-olds.

To their credit, my parents tried their best to tame our swamp of a backyard. I suppose it was their civic duty, living in a landscaped suburb, to do so. It bested them every time, though, which I was very glad of. I loved our backyard. It was a very popular play place because it was so unconventional. I couldn't see how it could be improved upon, although now that I think of all the mud we must have tracked into the house...

Our front yard was normal enough. There were bushes and trees and actual lawn. From the front, our house looked just like any other house on the block. Entering the backyard was like stepping into a time warp, though. Our backyard was magical.

One of my parents' beautification projects was creating a rock garden under the deck stairs. I believe part of the motivation for this was because they were hoping to eventually lay down some sod and our backyard was altogether too uneven and too rocky for such an undertaking, so every Saturday we would do some rock picking. The little kids would carry little rocks while the big kids and my parents would work at moving the bigger rocks under the stairs where we arranged them in a manner we hoped was at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing.

Sometimes the rocks were too big to be moved. My dad would then break them into smaller chunks with a shovel and then we'd cart them off to our ever-growing rock garden.

Stumbling upon one of these too-big rocks one day, my dad dug around for a while, trying to find out exactly how big the rock was so that we could heave it out of the ground and add it to our garden. He dug and dug and dug, never finding the "end" of the rock. It seemed to me that he dug all day long. Eventually he just started breaking off huge pieces of the rock and we'd tote those over and deposit them over by the rock garden.

He worked at that rock for several weeks, never finding the end of it. I remember my parents joking that they'd found the rest of the Canadian Shield, and it seemed like that could very well be the case. There was no end to this rock. We never got it out of the ground; instead all we ended up with a huge hole in our backyard, which slowly filled with muddy water every time it rained.

This provided no end of amusement, as I'm sure you can imagine. Our swings had never been left so still and vacant for so long.* What's a swing set compared to a gigantic hole?

My friends and I would dance around the hole and throw rocks and leaves and things into it, pretending all sorts of things. Rain dances were performed, pots of stew and cauldrons of magic potions were brewed, piles of slugs were sacrificed. There was a 2x6 stretched across the hole for some reason and we would make believe that was a pirate's plank or a suspended bridge or diving board or trampoline, although I'm quite positive we weren't supposed to do any of those things since they were all probably a little dangerous considering the pool of muddy water below us. We even would coax my friends' dog, Scruffy, across the plank.

Truthfully my parents probably warned us to stay far, far away from the hole and to leave it completely alone...but from all of my experience of raising children and from all the years I spent being a child myself, I can full-heartily attest that those warnings were most dutifully ignored, keeping inline with full childhood protocol.

Luckily no one ever fell into the hole and we only got caught playing around it a handful of times--it was too fascinating to stay away and playing around it was worth getting in trouble more than once for. Apparently. I had never seen a hole or rock so big, at least, not in my backyard.

Soon, though, the hole got filled back up and efforts of improving the backyard abandoned. We were only renting, anyway, and the impossible nature of the backyard was not officially our burden. I think we may have planted a few domestic-looking bushes back there after the rock incident, but those were half-hearted attempts at landscaping.

The backyard remained a lovely Jurassic-theme for the rest of the time we lived in that house, much to my parents' disappointment, I'm sure. But I loved it.

*Actually we may have gotten the swing set after the big hole...I don't remember.

Learning to talk is scary

It's a holiday here in Egypt today. We're supposed to be celebrating the Revolution of 1952, but we're not really sure how to celebrate that so we were plain, old lazy, instead. I called my mom at work today to give her some information she needed before she leaves America--she leaves for South Africa on Saturday and gets to our house on August 4th after she finishes with the Viola Congress, which is in Stellenbosch, South Africa, this year. Fun times for her.

I mentioned that we'd have to try to Skype with her on Saturday, but her plane leaves too early in the morning, so we wouldn't be able to...and since she'd have to work all day tomorrow, that was out of the question as well.

"Tomorrow is a holiday," my mom corrected me.

"Oh, it is?" I asked, "Today's a holiday here. How funny. What holiday is it?"

