"f-f-f-fweeeezie!"

I am usually all for walking around to run my errands even in less-than-ideal weather, but I was more than happy yesterday when a neighbor/friend found us on the way to joy school to take Hannah. Jane and I turned right back around and made a beeline for our cozy home.
Jane learned the meaning of the word "freezing". The air was biting, bitter, brutal. Jane found a partially eaten muffin on the ground which was rock hard. I'm glad she didn't find it appealing.
Pour Jane's face was frozen still when we got in. She looked statuesque with big unblinking eyes until the blood returned to her face and warmed her little body.
We were spoiled for the rest of the day as Hannah also got a ride home. I love my friends!

Reason for the Season- #10

The incredible, edible pumpkin


I know there are loads of delicious pumpkin recipes out there. Here are just a few you should try, under the assumption that you like pumpkin.

•caramel pecan pumpkin pie
This has Thanksgiving written all over it.

•pumpkin chocolate chip cookies
As posted previously on our blog. You could also try these pumpkin cookies. Thanks for the heads up Merideth.

•pumpkin swirl brownies
(pictured above)

•pumpkin mushroom soup
Just a bit less syrup and it's delicious!

•souffled pumpkin pancake
One I plan to try over Thanksgiving.

•crustless pumpkin pie (below)
Makes you feel just a little less guilty, if you're prone to that kind of thing.

Enjoy your pumpkin this season, in all its many delectable forms.

••••••••

Crustless Pumpkin Pie

1 can pumpkin puree
1 12 oz. can evaporated skim milk, or 1 1/2 c. regular skim milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. pancake mix
2 T. butter, melted
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Fat-free Cool Whip for topping (optional)

Preheat oven to 350˚. Spray 9" pie pan with cooking spray.
Mix all ingredients well and pour into pie pan. Bake for 50 minutes, or until inserted knife comes out clean.

Our day, numerically speaking

1 bewitched sleeping princess,
2 pretend doggies,
3 forts,
4 owies,
5 broken or deconstructed objects,
6 games of hide-and-go,
7 x 8 = times Jane told Hannah to "Dop it!" (Stop it),
9 things that I didn't get done on my to-do list,
10 pillows it takes to cover two little girls,
11 minutes of twirling, spinning, flipping and shakin' it to "Do I Do" by Stevie Wonder (pant, pant), and

12+ wardrobe changes.

That pretty much sums up our afternoon.



And now, I have about 50 minutes to clean up and get dinner on.

Hannah, on the spot

This photo really has nothing to do with what I am about to write.

•••••••

Hannah participated in her first Primary program today. Technically, she is a month and a half too young to be in Primary, but the Primary presidency asked if she would like to be a Sunbeam a year early because there was only one other child in the class at the time.
That said, she did a great job up on the stand, mostly just at saying her scripture over the mic. When it came time to sing, she stood there shifting her open mouth the way she does when she knows she has attention on her. She would look at me and smile and I would try to encourage her by mouthing the words to the songs. She didn't care. At least she stayed up there and stuck it out like a brave little Sunbeam.

Just for the record, Hannah knew every word to every song the kids sang, and there were many. I have heard her singing them when she's playing on her own, when perhaps she thinks I am not listening. The other day, while she was taking a small trash bag out to our hallway chute, She was BELTING OUT the words to "We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet." She loves the echo. I also have found her in the stairwell, even better acoustics, singing "Home".

Maybe next time when she hears the songs she knows so well, she will have the urge to sing. I'm still proud of my little blue mouthed girl.

Marriage coaching is worth a try

I subscribe to a blog called simplemarriage.net. The author, Corey, has some great marriage advice.

Corey is a marriage counselor and marriage coach. The difference between a counselor and coach, as I understand it, is basically this; people who are trying to save their marriage see a marriage counselor and people who want to take a good marriage and make it even better should see a marriage coach.

One day, Corey was offering free marriage coaching to two couples. So I put my name in, and we won free marriage coaching.

The point of all this is that Minna and I have a great relationship but actually going to a marriage coach was really fun. We had no pressure to "save" our marriage, only make it better. And we have. Just by thinking about making our marriage better, and knowing Corey was going to follow up with us on the goals in our next session we set actually helped. I probably wouldn't have paid for the coaching before but now I see it as something I would do once a year, kind of like a checkup. And I'd recommend it to everyone.

We had three sessions. We spaced them out a few weeks apart, we were really busy, but I liked having a couple weeks to work on our goals before talking about them again with Corey. The whole thing started in September and we had our third session the first week of November. While I would say (and Minna agrees) our "quality of marriage" hasn't instantly improved over the last few weeks, my awareness of our marriage has, and this awareness is the key take-away.

If you love your spouse, if your relationship is fine, and you aren't trying to save your marriage, then you should see a marriage coach. (btw, if you are trying to save your marriage, you might consider a marriage counselor.)

Thanks Corey!

My Lovell-y wife

Just so you know, Minna isn't the only one who posts on this blog. In fact I started this blog just after Hannah was born, and was the main author until Minna contracted blogging fever, to which there is no known cure. So without her permission, and for no occasion at all I wanted to declare here and now why she is so awesome.

