Annacdotes 22

1. One day during spring break, we had a game marathon. What was the game at the top of Anna's list all day? House. I was très confused and kept suggesting others. Finally I said, "Isn't this just like real life? I'm the mom and you're the kid?" But then she told me she wanted to pretend to be a dog and I would be the owner. We played a lot of fetch while I read the newspaper, and she loved it.

2. One Friday, Anna was getting ready to go to her weekly playgroup, and she said, "Boy, I feel like it was just yesterday that I went to playgroup." What a little adult, chatting about how fast time flies. I said, "I know. This week went by fast." Then she said, "And I'll feel that way tomorrow, too!" It honestly took me a few seconds to even process what she meant, it was that brilliant. In case you're as slow as I was, she meant that, tomorrow, it will seem like playgroup was just yesterday — because it was.

3. This is what I found one day in the notes app on my phone.

(Don't be distracted by the personal information I had to blur out, but the spider bit? Amahzing.)

4. Anna caught on to people gesturing their own quote marks to things when they speak, so she started to do it too. But of course she added her own flourish. When she does it, she does both hands together over to one side. I don't know why she does it like this, but it is extra cute this way.

5. Anna came out of the pantry with a paper bowl and a bag of fruit snacks, mere minutes after we had just discussed having lunch soon. Slightly astonished, I said, "Are you going to eat those?" Like it should be obvious, she said, "No, I'm going to glue these onto the bowl so I can have a lickable hat."


6. In a recent prayer: "I hope I can strengthen my family by adding more people to it so that we can create more love." So cute, but it was also nice knowing that words said in Primary actually made it into her brain. Sometimes you wonder about kids these days.

7. One night after getting Anna all ready for bed, she said, "Ha! Guess what you forgot but I remembered?" Turns out, I had forgotten to take her hair out of whatever creation it had been that day. Really playing it up, she teased and acted like it was the worst thing in the world. But what the worst thing actually was caught me off guard. She said, with much pretend contempt, "Ugh. I hate it when I know forgetters."

Anna's first lunch at school, to get ready for first grade. Cue freak out.

A bite of spring

Anna and I made these Strawberry Lemon Bars the other day and they were delicious. It was like spring in your mouth. It was also a pretty kid-friendly recipe: not too many ingredients, lots of different techniques to keep things interesting (patting, stirring, juicing, grating), etc. The only hard part was waiting for the bars to chill for an hour before eating.

Strawberry Lemon Bars

ingredients

• 1
  cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4
  cup powdered sugar
• 1/2
  cup butter
• 2
  eggs
• 3/4
  cup granulated sugar
• 2
  teaspoons finely shredded lemon peel (set aside)
• 3
  tablespoons lemon juice
• 2
  tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4
  teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3
  cup strawberry jelly
• 1
  teaspoon lemon juice
• 5
  whole fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered (or sliced) *

directions

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl stir together the 1 cup flour and the powdered sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs (mixture will be dry). Press mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 8x8x2-inch baking pan. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or just until golden.

2.Meanwhile, for filling, in a large bowl beat eggs, granulated sugar, the 3 tablespoons lemon juice, the 2 tablespoons flour, and the baking soda with an electric mixer on medium speed about 2 minutes or until combined, scraping side of bowl occasionally. Stir in lemon peel. Pour filling over hot crust. Bake about 20 minutes more or until light brown around the edges and center is set. Transfer to wire rack; cool.

3.In a small saucepan heat jelly and the 1 teaspoon lemon juice just until jelly is melted; spoon over bars in pan, spreading evenly. Arrange berry quarters on top of bars so that each cut bar will have a berry on top. Cover; chill for 1 to 2 hours. Cut into bars.

* The fresh strawberries on top looked nice, but they were hard to hold and eat around. A thin slice might work better than a whole quarter. And they got kind of mushy by the next day, so if you're not planning on eating all of the bars all at once like Tubby Tubberson, I would maybe hold off on those.

A winter secret

Before this spring weather really takes off, I feel like I need to get something off my chest.

I really like the snow.

I know,  I know. Some people hate it. Many people complain about it. It's a pain to drive in. It's bothersome to clean off your car before you have to drive in it. I understand all of this, but I still love it. It's just so magical. When else does beautiful, fluffy and sometimes sparkling stuff fall from the sky and stay for a while? What else can you go outside and roll around in, pack into balls, build into people (not just snowmen—Anna insists on making only snow girls), slide down, and eat (if it's clean)?

Nothing besides deliciously beautiful snow.