Right, Pioneer Day. It's not like Andrew hasn't been working all week to plan a branch party this Saturday to celebrate that holiday, or anything. Sometimes I'm a little spacey.

Anyway, because of the branch party on Saturday and because we have no food in our house suitable for making salads or desserts, we decided to go grocery shopping. We got Rachel all situated in the stroller and had just closed the door when Rachel said,

"My daddy till you. My daddy till you so bad!"

She said it in her whiny voice, which echoed in the quiet of the stairwell making her sound eerily prophetic, the way a gypsy fortune teller might sound. Stunned silence followed.

Rachel only says the "k" sound sometimes. Usually it is replaced with a "t" or an "f." Following the rules of pigeon-Rachel, the "t" sound was really a "k" sound. My eyes met Andrew's and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing.

Did our daughter really just say that? Did she just say 'My daddy kill you?'

I went through a few more rules in my head. For example the general pronoun confusion that Rachel exhibits. You, me, I, whatever. He, she, him, her, they, whatever. It, those, they, that, this, whatever. Whichever pronoun happens to slip out first is the one she uses. She often says "you" when she should say "me."

Her "l" ended up blending with the "y" in you, so it was hard to tell if it was actually "l" or "r." She gets those phonemes mixed up all the time, anyway.

And then there's the way she habitually elides or epenthesizes syllables in her words. Tortilla, for example, is either "tia" or "tortitilla." Married is condensed into "marr" or something like that. Thinking of "married" is what helped me figure it out. Married sounds a lot like "carried" and if marriage turns into "marr" then carry turns into "carr," or if we follow the rest of the rules in pigeon-Rachel, "till."

"Do you want Daddy to carry you?" I asked.

"Yeah! Pick me up!" she said.

Phew. So all we had on our hands was a whiny child who wanted out of her stroller, not a demonic, possessed being foretelling omens of death. Worse, of murder. This learning-to-talk thing can be pretty scary sometimes, but it usually ends up being pretty hilarious in the end.

Princess Tales

We went out to get some produce this evening at The Tree. Everyone there loves Rachel; they got a banana all ready for us when they saw us walking past their store...hoping that we'd stop by, I guess. They probably time our visits and know when to expect us since we usually buy our water from them. We can't go too long without stopping by.

Rachel started eating her banana right away. A man who was visiting with some of the employees stopped to ask her her name.

"Dacher," Rachel answered, spewing out little chunks of partially chewed banana on his face.

"Say it again," he asked. No one catches her name the first time here.

She refused to repeat herself, so I told him her name for her.

"هي خايفة/Hia khaifa," he remarked to his friend in Arabic.

Rachel stopped eating her banana to retort,

"I'm not starewsy! I'm eatin' a 'nana!"

That's right! She wasn't "scary" she was just too busy eating her banana. I thought it was cool that she knew what khaifa meant without anyone telling her, though. Sometimes I really wonder if she's picking anything up at all...but she is.

Rachel uses "starewsy" to describe scary things and also to tell us when she's scared. She also says that she's 'fraid of things. Most recently: the dark. That has been making bedtime fun the past few nights. I think we've been reading too many witch stories to her.

She inherited some fairy tales from one of the Lewises, probably Megan, two of which feature witches. The witches seem to be her favorite part, especially the one in Hansel and Gretel. She can't wait to get to the witch part so that she can say,

"Oooh! Starewsy witch! Eat me! Ahhh!"

I don't think she's really afraid because sometimes she'll ask us to chase her around the house and she'll scream the same thing.

"Don't eat Dacher! Daddy's starewsy witch! Eating me!"

She thinks it's hilarious that a witch made a house out of candy to tempt children inside. She also thinks it's hilarious when I use my best witch voice, which probably isn't very good, but which Rachel finds impressive enough.

She's picking up on some awesome vocabulary from some of the stories we've been reading. Tonight while at the dinner table, Andrew did something funny, so we started laughing.

"No laughing more!" Rachel commanded.

Sometimes she sucks the fun right out of the room with the way she negates everything we say and how she's always issuing commands. Not that we actually obey her.

