Helping Around the Home

Helena is a pretty great helper around our place.  She loves to sweep and mop.  She knows where all the toys go and usually helps put them away.  She empties the groceries from the stroller.  She puts her own clothes in the dirty clothes basket in her parents' room - and often adds a a piece or two from their floor.  Her newest thing has been to help sort laundry.  She has two piles - her clothes and everything else.  After she has sorted it, she insists on putting her clothes in a separate bag and carrying them down to the laundry room!

But the thing she really gets into is setting the table.  She loves to get the silverware and put it and the napkins at our spots.  No, they're not always in the right spot, but she does a great job anyways.  This past Saturday was John's last day of Reading Break, so Helena and I set trays and then ate breakfast in bed with him.

A couple Christmases ago her aunt, uncle & cousins gave her a picnic basket which is still a much loved toy around here.  We're always having pretend picnics.  So this Monday we had a real picnic.  I prepared the food but Helena prepared the picnic spot.  She thought of everything!

French Onion Soup

The adults in this household think French Onion soup is amazing, and we just found a recipe that is easy, that is delicious, and that keeps well in the fridge (the onion broth that is) so you can eat it multiple nights!

Recipe adapted from French Onion Soup Gratinee on allrecipes.com

Ingredients

4 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. salt
2 large red onions, thinly sliced
2 large sweet onions, thinly sliced
1 (48 fluid ounce) can chicken broth
1 (14 ounce) can beef broth
1/2 cup red wine
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. thyme
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 thick slices of bread
1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
4 pinches paprika


Directions:

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Stir in salt, red onions and sweet onions. Cook 35 minutes, stirring frequently, until onions are caramelized and almost syrupy.
2. Mix chicken broth, beef broth, red wine and Worcestershire sauce into pot. Add herbs. Simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to low, mix in vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Cover and keep over low heat to stay hot while you prepare the bread.
3. Preheat oven broiler. Make toast out of bread and then cut toast into bite-size pieces.
4. Arrange 4 large oven safe bowls or crocks on a rimmed baking sheet. Fill each bowl 2/3 full with hot soup. Top each bowl with a large handful of toasted bread bites, a handful of Swiss cheese and a smaller handful of the mozzarella. Sprinkle a little bit of paprika over the top of each one.
5. Broil 5 minutes, or until bubbly and golden brown. Serve immediately!

Two Years Old

Helena turned 2 a few weeks ago, but believe it or not, her birthday celebrations were supposed to continue on until tomorrow.  Yes, it's a birthday that was going to be celebrated for over 2 weeks.

Here's why - sickness seems to be attracted to her "big" days.  Her birthday week was the week all three of us had the flu.  So we did a family celebration 2 days after her real birthday in the hopes that Helena would eat some of her food.  Her birthday outing was postponed for the next weekend, with the intention of having everyone well.  Everyone was, that is until Helena got sick at the party and continued to be for the next 12 hours.  So, her friend & family were going to join us for brunch tomorrow morning so we could do party stuff, and then I got the stomach flu last night.  Brunch has been canceled and we're calling this birthday officially over.  But really - will this sickness ever end?

Despite all of the sickening truth above, Helena has LOVED turning 2.  It comes up in conversation at least 5 times a day, and the birthday song is still being sung around here!

For her birthday, she wanted chocolate.  Chocolate for breakfast, chocolate for dinner (we talked her into pizza), chocolate for dessert and chocolate for a gift!

Helena is quite the little mommy.  She has named all of her dolls and despite having a few favorites, takes care of them all.

Funny little story - Helena often points to her mommy's tummy and says "Mommy's tummy baby," then she points to her own tummy and says "Helena's later."

Her usual bedtime pal is Baby Brianna but on Helena's birthday Brianna was replaced with Bob the horse.  John & I are regularly amazed with Helena's memory.  Her grandpa's horse is named Bob, and even though we hadn't talked about him for a month and a half, as soon as she opened her gift, she named her horse Bob.

Helena & her mommy are good friends.  Snuggling in bed together in the morning, cooking, playing with toys, doing crafts, putting away groceries, reading, cleaning (Helena truly is a big help in that area!), running errands, visiting friends...we do almost everything together and love it!

 

Despite all the fun Helena & her mommy have during the day, it's obvious who has been missed once our front door's knob starts to turn.  Helena and her daddy have great times together playing with Duplos and other toys, singing with the guitar, going out on adventures, and building forts.

Her closest pal is Holly.  Oh how those girls giggle and laugh and play and read together!  Holly & Helena and their parents went 5-pin bowling for a birthday outing.   The girls had lots of fun bowling, but during the outing we ended up with one girl getting a bloody nose and the other vomiting.  I guess something always happens at birthday parties, right? 

 

And if you haven't gotten your fill of Helena at age 2 info yet, read on.

- Talking like crazy.

- Needs her Auntie Kari blanket, Nani blanket, Grandma Helen blanket, baby, and water for bed every night.

- Loves tattoos.  As she tells me often, they "not hurt".

- Hates mittens with a passion.

- Is learning her letters and enjoys pointing them out everywhere.  All the letters she knows are connected to people or things, so it's almost always "G Grandma" or "Z Zoe", not just the letter itself.

- Can count to 11, if she can make it past that hard number 5.

- Loves looking at photos.

- Favorite book series are currently Maisy and Curious George but is really happy to read anything if you're reading to her.

- Is loving reading her Bible and stories about Jesus.  Just today John taught her the Zaccheus song, and she walked around the apartment singing "Wee little man, wee little man, climbed tree, hello Jesus.  Song!"

- Seems to be becoming a pickier eater as each day goes on but her favorites remain the same - cheese, fruit, meat on bones, peas, roasted broccoli, raisins. And chocolate.

