Fevers, Ear Infections, and Redemption!

Hi there. 

So, yeah, I've been dark for a few days.  Cole had a pretty good fever goin' there for a while last week.  Thursday it peaked at 104.5, which was pretty fun.  If by fun you mean a hot, angry baby who only stops crying while being held, but not held in the rocker or on the couch or sitting down - only while being walked around and entertained.  Or in the bath, but you can't take a bath all day even if you're only eight months old and don't understand that.  Did I mention hot and angry?  Poor kid.  But he survived.

But then he woke up with an ear infection this morning.  Again.  That's the third time in six weeks, in case you're counting.  (Different ear, in case you're wondering.)  Good thing we have his nine month check up with Wednesday - we need to figure how to help this poor baby out!

So blogging hasn't been my top priority.  But cake baking has!  Just kidding.  But a while back I was asked to help with a Family Fun Night for Spencer's school.  I couldn't help out that night because Lance had a LAN party, and I wasn't willing to pay the crazy prices they were asking for the dinners (Seriously - $4 for a hot dog dinner?  Right.), but I was willing to make a cake and donate it for the cake walk.

I decided to tempt fate and give the giant cupcake cake another try. The result?

Redemption!  Well, mostly.  It wasn't perfectly straight, but it certainly wasn't this, either.  The school secretary was quite impressed, or at least pretended to be, and that's good enough for me.  Besides, doesn't this look like a cake an eight year old girl would love and would try and try and try to win at a cake walk?  Hey, as long as it wasn't the last one to be chosen, I'm fine.  (But I guess I'll never know since I wasn't there.  Oh well.)

Littlest Brother

Sometimes it's hard to be the littlest brother.  Like when your big brothers are splashing up the perfect storm in the tub.

And you can only watch from a distance.

Self-portrait Tuesday: Courtesy of Josh and Spencer

*Those spiky baby hairs are getting outta control, dang it.

International Food of the Month: Crepes

So this being February and the month of lurrve and all I thought it only appropriate to cook the international food of lurrve: French.

So I got to work and researched and thought and planned and came to this realization: I don't really like most French food.  Now before you go all crazy and start yelling that I don't know what I'm talking about because French food is the BEST I am now the WORST, let me just say that this is just my opinion.  Some people love French food.  Some people love Thai. (That would be me.)  Some people think hot dogs are high dining.  It's all about opinion.

I've had a bit of French food in my life.  In my life before kids I used to go to this little French restaurant in SLC quite a bit for work.  And I liked it.  But when I really thought about it I realized that what I really liked there were the homemade fries and the desserts.  I'm not a big fan of duck or veal, which is used quite a bit in French cooking.  They also use a ton of wine, which I just don't have around the house.

But then I remembered something very French and very yummy: crepes.

And this is the crazy part: I have never made crepes.  Ever.  I can hardly believe it either.

So I decided to make them on Sunday.  I researched a bunch of different recipes, some very authentically French and some very Americanized, and decided to use Alton Brown's version.  Why?  Because ingredients-wise it was very French.  But prep-wise, it was very easy.  And I'm all about the easy on Sundays.

In fact, Alton's recipe is so easy I only had to take one picture of the prep:

Ta-da!  Just throw all of the ingredients into the blender and blend well.  Awesome.  Then you stick it into the fridge for an hour to let all those pesky bubbles pop.  (If you try to make crepes with bubbles they will tear.)

Crepes are notorious for being sticky, so greasing your pan is key.  I used a Teflon pan and then still used a paper towel soaked with butter to grease it.

 A few quick notes while I'm thinking about it:

1. I know some people swear by special crepe pans or crepe makers.  Those people are crazy.  My cheapo pan worked just fine.  Sure, my crepes weren't perfect, but then neither am I. Besides, I prefer my food to have a little personality.
2. When making foods with only a few ingredients I think it's important to make those ingredients really high quality.  In this case that means no margarine.  Butter ONLY!  Besides, I'm pretty sure the ghosts of dead French chefs would come to haunt you if you tried using margarine.
3. Crepes are not at all hard to make.  I'm not sure where or how they got that reputation.  Trust me on this.
4. Josh is a little devil.  I've been trying to write this post for the past hour and he is deliberately driving each of us slowly but surely crazy with his antics.  I decided he must want some attention and so  I played with him for a bit.  This did nothing; kinda made things worse, actually.  Mommy even had to put herself in time out for a few minutes.  This has nothing to do with making crepes, but it sure feels good to get off my chest.

