Happy Birthday, Camille!

This girl-- she just cracks me up all the time.  The other day I was folding laundry and I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of her riding her scooter to her friend Scarlett's house, her arms spread eagle wide in the breeze, looking very triumphant and full of life.  She is a sight to behold.  She has so much love for everyone and everything in her life.

I had to take one last picture of her before she turned 8.  So here she is, still 7 for a few more hours...

We had about three days of celebrations, as we tend to do.  Her actual birthday was fairly low-key: she opened presents before school, I made her dessert of choice (red velvet s'more brownies) in the afternoon, and for dinner she wanted grilled cheese and tomato soup!  She spent a chunk of the day on the phone with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins calling to wish her a happy birthday.  And before bedtime, we started a family air hockey championship, complete with brackets and double-elimination!  It felt very professional.  (I have lost each match so far; I wish I could say I was going easy on Camille because it was her birthday, but she totally beat me fair and square!)

Camille is in the throes of that ugly smile stage that most kids go through, so I get really excited when I capture a legit, cute smile!

On Friday we met Grandma and Grandpa at Mission BBQ for dinner, and got Coldstone after!  And then-- the moment Camille had really been waiting for-- presents!  

Camille made a point of telling the staff that it was her birthday, so they brought her a dessert.  She knows how to work the system!

Her main present was a hoverboard, which she was THRILLED about and has been riding around the house ever since.  Bentley overheard her yelling, "I'M NEVER WALKING AGAIN!!!"  

And THEN, on Saturday she had a party.  And it was kind of a disaster, but it's fine and over with now so I'm not going to worry about it.  (Part of me is a little embarrassed since I feel like working for a wedding planner means I should be better at organizing things like this, and nearly everything that went wrong could easily have been avoided if I'd thought things through better.  Live and learn, I guess...)  Mistake #1 was that I planned for the party to be too long.  Camille wanted to watch a movie, so I wanted to give her time to play AND watch the movie, but that was a mistake.  We should have just had two hours and no one would have cared if there wasn't enough time for the whole movie.  Mistake #2 was inviting WAY too many kids.  Thirteen second-graders trying to play Capture the Flag (or any game other than Duck, Duck, Goose, as I quickly discovered) is going to go badly.  You'd think I would know that by now???  And Mistake #3 was inviting a few boys from Camille's class who are just NUTS.  Every time I turned around, they were popping balloons and wrestling each other and were just awful.  Next year she's only inviting girls.

But still.  We played games.  Camille opened presents.  The kids ate pizza and doughnuts and drank root beer (one girl hilariously asked me if the root beer was okay for kids-- I loved that she checked!) and some of them watched The Greatest Showman, and we all survived and that was the last party I will ever throw for a bunch of second graders, so check that off the list!

Happy birthday to my baby!!!  Camille sure makes our family more fun!

New Gigs

So usually when I'm working for Adam, that means I'm helping with a wedding.  But not always!  This last week, he asked if I wanted to help him out at a birthday party...  for a one-year-old!

Apparently when your grandfather is a billionaire, you celebrate birthdays differently than the rest of us.  And if your mom could have died in labor (she needed 3 units of blood) and then you had to have open-heart surgery just 5 weeks after you were born...  well, then they REALLY go all-out for your birthday!

So this party had 150 guests and involved a DJ, an open bar, two huge bouncy castles, a florist, two caterers, and a mechanical bull.  And it was held in Grandpa's private event barn.  Obviously!  Rich people-- they're just like the rest of us!

Adam wanted me to get there early and help set up the balloon arches, but I can't tie balloons off to save my life (I told him this, but I don't think he believed me), so I finally had to give this task to Bentley and Kendra.  And they did a great job!  I busied myself inflating various ponies and stick horses that tied into the theme of horse racing.  (The birthday boy was wearing an adorable jockey outfit.  And the enormous fluffy dog that probably cost more than my car had a special collar that looked like a tiny jockey was riding him!)

They were very proud of their balloon arches, so we had to take lots of pictures!

This makes me laugh

The party went well and everyone seemed happy!  It was nice that it ended around six, so Kendra and I were on our way home by 7:30 or so.  MUCH earlier than a wedding!  (Bentley had helped with set up and then got to drive around picking up food for the party, so once he was done with that, he got to go home.  He'd also put together gift bags the night before.)

Once most of the guests had left, I went ahead and took a turn riding the mechanical bull.  I figured I would probably never get such a great chance and you just don't turn opportunities like that!  I fell off almost immediately-- that thing is super slippery!-- but now I can say I've tried!  (There was one guest who was clearly an equestrienne and managed to stay on for a full minute, waving her hand most of the time.  It was extremely impressive!)

And I have no pride, so yes, go ahead and laugh at me:

I did chat with the rich grandfather for a few minutes at the end.  He was very friendly.  But he did not offer me any extra money, other than the hourly rate that I'd earned.  Weird, right?  But I was lucky-- Adam had offered to do this as a favor when it was just supposed to be a small family affair!

