i was whining to my mother about everyone here being sick, pat being gone, and the two days of no sleep, and she replied back that she remembered going through that too when my sisters and i were little. after one particularly bad week my grandmother stopped by with a bag of medicine for my mom. inside the bag was a pint of happy jack whiskey (i’m wondering if my mom meant jack daniels?). ha!

rowan and niamh are both still battling fevers, but so far i’m in the clear (muriel’s turn came and went at the beginning of the week). hoping it passes me by, but if not at least pat comes home tonight so i won’t have to deal with that alone.

1.  i recently upgraded my (oops! i mean we and our ) camera from the Nikon D50, to the Nikon D90 (much thanks to georgia and ryon for hauling it over here for me in their carry-on luggage!  a big favor since they were also carrying supplies for two small children).  okay, so at a quick glance the two cameras don’t look all that different from each other.  but they are in fact very different.  i know that a good photographer is supposed to be able to get good shots no matter the camera (and yes, i’ve gotten a fair number of nice pictures with the D50), but the D90 is sure going to make things easier.  the ratio of pictures that i can immediately trash because of blurriness, under/over exposure, etc. to decent pictures is already a lot better.  the biggest difference i’ve noticed so far is how much more easily accessible all the controls are, and the huge viewscreen.  love it, love it, love it!  below is one of the first pics i took with the new camera.  i wish i hadn’t cut off the swan’s tail, because the lighting on it’s wings is just so nice!  oh well.  luckily swans are not high on the list of things i want decent photos of, because then i’d be really peeved.

2.  i’ve gotten a bit more serious about the whole what’s-the-point-of-a-camera-if-you-don’t-print-the-pictures philosophy.  the first step was starting an annual photo book from blurb.  i began with 2007, because when i started this project it was still 2008, and i am doing one book per year back to rowan’s year of birth.  after that i figure i’ll do one whole book for our marriage pre-children.  before that not sure what i have in the way of digital photographs.  nothing, probably.

i’m waiting to form a firm opinion on the quality of books until after i print the next one (working on 2008 now). there are a lot of things i would change about the 2007 book layout wise. also, some of the picture quality is not that great. but in 2007 i paid a lot less attention to my camera, so i suspect the reason for some of the pictures being a bit grainy is my fault.  the binding and all that seems really good though.

and secondly, i’ve found a fabulous way to get pictures up on the wall for display.

the board is from ikea and the magnets are from either the container store or fat brain toys.  i personally prefer fat brain toys because they are slightly cheaper, no tax, you can get free shipping, and i’d rather support a cool independent toy store than a boring old organization store.  the pictures were printed out at Mpix, and i can’t say enough good things about the quality of the photos from there.  so SO much better than any other online printing place i’ve tried (such as shutterfly-bah!).  anyway, i love these photo boards so much that i’m going to get another set for the living area (the above photo is in the kitchen), and also put some up in rowan and niamh’s room for displaying artwork.  i wish i could say i thought up this cool idea myself, but alas, i didn’t.  i got it from the image is found.

i know this is all more information than anyone wanted about my current obsession. a word that i use fairly loosely. it is not that all-encompassing. i have very few child-free moments each day. and even fewer child-free moments where i am not in a semi-vegetative state of exhaustion. in fact, it might be more accurate to call my interest in photography a justifiable procrastination tool, as i really should be spending that non-vegetative, child-free time studying french or writing. anyway. i’m hitting the publish button even though my photo “obsession” is not all that interesting to other people because blogging about it is helping me get through this very very very long day. and it’s hard to find interesting things to blog about. and i’m trying to blog more because i’m hoping that if i blog more often it will inspire the rest of you to blog more often.

It only took 8 years but victory is mine, my friends!!! We’ve been trying to stay at home and eat. I’ve been throwing out ideas for meals and even cooking a little. The other day I suggested pulled pork sandwiches and coleslaw. Jeremy thought that sounded worthy and actually said, “That sounds good. I like your coleslaw better than the stuff you can get in the deli.” I couldn’t believe it. He used to turn his nose up at my coleslaw and now I’m getting high praise for it. What is the lesson here? Persistance maybe? Ahhh, sweet victory.

pat is in malaysia this week.  he left sunday morning.  along with my sister and her family.  as if that wasn’t a rough enough start to a week of single parenthood, at 3am sunday morning muriel woke up screaming because she had a 101 degree fever and had had a diaper explosion which required new jammies, sleep sack, and sheets.

i was pretty cranky and short-tempered for the first part of the week, but managed to snap out of it after a couple of days.  the weather this week has been lovely, so we’ve been at the park/beach almost every afternoon, which definitely helps with the mood.

today, however, rowan and niamh woke up from their nap today with fevers.  i dread a repeat of the time pat was in malaysia and the kids and i all had some sort of stomach bug.  in case you were wondering, kids get scared when they see their mama vomiting.  lovely, yes? we made an afternoon run to the store for juice, gatorade, and chicken soup with rice ingredients, just in case. both kids seemed more than fine once the motrin kicked in, so i have high hopes. wish us luck!

