Ha--that big house is back....

My house is for sale again. Can you believe it?
http://www.cohomefinder.com/p/80501/1717865-12525-Quicksilver-Rd-Longmont-CO-80501.htm

Reasons this won't sell. Again.
0.  Publicly available, easily searchable online estimates of the value of this house are (on homesnap) $189,000-230,000 or so (the same as my house I'm in now) or Zillow, comparable properties are worth $39,000-$80,000 (less than the equity in my current house).  Not only that, every real estate site shows it sold last December for $210,000. So nobody is going to fall for the $650,000 estimate.
1. People who are ready to spend $650,000 on a house want a house that is ready to live in and worth $650,000, or else they'll build a brand new custom place
2. Even if it was fixed up, this wouldn't be worth $650,000.
3. No water rights, so not useful as a farm property
4. No barns, so not useful as a horse property
5. County has insisted this property will never be used in a pot-related industry
6. Stubbornly zoned Ag, so very limited business allowed here, but the building looks like a business, not a house. Not to mention the dirt road won't support traffic of a business use
7. The place was for sale for 5+ years, off and on, for prices ranging from $450,000 and down to $200,000; it's changed hands twice in 12 months and nobody has successfully developed it into anything yet.
8. REALLY difficult to get a loan of any sort on this property thanks to it being gutted
9. Last people who got a change-of-use approved on the big building found it came with a bunch of arbitrary and capricious requirements, including not letting their pigs offend the bald eagles nearby and removing a perfectly good shed for no discernible reason.
10. It looks like a big office building.

11. This is what you can get for about the same price right now in the same area: "Custom built 6 bed, 4 bath, ranch tucked into the foothills with outstanding views and 30 plus acres. Wonderful horse property with eight fenced in acres, and a 1000 sq ft 3 stall barn with water and electricity. This home features heated, 3 car, over-sized garage, walk-out basement, vaulted ceilings, 5 piece master, covered back patio great for entertaining, and a geothermal system that reduces the cost of utilities and keeps the home at a comfortable temperature all year round." On 30 acres. THIRTY.(http://www.cohomefinder.com/p/80513/1718253-5524-W-County-Road-8e-Berthoud-CO-80513.htm)

Or this, for less and an hour north: "In-town acreage w/ room to roam! Come stretch out in this sprawling, updated & nicely appointed ranch home w/ open floor plan design. Boasting 2 master suites on main level, this 5+ bdrm, 4 bth home has something for the whole family. Enjoy the covered back patio while watching family play in the park-like backyard. Retreat to the finished basement for fun & entertainment. Don't miss the insulated detached 30'x40' workshop w/ 2220V service. Country feel, w/ access to everything in SE FTC." http://www.cohomefinder.com/p/80525/1718465-1000-Province-Rd-Fort-Collins-CO-80525.htm

Funny thing was, even though I want to raise my kids in that kind of area (it just FEELS right), just yesterday (literally yesterday), I decided it was good we hadn't been able to buy that place last year because I'm not sure the county would have been easy enough to work with. Boulder County has a downright terrible reputation for being bullies to homeowners who live outside city limits. Nobody wants to work with them, it seems. Of course, nobody complains about when things go smoothly and run well, so maybe the few unhappy voices are all that get heard, over hundreds of happies. I have no way of knowing. 

My concerns:

1. I'm not sure we would be able to get permission to do what we'd want to do with the place even though it's zoned for it.  We would need a change of use permit approved to turn the former migrant worker dorms into a single family house. The property is already zoned for that, but they have rules about how big a house can be in the county, and this building is outside their limits. Never mind that THEY BUILT THE BUILDING. They might still not approve it because it's too big, even though there's no way to make it smaller.

2. They might approve it but make arbitrary demands we couldn't afford. The last potential buyer wanted to turn it into an ag research facility with a pig farm out back, and the land use commission approved that use, but with a list of bizarre conditions that included putting up a six-foot privacy fence (around a 3.5 acre property--that's a lot of fence) so the pigs wouldn't offend the bald eagles half a mile away by the river, and taking down a perfectly good shed (and they didn't give a reason), and making whatever modifications FEMA required to get it out of the flood plain (not just buying flood insurance....), and put in nice landscaping in the back lot--presumably so the pigs would like how it looked in their yard?  So that doesn't give me a lot of hope they would approve 8 kids living there, if pigs were too potentially offensive. 

3. I have tried and failed to figure out what the taxes on the property would be. It might break us if they decided it was a million dollar property and figured taxes based on that.  (Edit: I found it finally--just about $2400 a year, so about double what we pay here--not as bad as I feared).

4. Given their requirements for the yard, I'm not sure we could happily (and affordably) meet their requirements for the house to become a house and get a certificate of occupancy for it.

5. Even though they say homeowners can act as their own contractors and do the work themselves, I'm not sure they actually would let us, even though we'd want to. I'm pretty sure I can build a wall up to code if someone teaches me how (and we were planning to hire a contractor to do that), but I'm not sure the inspectors/building permits people will approve.

6. Kids might scare the bald eagles, and that might be trouble. Apparently those bald eagles are THE important residents of the area.

7. They might not allow us to do what I had wanted: Finish the kitchen and bathrooms, and then finish the main body of the house as 4 giant rooms and use temporary walls until we know for sure where we want to put the permanent walls. 

I suppose if it were even possible for us to buy that place (given the current overpriced-ness....), I guess I would want to talk to the neighbors (all 2 of them, in fancy houses) to make sure the county is reasonable to work with, and also insist the current owners get the change-of-use approved (it costs like $500 to apply) BEFORE we agreed to buy it (or as part of the conditions of the contract).  I wouldn't want to be in the position the current owners are--bought the property thinking they could flip it and make a good buck, and it turns out they can't use it or sell it.

I'm waiting, though. Even though I decided we're not even going there at all, having it hit the market again kind of threw me for a loop. Especially since a friend gave me an entire kitchen a couple of weeks ago--cupboards and all. Even the sink. 

But Tim just applied for a job in Aurora that I hope he gets, and we agreed he was done commuting, so I was thinking if we could find a place, we'd go down there.

But there is so much about that big house that appeals to me. Big sky. View of the mountains. Quiet. Dirt road. Space enough for everything we'd ever want to do, inside and out. The dreams are all there. The practicalities of it may be impossible.

Ah, life. Every time I move on, that house comes back to get me.

Update: What I think they think they're doing: There is a shortage of commercial/warehouse property in Boulder County right now thanks to the pot industries taking it all. Boulder has been adamant that the growth and production of marijuana is more of an industrial operation than an agricultural operation, despite growing plants being involved, because of the intensity of power usage, the armed security required, and the complexity of the process. I suspect the owners of this property are from outside Boulder County and are trying to sell it as an industrial property and potential pot grow operation. Unfortunately for them, multiple realtors have told me the county has made it very, very clear that they WILL NOT change the zoning on this particular property from agricultural to industrial or commercial. So at the moment it's priced as a commercial property would be (probably reasonably). But it won't sell as a commercial property because the county won't change the zoning.

And it's unsuitable as an ag property at that price (given you can get much better ag properties for less) and also because it has no water rights and no outbuildings. Some sites classify it as empty land because the buildings are not in finished condition, but as empty land it would be worth only $80,000 after the buildings were removed (which would be costly). Some sites classify it as farm/ranch property with buildings, which is also not going to happen because there is better farm/ranch land available for cheaper and with finished buildings and water rights. But even sites that list it as a property with a house find the value, in its current condition, is about $183,000-$230,000. And one site gave a "finished and ready to live in estimate" of the property value as $435,000.

So unless they can successfully do what 5 years of potential buyers wanted to and failed to do (get the county to change the zoning to make it commercial or allow pot grow operations in ag zones), the building is not going to sell for anywhere near $650,000. And, in fact, it's probably not going to sell at all. They'll probably either lose it to the bank or have to give it away because truly the value of any given thing is not what you think it is worth but what people actually are willing to pay for it. And 5 years of attempts tells me that this property is actually worth nothing, not even the value of the land thanks to the buildings that stand on them being so expensive to deal with.

Curious to see what they end up doing with it and how long it takes them to realize the trouble they're in, write off the loss (since it's owned by an LLC, I understand this is a possibility), and give the place away. Or trade me for the equity in my own house. I might do that, if the county would let us turn the big building into a house. But that's a big if.

Elijah-isms

Me: "Do you like boiled eggs, Elijah?"

Elijah: "Yes, but I don't like the pac dot in the middle."

End of an era

I have heard over and over from so many, many moms that not long after they had their last baby, they got depressed.  They had just spent a good long time doing a very important thing, and now what?

That might strike me at some point. I've actually been expecting it. Even moms who knew everyone goes through that were surprised that they, too felt it.

So far, though, I've been quite delighted to get rid of baby things (they take so much space!) and baby clothes (a whole closet I can use for something else soon!).

And I feel a lot like I do when we move. Sure things are different, but I love getting to redefine myself and present a new me to a new ward who has no idea who I was before. Moving is a fresh start where I get to define how I am perceived, and that's fun for me.

And my thoughts have not yet turned to a sad spot, or to wondering what next can possibly be as important as having babies. (Nothing, I think?)

Where my brain is going:

--All those things I've always wanted to do with the kids but couldn't because my arms were full? We can do them. Let's go camping!

--I have had a baby either in my arms or in my belly for over 14 years now straight through. And I've been either pregnant or nursing (or both) straight through with no break for over 7 years. Straight. My arms have always been full. I wonder what I can do? I have no idea my capabilities...but I'm pretty aware of my weakness. So I'm excited to discover if I have any superpowers (since everyone has SOME).

--Will I actually be able to keep my house cleaner? That's an interesting possibility.

--I can finish all my quilts and all my weaving projects! Woohoo!

--I can build my website and finish all the preK-eight curriculum I have outlined.

--I can learn to illustrate and finish my little leveled activity readers.

--I have so many novels that have sat untouched for years because I was doing more important things.

--Having babies is only part of the important work we do in parenting children. I'm looking forward to getting to just raise these guys. I want to teach them and play games with them and enjoy them.

