Right before I left I hosted a Texas Bee pool party at my apartment complex! I was so happy to have so many people agree to come. I don’t have time to comment on every photo, so those who attended can feel free to leave their thoughts below

Baby BoP and Baby Avo. T1 has such a HUGE head compared to her! They are only 5 days apart. I remember when BoP went into labor and I was so mad because she was due after me and I was so ready to have the baby out of my belly!

Hydrangea, BoP, Mouse, Avocado. TH came after we took this picture, and Fro-Yo was there as well but she wasn’t in our group shot because she was mistakenly at the wrong pool for a little while!

Baby Hydrangea is on the way.

Those swim trunks are for a 12 month old. He looks ridiculous in them.

I brought my waterproof camera down for some shots in the pool. Fro-Yo’s nieces had so much fun playing with it.

I am most definitely NOT good at being in underwater photos.

Fro-Yo is really good at it though!

Isn’t she darling?

Can you find Mr. Mouse in Mrs. Mouse’s glasses?

If any of the bees present would like a copy of the photos they are in send me an email! I’m exciting for our Chicago Bee get together this Saturday

Yesterday husband and I were reading scriptures together (actually we were reading the student manual which was explaining some of the concepts found in the scriptures) and I found myself getting caught up on the word “lagged”. I realized that if you replaced the L with a J the word went from one syllable to two syllables — lagged vs. jagged. Why is this? I couldn’t focus on anything else so we took a break from our reading while husband dug up the following email forward from his inbox. I loved it so much I decided I had to share it with you, even though most of you have probably already seen it. How does anyone learn this as a second language? CRAZY!

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse .
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present , he thought it was time to present the present
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. – Why doesn’t “Buick” rhyme with “quick”

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is “UP.”
It’s easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car . At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special .
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP ! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. I f you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP .
When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP .
One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so……….. it is time to shut UP…..!

I love belated Valentines Day so much more than on-time Valentines Day.

These flowers? They were free (due to a cashier error). Even if they weren’t free, they would have only cost $10. Did you hear that? $10 teeny, tiny little dollars. I bought ice cream cones that cost almost that much while I was in Vegas.

Now I have 12 pretty flowers to look at, and one big vase to keep.

And there was a second surprise after the flowers! I have been wanting to buy The Scarlet Pimpernel for years, but I’ve been unable to find the exact copy our creepy history teacher in high school used to show us when he didn’t feel like teaching anything. I got so excited when I saw this at Costco a few weeks ago, but the price tag was enough that I knew buying it would bust our entertainment budget for several months. That Husband saw how excited I got and bought it for me as a V-Day surprise.

Now I have:

Pride & Prejudice

Victoria & Albert

Emma

Jane Eyre

Lorna Doone

Tom Jones

Ivanhoe

and my personal favorite The Scarlet Pimpernel.

We’re going to be Pimping out tonight with some homemade ice cream. (Did you like how I did that thing with the Pimpernel and the Pimping? I thought it was cool of me. I’m usually against using the term “pimping” because of the awful connotations, but I thought I was being quite clever here.)

Did you know I am completely, ridiculously, madly in love with my husband? I like him better than I like all of you combined. And I like all of you a whole lot.

This is one of the flowers he sent me last year for valentines day. This year I told him I never want him to give me flowers right around valentines day for the rest of our lives. I hope he realizes that doesn’t mean I never want flowers. I want “Happy Tuesday” flowers, and “good job cleaning the kitchen” flowers, and “just because I like you” flowers.

This year I don’t want any flowers, I just want him.

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, nothing else will do
I’ve gotta have you, I’ve gotta have you.

Gotta Have You, The Weepies

Actually I don’t ever have any amount of coffee, whiskey, or wine. So those definitely won’t do. The flowers won’t do either this year. I gotta have you TH.

I realize that most people show their crafty projects after the intended recipients have received them, but does it make any sense for me to show you a valentine craft project 364 days before valentines day 2010? I think not.

After these Fred Flare valentine hot chocolate packets were featured on Weddingbee, I remembered that one of the cookbooks I received for Christmas had a recipe for homemade marshmallows that all of the women back home were raving about. I wasn’t going to pay the insanely high price of $8 for a packet of cocoa, so I decided to come up with my own version. I don’t usually do step-by-step photos, because the lighting in my apartment is so awful, but with a project like this I thought you all might like to see how to make your own.

Ingredients

Vegetable oil for brushing
4 pkgs unflavored gelatin
3 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Brush your jelly roll pan with vegetable oil. Cut a piece of wax paper and lay it on top of the oiled pan, and brush more vegetable oil on top. Set aside.

Pour 3/4 cup cold water in the bowl of an electric mixer and sprinkle gelatin on top. Let sit for at least 5 minutes.

Place 3 cups granulated sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 3/4 cup water in a medium saucepan. Take a moment to soak in exactly how much sugar marshmallows really contain.

Set saucepan over high heat and bring to boil.

Insert a candy thermometer, and cook until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (238 degrees F), which will be after about 9 minutes of boiling.

Using the whisk attachment beat hot syrup into gelatin on a low speed.

Gradually increase speed to high, beat until mixture is very stiff, somewhere around 12 minutes. Ooooh and aaaah as it turns white like magic. Beat in vanilla.

What does very stiff mean exactly? I have no idea. I guessed it meant something like this.

Pour mixture into the jelly roll pan and let sit for 3 hours, or overnight. The picture below is of the marshmallows after sitting overnight.

Place 1 cup confectioners sugar in a fine strainer and sift onto a clean work surface. Invert large mashmallow onto the sugar-coated surface, and peel off the wax paper.

Take your heart shaped cookie cutter and dip it in vegetable oil.

Press down firmly, twisting a little at the bottom, to make sure you cut all the way through the ‘mallow.

Roll the marshmallow in the excess confectioners sugar.

Have a little fun playing with the leftover cutouts (please note, this step is unnecessary).

Call your husband in and while pointing to your hearts say “Look how pretty!” (This step is necessary).

Line up your hearts in neat little rows. Continue with the “Look how pretty!” statements.

Fill plastic baggies, one with hot cocoa mix, the other with marshmallows. Use your (new!) rotary paper cutter to cut out strips of red paper. Fold in half, and use hot glue gun to affix “i love you” ribbon to the front. Staple label to the top of the baggie.

If you are really crafty, you will make sure the personal instructions look at pretty as the rest of your packaging. If you are me, you break out the ball point pen and scrawl across the back of the labels with your unsightly handwriting.

Don’t the hearts look so cute all smooshed together like this?

I couldn’t resist doing a little test run for myself. Isn’t that one of the sweetest sights you have sever seen?

Actually, 3 marshmallow hearts floating together in my hot cocoa cup might be the sweetest sight.

No! No! No! The absolute sweetest is 5 marshmallow hearts, oooey and gooey and a little bit melty, floating together in my hot cocoa cup.

I’m so happy how this turned out, it’s definitely the cutest thing I’ve ever made. I’m going to keep the recipients of these valentines a secret so they can be surprised when they receive them.

What are you crafting for Valentines Day?