Andrew started laughing louder.

"NO LAUGHING!" Rachel shouted.

Andrew kept laughing and I started doing my witch laugh that I use for the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

"Oooh," said Rachel, "Mommy's cackling! Mommy's a witch! Starewsy witch!"

Andrew and I looked at each other. Cackling. Really? Who uses a word like that, besides the Brothers Grim? It's only used twice in Rachel's copy of Hansel and Gretel, among other choice words like screeching and shrieking. It isn't used at all in her copy of Rapunzel, the other book we have that features a witch.

Both of these stories are rather long and I usually don't mind reading them to Rachel unless I feel like I've read them too many times in one day, which is usually the case. She likes it when I read them because I actually read the words on the page and do voices. That's just the way I like stories to be read and it's how my mom always read to me.

Andrew is a paraphraser, which would work if he actually knew the storyline. He's always backtracking to correct himself.

"And they had a great, big garden with lots of vegetables...no, wait...that's not their garden...that's the witch's garden and no one goes there because they're all afraid of her..."

Rachel gets impatient when he reads to her. She generally doesn't mind that he isn't reading what's on the page unless he leaves out important details or strays too far from how she's learned the story goes. I told him he should at least read through the whole story so that he knows what each page says before he tries paraphrasing. Rachel's a little particular about her stories, so much so that if I stop reading she'll pick up where I left off as if to prompt me.

When Andrew was reading Rapunzel to her this evening, she listened patiently while he bumbled his way to the storyline, was very polite, and didn't correct him on anything...until the very last page.

"And then the prince and Rapunzel found each other and lived happily ever after."

Andrew closed the book with a flourish. Rachel opened it back up.

"And!" she announced, "Getting married, Daddy! Getting married, too. Getting married!!"

Only it came out more like, "Dettin' marred!" and Andrew couldn't understand what she was saying, so he asked me.

"They get married on that page," I explained, "And then they live happily ever after."

He looked down at the page and read the last sentence, "There they were married and lived happily ever after."

Rachel smiled, slipped off his lap, and skipped happily away, dreaming of someday marrying a prince of her own. Or just content that Daddy finally told part of the story the "right" way. Since I'm not sure that she completely understands the concept of "marriage" or the act of "being married" yet, I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

Speaking of the "act" of being married, yesterday was an awful day for me. I woke up feeling so tired and icky and sat, slumped on the couch, most of the day. Occasionally I'd will myself to get up and do something but failed miserably, often. I read paraphrased stories to Rachel with my eyes half-closed. I gave her bread and mustard and processed cheese for lunch. I let her run around stark naked the whole day. I avoided everything I possibly could just so that I wouldn't have to open my eyes.

I would like to thank Mr. Braxton Hicks and Little Miss Cervix-Cervix-Ribcage-Bladder for my acute lack of sleep. I think between those two, and the 5 times I got up to use the washroom (partly in thanks to Little Miss CCRB, emphasis on the B), my potential 8 hours of sleep that night was cut down to maybe 2. That's probably a generous estimate.

When I had less than an hour and a half until Andrew was due home, I popped a movie in for Rachel (who refused to nap), as per Andrew's suggestion (I was whining to him over IM about how miserable I was), and fell asleep.

He came in the house as quietly as he could and carried Rachel off to the kitchen to make dinner. Then he woke me up and held me while I cried and cried and cried about absolutely nothing while dinner sat on the table getting cold. Then Rachel came to join in on the sobbing mess and he ended up having to comfort both of us at the same time. She was crying because, as she put it, "Mine mommy's so sad!"

It was just a hard day. I think some days are just like that, whether you're pregnant or not, but especially when you're pregnant.

Later when I had somewhat recovered from the day and after we'd eaten dinner, and after he forced me to get dressed and dragged me out of the house to go on a walk, and after we got home from that and Rachel was put to bed, Andrew kissed my forehead and said,

"Thanks for being an awesome wife today."

I stared at him, shocked.

"If by 'awesome' you mean I was alive and married to you at the same time then, yes, I was a pretty awesome wife."

