How I Love Those Tidbits of Awesome

There have been several tidbits of awesome recently. Oh how I love it:

-I ate Candy Cane Joe Joe's for the very first time. WOW. So good!! I get it now, y'all. I GET IT. Keep 'em comin'.

-I shopped at Old Navy with a 30% off coupon and a tremendously well-behaved baby.

-I watched The Office and 30 Rock while Timmy brushed my hair and massaged my scalp. (Oh my heavenly bliss.)

-I slept in on Friday morning for the first time in months (thank you, Bottle God), while Timbo got up and fed the baby. I woke when I wanted to, instead of when my cute little baby alarm went off.

-I went out on a date with Timberwolf for the first time in a couple months (excluding a last-minute late-night jaunt to Cheesecake Factory, and also excluding the more recent mini-date to Stake Conference, which ended with Jean throwing up on the sidewalk... but that's a story for another day). On Friday night, Tim and I went out to dinner at Mimi's and then drove to Disneyland, where we raced around the park like a couple of kids without a stroller, and managed to go on 11 rides in 3.5 hours. We forgot how convenient it is to NOT have a stroller (or baby, haha), and how great it is to go on the scary rides, and how fantastic it is to be there late at night when lines are super short!! We love you, Weston, really we do.

-I attended our daytime enrichment yesterday, which was a crazy-awesome craft extravanganza. There was a lot of crafting and general extravaganzing going on, and we all enjoyed a yummy soup lunch and plenty of laughs and conversation. I left with a sweet-looking glass ball ornament (yaaaaaay I made something), along with my nativity blocks (wooden blocks with cute nativity images), which are very sad and unfinished-looking. (I started them, but then realized that the sanding alone would probably take two hours. So, being the wholeheartedly uncrafty person that I am, I decided that I would finish them at home in a very sub-par manner, and then apologize in the future to my children who have the plain, unfinished blocks instead of the pretty, stained, shiny blocks that all their friends have. Sorry, children, but you have kind of a low-maintenance mom, so if I were you, I'd take my advice and try to embrace her low-maintenance-ness in order to be satisfied with sub-par things and not be disappointed all the time.) :-)

-I found out that my friend Abbie's husband got accepted into medical school. YAYAYAYAY!!!

A couple of the downsides to my tidbits of awesome:

-Going to bed at 2:00 AM after a fab date with the Timster, only to awake at 6:00 AM to a babbling, yelling baby. Oops, I just fell asleep while typing that. I'm awake again.

-Checking the Weather Channel this morning, only to find out that it's going up to 92 degrees today. Oh blurg. Thanks a lot, Al Gore. (haha)

Where the Heck Is That Darn Cheerio...

Weston had a late-afternoon bottle today, so he just had a few Cheerios for dinner. Because he's still a bit uncoordinated with his Cheerios, it's rather amusing to watch him eat them. Case in point.

Yah, Aebleskiver! Yah!

Up until a couple of months ago, I had no idea what aebleskivers were. Then one day, exploring a Williams-Sonoma store (happy sigh), I learned that they are small, filled pancakes of Danish origin, and that they are supposedly freaking-holy-schnikies-delicious. I originally planned on buying the Williams-Sonoma aebleskiver pan, which is $39.95 (whaaaaat?), but then I noticed that the Target aebleskiver pan is only $17.99 (whee!). Oh, and warning: apparently Target People noticed that everyone was buying their cheaper pan instead of the newly-released Williams-Sonoma version, so they increased the price to $19.99. And second warning: it comes in a ghetto "As Seen on TV!" box, but don't be concerned. It still works fine. :-)

This morning, Tim was a super helper monkey, and he entertained Weston so that I could give the new pan a whirl. Naturally, I documented the big event. Here, I'm preparing the dry ingredients:

... while also beating the egg whites:
Then I combined the batter with the fluffy whites:

... and switched to a whisk, because my spoon was not allowing me to "fold in the egg whites" very well:

I started by preheating the pan and spraying it with cooking spray. Then I added about a tablespoon of batter into each well:

I chose pumpkin butter for the filling this time, in honor of the season:

I plopped about a teaspoon of filling into each well:

And then topped it off with more batter:

I flipped this little guinea pig much too early:

But fortunately, the first batch worked out!

Seven hours later, here was the final batch:

And voila - our mound of warm aebleskiver:

They were yummy!! Tiny, yes, but very fluffy:

We enjoyed them with a little maple syrup. He likes them! He likes them!

Oh, and in other news, Tim shaved his head yesterday. He said that he was sick of having so much hair. I asked if he was going Britney-Spears-crazy, but he said no. He just shaves his head every once in a while. Yep. :-)

Post-Election Debrief

Well...

There you have it. Another presidential election. Maybe you're ecstatic, maybe you're depressed. I can understand both of those feelings, because I've been there. Either way, this is a momentous, magnificent event in the history of our American society. Whether we are Republicans or Democrats or Independents or Others, I think we should all try to join together and support our new President-Elect. I, for one, am grateful that Weston is going to be part of the new generation that grows up knowing that, truly, we are ALL equal and EVERYTHING is possible. Thinking about this world of possibility and opportunity that he is entering makes me very happy.

Anyway, it's dizzying going through all the commentary by TV pundits and journalists and writers as to the immense meaning and implications of this election. Here are two of my favorite articles that I've come across, if you have a few minutes for a couple quick reads:

Article #1: (This one is extremely thoughtful and touching.)
And Then They Wept
By Charles M. Blow
Published: November 4, 2008
History will record this as the night the souls of black folk, living and dead, wept – and laughed, screamed and danced – releasing 400 years of pent up emotion.

Article #2: (This one is... well... did you really think that this WOULDN'T come up? Haha!)
That Dress? Everyone Has an Opinion
By Ruth La Ferla
Published: November 5, 2008
Some called Michelle Obama's election night dress an eye-catching statement and others an eyesore.

Halloweekend

FRIDAY

First, Weston put this on (thanks Gangy!):

Then we went and played:
Occasionally, there was some of this going on:

And also some of this:

And even some of this (in the upper left corner):

And we had to take a picture with this:

And we made this guy do this:

Later it was time to grab this:

We took a picture with this guy (Weston's first-ever trick-or-treat):

There was a lot of this:

And again, some of this:

SATURDAY

This greeted us at the Trunk-or-Treat party:

It was rainy, but there was still lots of this:

And lots of lots of this:

And lots and lots and lots of these:

And accordingly, much of this:

And finally, there was a lot of distributing (and consuming) of this: