Tree!

What I've been doing today (in Photoshop).

amphibian dragon facts

Kate modifies her homework.

fishy fishy fish bread

I tried out the fish-shaped hot cake pan that I got for my birthday. I can see it's going to take some practice, getting the right amount of batter and filling, and the right cooking time and temperature. I ended up with some pretty misshapen fish.



I used this recipe for the batter. The traditional filling is red bean paste (팥). I thought I'd try strawberries.

Warm up the pan on the stove, add batter, add filling, more batter on top, close the pan--



Cook on both sides--



Ta da! Fish!



(We had eaten some of the uglier ones by this point.)  They tasted pretty good, though the texture wasn't quite like the Korean version.



"Hey Andy, want a fish?"



Andy is intrigued. Kate decided she doesn't like cooked strawberries, but she liked the tail part.

In other news, we are not doing so well with the time change.  Andy was up and bouncing off the walls till 1:00 in the morning, and then Kate woke up at about 2:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.  Oy.  Long night.  

Letter Fun

Andy's obsession with the alphabet continues.  He has a couple of sets of Melissa and Doug letters that he likes to line up in interesting places.  Like on the kitchen floor, with one letter in the middle of each tile (and then when he runs out of room he starts a second row on top).  We think this is pretty clever, but it's better if he does it when we aren't trying to cook or do something else in the kitchen.  He does get underfoot. 



He recently discovered that the piping on the edge of the couch cushions also makes a good ledge for letter display.  (Resourceful!)



Kate made this for her letter-loving brother at school.  I thought it was very sweet.  Particularly because I think this is the first thing she has made for him, ever. 

Andy is starting to talk a little more--he has a lot of words and phrases that he has memorized and frequently repeats them to himself, but it's still more like he's practicing talking than actually using them to communicate.  He is reading up a storm, though.  Loves reading.  When I let him play with my kindle he types words that he knows.  The other day he typed APPLE BOY CAT DOG... and then tried to do ELEPHANT but that was a bit beyond him. 

My birthday--jjigae and a fish pan.

I like to try to get a picture with the kids on my birthday. This doesn't always work so well, but these turned out pretty cute.



Awwww!

We went down to O Bok Jip in Lakewood for dinner, and I got some kimchi jjigae. It was not the best jjigae I've had, but it was okay. But there was quite a lot of it so I ended up taking the rest of it home and having the leftovers for lunch the next day, and it was suddenly fabulous. That's the beauty of jjigae--it's better the next day. I was familiar with the phenomenon, but was somewhat surprised at the magnitude of improvement.



Here's my post-birthday lunch! Day-old kimchi jjigae, (new) rice, and kim. Andy was excited about the rice and kim. I gave him a few dribbles of jjigae broth on his rice, too.



Andy sneaks some kim.  He would just eat the whole package plain if I let him.



I got this pan for my birthday. It's for making goldfish-shaped waffle-cakes. (Korean boong-o bbang.) Amanda got one, and when I saw it I said, "I must have one of those!" (Got mine from Amazon. Amazon thinks it's Japanese, even though it's got Korean all over it. Funny.)



I still haven't tried it but I will post pictures when I do!

What I got for Valentine's Day

They're heart-shaped!

Happy birthday to Doug!

Doug is another year older!  We celebrated with dinner at Chevy's.



Andy's chip-dipping action.  (I have been somewhat less impressed with their food lately, but we love the salsa.  So good.)



Continuing our tradition of  "stick candles in whatever's handy."



A kiss for the birthday dad.



And here's Doug's present! It's a gorget. Because every guy needs a gorget.

Happy birthday to my cute hubby!   Mwwwwwah!

Hand Family

Kate drew this at church.  The thumb is Pikachu.

She wore her new pink dress, and I was planning on getting a picture, but we were both in a bad mood so I didn't even try. Seems like we've been butting heads a lot lately. But hey, she loves her family! And Pikachu.

Tension Headaches (me vs. the sewing machine)

I've been working on this pink dress for Kate. It's almost done now, but I did have some trouble getting started.

