baked potato soup (ultimate potato soup via allrecipes.com, adjusted)

6 cups diced potatoes
3 stalks celery, diced
1 cup chopped onion
3 cloves chopped garlic*
3 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth, divided
1 cup heavy whipping cream*
3 cups rice milk*
6 tablespoons butter, melted
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cubes chicken bouillon
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper


In a large pot, bring potatoes, celery, garlic and onion to a boil in 2 cups of broth (or more*). Cook until potatoes are tender, 15 minutes. Drain and reserve liquid.
Combine reserved broth and half-and-half in pot. In a bowl, combine melted butter and flour. Stir into cream-rice milk mixture over medium heat. Stir until thickened. Stir in reserved vegetables, remaining broth, bouillon and pepper. Heat through and serve.

it's this easy. i made minor alterations, as noted with the signature *. enjoy. i did.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ultimate-Potato-Soup/Detail.aspx for those of you wanting the original.

for the record, i did respond to susan's last post. and i commented directly to maas hours after her latest post as well. i think the more you post the more you respond. words of affirmation are important to me.

and i'd like to say to you blogworld: good work on updating your posts. i'm looking forward to having a few more minutes to read the 5 new posts.

look what i found in my garden: if this doesn't get any comments you are in big trouble...

i'm here to say that i have been posting, some good stuff by the way, and no comments are coming in...disappointed. shame on you people. i have better ways to spend my time than entertaining you. don't i?

in case you missed it this summer.

slow and steady wins the race, eh? wyatt's learning what pee-pee feels like. he sat on the toilet a lot today, meaning i read him "the little engine that could" while he peed every minute or two. i've learned that when i wake up in the morning i need to pray for a double portion of patience. i like to think we're making progress. tomorrow we are going to the dollar store to pick out their first toys for potty training. i'm hoping this is a motivator for the little ones.

other than that, it is COLD. i love it. we sometimes leave the front door open, but right now the whole house is closed up because it's supposed to be in the 40's tonight. will we turn on the heat? part of me wants to, but then the other part says, it's only september!

last night after the lesson for the kids (learning about mount gerizim and mount ebal and G-d's blessings and curses) harrison and big cassie went to town with the train set. i merely asked h-man to build a route that went around in the same direction for the train wash and the roundhouse. this is what happened:

herre's the petting zoo, with myriad of animals, as well as the mine shaft:
here's the modern art museum with the weird architecture:
and finally, jed's barn, with letter-block haystacks:
it's pretty brilliant, eh? it lasted till about 11am the next day, when little cassie and noah decided the tracks were more fun as individual pieces. not too surprising. glad i caught it on film. (p.s. uncle joe, send more track)

3

we're off. day three of potting training. it's a slow start; two kids who really don't mind pooping and peeing in their diapers. but we've had enough. "they" say you can't train a kid till he's ready, but i think if we praise wyatt enough he'll do it. he loves it when we get really excited, and we are stoked about poop in the toilet.

this morning i got cassie up and as i was carrying her into our bathroom wyatt hollered his typical morning hello: MAMA! (it sounds more like 'mameh') so tom jumped out of bed and got him up. there they sat, two little cuties with their bums on their respective toilets. he had already pooped a bit in his diaper but i knew there was more in there. so i told him to push and after some toots it happened! high-5's all around. he finished up so we decided cassie was finished too and when she got up what did we see? pee-pee! success. it's was a good potty morning...till cass hid in the garage while tom was getting ready for work. yup, she's a secret pooper. we'll have to work on that.

two different interpretations of 'row your boat' by the cutest in the house.



and to top it off, the abc's, minus a few letters. you know what he means.

two things:

one) is it hard to read this blog when the font is white and the background is brown? i like the way it looks, but is it user-friendly?

two) have you ever jumped on a trampoline so high you did two flips and three twists? if so then you could win a gold medal. seriously. it's simply called "trampoline". tom, sam, brooks and i watched a lot of this tonight. they wear little white socks and jump 40 feet high. it's definitely better than the equestrian competitions. please, those horses deserve some clover and a break. http://www.nbcolympics.com/trampoline/index.html

and since i'm on the topic of the olympics, what's with usain bolt of jamaica showing off before he finished the race? he's fast, sure, but doesn't he realize that record will be broken next week? he should've finished the race instead of showboating (as some might call it). i'm disappointed.

