Wednesday's Whimsical Word: Friend

The word friend brings so many thoughts to mind, it's hard to decide what to post today. So may fun adventures with friends come to mind, childhood memories and fun times in high school and college gush forth as I think about friends I've had in various stages of life. I've been blessed with many wonderful friends. Many of whom I don't see as often as I'd like, but their friendship still has great meaning in my life.

Then my thoughts turned to family. Often, sibling rivalry interferes with siblings becoming close as friends. But such was not the case for me. My sister Katie and I shared many friends and often played together during our growing up years. We even made it through the teen years without too many major disputes. in fact, we got in more trouble for laughing and being silly than we did for fighting. And the disagreements we did have usually ended in laughter anyway.

This brings me to the final friend-related subject of this post. My own kids. Unfortunately, the automatic friendship that I felt came so easily between Katie and me, hasn't developed between my kids; at least not yet. I often feel like my kids fight ALL DAY LONG! Am I doing something wrong? Is this one of those things that's different for boys than it is for girls? I hear some people say that their kids are best friends and it makes me wonder their secret.

If anyone reading this knows how to nurture friendship between siblings I'm all ears. I really want my kids to be friends. As I found out during my pregnancies that I was having boy after boy after boy, I was genuinely excited for another baby boy to come along every time. I hoped and imagined they would all be friends; little buddies. Hopefully it will still happen. I know they're all quite young which exaggerates their age differences and variety of interests. Hopefully as they grow they will realize what valuable assets they can be to each other and friendships will still develop among them.

As they get older they may have more things in common, which I've found helps dramatically. I made this discovery quite by accident today. Camden and Jace both needed new shoes. They both got the same style of shoe to replace their old shoes. And, amazingly, just having the same shoes has brought them a little closer. Jace actually included Camden in running around trying out their new shoes together. They can both run remarkably faster in the new shoes in case you were wondering...funny how that works.

Hopefully their friendship will continue to grow as they do. I would love to see that happen.

Valentine's Day

A few Days before Valentine's Day this year I was talking to Jace about sweethearts. I told him that Casey was my first sweetheart and then Jace Camden and Alek are my next three. Jace seemed a little disappointed that he wasn't first. So to make this Valentine's Day special I decided to get something for my little sweeties.

We also made Valentine Cookies and took them around to neighbors. This was always one of my favorite traditions when I was little and I wanted my kids to have this memory too. I did most of the baking and frosting, but they had fun delivering them.

On Thursday and Friday the kids had their school parties.
Camden came home from preschool with a bag full of treats and cards, and Jace got to make a valentine box for school.
He wanted to make a Spongebob box and he gave out Star Wars Valentines. I was amused with both of those choices since he's never seen a star wars movie and we never watch Spongebob cartoons here. But I guess he's watched it a little at friends' houses.

And of course Alek likes Valentine's day too. Here he is enjoying a mouthful of conversation hearts.
The best part is, Our Valentine's celebrations here are still going strong. Casey and I are going out tonight for a Valentine's date night. I am so excited! I always love spending time with my first Sweetheart.

Wednesday's Whimsical Word: Egg

This is not something I usually post on my blog but I wanted to share a recipe. I made this recipe three times just before Christmas and LOVED it. Although it's not a healthy recipe by any means, it is really good, and easy because it has a few simple ingredients. And the presentation is fantastic.

Jam Filled Butter Cookies (recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup fruit preserves, any flavor

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and egg yolks. Mix in flour a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. If dough is too soft, refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes. Place balls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Use your finger or an instrument of similar size to make a well in the center of each cookie. Fill the hole with 1/2 teaspoon of preserves.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

That's the recipe as it was on allrecipes.com but I also added 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. If you like almond extract it would probably be good with a little of that instead. And instead of jam I used some pink grapefruit jelly. I loved the color and flavor this gave the cookies. Anything citrus is likely to be a hit for me, especially grapefruit. But I'm sure these cookies would be great with any kind of jam or jelly.

Let me know if you make them and what you think. I honestly couldn't stop eating them. Next time I make them it will have to be when I am planning to take cookies to someone so that there will be less of them around for me to eat. But I would love an excuse to make them again so if you want a plateful of these little gems, let me know and I'll whip up a batch. Really!

And just for fun I thought I'd add some pictures.