Okay.  Back to the importants.  So you've heated your pan (I set mine to a inbetween medium-high and medium) and greased it with the butter.  Alton's recipe says to pour in 1 oz of batter but I found that 2 oz worked better with my pan size.

Then you swirl the batter around.  It is extremely difficult to take a picture and swirl at the same time, so this is the best you get.

The crepe cooks quite fast; it only needs around 30 seconds or so before the edges start curling in.  (That was my gauge for when to flip it.)

There is no way to take a picture and flip a crepe at the same time.  Trust me.  This is because we only, unfortunately for us mothers, have two arms instead of three or four.  And flipping a crepe is a two hand job.  (I would slide the spatula under the crepe and then use my fingers to help flip it.)

The other side should look pretty like this.

The other side takes even less time to cook - 10 to 15 seconds.  Since we weren't eating the crepes right then I stuck them on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven, which kept them nicely warm.

I decided to go authentic with my crepe and filled it with Swiss cheese, ham, and steamed asparagus.  Yum.  Can I just say how much I love asparagus?  I Love It.

So nice and neat.  An yummy.

Most of the men in my family abhor good taste.  Don't ask me why.  But they chose to fill their crepes with ham and American cheese.  American cheese!  Oh, the shame.  But they seemed to like it.

Josh decided to use his cup as a cookie cutter on his crepe.  We then filled the shreds with jam, which he seemed to enjoy.

And Mr. Cole?  He liked his straight up plain.  He couldn't get enough.

Especially when we got the ice cream out.

No, we didn't give him ice cream.  But Spencer didn't eat the crepe with his ice cream, so we gave the dripping, sticky sweet crepe remnants to Cole.  He was in heaven.

As was I.  There are few things on earth better than homemade crepes.  This is a recipe that is definitely sticking around the Madsen household.

Irony

I decided to snag a little nap while Cole was napping this afternoon.  I really needed it due to Cole's 2:30am highly exclusive teething party the night before.  (It was by invitation only - and I was the only one invited.)

I slept for about 45 minutes only to be rudely awakened by the yelps, hollers, screams, and cries of Josh and Spencer fighting over the Wii.  They had come to blows over which song to dance to for Dance Dance Revolution.

The song in question?

Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence.

Dance Dance Revolution

Cole is finally feeling better.  He's been off of antibiotics for a full day.  Lance gives him 48 hours before we're back at the pediatrician.  I'm a bit more optimistic - I'm hoping for at least 96.

He's still kinda grouchy, though, because he's finally cutting his first tooth.  If it's not one thing it's another with this poor baby, right?

Anywho, Cole decided he wanted to get in on a little Dance Dance Revolution action.  Lance happily obliged.  Boogie down, Cole!  Shake what your Momma gave ya!

Again

We think Josh and Cole have the Rotavirus.  

Again.

So the vaccine only works about 75% of the time.  Great, we're priveleged to be part of that 25%.  And once you get it, immunity is incomplete, although it won't be as severe the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) time around.  Wonderful.  So maybe instead of eight days of sick and crabby children I'll only have five.

So now I'm off to go cry.

Again.

Never-ending Quest

One of my main responsibilities as a mom is to keep my children safe and alive.  You'd think this would be pretty easy, especially when they're young like mine are.

You'd be wrong.

Mainly because all three of them seem to be plotting the others' and their own demise.