who am i not disappointed in? the u.s.a. softball team (they're reminding the world why this isn't an olympic sport: no one can touch them); the sand volleyball teams (the women and men are exciting to watch. have you ever run on sand?); and the women's soccer competition, specifically brazil (the u.s. is good but i'm thinking marta is going to show everyone [pay attention, boys] what soccer looks like)

hope you're enjoying the summer games. we're getting a kick out of seeing the best athletes in the world put on a show. it makes me want to go exercise...or go to sleep.

our weekend: a video essay

we spent our weekend with a damsel in distress, baby cass. her runny nose turned into a fever friday and this is what we've been dealing with ever since. the nurse practitioner said aside from a little bit of a red throat she looks healthy. we'll blame it on her canines coming through, although she's never been this miserable before. she's got some serious lungs, but you might not be able to tell in the video because she's winding down at this point. help!!!

(after you watch this you might be wondering how i could just let her cry on the floor. trust me, i tried to hold her and console her. this turned out to be the best thing for both of us. also realize that she had been screaming like this long enough for me to think about getting the camera, and then to acutally get it.)



then she realizes things are going to be okay



and it's life as usual

the adventures are growing...
cassie has now pooped in the bathtub 3, THREE times in the last month. wyatt is on patrol now when we get in the tub and this evening it was a good thing. i'm reading the paper, sitting next to the tub when i hear him say, "oh yeah! cassie's poopin'!" i look over and sure enough, there's globs of poop in the tub under her naked tush. this time was more stinky than gross, so i'm thankful for that. tom and i clean them off, i clean the tub and tom heads off to a meeting while the kids play together. while i'm doing the dishes from dinner i let the toys soak in the sanitized tub with some soap, hoping to salvage our last remaining bath toys. but as i'm rinsing the pan in the kitchen i hear some laughter and then wyatt's broken exclamation, "cassie..." but he trails off and as i rush down the hall i hear a panicked cry from cass. there she is, laying on her back in her pajamas in the tub filled with about two inches of soapy water. awesome. as if cleaning the tub of poop wasn't enough adventure for the evening now i have a fully clothed sudsy daughter. i tell wyatt to "go to your room" (as i was saying it i thought, i can't believe i'm saying this. i guess it was a minor punishment for misleading his little sister to think that playing in the bathroom was alright) and strip her down. she is not thrilled about the impromptu bath in the kitchen sink but i have to make sure there's no soap in her eyes or hair before i put her to bed, as a sort of punishment for climbing in the tub. i think it was more of a relief for her; she no longer had to make decisions on what was smart and what was fun.

is this how it will always be, the two of them together but cassie always pushing the envelope a little more than wyatt? i'm hoping his level-headedness will even out her thrill-seeking. and vice-versa.

and in other bathroom news, i asked wyatt to help me out when i was using the bathroom tonight. all i needed was a few squares of t.p. since tom didn't replace the back-up roll and i used the remaining toilet paper to clean the smears of poop off the tub. this is what i got:

but in cute and clean news, here's wyatt with his arranged-marriage wife, mira jane mcinnes. we're hoping jack and stephanie will stick with the verbal contract we made while mira was still in the womb because this girl came out cuter than any newborn has a right to be. i mean, c'mon, when they're that little they aren't the most attractive creatures. but she was, and is, the cutest little redhead we know. wyatt even talked about stephanie tonight, and asked about "that guy." i can only assume he meant jack. tonight after we prayed for pop wyatt asked me if he could see a pancreas. it took five minutes for me to figure out what he was saying, since it orignally sounded like "pan-is-sus" but i finally figured it out. this is what i plan on showing him. i think it would be more helpful if it was animated, but we'll take what we can get.

we're keeping pop in our prayers, trusting that the surgeon will be guided by Divine hands and that at least half of mike's pancreas will be cancer free and healthy. we're believing that the heart attack last summer was a gift from God to lead the doctors to this problem and that it will be all His glory when pop is able to retire healthy and happy. we love you, pop!