Updates

Fifty stripes for me for being lax at my blogging.

Things that have happened this month:

- Submitted my application (and a sizable chunk of our savings) to USCIS to remove the conditions on my permanent residency. 50 pages worth of documents to prove my marriage to Evan is valid raning from birth certificates to Christmas cards. Ah, bureaucracy.
-Kitchen sprung a leak... ripped up the whole floor and base cabinets, fixed leak, tiled the floor, and showered with our dishes for three weeks.
- Claire came to visit. Well, more came to visit Danny-boy, but it was really nice to see her, even if she did have to crash on our couch whilst our house was a disaster zone (see above). Claire: you have to come and stay with us again so we can redeem ourselves.
- Our car died. One year almost exactly after it blew a head gasket and we had to replace the entire engine. It was out of commission for the whole week that Claire stayed with us. It is now fixed-ish, and we are currently trying to figure out a permanent replacement.
- Received a one year extension on my green card, and we are now waiting for my biometrics appointment on Wednesday, and ultimately for USCIS to get around to approving my case... I have little hope of it taking less than 6 months.
- Oliver and I visited Sarah in Austin for 5 days. We jammed every day full of museums, exhibitions, and restaurants. I miss Sarah.
- Spring finally came, bringing with it blossoms, and colds and flu. It was pretty heinous for all of us, but poor little Oliver got hit the worst. We are on the mend, though.
- Watched conference. Elder Holland always gives the best talks.
- Both kids continued to grow faster than we cared to admit. Lena is jabbering away with rapidly increasing intelligibility. Oliver is crawling, standing (both aided and unaided), climbing, and stretching. Oh, and getting heavier.
- Lena got potty trained! Wohoo!
- We finished our taxes. We are still trying to get over our return amount. Hurray for EITC, and kids!
- Evan finished all of his midterms, and is now working on the last of his papers. Tomorrow is the last day of classes, and not a moment too soon. Then finals, and then more school. Yay!

Pictures soon!

Cupcakes

I must not have been thinking straight the day I decided that cupcakes would be a great idea for Lena's birthday party. Usually I hate baking. On a normal day I even hate baking from a box. So, when I decided that not only would I bake cupcakes, but I would bake cupcakes from scratch, I really must have been lapsing in my sanity.

In the week of Lena's birthday I made over 100 cupcakes (and ate at least a third of them, all by myself... I don't even want to know how much butter that was). After a lot of research I decided to go with a recipe from Magnolia Bakery in NYC for their vanilla cupcakes. I had a few trial runs, figuring out along the way that my oven doesn't heat to the temperature that it says it does, and that I need to read recipes properly (one teaspoon of vanilla extract is NOT one tablespoon of vanilla extract). Finally (on the day of Lena's party) I ended up with 50 pretty, domed cupcakes, that, whilst I am sure didn't do the Magnolia Bakery cupcakes justice, were fabulously delicious.

I also made a discovery: I enjoy icing cupcakes. I just used a knife because I couldn't be bothered/was too impatient to pipe. I actually found it oddly theraputic and fulfilling, kind of the same feeling I get whenever I am creating art. It was different, but not necessarily in a bad way. I thought they turned out kind of cute. I forgot to take pictures of them before the party, but did manage to round up a few of them the next day for you all to see... I apologize in advance because the prettier ones got eaten at the party.


Oh yeah... the recipe, so you can all make them for yourselves: Magnolia Bakery's Vanilla Cupcakes
and it includes the buttercream frosting recipe too.

Lena's Happy Birthday

Our little girl is two! We can hardly believe it. We celebrated her birthday twice; once on her actual birthday as a family with her favorite foods (egg noodles and chicken) and cake, and then a little party with some friends the day after. Lena had a wonderful time. I don't think she fully understood what a birthday actually meant, but she did know that on your birthday you have a party, and balloons, and a cake, and you blow out candles, and have fun. I could talk and talk about everything that happened, but that would be tedious. So I will share through pictures instead.

Two candles! Celebrating with family, and grandparents via Skype

Attacking the cake...

Which was kind of disappointing after last year: she spent most of the time trying to
put the cake back together after Daddy stuck his finger in the middle...

And then Oliver wanted to share...

He did a pretty good job of demolishing the cake...

And then Lena decided that Oliver would look good with a cake-hat...

Which landed both of them in the bath. (And as a side note, I love that Oliver can
sit up now and take a bath with his sister. It is one of the things I have
most been looking forward to with having two)

She was so excited about those balloons. When she saw the decorations we had put up
she ran around the house saying "Look! It's beautiful!"

I love her ringlets!

Birthday Cupcake...

And they were delicious, if I might say so myself.

Nathan

Max

And one tired little toddler after everyone had left.

Videos to come!

Maybe The Cutest Thing Ever...

All My Fault

We are (still) potty training Lena. Sometimes we have good days, and sometimes we have accidents. This morning it started out well. Lena was dry all night, and when she got up she politely asked Daddy if she could use her potty. Which she did. Later on today, however she had an accident whilst eating cookies in the kitchen. When I asked her why she didn't pee on her potty she looked at me thoughtfully, and then wagged her finger at me and said "It's 'cause of you!"

Right. It's all my fault.

T Minus 2 Hours

In two hours I get my husband back. This week has been pretty busy for him. Every week is busy, but this week he had two Econ midterms, and then one of his Russian professors (a professor that teaches Russian, but is not actually Russian, just for clarification) sprung a midterm on the class with 24 hours notice... scheduled right in the middle of both of his econ tests. Lovely. So, between revision and his normal (absurd) amounts of homework, Evan hasn't exactly had an awful lot of time to really be home and relax. But all of that is going to change in two hours, because in two hours the testing center closes, and even if he hasn't finished, he will have finished. And that means I can finally clean the glass surfaces in our apartment. One of Evan's little idiosyncrasies is that he likes to solve math problems on our windows and mirrors rather than on paper. I think it helps him to collect his thoughts, and I find it funny and rather endearing. So, I thought I would share pictures of some of the surfaces in our place that have been intelligently graffitied.

Some of the kitchen window graffiti...

And on our linen closet door...

And on our bedroom closet door.

I love my husband. And I'll be glad to have him back, and have our family be back to normal.

That Would Have Been One Crowded Egg

I made quiche last night, and halfway through realized that we only had a handful of eggs left. Minor problem considering it was quiche and all. I promptly sent Evan off to good ol' Smiths on an egg buying quest. Despite the proximity to our apartment, we rarely go to Smiths anymore. I am offended to the core with the exorbitant prices that they charge for their substandard produce, amongst other things (like the distinct wateriness of their Vitamin D - full-fat for those non-Americans reading - milk). After Evan returned, eggs in tow, I was again reminded why we choose to grocery shop elsewhere. Sure, we pay a few cents more for our weekly carton of 18 eggs from Sunflower Market, but at least it doesn't feel as though we are eating genetically-modified eggs from mutant, hormone-stuffed, battery hens, fed and looked after so poorly that they produce flimsy-shelled eggs with pathetically tiny yolks. Anyway, this isn't a rant about my issues with Smiths, I promise. As I was adding eggs to my quiche mixture this happened:


That's right. One of those eggs had two yolks. Now I'm no "eggspert" or anything, but I am pretty sure that is not supposed to happen. I am also pretty sure that the egg white only has enough nutrients to support one embryo, so and egg with two yolk would inevitably become a failed egg. But it is funny to think about the possible scenarios if it did hatch successfully.