When I got home, I discovered that Craig had fixed our ice maker AND organized my pantry!!!  But he says this does not mean I should keep working Saturdays.  (Craig is really sending me some mixed signals here...)

New Things

About a month ago, an acquaintance (Holly, who I've met a few times and we're friendly, but she's in a different ward, so we don't see each other frequently) sent out a group email asking if anyone was interesting in doing a freezer meal group with her.  I've always wanted to learn how to make freezer meals, so I volunteered.  

Holly sent out texts figuring out a time when everyone could meet (first Thursday of the month) and there was quite a bit of time before our first meeting, so I mostly forgot about it.

Until she sent out a text last week saying we were meeting that week and everyone should prepare five meals.  And I was like, "Wait, whaa....???"  I quickly emailed Holly asking what exactly this freezer group entailed because I had no idea.  Bless her, she called me that day and explained: they used to get together and make meals together (which is what I was picturing), but it took hours and hours, so now they just make meals on their own, get together, and swap meals so you get the variety.

I'd unknowingly signed up to make five freezer meals for a bunch of strangers!  And I'd never made a freezer meal before!  Fortunately, Holly also gave me a quick run-down on what works and doesn't work in this strange new world (she said most recipes are fairly forgiving and to not stress about it too much; that was nice to hear!).  I finally decided I'd make my Mom's enchilada recipe (which I subsequently learned was my Grandma's recipe!).  I knew I was supposed to prepare five meals, but I figured while I was doing that, I'd make one to go in my own freezer, and one to eat that night.  So...(does some quick math in my head)... seven meals!  No sweat!  (Plenty of sweat.)

But I managed to break it down pretty well, I thought.  On Tuesday night I browned seven pounds of hamburger while Craig was at church with the big kids.  On Wednesday night I chopped up five large onions.  (I learned recently that keeping a cup of water near the onion will keep you from crying, so for that night I used the cup of water AND my goggles!)  Thursday morning I washed all the pans I would be using.  And then Thursday afternoon I put everything together!  I weighed everything to make sure the portions were accurate (this was also necessary because I was using larger cans of tomato sauce and soup, so I had to measure those to get the right amounts) (also, pro tip: a pound of hamburger does NOT weigh a full pound once it's been cooked!).

Getting all set up

Once I got going, assembling them all went pretty smoothly.  Enchiladas are a pain because they make such a mess, but there really wasn't a whole lot more mess from making seven of them as opposed to making just one!  After about two pans, I figured out that each would hold about 11 enchiladas, so then I would count out the tortillas ahead of each batch, which was also helpful.  

And here we are!

So there are six pans, and one was in the oven cooking away!  It worked great!

At some point mid-week, I figured out that our group had five people in it including me, so I really only needed to bring FOUR meals to share.  So I had an extra.  But we have a family in our ward going through some really difficult stuff, so it made perfect sense to give them the extra meal.  Done!

We all exchanged our meals that night, so now I still have a pan of enchiladas for another night, plus BBQ pork chops, cilantro lime chicken, Korean beef tacos, and pulled pork.  We should be eating good for the next few weeks!  I think I'm a fan!  Now we'll see if I can come up with something for next month...

Mad Skillz

Many years ago, I tried to make bread bowls and they didn't rise properly.  We called them bread plates and they were the saddest things ever.

From then on, I always just bought bread bowls from Panera.  But those are a little bit on the pricey side, so I would only buy two, for me and Craig, and then I'd get cheap rolls for the kids.  And that worked pretty well!  Until the kids started eating more and getting jealous of our bread bowls.  And the economy tanked and inflation shot up and our monthly budget became a pipe dream that we laugh-cry about at the end of each month.  {Sigh}

Anyhoo.  In an effort to save money, this month I decided it was time to attempt making bread bowls again, to go along with my favorite potato chive soup.  And miracle of miracles-- they turned out beautifully!  Huzzah!  I should have taken pictures.

So we're eating dinner and the kids are very excited to finally each get a bread bowl.  Camille started to dish up some more soup for herself and I stopped her and told her to let Dad do it.  I worked too hard on this meal to let her somehow mess it all up.

(I should explain that I HATE dishing up for the kids, so, since I do all the work of making dinner, we decided that dishing up for everyone could be Craig's job.  And that makes everyone happy.  So he sits near the middle of the table so he can reach everyone and everything, while I sit at the head so I'm not in his way.  So, yes.  Dishing up = Daddy's job.)

Craig pours some more soup into Camille's bread bowl and promptly spills it all over the outside of the bread bowl and the inside of the real bowl.  So everyone started laughing.  And then five minutes later, he tried to dish up more for Colton and this time he managed to drop the entire bread bowl into the pot of soup.

The kids were dying.  Craig was dying.  We haven't laughed that hard in a long time.  The bread bowls were a success, but the family laughing together was priceless.

I'm not taking over serving everyone's food.  Yet.  But I should probably be thinking about it.