Pizza!

Things here have been moving along. Natalie has started to become really stubborn and rebellious and whiny and also extremely hilarious and sweet and impossible to stay upset with.

Paco's Christmas gift- a box set of Dr. Suess titles- has proved a big hit. Any time we read the title of ANY  book now, she follows with, "By Dr. Suess." So, we started reading the scriptures the other day and Micah read "The Book of Mormon" and Natalie chimed in, "By Dr. Suess."

A couple of funny daytime exchanges between us:
Me: AUGH!!! *tripping over pots and pans strewn across kitchen floor by Natalie*
Natalie: Are you okay, Sarah?

Me: First, finish your bread. Then, you can have a cheese.
Natalie: No, I don't think so, honey.

Natalie has learned the word/concept, "scared", much to my irritation. Now, she freaks out at everything from turning off the lights for bed to Stinky, the potted cactus character from Sesame street, shrieking, "Natalie SCARED!!!!".

She likes to sing songs (mostly made up, some snippets of songs she is learning from nursery) while she plays and enjoys playing with our shelf of canned goods, piles of shoes or a laundry basket just as much as the overflowing contents of her toy box.

Also, she likes to be naked all the time and I generally just let her because she looks like a cute little angel cherub baby, with her chubby little everything and her wispy white hair. 

I recently made pizza for the first time. This alfredo chicken spinach one was delish except that the crust was crispy and awful. On my second attempt, I made the crust on this site and it turned out AMAZING.

I also tried making English muffins and though they weren't a total failure, I want to continue to search for a better recipe. These were supposed to deflate a bit as I cooked them, but instead we ended up with 4 inch tall english muffins. Also, they were void of nooks and crannies- completely unacceptable.

 But, of course, I couldn't just throw them away! So I came up with a nice use to mask their unappealing-ness: eggs benedict! After the snow, Target was completely out of eggs in 6, 12 and18- count packs, so I ended up buying a huge case of eggs. This meal killed 2 birds with one stone- used up a ton of eggs and made the english muffins palatteable. Also, it was unbelievably delicious and fattening and we probably both gained about 3 pounds that night.

This is Micah's Sexy Pose. 

I also got to make some food for the superbowl- pizza, wings, hotdogs w/ homemade pretzel buns, 7-layer dip, guacamole, cheesecake and more. We had several couples from our ward over and it went very well. 

I'm not the most warm, kind, charitable person, so I like feeding people- it's the easiest way for me to show people that I care about them. 

Natalie "helped" me with a lot of the preparations. I turned my back for a second and she took a bite out of this avacado half (and I mashed it up and served it to my guests anyway. Sorry!) and she kept absconding with my ingredients!