I've been thinking about how much I love snow ever since Anna and I checked out this book by Cynthia Rylant from the library a while ago. It was delightful. It covered the many different kinds of snow, the kind that "comes softly in the night like a quiet friend" or the kind that falls so "heavy [it buries] cars up to their noses." It talks about how nice it is to come inside after being out in the snow. The book celebrates how snow helps us notice the delicate limbs of trees and the special kind of snow that makes the whole world glowing pink, even when it's nighttime. See? Magical.

Because the snow melted so quickly down in the valley a month or so ago, we went up into the canyon to see if we could do some real sledding. I swear it was 1-2 feet deep in places, and they were not kidding when they came up with the song "Winter Wonderland." It was marshmallowy and gorgeous everywhere you looked.

Other things I love about the snow:

• The wearing of snow clothes makes it possible to go places you normally couldn't. As kids, my sister and I used to climb up and sit in/on the bushes by my house when we were playing in the snow, just because we could.
• It's a giant canvas. You can play fox and geese, and Anna and I also like to play giant games of Tic Tac Toe with our feet and sticks to draw with.
• We also experimented with different ways to paint on it a couple weeks ago. We used water and food coloring in a spray bottle and with paint brushes. (We had to hurry before it melted, as you can see in the pictures.)

Snow has many magical qualities and I don't care how much others hate on it, I love it. And judging by this last snowy attempt to thwart spring, today was a great day to post this. I know it's April when the snow should be done, but I wasn't over it yet.

Conference Traditions

When I worked for a Utah County newspaper a few years ago, we would do a special section every time general conference rolled around. We did feature articles on stuff happening in the church, like new temples, disaster relief and other humanitarian work, new leaders, etc. We included conference games, recipes, family night ideas and all that fun stuff. Anyway, I was obviously on the lower rungs at the time, having just graduated from college, so I was invariably assigned to collect the "man on the street" stories for the section, which no one else wanted to do. But I kind of liked it. Along with another woman from the newsroom, we went out and polled people on the street with the question du jour, took their picture, and then put it in the paper. One time we hung out on Center Street in Provo, hoping to run into some Mormons, but most of the other times we hit up our tried-and-true hot spot in Orem, where the distribution center sits next door to Deseret Book. Most often, we asked these people about their favorite conference traditions.

Some people said their mothers always made cinnamon rolls Sunday morning. **sending idea to my mom** Others, like my own family, have a girls night while the boys are gone Saturday night. We still do this, which I think is awesome. We get some take out, we watch a movie, and then my brothers and dad show up to have a guys night of their own and we get a recap of what happened during the priesthood session. Whatever the traditions were, it was fun to hear how other families do it.

Besides listening to the prophet and apostles speak and watching in comfy clothes, there are so many things I love about conference. And now that I've started Anna on some quality Conference Bingo and the like, we're starting some of our own traditions. So I want to hear about yours. They can be for kids or not or whatever. What do you do for conference?

On Parenthood

You go through so many emotions as a parent, every single day. As though parenting itself (the actual actions required) isn't hard enough — and along with managing/dealing with/ignoring/coping with the bevy of emotions your child(ren) goes through — the emotional roller coaster it puts you on can be a doozy. In the course of one day, you can feel extreme love and devotion because your kid is astonishingly witty and smart and the prettiest thing you've ever seen, or you can feel like your head will literally explode if you hear her speak in that wretched baby voice one more time. And probably a hundred other emotions in between.

And it changes on you fast. One minute, you're on your way to find out why it's taking your child 20 minutes to brush her teeth, ready to really throw down, only to find that she has been busy writing "I love you Mom" on a post-it note and sticking it to the mirror. I just had to swallow that lecture and give her a hug instead. The lows are rough, but the highs are magical.

For the past few days, Anna has been in a sort of clingy/shadow phase. Most of the time, she is very capable of entertaining herself for a while. But the last few days, if she's not incessantly asking, "What can I do, Mom, what can I do?" while I'm trying to get something done, she's yapping and hanging on my clothes pretending to be a frisky puppy or blowing a kazoo in my face. I have had to practice much patience.