--Knowing I don't have to do this again, I'm starting (finally, 5 months after baby came) to enjoy being with the kids just as they are, without planning anything. Having so many has forced me to mother intentionally (else a child actually can go several days without me making eye contact with them, which is scary!), and I'm enjoying that.

--Some day my kids will be big enough that I can travel with Tim. I'm allowed to think about that now.

--I only have 4 years with all 8 kids at home before they start going on missions, so I'm going to enjoy every minute of it that I possibly can.

--I think I can actually homeschool the way I can in my head. Finally. We might actually get that organized and keep it organized.

--The sleep disorder is exacerbated by baby-having. So with no more babies, we might actually get things under control. I don't even really care how late we sleep, as long as we get ourselves off the non-twenty-four-hour sleep rhythm.

--Always I've had to prioritize tiny people over everything else, the whole 14 years I've been at this. But very soon there will be only bigger people, and then maybe I can get some order going here. (Of course, what use will it be to sort the toys if there isn't anyone left to play with them?)

In other words, I'm not looking back with a sense of loss or finishing or sentimentalism.  I feel like I reached the peak of a great mountain, and I can see before me grand vistas of all the life I can have and all the adventures my family can enjoy now that I'm not going to be using all my spoons every day building little bodies. And that's pretty exciting.

I never really was a baby person. I'm the one that cries when someone else has a baby because I know how hard it is to not sleep for 3 months straight. I actually felt pretty done with babies after 7, and only had 8 because of that one dream I had where 7 asked if 8 could come along, too. And I am SO GLAD we had her. So glad I didn't quit at 7. But I'm done now. And the future is looking pretty exciting. There is much work to do and much fun to be had, and I am happy to be going there.

Jackisms

Jack: "Mom. I love church. I love to go to church. I love to ride in the strollit with Eemaline!"

Me: "We have to get ready in 1 hour."

Jack: "I need a jacket-shirt."

:)

I love that. A jacket-shirt. That's a good description of a button-up Sunday shirt!

Prayers answered

I didn't get the main thing I prayed for this month.

But I am in awe of two things:

God is obviously aware of my wants and needs because He provided a bunch of things I have wanted for a long time but wasn't asking for (things that would make me happy but are not absolutely necessary for survival).

I have a whole lot of friends who are close to God, because when He talked to them about what I needed and wanted, they heard him, listened, and acted on it.

That just blows me away.  Both that God cared, and that my friends are such amazing people that when He talks, they effortlessly hear and act.

And I am so grateful.

And also I did get some of the things I prayed for, in addition to the things I wanted but didn't ask for.

So thank you, friends, for phone calls when I was down and feeling very alone (and you had no way of knowing that), for clothes, for eggs, for cupboards, for a piano, for a working oven, for a dishwasher, for a bed. You couldn't know that I wished I had a few pretty tops (for me and for Anda), that my oven would break the day after you asked if I wanted one, that my bed is anything but flat and the mattress is splitting open, that I looked longingly at every piano for sale all month but didn't mention it to anyone.  You couldn't have known I was praying for ways the kids could have their own little places to put their things away, or that the dishwasher door has been jumped on so many times I was afraid it was going to start leaking.

Thank you.

Jack tries to sing "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree"

Jack sings:

"Popcorn on my eyes.
Popcorn on my eyes.
Popcorn on the eyes.
Ice cream.
Ice cream.
Ice cream.
Popcorn on the ice cream.
Popcorn. Ice cream.
Ice. Sicles.
Popcorn. Popcorn."

Jackisms

Today, Jack thought I was holding a book backward. He took it away and said, "No!  That's the The-End.  Read here.  Oh. Wait. _That_ is the The-End. Read here."

Jack says, "Emmeline wants to take mine baba."  Always "mine," never "my."

Today, I asked Jack if he needed a diaper change. "Yes," he said. "Mine diaper is pop, like a water balloon."  I said, "Your diaper is going to pop?"  "Yes," he said. "Like a balloon. Pop."  So I laid him down and changed his diaper and was horrified to discover he was still in his nighttime diaper many hours after he woke up. He had gotten up when I was in the shower and I had forgotten to change him when I got out!  Ooops. And yes, it did feel an awful lot like a water balloon that was about to pop. I can't believe it didn't leak!

Jack frequently says to me, "Mom, I'd like to hold you."  And when he cries in the night, or had night terrors, he refuses to calm down unless I say to him, "Jack, I'd like to hold you." And then he's fine.

Did I just read that?

Delightfully bad translation of an interesting scientific report:

http://www.gazetteherald.com/light-has-restored-memories-in-mice-suffering-from-amnesia-the-silver-ink/126753/

One of the few somewhat sensical sentences:

"The survey sounds somewhat potentially promising but simply because of straight-laced considerations it doesn’t retail for mankind."

Love that.  Somewhat potentially promising. What a great phrase.

Most of the article is like this: "individuals plagued by rights amnesia – exactly where the man or woman shedding access, actually don’t shed their business’s storage memory but will become not accessibile for ability to remember."

Proof that HMH don't understand their target audience

Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt produce some of the best homeschooling courses out there--like Saxon Math. (Not because they developed them, but because they bought them out).

Here is proof they have no idea what they're talking about, though, when they try to talk to homeschoolers.  This is a paragraph from their homeschooling home page: "Summer is almost here, and as a homeschooler, chances are you’re looking forward to taking a much-deserved break from formal homeschooling. But you may also be worried about summer learning loss if you go long periods of time without a lesson." (http://www.hmhco.com/at-home/homeschool)

That was obviously written by someone who has worked with traditional education their whole life and has no understanding of how homeschooling works.

We don't worry about Summer Learning Loss. That's a public school problem. Our learning goes on all the time, in a less structured way as well as a more structured way. When the teacher lives with the students, life has a way of organizing itself so that learning is a constant, not an occasional activity. It's not like piano lessons that you stop doing and you forget. A lot of us go long periods of time without what they are thinking of as "a lesson" already! Homeschooling is a solid, good-quality education, but it doesn't look like they think it does for a lot of homeschooling families.

Plus, all the homeschool moms I know have a sense of what to expect, and we don't worry about it if it takes our kids 2 weeks to get into the swing of math again, for example, if we stop using the book all summer. It's not something we sit around and fret about like public school parents do.

Then, if you read the article (http://www.hmhco.com/at-home/homeschool/homeschool-summer-learning-loss-2015-05-28), you'll find a bunch of neat suggestions written by someone who sat down and said, "What could possibly be educational that families can do in the summer?"  Not a thing on that list is a new idea to homeschoolers. Those things are totally on our radar and used all the time. It actually comes across as condescending instead of helpful.  They are inventing a problem and then suggesting "new" and "novel" ways you've obviously never thought of to solve them.

I really wish they had "professional teacher" instead of "poor mom who couldn't get a 'real' career so she's homeschooling" in mind.  They would get a lot closer to reality.

They also advertise that their materials are accredited (who cares?! Most of us homeschoolers don't trust the system that accredits things, so having a curriculum "accredited" is actually a potential strike against it). And they carry books titled "Common Core ____{subject matter area}" listed in their curriculum options for homeschoolers. That's going to be a really hard sell for a lot of homeschoolers. A different title might help.

I don't know--should I email them and let them know? Or just let it slide? They dont' really care what homeschoolers think anyway. They're just after the sales.

UPDATE (6/10/15):  I was wrong. They do care about what homeschoolers think. They even contacted me to find out more. So I take that back--I am very impressed.

Random ideas from this week

Someone discovered that a dental appliance used to treat TMJ called an occlusal splint actually can cure Tourette syndrome in a lot of people. Somehow realigning the jaw stops tics. Weird, right?

Interesting especially to me because my kid with the worst tics is also the kid with a malformed jaw that needs surgery (eventually).

http://tsa-usa.org/aResearch/gran/2013_walk.html

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We're shifting our sleep schedule forward this week so that we can enjoy the month of June, complete with 4 kids going to three camps in three different weeks.

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Baby rarely cries but she sure yells a lot.

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Sitting around awake all night, I think of a lot of random things. Today I realized that this fall I will have a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, someone in lower elementary, someone in middle elementary, someone in upper elementary, someone in junior high, and someone in high school. In other words, everything.

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And the randomist of all:

I discovered that if you recite the kids' names in alphabetical order, it's a poem!

Anda, Benji, Caleb, Daniel;
Elijah, Emm'line, Jack, Nathanael.

See? Perfect rhymed couplet in trochaic tetrameter (with a grace syllable beginning the second line).

Ten words I hate to hear

"There are some things for parents to do at home..."

For most families, doing little activities together is a nice change up.

As homeschoolers, though, I spend all day every day doing little activities together at home.

The last thing I need is more of my limited time taken up by little activities that I have to do with the kids at home.

Did I just read that?

"Teachers generally support the common core but are still opposed to testing, which isn't really a part of Common Core but the standardized testes, which was put in place long before Common Core, have been adapted to take into account the new standards and method of teaching."

http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/everything-you-didnt-know-about-common-core-n362751

I'm not sure exactly what they're teaching, but I'm pretty sure if testes (standardized, adapted, or traditional) being put into place is involved, it's not appropriate in a classroom.

Evaluating Benj

Getting Benji evaluated to see if we can make school less torturous for him.

Unfortunately, none of the evaluations asked, "Does your child melt down when he doesn't get a turn?"  or "Does your child run when he gets upset?"

So far we know this:

1.  No autism
2. No speech issues that require speech therapy
3. That stupid psychologist who told me I'm just a bad mom and should change religions has since been fired, along with 3 of her co-workers. As she should have been--least competent professional I've ever worked with. She actively modified her behavior to counter any ADD/ADHD and then said he had no attention problems.

So far so good. We'll see what happens next.

What I think:  Benj has no-tic Tourette Syndrome and SPD and is gifted.

This is a controversial, "not real" diagnosis he can't officially get because SPD is now grouped with autism, and Benj doesn't have autism so he will have a hard time getting a "pure SPD" diagnosis because nobody does that, even though it exists.

