Memory Keeping

Memories of My Grandfather (With Oatmeal Raisin Bar Recipe)

- Mama 2 Comments

Please keep reading for a very special recipe from my Grandfather’s collection.

Cholangiocarcinoma. That’s… not an easy word to say, to spell, but once it becomes a part of your life, it’s a word you can’t forget. I like to know my grandfather as someone who wasn’t defined by the cancer that eventually took his life. But truly, I remember so many things before the cancer was a part of his life. Today would have been my grandfather’s birthday.

For a short time in my youngest years, my mother and I lived with my grandparents. I am often told the story of a time when I was very little, on Christmas Eve. I wouldn’t go to sleep at all, wanting to stay up. Then finally, out my grandparents’ house window, someone pointed out the lights from the radio towers nearby… flashing red lights, akin to Rudolph’s nose. I got so excited, knowing Santa was near, and knowing he wouldn’t visit if I was awake, I rushed to bed. I was asleep within minutes.

As a young girl, I had a variety of makeup brushes to play with at my grandparents’ house. I’d sit there for hours looking in the mirror putting on “MakeMuck.” My grandfather was a hairdresser for most of his life, and he formed a lasting bond with all of his regular customers. It seems he continued those friendships with many of them even after his retirement.

My grandfather had a passion for horses. A World Champion in the Missouri Foxtrotters Show circuit, and a Missouri Fox Trotting Horse Breed Association Hall of Fame Inductee, he truly loved horses with all of his heart. Because of that, at a young age, I did the whole Stick Horse Circuit, riding around a stick with a stuffed-animal style horse head in the arena. I never got into his passion for horses, but his love of them meant the boot closet in the old house always smelled like worn leather and, others say, manure. When I close my eyes, I can picture the smell of the boot closet, bringing back memories of my grandfather coming in from doing chores.

One of my earliest memories in life was a memory of my grandfather. I had read The Foot Book a million times, listened to it a million more, so when I’d sit and read it, no one would believe that I was really, truly reading it.

I changed everyone’s minds when I crawled up into my granddad’s lap, as he sat in his chair, and started reading that day’s paper. There’s no way I could have memorized it– it was the edition from that day. The things I was reading had been unread by others in the room, and it was clear that I really did know how to read.

When my grandfather was ill, and we’d go down to visit, I loved that we were able to bond over episodes of Jeopardy. He always told me I should go on the show– that I knew so many of the answers. In reality, once there, I’d choke and never get one right. I’d rather be a good couch player.

February is Cholangiocarcinoma awareness month. Cholangiocarcinoma is very rare. It’s not something you expect to take you, especially so quickly. This cancer is rare, arising from tissue in the bile duct. Only about 5% of Cholangiocarcinoma cases are inside the liver, the way my grandfather’s cancer was. There’s a very small chance that people diagnosed with Cholangiocarcinoma will survive longer than 5 years, and in fact, because it’s caught so late, even 6 months is a long survival rate.

However, The Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation is working very hard to find a cure by promoting collaboration, understanding research, and education about Cholangiocarcinoma. You can help them achieve this mission by donating.

When my grandfather passed, he left me the recipes and cookbooks, many of them old family favorites, handwritten on scraps of paper or pulled from newspapers. These incredible recipes are a huge part of my heritage. One special treasured recipe that he loved, that everyone seemed to love, was the recipe for Oatmeal Raisin Bars that my grandfather’s mother would make when he was younger.

With a flaky, buttery crust and crumble top, and a rich raisin filling, these bars are spot-on and perfect for bake sales, potlucks, or even just enjoying on a Sunday afternoon.

You’ll begin by taking 1 cup of raisins, 1/2 a cup of water, and 1/4 cup of granulated sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Right now, you can see all of the little wrinkles on the raisins, and the clarity of the water.

Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer as you stir constantly, mashing the raisins a bit with a fork. The raisins will get plump, losing some of their wrinkles, and the water will start to disappear, the water darkening into a syrup. You will want to cook them until there is nearly no liquid left. Set the raisins aside to finish soaking up liquid.

In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups instant oats, 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of packed brown sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. This will make the start of your crust.

Add in 1/3 cup of melted butter and 1 egg white to create a course crusty dough.

Press half of the crust into a greased pan, making sure it’s well-packed and sturdy.

Spread the raisin mixture evenly over the bottom crust. This will bake nicely in to create a sweet filling.

Press the other half of the crust mixture gently over the raisins. You’ll want to bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until lightly browned. Cool the bars for a minimum of 1 hour in the pan on a cooling rack before slicing.

Out of the Phone and Onto the Walls with Walgreens Photo Lab

- Mama 3 Comments

I am THAT mom. You know, the one cluttering your Facebook news feed with 15,000 pictures and videos of my son. I know, I know, I think he’s soooo much cuter than you do, but that’s life.

At BlogHer recently, though, my phone (which was going through overuse overload at the moment) was totally dead on the way back to the hotel that day. I was chatting with a woman who was hoping to start a blog soon, and she asked about my son. I went to show her a picture, and realized that I didn’t have one. If my phone was dead… I didn’t have a single photo.

