Oatmeal

So, what's the big deal with oatmeal?


I have been thinking lately that I would like to eat a healthier breakfast. So I have been choking down oatmeal for the past week. Then today I compared the label of oatmeal with the label of cheerios and found that...

Oatmeal has more

Calories
Fat
Saturated Fat
Protein
Carbs

While Cheerios has more

VITAMINS A,C,D, B6, B12
Calcium
Iron
Thiamin
Riboflavin
Niacin
on and on

They have about the same fiber.

So granola friends I ask of you, what is oatmeal giving me that cheerios is not...besides more fat and fiber?

There ain't no sunshine when he's gone...

Well, except there kind of is. Because tonight for dinner we had apples with peanut butter for our main course and then for dessert a bowl of cheerios. Last night for dinner we also had cheerios. Night before that? Ralphie took pity on us and fed us well. Night before that? Went out to dinner.
The other sunshine there has been is that, in order to maintain safety and security in the Bassett home while Blaine was out on business, we had to get the dogs groomed. My theory in this is that I wanted the dogs to sleep in the bed. Gross huh? Mostly because they have really good ears and I wanted to know if they could hear anything spooky or amiss in the house. But I wasn't going to let my stinky disgusting dogs sleep in my bed. So I had to take them to the groomers. And boy they look purty.
Anyway, so there is a little sunshine, but mostly we miss him. Oh and place your bets now....who do you think gained more weight this week... Blaine who was eating on the companies dime (which, I've seen first hand, can get out of control....appetizers? yes. Main course? Obviously. Desserts? Bring them on. Specialty drinks? No doubt about it). Or me who was eating non stop and absolutely nothing healthy (besides cheerios which are fortified right?). I am curious to see who wins. And by wins I mean gains the least : )

Like an orange on a toothpick

Today I took the kids in for their annual check up and what do you know....Bentley's head size is off the charts. Like WAY off the charts. Like "oh my gosh I need to measure your head right now because your childs head is freakishly big" kind of off the charts. It happened when Gwen turned one too. We had to measure all of our siblings heads and parents heads, etc. to make sure that we are all big headed.
At girls camp they called me fat head. Really. And this isn't like when I was a camper at girls camp, it was when I was a counselor. My head is just big. I like to think it is to accomodate by big brain, but you know, whatever. So the weird thing is that the doctor measured my head and it really isn't that big (and I would now like an apology for all of those who called me fat head). I am in the 75th percentile. Gwen is currently in the 99th percentile. And from my basic understanding of how percentiles work it is impossible, but Bentley is in like the 150th percentile. His head is that big.
Anyway so everyone say a little prayer that when Blaine measures his head that it is really big. I mean, it seems pretty big, but we are hoping that it is honkin' huge so that Bentley's big head will be explained genetically and so we don't have to go and get an MRI. Yikes. I am fairly confident it is all good, but the huge head combined with the fact that the kid isn't even close to walking or crawling more than an army crawl has the doctor concerned.

In other well-child check up news... they did a hearing test with Gwen and you have to wonder about that. She asked Gwen to tell her when she could hear a beep. Gwen sat there silently and then the nurse would ask "do you hear a beep" and Gwen's response was "almost". Wonder how accurate those tests are...

Anyway, so this is Kristi-Big-Head-Bassett signing off. I'm going to go "cry myself to sleep on my 'uge pilla" (Please tell me you've seen "So I Married an Axe-Murderer").

Ode to Jo...

As in JoAnna Morris. You see, JoAnna Morris was the first person to introduce me to the fine art of "GS" or "Garage Sale-ing". I thought she was insane. She wanted me to get up at 6:30AM and go to her neighborhood garage sale. This was two and half years ago while I was living in Minnesota. I thought I would humor her and got up to follow the handmade route she had drawn up for us to follow. She had both of her kids in the van (and everyone say a silent prayer of gratitude right now that your husband is not a Surgery Resident... or any type of resident as were most of the husbands of my friends in Rochester, Minnesota home of the Mayo Clinic). Anyway.... I followed this crazed woman around for an hour and a half. She'd leave her kids in the van with a movie running, browse each sale quickly, slow down and drive by sales, peering out her window. The whole thing was quite hilarious. And then I found it..... a garage sale some lady was having who had twin girls a year older then Gwen and she was selling all of the clothes they had outgrown. It was awesome. Anyway, thank you JoAnna because now I am a professional garage sale-er and I love it (I love going to them, I do not love hosting them, I will never do it again).