And the diagnostic criteria for TS require tics of varying kinds even though the TS community all agree that the "behavioral side" of TS is the harder challenge (these: http://www.tsa-usa.org/Education/UnderstandingTSBehaviors.htm) and very real. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever proposed that there is a non-tic TS except me. I think that they misdiagnose these kids as having ADHD, OCD, Oppositional-Defiant disorder, etc. when in fact it's TS. So it looks like ADHD but has a different timbre to it. Similar, but not quite the same, just like stuttering and palilalia are similar, but not the same. Just like SPD and autism are similar, but not the same. They taste slightly different, just like oranges and tangelos taste slightly different and look slightly different but could easily be mistaken for one another.

And the giftedness is hidden by his challenges, which is officially called 2e (twice exceptional) by parents in the gifted community. (SO so so many gifted kids are misdiagnosed with ADHD or autism/asperger's because gifted looks different than people think it does. See this: https://sengifted.org/archives/articles/misdiagnosis-and-dual-diagnosis-of-gifted-children and also this:http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Lind_OverexcitabilityAndTheGifted.shtml).

I know everyone has pushed me (off and on) to put different of my children on ADHD meds for their benefit, and I am certainly in favor ADHD meds for people--I think it breaks shackles. But I have always hesitated to give them to my kids and husband. And I have recently learned that ADHD meds actually make Tourette Syndrome worse. So it was good that we never gave them to my "twitchy" kids (as the TS community calls it) because it would have been a cascade of problems.

So anyway, on we go, waiting to see first what the district concludes and secondly how I feel about that (since their diagnostic criteria includes, I learned today, that the disability, in their eyes, does not exist unless it interferes with how a child functions in a typical classroom. If it doesn't interfere in the classroom, they won't acknowledge it unless you get it diagnosed outside their system and bring the diagnosis to them and force them to recognize it. So that means I'm unlikely to get a good "absolute" diagnosis from them--that's not their goal, no matter how much a child's problems interfere at home or other non-school settings).

Things I want my kids to know: Education

Get as much education as you can.

Also get some job skills.

They are not the same thing, despite what current educational theory says.

Learn how to think (education) and how to type (job skills).  Read the great books and see the great art (education) and learn how to fix a car (job skills).  Analyze political and governmental systems (education) and learn how to budget and do taxes (job skills).  Learn how to write down your ideas (education) and how to copy edit (job skills).

The most important thing that fits in both categories is you must learn how to learn. Also learn how to solve problems. If you can do those two things, the world is wide open to you.

No matter where life takes you, you'll be glad you got as much education as you could (never stop getting it either, even after you go to college. But do go to college.) and you'll be glad if you have some job skills.

Things I want my kids to know: Parenthood

The prophets used to openly teach that people should have a large family (without defining what that meant).  They used to teach that dads should support the family and moms should be stay-at-home, full time parents because raising kids is important enough that someone should be doing it full time.

You don't hear that so much anymore. I'm not sure why. Rumor has it that people stopped listening and rejected that advice, even in the church, so they stopped teaching it. I know it's impossible for families with only one parent, but it was never actually "revoked" for the rest of us.

But the reality is that women don't really want to stay home with their kids. It's too hard and the rewards are highly delayed, to a great extent.

But I want my kids to know that I tried it. And being a parent the way they used to teach you really works and is a good thing. It's not a waste of a woman's time or talents to be a stay at home mother. It's not belittling or degrading or a trap.

It's wonderful. Best thing I could have done with my mind and talents and education and experience and time and money.

And having a lot of kids is hard work, but it's wonderful, too. Well worth it.

I am so glad I followed that "old" advice. It's a good choice I never would have made without the prophets telling me it was a good choice.

The pressure is on, against moms and dads and the old-fashioned way of doing things. It's so strong against stay-at-home parents that many women don't even consider that an option. They don't think they can be "fulfilled".

I still remember the guy who told us, "Well, my wife likes to contribute to our family."  As if creating and raising the family isn't a contribution?

Besides, you can always have a job later. But you can't always have babies later.

So do it the way the prophets say. They know what they're talking about. You'll be glad.

(And no, I'm not going to tell you how many kids you should have either...)

Things I want my kids to know: Tithing. And money. And Blessings

Somehow, a lot of people have got this weird idea that the way God blesses us is with stuff and money.

It's like that weird idea that if it can't go on display in a show or gallery, it's not a talent. Who thought of that?!

There's an oft-quoted scripture that promises if we pay our tithing, God will open the windows of heaven and there will not be room enough to receive the blessings.

And somehow we imagine that all those blessings are little gold coins, like life is some Nintendo game and tithing is an endless coin block we bang with our heads.

The actual scripture is Malachi 3:10: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."  It is interesting to note that most of the times opening the windows of heaven is mentioned in the scriptures, the verse is about massive rainstorms.  So thinking of rain would be more useful than thinking of gold coins. Rain makes things grow, after all. It give us water, which is necessary for life. It's free. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's not money.

The blessings can come in any form--even ones you don't recognize.  You can pay your tithing instead of your mortgage and still lose your house.  We don't get to define the blessings any more than we get to define how God blesses us ever. (But I sure do find myself trying:  if I do my visiting teaching, then you'll give Tim more work, right? If I repent of this one thing, then you'll rescue us, right? It never works.) But even if you lose your house, you can be sure that God will rain blessings on you like a flood.

But they might be other blessings--chances to serve, children, happiness, talents, chances to learn (even though often chances to learn feel like curses not blessings), knowledge, friends, things not breaking, plenty of food, new hobbies, joy, health, etc.  There are a million kinds of blessings--or more--so why would we limit God to giving us money? In fact, God thinks money isn't particularly good for people, as far as I can tell, because He doesn't give most of us as much as we'd like.

So blessings aren't money, and you can't tell how righteous someone is by how rich they are, and poor people are not people who aren't as righteous or forgot to pay their tithing.

But the blessings are real. Just don't think gold coins.

Things I want my kids to know: Commandments

Commandments, as a concept, are pretty unpopular right now.

So of course I have to write about them.

First, though, I have to make it clear that this post might look like I'm saying that commandments are just nice suggestions to make us happy, and I'm not saying that at all. So if I don't make myself clear with the rest of this, know that commandments are not suggestions. They are essential.

Here's the thing about commandments:  When left to our own devices, with perfectly good intentions, we screw things up pretty badly. Add into that the reality that many people do not have perfectly good intentions, and those people seem to have a knack for getting into power...well, let's just say that we can't trust us to run the world and get it right.

We lack the knowledge. We lack the vision.  We lack even the angle needed to get the vision, and the capacity to have the knowledge. We're like 2 year olds trying to design a road system and then use it. Driving, I mean.

But here we are, trying to make a world function. Trying to learn and grow and let other people learn and grow. Trying to be happy.

And just in case our own inadequacy wasn't enough to screw things up royally, we have a little help from Satan.  So of course that makes things even messier.

So God, being a smart and loving father, gave us commandments.

Really, they must be for us. They can't be for Him--He doesn't need them.

So we assume they are for us. And knowing that He has perfect knowledge and that He loves us, we have to assume that the point of commandments is to make us happy, or at least get us on the right path for that.

And He had to make them stronger than suggestions because we aren't so good at following suggestions. What's more, if you look carefully at the commandments, you'll see that they don't just help you, personally, avoid trouble and be happy. They also are the bare minimum requirements necessary to keep us from destabilizing society and making the whole grand experiment implode in just one generation. We are perfectly capable of screwing things up so profoundly that within one generation nobody would have a chance of learning enough to make good choices and get back to Heavenly Father.

Like all children, we are adept at confident chaos and completely inept at humble order.

Even when we try order, we tend to focus it in completely inconsequential places, like toilets and floors, instead of where it matters, like family structure and relieving suffering.

So commandments.

We need them.  Desperately.

We must have commandments in order to not ruin our chances and everyone else's chances of succeeding at what God sent us here to do--learn and grow and come back to Him pure and clean and with the experience we need to have all that God has and use it rightly.

So the commandments are a roadmap to happiness, and they are so important (not just nice suggestions) that God binds us to them with covenants. He is serious when He asks us to promise to follow Jesus, to build righteous families, and to live the gospel. He wants us to be serious about it, too.

But Satan is tricky. So, unable to convince most generations to abandon commandments all together, he has managed to convince many many people that keeping the commandments makes them better than other people. It's like this exclusive club of people who keep the commandments and are therefore "righteous" (which is more like a crown than like a characteristic and a result of continuous humble effort). I used to think that never having had to repent of anything "serious" meant I was better than other people. So stupid.

Really, keeping the commandments doesn't make us better than anyone. And it doesn't make us more important than anyone.

That's not to say don't bother. There are millions of benefits of keeping the commandments:

It spares us pain we might otherwise have.

It guides us to places and experiences that make life fulfilling and enjoyable.

It helps us not destroy society.

It gets us to a place where we can qualify for blessings like eternal marriage and having access to revelation and a constant companionship from a member of the Godhead (seriously--why wouldn't we want that?! If this were a game, it would be the best powerup ever).

It puts us in a position to help other people.

It protects us from dangers and from painful stupidities of so many kinds.

It takes a little off the edge of confusion and darkness life is built to be.

It helps us not hurt other people and destroy their lives. That's important.

It helps us know how to go forward, and helps us know how to counsel other people who want to go forward.

It helps us know what things are good and what things are actually Satan's lies. Remember that Satan is not passively mucking about--he's actively trying to destroy the world and us individually, and he's really smart, and the commandments are like armor, weapons, and road maps to help us  not be destroyed.


Really, the commandments are this wonderful blessing God gave us. We throw them out at our own peril, and society throws them out at society's peril. It is NOT going to lead to happiness, even if it seems like should, for us to ignore or reject God's commandments. That's why he made them commandments and not suggestions. They're really quite vital.

And the reason we want to share the gospel with people? Not to get them into our exclusive "chosen people" club.  We want to share the gospel because we want everyone to have the blessing and guidance and joys that we get from following the commandments. We want them to have the protections. We want them to avoid the pains and sorrows that come from sin. Not that they are horrible, worthless people for sinning, but that Jesus can help them feel better.