This is a far cry from the day when people joked about someone whipping out their wallet and showing off about 10-20 photos of their children in their little plastic photo holders. Now, we’re all armed with arsenals of 300+ photos on our phones, and it’s a shock when you need a printed picture of your child.

But then I realized… I don’t have any printed photos of my son! I have a printed photo album… from pregnancy. It features maybe a small handful of photos of my son after birth. But I had no photos of him on the walls, no photos of us together. And that floored me.

However, later in my BlogHer weekend, I stopped by the Walgreens booth. I’m fairly familiar with Walgreens in that they have a pharmacy, and there’s one somewhat near me, and they carry a few other goods. But I didn’t even know they HAD a photo lab! The Walgreens photo booth enlightened me, though, and even told me that they had a phone app.

After a quick tutorial at the booth, I was all set to start getting actual, in-hand prints of my son.

But would they be quality? I mean, I was uploading photos off of my Instagram, for goodness sakes! But I figured it was worth a try. To give me a shot to try it out, the Walgreens Photo Booth at BlogHer was kind enough to give me 20 free Instagram prints which I could test out.*

When I got back from the conference, one of the first things I did was sit down and use the Walgreens App (available for both Android and iOS).

Once your app is downloaded, you can open the app and click on photo, then create. If you want, you can even pull your photos directly off of Instagram by logging into your Instagram account via the application. I love this feature, because all too often, I have to delete photos from my phone in order to have space for MORE photos… and that means Instagram photos (already uploaded online) are the first to go!

Once you log in, you’ll need to hit Authorize, allowing the Walgreens app to access your photos temporarily so you can select what you’d like to print.

All of your photos will show up on the screen, and you just tap on the ones you’d like to print.

The ones you’ve tapped on will show a red check next to them!

From there, you can select your size and quantity (Here, I chose 4×4, which is $0.39/print in my area, but there is also an 8×8 option at $3.99/print. I’ll talk about both in detail in a minute). If you have a coupon code, here is the place to enter it, as well!

The only flaw I could find with the app is that if I wanted to order multiple prints of a specific photo (for example, one for me, one for the grandparents, and one for great grandma), I’d have to go back through the process entirely to order a second set of prints. I also was ordering prints in two different sizes, I had to go back through the process twice. I’d love to see Walgreens streamline this feature in the future, but for now, it didn’t take me THAT much longer to go through twice (and it’s unlikely that I will always be ordering two different sizes anyway– this time, I needed some 8x8s for the new apartment, so I decided to print in that larger size).

After that, you’ll submit your order, entering contact info like your name (which you tell them to pick up your prints, obviously), as well as your phone and email so you can be notified when prints are ready. You’ll also set your pick up location– I chose my closest Walgreens location. At this point, you’ll be given an estimated pick up time. My estimate was set for about an hour after ordering my prints.

Once submitted, you’ll get a confirmation email saying your order has reached the Walgreens system!

But look at that! Way less than an hour later– actually more like 25 minutes later– I got an email notification that my order was ready for pick up!

(Ignore my phone’s time– I honestly forgot to screen capture this message until I got home from picking up the photos).

Seriously, I can’t guarantee that your same-day pickup will always only be a 25 minute wait, but I’m sitting here realizing I can order prints from my phone, get Zach in the car, drive to Walgreens, and there’s a fair chance that my photos will already be finished and ready for pickup!

You can’t get much more Instant Gratification than that unless you have your own quality print access in-home (I do not, so this is as instant as it gets for me!)

So, that’s exactly what I did! I drove to Walgreens and picked up my photo prints. It was a quick process in-store, too, taking less than 5 minutes to grab my prints, pay, and get back in the car.

How is the quality, though?

It’s actually pretty good, if you keep some things in mind. For one, an Instagram photo is essentially 2 inches by 2 inches in size. When you go from 2×2 to 4×4, you’re quadrupling the size of the photo. Going from 2×2 to 8×8 means you are increasing the size 16 times, if I’m doing my math right! That’s going to be a huge size increase. Anytime you go up that much in size, there will be a little bit of quality loss or pixel damage from the original photo.

For most photos, this isn’t a problem! They have enough light and are high enough quality that it’s not going to affect the quality negatively at all. However, when you zoom in on a photo quite a bit before Instagramming it, then you’ll definitely have lower quality when you upload for printing. The same grainy effect also occurs if you have low light in your original photo, too, so be careful when printing.

The grainy look of the photo above was already present in the photo– even when I printed it in a 2×2, it was grainy due to the low light. I don’t fault Walgreens for how the picture turned out, knowing that this is how the photo looked on my phone. I chose to print it anyway, since it’s a priceless memory. I wanted to also give you an example of what a low-light photo can look like when printed– if it’s grainy on your phone, it WILL be grainy in a print, regardless of size or where you get it printed.

Obviously, flaws show up more in an 8×8 than a 4×4, so you’ll want those low-light photos or zoomed in photos in the smaller size, and print your well-lit, non-zoomed photos in the 8×8 size.

The quality otherwise is great, and the colors are very true-to-phone, so what you see is generally what you get with your Walgreens prints.