We have this Brother CS6000i sewing machine that Doug ordered online about a year and a half ago. He used it to make his doublet, and didn't have any trouble with the machine, but when I tried to use it I just couldn't get the tension right. (Fortunately I started on some test pieces rather than right on the skirt.)

With the tension all the way down on 1, the top thread was really tight and the bottom stitches looked like they were staggered, one to the left and the next to the right of the center line. Turning the tension up only made it worse. I had a feeling the problem was with the bobbin, but couldn't figure out how to adjust it. (It's a drop-in bobbin--it turns out there is a case, but it's just a little harder to get to.)

I looked online and found some comments about a lot of people having tension problems with this machine. I decided to take it down to Quality Sewing and Vacuum and see what they could tell me. (Sandi Pickering from church is the manager there.) A very nice lady helped me out. When she popped off the bottom plate it was all full of red doublet-lint. She got that all brushed out, and adjusted the tension on the bobbin for me, and helped me pick out a better thread. The thread that I was using was "polyester covered polyester," which may have been making the machine unhappy. Apparently anything that says "covered" is undesirable. I did not know this.

With these various ministrations, the machine performed much better, and I was able to get the skirt pieces sewn together without further difficulty. I got that all done and then sewed the skirt onto the crocheted bodice. When Jill Tracy assembled the autumn dress for me, she just seamed the skirt and bodice together on the wrong side like regular fabric. On this one I put a picot edging along the bottom of the bodice, so I decided to top-stitch it. I just sewed carefully in the ditch between two rows of crochet stitches, and then did another line on the next row up, for added security. It seemed like it worked really well.

With the kitchen table being our only work-space we have to shuffle things around for projects and eating.  I have also borrowed the neighbor's ironing board.  It's up against the back door.  We make do!

Andy-Proofing

Our fridge is now sporting this stylish new buckle. Andy keeps getting into the fridge for juice. We never had this problem with Kate.

Groundhog Day

Kate made this cute little guy at school. I remember Mr. Seewer, my high school World Lit teacher, saying that he would like to receive Groundhog Day cards. I guess the idea didn't really catch on, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology there are now a few e-card versions available.

Kate tells me that Pikachu saw his shadow too.

I have fallen down this rabbit hole

... and I don't expect to be coming out for a while.

The show does have its flaws (there are certain aspects of the premise that I'm afraid the creators haven't really thought through completely) but I am totally loving it anyway. It's like popcorn.

(And I have a new appreciation for Doug's gray shawl-collar cardigan.)

Lunar New Year

I made this card to send to some friends in Korea. (Hopefully they won't mind getting it a little late!)

I wanted to get some dduk guk, but with the weather lately I hadn't prepared anything.  Monday was wonderfully sunny and even warm (relatively), which was lovely after all the snow and ice.  So I called Doug, when he was done with his classes, and asked if he'd like to have lunch in Lakewood.  We arranged to meet at Chung Ki Wa.




Doug had chicken bulgogi, and I got my dduk guk for the year.  It was a big bowl with lots of dduk.  Very dense.  I was feeling pretty full afterwards. 

The best part was that while I was driving down I had the thought that we should get some kim (laver seaweed) for Andy to have with his rice.  I figured Doug was closer than I was, so I called his cell phone and asked, "Could you stop by Paldo World and get some more kim?" and he said, "I already did."  Isn't he awesome?

It's the year of the dragon.  My brother Peter is a dragon!  새해복 많이 받으세요!

ice storm

Our snow turned into more snow and then freezing rain. Kate was off school Monday and Tuesday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and then a waiver day (not sure exactly what that is), and then we had three snow days in a row. So we were pretty much holed up for the entire week.




I've seen ice storms before, but not since we've been in Washington.  They are quite spectacular.  And very destructive. 




I took these over by Fred Meyer. Poor trees! A lot of the trees around our complex had to have limbs removed, too.



A lot of people in the area lost power, but ours fortunately stayed on, so we stayed nice and warm.