Why wouldn't we want to share that? Why would we fight against the commandments? This makes no sense, just like it makes no sense to not repent (as often as you need--I don't know who said you can only repent of something once and then after that if you mess up again ALL your sins come back to you. If that were true, it would be a great way to discourage people from repenting. It's not true anyway. As long as you are sincerely repenting, you can do it over and over, and God forgives over and over. Otherwise if you get an addiction, you're toast, and we know that's not the case. Jesus is big enough for mistakes and sins that are hard to stop doing, too, not just for the easy stuff.)

Things I want my kids to know: Security

When the economy crashed in 2008, we were living in Las Vegas. Vegas was smashed by the downturn and many, many shows closed, including the one Tim was in.

Suddenly, we were without a steady source of income again.

I prayed about that, and told Heavenly Father, "Couldn't we have just a little security? It would be so much easier."

And He said, "Security doesn't come from a job. Security comes from knowing you are on the path that God wants you to be on."

So I was praying about the wrong thing.

Sometimes we're just totally facing the wrong direction, and it's time to turn around and figure out if we're on the path that God wants us to be on. And then, even if it's a really scary path (and they often are scary and dark) you can feel secure because God is in charge. Even if you can't see Him.

Things I want my kids to know: Trusting God; and Things aren't always what we think

In October 2012 I found my dream house. Big place. Totally gutted already so I could make it into whatever I wanted. On 3 1/2 acres but still only 3 miles from the library. Surrounded by open space and farms that, by law, can never be anything but that. Right next to a bald eagle nest. It was everything I'd ever wanted, and it had the bonus of being perfect for furthering Tim's career in the direction we were hoping to take it, including having a second, tiny house on the property that already had the floor plan of a recording studio. It would need minor adjustments to become that.

Last summer, when I was very sick and pregnant with baby 8, the place went on the market, and we were poised to get it--everything we'd ever wanted.

In the midst of that all coming down, I had gotten a blessing that said that God appreciated me asking what our baby's name should be and ceding that bit of my agency to Him, and our baby's name was supposed to be Emmeline.  So then her name was Emmeline. Just like that. I accepted that name and embraced it and moved on. Decision made.

So we had everything turned in about that house, and were already thinking about what it might be like to move. Then at the last minute someone swooped in with a better offer and the house was gone. It changed hands twice since then and is now being remodeled into a barn for ag research and a pig farm.

I was devastated. Completely devastated. I had followed very clear promptings of the Spirit--as clear as they possibly can be--and it was a miracle that there was even a chance we could get the place, and it seemed to right and so sure, and then everything was dashed to pieces.

I admit openly I was mad at God, and I told Him so. I've found that it's always okay to tell God when you are unhappy with Him because, quite frankly, it opens the discussion. Besides, He already knows. It's not like you not praying that is hiding it from him. But turning to Him with your anger--even when it's directed at Him--is better than pretending you're not mad or telling yourself you shouldn't be. Like I said, it's not like He doesn't already know. And, in my experience, God would rather us turn to Him when we're mad so He can help, rather than turning away or pretending we're not mad. He doesn't get mad back (thank goodness--the last thing I need when I'm hurting is the wrath of God. His love is much more helpful).

I told God I was mad at him and so hurt and that it was really, really  mean of Him to lead me to believe I could have something I really, really wanted and then snatch it away like that, and how dare He?!

The answer I got was, "You trusted me with something that didn't matter much to you," (naming the baby) "so can't you trust me with the things that do?"

_______

Another thing that I learned (again) from that house thing:  God gives us instructions, and we obey, and we have this lovely, frustrating need to assume the endpoint of a series of events from the starting points. But God doesn't always have things end the way we think they will based on how He started.  And that doesn't mean we weren't following the Spirit. And it doesn't mean we somehow messed up or missed the mark. And it doesn't mean we were wrong about what we understood we should do. And it doesn't mean God isn't actually in charge or he's gotten a little old and out of touch.

The story we get told is someone felt prompted to call/visit a person and it turned out they needed help. The story we don't tell is that for every time that happens, there were a hundred times someone felt prompted to call/visit someone and it turned out they were just fine and didn't need anything. It doesn't make it wrong that they called, and it doesn't mean they weren't prompted. And it doesn't mean there was no good that came. The only thing that was awry was the expectation.

So we trust God even on the big things that matter, even when He hurts our feelings, and remember that what we think is the purpose of any given prompting might not be. Our job is to obey, not to understand.

Things I want my kids to know: obedience

I'm not really big on obedience. I see no reason to follow rules that are stupid or people who are stupid or systems that are stupid. And I think a lot of rules and systems are stupid, and a lot of people just haven't thought through things very well a lot of the time.

If a doctor wants me to cooperate, they have to explain to me why. And then I'll do it. But if I don't see why, I have to trust a person an awful lot to just obey.

I think God understands that because He has gone to great pains to help me learn to trust him.

So I obey God. Even when what He says doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Even when I don't like to do it.

So I'll tell you: I don't go to church because I like church. And I don't read the scriptures because it's fun, although it has gotten to be more fun as time has gone on.  And I don't pay the tithing because I have extra money and why not?  And I don't tell the truth because it's convenient and natural to me.

Why do those things? Because I need the Spirit in my life, and you can't get the Spirit without doing the things God has asked us to do.

So we obey God, even if we don't obey men, because the results of obedience are so so valuable.

Things I want my kids to know: Hope

Hope is this magical, wonderful thing that makes all trials easier.

A little hope can do wonders.

Every time things got really bad, and a little hint of good that could possibly come would show up, it made everything better.

The trouble is, we often hope for good things that will happen. And then if they don't, we're crushed and sent right back to the depths of despair.

One day, I was feeling down and turned to Jesus instead. Instead of hoping that things would get better, I discovered I had hope in Jesus. This is hard to verbalize because it's not the same as having hope that Jesus loves me. Or hope that I'll get a promotion. Or hope that things will go my way.  It's just this undefined hope...centered on Jesus.

And that has been an enduring light in my life instead of one that goes off when the thing I hoped for didn't happen. I still hope that people will buy Tim's songs. And I still hope that the latest round of advertising will get him gigs in schools. And I still hope that people start hiring him regularly. And those hopes are still dashed more often than not. But the hope in Jesus (not hope that He cares, and not hope that He's going to fix things)...that has given me all the benefits of hope, but without the crash at the end.

It's not something I can explain because it is something I experience that is beyond words. It is just there.

So: hope in Jesus. Find that. I wish I could tell you how to get it. I'm not sure how I did--I just turned to Jesus and asked for it, I think. You could try it.

Things I want my kids to know: Not dying

There have been times in my life when I wasn't sure how I would go on. Things were just too hard.

Then I remember that on my mission I had the realization:  Either we live or we die. And since dying isn't really our choice, we live.

So I'll live through this, too.

Things I want my kids to know: Patience

I can't remember ever having God take away my trials simply because I asked.

But if I pray for patience, those prayers are always answered instantly and positively, letting me get through another day.

One day at a time. One prayer for patience at a time.

Things I want my kids to know: That's what Jesus is for

There was a time in the last few years when I had read enough about people abusing and torturing children (all over the world) that I got really sad about that. How could it possibly be that a God who loves us would send us to a world where people could choose to hurt each other so deeply, and in ways that destroy entire generations of people.

Perplexed and sad, I turned to prayer and complained to God that He let all the babies suffer so much, when it destroyed their entire lives.

The answer I got was, "That's what Jesus is for."

We focus on Jesus being for when we personally sin. And that's important.

But Jesus is also for all the suffering. Not just the little suffering of someone hurt my feelings by accident--even for the big suffering of rape and murder and torture. I had never thought of the atonement that way. Jesus is big enough even for the big hurts. Even for the pain and destruction we do to each other that lasts generations.

God doesn't interfere with our agency and stop us from destroying other people. But He also doesn't leave us alone to be destroyed.

And, granted, He often doesn't "fix" the bad effects, the life-long challenges that come from abuse. But He doesn't leave us to suffer them without comfort.

The atonement is big enough and strong enough even for those horrible, worst-of-the-worst pains.

That's what Jesus is for.

That said, there have been times when I was really suffering from unhappy circumstances beyond my control, and I really wanted to access to atonement for help, but I had no idea how to go about that.

We're always taught that we should use the atonement, but nobody talks about HOW to do that. We get told how to repent, but what if we've nothing to repent of, are hurting and pleading for help and patience and faith and we just need help?

I don't know the right answer to that question. It's not like you can just log in with a free account and put in your password and magically have relief.

But I do know a woman who is new to the gospel who told me that one day she was suffering from numerous mental illnesses and also an injury that wasn't healing, and her therapist suggested she turn to Jesus. So she just talked right to Jesus, as if he were there in the room, and her injury was healed and her mental illnesses helped (not eliminated--that's one of her burdens in life--but better than they had been). She didn't even "say a prayer" the "right" way; she just talked to Jesus and it worked.

I marveled at her simple and pure faith and floundered in my "advanced" knowledge that didn't help me get what she got--relief.

I got a blessing sometime in there that said I needed to lay my burdens at Jesus's feet. I was perplexed--I wanted to. But how do we do that? They were burdens that I couldn't see getting better without going away. And certainly I hadn't picked them up, so how could I set them down? And besides, wasn't the only way to get relief to have God take the burdens away--meaning, in my mind, that God fix the circumstances that have caused the burdens?

A few weeks later, I was in as much anguish emotionally and spiritually as I ever have been, and I saw a little video the church put out of Jesus reaching out to someone and healing them, and as I watched, my own heart cried out "Jesus, that's what I need, too!"

And immediately I felt calmer, happier, lighter. My burden was not gone, but I felt better about things.  It wasn't a permanent lovely never-feel-pain again feeling, but it certainly was a burden lifted, and a new ability to see and wait and learn.

Of course, life never stays the same, and it seems to me that Jesus and the atonement are things we have to access over and over, not just once.  Recently I had a really, really bad day where it felt like my whole life was falling apart and things I thought I understood weren't really the way I thought, and I opened the Book of Mormon and it fell open to my favorite chapter.  I found myself reading Mosiah 14:4-5, Abinadi quoting from Isaiah: "Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

I had grief. Deep grief. Intense sorrows. But through Jesus's suffering, we can be healed, and he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. So I prayed to Heavenly Father and told him that I needed Jesus to bear this grief for me and carry my sorrows.