I did a side-by-side comparison of two different sized photos. You can note a few differences. For one, the larger photo is on a glossier paper, while the smaller is on a more matte paper. I honestly don’t know if this is standard across all Walgreens or if that is just mine, but I like both photos very much. You will also notice the larger one is slightly less crisp than the smaller photo due to the size increase.

Overall, I love the way my photos turned out, and I absolutely plan on using the Walgreens Photo app again very soon to get my prints for myself and my family. Now, I’ve just got to find out where to put them!

I have a few ideas, though, so stay tuned, and I might share them very soon!

*As I mentioned above, Walgreens gave me 20 free photo prints to test out their service; I also purchased additional prints at that time. However, all opinions in this review and post are my own, and I was not coerced in any way to review these products falsely. All opinions on DigitalEraMom.com will always be my honest thoughts on the product.

A New Connection with ConnectMyDNA

- Mama 3 Comments

The symbol above may look like some odd form of tribal art, or a strange emblem from a tattoo or CD cover. But this emblem, it isn’t any of that. It’s actually a very personal representation of my DNA. Isn’t that crazy to think about?

I should start at the beginning. This year, in Jeffrey’s homeschooling unit on Exploring Countries and Cultures, we thought it would be interesting to find out a little more about the countries and cultures we come from. So as soon as we saw a groupon for a company called ConnectMyDNA, we jumped on the opportunity to buy a couple of test kits!

The kits arrived as a nondescript envelope, something small, that when you opened it up, held something very powerful and personal.

The inside of the envelope contained two swabs and an envelope, as well as information on how to register your barcode (which is also printed on the envelope) on the website.

You start by taking a cheek swab on each of the two swabs, making sure to twirl them as you swab, so you can totally collect your DNA.

Cute, right?

Once your swabs are sealed in the envelope, you mail them off, and within a couple of weeks, you get an email letting you know your results.

I honestly didn’t expect to be surprised by mine at all. I’ve always known that I have some pretty strong ties to Ireland (as evidenced by the red tones in my hair and my incredibly fair skin), and it’s no shocker that I’ve got all kinds of European blood in me.

When I got my results, I looked them over. Irish. Number one. No surprise. Farther down the list, Bosnia and Greece… I had no idea about those! Portugal, Cyprus, Macedonia.

My number 2 match was more of a surprise… Peru? I had never known that I might have South American heritage. A look at my family tree reveals a lot of Europe, but not a lot of South America, if any.

I mean, I knew my ancestry was pretty mixed, pretty blended, but I had no idea what kind of diversity I had floating around in my own bloodstream!

I’ve always made a point to think about my Irish heritage, to learn more about the German heritage I got through adoption rather than blood. And I’ve worked hard to follow my family tree when I can. But… to find this whole world, literally, of heritage that I had never known was thrilling.

Countries I never expected to have anything to do with, I found out, were a part of me!

I am a huge history and geography junkie. I love to know about cultures, which is why I love the My Father’s World unit, Exploring Countries and Cultures. Every two weeks in the curriculum, we go to a different country, in our minds, and learn as much as we can about it.

To extend that into a chance to find out where we’re REALLY from using ConnectMyDNA is amazing.

And it definitely will make me think twice about using the “come here” motion with my index finger to ask someone to come to me– apparently, in Peru, that’s not a nice signal at all!

Check out my results below on my personalized DNA poster!

 

Have you ever been surprised by some family history you’ve stumbled upon? What do you think of the idea that you can have a DNA test tell you where you’re from?

 

One Little Word 2013: Capture (Continued)

- Mama 2 Comments

I said at the beginning of the year that the word I wanted to focus on the most was Capture. I felt like there were so many little moments that I missed, so many things that weren’t making it into the family photo albums or being remembered or reflected upon.

I have been trying so hard to be really conscious of this effort at the moment, making sure to take daily snapshots of what life is like. I didn’t want to look through Zach’s albums when he grew up and see nothing but birthdays, holidays, and special events. I wanted to document the unremarkable things about life, too.

It used to be that we only documented the big events out of necessity. I mean, think about it. 150 years ago, if you wanted photographs, you’d have to carry around boxes of toxic chemicals just to take them. That’s not that long ago– just a few generations. It wasn’t until 1901 that Kodak came out with the Kodak brownie, making it easier than ever for people to photograph things themselves, but even then, prints were expensive, hard to reproduce, and not exactly the quality options we have today.

Even when I was younger, it wasn’t easy or cheap to take photos, and a roll of film only gave you so many chances to get it right. There was no burst mode, no delete button, and no way to view the photo you were taking until it was printed, so even if you thought you got the shot, there was that chance that you didn’t.

Now, I have a camera that can take multiple shots per SECOND, be viewed right on the screen as I take them, and I could even print them out in my own home if I wanted, no darkroom equipment necessary.

Because of that, I shouldn’t feel limited to taking photos only of really extra awesome things that happen. I can snap photos of ridiculous things.

Like a dorky self portrait.

The tattoo Zach decided to draw on his knee.

A late night craving for pudding.

Zach all dressed up for our Valentine’s Day date.