Blaine was not a huge fan of the habit, he thought it was kind of hypocritical for me to accuse him of being a pack rat and demand he get rid of some of his junk while every Saturday I would go out and buy other people's junk with which to clutter our house, but he has since wizened up. I don't buy junk. I buy clothing. And sometimes toys. And I love it!

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I've been on kind of a losing streak lately. Coming home with one or two treasures (usually a dress for Gwen, which sale for about $1 at garage sales and are nice enough for church, but cost so little that she can wear them any day and I don't care!). But yesterday, my friends, I hit the garage sale jackpot.

Have you ever priced maternity clothes? For something that you are going to wear for five or six months maximum, they sure are expensive. Nice cute shirts from motherhood maternity cost over $20 and as a general rule I don't pay $20 for anything, except the mortgage. So let me tell you of my spoils of yesterday, the best garage sale-ing day in history.

Garage Sale #1

Maternity shirts at $1-2/shirt. I bought 6 shirts
Girls pajama sets (from the Disney store, two of every type of princess, long sleeve and short) $0.25 a pair! 7 pairs.
Boppy pillow with cute cover $10
Giant ziplock full of 10 playtex baby bottles $2 (Don't Worry, I'll clean them good!)
Brand new with tags infant girl outfit, very cute $1
Gwen size long sleeve shirts $.50/shirt 3 shirts

Total $27.50

Upon making my payment the woman brought up a brand new, never used Diaper Champ (one of the finer baby products on the market) and gave it to me for free because I bought so much stuff. AWESOME! Used those sell on craigslist for $10, new they are $25. I already have one but this one is newer, nicer and now we can have one downstairs.
And can you believe that I bought 7 pairs of princess pajamas for $1.75. I rock. This garage sale rocked.


Okay, now garage sale #2

Maternity shirts and dresses all from Motherhood Maternity or Old Navy $0.50 a piece. These are modest, wear to church, would have cost $40 each I am sure, dresses. I bought 5 dresses and many more shirts (maybe 6?) and a Halloween costume for Bentley ($2), total here? $9.50 ish MATERNITY DRESSES. I am sure I can resale this lot on craigslist--just the dresses for at least $20. Sweet.

Garage sale #3

Some insane couple was selling all of their infant girl clothing, which was all in excellent condition for TEN CENTS a piece. Dresses, pajamas, onesies, bibs, rompers, everything. These people are insane. I pilled up my stack so high and I thought it was a quarter a piece, when I found out it was ten cents I went back for more. I got 25 pieces for $2.50 and then I also bought a pretty new looking game of Cranium for $2. Total $4.50.

Garage sale $ 4
Two pairs of pants for Gwen (Old Navy), a sweater for Gwen and a long sleeved shirt for Gwen. Each $0.50. A Dora puzzle $0.25, and a Discovery toys set of shapes, hard to explain little thing for $.75
Total $3

Okay, in total I got an entire maternity wardrobe including sunday dresses; an entire infant girl wardrobe, nice supplements to Gwen's wardrobe, a brand new diaper champ, a few fun games and a puzzle and a Halloween costume for less than $50. That's how much two maternity shirts would have cost. I was so happy. Really, I was. A lot happier even than I was when I spent $50 on my new hair cut and color. All day long I just reveled in fifty cent maternity clothes and twenty five cent pajamas.

I know you don't care, but I want history to know what a saavy shopper I am and I am dreading the day when Gwen is old enough to think she is too cool for garage sale stuff. Oh and this is another huge benefit of living out of Utah, because here people have one or two kids and then sell all their stuff. It's awesome!

$9

If you go to this post and leave a comment, they will donate $9 to breast cancer research. You should do it.

Click here

Surprise!

