Got Phone, Will Talk

Phones are a way of life.

Whatever would we do without them?

Probably a lot more....

dishes.

vacuuming,

laundry,

cooking...

you know the drill.

Who wants to get up and answer the phone when you're in the middle of crocheting that afghan for the next person who gets married around here.

I really don't like answering the phone when I'm busy, since most of the time the person on the other end wants to sell me yet again some fancy pants insurance, or travel bonuses, or "spend some more money and we'll let you have free interest for two weeks" or whatever for 9.95 a month, free 30 day trial and if you forget to call after the 30 days, start charging you for something you didn't want in the first place. I can't get off the phone fast enough.

Use call waiting, you might say. I don't have call waiting. I'm not going to pay 3.95 a month for the phone to tell me something I won't know until I pick it up since these people block the number anyway.

The bank called me the other day and offered me $100 to try something or other, for a monthly charge, cancel after 30 days, make sure you call in on time, blah, blah, blah, and I didn't take it. It isn't worth enough to me to remember to call back. It's my policy, I take no offers. Some things aren't worth it at any price.

Now maybe a couple hundred dollars....

I don't like to call anybody on the phone either. My heart pounds and my hands get numb, and, I have to call quick without thinking or general disintegration sets in.

Must be my age, I didn't walk around with a phone sprouting from my ear when I was growing up. Phones weren't toys, that as soon as you don't have anything to say you could type a little code and let everyone know about it.

Goodness, I could go weeks, while school was on and not talk to anybody on the phone that was in the kitchen and everyone could hear what you said!! (We did have a long cord that would reach into the hall, for the few times I was a "normal" teen.)

Enter the age of cell phones....and a new age of evolution.

The human race is suffering from a mutation that occurs at adolescence or a little sooner in prosperous families. The first symptom is a whine that grates on the ears of the adults in the household taking the form of something similar to "but everybody else has one, why can't I have one, you can call and find out where I am whenever you want."
Soon, the afflicted teen or pre-teen is seen growing a shiny tumor out of one hand that is most comfortable held up to the ear or with both hands, the thumbs frenetically moving to alleviate the most serious symptom of all. I NEED TO TEXT MY FRIENDS!!

In our household this serious disease is already taking hold on the smallest persons in the house.












Zane was actually "talking" to Lynette on the way home from snowboarding. It took him a while as he was blabbering away, to realize he was holding Gramma's phone in his hands, and it would be much cooler to push all the buttons and call Estonia.

What's For Breakfast? Part 2

As previously stated, I LOVE pancakes. When I was a kid, Mom would make thin pancakes four at a time in her electric skillet. She didn't have any of this non-stick nonsense on hers. She'd put a very little bit of oil in the skillet and drag her spatula over the bottom until there was just a little smear of oil. Then she'd pour four nice little circles of batter, wait for them to bubble and flip them over for perfectly brown pancakes every time.


Dad always ate his in piles of four. I ate mine in two. Put a little piece of butter, (oops, margarine in our house), between the pancakes so it melted, spread it around and pour hot syrup on top and YUM!

Mom believed hot food should be eaten hot, so we ate pancakes right off the skillet, and she made her own syrup so it was either fresh or heated up again. It was a big culture shock to go to someone else's house and eat big, thick, "cold" pancakes with syrup right from the refrigerator. I just couldn't do it sometimes.

The sad thing is that Jim does NOT like hot syrup, he likes syrup that pools on top of the pancake. I just like to eat them HOT. Lorene is on Jim's side and Lynette is on mine, so I have both on the table. Nathan won't eat a pancake to save his life,... unless there are chocolate chips in it every half inch. And he has eaten one once with Nutella.

And when we are talking about oatmeal at someone else's house..... I won't go there. It is all I can do to eat mine, and I know how to make good oatmeal.

Lynette would have me make pancakes every day, but even half a batch makes too many to throw away. So, she has to put up with warmed over ones part of the time. I sneak a little oatmeal into my pancakes, too, for some more nutrition and fiber.

Zane enjoys eating a plain pancake now and again, but Lorene has him practicing with a fork, so we tried it with pancakes.

I love the expressions on this little boy's face! He's really enjoying himself.

Got one, all by myself!

How to make edible oatmeal:

When salted water is boiling, pour in old-fashioned oatmeal quickly. Do NOT stir. Turn off the heat and when the boiling calms down, put a lid on it and don't touch it until time to serve. Do NOT stir. If you put it in a serving bowl, do NOT stir! I serve it right from the pan most of the time since stirring it makes it gooey and that is what I don't like. If you like raisins, put them in with the oats. Or do like I do, since Jim doesn't want raisins, I wait until the boiling calms down and very carefully put them on one side, so I get raisins and he doesn't.

Quick Maple Syrup:

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1 cup water

1 tsp burnt sugar flavoring

1 tsp maple flavoring.

Boil sugar and water and add flavorings.

The Best Maple Syrup:

3 cups brown sugar

3 cups white sugar

3 cups water

1 cup corn syrup

Bring to a boil, take off the heat and add:

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp maple flavoring.

Can be sealed in jars to keep or give as gifts.

Snowboarding 2010

These kids of mine LOVE to snowboard. Jim has taken them himself these last couple of years. Since Zane was born, I stay home and babysit him, while Lorene works.


They get more daring every year and I am glad I stay home so I don't need to watch. We've had good luck since we've been skiing about 10 years with only one accident. Lorene hyperextended her shoulder the last time we went all together, so neither one of us skied, but spent the rest of the day in the emergency room.