I saw some crocuses coming up at the church the week before. I'll bet they were hating it.

snow pants and snowball

We finally got our snow! Kate has been having fun playing in it. (She went out for a little bit before church on Sunday, and then we were in a hurry to get ready.)

I had the idea for this layout last year, but never got it done.  (It's a quote from Little Bear.)  Credits here.



I got a snowball started for Kate, and then she rolled it around for a while. She hasn't had many chances to do this sort of thing!




A girl and her snowball.  After this she rolled it down the hill and it broke, so she turned it into a snow cave for her rubber dragon. 

The snow pants are hand-me-downs from Glory and Sky.  She wore them last year and we were pleased to find that they still fit just fine.  She's got pink pants, a pink hat, pink boots, and pink mittens. 



I crocheted this scarf--also pink, but it doesn't really match.

Doug has been teaching Kate how to stomp the snow off her boots before she comes in, and how to take off her things just inside the door.  He says, "If you don't grow up in snow country you don't know these things!"

It was pretty good packing snow but now it's all crusty.  We're supposed to get some more--maybe a lot more--tonight or tomorrow.

Get 'er done

For our Relief Society book club this month we're reading The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Last night I was less than a third of the way through (it's a bit longer than I thought), and our meeting is this Wednesday, so I only have a couple of days to finish it. I've always been a reader but these days I'm not getting through books as quickly as I used to--mostly I just read at bedtime, and then I fall asleep. (I blame the internet for completely destroying my attention span.) So today I decided to see if I could download the audiobook. I have cards at four different libraries in the area, and luckily one of them did have it available.

So I've been listening to the book and catching up on my back-log of blog posts from December. (You can change the date when you post, to get them to show up in the order you want.) Now I'm almost done with the book and I got a lot of photos edited! Yay!

Honey Pig (꿀 돼지!)

Lunch at Honey Pig in Lakewood!  (It came up as one of the local deals on Amazon, and Doug spotted it and bought it.)

We've been to Honey Pig before but it finally dawned on me that the name is a pun in Korean--꿀 is the word for honey but it's also the sound a pig makes. 



It's one of those places where you cook the meat at your table.  They had these thin little sheets of dduk (rice cake) to wrap stuff in.  I've never seen that before.  It seemed like one of those trendy things--putting the lettuce inside the rice instead of the rice inside the lettuce.  It was good but I think I prefer the old-fashioned way. 



We decided to go while Kate was at school, and I think that was really the best way to handle it.  Andy just sat there and ate pretty steadily the whole time.  Kate would have eaten a few things and been done in five minutes, and spent the rest of the time asking "When can we goooooooo?" 

Honey Pig is the restaurant that used to be Dooriban. We went there several years ago with the Tracys, when Kate was really little. Later we went back and discovered it had changed names (and ownership, probably). Honey Pig seems very particularly geared toward the barbecue. Which is good, but most of the time we go for something else.  (Kimchi jjigae!)  The two places in Lakewood that we usually go to are Chung Ki Wa and O Bok Jip.  맛이 있어요.

Gathering Pink

I love displays of color. Stacks of cardstock, cubbyholes of yarn, little drawers filled with rainbows of embroidery floss.... I remember once being entranced by a wall of socks at the mall.

I went up to JoAnn to look for some pink fabric to made a dress for Kate. Maybe something with hearts on it, I was thinking. What caught my eye was the array of fat quarters, sorted by color, lined up along the front of the fabric shelves.  All those different patterns together--I just love it. 

I'm planning a dress with a fabric skirt and crocheted top  (like the autumn dress, but more of a jumper style, to go over a shirt).  It turns out that matching fabric with yarn (or crochet thread) is more difficult than you would think.  Pinks shade toward purple or toward orange.  But I realized that if I use a variety of pinks that are close to each other but not exactly the same, then the crochet thread doesn't have to match exactly either.  So I'm going to make a patchwork skirt with all these different pinks.  Doesn't that sound cute? 