She is carrying yet another child
She will always read "one more book" to the girls at bedtime
She adores me
She is patient when I am not
She loves to be beautiful and does it well
She makes me lunch most every day
She takes awesome photos
She makes delicious cookies
She is in love with fall
She is an artist
She teaches our girls right and wrong
She loves to make me fantastic food
She makes our house nice
She smells good
She makes the house smell good
She cleans up smelly diapers
She re-parks the car on Tuesday and Wednesday
She dresses the girls cute
She scratches my back
She wears compression socks
She has lovell-y freckles
She does my laundry
She is easy to talk to
She loves flip-flops
She has lots of personality
She listens to all my ideas with an open mind
She loves Dancing with the Stars
She blogs
She hates wicker furniture (like me)
She loves food
She loves her family
She loves my family
She is grateful
She believes in Jesus Christ
She fulfills her calling at church
She married me in the temple

and on and on...

Big sis

I kept looking at this photo (because I love it) so I thought I might as well post it.

Hannah is looking forward to being a big sister. She often asks about "her baby" in my belly and then pats it and hugs it. Last night, while hugging the baby bump, she said, "I hope the baby likes me."
I thought, "how could it not!"

Jane singing

Hannah and Jane watching a movie tonight

Why I never want a car I care about in NYC

Dings, scratches, broken tail lights, busted side-view mirrors...
We've seen all off that and more on both of the cars we have had in NY. Between the parallel street parking, double parking and cars whizzing down the neighborhood streets at obscene speeds, it's bound to happen. Then there's the blatant carelessness that is so rampant it has become the norm. I constantly see parking cars roughly "tapping" parked cars while they squeeze into the only spot within blocks. It's disturbing which is why I'm afraid to ever own a car in this city that I would give an iota for.

Our first car that we owned here, a beloved Isuzu Trooper, was found one day to have a crushed tail light. I was shocked that someone would do that and not tell us. I have since realized that incidents like this are all too common.


Here is a look at our current car's side-view mirror, no doubt hit by someone that was trying to squeeze by a double-parked car and ours. Our friends were about to borrow our car when we discovered it. They took it regardless and repaired it with sticky velcro. Apparently, it was all they had on hand and so it has remained.


Although the window below fell spontaneously while driving, I wouldn't be surprised if the door hadn't been bumped by another vehicle at some point and we are just now seeing the effects. Or I could surmise that the poorly paved streets which result in excessively bumpy travels eventually jarred the window mechanism loose. Whether these be the case or not, this is the state of our window, which has only been so for two days and hopefully won't be that way come the weekend.

Lovely, isn't it? Those indentations in the plastic to the left are from Jane's little fingers.

To prove my point about the regularity of damage done to the cars of the street, here is a picture of two cars, one parked directly behind me and one parked directly in front of me.


Again, all too common.
I would venture to guess that 85% of the cars parked on our block suffer from such afflictions. Truly, the streets of NYC are an unsafe place for any vehicle, cherished or not.

Reason for the Season- #9

Fall Color



Fall in New York - are you kidding me!?!
It's pretty amazing here right now, and I'm not just talking about the photo of Central Park above.

Today, I drove out to Long Island, and although the parkway was beautiful, it didn't compare to a small one-lane road I happened to drive down. The scene took my breath away as soon as I turned onto it. It was lined and paved with gold, all gold. The trees glowed so bright and warm, and the fallen leaves that blanketed the drive had barely been touched. I wish I had had my camera. The scene was brilliant. It awakened my senses and made me so grateful to live in such a beautiful place at such a time.

Hannah on voting

I said to Hannah,
"Hannah, I need to go vote!"

Hannah said,
"I want to go to the vote store and buy a vote."

Luckily, we live in a place where voting is free.

When I asked Hannah,
"Who should I vote for: Barack Obama or John McCain?

She said,
"Vote for us!"

Hannah thinks "us" are awesome.

We're Moving! (our blog is moving, not us)

We are moving our blog to the blogspot servers so we can have some of the neat functionality that they provide.

You can find it at http://dyeries.blogspot.com

Don't forget to update your bookmarks and blog readers!

We're also going to add a domain name. It will activate in the next day or two http://dyeries.com

Reason for the Season- #8

Halloween!

It took having kids to appreciate Halloween again.
This year, Hannah was a butterfly and Jane was... well, just a cute little girl in a pink poodle skirt. It was so fun to watch them. They were so excited when we got outside, they could barely stay still for a photo, but we did manage to get a few. Oh, I forgot to mention that I made a silly, pregnant monkey of myself. It was Hannah's idea (Not shown are my monkey gloves and tail).
We went to Burns Street - essentially the same Burns Street we live on but in a private neighborhood called The Gardens. They love trick-or-treaters there, and they always know how to do Halloween right with great decor and plenty of chocolate candy bars. We had a good time but Hannah requested to go home before we did. We had no problem with that.
A short and very sweet Halloween evening.

The prep

For tonight, getting the hair ready...
and watching Ratatouille.