A favorite lunchtime salad.

A particularly blue sky.

A crazy cake mustache.

My favorite flowers.

A little bit of spilled granola.

That time we shared Cheetos with the dog.

The day the hot water heater went crazy.

Or hanging out at the airport.

 

None of these things are particularly remarkable. None of them are even remotely “extra special.” They’re just bits and pieces of our everyday life together, and I love that I’m able to capture these snapshots.

To me, this is what my word is about. It’s about capturing the memories, the date, and a few words about what was happening. It’s about a special moment in time, remarkable or not, that I’ve been able to capture.

100 years ago, would Zach spilling a box of granola on the ground have made it into the scrapbooks? Probably not. In fact, even (just a few) years ago, when my mom was younger, she had a similar experience while making her family breakfast as a young girl, but that photo wasn’t captured. We have the story, and we have photographs from holidays around that time, but we don’t have that particular event captured.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by capturing grainy images on my cell phone, questioning if these will be good enough quality, but then I’m reminded of a quote someone recited to me not too long ago, saying “The best kind of camera is the one you have with you.” If you happen to have your DSLR ready at a moment’s notice, perfect. If not, your cell phone will work just fine.

Just go out there, capture the moment. Report back to me– I’d love to see your favorite moments captured so far this year!

One Little Word 2013: Capture

- Mama 4 Comments

A lot of you who were following my blog last year probably remember that I chose a One Little Word last year, inspired by the craze created by Ali Edwards. My 2012 word was Growth, and I feel like, in so many ways, I really did grow a lot in the past year.

I grew with my blog, taking it on as a full-time career and getting featured by Duncan Hines, Jell-O, International Delight, Citrus Lane, and several other brands. I ended up getting over 12,000 new visitors last year alone, and had many people visiting from around the world- 93 countries in all.

I grew with my baking, inventing over 100 new recipes over the past year, and even getting invited to the Duncan Hines test kitchen as a Frosting Creations winner.

I grew as an educator, getting into the swing of where I fit in in terms of homeschooling, and discovering the right curriculum for Zach.

I grew as a mom, figuring out how to create a better routine for Zach, meeting his needs better, and learning how to figure things out.

I grew as a photographer, finding my niche in terms of style, and figuring out exactly how I wanted my photos to look. I also learned how to do better post-processing to make my photographs look as brilliant as possible. I even had a company email me and tell me that my photos were “the most professional in-action shots of their product they’ve ever seen.” Hello, awesome.

I’m not saying any of this to brag. I’m saying that, by focusing on the word “growth,” and focusing on the areas in which I wanted to grow in 2012, I ended up achieving so many of my goals, finding new ones I hadn’t thought to plan for in January of last year, and really, truly, embracing my word with gusto.

And that’s why, this year, I’ve decided to choose a One Little Word once again. This year, my word is…

 

Capture.

(From Unglued, by Lisa Terkeurst)

I want to better capture life. Even with my blog, and even with my improved photography skills, I felt like I failed to capture the day-to-day life that we lived. I captured the big things, yes, but so many little things, like the way Zach’s hair stuck up into a unicorn horn one morning when he woke up, and the day that Zach finally understood the sign language for “all done” were lost to history.

This year, I’m really embracing the idea of capturing. I purchased a smart phone recently (yay! I’ve reached the 21st century!) and got instagram (follow me! @jengerbread88).

I want to photograph more, post more, share more, and remember more.

I’m also trying to do Project Life, a project initially created by Becky Higgins and adapted by hundreds of thousands of scrapbookers, in formats like paper, hybrid, and digital. The concept of Project Life is that you take a few photos a week, put them in an album, and include relevant journaling to capture the every day life of your family. You don’t have to take a photo every day, and you certainly don’t have to work on the project every day.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll make it through the entire year. In January, I start out with a lot of things, feeling very gung-ho, and end the year without it. But this year, I’m looking at it as, every week I DO actually complete is just one more week captured and that’s what my goal is all about anyway.

So here’s to focusing on capturing more than ever in 2013.

Do you have a One Little Word for 2013? What are you planning to focus on over the next year?

On Reflecting and Memory-Keeping

- Mama 5 Comments

Today, for the very first time, Zach opened a door by himself. He did it again, and again, and again. He’s finally reached that height, and it was amazing to see his face when he finally got it.

This little event seemed so momentous, and, as with any new task he’s learned in the past year, I started to think about the things that he has learned, the ways he’s grown, and really, the ways in which my entire family has grown. We’ve been through a lot in the past year, like my grandfather’s illness and passing, my mother’s very scary illness over the summer (which she is still going through, but not to the degree she was over the summer), my sister visiting, our exchange students, my blog hitting over 100,000 views, purchasing my domain, my Duncan Hines trip, and so many other things.

Part of why I started blogging was to record these memories. However, there are still things that I just don’t share with my readers. I have a personal life, absolutely, and I like to sometimes keep that separate from the blog. Even though I’ve shared some pretty intimate details about myself publicly here, like my struggle with PMDD, or my heart failure during pregnancy, there are still things that are best kept private.