And we are SO EXCITED!

Perfect Pumpkin Bread, a pictoral voyage

First off, gather all of your supplies and helpers. And your camera. You are confident that this will be the recipe and photo essay that will make pioneer woman weep and quit blogging. I've bolded the most important part for your convenience.

Needed Supplies:

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 C butter
• 1/2 C Applesauce
  
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 C white sugar
• 1 C brown Sugar
  
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended.




Pour into the prepared pans.




Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean


It's okay if you don't have toothpics and have to use a shiskabob skewer instead. Just be sure to insert it in the MIDDLE. Or else it will look like this when you try to dump it out on the rack.


At least the house smells good, right? I can hear PWs laughs from a thousand miles away.

And the winner is....

Seems simple enough doesn't it? Balloon cupcakes. Of course I couldn't find curling ribbon in multi-colors. I appreciate all of the suggestions, Jessica I am totally going to borrow the Thomas stuff next year if that's okay because, wow, that will be awesome. And Holly, you're friend is an animal, that looked like a way fun party....way cute idea!

I built it, now come....

Alright all you google reader-ers. Come to the blog and take my poll! I have my ultrasound tomorrow and if you guess the right gender then I will name the baby after you! Maybe...

Firsts

The day before Gwen's birthday we wound up in the Emergency Room. I took her to Burlington Coat Factory to pick up a present. I was bent over on the ground looking at some toys and all of the sudden Gwen came crashing down on the floor, the tile floor, from her perch in the shopping cart. TRAU-MA. I didn't know what to do, she hit the floor really hard. She was crying, but was her brain bleeding? I didn't know. OF COURSE it was Friday at about 6:30PM so there was no chance of just rushing her to her regular doctor (beware of Fridays after business hours, it's when all bad things happen). So I took her to the emergency room. Being the female that I am I called my mother for moral support and guidance, "ohh..." she said in a hushed tone when she heard what had happened, "I know babies have died from falling out of shopping carts before..." Thank you mother. Tears. Sob. Wail. (Those were all from me, by this point Gwen was down to just some tears still trickling down). An hour in the emergency room waiting and finally when the doctor came to see my happy smiling baby (it all seemed less traumatic by this point).... he asked, "So...why did you bring her in again?" "Um, she fell out of a SHOPPING CART, which is like the adult equivalent of falling off of a mountain!" I cried. He asked if she had passed out? No. A million other quetions? No. no. no. So like three hours after the ordeal was over I left the emergency room with a sheet of paper telling me when it is appropriate to bring a child who has fallen to the ER (ie one pupil the size of a pin prick the other the size of a bowling ball, etc.). Oh and they also told me that there was a chance she would have a seizure anytime within the next year. Awesome.

Point being. I never got to make the cute princess cake that I had been dreaming up for about a year. I wound up making a yellow cake mix with white frosting and using sprees to make little flower-like designs.



Her second birthday went much better


Sush. I know she's a girl but she has a birthday around halloween.

I am pretty sure I slept through her third birthday (having recently had a baby and all).



I feel bad that I flopped on her first birthday though, those only come around once you know. So this time around, since I am now a grocery cart seat belt buckler Nazi I plan on being in a position to make a decent cake for my second born. So I decided to look up "first birthday cakes" online and came across images like these...


And, tell me if I am wrong, but they seem just a snitch out of the scope of my ability. I mean, not much but a little. So.... any suggestions? I was thinking I could just do orange frosting and call it a manly basketball cake. The good news about boys is they like a lot of things that are round : )

And the extra good news is that if I mess up this time, I hardly have to wait much more than a year to celebrate another first birthday!

Math Error

All of you ladies may want to sit down for this. I was thinking today "oh cool, I am almost twenty weeks along, that's five months, sweet!" so then I continued to ponder, "hmm, so that means I have four months left...how many weeks is that? four times four is sixteen. Cool sixteen weeks left." Wait a second! I don't have sixteen weeks left, I have twenty weeks left. Pregnancy is TEN months. Is it just me because I thought it was supposed to only be nine. I feel a little cheated.

