Not your typical inspirational music

Yesterday I miraculously went running. I was listening to some of Brandon's jammin music on my ipod to keep me going. One particular song was very inspiring to me. It was Eminem's "Lose Yourself". In the lyrics he said, "If you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, would you capture it? Or let it slip?".... "You only get one shot, do not miss your chance, this opportunity only comes once in a lifetime" It made me think about how every minute of our lives we only get once. It made me run faster, I will never get those minutes of my life again. And these minutes right now while I'm blogging, I'll never have these minutes again. It made me think about how I spend all of my time and if I'm really making the most of each moment to seize everything I ever wanted. Thanks Eminem for the very unexpected insights.

Eggs, flour & milk

3 simple ingredients can sure make a lot of great food. (plus toppings, of course)

My Favorite, Swedish Pancakes:
2 eggs
1/2 c. flour
1 c. milk

Use butter on the pan, fry on med. heat. Flip. Remove from heat add butter and granulated sugar for best results. Or syrup works too if your name is Brandon. Makes 3-4

German Pancakes:Crepes:
Yorkshire Pudding:
Yorkshire pudding is made the same as german pancakes, but you bake it in a cupcake pan, use gravy instead of syrup (I thought it was weird at first because it was like putting gravy on pancakes to me, but I discovered it actually tastes good) and eat it for dinner. Definitely the most unique of these.
I'm sure there are other things you can make too, probably regular pancakes, or waffles? I never make those though, so I'm not really sure.

Christmas Picture Winner...

Although Sam made a really good suggestion for our Christmas picture (see comment #7 on previous blog), we ended up at our relatives house later that evening and they took a picture of us in front of their beautiful tree. Although Calvin looks a little deer-in-the-headlights & wouldn't smile for any of the pictures, at least he looked at the camera. Winner.

Our snowy night adventure

It began with simply delivering a few Christmas treats. We decided to brave the snow packed streets to stop by a friends house that is just a few minutes away. We visited for a couple of minutes but couldn't get the car out of the driveway afterwards. We proceeded to scrape at the snow and ice and spin our tires for the next 30 minutes. After finally borrowing a neighbor's shovel we were able to leave. However, the shovel had broken in the process. I suggested that we tell the neighbors that we were going to buy a new one, but Brandon figured we would be back in a few minutes and it didn't matter. While we were at the parking lot of the 6th store trying to find a shovel we got a phone call from our friends asking if we had broken their neighbor's shovel because they had come over asking about it. oops. We eventually found one and were able to apologize, explain about the shovel famine, and then finally return home an hour and a half later.

Christmas picture voting

Even though it's a little late for Christmas cards, we still tried taking a family picture hoping that we might at least send out a few. These are all 6 of the pictures that we took. Which one do you think we should send out? By the way, it took a lot of effort to get these, so don't think you can pick "none of the above".

More baby room decor

To match the mobile I made, I found an idea from a magazine for another decoration. We bought some canvases, painted them, and had Calvin add the finishing touch. It's trickier than it looks. You might think some of the prints look kind of funny or smeared, but those are good ones. I promise. We had to redo a couple due to overly curled toes and excited hands.

Gmail extras

I've been really getting into all my Gmail extras. It started with the google reader, which saves me so much time on blog checking. Then the other day I decided I should keep a calender and started putting stuff on my gmail calender. I got a little carried away with all the public calenders you can add and put on a BYU calender, U.S. holidays, Christian holidays, Lebanese holidays and Canadian holidays. Then I created calenders for Waddington birthdays and Miller birthdays and added every event I could think of. Then I added Tasks to use for my daily To Do list, instead of a scrap of paper I always lose. Between gmail, blogging, web searching, using my calender & to do list, I'd say my life feels like it's run about 95% by google.

My toys

Calvin's toys aren't that interesting to me, except his colorful rings. If they are anywhere around me in church I can't resist playing with them and changing their order over and over again to see what the best pattern is that I can come up with. There's really no way he likes them more than I do.