- Loves to play with Duplos and is pretty good at making simple things on her own.

Against the Tide

This is an extremely late book review for Bethany Publishers, but here it is anyways.

Lydia Pallas works as a translator for the Navy, and her work involves her with Alexander Banebridge, an unusual man working hard against opium trade.  In doing so, Lydia gradually learns that she is addicted to opium, as she was given Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup in her childhood and has continued to take it for its calming effect as an adult.  This only strengthens her resolve to help Bane in all that his endeavors include...

I rather enjoyed this book.  The story lines of Lydia & her difficult life and Bane's mysterious one are ones that I have never come across before in Christian Romance literature.  While that was enjoyable, what I really liked was learning more about the history regarding opium.  Mrs. Winslow's syrup was a real medicine used with babies and children for years and years!  It was nice to be able to read fiction and yet learn true information.

*Please note that I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a review, but not necessarily a positive one.

Back On Our Feet with Friends

Due to our apartment's flu epidemic, we went 8 days without any socialization.  That's a long time!  We did a number of things that needed to be done around our home - got caught up on paperwork, painted the bathroom (actually this occurred right before the epidemic, leaving the apartment a MESS for the first 4 days of sickness), rearranged the living room, worked on toy organization...and many hours were spent on the couch or in bed.  But even with all those projects & recovering, we are still more than ready to see friends and more friends and yes, once again, friends.

Wednesdays are currently Mom's Group days for Helena and me.  This week was our week to host, and while Helena had to work on getting in the sharing groove, we had just a wonderful morning.  Here are a few fun pics for the morning:

Helena's toddler bed was quite the attraction.  All 3 girls took a nap together.

Pretty dresses, necklaces & horn pegs!

John's Trip to Israel

Hello there. It's me, John, writing a much belated blog post about my trip this past summer to Israel. I went with a small group from school, and then stayed on an extra week to do some sight-seeing on my own.

With my school group, we mostly did things related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here I am at Qumran:

It was very hot there. I couldn't imagine living in such a place.

The highlight of the whole trip was the time we got to spend in what I like to call the "Scrolls Storage Closet." We went to the "scrollery" where you can request some scrolls to look at for your work. We all thought we were going to get to see the few scrolls we had requested, through thick glass plating. We did get to do this. But we were surprised also.

One of the parts of our tour--before we did our work on the specific scrolls we requested--was a visit to the "storage room." We went through two locked doors (this is, of course, after the security check for the IAA headquarters and the security check before that to get into the Israel Museum) and found ourselves in a fairly small (8x15 ft) room with drawers. The lady (one of three conservationists working there) started pulling out "plates" (collections of 3-6 scroll fragments) to show them to us. We were excited. There was a scroll fragment in the flesh!

She was showing us how some of the old plates still had scotch tape that they couldn't get off. Then she pulled out another plate to show us how they now liked to keep them. Then she pulled out another plate to show us how they mounted them using Japanese parchment paper and linen. She would take them completely out of their casings, so that there was nothing between us and the scrolls but air! We soon realized that every single scroll was in that room, except the few (around 10) super important ones in the Shrine of the Book. She showed us the various stages of preservation for the parchment manuscripts, and then the papyrus manuscripts too!
 

And then things got really good. She pulled out a really nice, big portion of scroll (8 columns or so) that we immediately recognized was the Psalms scroll. This is a scroll that could easily be in the Shrine of the Book. It was beautiful. And right there in front of us! (She didn't take this one out from under the protective glass/plexi/whatever super-material they use on the front.) I was thrilled: I had written half of one of my papers dealing with one of the columns (Ben Sira 51). THEN she pulled out the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus Scroll from cave 11. My professor literally swooned. It was incredible, about 13 columns, only 4 or so inches tall (like a pocket scroll). She also showed us the only dead sea scroll that contains the Ten Commandments (apparently people were lined up around the block to see this one the entire time it was in Toronto.)



So, that was sweet. We then got to spend a couple of hours looking at and studying some of the scrolls, one of which was the Psalms Scroll (that is, the 6 column portion of it that we had requested). It was so much fun, just to read the passage I had worked on, and sight read Psalm 138 and another Psalm that we realized was the Syriac Psalm 155 (that they didn't know existed in Hebrew until it was found in the Scrolls).

It was amazing.

We did many other great things, and after the people from my group left, I stayed on an extra week for some site seeing. But the scrollery was by far the best part of the trip!

In Sickness and In Snow

One of my new year's goals is to just get 'er done.  I am SO GOOD at procrastinating, it's embarrassing.  So, this year I'm just doing it.  Part of the goal is to spend less time on the computer, as it is my go-to when I am avoiding, which has made not doing the blog easier.  See, I want to catch us up over the last 4 months in which so much of life I'd like to remember has not be memorialized on Livin' Life, but then here I am once again dragging my feet in writing a simple post about today...

The past week has been different for a few reasons.  All three of us had the flu, each coming down with it two days apart.  John & I were trying to figure out last night what is easier - taking care of Helena when she feels good but we feel awful or when the roles are switched - and we honestly couldn't decide on an answer.  But, thank the Lord, our sick symptoms are almost gone. 

The other reason it's been crazy has been due to the weather.  One day - freezing cold.  Next day - supposed to be 50F but instead it's wet glorious snow.  Third day - cold.  Fourth day - barely need a jacket outside.  Fifth day - back to being frigid.  And so on.

On day 2, Helena & I went out and played in the snow while John fought the flu.



On day 4, John & Helena went and got soaked in puddles while I was in bed.

On day 8 (today), Helena wanted to build a snowman but that's not possible in green grass, so we made one inside.