What Do You Do With a Drunken Pork Roast..?

One of our favorite meals at my house is Pioneer Woman's Shredded Pulled Pork. There's nothing simpler than dumping some Dr. Pepper and Adobo Peppers (or BBQ sauce, which is what we use) on a pork butt and letting it cook all day. Easy and delicious. It's especially handy when company is coming because it produces quite a few servings and everyone likes it. Win-win!

On Thursday evenings, we've started a tradition of eating with some friends of ours. The kids play while we chat and it's great. I had decided to make the Pulled Pork of Awesomeness for the meal, but when I checked our pantry, I couldn't find any Dr. Pepper.

Sneaky husband.

I scoured the cupboards for any sort of soda-pop-ish beverage that could serve as a sweet meat tenderizer, but, alas, the only drinks I keep stocked in our house are milk and water. Oh, and pink lemonade. I stood in the kitchen, fretting, until I remembered that we had a bottle of whiskey in our top cabinet.

Now, before you start thinking that my husband and I survive our wonderfully chaotic little life by being closet alcoholics, let me clarify that the whiskey was only in my possession because of another PW recipe that called for it. I cocked my head and pondered whether or not whiskey could serve the same purpose as DP. Surely. Right?

So, I unscrewed the lid, shuddered at the stench, and poured a little on top of the roast. I peeked into the pot and thought that the liquid content seemed a little low, so I poured a little more. It still didn't seem like enough, so I drenched the roast, screwed the lid back on the (significantly lighter) bottle and stashed it back in the top cabinet. I then dumped BBQ sauce on top of it, turned on the heat, and walked away to let the roast cook. Or brew. Whichever.

After a few hours, the house began to smell a little sour, but I ignored it because you really can't judge the idiocy of a decision until that decision has come to complete fruition, which, in this case, required a fully cooked roast. So I waited until the allotted cooking time had passed and only a few minutes before our friends were to arrive, I tested the roast.

I lifted the lid and despite the intolerably rancid and bitter smell, I held my breath, grabbed a fork, and proceeded to attempt to shred my shredded pulled pork.

Only it didn't shred. In fact, it didn't move. That dang roast was as solid as though it were still in the fridge.

Not one to give up so easily, I grabbed my butcher knife, shoved it down into the roast, and scraped a piece of meat onto my fork. I steeled my nerves, opened my mouth, and placed the Roast Fail on my tongue.

As quickly as the roast entered my mouth it also exited it, as I gagged and threw up in the kitchen sink.

The taste of the whiskey was so undeniably prominent that I might as well have left the pork and BBQ sauce out of the pot and written "Hot Liquor" under the Thursday slot on our menu board. It was so sour, SO sour, and I hung my head in shame as I mentally added this to the long list of domesticity fails that have occurred in my married life. Poor husband. Poor friends that were on their way over. Poor pork roast. Poor trash can that would have to endure the wretchedness of the poor pork roast.

Thankfully, Pizza Hut delivers to my house.

Have a lovely day.

The Quick Fix.

First of all, thank you for all of the travel recommendations! I pooled your ideas together and came up with some things that will hopefully aid in our journey. I went to Target this morning and attempted to snatch up some goodies from their dollar aisle ... can I just say, running around with the three tots is a bit of a challenge. It was hilarious to see me literally throwing stickers, sketch pads, magnets and Slinkies into my cart while zooming through the aisles. Speed is key, in my opinion, and wow, we were fast today!

So. Thank you. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Secondly.

Cub walked up to me today with my husband's broken helicopter and asked what happened to it. Before I proceed--does anyone else have a husband who owns a similar toy? The kind you see in the mall? Anyway. My husband is a gadget guy and hence, the helicopter. I've gone to friends' houses and laughed when I see a similar helicopter on the shelf ... there must be some kind of mini-helicopter movement afoot. Anyway. So, when Cub asked how it had been broken, I told him it had crashed and the blade fell off. He then sighed and muttered, "Well, I guess we need a new one."

I cocked my head and told him that no, we just needed to fix the old one.