Here are the cookies rolled into balls before I filled them with jelly. I pressed holes in them with a clean chapstick lid dipped in flour. I put the jelly in a plastic bag and cut the corner off to make it easy to put jelly in the centers. And here is the finished product. it's hard to tell when they're done you have to look for slight browning around the bottom edges. These literally melt in your mouth.

Once they're cooled, I dust them with powdered sugar. But that's more for presentation than taste. They taste just as good without it. Enjoy!

2010

Doesn't the year we're in sound epic? I love how it sounds like it could be a movie title or something. It just has so much promise. And promise of something great for this year is something I could really use. After the way 2009 turned out with our house, I was really excited to see 2010 arrive. I think I even said out loud that 2010 can't possibly be worse than 2009.

Well guess what? I was wrong. Just 8 short days into the year we were hit pretty hard with a major financial upheaval. So, unfortunately, our financial problems are not over. But, that being said, I still think that 2010 has plenty to offer.

We may not live the picture perfect life that I seem to read on every blog I come across. But we do have a lot going for us. Casey and I get along fabulously despite being in the midst of financial woes, and we both have good jobs which is a great thing right now. And while we haven't had an illness free winter, the kids are all healthy, happy, and growing. They're learning and loving life at all of their different stages. I love the area where we live and I have my wonderful family close by lots of really great friends.

I guess what I'm really saying is that I haven't given up on 2010 yet. I think it can still be a really great year for us and I can't wait to find out what else the year will bring. With all we have going for us, I just know we have something great coming up. I can't wait to figure our what it is.

(On a side note, the Wednesday's Whimsical Word for tomorrow is egg if anyone else wants to participate.)

I Miss Blogging

I just spent nearly an hour reading back over my old blog posts. Doing this made me realize how much I miss not posting on my blog regularly. I need to get back into it. It was such a great creative outlet for me and I had fun with it. But lately it has felt like a chore. Something else I neglect to do and then feel guilty about later. But I think it's when I post more often that I get the most out of my blog. Of course, I don't exactly lead the most exciting life, so extra posts may not be about major events and fun things we do that people want to catch up on. Typically, more blog posts from me could very well mean that you get to read a bunch of random thoughts or my weekly dinner menu. I'm not sure exactly what posting more often will bring, but I want to see what I can do with it. I need to get my creative juices flowing again. This post is probably quite unnecessary, since I doubt anyone reading this blog is hanging on my every word, just waiting for me to post again, but I need this right now. Hopefully I get something out of it. So for those wanting updates about our life and what we're doing, just watch for posts with pictures.

In fact, I was thinking about the manic Monday posts I used to do, and how they really helped me keep up with blogging. I didn't want my blog to be just those, so it forced me to blog about other things in-between. I've been thinking about it for a while and now is a good time to bring that back. But instead of Manic Monday (a title I never really liked) I'm going to go with Wednesday's Word. I have a list of words from the old Manic Monday website that I'm going to use in random order. In fact, I'm going to start today...right now!

I found the file with the list I saved and today's word is ...warm.

All I can think of is the total dichotomy of the word warm to the weather right now. I am so ready for spring. But I realized just how far away warm weather really is when Camden asked me yesterday when it would be warm outside. I told him 3 months and then counted quickly in my head, hoping I was wrong. That couldn't be right. Three months is still so far away. But sadly it's true. While we usually get some relatively warm days teasing us as spring tries to make an appearance, we likely won't have consistently warm weather for a while. And unfortunately, the groundhog isn't any more optimistic than this post. We received a prediction yesterday for 6 more weeks of winter. Hopefully Mother Nature will surprise us and give us an early spring anyway. I know I'm definitely ready for some warm weather. And with any luck, my count was off too. I'm hoping for an unseasonably warm April but it's definitely not a guarantee here. So much for global warming huh? Ok, so I really shouldn't complain. By comparison, today's weather really was almost nice enough to be considered...warm. Almost.

And just to round out this post and get back into the swing of things, I'm going to add a Smiley List. Now, more than ever, I need to think about the little things that make me smile throughout my day. (I may or may not elaborate on that later.)
-Jace was in a really happy mood after school today and didn't complain when it was homework time.
-Camden is really starting to show an interest in writing his letters and putting letters together to form words.
-Alek learned to say the word happy. He pronounces it in an old English style, without the 'h' and he yelled it in his room several times before falling asleep tonight.
-Casey and I got to spend some time relaxing together tonight because we got the kids to bed a little bit early.
-I'm blogging again!