I feel like I’m missing so much, though. I always say I’m going to make a photo album, and to some degree, I definitely scrapbook. However, I’m really bad about dating the pages, and sometimes by the time I get around to the picture, I’ve started to forget the details of the story.

That’s why, when a friend told me about a website, I decided to give it a try. I swear I’m not advertising or anything– I am truly passionate about this website, and I feel like it’s something that my readers can benefit from. Also, it’s free.

I’ve bought a billion journals. I’ve written in the first page. I’ve forgotten or lost them. I’ve moved on. I’ve tried starting a private blog online, too, but then I forget to log in and update, and it just goes completely unwritten still.

But this, well, it’s revolutionary.

Let me ask you something. When you’re online, what’s something that you do every single day?

The one thing I think we all can agree we definitely do online each day is check our email. Right? This website, OhLife, sends an email to you every night (around 8pm), asking you how your day was.

You don’t have to go to their website to journal about your day. All you have to do is hit reply and type. You can type a little bit, or you can type a ton. It’s all up to you.

I’m seriously in love with OhLife, though. It’s the longest I’ve used a journal without fail. I love it because it doesn’t feel like journaling. I just start typing. And, the beauty, I think, of OhLife is that it’s private. There are no share buttons, no pin buttons, no tweet it buttons… nothing. It’s just your words, your thoughts, and it’s private.

I love sharing, don’t get me wrong. But some things, like I said, are just for you and your family.

I want to tell Zach’s story, and remember the skills he learns each day. I want to tell my story. I want to reflect on my emotions. On the occasions that I do scrapbook, I would like to have some journaling to pull from. And if I’m working on that journaling each and every day, it’s going to be fresh in my memory when I reply to that email at night.

I love the idea of journal-by-email. Oh, and there’s an export function, so you can eventually export your stuff if you ever need to. The website has been around since 2010, so it’s not likely to be going away anytime soon.

Did I mention enough that it’s FREE?!

Go sign up. Like now. www.ohlife.com. You’ll get a nightly email. Reply. Write your life story before you forget it.

If there’s one thing I’m going to resolve to do in 2013, it’s going to be to capture my memories better. OhLife is perfect for that. I hope you’ll join me on that adventure and work on preserving your memories, too.

 

 

Do you keep a journal or do you skip that altogether? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Take A Silly Picture

- Mama 3 Comments

These pictures are old. I mean old old. Like, last spring old.

I was going through images that I needed to edit and get moved over to my external hard drive when I found these. They’re adorable, and I distinctly remember that Zach had just woken from a nap about 20 minutes before I took them. Echo jumped up on the bed in order to get some lovin’s from me, and Zach picked up his books. He looked at Echo, patted his butt as if to say “sit,” and started to read his books to Echo.

It was arguably one of the cutest moments I’ve witnessed in my entire life. I couldn’t resist snapping several photos since my camera was right there.

But, since children move and dogs move and I was just snapping away on auto mode, my pictures just weren’t that great. They weren’t lit perfectly, they were a bit blurry, and they just weren’t…. perfect.

I have this habit when I photograph things. I’ll snap about 400 photos of something, and then I’ll open them up and really look at them. I may adjust the lighting, I may tweak them, and I’ll go through and delete every photo that just doesn’t… work. If there’s a blurry patch, it’s gone. If there’s poor lighting, it’s gone.

As I’ve worked on this blog, I’ve tried to improve my photography enough that you can see what I’m doing with the food I’m making or the activity we’re working on in school, or whatever I happen to be blogging about.

The problem is that sometimes this professional side of me bleeds over into my personal life so much that sometimes I’ll ignore a set of photos that are cute, but not perfect. I overlook the fact that with a few minor tweaks and the memory intact, it doesn’t matter if these photos are perfect. It just matters that I’ve captured some sort of memory there.

These photos serve that purpose.

They’re blurry. They’re not perfect. There is no way that I can go back to that day, recreate that scene, shoot the photos again.

I have to live with the photos I got, and honestly, at second glance, they turned out really adorably. I notice that the blur really shows the pace Echo and Zach are moving at. It shows the scene, even if the pictures didn’t turn out perfectly, professionally, well-lit, evenly cropped, nicely framed.

They capture the spirit of my boys, and that’s enough for me.

So here’s what I want to challenge you to do.

Grab a camera. Take a silly photo. Take 10 silly photos. Take pictures of your son, your daughter, your grandchildren, your pet, your husband or wife, your brothers or sisters, your parents, yourself… whoever you want. But capture that memory. Take a bunch of photos. Throw perfection out the window– focus on the memory. If it’s blurry, it’s blurry. If it’s poorly lit, it’s poorly lit. If you get a perfect shot, even better. But focus on getting that memory, if nothing else.

I’d love it if you’d come back and share with me the shot you took, and any story behind the photo. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.

It Happened With a Blink

- Mama 5 Comments

I want to show you guys a picture of me, one year ago.

I was incredibly sick. In fact, I very easily almost died. But there was one very special thing keeping me there (despite the fact that I was so out of it, to this day, I can barely remember the hours leading up to 4:00).

At 4:00, I got to see the one thing that I held on for.

