Martin's Four

Heidi's living with three boys!

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Snow Day

I've been extremely neglagent with this blog. I aplologize. Life is busy. Two small children pretty much need constant care, attention, feeding, changing, playing, supervision, etc, etc. You know, so they stay alive.

In brief, Ian started pre-school, which you would think would give me extra free time. Mmmm. Really it's just an extra place to get ready for, and go to and from. Ian loves it and is doing great, as we knew he would because he's sooo smart and very social. If you know him, you agree. Jayden likes it too and can't wait to go himself next year. In the meantime, he enjoys, and I mean really really enjoys one-on-one time with me or Rob, or both if Rob's shifts allow.

We went camping to Winthrop, WA, for the Canadian thanksgiving weekend. Someone always gets sick because it's really cold there at night. I think we all got sick. That triggered and ongoing cycle of colds that lasted until mid-December and included bronchitis and anti-biotics for all of us at the end of November. Thankfully we have all been healthy since then. Of course now that I've put that on the world wide web I'm sure we'll all get sick soon.

Our Christmas and New Years was wonderful, restful, and joy-filled. Both boys were really into the whole Christmas thing this year and it just added to the fun.

In November I picked up another part-time job on the side gig. A nursing student from UBC is doing a research project for her phD on the reserve that I work for. I applied for a position as a research assistant, same hours more money, but didn't exactly get it. She did say she was impressed with my resume and asked to keep it on file for future. Why would I turn that down? A few weeks later she asked if I would be willing to type up transcripts of the recorded interviews that they are conducting. So I do it on my own time, in my own home, keep track of my hours and it brings in a little extra cash. So far I've only done about 10-12 hrs in the last two months so it's extremely part-time, but that's ok, we don't need extra money, but it's always nice and I get to exercise my brain in a new way.

From working at home in this way I soon realized that our computer, a desktop PC is really old, slow, and stupid. I started dreaming of a new, faster computer, a nice desk from which to work in a relatively calm, quiet space. Ha ha. I joke. In this house? With my boys? Practically impossible. Our computer is in the kitchen, on a small old desk (the one from my childhood), and in almost constant demand from all the other members of this family. Yes, Ian and Jayden are becoming quite computer and internet savvy. Ian doesn't even need any help anymore, he can turn it on and find his own website. It blows me away. (He was actually barely 3 when he first began demonstrating this. Rob and I used to just sit and watch him in awe as he navigated his way between Treehouse, kidscbc, and wiggles websites.) Aaaanyways...it's not a super comfy environment in which to work.

So we knew we had to do something. So for Christmas, we bought ourselves a nice new laptop. A router for wireless internet (can we say blogging in bed?), a new printer because our other one died like 3 years ago, and a new monitor/tv for the old pc, so at least it looks better and gives more space on the small desk. And that is the extent of our Christmas presents to each other. Quite enough money spent, I'd say.

We now plan on buying a real desk that we will for the time being, place in the dining room, which is currently empty as we only have one table that we sometimes move from the kitchen to the dining room if we have a lot of people, but isn't entirely necessary. I also dream of new books shelves in there so I can finally unpack the boxes and boxes of books that we have sitting under the stairs. We have three bedrooms upstairs, one for us, one the boys share, and the other one that is FULL of all their toys and books (which still manage to spread their way around the house). Someday, when a toy room is not so necessary we will convert it to an office, and then the dining room back into a dining room. (Maybe.)

I see that I've just spent a lot of time rambling away completely off topic, which it says at the top is "Snow Day". It snowed a lot here last night, this morning and still the odd flurry happening as we speak. I wimped out on the drive to North Van and decided to stay home from work. During Jayden's nap Ian and I went out and shovelled snow, he got bored really fast but was quite patient until I had done at least half the driveway and the sidewalk. And then I made my homemade cocoa when we got inside. It's awesome and I thought I'd share the recipe with you because it's so good I want you all to have some. This recipe came from my Oma, to my Dad, to me. Or from my Dad, to my Oma and me. Not sure.

5 heaping Tbsp cocoa powder
8-10 Tbsp of sugar (depending on your sweet tooth)
1 can of evaporated milk
my kettle holds 1.8L boiling water
extra milk to taste and temp

These measurements are really rough, usually each batch is a little different. Experiment to find what works best for you.
Mix the cocoa and sugar together with a little evap milk to make and nice smooth paste,
keep adding evap milk to make it runnier and runnier while getting out all the lumps (apparently this is very important, depending on my time and patience I skimp on this) while water is boiling
slowly add water and rest of evap milk to the paste in a pot, on low, on the stove, while stirring,
it tastes better if it's allowed to simmer a bit, but not to boiling.
Serve adding milk if desired to adjust taste or temp.

My sister like to put a dash of vanilla in her recipe, I don't, yuck. Or a bit of cinnamon. Feel free to top with marshmallows or whipping cream or whatever else you like with cocoa. I prefer it on its own it's that yummy. Sometimes I mix it with coffee for a great mocha. The leftovers, if there are any, keep really good in the fridge and it even tastes amazing when it's cold.

Hope your winter is going well, I will be back at some point to show you pics from the last few months.