And he looked at me kind of funny and asked, "Why don't we just get a new one?"

I saw a Pinterest picture the other day that showed an old man and a woman (probably a stock photo) and it wrote that their marriage had lasted so long because they were married in a time that when something was broken, you fixed it, you didn't throw it away. And as I looked in my son's blue eyes, I couldn't help but wonder if we've done a good job showing him that truth.

This day of technology is a tricky one because it is often true that when a phone, tablet, or computer breaks, it's usually only slightly more expensive to completely replace it with a nicer, newer model than to fix the broken older model. There isn't anything wrong with that, per se, if the device is something useful to you. But I'm realizing more that the speed of technology is causing most of us to embrace an "I need it now" mentality. My diapers.com orders come the day after I order them. I can transfer money into my bank account with my phone while sitting in the drive-thru at Starbucks. Netflix gives us instant movies and shows, and Pandora gives us whatever music we want based on the genre we like. Now, now, now.

And yet we kneel in front of our kids, gently grasp their shoulders, look in their eyes and tell them they need to be patient. To wait for the things they want.

It is blatantly contrary to the world we live in. The world of NOW. How do we stand firm when the culture of immediate satisfaction pushes against us?

It's something I struggle with. Teaching our children to wait. It means we have to show that we can wait ourselves, which, for me anyway, can be hard. "I want it NOW!" screams Veruca on Willy Wonka. I hear you, girlfriend.

But maybe it's as simple as fixing a broken helicopter...even if it's tempting to replace it. That when those opportunities arise, we should take them. Because really, easy-to-replace technology is one of the few things in life that's easy to replace. Friendships and relationships cannot be replaced. They have to be fixed in order to work. And what a weighty responsibility it is to show our kids how to do that.

My husband and I celebrated our seven year anniversary today. Every year I understand more how awesome it is to celebrate marriage.

Because it gets harder.

The kids take time. The job takes time. The balancing act of mother and wife gets tricky as the kids multiply and our time is compromised. It takes work, and by that, I mean it takes WORK. We really have to work at it to make it work. I love my husband more with each year, but it's because we work to make it happen and I love him all the more for it--it's really amazing. The best things in life, in one way or another, require constant work. Or, so to say, constant fixing.

I hope I can figure out how to show that to my kids.

Have a lovely day, friends.

Squishy.

My Dad has always done private contracting and when I was a kid, one particular house he built was fairly close to our own. After school, my Mom and brother and I would drive over to the work site to hang out for a bit. My very favorite thing on the site was a massive mountain of dirt that was leftover when they dug out the foundation. My brother and I would climb that mound every evening and get completely filthy, digging and burrowing through the soft, freshly dug dirt. One of those really great childhood memories.

So, when the storms from last weekend left an impromptu shallow pond in our backyard and the kids ended up in it fully-clothed, I acquiesced.

What had started out as an innocent game of throwing rocks in the water soon turned into a mud-slinging free-for-all. And all I could think about was that dirt mound as a kid--the soft, squishy mud between my toes and how absolutely glorious it felt.

Needless to say, I was thrilled that my kids were feeling the same thing.

Naomi's white tutu is now brown, but, it was worth it. Kids being kids--it doesn't get much better than that.

Have a lovely day.

Sweet Weekend.

The girls and I headed to Arkansas to visit my parents for the weekend, after I realized I had not left our town since I was 36 weeks pregnant, which was, oh, almost three months ago? IT WAS TIME TO BREAK FREE.

It was really fun for Naomi to be the oldest sibling for a few days. She was the center of attention and loved every minute of it. Her Pepere made her favorite food (EGGS) and she got to mix birdseed with her Memere. And, they all enjoyed lots of time outside together in the beautiful sunshine. It was so sweet and so fun!








(I love this picture--so typical of trying to get a group shot with two little ones!)



And I got some extra sweet time with the littlest sister, too.






A lovely girls' weekend, indeed.

Have a lovely day!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Friday Funny.

Have y'all seen that Disneyworld commercial? The one that shows a lot of happy families having fun in the sunshine with One Republic's Good Life playing in the background? That chorus is just so catchy, I recently made it my ringtone.