"Are you alive? Are you married to me? Then you qualify," he assured me.

I hope that Rachel (and all our daughters, even Little Miss CCRB who ruthlessly keeps me up all night) marries a prince like her father. Someone who makes being married easy.

Someone who can ride home on a hot, stinky bus after a long day at work and, like a knight in shining armor, sneak inside the dragon's lair, slay the dragon known as dinner, banish the witches, also known as dirty dishes, from the sink, and wake his unshowered and still pyjamaed Sleeping "Beauty" by brushing a tangled, matted mess of hair away from her face and bestowing a magical kiss...all the while having a toddler follow him around like he's the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Someone amazing.

Thanks for the happy "so far," Andrew. One day down, the rest of eternity to go...until we reach happily ever after.

The Cinderella Cake

Apparently Rachel has a favorite Disney princess—Cinderella. This is all based on a deck of cards that we have; she has never, to my knowledge, seen Cinderella. We decided to order it on DVD and have my little brother bring it out with him in August, though, just so that she knows what she’s referring to when she says Cinderella is her favorite.

When I asked her what kind of birthday she wanted, she didn’t really know. She wanted a red birthday, with cake, and party hats.

But then her little friend Abby had a birthday and Natalie put pictures of the Nemo cake and the jellyfish balloons and everything fishy and Rachel realized what I meant when I was asking what kind of birthday she wanted. She changed her answer.

“I want a princess party! A Cinderella princess party!”

Frankly, the task of creating a themed birthday party while living abroad seemed a little daunting to me. That’s why we went with the whole FHE-theme. Come, socialize, make Rachel feel special, call it a party. Easy.

The Cinderella cake part was really the only thing I had to worry about. Finding all the supplies for making a basic cake here is…difficult. Finding all the supplies for making a Cinderella princess cake? Even more so.

Andrew likes to say “an artist never blames their tools.” I say phooey. While he has a point, most successful artists that I know have a lot of tools, and good ones, too!

We couldn’t find a cheap enough doll around Maadi so Rachel and I headed off to Dar es-Salaam, a big outdoor market with everything from clothes to fruit to Barbie dolls, and battled our way through the hordes of shoppers there until we came to some toy shops and found a Barbie doll for 10 LE.

We had to find icing sugar, which most of the local grocery stores usually carry. It’s risky to purchase, though, because ants are highly attracted to it and will eat through the package to get to the sugar. It’s also tends to be a little more lumpy and a little less powdery than the icing sugar I’m used to working with.

I spent over an hour last night picking ants *grumble, grumble* out of the sugar and finding lumps to smash before I even started making the icing.

Assembling the cake was easy enough. We used a little pan we picked up at Moudy’s for the base of the dress (the same one we used at Christmas time for our gingerbread mosque) and stacked a few cupcakes on top of that.

Icing the cake was another story entirely. The icing was so soupy that it kept dripping down her dress while I was decorating. I eventually just lathered the base coat on and stuck it in the fridge for a half hour so it could harden a bit. It kept falling off the cake completely. Finally it stuck, though, and I smoothed it out the best I could and then added the finishing touches…which also kept melting off almost as fast as I could put them on.

It didn’t help matters any that, while I had remembered to pack all my decorating tips when we moved out here, I forgot to pack icing bags. Cheap rip-off Ziploc baggies just don’t work quite as well. And since the icing sugar is more granular than our icing sugar back home I couldn’t use the tips I was planning on using because the icing wouldn’t squeeze through. *Sigh.*

After 5 hours of killing ants, running back and forth from the fridge to the table, renegotiating rent with our landlord, and dealing with oozing icing, I finally finished the cake.

Andrew was apparently impressed with my Cornelli lace, even though that’s the part that I really needed the smaller tip for, and, besides the stars on Cinderella’s bodice, it was the most drippy part to decorate. Maybe I should have decorated the cake in the fridge…then we could both have stayed cool. Anyway, Andrew took like 20 pictures of the front of Cinderella’s skirt. So funny! With the camera up that close, though, you can really tell how much the icing is sweating. Icing isn’t naturally that shiny.