Mad skills

For one of the pages of Gwen's project I did pictures of her pets...Boots and Swiper. Since I had some extra pictures and construction paper left over I took it upon myself to label their food canister. Do you like the way I did something different in each letter. Do you see why I don't go to Stampin Up parties, and blog instead of scrapbook. Good grief. Someone teach me bubble letters.

Project

It's 11:22PM and I just finished Gwen's project. The alternate title is: Why my Mommy doesn't scrapbook

Reason #1: She missed the sleepover where people learned how to do bubble letters.

#2 She labled herself as Bentley in our family picture.

#3: Her handwriting looks really bad big (but I must say, it is quite nice when she writes small)

#4: She had to make up my list of favorite foods based on what was on sale at Randalls

New Hair

Being the observant person I am, I've noticed that taking self portraits the old fashioned way is out. The new way is to take your picture in a mirror. Brilliant! Easy as pie. Just point and shoot...

Whoopsie, I better aim up higher.

Well that didn't work, I said higher!

Maybe I should just align it with my eyes and show off some major bicepage while I am at it....

Hmmmm

What kind of blogger would I be...

Midnight Oil

You may not know this about me, but I was a pretty good student. I know. Hard to believe. Especially given the greeting I was by my high school counselor "Oh, you're Shawn/Todd's sister....so, when ya gonna drop out?". [Note: Both of my brothers have gone on to be pretty darn successful in their life, after a few little obstacles to overcome, I am very very proud of them]. Regardless they left a lot to be desired as far as someone following them through school. Anyway, I was in "honor" classes and I did just fine (my more mature self is now horrified that such distinctions as "honor classes" are even made....that's another blog post for another day). Fact of the matter is, I did nearly as well as Blaine, which is quite comical if you consider our different approaches to school.
About a week after our first essay was due in AP English our teacher thought it wise to read us an example of a really good essay and an essay that could use some work (I think she called it a "disgraceful" essay). Turns out she read Blaine's essay as the good example and my essay as the bad example. And the end of the year she took us all out in to the hall individually and told us if she thought we would do well on the AP test. I peeked through the keyhole when Blaine went out there, as soon as the door shut behind him he and the teacher just looked at each other and laughed and busted open some oreos. Of course he was going to ace the test. When I went out she had a somewhat somber look on her face .... "I hate to tell you this but.....I am not 100% sure you should even take the test". Well I sure showed her. In the end Blaine got a 5 (highest you can get), and I got a 4. Boo-yeah.
The thing is, he and I take a different approach to school. I am more of a "Laissez-faire" type person. I am very motivated by deadlines, but usually not until the deadline is...say... 12 hours away or less. Blaine is quite the opposite. I remember his first semester at BYU he came home one day and was working on a paper, he was quite stressed about it and I later found out it was a three page paper that was due more than a month from the time. Three pages? Puh-lease. I don't start those until two hours before they are due. He drew up drafts of that thing, did several rewrites, sent it to relatives to proof read, etc. Whoa. Opposites attract I guess.
This strategy of mine only became a problem my last semester of college when I was taking 400 level courses in Sociology. I would go to class, try really hard to listen, but man, it was like the professor was speaking gibberish. Anyway, somehow through all of his mumbo jumbo I got that we were supposed to write a 30 page paper on how Modern Jihadism related to the feminist movement. Yabbity whobity whatty? Oh well, four months to mull that one over. This also happened to be the semester that Gwen was conceived and consequently the semester I became familiar with all of the restroom stalls/garbage cans on campus. Who had time to worry about Jihadism. So, yup, I wrote my thirty page paper the day before it was due. When I got it back the teachers notes were pretty sad, he very nicely said that my paper was a strange combination between plagiary and nonsense. Exactly. Comparing Jihadism with the feminist movement is nonsense and it was a lot of work even finding someones thoughts to plagiarize. Sheesh. Give me some credit.
So what does this have to do with you and my life in the here and now? Well, nothing really to do with you (other than I apologize because I still do not believe in proof reading and that's got to be annoying for you). Well, Gwen had a homework assignment due for the first day of class. Five pages on construction paper where we were supposed to glue pictures of herself, her pets, her house, whatever. Fine. Sounds easy. I can slap some pictures on there and have her color something. Gwen and Blaine stayed home sick from church on Sunday and I left them with the simple task to do Gwen's homework. When I got home I was thrilled to hear that they spent the whole time working on it. "Let's see it!" I said eagerly. Blaine glanced nervously around "well, there's nothing to actually see yet". "Uhhh. What?". He showed me that they had a rough draft of their ideas for what would go on each page and had narrowed down our selection of pictures (for these five pages) to a mere 100.
Needless to say, we didn't finish Gwen's homework in time. Blaine wanted thoroughness, and I wanted to comply but I am such a dang procrastinator. My daughter is doomed to failure because a perfectionist married a lazy person, and the lazy one is the one that stays home and has a deep fear of disappointing her perfectionist.
Maybe I don't have to be too concerned though because when all was said and done, I graduated with a better GPA then Blaine. Let that be known (hmmmm.....Electrical Engineering vs. Sociology....that's a fair comparison, right?).