You can probably see where this is going.

Picture it: Thursday morning. Cub is crying because he got in trouble for not being nice to Naomi. Naomi is crying because Cub was not nice to her. Lydia is crying because I'm putting her in her car seat. And all while we're trying to hurry out the door. Chaos, crying, rush, Mama frantically trying to contain the crowd.

And my phone rings.

Oh, this has gotta be the good life,

This has gotta be the good life,

This could really be a good life, a good life...

The peppy chorus was barely discernible above the little moment of chaos that was playing out in our entryway.

I stifled a smile. And then burst out laughing.

Hooray for moments of hilarity in the midst of a morning rush.

Have a lovely weekend, friends.

The Little Big.

The other night as I was crawling into bed after my billionth potty break, I heard Naomi sneeze over the monitor. The sneezing slowly turned into a cough, which slowly turned into a whimper. I rolled out of bed and padded down the dark hallway to her room. She was standing in her crib with her arms reaching out to me and I scooped her up with her blankie and brought her back to my bed. My husband had jumped ship earlier in the night (his snoring pregnant wife was keeping him awake? what?) and was in the guest room, so it was just baby girl and I. I snuggled her next to me and she curled into a ball until our foreheads were touching.

I touched her chin with my finger and she wrapped her hand around my hand. I couldn't believe how small and chubby her fingers are. I forget. I kissed her forehead and we snuggled together, forehead-to-forehead, hand-in-hand, until she fell asleep.

I was about to carry her back to bed until I realized that this might be one of our last long snuggles for a while, after the baby comes. So I froze time and wrapped my arms around her and soaked in her baby-ness. Her little hands, her little feet, her little head, the smell of her hair. She's so little, about to be the "big" sister. My pillow was wet from a few tears, thinking about our sweet moment and the future. It's so much to take in, but I'm thankful. I never could have asked for more than that moment that night.

Love you, baby girl.

Have a lovely day.

The Thanksgiving Tree.

You might remember my post about a Thanksgiving Tree last year...can you believe it's that time of year again? I can't! Here's a little refresher on the Thanksgiving Tree if you're interested in doing it with your family!

A sweet friend of mine shared this idea with me a while ago, and I'm happy to pass it on.

Firstly, you take fall-ish colored construction paper or cardstock and cut out enough "leaves" to represent each day from November 1 until Thanksgiving Day (this year Thanksgiving falls on November 24th, so you would cut out 24 leaves). Since I used cardstock, I used the first leaf as my template.

Poke a hole in each leaf and feed a piece of string or twine through.

Create a "tree" using a large stick or a bundle of sticks. I have a dried twisted hibiscus I'm using this year. You can either attach all of the leaves now or attach them one at a time. Cub wanted to help me this year, so we went ahead and put all of the blank leaves on our tree.

Every morning, write what you are thankful for on a leaf.

It's an easy way to focus on the poignancy of a thankful heart, and to teach it to our kiddos at a young age. We kept our leaves from last year and plan to continue keeping them--it's so fun to look back!

Plus, it's a great fall decoration. :)

Have a lovely day, friends.

Shopping Savvy.

Caleb has a shopping cart that his G-Ma gave him and it recently made its way from her house to ours. He loves it. He uses it to transport all kinds of things around the house, namely trains and books and cars and such.

A few months ago, he got it in his mind that he would like to take his cart to Target, please. Naturally, the execution of such a suggestion would be tricky with a one year old and a two year old, so we put it on the back burner, but kept the burner lit in case the opportunity ever presented itself to go.

And it DID!

While Naomi spent some time with the grandparents, I decided it would be the perfect chance for Cub to take his cart to Target. As soon as he woke up, I got him dressed and we loaded his cart in the van. We parked in the closest spot we could find and unloaded his cart. The store had just opened and was pretty empty (part of my plan!) and when we walked through the doors, the manager greeted us and was delighted in how cute it was to see a little guy pushing a cart, so I knew we were good to go.