Those times are taxing, but they're not the only emotions you go through. The other day at the park, I felt like I was on the Colossus of emotions (for you Lagoon fans out there). I felt such sheer joy in her suggestion that we roll down a steep hill together, glad that she was instigating this adventure. I felt like a success for teaching her to enjoy the total freedom and abandonment and fun that comes from rolling down hills. I was proud when she wanted to take charge and take us on a walk and choose every path we went down. I laughed with her when she confidently pointed her walking stick and said, "Onway! Thisward! I mean, onward!" I marveled that I could laugh with her, that she is old enough to laugh at things like this. I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on that, though, because pretty soon she was running toward me with a pouty lower lip after going down the slide. She held out her hand and showed me a scrape and told me how an older boy was trying to climb up the slide when she was sliding down and he accidentally stepped on her hand. I went from feeling a sense of calm so that she would learn to brush things off, distress that she really could have gotten hurt, impatience with the older boy for stepping on someone, to flat-out panic that she might get gout or something when she promptly licked her scrape "to get the white away." Blech.

Later she saved me a green skittle because she knows green is my favorite color. Maybe it's silly to get all mushy about a green skittle, but my heart sings when she does stuff like this, when I see that she's old enough to pay attention to other people and she willingly, knowingly does thoughtful things. It's times like these that make me think, "What have I done to deserve this?" But I think you know you're a parent when you ask this question both in times of frustration and times of joy — and probably 50 times a day either way.

Kite Day: A Story

illustrations by What I Found On My Phone

Once upon a time, I was sad that winter was nearly over. It hadn't snowed nearly enough for my liking (we had only gone sledding once, for heaven's sake), and the temperature was already starting to warm up. But when I saw a couple 60-degree days in the forecast, I wasn't too sad anymore. Because, even though I would miss the snow, who doesn't like spring? The forecast for one warm day even said it would be windy, and I knew what that meant. Anna and I best be headin' to town to buy us a kite. This was the beauty we picked out.

photo and looming finger by Anna

It turned out to be a great flyer. It was easy to put together, there was no tangled string putting it away, and it came with a little storage case. Big fan. Thank you, Target.

After a few nose dives straight into the house, we had to borrow our neighbor's field so the butterfly had some room to spread its wings. (Writer fail.) The wind was perfect, launching that thing straight into the air at the first throw. At times it was almost too windy and it flew straight into a tree once, giving the butterfly a run for its money, but it stayed in one piece.

If you don't look too closely, it looks like I'm holding onto nothing. Just miming. Playing a casual game of invisible tug of war.

photo by Anna

Once we had some room, the kite flying was perfect. The 60 degrees felt delicious, as did the wind in our hair. (I also love the wind. Big fan of that too.)

So even though the sky was pretty much totally gray . . .

photo by Anna

. . . we still managed to have an amazing day. And we all lived happily ever after.

The End

The Weirdersons

Awkward Family Photos is one of the greatest inventions.

When you moved out and went to college or when you got married and came face to face with someone else's family habits and traditions, were you ever surprised to find that what was totally normal your whole life was weird to someone else? And the other way around? There are a lot of weirdnesses the other way around, let me tell you.

I've been thinking about a few lately. For one thing, I had some friends who thought my family's taste for the chocolate banana combination was totally weird. (Come on! A chocolate banana shake = heaven.) I thought others were weird for putting peanut butter on their pancakes or eating ketchup sandwiches (bread and ketchup = vomit). One of my friends always eats cooked green beans with her hands. Apparently that's just how they did it in her family. When my family gets a variety of donuts, we cut them into halves or fourths or whatever size we want so we can taste all of them, instead of being relegated to one solitary flavor. But some balk at this. We also mercilessly teased my sister in-law for peeling the whole banana before she ate it. It just seemed so wrong, since the peel was the perfect way to keep the banana slime contained while you enjoyed the fruit. (I do have to admit, though, that I sometimes find myself doing the same thing these days. Sometimes I just want to peel the thing and get it over with so I don't have to peel then eat then peel then eat, and so on. Don't judge. I'm going to in this post, but still don't.)

Another area to consider is sleeping. I know one family where all the kids fall asleep wherever they are late at night, in whatever they're wearing, and they're usually piled all around each other until morning. Not only does this sound incredibly bizarre to me, it also makes me feel claustrophobic. I'll hug you all you want in the daytime, but I need my space when I sleep. And I don't need anyone's knees in my back. I should school them in Ross Gellar's Hug & Roll technique.

And cleaning. I think lots of people have different cleaning practices. I know someone whose mother religiously washed everyone's sheets once a week. Now you might rightfully call me Dust Mite Ashley after I tell you this, but I'm pretty sure we called it good if the sheets got washed once a month-ish. (Or maybe that's just when I started to do my own laundry . . . wouldn't want to make my mom look bad.)

Anyway, what about you? What eye-opening experiences have you had about how other people live? Or was there ever a time where you realized you were the weird one?