And that worked, too.

I still don't know if either of those is the right way to access the atonement, but I do know that it works. And not just for sin. Jesus isn't just for sin. He's for all the sorrows and burdens and griefs and hurt us. And it does work. We really can set our burdens at His feet.  I still don't know how exactly that works, but talk to Jesus. He makes it work somehow.

Things I want my kids to know: God doesn't rescue us, but He doesn't abandon us either

When Anda was a baby, she got sick a lot. One time she got a blessing that said God knew it was a bother to be sick a lot, but He wanted her to have a strong immune system.

Over the next ten years, Anda rarely got sick. And when she did, it was milder than the other kids, even when we all got taken out by a particularly nasty strain of RSV.

Fast forward 11 years to Christmas 2014. The day before Christmas Eve, Anda noticed a swelling in her neck. As I always do, I said let's watch and see. It got worse. It turned out she had a strep infection in the tissue around her tonsils (also known as quinsy--it's the thing that killed George Washington). Soon she couldn't open her mouth, or eat, or drink. Quinsy is one of those sicknesses that you can't fight off yourself. The only treatment is to go to the hospital and get IV antibiotics overnight. But it was Christmas and then the weekend...she got a blessing that said she would live through this and feel well enough to enjoy Christmas. And she was, barely. But she spent five days on the couch, insisting she was getting better. Finally I gave up listening to her and we took her to the doctor. By then, the swelling was going down, she could open her mouth again, and she could eat and drink. Her body was fighting it off, but slowly. We got her  course of oral antibiotics and she got better, a few pounds lighter but none the worse for the wear.

The point here is that her killer immune system worked. It saved her life and was actually fighting off a sickness that you aren't supposed to be able to fight off.

What does this have to do with God?  Well, he let Anda suffer as a baby--and she hated it and so did I--so that years later she would be strong enough to live through something much, much worse.

So when I say that God doesn't rescue us, really He does. He just doesn't rescue us by taking away the bad things. He uses the bad things to make us stronger--and that IS rescuing us.

There comes a time in every person's life when things are miserable and it feels like God must either not care or outright hates us because He won't help by getting us out of here. The worst is knowing that He does rescue some people, so you know He can. Sometimes people get a blessing and then get pregnant. Sometimes a prompting keeps them out of a car accident. Sometimes He miraculously saves your baby from drowning. And, maddeningly, sometimes he doesn't.  Even when you know He can and has for other people.

Really, though, God loves us. He just does things differently than we do.

We, for example, expend enormous amounts of energy trying to eradicate disease, poverty, and pain in order to help people suffer less. (And I really believe that we should).  God, on the other hand, strengthens us so we can get through it. He gives us patience. He gives us comfort. And he sends someone to sit and hold our hand while we suffer.  He helps us through and makes us stronger rather than eliminating the suffering.

We, in our eagerness to help people not suffer, would actually eliminate the whole point of life: we would make it easy and pleasant, without pain or effort, but the point of life is growth and strengthening, and you don't get that without pain, suffering, and experience. That's why difficulty, pain, and true suffering are common experiences for every single person in life. EVERYONE gets to suffer. (If you haven't yet, know that you will.)

Even Jesus, suffering the worst pain that anyone on earth has ever suffered, so that He, even, wanted to give up and felt abandoned by God (see, even He had to experience that)--even He was not rescued by His Father (and we have no doubt that God loves Jesus).  But God sent him an angel to hold him while He cried, and to be there with him. And he sends angels to us to hold us while we cry. We can't see most of them, and the ones we can see usually can't fix anything (being other living people), but they can sit and hold us while we cry. And they can use what skills they have to relieve the suffering somewhat, even though it doesn't go away.

Be someone's angel.

Things I want my kids to know:

I noticed that some of my kids read my blog. I think they're scared I'm going to write about them...?

I also noticed they come back to it occasionally to get the family stories again, and to know what I think.

So I'm going to write  few posts of things I want my kids to know. The really important stuff, not just how to cook or fold laundry.

Did I just read that?

This headline has exactly two meanings that are quite different from each other:

"PD: Phone man denies stealing rings in his pocket"

(://www.9news.com/story/news/crime/2015/05/16/denver-police-cell-phone-stolen-gps/27468425/)

I expecting to read an article about jewelry stolen by a phone repair man.  I read an article about a stolen, ringing phone. 

Funny kids

Benj, sniffling and snuffling:  "Mom, my nose is cold."
Me: "Do you mean you have a cold? Or that your nose feels cold?"
Benj: "I have a cold. My nose is stuffy.  When will it get warm?"

I love that the opposite of cold is warm, so the opposite of a cold is warm.

Mothers Day....thinking about mothers again

I was thinking all day about mothers and how the world is against them and sure they're all doing it wrong. How much bad advice we get from people who should know better (like doctors) and worse advice we get from anyone selling anything (like parenting magazines and formula companies) and how much worst of all we're condemned by ourselves for not being someone else.  Or, rather, for not having everyone else's talents and none of their weaknesses.

But here's the thing: God gave people moms. He could have set it up so people had babies like frogs--lay 'em and leave 'em--but He didn't.

And scientists even agree now that just hearing your mom's voice can calm you down when you're unhappy or stressed. Moms are there for the same reason Jesus is (only on a smaller scale because we are not Him): They give us an anchor and peace and direction. The sound of their voice makes us calmer and help us get through.

I've noticed over and over that people who have abusive moms lack this calming, anchoring influence in their lives and they suffer for it. They're more prone to depression and anxiety. They lack a secure space that moms give us.

And here's the amazing thing--it works for all loving moms. It has nothing to do with the condition of the floors, or how you decorate, or if you can't figure how the heck little girls hair is supposed to look.  It works if you went to every baseball game and if you went to none of them. It works if you baked cookies or if you couldn't even figure out frozen pizza.  It works if you actually make stuff that looks like pinterest or if, like most of us, you "nailed it." It works if your hair looks pretty or you can't remember if you brushed it today or if you let your kids fix it and went to the store that way because you forgot. It works if you let them watch movies or use computers, and if you let them eat white bread, and if you can't figure out bedtime despite working on it for 13 years (and counting).  It works if you know everything about parenting or if you managed to have a few more kids and realized that you don't actually know anything.

If you did your best to be a real mother, you are a gift to your children forever. And to their children. It's this amazing thing.

Sometimes we can't find Jesus. Sometimes we can't hear Him, or figure out how to access the atonement. But God didn't leave us alone--He gave us moms, in all their variety.

It's a huge responsibility. It's a huge privilege. Some women screw it up. But most of us do our best and that is enough.

Why do I read about wine?

Why do I read about wine? I have no idea. I just do. First it was a book on the phylloxera epidemic that wiped out the French vineyards in the late 1800s. I read it because it was epidemiology, but on plants. Like all epidemiology stories put in book form, it was a fascinating and true mystery, only heavy on the science and light on the "true crime" (since nature was the criminal).

This time, I was reading "Shadows in the Vineyard," about a sophisticated extortion attempt pulled off by a couple of unsophisticated Frenchmen against the greatest vineyard in the world. Except it was really a book about what makes a great Lord of the Vineyard (they call them vignerons in the book--masters of the vines). The crime was kind of secondary. Or even tertiary. And, having never even tasted wine, that was way down on my list of important things in the book.

It was a great portrait of an interesting man, especially.

But it was also a book that contained some insights that I found important.

First, the portrait of the man pointed out that the greatest vineyard in the world is tended by a gentle, brilliant man who treats the vines carefully, doing for them each individually (and he knows his vines individually) what will help them produce the best possible grapes.

There is, apparently, a cliche in the French vineyards:  "The more a vine struggles, the stronger the vine, the sweeter the grapes, the better the wine."

Given that, the vignerons will plant the vines in challenging circumstances--a little closer together than you'd guess, for instance, so they have to make their own way and struggle to grow.  Why? It makes them stronger, and their fruit is better.

And they do this on purpose, with full knowledge that it's harder for the vines, and that they might not produce what looks to an outsider like a great harvest. But the result is better grapes, even if they don't look giant and abundant, and grapes that are more suited to perfect wine (which, granted, I don't understand at all by way of experience, but in theory I get).

Further, the vignerons know that perfect wine doesn't come from the grapes alone. It comes from what they call terrior: the interaction between the right kinds of vines and the soil they are planted in. Not all kinds of grapes grow nicely in all kinds of soil, and the soil actually imparts character to the grapes and therefore the wine. To have a perfect wine, you have to carefully marry the vines to the exact right soil, and the cultivate them carefully, forcing them to struggle so they'll grow strong. And then even then the vines have to be coddled and cared for--and then they last and produce grapes for 350 years or more.

The vignerons love their vines and call them their enfants and treat them like their own children, focusing on tending to and caring for the vineyard to get the best wines--quality being valued over quantity. They are in the vineyard, walking among the vines constantly, very much in touch with all that goes on there.

Reading about that, I couldn't help but think that we are vines, and Jesus is a master vigneron:  he loves each of us vines perfectly, and knows us well, and he carefully selects the right soil for us to grow in and then doesn't rescue us from our struggles--but is always there, tending to the vineyard and keeping his eyes and hands on us to intervene if necessary, but letting us struggle so that we can be strong, so that our fruit can be sweet and our wine good.

Did I just read that?

"Kansas gets 4 years for beheading man with guitar string; prosecutors cite problems with case"  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/06/kansas-gets-4-years-for-beheading-man-with-guitar-string-prosecutors-cite/?intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork

I would cite problems with that headline.

Unless they really did put a state in jail for 4 years. Or the band (that would explain the guitar string). And if that's the case, 4 years seems kind of short...

Candy bars!

Making candy all month--kind of obsessively, as I got a bunch a new ideas I had to try--led me slowly but steadily to a new discovery:  You can make candy bars at home.

Of course, that seems obvious. If you can make chocolates at home, why not candy bars?  Duh.

The thing that delighted me is that candy bars are actually a hundred times easier than making chocolates.  Why? You don't have to form them one at a time. You spread all the ingredients on a cookie sheet, let them set up, and then cut them into bars.

And they are Oh. So. Good.