He got to go to the cereal bar aisle and pick out his favorite flavor (always strawberry) and put it in his cart. Y'all, it was a BIG DEAL. So cute!

We only stayed for about fifteen minutes, and it was worth every second. Cub was elated. I remember always wanting to take my little cart I had as a kid to the store, so I could only imagine how happy Cub was to do it. Such a big boy.

Way fun.

Have a lovely day!

Oh, y'all. I am so tired. After a day full of flight delays that resulted in a midnight flight to an airport way out of our way and a night spent in said airport (by "night" I mean from 2-5 in the morning ... oy), my brain is fried. I'm so glad to be home.

I do plan on expounding the details of the trip, but for now I will leave you with some snapshots. These span from Maine to New Hampshire to Vermont and highlight the beautiful home of my Aunt, sore feet, the joys of the sea, a visit to Seventh Generation headquarters, reuniting with family, and, most importantly, Memere's 90th birthday party, thrown by my Mom and her two sisters. This was really a very special trip.

Enjoy the pictures and I promise a post is coming, after I recover.

Have a lovely day, friends.

Blast. Off.

I jumped in the car this morning to grab some coffee at my new favorite coffee joint in town and, rather than turning on the kiddos' CD, I instead tuned into a local country station (I live in Oklahoma, remember). As we neared our drive-thru destination, the host of the morning show announced that a viewing of the space shuttle Atlantis launch could be seen at the Planetarium of a local Air and Space Museum and as I turned up the volume, he shared about the poignancy of this launch, the last manned shuttle launch of the space program.

Last manned shuttle?

I peered in the rearview mirror, saw my two kiddos smiling back at me, and decided that the Planetarium was exactly where we needed to be. It was still early, but I was now on my own mission of making this mini trip happen, in a blaze of the-kids-need-to-experience-this glory. I called my friend and told her about the launch and asked if she wanted to enjoy a historical adventure (and a chaotic one), a challenge which she graciously accepted. I came home, packed some snacks, put on makeup, and went to pick up my friend and her daughter. As we cruised in the minivan to the Planetarium, we reminisced on what the space program was like when we were kids. Who didn't want to go to space? Most kids, at some point, want and expect to experience space travel. When I was Cub's age, the Challenger shuttle had just been lost and the country mourned together the brave souls who were so close to space but never made it there. The space program was an important part of our education and it was a little sad to think that our kids, while they will probably be exposed to the exploration of space, won't necessarily live in a country that budgets for its own astronauts to go there. An understood cut, but a sad one, nonetheless. The end of a chapter in an endless book.

We pulled into the parking lot, put the girls in the jogger, and headed inside. By this time it was standing room only, the dark room full of spectators and local TV crews filming the launch on the large screen. We got there with nine minutes to spare and watched as mission control gave the go and charged the shuttle with safety and "godspeed". Those few minutes were punctuated with switching the babies and taking trips to the lobby to walk around, but when the twenty second mark came, we were all in there together, standing at the very back, watching history unfold. Cub held onto his Bullseye horse and watched in complete silence and astonishment as fire poured out of the burners. When the countdown came to ten, everyone in the Planetarium started counting out loud, the excitement building with each number. When it came to ONE! all of the cell phones came out, snapping pictures of the shuttle as it poured smoke, trembled, and all 4 million pounds of fuel and ship slowly rumbled and lifted off of the ground. There were cheers, and, I'm sure, a few tears.

And that was it. Within a few minutes, the moment was over.

We gathered the kids and schlepped them back to the car, and drove home.

I know that the kids won't remember what they saw today (although Cub loves saying, "Today I saw a space shuttle fly high in the sky!"), but I love that they were able to experience the poignancy of sending their fellow countrymen to space for the last time, for a long time. To enjoy, for a few moments, the unifying excitement that it brings, in that small Planetarium, full of strangers who, on a countdown from ten, cheered for the same thing.

To remember that, no matter how frequent, it is a bit of a miracle to witness men piercing our atmosphere, forging into the vastness of outer space.

Have a lovely day.

A Happy Fourth.