Pumpkin Pie Surprise

Last night we invited some friends over to eat homemade pumpkin pie, as in made from actual pumpkins. Blaine has a thing for pumpkins and really enjoys roasting the seeds and making pies from scratch. Last week at the store they had pie pumpkins in stock, so the festivities of 2008 have officially begun (they were supposed to begin with pie pumpkins grown in our own garden, but we all know what happened to that).
So our friends come over and their cute daughter is playing with our cute daughter when all of the sudden their daughter starts screaming. Our friend ran upstairs to find that she had jammed a thermometer in her ear....on no big deal right? Yeah luckily I had written in marker on the thermometer "rectal only". Who keeps rectal thermometers laying around in their kids rooms? That's disgusting. In my defense, Gwen was sick and I had used the thermometer recently, but still.
Anyway, the pumpkin pie was very good, but if it was good enough for our friends to overcome the severe lack of hygiene in this house, only time will tell!

One in a googleplex

So today I had a kitkat (just a little fun size one. Okay, three fun size ones), but they forgot to put the wafer in, so it was just chocolate. Weird. And that, my friends, is why I am afraid of airplanes. No ones perfect, sooner or later you forget to put the wafer in the kit kat.

Family Portrait

Well not really. The thing is, I want to post a picture of my new hairdo but I am currently sporting a premature double (er....triple) chin and until I reach the point in my pregnancy that normal people start to "show" I am not putting pictures of me up. Sorry. Anyway, my hair is black. Practically. Dark dark dark. The thing is though, I love it! It was a little shock when I got home and looked in the mirror...and my first thought was "Adams Family!". It's growing on me though. I'm not such a big fan of the cut. Well, I like it just fine, but I kind of wish it were a little shorter and I think to make it look good I will have to get a straightening iron, and the only kind of straightening iron that works on these poofy locks is a Chi, and those are expensive and....you know the story. So there you have it. I went darker and a little shorter and you'll just have to visualize until I can figure out how to photoshop my little friends dangling from my chin.

$0.99 update

Okay, I just have to revise....I just checked my junk e-mail (I have a whole junk e-mail address that I check like once every two months...really it is a great idea, anytime I sign up for anything I just use that address, it's nice) anyway and I noticed one of the headlines was that Arby's is temporarily reintroducing the Arby-Q sandwhich, for only $.99. Awesome. And I totally sound like a fast food junkie, which I am not, but hello, for a dollar? Can't be beat.

Rules in "sneaking"

A couple days ago Gwen came upstairs and said. "Mom, I'm sorry". When I asked her why she was sorry she told me that she was sorry she "sneaked" some of the treat I made. I thanked her for admitting that she snuck and then went downstairs and I had to laugh. Let's just say if she hadn't admitted guilt right away I probably would have been able to guess the guilty party. My hints were 1- chair pulled up along side the counter 2- a piece the size of my pinky nail missing right from the middle of the pan and finally, and most obviously, 3- her tool of choice, the hot pink kids knife.

