bedtime conversations

Sometimes I have the best conversations with my girls at bedtime while I'm tucking them in.  Cumorah was talking 100 miles per hour the other evening.  I could have spent forever just watching her beautiful perfect little face while she was talking.  Her little mouth and lips with all her distinctive pronunciations, and her very serious little eyes, her expressions, the crazy frizzy curls that surround her face, it just kills me.  Motherhood.  It's like a sickness.  Who else could spend eternity staring at her children in utter amazement and adoration?  Especially when it wasn't less than 17 minutes earlier that a thoroughly exasperated and finished-with-the-day mother was ready to throw all said adored and amazing children out the window to be eaten by the crocodiles. 

Cumorah is amazing.  She thinks so seriously about everything and NOTHING really escapes her notice.  Sometimes it catches us off guard and sometimes it's very inconvenient.  But it is part of who she is and I, being her mother, think it's amazing.  Have I ever mentioned before how intense she is?

So there we were, Cumorah sitting in her bed talking 100 miles per hour about I-can't-really-remember-what, and me half in her bed and half on the ladder staring intently at her, nodding my head in agreement every once in a while and wondering dreamily what she's going to be like when she grows up and trying to absorb all of her freshly-four-years-old-ness before it's gone forever.  The conversation turned to Mommy and Daddy getting married in the temple so that we can be a family forever and how Daddy and Cumorah were the first.  As in, Daddy was the first child in his family, and Cumorah is the first child in her family.  Rivers piped up from down below with a very curious question in her very cute tiny trilly voice that I really need to get recorded.  "Who babysitted us while you were getting married in the temple?"  I said, "Actually, you weren't born yet so nobody was babysitting you here.  You were in heaven living with Heavenly Father and Jesus."  To which Cumorah knowingly replied, "Except for not me, I was in your tummy."  The confidence with which she said that could have started a lot of scandolous rumors.   "No, actually, you weren't in my tummy quite yet when Mommy and Daddy were getting married in the temple.  You were in heaven, too.  But then after a while after Mommy and Daddy were married, you were growing in my tummy because it's true, you were the first child."

i don't know what it is...

but it's what's for dinner.

It's really not that uncommon for Brian to ask me what's for dinner while I'm cooking and for me to reply, "I don't know."  And then when I'm asked again, "I don't know.  It's just stuff.  It's something.  I don't know what to call it."  And sometimes when I'm asked I'm not even sure how I'm going to finish cooking it.  It just sort of evolves.  That sounds really appetizing, huh? 

Don't start thinking I'm a horrible cook or feeling sorry for Brian or anything.  I'm really not that bad.  I make normal stuff like tacos and soup and chicken and pizza and all that but sometimes I look in the fridge, pull out what's inside, (and I serve it up fried...sorry Little Mermaid moment) and make something.

Monday was one of those evenings.  It was classic.  I wish I had a picture.  It was green.  Very green.  Bright green.  I should name it. 

And you know what the funny thing is?  It actually tasted pretty good.

We had leftover roasted fingerling potatoes, bits of pan fried chicken, and steamed carrots and broccoli.  I chopped some green onions, the potatoes and the chicken and cooked it in a little olive oil until it was kind of toasty.  Then I added the carrots all chopped up and cooked it a little more.  Meanwhile, I'm not sure what possessed me but I put the broccoli in the blender with some milk and a bunch of eggs.  Seriously.  That was the green part.  The broccoli had been cooked just right, so it was brilliant.  Then I poured it over the stuff in the frying pan.  Then I realized it really wasn't going to cook right in the pan.  So my french bread (from scratch, my first time, I was proud) came out of the oven and I scooped the green stuff from the frying pan onto the hot stoneware baking pan and put it in the oven.  After I topped it with slices of the log of fresh mozzarella that Pearl brought up to us to use since Amy had two logs and the best-if-used-by date had arrived.  It was one of my strangest fits of made up cooking that I have ever had, but like I said, it didn't taste half bad. 

In fact, the worst disappointment of the meal was that I realized on my initial bite of beautiful homemade french bread that I forgot to add the salt.  Really?  That is the worst thing ever.  My children wouldn't eat it.  There's a saying there somewhere, pride cometh before the fall, or something like that.


ps I learned something from this post.  I have no idea how to spell broccoli.  I spelled it three different times.  Three different ways.  Three different wrong ways.  Thank goodness for spell check.