have become new favorites of at least one person in my household – and the other one seems to tolerate them well enough that I keep buying them and trying out new recipes. It all started with an apple-walnut kale recipe I heard about on NPR and got from the Cookus Interruptus website (along with some other recipes I enjoyed). Today NPR was featuring yet another food blogger discussing her recipes and I was intrigued. I’m not the reader of food blogs that some of you are, so maybe you’ve heard of this woman – but in skimming her blog, she’s kinda funny, seems to try and incorporate whole grains into her recipes (something I’m trying to do more of), and she has a friend with a baby named Esme (unrelated yes, but still worth noting). Her blog is called Hogwash and can be found here. (maybe…)

as most of you know my little sister, georgia, and her family (husband + 2 little boys) recently came for a visit.  we had a wonderful, if exhuasting time.  february is not an ideal time for travel under the best of conditions (unless perhaps you are in the bahamas or some other place with a nice winter climate), but add five kids under five to the mix, and it becomes very difficult!  so much time to bundle everyone up, then there is the whining about the cold, trying to keep hats and mittens on, trying to keep kids out of snowdrifts, etc.  the weather since they left has been fabulous, naturally.  haven’t even needed hats and mittens at the beach the past couple of days.

anyway, despite the miserable weather we did manage to show them a few of the sights around switzerland, one of them being the château de Gruyères.  besides the castle and the cheese, Gruyère is famous for it’s very thick and rich double cream.  which i made sure, of course, that my sister was able to sample.  We bought a container of double cream and a package of meringues (berries would have been my first choice, but in february meringues are a good substitute) on the way home.  you can actually buy all this stuff in morges, but i personally think it’s always more fun right from the source.

the meringues are so pretty, like waves of silky white desert sand frozen in….um…i think i’d better leave waxing poetic about food to the food bloggers.  but seriously, they are very pretty, don’t you think?  i don’t know why, but they taste different than the meringues i am used to in the states.  ryon, my brother-in-law, thought they tasted like popcorn balls. i checked the ingredients and the only thing they contain is sugar and egg whites, so i’m not sure where the different taste could come from. perhaps they use more of a brown sugar instead of a white sugar? i am not sure.

according to various sources i found on the internet you are supposed to dip the meringues in the double cream. i didn’t immediately adore this combination, but it has grown on me (have to use up all that double cream somehow, right?).  the cream does a great job of cutting the sweetness of the meringues, and the silkiness of the cream also pairs well with the crunchy meringues.  note:  keep it under three meringues per sitting.  otherwise the roof of your mouth will feel like someone has been going at it with sandpaper.  the double cream is supposedly The Best.  period.  having not tasted any other double cream, i can’t say that myself, but it is good!  here is poor niamh holding a meringue dipped in the cream so i could take a photo.  how mean am i–making the child allergic to eggs hold the special-treat-’o-poison.  i did give her a piece of chocolate afterwards for her assistance.

a while back i fell in love with a hat that soulemama posted about.  i have no knitting skills, but i fortunately happen to know of this super cool etsy seller that i thought might be willing to do a custom order for me.  not only did she knit muriel and niamh matching hats, she also surprised me with a matching one for rowan.  i also took the opportunity to get muriel one sara’s tassle hats that i’ve been wanting for a long time.

the hats are fabulous, and they were knit and mailed in record time (like, i think, within a couple days of my asking sara to make them for me).  warm, darling, not mass produced–what more could you want in a hat?

thanks sara, you are awesome!!!!!

i really wanted to get the kiddos in a picture together with their matching hats, but i’m afraid if i waited until i could pull off that feat, this post wouldn’t get published until summer.

here is muriel in her gnome hat, being held by her uncle ryon:

and the rest of the hats:

i’m too tired to write a whole lot at the moment (five kids under five in the apartment.  enough said.), but wanted to get in muriel’s four month post.  i’m cheating a bit, these pictures were taken yesterday.  she is now taking a slight interest in toys.  we spent much of the month struggling with breastfeeding, but have finally gotten back in the groove.  thank goodness.  there was more than one time where i was certain she was going to be a formula baby.  i will never take breastfeeding for granted again.

So Jeremy’s phone is in the process of dying and he’s been looking for a new phone the over the past few weeks. This weekend we went to the mall to look at phones and happend to stop at an AT&T kiosk in the Everett Mall. In less than 10 minutes, the worker at the kiosk showed us several phones and gave us some info and we were ready to move on and look at a few other places. As we walked away the worker thanked us (loudly) for wasting their time. I couldn’t believe it. It was so over the top rude. 10 mins at a Kiosk surely isn’t long enough to qualify for this. No one else approached the kiosk and I don’t think anyone even walked by the kiosk during the time we were there. Surely people in customer service think such things all the time but to declare them so loudly when is unwarrented is really a sign that all things are going down hill.

Want To Know More About Me?  Here Are ‘25 Random Things’

ha!  my sister told me she saw a newspaper article about this, so i did a quick google search, and voila!

it feels a little strange to be part of a pop culture phenomenon.  btw, in my own i tagged those of you i thought most like to complete the list (not because i don’t love you!).  AHEM.  so those of you i tagged should complete the list and then tag the other Roses!