Ten boxes of fireworks

+

Sixty-five guests

+

Kiddos splashing in the pool

+

A ferocious game of backyard volleyball

+

Lots of laughing and chatting with friends and family

+

A few children's tears from the fireworks' BOOM!

+

Lawn chairs

+

A table filled edge-to-edge with pies, cookies, cake, chips, deviled eggs, cobbler, and homemade ice cream

+

Disc golf and Bocce Ball in the front yard

+

Tiki torches

+

Flags and sparklers

+

Bug spray

=

One heck of a Fourth of July.

(And two very, very exhausted hosts. YAY for coffee.)

(And yay for a home where we can do stuff like this--a dream come true for us. Exhaustion is a bit more tolerable when it's accompanied by joy. What fun memories were made!)

I hope your Fourth was a good one!

Have a lovely day.

Peace, Wonderful Peace.

On Friday we headed to the lake with the kiddos and spent the afternoon playing in the sunshine. By the time bedtime for Naomi rolled around, she was ready. Exhausted and cranky, we tucked her into the pack 'n play in her grandparents' room where she promptly conked out. An hour later, her cries could be heard echoing through the house, so we went in and got her and tried to figure out what was wrong. We decided it was because she was in a new place (we haven't been to the lake house since she was a few months old) and decided that maybe upstairs in the closet in our room would better suit her, since it would be pitch black. Pitch black usually works in a crisis situation.

So I lugged the pack 'n play upstairs and settled her down. Within a few minutes, she was asleep. Ahh. I stayed up a few hours later and finally headed to bed around 11:00, the first one to go to bed (I married a family of night owls). I crawled into bed with Cub asleep in the trundle next to our bed and Naomi asleep in the closet. My eyelids were heavy from the fun but busy day (and from my daily task of gestating) and I lazily checked Facebook before drifting off to sleep.

A few moments later I heard Naomi fuss.

But it wasn't an angry fuss. It was a happy "I just woke up!" noise. As in, "Wow, what a great nap I just had!" I pulled the pillow over my head and pretended I couldn't hear her. Surely, she would simply conk out once she realized it was still sleepy time right? I laid there and heard her continue to talk to her blanket and then she began speaking very angrily to her blanket and then she began to cry. For fear that she might wake up her brother, I decided I needed to go get her. By now I was beyond tired and a little cranky myself as I swung my tired legs over the side of the bed and slumped to the closet door. I opened it and picked up my little ray of sunshine, who cooed happily in my arms. I mumbled that she really needed to go back to sleep. I'm sure she understood me very clearly, based on her rapid arm movements and giggling.

So, I did the Mom Swing and slowly rocked her in my arms back and forth, standing in the dark closet, singing our lullaby for Mouse, "You Are My Sunshine". I sang it softly and she settled into my arms. I felt her grow heavier and heavier until I was sure she was asleep, or at least close to it. I gently leaned over the pack 'n play and set her inside when her little eyes popped open and she started to cry. I scooped her up again and started rocking back and forth and singing, barely keeping my eyes open. I lost my place with the lyrics at some point and I'm sure the words sounded like "You aw ma sumshinbth" as they slurred with my ever-growing weariness. I felt her grow heavy again but I didn't want to risk a premature landing, so I sat on the closet floor, criss-cross applesauce, rocking Naomi in my arms.

And I'm not sure if it was a second wind or a just a Mommish change of heart, but I was suddenly very content there on the closet floor. My usually-squirmy baby girl was lying still in my arms, snuggled close to me in the darkness. My change of heart changed my tune and I found myself singing "Count Your Blessings" to my little Mouse, softly while she started to fall asleep.

And then I started to feel a little badly for Mouse. She had had a long day, she was way overtired, and now she had to sleep in a closet. I couldn't blame her for having a rough time falling asleep. And again I found my tune changing to the chorus of "Wonderful Peace", a hymn that my family has sung for years:

Peace, Peace, Wonderful Peace

Coming down from the Father above,

Sweep over my spirit forever I pray,

In fathomless billows of love!

