Deceptively Delicious

So my friend Melissa recommended this book to me while we were shopping at Costco - I had never heard of it because I avoid all things Oprah, but after a quick flip-through it looked so good I had to buy it. The idea is to put pureed vegetables into familiar recipes, making your kids' favorite foods more nutritious. Lately I've really been trying to get the whole family to eat healthy but I've been focusing on buying organic and limiting processed foods, which means there are fewer and fewer snacks and meals at our house that Carson and the boys actually want to eat. My friend Jodee said she tried some of the recipes and liked them, so today I planned out my grocery shopping according to the book and started making the purees. Tonight I made homemade macaroni and cheese with butternut squash puree and it was super good! It looked like regular orange mac and cheese even though I used white cheddar (no artificial colors!) and the kids loved it. Maybe after trying some more recipes I'll post a list of my favorites.

We enjoyed Thanksgiving at my parents' house last week and I beat Carson at Boggle for the first time. My Grandma always makes the gravy and my mom was excited to show off her new countertops:

Carson was working on our family video last week and the boys saw a part where they had made a rocketship out of an upside-down wheelbarrow and some other yard equipment in the backyard. They wanted to run outside and do it again, even though it was freezing! So we bundled them up and here it is:

Caeden was super excited to be playing outside with his big brothers!

Trey sayings

Trevor will say silly, crazy, smart, off the wall things all the time. I have a terrible memory so the next day something will remind me of what he recently said and I won't remember it anymore. I wish I could write them all down to look back on later. Here are his most recent two:

Marisa was reading a comment on a blog and said "Holy Cow." Trey asked her if that was taking the name of the Holy Ghost in vain. She explained that it isn't and that it comes from India where they think cows are sacred. Trey started laughing and said, "Moo, moo... I'm sacred. Moo."

We were all in the car and were listening to a hip-hop station to a song that had a pretty good beat to it. Then the lyrics started (fifty cent, or as I usually say, "fiddy sent") and they were bad as usual. I said that "this song is kind of naughty" and I changed the station. After about 5 seconds of the new station Trey wasn't impressed and said, "Turn it back. I want to listen to the dirty song. I like dancing to dirty songs!"

That time of year again!

I grew up a Ute and luckily converted before going to college...


Click on the picture and let it scroll through its varied slogans. Also, if you haven't heard, the physician told me I will only have boys no matter how many children I have. He centrifuged my "seed" and I only have little Y's swimming around. He said that I have EBF, Exuberant BYU Fanaticism.

He's a Mo'

I always enjoy coming to like a person and then find out they are a Mo' like me. This happened a couple of years ago with Glenn Beck. I started watching him and liked his fresh, tell it as it is take on the world. After a couple of months I found out he was LDS.

This happened again with one of my favorite techno artists. Kaskade! I saw something that said he found his motivation and love for music while in SLC...what! Who finds their love of techno and makes a mark for themselves via SLC? That obviously piqued my interest so I did as I always do...I googled it, and sho'nuff, he is a Mo'.

Musical Genius

Maybe its because I'm a biologist at heart, but I love this new website a friend showed me called Music Genome Project. People quantify the various musical aspects of a song and list them in its genome. They take this information and the songs that you like, correlate it all and come up with a list of songs that you would like. It works amazingly well. After selecting a couple songs it will automatically bring up other songs that I know and love that fit perfectly, then new ones that I have not heard before. Yahoo music used to do this a little, but this website is amazing. Anyway, these are some of the things that I like about my music...mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, acoustic sonority, a sublte use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping and minor key tonality. Some conflict because they come from different "stations" that I made.

In the spirit of music I figured I will update my latest additions music list:

Name	Artist
Time After Time	INOJ
After All This Time	Simon Webbe
Breathe	Telepopmusik
Simple Man	Lynyrd Skynyrd
Welcome To The Black Parade	My Chemical Romance
Aerodynamic	Daft Punk
Harder, Better, Faster,	Daft Punk
The Adventure Final	Angels & Airwaves
Do It For Me Now	Angels & Airwaves
Everything's Magic	Angels & Airwaves
Good Day	Angels & Airwaves
Only You	Joshua Radin
Start The Machine	Angels & Airwaves
Valkyrie Missile	Angels & Airwaves
The War	Angels & Airwaves
The World Is Mine	David Guetta
Let Me Love You Down	Injo
Sensibility	Acoustic Alchemy
Sensibility 2	Acoustic Alchemy
This Is Why I'm Hot (Instrumental)	MIMS
Time After Time	Quietdrive
The World Is Mine	David Guetta
Apologize	One Republic Ft. Timbaland
Do It	Nelly Furtado
Electropop	Juipter Rising
Feels Like Home	Meck Ft. Dino
Give It To Me	Timbaland/Nelly Furtado/JY
Put Em Up (Radio Edit)	Edun
Young Folks	Peter Bjorn And John

As always there are songs that are old that I am getting to fill in holes in my collection. There is also a disproportionate amount of Angels and Airwaves. I tried out a few and liked these.

10 Months and Family Visit

Caeden turned 10 months old yesterday. We haven't posted pix of the boys at the same age for a couple months so here is the new comparison. He looks more like Beckham did at the same age than we thought and a lot more different than Trevor. The first three are Caeden...



Bex at 10 months...

Trey at 10 months...

This one below makes him look a little more like his brothers.

Cody, Lisa, Tucker and Aubrey came to visit for a few days. Cody interviewed in Spokane for a job after he graduates in May and it sounds like the job is his for the taking. We'll be glad to have them a few hours drive rather than a few days drive away to visit.



We went out to lunch in the Space Needle and had some good food and a great view.

We took them to the "world famous" Freemont Troll, but they weren't too scared by it.

About time

My brother and his family are visiting. It was fun to have them here for a couple days. They will be in Spokane for a bit visiting friends and interviewing for jobs. We have a long standing who's-best-at-boggle debate that has been reignited by the MAW game. I got Master today and tried to write " 'bout time " as my name, but it didn't come out correct. Anyway, I'm moving up in the world...



take 2

Halloween

Halloween has come and so have the annual sugar rushed, sleep deprived cries that accompany this wonderful holiday. In reality it was a lot of fun because the boys were so excited. Beckham couldn't believe that you could actually walk up to random houses and get free candy. Life is over-the-top amazing in the eyes of that 2 year old. For school Trevor had to dress up as a "community helper." He chose scientist then put his usual creative spin on it and went as a mad scientist. I don't know how mad scientists help the community, but stifling Trey's creativity is like trying to keep a big inflated beach ball under your feet in a pool...you always lose. I guess you can tell he didn't get his creativity from his father because that analogy was definitely sub-par....


On Halloween night Trey went as a Bionicle. Bex went as Spiderman in Trevor's old, torn, threadbare spidey suit. He said he wanted to be a pirate and has been pirate crazy the last couple of weeks. When we pulled out the old (should be in the trash, but Trey won't let us throw it away. Luckily all the tears are on the backside) Spiderman suit, Beckham suddenly changed his mind and was dead set on being spidey. No amount of discussion was going to change that kid's mind.

Marisa always does a great job of carving pumpkins. I gave up 1 or 2 years ago. How am I supposed to compete with these?

Bex liked being goalie, but didn't figure this out until the end of the season.
Caeden loves to run around and try to get on the field during his brother's soccer games.
Three crazy boys!

Trey all of the sudden started doing great his last three soccer games. Maybe it was initiated by the chocolate carrot we hung in front of him if he scored a goal, but something clicked and he started wanted to be aggressive on his own.