Jim took them already to Snowy Range in Wyoming, during Christmas break, and this time Rod and Tanner came along. Lynette and Nathan have fun all by themselves, snowboarding, but it is always fun with extras, and it was nice for Jim to have another adult along.

Tanner

Lynette

Nathan

Ready to go over the jump.

They really do have a nice time, and spent most of their time jumping to "get some air".

My Little Helper

I've been laughing over Zane's antics these last few days before realizing that it is what we do everyday that makes up the daily stuff of life.

I don't have all the photos yet that I would like to highlight some more of Zane's daily life, but I hope I'll have my camera a little closer to catch some of those on film, phooey, that nice little phrase is gone forever. What are we supposed to use, catch them on digital imagery, pixels. a 2.5"x2.5" screen?

Zane was so funny in the library yesterday, at least for the first 5 seconds, until I spent the next 15 minutes taking turns with Lynette chasing him as he was looking for the way out. He is so tall, that he looks about 18 months old, and acts that old in everything but social skills. Although, I'm not so sure that 18 month olds have any great social skills. So, he goes up to this 3 year old and gets right up belly to belly to him and says "ahh", which seems to be his usual form of greeting. The poor kid, who was holding on to his mother's hand, leaned way back to try to get out of the way, while I'm trying to pull Zane off and apologize for Zane. Luckily, she was a sensible woman and got a real kick out of it, since I heard her later telling her big kids what Zane had done, and laughing.

So the only thing Zane isn't ahead of the game is the talking bit. I mean understandable words that come out of his mouth, since he can stand in front of me and "tell" me all sorts of things that sound like a whole conversation in babyese. And if he's aggravated, I'll hear about that too, as he stands there clapping his little hands together hard and very obviously telling me off.

But, I'm getting a little off the point here which is to point out again how Zane is so clever at 13 months of age.

He loves things with wheels and he's been fascinated with the vacuum cleaner as soon as he was able to follow it. If I could stand to keep it running, he would have been happy pounding on the light and hollering at it. Now, I have to be careful I don't run him over as I'm vacuuming.

I think I'll just hand the job over to him.











He's also very observant, too bad he won't sit quietly when I want him too.



Here is another new trick. I was vacuuming under the dining room table. We usually don't keep chairs by the light switches, it gets old when you're trying to do something in the light...dark...light...dark.

I don't take Zane with me to the store very often for the --what should be very obvious reasons of -- Zane not liking to get in and out of the carseat, he has a very small attention span and will jump out of the cart one of these days, and if he is not corralled, will wiggle so vigorously in my arms that I can't shop or hold him.

But, Lynette and I thought we could do it together. Zane loves to go out, so we got his nice little coat on him and while gathered up our other stuff, he decided to carry his little bag himself.

That was all well and good, except it was hanging on the chair, so when he pulled the bag, he pulled the chair over on himself and it hit him in his forehead.

What a cutie!! It was so sweet to see him carrying his little bag. It just makes my heart swell up with love for my little Zane.

Oh, and by the way, Lynette was so exhausted by the end of the hour and a half we were gone, that I'm sure she'll remember why I don't like to take Zane anywhere by myself.

What's For Breakfast?

Breakfast seems to be an optional meal in our house. I grew up eating breakfast every morning, partly because I would be starving by lunchtime at school otherwise and mostly because my mom wouldn't let any of her kids walk out of the door without eating something.

That something was not necessarily breakfast food.

I couldn't face eating eggs and oatmeal in the morning, or even cold cereal. I was nauseous just looking at them. (School was NOT my favorite place to be.)

Mom didn't mind what I ate as long as I ate something, so I got very good at warming up last night's leftovers.

And, this was before there WERE microwaves, by the way.

Mom had this neat little bun warmer, that by putting a little water in the bottom and the food in the steamer basket, and heating it up on the stove burner, pretty soon, I had warm food to eat.

I'm not really sure what everyone else was eating. I have clear memories of Andy eating a serving bowl full of chocolate malt 'o meal hot cereal, and of Dad stirring sugar into his milk before he poured his cereal in.

Maybe it depended on what was happening in school that day, since I remember eating pancakes, (which I LOVE) and wheaties. (the only cold cereal I would eat)

When it was really serious, mom would whip a raw egg with chocolate milk in the blender and I would drink what we called "chocolate egg nog" before I left for school.

I suppose if I look back I ate other things, but it seems those high school years burn searing memories on my mind and I remember those years the worst....errr the best.

Now, JIM's Family, ate breakfast together every single day, they had eggs and bacon and toast and cereal, hot or cold.

So, when JIM's family breakfast traditions, met MY family breakfast traditions, we had a derailment, and we had NO breakfast, traditions or otherwise for a lot of years. Now, Jim and I eat a nice little sensible breakfast of eggs and toast and cereal and the kids are on their own.


What to feed a nice little baby for breakfast? I usually feed him baby cereal and fruit, or cheerios.












Whaddya mean those aren't Cheerioes!!

Talk to his mother about that one.



Who me?
















Zane has figured out the joys of feeding his food to someone else. He opens his mouth REALLY wide and puts it in. I don't think he wants us to eat it or to eat it himself. He just wants the fun of the game.

This Time Last Year III

February 2009

All of us together.


Lorene and Zane

What a nice little baby Zane was!! Those days are gone forever, so it is nice I can revisit them in photos. He wasn't tiny very long, or babyish very long either.

What a cute little bug!

Great Great Auntie with baby Zane

I just love babies in little sleepers, I wish I could snuggle him up.

Tiny curls

Proof of a real smile

Zane looks so big in the swing

Sweet baby face

My favorite overalls of this size

Naptime

Do Monkeys Really Eat Bananas?

This one Does!!