For example, these events all really happened today:

1. I caught Josh and Spencer piling pillows on top of the baby and jumping on them.  Oh sure, Cole was crazy happy, giggling like a maniac and squealing with joy.  From Underneath The Pillows.  Yikes.  Crazy momma bear made an appearance to save her cub, and then proceeded to strike a death blow with her mighty paw against her other two unruly cubs.  Not really.  But they got a good talking to.
2. I caught Josh trying to stick his chubby little fingers into an electrical outlet.  Almost all of the outlets in our house are covered, but this one wasn't for whatever reason.  And although he's three and knows better and hasn't shown interest in outlets since he was a baby, he was bound and determined to get his finger in there for the shock of his life.  I was a jerk and stopped him.
3. Spencer and Josh were playing the piano while I was making dinner.  All of a sudden I heard a screech from Josh and Spencer say "Well, you should have been watching!  It's your fault!"  Spencer had slammed Josh's hand in the piano cover - and was blaming Josh.  Nice.  He got quite a good talking to from me and a punch in the back from Josh, which I did not see but certainly heard.  They then proceeded to have a rock-em-sock-em wrestling match to the death.  Which I ignored.
4. Cole has discovered the effectiveness of quickly lurching and arching his back while you are holding him.  This rarely happens, as that boy looooves to be held.  However, if things aren't quite going the way he wants - as happened today as I tried to wipe his nose - he performs this gold medal maneuver.  He did this today while we were in the kitchen and I came very very very very very close to dropping him.  Head first.  Onto the ceramic tile.  I asked him what this death wish was all about, but he just tried to bite me.

Self-portrait Tuesday: I Actually Remembered!

Ol' Blue Eyes

Because when the baby is this cute and the lighting this good, an impromptu photo shoot is a must.

Homemade Valentines

A few weeks ago the boys and I made homemade Valentines for some of our family.  (Grandpas and Grandmas mostly.)  We went extra fancy this year and used some extra photos that I had of the boys.  Nice.

I didn't post these right away because I wanted them to be a surprise. But I'm going to now, just for posterity's sake. And because I think they're just so darn cute.

Can you tell which Valentines the boys made and which ones I made? :)

Valentine's Day

Some families go all out and have fancy-shmance Valentine's Day dinners.  Not us.  We are quite the opposite: pizza and root beer, baby!  We used to eat it on our wedding china, but now that we have kiddos that's just too much effort. (And dangerous.) 

So here's what our table looked like this year:

We give the kiddos books for Valentine's Day, which I think is a great tradition.  (Although they willingly admit that they like the candy Grandpa ElRay and Grandma Susie send better.) 

Here's our fancy china.  Nice, right?

And here are a few random shots of my Valentines.  (Josh refused to have a picture taken, was grouchy, and wasn't wearing any pants.  Anyone want a three year old?  Free to a good home!)

Wait, what's that?  You want to know what that misshapen pink thing in the middle of the table was?  I was hoping you wouldn't notice.

Well, it's supposed to be a giant cupcake. See, my dad gave me a giant cupcake cake silicone pan for Christmas.  The boys had been begging me for a while to make a cake with it, and Valentine's Day seemed like a good enough excuse.

So I made it.  And it was cute.  For about three seconds.

And then I frosted it.

And things took a major turn for the worse.  See that crack?

One second after I took that picture it turned into this.

Dang it!  I'm not quite sure what happened with that.  I think the top must have shifted while I was frosting and decorating it.

Also, the frosting was apparently a little too thin.  Very too thin.  (It didn't seem that thin in the mixing bowl, I promise!)

I have never had a problem with frosting like this before. *sigh*

Things look a little better from this angle.

Or this angle.

But not this angle. 

Or this angle.

D'oh.

On the bright side, the cake was still very tasty.  I mean, seriously, how can you go wrong with milk chocolate cake mix with crumbled brownies mixed in, super-duper vanilla buttercream frosting, and Whoppers?

Mmmm(ish)...

As per usual we took several videos of the boys enjoying their candy.  My favorite is "Gross"; it starts out with a conversation with Spencer but quickly goes downhill as you can hear Josh gagging on and spitting out a mouthful of candy.

Yes, the Madsens are the epitome of Valentine's romance.