At exactly 4:00, he came. I was able to hold him, to meet him, to cuddle him, and to realize that my life would never be the same, and that was totally okay with me. And somehow, in the past year, my little bitty baby has grown up.

When he was born one year ago, Zach weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces. Now, he is a whopping 22 pounds.

He still yanks off hats every time he gets the chance.

He seemed so tiny in that huge carseat when we brought him home. Now that carseat is too small– we’ve had to buy a new one.

All of his little baby wrinkles are gone.

 

In the past year, he has learned to sit, to crawl, to feed himself, to drink from a cup, to communicate with signs and words, to turn the pages of a book. He has become advanced in fine motor skills and social-personal skills. He has met every developmental milestone and exceeded many of them. He has grown at an amazing rate, staying consistent at each appointment. He has gotten such a personality, such a… Zach-ness about himself.

He loves Sid the Science Kid, and watching Sesame Street videos with his grandma on Youtube.

His favorite word is “wiggle.”

He loves books, especially his Baby Animals Sea Life book and his I’ll See You In the Morning book he got from Citrus Lane.

He loves his stacking cups, but not to stack them… he loves to knock them down.

His favorite food is watermelon. He also loves chocolate, vanilla wafers, crackers (especially Goldfish), pineapple, and many other fruits, vegetables, and noodles. He can eat an entire container of yogurt at once.

He loves to sing and make sure that you’re listening.

He loves to play with Echo, climbing him and petting him, and throwing toys for Echo to fetch.

He loves sand. Bathtime is the best. He likes to swim, especially if his uncle is in the pool.

He is just… amazing. And he has changed so much in the past year.

So many times, I say “Zach! Slow down! I want to rewind and see you in those first few weeks, few months… I miss you being a baby, a little bitty boy.” But honestly? I wouldn’t trade right now for the world. I want to enjoy him right this minute. I want to love each unique thing he does, each new thing he learns, each weird quirk and adorable habit.

I love him. I can’t live without him. He is the reason I’m here, the reason I held on through my illness last year. He is my whole world, and I can’t live without him. But he grew up so fast, and he’s still growing, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. All I can do is enjoy the right now of the whole thing… I can enjoy this minute, when he is standing next to his high chair, and letting go without realizing it. I can enjoy this right now, when he is crawling across the floor listening to Sid the Science Kid and stopping to stare every time they sing a song. I can enjoy this moment, when he is standing up on his knees, then slamming his hands against the floor and yelling “La la LA la!” I can enjoy this moment when he is removing all of the rubber ducks from the back of his truck and throwing them around the room, waiting for me to put them back into the truck so he can do it again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvuxFdM3S58]

 

Enjoy it. They grow too fast.

Happy Birthday, Grandma! (With German Chocolate Filled Cupcake recipe)

- Mama 4 Comments

Today is my grandmother’s birthday! I’m so blessed to be visiting her today to celebrate with her! Growing up, my grandmother was a huge fixture in my life. I have many memories of spending time with her when I was younger.

Grandma holding me the day I was born. 

At one point when I was younger, I would spend the night at my grandparents’ house every Friday. Sometimes, my mother would drop me off at grandma’s workplace at the time. I would sit in her office and file paperwork, or at least, pretend I was. After grandma would get off of work, we’d go home and spend time together. I had two nightgowns at my grandmother’s house… one was brown flannel, and one was satin and pink. Each Saturday morning, we would clean up the house, just the basic tasks like washing windows and dusting. I would wear my brown flannel gown and pretend to be Cinderella, and then when the cleaning was finished, I’d change into the pink gown because, to me, it looked more like a ball gown or pretty gown, and it meant my Cinderella transformation was complete.

Visiting Grandma one day.

Grandma and I would also often play restaurant. She would get a notepad of paper and pen, and write down my “order” for breakfast. As I grew up, when my grandmother moved to an apartment, much closer to our favorite bookstore, it was not unusual for me to spend a weekend with her, and wake up in the morning, head to the bookstore when it opened at 10, sit around reading and drinking coffee drinks, and stay there until 10 at night when they would close up and ask us to leave. At the bookstore, I would often get a huge stack of books and read a chapter of each, pruning it down from about 20 to 5 or 6. It was nothing for us to spend a full day there, and as I ran around the store reading chapters of various books to decide which ones I wanted, she would instead sit there with one book, typically a Sue Grafton novel, and read the entire thing.

In addition to helping foster my love of reading by taking me to bookstores for long hours (Borders was our favorite, and we were both so sad to see it go), my grandmother also inspired a great love for theatre by taking me to many, many theatre productions. I can’t even count the number of productions of West Side Story I’ve seen anymore.

On the way to a theatre production.

One of my favorite anecdotes about my grandmother is the time we went on a cruise when I was younger. My parents shared one cabin, and my grandmother and I shared the other. Our cabin had a window, and one day when we were docking in the Bahamas, we woke early to watch out our window. Because the cruise had free room service, we ordered breakfast, and sat and ate breakfast as we watched our boat come into port. After enjoying our breakfast by the window, we started to get tired, and decided to go back to bed for a few hours. We woke up, we ordered breakfast like we did every morning, and halfway through, we realized that we were eating breakfast for the second time. On many occasions, we have thought back on that day fondly, talking about the day we ate breakfast twice.