We went to bed at 2 AM last night, leaving dishes in the sink and a long list of things still to do like mopping the floors and cleaning the bathroom. We decided that we could easily put those three activities off until the morrow.

When I woke up after a long, sweaty, muggy night, I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and get to work. But when I turned on the tap, nothing came out. *Grumble, grumble.*

So we spent the whole morning waterless while I fretted about not being able to clean my toilet before the company arrived. I was so happy when it turned back on. I cleaned the toilet right away. And guess what. No one even ended up using the restroom, anyway.

And we didn’t even eat the Cinderella cake, which is really okay with me because Rachel hardly even noticed when we brought it out—there were so many other things to pay attention to (like the swarm of excited children bunched up behind her). Maybe tomorrow she’ll be more impressed. Or at least notice.

It was fun to make a cake again. I haven’t decorated a cake in a long while…probably because it isn’t quite as easy here. Challenges are fun, but I told Rachel that if she isn’t satisfied with this princess cake that she can have one again next year and maybe we’ll be able to borrow some of Grandma’s decorating things—like a doll pick so that I don’t have to try to shove Barbie’s huge (and de-legged) hips through a too-small hole in a cupcake ever again.

No pregnant lady should ever have to shove a body through a too-small hole 99 days before their due date. It wasn’t pleasant to think about what the future holds while watching the cake crumble…probably I should have either cut a bigger hole or just thought about something different…but it’s kind of hard to control where your mind wanders at 2 AM.

Rachel’s 2nd Birthday

“Happy Birthday, Rachel!” Rachel squealed while running into our bedroom to wake us up this morning.

I was quite amazed that she was awake and happy; we put her to bed late and then she stayed up later in bed, insisting that the dark was scary and that she needed to come out of her room or have the light on so that she could see. What’s there to see when you’re sleeping?

Andrew and I were up much, much later than Rachel, though, and the morning came too fast for us. We were decorating cake, blowing up balloons, and wrapping birthday presents until the wee hours of the morning.

“Should we go open up your presents?” Andrew asked her after she jumped on him too many times.

“Yeah. Presents.” she said, though it came out sounding quite a lot like ‘pencils.’

“Do you know what presents are?” he asked.

“Yeah. Is…is…is…is…is…” she stalled.

“It’s when people wrap up toys or other things in paper so that you can’t tell what it is when they give it to you. Like a surprise.”

“I like prizes!” she said and zoomed out of the room to look for the presents/prizes.

That’s when she found the balloons. It was definitely worth staying up late to blow up the balloons when we saw her big smile.

She had fun batting those around for a while, but we had to move onto presents before Daddy left for school. We decided to let her open them in the morning because they were mostly things that we knew she really wanted…and we figured she may as well get a whole day of playing out of them before bedtime.

She got a little xylophone, which she calls her piano…

A stroller for her baby dolls…which she wheeled around the entire house the whole day without bugging me for attention so that I could actually get a few things finished. Happy Birthday to me…I mean, Rachel…we got it for Rachel. I’m not sure who enjoys it more, though…

She also got some toy cars that Sam left for her as a birthday gift when he moved back to the States. When we told her they were from Sam she got so excited…and somehow got the impression that everything she got was from Sam and nothing was from us. Sam’s cars. Sam’s stroller. Sam’s piano. What a generous little boy Sam is!

We also gave her the accessories and dress that came with the “Barbie” doll we used in her cake. I considered also wrapping up the legs since we had to pop those off, but I thought that might be a little gruesome…

We had a quiet day at home, decorating cupcakes, playing with Rachel’s new toys, and actually taking quite a nice nap after Rachel got too grumpy to be awake anymore. I was hoping all day that going to be late and waking up early would catch up to her and finally at 2:00 PM it did!

When she started screaming and biting the floor (apparently that’s possible) I decided that it was time to attempt a nap. She fell asleep rather quickly and woke up in a good mood!