All I wanted for my daughter at that moment was peace and I sang it over her in the darkness. It's hard to explain the poignancy of that moment, except that it was one of those moments where everything else disappeared and it was just she and I, in the quiet, together. Even after her heavy eyelids shut, I rocked her quietly and closely there on the floor for a while longer, cherishing the moment.

She stayed asleep all night.

As I thought about this today in the sunshine of the afternoon, it all seemed to sound a bit dramatic, what with hoping for peace and being so tired in the late hours of the night ... but the daylight always seems to make the nighttime moments seem insignificant. But the nighttime moments are significant. And I found myself looking at that moment with a sense of gratitude--the joy of cradling my precious girl. When I did finally lay her down, I crawled over my big boy in his bed, snuggling his Nigh-Nigh, bedheaded and sleeping with his mouth wide open, and when I pulled my covers up to my chin, my heart was full. And my husband, who had been downstairs and had missed all of the action, completed that fullness when he crawled into bed only moments after myself. My little family, my whole world, contained in one dark room.

I can sacrifice some sleep to appreciate that.

Have a lovely day.

Slick.

I realized I never wrote a Father's Day post, so we'll go ahead and call this one it.

This is one of the best memories I have of my Dad.

When I was a kid, I really wanted a slip 'n slide. A specific slip 'n slide, in fact, that was advertised throughout morning cartoons and the TGIF line-up. I can't remember the exact name of this particular piece of slippery plastic, but I remember the sing-songy slogan that accompanied the commercial: "You run! You slide! You hit the bump, and then you DIVE!"

AWESOME.

On the commercial, the slip 'n slide looked enormous. It showed teenager-sized kids running at full speed and then in slow motion it showed them landing on the slip 'n slide with huge waves of water pouring over them. After sliding down the massive slide, they would hit a huge bump and go plunging into the pool attached at the end. Sheer watery perfection.

My Dad knew how much I wanted this slip 'n slide and since California summers are a tad toasty, he decided to take me to Toys 'R Us one day to buy it. I was giddy. We searched the store until we found the massive display ... and saw the box that the slide came in. It was tiny. My Dad read the measurements on the box and realized the slide was seven feet long. He grimaced and put his hand over his head to show me how tall seven feet was. My little heart was broken. The commercial had LIED! With my head down, I told him it was okay, I didn't need the slide. And we left the store.

However, instead of going home, he took me to a hardware store. Puzzled, I followed him inside as we wandered to the back of the store. He pulled out a box labeled "BLACK TARP" and raised his eyebrows with a very sneaky smile. I had no idea what his plans were, but we bought the box and headed home. I went to my room while Dad stayed outside and a little while later, he called me down. I walked outside and couldn't believe my eyes:

Down the slope of our front yard laid a massive black slip 'n slide! It was five feet wide and thirty feet long. My Dad hooked a sprinkler up to the top, squirted some dish soap at the starting point, and had thusly created the most impressive and amazing slip 'n slide I had ever seen. My jaw dropped open in amazement. I jumped up and down, giddy to try it out. Within minutes every neighborhood kid was in our front yard, mesmerized by the massive piece of summer fun sprawling down our lawn.

We used that thing until it shred to pieces.

I thanked my Dad profusely, but I think it was the change in my countenance that pleased him the most. And now, as a parent, I get it.

Happy (late) Father's Day, Dad. :)

And thank you for the "above and beyond" moments.

Have a lovely day.

A Few Words Wednesday: The Party.

Thanks to a wonderful family happy to attend, hot glue and burnt fingers, sales at Hobby Lobby, a talented Cake Connoisseur, a few tears, a lot of laughs, and one sunny afternoon, Naomi's party was a memorable one.

(The cake was perfect.)

(Amazing sausage rolls, you can find the recipe here!)

(Sioux City Root Beer, Stewart's Cream Soda, and pink lemonade!)

(Birthday girl blowing kisses!)

(Love.)

(We have amazingly crafty relatives--woot!)

(Not sure what to think ... also, note my ever-growing baby bump!)

(The cuteness!)

(Baby blues.)

(Blowing kisses while relaxing outside after the party.)

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl. I can't believe you're not a baby anymore!