Kind of amazingly good. Like we all made ourselves sick eating so many because you just can't stop.

The other thing I love is they completely satisfy my need to experiment in the kitchen. (What, you mean you haven't noticed that I LOVE experimenting in the kitchen? And tend to go overboard testing new ideas?)  Candy bars are uniquely creatively satisfying because you can combine ingredients in so many, many ways.

My first attempt was a brand-new-invention candy bar (let's call them Mister Tim Bars for now because they include all his favorite treats).  I layered graham crackers, homemade marshmallow, and peanut butter filling, and topped it off with milk chocolate. And they were to die for. I made one cookie sheet worth (that's 72 candy bars, each 1"x 3" because I have a big cookie sheet), and they disappeared super fast--before I could even finish covering them completely in chocolate!

The second go was supposed to be Twix clones, but when we did a taste test the homemade version was so good that the real Twix bars tasted yucky in comparison--and Twix are one of my all-time favorite candy bars! I once again ate so many I made myself sick.

And there are so SO many options.

Oh, what? You want recipes?  (Oh my--this is so easy it's almost embarrassing).

The idea that so appeals to me about candy bars is you can choose any flavor coating that they make baking chips of and fill them with any combination of fillings.  Mix and match to your heart's delight.

The basic process:

1. Get a big cookie sheet (mine is 12" x 18" and that's just right).  Cover it with a sheet of wax paper or aluminum foil (wax paper works better) long enough that 4" hangs out on each side (to use as handles to life the bars from the sheet to cut them).  THIS IS IMPORTANT:  It has to be a cookie sheet with 1" sides on it. Those flat ones just won't do.

2. Melt your choice of baking chips. I do them a cup at a time in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until they are smooth. Sometimes I add a half teaspoon of shortening per cup of chips to get a softer, smoother chocolate, but it's not required (and is a bad idea if you really want a crisp chocolate coating on your candy bar).  Spread them in a thin layer across the entire bottom of the cookie sheet. It takes about 2 cups of chips, so about a bag, to cover the bottom. You could make the layer thicker, but it's really easy to overwhelm with chocolate, so thin is good.

3. Start layering fillings.  If you're going to use cookies or graham crackers in the layers, lay them down before your chocolate (or other flavor of chips) sets up. If not, you can let the chocolate harden (best done in the fridge or freezer or it goes really slowly) before you layer things on.

4. Top with another layer of melted chips (to match the bottom or a different flavor--you can be creative!  Like chocolate on the bottom and peanutbutter chips on top? Yum!).

5. Let the whole tray set up (best in a cold place--I cover mine with another sheet of wax paper and stick it on the back porch at night because my freezer wont' hold the tray--but a freezer would be perfect).

6.  Take the entire thing out of the tray using the wax paper "handles" you left hanging over and cut it into bars with a big knife. I can make 72 bars from my tray. 1" x 3" bars really are perfect--homemade candy is richer than store bought.

7.  Eat them as-is, with bare sides, or cover the sides with more melted chips so they look more like storebought candy bars. I have found they don't last long enough for me to cover the sides, and it's a lot of work, so it can be unnecessary. That said, the chocolate on the sides does hold caramel fillings in better-it tends to very slowly spread if you don't contain it with chocolate on the sides, too.

Options for coatings (these are the flavors of baking chips readily available in my stores here in Longmont):
semi-sweet chocolate (can overwhelm some fillings, but I do so love dark chocolate flavors!)
milk chocolate (this is preferred--it lets the flavor of the fillings shine through)
white chocolate
butterscotch
cherry
peanut butter

Nestle and Hersheys also make specialty chips that are sometimes only available seasonally, including mint chocolate and special dark chocolate. Don't bother with the multicolored ones, though, because you melt and stir them together, so the colors blend in and look like plain chocolate in the end anyway, and usually those multicolored (orange and brown for Halloween, Green and red and brown for Christmas) actually are not multiflavored.

You can also use candy coating, like CandyQuik, but why settle for fake chocolate when you can have real chocolate?

The Fillings
This is the good part, right?

Caramel (use your favorite recipe; My favorite is: 1 c melted butter, dash salt, 1 can sweetened condensed milk or 1 1/3 cup homemade sweetened condensed milk, 2 1/4 c brown sugar, 1 c corn syrup, and 1 tsp vanilla--mix and cook in the microwave for 18-20 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes, until it reaches firm ball stage.)

Marshmallow (I used this recipe, but I didn't bother to form them into peeps. I just poured them onto the tray and let them set up in a big sheet. It's basically divinity with gelatin added.)

Graham Crackers

Peanut butter (or any nut butter) filling:  1 tbsp soft butter mixed with 1 c peanut butter (or almond or Nutella or whatever) and 3 cups of powdered sugar--knead until it looks like playdough. Or use your favorite buckeye filling recipe.

Nougat (Divinity with baking chips added to flavor it--see the bottom of the recipe at the link for instructions; you have to triple this recipe to fill a cookie sheet. You could also use flavoring extracts to flavor it.)--this is like the filling of 3 Musketeers bars, only you can make any flavor you like.  If it lasts that long. My kids inhale this stuff plain.

Shortbread (use your favorite recipe. Mine is: 1 c softened butter, 3/4 c sugar, 1 egg, and 2 1/4 c flour. Mix and spread in a cookie sheet. Bake at 325 for 20-25 minutes. To use in cookies, like Twix clones, bake them in the same cookie sheet you'll use to assemble the candy bars, but first grease the sheet, line it with aluminum foil with 4" overhangs on each side, and spray the foil with baking spray--or grease it, too--so that you can remove the shortbread as one giant cookie, put down the wax paper and chocolate and replace the giant cookie as a layer in the candy bars. If you like the less distinct flavor of the storebought candy bar cookie layer, use shortening instead of butter.)

Nuts

Dried fruit

Coconut

Coconut filling (1 1/2 sticks melted butter, 1 square soft butter, 2 pounds powdered sugar, 1 can sweetened condensed milk or 1 1/3 c homemade sweetened condensed milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla or coconut flavoring, 1-2 c shredded coconut--mix well until it looks like cookie dough)

Cream candy filling (just in case you want a cream filling denser than nougat, although I would always choose nougat first)--same as the coconut filling recipe, but leave out the coconut and stir in whatever flavoring extract you want instead--maple, almond, vanilla, etc.

"Chocolate milk cream" (that's what my kids call this stuff). It would be super good as a gooey addition to a marshmallow filled bar

Toffee (my favorite recipe is here)

Truffle filling (the pretty much standard recipe is here)

Ice cream (for a frozen candy bar--but you have to serve it frozen!)

Jam or jelly (raspberry jam with chocolate nougat sounds so good!)

Or any kind of other candy you want to chop up and stir in (candy canes, whoppers, lemon drops, toffee bars, those tiny hard marshmallows they put in hot cocoa--you can buy them in jars at the grocery store, gummy bears, fruit snacks, etc. Be creative.)

Any other kind of hard crackers or snacks you want to chop up and put in (pretzels, those "chinese noodles" that are neither chinese nor noodle, cookie bits, etc).

Or anything else you can think of that would be good coated in chocolate.


SO MANY OPTIONS.  There are too many choices. I think the next thing I want to try is shortbread, caramel, and nutella filling. And also graham cracker, marshmallow, and nutella filling. And nougat in many flavors (cherry, orange, chocolate, mint, vanilla). And vanilla nougat with caramel on top. And marshmallow with caramel on top. And...

too many candy bars!

And I ran out of chocolate chips. So I have to pause for a breath and to buy more before I can make any more.

But YUM. One of my more successful experiments, actually.

Did I just read that?

"Perhaps the good folks in the Ohio legislature misunderestimated the extent of left-wing extremism that infests much of the modern day Democratic party."

http://downtrend.com/brian-carey/breaking-ohio-house-passes-a-bill-making-it-illegal-to-kill-someone-with-a-heartbeat

Misunderestimated just might be my new favorite word.



From the same article: "Of course, the idea of preserving fetal life infringes on a woman’s right to choose!!11!1!! "




He's pretty excited about 11 and 1!!!

Did I just read that?

"Mental illness, addition brings down cardiologist"

http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/storytellers/2015/03/31/mental-illness-addition-brings-down-brilliant-cardiologist/70705718/

(They'll probably fix that, but the url preserves it).

Because you know that adding is REALLY dangerous.

(Also, oddly, there is no mention of either addition or mental illness in the article. They do talk about addiction quite a lot, though.)

On my mind lately

Roya Klingner is one of the vocal advocates for gifted people in the world. She posted on Facebook today, "I use all my talents, all my time and money to support ‪gifted‬ ‪children‬ worldwide! I love what I do."  And she really does.

The quote struck me, though.

What am I using all my time, talents, and money to support? 

The concept is easy to comprehend if we have a singular purpose in mind, like Roya does. She uses everything to further the cause she believes in: gifted children.  Other people use everything to further their causes: political, intellectual, social, or whatever. 

But the thing I realized is that everyone ultimately uses all their time, talents, and money for something (or some things).  Those things--time, talent, and money--do get used up or lost. We don't really get to hoard them--time and talents, hoarded, slip away; and money ultimately can't come with us and does us no good sitting unused in a bank somewhere (we either use it or lose it when we die).

If it's going to get used anyway, doesn't it make sense to choose what we use it for instead of letting it all slip away, frittered away on thisses and thats that don't add anything to our lives--or anyone else's?

Roya's quote brought to mind this phrase from the Guide to the Scriptures produced by the Church: "The law of consecration is a divine principle whereby men and women voluntarily dedicate their time, talents, and material wealth to the establishment and building up of God’s kingdom."

(found here: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/consecrate-law-of-consecration.p2?lang=eng&letter=c)

So if we're supposed to dedicate our time, talents, and money (as Roya put it) to the building up (and establishment) of God's Kingdom, the question on my mind is how exactly do we go about that? That seems kind of daunting, actually. And spartan. It brings to mind giving up all we have to talk about Jesus exclusively and build a walled city of some kind.

But what is God's Kingdom anyway?  That seems like an important question to ask.

It's really easy to understand "gifted children" or "environmentalism".  But "God's Kingdom" is not as clearly defined in our world nowadays.  And how can I dedicate everything to building it if I don't understand what exactly it is?