She was so anxious for her guests to come. We invited the entire branch over for FHE, as well as Rachel’s new friend Elijah. We ended up having the Cummings over, with their 7 kids, the Houses with their 5 kids, Joseph Cunningham, Brother Knapp, and Rachel, John, & Elijah. It was a full house; it was fun to have so many people share her special day!

When it came time to sing “Happy Birthday” we had quite the chorus! 14 children and 9 adults! Brother Knapp came just while we were singing and followed his ears to our apartment. He rapped on the door with a little “cha-cha-cha” between measures and when I opened it up he burst through the door dramatically, singing the last line the loudest of anybody,

“Happy Birthday to you!!”

(Brother Knapp is really fun. It’s obvious why Rachel likes him!)

The Cummings brood then led us in singing in Arabic to Rachel. Senna helwa, ya gameel!

It was definitely nice to have so much singing and not be the only two singing over Rachel's shoulders, although I think she was a little overwhelmed by it all.

When it came time to blow out the candles, though, Rachel wasn’t quite sure what to do. I tried coaching her, but she wasn’t going to blow them out. We’ve been practicing the past few days, pretending to blow things out but she just never grasped the concept. She kept saying that she was going to “blow up” her candle. No wonder she didn’t want to blow on her cake! Eventually I just blew it out for her.

We had cupcakes, Amiee brought ice cream, and Catherine brought caramel-peanut butter popcorn. It was quite the feast!

Rachel had fun playing with her little buddies Rex and Elijah, as well as the eleven older children. I don’t think our house has ever been so noisy. It was fun for a while, but I don’t think I’ll plan on having 14 children…just saying.

Rachel was also honoured to be called to the phone. She got two phone calls just for her! One from Grandma and one from Auntie Josie and Naanii. She was quite nervous to talk on the phone; she’s not really sure how it works and prefers Skype. Still, it was fun to hear some familiar voices…and to wrap her fingers up in the phone cord.

It’s hard to believe our little baby Rachel is two…especially because sometimes I still feel like I’m recovering from delivery. Still. But I guess it’s time to face the facts: She’s not a baby anymore. She’s our little girl. We love you, Rachel!

Inch by inch, row by row

I finally finished the baby blanket I was working on for Miriam. I’ve been working on it for so long! It’s kind of ridiculous. I found the pattern on About.com and thought that because it was called an “easy” baby blanket and was for “beginner crocheters” that it would be right up my alley.

Ha. Ha.

I now think that people who write tutorials for beginners shouldn’t use words like “beginner” and “very easy” because when it isn’t “very easy” it makes the “beginner” feel really stupid.

I’m not even going to tell you how many times I had to unravel and begin again because I don’t even know. Several (dozen) times, probably. It was so depressing.

And then…when I finally figured it out we went to the store to pick up some more yarn to match what I had started. I had a beautiful yellow, pink, and orange variegated yarn that I think is just the prettiest color combination ever…and they don’t have any more of it at the yarn store. They have several skeins of the same yarn in purple and red and blue and green and brown. But not the orange.

To make matters worse, nothing in the store matched any of the colors in the yarn.

I had to choose completely different yarn to work with and it took me forever to even want to make the blanket because I wasn’t okay with that. (I get a little emotional when I’m pregnant, okay?)

But then one day Andrew borrowed the whole set of the Lord of the Rings DVDs from the Houses and insisted that we have a LOTR marathon. I hadn’t ever seen Return of the King and he’s been concerned about that for our whole married life. It was the perfect opportunity to forget myself and get to work.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish during 681 minutes of movie-watching time. Even with all that time dedicated to crocheting (or at least half-dedicated; I did pay attention to the movies, too) I only got half of the blanket finished.

I’m still not convinced that I’m entirely in love with it. It was also a variegated yarn but when it was all balled up it looked like the green and reds were more mixed together. I wasn’t expecting it to look so stripy. I am satisfied with what Andrew calls my “artisanship,” though. I learned a few new stitches and even put the shell border on the outside. And I think it looks a lot better than the last blanket I made (for Rachel). It definitely looks a lot better than the first blanket I made (of which, thankfully, no photographic evidence exists).