I was quite disappointed to discover that the company that made the crochet thread  I used for the autumn dress (America's Best) has gone out of business.  If I had known I would have stocked up.

Andy sings the алфавит

Our little hyperlexic boy loves watching alphabet videos on youtube. He has quite a collection of alphabet songs in English now (ending in "zee" or "zed") and he's even been branching out to non-English alphabets. He has a couple in Spanish and French that he has memorized, and this one in Russian. He was singing along with it the other day and it was so cute we just had to get a video.

For a long time he would just kind of chant along with the songs, but in the past couple of months he's started really singing. (With, you know, actual notes.) We love his cute little voice.

(I did take a semester of Russian, once upon a time... the only things I know how to say are "I am very glad that you are in the USSR," "Where is your husband?" and "I am a puppy." )

Welcoming 2012

I have picked out a "one little word" for 2012.  My word is FOCUS.  I know I let myself get too distracted by the internet and it keeps me from focusing on the things I should.  So I'm going to re-focus on using my time and resources to do the things that I really want to do.  And on figuring out what those are. 

We spent New Years Eve with the Tracys, playing Ticket to Ride and eating cheese and veggies till the unfashionable hour of 9:30.  Yes, we are the big partiers.  (Normally the kids get their pajamas on at 7:30, so that was pretty late for them!)  We hadn't played Ticket to Ride before.  Doug and I both enjoyed it.  (He always likes maps.)

We've had several game nights like this, over the years, playing Settlers or Killer Bunnies or something of that nature at the Tracys' kitchen table while Kate played with the Fisher Price castle and other toys on the living room floor.  (Other people's toys are always more interesting.) She would almost always go home with a beanie baby that she would borrow until the next time we were there, trading it in for another one.  This time felt like some kind of milestone, or transition, as instead of playing in the living room nearby, Kate spent most of the time down in the basement on the Wii.  My baby's growing up.  (Andy ended up on the computer, right next to where I was sitting, playing on starfall.com.)  We went home with borrowed Wii games instead of beanie babies. 

We started 11:00 church today.  We alternate between 9:00 and 11:00 (there's also a student ward in our building that keeps the 1:00 time slot, so we don't do that one, thankfully!)  Since we were out last night the kids didn't get their Saturday night bath, but I thought, "Hey, we've got two more hours to get ready in the morning; we'll do it then."  This worked out okay but I don't think I'll make a habit of it.



Andy is a Sunbeam now!  The kids are assigned to their classes according to what age they are on January 1.  Since Kate and Andy's birthday is right at the end of the year, they get to leave the nursery when they're newly-three.   We have a picture of Kate as the Littlest Sunbeam, on her first day in Primary. Doug has told me several times that this is one of his favorite pictures of Kate, just right on the cusp of babyhood. Andy is actually not the Littlest Sunbeam, since there's another boy in the ward whose birthday is today. I also was not able to get a picture of him sitting in his chair, because he just wouldn't do it. He is a wiggler and a roamer. So he spent the first while sitting with his teacher, and then came to me.



I held him for just a few minutes and then he just conked out.  Right at 1:30--nap time!  (We've been trying to discontinue the nap but he keeps falling asleep anyway, so we just try to keep it short.)  Kelly Dickson put her coat down on the floor for him and he slept that way till it was time to go. (That's his Happy Birthday sticker, on his shirt.) 

I have to mention that we did not sing "Ring Out Wild Bells" today. I've always liked the way that last chord resolves.

Kate keeps asking me when it's going to snow.  She knew that the solstice was the first day of winter, and anticipated that winter would bring snow.  This morning when I went in to wake her up she asked me again, "Did it snow?"  No snow.  It's been pretty mild, lately.  The cloud cover keeps in the warmth, like a damp gray blanket.  (I'm not saying that in a bad way--it's kind of a cozy damp gray blanket.)  Today was clear and sharply sunny, but still well above freezing. I'm okay with a mild winter, but I do hope we get at least one good snow.

Happy New Year to you!