I do not think the phrase means, for example, an actual physical city that God rules (not like the kingdom of Alfred the Great or someone like that). I don't think it's a spot on the ground.  I don't think it's a walled compound, and I don't think it means we give everything we have and are to building temples all over (even though building temples obviously is part of it) and don't do anything else.

When we consider it in the light of Zion being a name of God's kingdom, and Zion being, in the scriptures, not just the city but the people who lived there (the city of Enoch, where people were of one heart and one mind, or Zion, which is the pure in heart, the scriptures say), then it seems apparent that the Kingdom of God is built through bringing all of God's children to Him. It is the people who are the kingdom.  So to build the kingdom of God, we give our time, talents, and money (just like Ms. Klingner does to gifted children) to bringing people to God.

And what people? Probably the people around us. The people within our natural reach are usually the ones God needs us to help first. So building up my family and raising them righteously--that would be building the kingdom of God. My own little family are part of the kingdom, so all I do for them must be part of this. And my friends and neighbors and ward. They must be part, too.

And how? I think building the kingdom can be done, in my opinion, through anything that edifies and truly enriches people's lives, including art, music, good food, literature, friendship....All the good things--the truly good things--in life are gifts from God to us to make our lives rich and joyful and satisfying, including the gifts He gives us (commandments, scriptures, prophets, families, and, most of all, Jesus).  So the kingdom of God might be all the people and everything they need to have a happy, fulfilling life (including things to eat, things to wear, things to do, things to believe, places to be....)

So, I conclude, the good things we give to other people (friendship, smiles, treats, fun times, music, poetry, art, dancing, adventures, hope, love, joy, etc) that make their lives happier and bring them to God and to Jesus--these are building the kingdom of God. And so are the good things we produce, using whatever talents we have. 

Suddenly, that seems manageable. And fun. And satisfying.  Well worth the price (even though the price is everything). God is asking me to use what I have to do what I'm good at (using my talents) to make other people happy and bring them to Jesus (who will lighten their burdens and relieve their suffering--that's His promise)--which I know makes me happy, too. 

Suddenly the idea of giving everything to build the kingdom of God doesn't sound like a request for sacrifice, but another hint in this eternal treasure hunt that will lead us to happiness and to real treasures. It's not a burden--it's a suggestion of where to look for the blessings. Just like all of God's commandments.

Assumptions that underlie the marriage discussions

I don't want to engage in a discussion on "redefining marriage" or "marriage equality" (however you choose to frame the issue), nor do I want to start in on a battle about whether marriage is a joining of people for love or for creating children. These things are being talked about endlessly, ad nauseum (mostly because people are not listening to each other or compromising, but merely digging in their heels in a "my way or the highway" approach that has resulted in a vicious cycle of hurt feelings and bullying that is getting us nowhere).

So why am I writing about it?

I am seeing some underlying assumptions that nobody is talking about, but that I think are important parts of the topic. In any serious discussion, it can be extremely helpful to examine the underlying assumptions because they drive the discussion.

Without extensive discussion of what I think of these (whether I agree or not), here are the assumptions I'm seeing that I think are important to the "marriage question":

1. We--our lives and our personalities--are defined by our sexuality more than by any other factor.

2. Sexuality (and sexual attraction) is so powerful that it ultimately cannot and should not be resisted.

3. Love is the outgrowth of sexual attraction.

4. Sexuality is one of the driving forces of our lives and, as such, is an appropriate focus of our thoughts and energies and is a reliable guide to happiness. 

5. We're all defining the words involved in this discussion (marriage, family, etc) the same way and have the same understanding of what these things entail, including their appearance and their purpose. 

6. All gay people think the same way and want the same things, and all religious people think the same way and want the same things.

7. You know what I think because of my religious identification and I know what you think because of your sexual identification.

8. If what God says doesn't make sense to me, HE must be wrong. Or you must. Because I am not. (This assumption shows up on both sides of the debates, by the way. Don't think it's the property of one side or the other.)

These assumptions are worth considering.

Personally, I like what Hugh Nibley said: "Lunch can easily become the one thing the whole office looks forward to all morning: a distraction, a decoy‑‑like sex, it is a passing need that can only too easily become an engrossing obsession. " (http://www.bhporter.com/Nibley%20Work%20we%20Must%20but%20the%20Lunch%20is%20Free.htm)

I think too many people are asking the wrong questions. The real core question, in my opinion, is "In the ubiquitous search for happiness and meaningfulness in life, who or what am I going to take for my guide?"  Is it going to be your body? Science? Your God? My God? Someone else's God? This religion? That? Some old text? Logic? Social policy? Something else?

Who do you trust to show you the best, happiest, most fulfilling path for your life? Who are you going to follow?

I can't answer that for you, but it would be wise for all of us to think about it so that the choice is made knowingly and willingly instead of as a knee-jerk reaction to what someone else is saying or doing.

If we don't knowingly, thoughtfully, considerately understand our assumptions and consciously choose our guide, we might not like where where we end up. (And that goes not just for the marriage question, but for the entirety of life--career, family, money management, parenting, etc.) 

Funny kids

Jack's grammar is just delightful to me.

Tonight he said,

"The sun is go nigh-night."

And also,

"Turn the 'puter on school me." (He wanted to turn the computer on to do his online preschool.)

Easter Candy Season

It's Easter candy season! And since I'm on a big DIY junk food binge, I'm making a list of the things I want to try:

Pies (or just eat this stuff as pudding):
Chocolate marshmallow pie
Peanutbutter marshmallow pie
Nutella marshmallow pie
Or swirled pie with more than one flavor of marshmallow cream filling...

Homemade marshmallows

Chocolate bunnies (this is where the whole Easter Candy tradition started--cheaper to make than buy chocolate bunnies, and a whole lot more fun)

Candy fillings for chocolates:
     peanut butter
     marshmallow
     peanut butter and marshmallows
     orange cream
     nutella cream
     vanilla cream
     caramel
     coconut cream
     mint cream
     caramel and marshmallows
     dulce de leche (since I made some by accident)
     graham crackers
     graham crackers and marshmallows
     graham crackers, marshmallows, and peanut butter
     graham crackers, marshmallows, and caramel
     cherry
     cherry with vanilla cream
     cherry cream?
     chocolate cream

And what Tim proposed:  No bake cookies made from graham crackers, caramel balls, marshmallows, and chocolate

And I'm trying to figure out an easy and quick way to coat the candies with chocolate. It's always a pain to do them one at a time on a fork. I probably should just give in and buy some molds. Then I could make some goopier fillings, too.

I also need to remember to buy some milk chocolate chips. They're more expensive, but often the semi-sweet chips are too strong of a dark chocolate flavor for the fillings (like for caramel).

Given that I've been going overboard with treats lately, I likely will try all of these. But I'm trying to convince myself to work in SMALL batches. Like divide one batch of filling into four different flavors instead of making four batches of filling.

I'm excited, though, because I finally made a perfect batch of sweetened condensed milk, and I remembered to buy a bunch of powdered sugar, so I have plenty to make into fillings for my chocolates!

Home Made Sweetened Condensed Milk

So I had a kind of pie-making binge weekend, and in the process I ran out of sweetened condensed milk, since I made two batches of homemade caramel (in the microwave! It's SO easy--just mix it up, microwave until it's thick stirring every 3 minutes. Way easier than stovetop. But I digress) last week, and then two pies that had sweetened condensed milk in them, and I just plumb ran out. Unlike tomato sauce, it's not something I usually keep dozens of cans on hand.

But a friend of mine had mentioned that a mutual friend makes her own sweetened condensed milk, so I thought I'd see if I could make some myself, since I really wanted a key lime pie and the main ingredients are lime juice (I had that, weirdly) and sweetened condensed milk (sc milk, combined with any acid, turns into a gel, which is why it is the foundation of many pies, including my favorite: cherry cream) and I had no car. (Also, I realized that easter candy season is upon us, and my cream candy filling recipe is based on sweetened condensed milk).

I emailed my friend for her recipe and found my mom's old homemade sweetened condensed milk recipe (on the back of her caramel recipe, of course). I looked some up online and found a thousand variations. My friend's recipe is:

Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 c. hot tap water
2 c. sugar
4 c. dry milk powder
1/4 c. melted margarine

Put hot water into the blender. Add the sugar, dry milk powder and melted margarine. Put the lid on the blender whirl it around for a full minute. The mixture will be kind of thin, but will thicken up after standing for about an hour. Store in frig or freeze. Makes about 4 cups = 3 cans condensed milk.

So I tried making powdered-milk-based sweetened condensed milk. It worked! Unfortunately, I could still taste the powdered milk flavor, even through the lime flavor in the pie, and I'm not a fan of powdered milk flavor, to put it mildly.

So then I remembered that I had seen a lot of recipes where you actually condense the milk on the stove as I had been prowling around the web looking for powdered milk based recipes. But milk is expensive. So I spent an hour doing a little math and calculated the cost of making sweetened condensed milk using two other recipes I found vs just buying a can.

Buying a can of sweetened condensed milk at WalMart in Longmont costs $1.68 a can, or $1.34 a cup (1 can is about 1 1/4 cups even though it's 14 oz--it's oz weight, not oz volume in a sweetened condensed milk can, and, unlike with tomato sauce, they aren't equal). And they're often out, so you might have to buy it somewhere else in town where it costs significantly more.

The easiest looking recipe I found, which I haven't tried yet, is to take a can of evaporated milk, stir in 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and heat it until the sugar is dissolved and it's "thickened" (whatever that means. I hate finding that word in recipes--HOW THICK does that mean, thickened? Drives me nuts.) This recipe costs $0.63 per cup because evaporated milk is that much cheaper than sweetened condensed, and sugar is cheap, too.

And the more complicated recipe that I liked was written up by a Malaysian lady.  Of course I researched dozens of recipes and concluded that most were plagiarized from one original (although I couldn't tell which was the original)--and this on supposedly professional recipe sites. Embarrassing. Do they think they're the only site people look at and nobody will notice?