A couple of years ago, we had the good fortune to travel on a bus tour to New York City. It was my second visit to the city, but her first. It was incredible traveling with her, my aunt Carol, and Uncle Freeman. We were able to explore the city and really have a lot of fun seeing everything New York City had to offer. Our hotel was within walking distance of both Central Park and Times Square. It was about five blocks from Times Square, and five in the opposite direction to Central Park. It was just incredible to get to see the city, and the travel there was a lot of fun. I took so many photographs on that trip!

On the bus to New York City.

My grandmother was the fifth child born into her family of all girls. She had four older sisters, Faye, Carol, Glenda, and Carlene, with her being the fifth. Each time, her parents came up with a name for a male child, and each time, it was a female and they had to adjust it. Faye was Norma Faye, her male counterpart name being Norman. Carol Dean, naturally, was supposed to be a Dean had she been a boy. Glenda Maye was a Glen. Carlene’s male counterpart name was Carl, and Myria Francis, well, was to be Francis. They grew up in a small town in Missouri, called Seymour.

Clockwise from top left: Carol, Glenda, Carlene, my Grandmother Myria, Faye

Recently, I began interviewing my grandparents about their lives and their childhoods, curating stories to document for the future. I got to hear some incredible stories about my grandmother’s childhood, and I want to share them with you, in her own words.

My grandmother, seated on her mother’s lap, with her parents and sisters.

Faye once made me get a spanking, but it wasn’t my fault. Mother had gone in to take a nap, and told Faye to watch us, since she was the oldest. So, with the mean old sisters I had, I asked if I could go down to Grandma Davis’ house, since she lived just over a block away. Faye said I could go, so I did. When mother woke up, she asked where I had gone, and Faye said “I don’t know. She was here, and then she just left. She didn’t say anything to me. She just left.” So, other came looking for me, and found me at Grandma Davis’ and spanked me all the way home.

I must take this point to share that, many times, Grandma mentions having “mean old sisters.” Grandma and her sisters are incredibly close. Faye passed away as a result of complications from ALS, and Carlene passed away of cancer. Both of those losses still weigh very heavily on our family’s hearts, and especially my grandmother’s. But her sisters, oh, her sisters. She loves them more than anything, and so when she says things like that, it’s always very tongue-in-cheek.

Grandma also told me a story once about her walk to school, which provides some insight into those “Uphill Both Ways” tales.

I always walked to school. All of us girls did, and we had to cross the railroad track. There was even an incline up to the railroad track. When we were growing up and would have to cross that, it seemed like it was so high. When it was icy, it would be impossible to get up the incline! Then, 20 to 30 years later, we went back there, to walk up the incline, and it was barely an incline at all.

My grandmother, the entire time I’ve known her, has had some very precocious qualities to her. The story below, I think, really features that in her.

I skipped school one time, I was in grade school. Well, it was before we moved to Springfield, so I guess it was grade school. I was so smart, that when I skipped school, where do you think I went? To my granma and granddad Sims, which was across town. I don’t know how they did it, because they didn’t have a phone, but soon, Daddy showed up at their house. The principal had a paddle that was about two feet long, and had little holes drilled into it, so when I came back to school the next day, I was called into the principal’s office. What was really bad about that is the principal and his wife were close friends with my parents and would come over to my parents’ house. When I got called into the office, he handed me a pen, because whenever you were paddled at school, you had to write your name on the paddle. I knew, just knew, I was going to get paddled. I wrote my name on it, and he said “This is just a warning. Don’t do it again.” So, luckily I didn’t get a spanking. But, yeah, I just had to go to my grandparents’ house when I was skipping school, didn’t I.

My grandmother, a precocious little girl.

I’ll leave you with just one more anecdote about her today. I also got the opportunity to hear a little bit about each of my grandmother’s parents, so she could tell me some special things she remembered about them.

My dad was a very smart, learned, educated man. Not formally educated, but self-educated, especially on the Bible. He was a very kind man, loved music. He sang bass in several different quartets and performed and sang solos in church. He was a very good singer. He loved his family very much and always made sure he provided for them. He worked for a milk company, worked several years for Carnation, then Cloverleaf for a little while, and retired working at Highland. He taught five daughters how to drive. He raised his five daughters to fear God and have a personal relationship with Him. My mother was very quiet, a very quiet person. She had a fantastic sense of humor. She loved life, loved her family, and just enjoyed life, truly enjoyed it. She was a great cook. I probably resemble my mother the most, except I’m not nearly the cook that she was. But I’m probably most like my mother.

My grandmother’s “mother and daddy.”

My grandmother is a huge part of my life, and someone I love quite a bit. She truly is a wonderful person and a great influence on my life. It’s harder now that she has moved three hours away, because I grew up spending a lot of time with her when I was younger, but she and I still enjoy spending time together and I love the great memories I’ve had with her.

Here are a few other fun photographs I was able to find of my grandmother.

(I’m always making fun of her curtains in the image above).