Blaine and I have often joked around about why they sell baby spoons with little plastic knives in the set. Is Bentley, who requires a spoon with a capacity smaller than a dime, really going to be using a knife to cut up his feast?

Turns out those plastic little knives are useful!

Well, we made it back from Corpus Christi, safe and sound and in one piece. It was a fun trip and here are some highlights.

* Crashing in our hotel room when we first got there at 4:30PM and ten minutes later, just as we had all fallen asleep some random woman coming in our hotel room with all of her luggage. She had her own key. And apparently she had already checked in and had just left for an hour. I don't know who was more surprised. Since we were sleeping in the bed already we kept the room, which was rather unfortunate because it really really smelled like something had died in there. It. was. disgusting. Everytime we walked in we had to plug our noses. Too bad Blaine and I are so passive and didn't walk down and demand a new room.

* Gwen sleeping on the Lazyboy. Priceline has been good to us but you never know what you are going to get. This time we had a queen bed and no sofa bed. Bummer. Since we only have one portacrib Gwen resorted to sleeping on the lazyboy. What an adaptable child. I don't know what we'll do with three kids. Maybe we will just have to lug around three port a cribs wherever we go. Or. Gasp. Pay full price for a hotel room. (Never!).

* Going to the Corpus Christi beach and running for the water only to be tackled by a family who warned us that the waters were jelly fish infested. Which was really true. There were hundreds washed up on the beach and you could see the water was thick with them. Just so everyone knows, when I raved about the Corpus Christi beach before, I meant the Port Aransas beach....the actual Corpus Christi beaches are all infested with jellyfish, quite freaky.

* Eating at "mama-citas" mexican restaurant....where they charge $1.50 for a can of pop and the toilets were not attached to the ground. That's right. Had I seen the restrooms before we had sat down and started eating chips and salsa....actually though the food was good and we'll just pretend there was a real nice employee restroom. With soap....and stuff.

* Bentley not sleeping at all the first night. Not one wink.

* Wow, all of these memories are making it sound like a bad trip....it really wasn't. Besides, who remembers trips where things go perfectly?

* Going to sacrament in Corpus and then leaving, Gwen asking "why aren't we going to primary" and us trying to come up with a righteous way of saying, "because we are going to the beach instead". Umm.....

*Driving to beautiful Port Aransas and dreaming of the day we buy a beach house there.

* Setting up our little beach tent shade thing to find, only ten minutes later that we had set it up to a little miniature Yellowstone National Park. Seriously there was this weird bubbling thing in the water and all the sudden it started stinking and I kept thinking any minute we would all be blown to smithereens in Texas' own Old Faithful : )

* Building sandcastles, riding waves, giving myself a mud wrap. Bentley's bloated ocean water diaper. Frozen Capri Suns.

* Gwen, upon hearing we were ready to pack up and go home, taking her swimming suit completely off and refusing clothing and towels and running around the beach nude. It was so weird. She simply did not care, and we really did care.....but she was so fast!

*Eating at Texas Roadhouse and BJs Pizza

*Driving home in a tense silence because I had asked Blaine for a bite of his orange chicken, and then I asked for one more bite and then he said something about me eating all of his chicken and then I made some reference about how if we were lions and it were his job to kill the food and share it with me I would starve....and then, I don't know, can you get PMS while your pregnant? I was really mad that he was really mad that I wanted to eat his orange chicken. And I stayed mad for a really really long time. Like, almost ten hours.

*Bentley learning to shake his head no. It starts....

*Stopping at SeaWorld on the way home from Corpus and since it was like a bajillion degrees outside no one was there. So Gwen got to go on the kid rides over and over. Oh and there was a cute little baby beluga whale that was following it's mom around during the dolphin show and messing with the synchronized swimmers. It was awesome.

*Pulling in to Austin at 9, eating at Firebowl (you should go there), and dragging our tired kids home and sticking them in bed. And then getting in bed. And getting mad at Blaine because he thought we should unload the car first, but I thought we should just go to bed and that I could do it myself in the morning and he thought that I really wouldn't do it in the morning and I thought that was rude and.....what if we were lions and going on vacation......

Pregnant people are so weird.