So of course I took a conglomerate of different recipes and tried it. I mixed up sugar and milk in the crock pot and cooked it until it had reduced by half, and it was still pretty thin but people on blogs and in comments had assured me it would thicken as it cooled, and it did but it was still kind of thin.  But they all said it was thinner but worked fine in candy recipes and stuff.  I also stirred in butter, like some recipes suggested, and that just floated to the top and solidified there as the milk cooled, so that was a fail. And I stirred in vanilla, which made a delicious flavor but not the pure sweetened condensed milk flavor I was looking for.

So we made rainbow fudge with it.  Aside from the fact that it was far too sweet to be edible, the stuff never did set up. It was just as runny as could be. Obviously the too-thin sweetened condensed milk was not sufficient.

Back to the drawing board. I googled. I read comments on recipes that said stuff like "Mine didn't set up so I tried this...." And I made another batch in the crock pot.

Cooked it on high instead of low until it reduced by half. Cooking it on low (the first time round) took 16 hours to reduce by half. On high it only ("only") took 12. (You have to do it with the lid off or it doesn't reduce, by the way). But it was still far too thin. So I added baking soda, like some commenters swore worked.  No good. Still too thin. Extra sugar did nothing. Frustrated, I poured the stuff out of the crock pot into a sauce pan and boiled the heck out of it.

While I was doing that, I realized something. Altitude. The recipe was written for Malaysia, on sea level. I'm at nearly 6000 feet. Boiling sugar at this altitude never works the same because the boiling temperature is different, so I have to make candy by the cold water test rather than by a candy thermometer temperature or it doesn't work.

I boiled it until I thought it was thick enough, and then put it in jars and refrigerated it over night. Success! Except I'd cooked it too long this time and had just hit the line between sweetened condensed milk and dulce de leche. SUPER delicious. Slightly overcooked. I made it into a key lime pie anyway. I really wanted one that didn't taste like powdered milk!

Anyway, that all got me thinking--of course I should look up dulce de leche recipes and see if they were any better than sweetened condensed milk recipes. Because sc milk is just undercooked dulce de leche. The ingredients are the same.  And that was really, really helpful.

For one, the dulce de leche recipes reminded me what I knew and forgot--the thickness of the finished product is not based on cooking time but on cooking temperature when you're dealing with sugar, which is why a sea-level recipe won't work at high altitude in the crock pot to thicken, only to reduce.

So here's what worked up here in Colorado.

Sweetened Condensed Milk Recipe (DIY)

6 cups of whole milk (I hear skim milk doesn't work, but cream does--that would be amazing, but not cheaper)
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda (totally optional--it browns if it you're into that kind of thing)

Stir all ingredients together in the crock pot and cook on high with the lid off until the mixture has reduced by half--about 12 hours. (I checked this with a skewer. I dipped it straight into the liquid when I started and then drew a line around the skewer at the liquid line. Then I measured with a ruler and drew another line around the skewer exactly half way down. When the liquid reached the lower line, it had reduced enough.) Pour the condensed liquid into a large sauce pan (use a really really big one, like a soup pot, because it climbs). Boiled it on medium and then low until it thickened enough. (You can test it by putting a little in a spoon and setting the spoon on an ice cube--when it cools to the right thickness, you've cooked it long enough.) I did NOT stir the whole time--after I turned it to low, I stirred just every 5 minutes or so to let the steam out. If you want dulce de leche, cook it until it's light brown and thicker.  Pour it into glass jars, cover, and refrigerate. If it looks like there are hardened bits in it, pour it through a strainer into the jars.

This recipe cost only $0.43 per cup. And it made a little over 2 cans worth (about 2.5 - 3 cups). So it's definitely cheaper, and not very hard.

I'm not completely satisfied yet, of course. I need to try:

--cooking it on the stove the whole time (I hear it works but that it can require you to strain the milk at the end), for 2-4 hours total

--cooking it in a pan in the oven. I read you can use that to make dulce de leche, so I'm wondering if you can do sc milk that way, too

--boiling the milk and sugar together first and THEN putting it in the crock pot with the lid off, so the crock pot can maintain the higher temperature (it never did actually get to boiling when I started it cold, on low or on high)

--using the caramel method (microwaving it). It works for white sauce and caramel, so maybe sweetened condensed milk, too? Probably would have to reduce the milk first, though, on the stove or in the crock pot.

--trying it without the baking soda. Most recipes don't use it, and I suspect it's extra. Dulce de leche recipes say it's just to help it brown.

I liked using the crock pot because it was so gentle--it didn't burn or scald or otherwise ruin the milk. Nothing grainy or lumpy or needing straining. But it also didn't thicken it. Combining that with the stovetop worked fine.

Those might all fail, but at least I know now how to make both sweetened condensed milk and dulce de leche without a can.

(With a can, the best dulce de leche ever is made by boiling the can, unopened, for 2-4 hours. But you have to keep water over the can or it can explode. Tim exploded a can once doing this, so it really is not a myth.)

Just asked Jack if he wanted some pie. He said no.

Baby came 2 months ago, and now I have energy like I haven't in a year. It's lovely. I tend to go overboard on things as a result.

Last Saturday was Super Pi day (3/14/15--the first digits of the mathematical number pi).  We couldn't go to our friends' pie party to celebrate because it was also St. Patrick's Day Weekend, which is a super busy time for Irish bands and the band Tim sings with, Delilah's Revenge, had the day booked full and they needed our van to drive themselves and their gear around.  (And our other two cars are broken. Of course.)

So we decided to have a pie party at home.

And I kind of got carried away.

I only own 4 pie pans, one of which I really need to send to Aunt Donella since my kids destroyed one of her pie pans. But that's a tangent. Only own 4 pie pans, so I could only make 4 pies. So I started poking around online to see if it's possible to make chocolate pie crusts (it is). And then I found myself wandering around a website called Mr. Food, which had a lot of good recipes that were easy.

And we ended up with four pies: Marshmallow Cream (based on this recipe but highly modified), Peanut butter cream, cranberry cream (only we left the pineapple out), and key lime.  Then Monday we found strawberries on sale, so we made strawberry cream cobbler, which was really good. And then Tuesday we made rainbow fudge (didn't set up and was far, far too sweet, looked tie dyed by the time we were done, and was very beautiful) and another marshmallow pie because some people didn't get any from the first one.

They were all good, but the marshmallow pie was my own modification of a recipe and it held so much promise!  So today we made a mandarin marshmallow pie, and I remembered having pineapple cream that was made with marshmallows, so I found that recipe and we're going to try that, too.

See, I get carried away!

But I did want to share the marshmallow pie recipe because it was so yummy and so versatile and not written down anywhere else.

Marshmallow Pie

24 large marshmallows (2 1/2 cups of mini)
1/2 c milk
1/3 c ice cream (any flavor--this will flavor the pie)
8 oz tub of whipped topping or 2 c whipped cream
Graham cracker or chocolate cookie pie crust

Heat the marshmallows and milk on medium heat, stirring constantly until the marshmallows melt completely. Set aside and let it cool for 15 minutes. Stir in the ice cream until it's melted completely. Fold in the whipped cream. Put the mixture in the pie crust and freeze for 2 hours or until set up.

This was super yummy, if you like marshmallows. It would taste fantastic with anything that tastes good with marshmallows stirred in or drizzled on top (chocolate syrup, chopped peanut butter cups, fruit, etc). The finished product tastes like marshmallows flavored like whatever ice cream you put in.

So from there we made a Mandarin Marshmallow pie.

The recipe:

24 large marshmallows or 2 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 c milk
1/3 c liquid from a can of mandarin oranges or orange juice
1 small can or 1 cup mandarin orange slices (canned)
8 oz or 2 c whipped topping or whipped cream
Graham cracker pie crust

As with the plain marshmallow pie recipe, melt the marshmallows with the milk over medium heat, stirring constantly until the marshmallows are completely melted. Remove from heat and let it cool 15 minutes. Stir in juice from mandarin orange can or orange juice. Fold in whipped topping/cream and then fold in orange segments. Pour into crust and freeze 2 hours or until set.

So now my brain is buzzing....chocolate marshmallow pie, snickers marshmallow pie, coconut marshmallow pie, etc.

So tonight when it was time to taste the mandarin orange marshmallow pie, I asked Jack, "Do you want some pie?"

He said, "No. Fish."

So I ate pie. And he ate fish.

Might have gone overboard with the pie, I suppose.

Did I just read that?

Really really sad story about a kid who committed suicide. But the parents said this about it: ""He is a good kid and has no substance abuse or other issues," they posted. "This is the first time he has ever done anything like this.""

Granted, the parents probably posted that on facebook when it was a search-and-rescue operation and didn't know their son had killed himself. But the news reporter who put the article together put the quote after a paragraph about how devastated the parents are that their son killed himself.

And that makes it a funny quote.  Because how many times can you do something like that?

(Still, it's a really tragic story. Just poorly written.)

http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2015/03/09/body-philly-area-teen-who-vanished-after-getting-homework-note-found/?intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork

Did I just read that?

"Woman dies after collision with street poll"

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=33748322&nid=148&title=woman-dies-after-collision-with-street-poll&s_cid=queue-1

Seriously--you have to be careful around the guy wandering the street with the clipboard and microphone. Those street polls are dangerous to run into.

Did I just read that?

This whole article had me laughing--not so many mistakes (although there is one) but the phrasing just put a comedic spin on things.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=33741923&nid=148&title=2-hospitalized-after-churchyard-crash-vehicle-fire&fm=home_page&s_cid=topstory

Lines that made me laugh:

"According to police, the car left the road for the lawn of an LDS meetinghouse. It went through two fences and hit a tree before coming to rest alongside the church. "The tree slowed it down quite a bit," said Unified police detective Ken Hansen. "Had it not hit the tree, it probably would have gone inside the church where there was a funeral going on." Hansen said the car's abrupt stop lit the bushes and shrubs next to the church on fire. The greenery, in turn, lit the car, endangering both passengers. A man attending the funeral soon extinguished the flames with a church fire extinguisher."

I don't know what it was about that passage that cracked me up...but just imagine it! Like a keystone cops episode.

And then this error: "Police are investigating potential impairments, including speed."

Speed is an impairment? I guess maybe that's the problem you have when you've got ADHD.