Happy birthday to you, Grandma! I cannot thank you enough for the support and love that you’ve given me through the years. I appreciate your comments on my blog and all of the support you’ve given me with my blogging and my goals for the future. I love you, Grandma!

For my grandmother’s birthday, I decided to make some very special cupcakes. My grandmother loves German Chocolate Cake. Fun fact, it’s actually not from Germany, but instead is named after Sam German, the man who created the chocolate that was once used in the recipe. I decided to do a pseudo-German chocolate filled cake. My cake recipe is modified off of one from Hershey’s website. It’s based off of their recipe to their “Perfectly Chocolate” cake.

The recipe kind of sounded a little odd to me, but it is truly a very soft, moist, and incredibly chocolate cake. Bear with me, as odd as the recipe sounds, it produces one of the best sets of cupcakes I’ve ever made.

2 Cups Sugar
1 ¾ Cups All-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 Cup cocoa powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 small box instant chocolate pudding
1 Cup milk
2 eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 C boiling water

Start by heating your oven to 350 degrees F. Fill your cupcake tin with liners, or grease it. I prefer using liners because it’s easier for batter to crawl up the paper than it is for it to cling to a metal pan, so cupcakes baked with a liner rise higher.

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, pudding, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Add your eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla, then beat for a couple of minutes. Stir in the vinegar quickly to activate the baking soda. Now pour in your boiling water. It will make for a very thin batter. At first, it kind of made me nervous how thin it was, but it ended up making some great cupcakes, so don’t get too worried about it! Plus, the batter smells incredible after you pour that water in!

Fill your cups between 2/3 and ¾ of the way full with the batter. Bake them for 25 minutes, and cool completely.

For the filling, I decided to use a modified version of the Coconut Pecan Frosting from Back To Her Roots. Her frosting recipe tasted delicious, but it was sort of soupy, which is why I provided for the modification below. However, if her recipe comes out perfectly for you, you may not end up having to use my modified technique and may be able to use the frosting perfectly like she did. Her recipe was positively incredible, though, even soupy, which is why I decided to use it instead of switching to a different recipe.

3 Egg Yolks
1 Cup packed brown sugar
12 tablespoons butter (1 ½ sticks), cut into pats
1 (12 oz) can Evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of Salt
1 ½ cups pecans, chopped
2 cups toasted flake coconut (I used sweetened, but her recipe calls for unsweetened. I would say it’s up to your personal preference).

Combine your yolks, evaporated milk, butter, and brown sugar in your medium saucepan, keeping the heat low. Cook and stir constantly until the butter is melted, and all ingredients combine completely. Remove from heat.

Stir in your vanilla and salt, and then add coconut and pecans. Stir until it’s well-combined. Transfer this to a bowl and refrigerate until it’s cool throughout. Make sure you allow for a lot of time for this to stay in the refrigerator. I refrigerated mine for 10 hours. If you can get it to go overnight, that would be best.

If, after refrigerating it for a very long time, it’s still soupy, grab a strainer and strain off all of the excess liquid. I’m going to tell you right now, you should save it, because the liquid is incredible for coffee, ice cream, everything. It is a truly delicious liquid.

To fill the cupcakes, you need to grab a sharp knife, cut into the cupcake at an angle (about 45 degree angle) and cut a cone shape out of the middle of the cupcake. If you cut it too deep, you might puncture the bottom of the cupcake, and that would be bad news, so make sure you’re careful to cut into the cupcake deep enough to give you a lot of filling, but not so deep that there’s no cupcake to go with it.

Once you’ve got the cone out of the cupcake, fill ‘er up with that delicious coconut pecan filling.

Grab the part of the cupcake you cut out, and cut the cone shape off so you’re left with a flat piece. Put that on top of the filling, and viola, you’re back to an easy-to-frost surface.

Back to her roots also has an incredible ganache recipe on her website that you could choose to frost your cupcakes with. I tried to make it, twice, and it was pure liquid, even after letting it stay in the fridge for about 7 hours (her recipe suggests two). If you can get the ganache to work (and I’m sure it does… I’m just ganache-challenged). Worst-case scenario, if her ganache doesn’t work, then you can put about 5 spoonfuls into a cup, and add your coffee… instant mocha!

Because the ganache didn’t work, I have a confession… I used some store-bought icing to use on the top. I grabbed my star tip, my decorating bag (it’s fancy. I take a quart-sized Ziploc, cut a corner off, nest my star tip in it, and spoon the frosting in), and my favorite Duncan Hines chocolate icing. I’m pretty brand-loyal when it comes to store-bought frostings, and Duncan Hines is where it’s at. I whipped up the icing so it would be nice and fluffy, and I piped it onto my cupcakes. Then, I took it that extra step and sprinkled each cupcake with a little touch of coconut (the coconut also helped so I could tell the filled and un-filled cupcakes apart… my little brother isn’t a fan of coconut and pecans, so I left several cupcakes unfilled for him).

And that, my friends, is my perfect kind-of German chocolate filled cupcakes. I hope some of you will be able to use this recipe in order to make a birthday special for someone as special to me as my grandmother!