My all time favorite Christmas book

The Gift of the Magi is such a loving story. It has beautiful illustrations - Lisbeth Zwerger is probably the best illustrator in the world. Maybe someday I can go to Vienna to meet her. And maybe I'll learn German too so I could actually talk to her.
I've stared at her short little book for hours. And the story always makes me a little teary eyed. It's very well written. (Although, I have to admit some of the vocabulary is a little over my head: mendicancy, meretricious, fob, parsimony. And it's in the children's book section? But even with my vocabulary limitations, it's still a profound story.)
So if you are trying to think of an inexpensive but meaningful present for someone, I recommend this amazing $5.99 book. And if you're trying to think of a present for me, I could always use another one. You know, just in case someone eats the one I have.

Poison Control

This morning Calvin was playing with his toys like normal and when I looked over at him he had blue paint all over his face. He was sucking on a little doll my sister brought us from Russia that somehow got mixed in with his toys. The question is, do Russians use lead paint? I don't know. So I called Poison Control to ask if I should be worried and they said he was fine, even if it was lead paint. Lead poisoning usually happens from lots of paint, from weeks of sucking on a lead paint toy. I hope all my calls to poison control go that smooth.

Pie

Ever since making my practice pie for Thanksgiving I've decided making pies is fun. This was the first apple pie I've ever made and I even tried doing a criss cross top. It was kind of sloppy, so I'll have to work on my cooking art skills and experiment with some more recipes too.

Snowflakes steps

I see a few main problems when people make snowflakes: first, not enough folds. And second, not cutting enough paper off. Here are some basic steps:

1. fold diagonally and cut so you have a triangle
2. fold in half so you have a smaller triangle3. fold the same way again4. fold in half again, but from the center so it looks like this:5. make large geometric shaped cuts and a couple small ones, leaving as little paper as possibleta-da!

Judging

I've helped out at Farrer elementary school with art night the past couple of years and the lady in charge asked me if I could help out with judging the Reflections art competition. It was quite interesting to see what they turned in and how the artwork differed in each age category. There were some pretty impressive 5 year olds. They smoked the 9 year olds. hmmmm? I wonder why.... Brandon asked me if I am going to finish Calvin's art projects for him, and I have to admit, it will be hard not to. But I told him I will do my best. I'll just have to give him an art lesson and then let him do it all by himself.

Movie Competition

A couple of years in a row my family made some great home movies at Christmastime. We did a movie of Bounce Back one year - this super cheesy motivational tape made in the 80's. And the next year we did a remake of Johnny Lingo. We do zero editing and retakes, just straight run throughs for minimal effort and maximum laughter. These movies are cherished possessions now and can only seen by people outside the family through an application process.
This year Brandon and I won't be with my family for Christmas so we are having a movie competition instead. Millers vs. Waddingtons. It's going to be somewhat like Jay walking. My sister is going to ask the Waddingtons questions and I'll ask the Millers and whoever gets the most right wins. If you have any suggestions for some questions, that would be awesome. And if you are a family member you are not allowed to comment or read the comments. Sorry. It's the law.

Merry Christmas to us

Brandon and I decided to finally frame a free Carl Bloch print we've had sitting around forever as our family Christmas present. Since it's a picture of Christ and it's the Christmas season, we hung it on the wall instead of wrapping it and putting it under the tree. I love having something that looks so nice on our wall. Our apartment decorations are very mediocre. And I was especially like that the print, frame and matte cost a total of $30. I love a good deal. Thank you Roberts Crafts 50%.
And if you live near Provo and haven't seen this painting at the BYU art museum, it is definitely worth checking out. It's one of the most amazing paintings I've ever seen in my life. They brought it here all the way from Denmark.

Elder Wirthlin

I don't think I have a single post that is spiritually related so in honor of Elder Wirthlin who just passed away, I thought I'd mention one of his conference talks that I thought was very inspiring awhile ago. It's called "Follow Me" and it's about how the apostles left their nets and followed the Savior and how we need to recognize the things in our life that we need to leave behind to follow Him.