I had to have Andrew read the directions to me while I did the corners.

“3 half-double crochets,” he read, “Isn’t a half-double crochet a single crochet?”

Logically, yes. But crochet patterns aren’t logical. You almost need a dictionary to decipher them, even when they aren’t written out in shorthand.

I finally finished it this morning and I’m really excited to put it aside and work on other things on my to-do list. Like cleaning my house and decorating a birthday cake for Rachel.

It took forever to finish. It was literally inch by inch and row by row. Every time I picked it up, Rachel would pounce on me.

“What are you doing, Mama? Making rows?”

“Yup.”

“Hold me. Read me this book!”

“Wait until I finish this stitch…” I’d try to get out before she’d climb up on my lap, covering the blanket, “Never mind.”

It was always a miracle when I could finish a whole row at a time. Usually I could only ever squeak in a few stitches. But I’m done.

5 stitches here, 11 there, several weeks later and I’m finally done.

Flashback Saturday: Deer

Andrew bugged me all day yesterday about what I was going to do for Flashback Friday but I was a little brain-dead, so I did nothing. Luckily, my brother David wrote a post in my stead. He's such a good brother. His post reminded me of a similar story, though, so now I'm doing a Flashback Saturday. Happy, Andrew?

I'm so lucky to have Andrew, truthfully. I was such a hopeless academic--not that I was hopeless at academics, rather I was hopelessly involved with academics. In other words, I was a nerd. Unlike other young men on BYU campus, Andrew wasn't intimidated by this. I have two theories for why this is.

The first is that Andrew is a hopeless academic, himself. In other words, he's also a nerd. The second theory I have about this is that Andrew missed most of my college years by being on his mission so he didn't know how much of a nerd I was.

He didn't know that I was on campus by 7 or 8 in the morning, every morning. He didn't know that I studied all the time and went to bed by 10 at night. He didn't know that I thought that attending a study group was socializing. He didn't know that I read, cover to cover, every single textbook for every class my whole time at BYU. Sometimes more than once.

Even if he did know all of that, he liked me, anyway. I technically graduated before he got home from his mission...but kept taking classes because how would life be complete without extra Italian, editing, and print design classes?

My cousin Michelle, her husband Andy, and me in August 2005

So that was my life at BYU: study, work, study, work, study, work, study. I didn't get asked out until the summer I graduated, just a few months before Andrew got home. And then I started getting asked out all the time, even though most of those dates were absolutely disastrous.

Anyway, there was a time that I lived south of campus, just a 15 minute walk away from the library, which is where I probably spent more time than my own apartment. That, or the JKHB.

I was always on campus by 8 AM at the latest. I always had an 8 o'clock class or work at that time and would usually get to campus early so that I could study a bit. Even though it was a short walk, it involved a rather rigorous walk up a steep hill. In the early morning quiet, I would often see deer grazing in the trees but I didn't think anything of it. Being that close to wildlife didn't really make me nervous. They were deer, for crying out loud, not bears.

One day, though, I decided to head home in the mid afternoon to have some lunch. Usually I had lunch on campus and didn't ever go home in the middle of the day, but this particular day I had forgotten to bring anything to eat or needed to run back home to get something or...I don't know. Something. I had to go home.

I had the hill to myself. No one seemed to be coming or going on campus. I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and was instead probably going over vocabulary or syntax structures or something while I was walking. I felt a whoosh of air.

Huh. Strange.

I kept walking and studying. I felt another whoosh of air.

Huh. Really strange.

I stopped walking and looked up from what I was reading. Whoosh! A deer jumped right in front of my path. Whoosh! Another one bounded off to my left. A whoosh-whoosh here. A whoosh-whoosh there. Here a deer, there a deer, everywhere a deer, deer.

I stood as still as possible hoping that deer don't crash into things, especially humans pretending to be trees, very often while they're bounding across paved pedestrian paths. After a few seconds all was clear. I guess the grazing was just better on the other side of the path.

If anything, this cured me of trying to study while walking, giving me half a chance of looking normal sometimes. Maybe that's why I started getting asked out on dates...