Under Construction

You may remember Landon helping with the demolition of the shower in our basement bathroom. Well, the remodeling is finally going on to the next step...yes, I know, it's been nearly a year...don't ask! The guys came Monday morning and started drilling through the concrete to move the drain since we are changing from just a shower to a shower/tub combo. Every surface of my house is covered with a fine layer of dust. Today they built the wall for the end of the shower and installed the tub/shower. They still need to sheetrock part of the wall. Tomorrow they will finish mudding and then texture. Tile on the floor to replace carpet (seriously, why do you put carpet in a bathroom?) and a new countertop will be done some time after all of that. I am so excited!

The space where the shower used to be... The new tub and shower...

Like I Said...

I know I was warned that it would probably snow in the next few days following our beautiful spring weather, but I guess deep down I was REALLY hoping it wouldn't!

Bounce Away!

It is officially Spring and the snow has FINALLY melted in our backyard (okay there is a small strip along the house that doesn't see the sun but it was so warm today that even that was starting to go away). Since the snow is gone, we put together the kids' Christmas present...a trampoline! They were so excited to finally get to play on it.

Landon and Rob had a good system going. Landon would hook the spring on the trampoline mat and then Rob would attach it to the frame...Trevor decided he wanted to get in on the "helping" as well. He would take off the springs before Rob got to them. Landon wasn't amused...

Yes, he still has the price tag on his shorts...Daddy got him dressed :)

I just realized when I went to watch the video that I forgot to turn on the sound when recording...oops!

All put together...now it just needs "the Cage"...

The finished product...

Bring on the warm weather (although I do believe we are supposed to get snow in the coming days...bleh!)

Dinnertime Conversations

Brynlee, right after watching T throw his plate on the floor:

Trevor is good at three things - screaming, throwing food on the floor, and making people laugh.

A few minutes later, Brynlee wondered out loud who the person was that was riding their bike past the front of our house. Lando peered out, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who was already long past, and then he turned back to us and asked the following while dancing a little jig:

What if we looked outside and there was a parade with people dancing like this, like the black guys in black hats from Mary Poppins?

dramatic reenactment of actual dancing event

Another New Nephew

My brother, David, and his wife, Noel, welcomed their first baby into the world yesterday...a St. Patrick's Day baby! I guess it's only fitting since Noel went to Ireland with her mom and sister while she was pregnant. They named him Kieran Son Kovacs. He was 7 pounds 12 oz and he looks just like his daddy. Kieran (pronounced like my name) is Irish and Son (pronounced with a long "o", not like sun) is David's middle name...his Korean name that my parents kept. Noel was induced early Monday morning (I believe) and never progressed past a 4, plus Kieran was trying to come out forehead first (which explains the bruising on the forehead), so finally at 2:25 pm on Tuesday, they did a c-section. Congrats, David and Noel, he's a cutie!

Stay tuned for a post about all my nieces and nephews born in the last 15 months...all siblings on both sides of our families have had babies during that period...that makes 10 (including Trevor)!

Wii with the Principal

Remember when Brynlee got to play Twister with the Principal for being in the 200 Club? Well, Ashlee was a "ten in a row" winner a couple of weeks ago and the activity this time was playing the Wii with the Principal. She was supposed to play at lunch a couple of Fridays ago but woke up that morning with a nasty cough and a fever of 103. So she didn't go to school that day. When I called the secretary to let her know she would be absent, she said "Ah, that's too bad. Today she was supposed to play the Wii". Yep, I said, she's a little bummed. Actually she was more bummed that she would be missing a friend's birthday party after school. When I reminded her that she was supposed to play the Wii, she said, "Oh well." About a minute after I got off the phone, the phone rang and the caller ID was the school. It was Ashlee's teacher. Apparently she and the principal were in the office when I called and they decided they would have a special "Wii day" for Ashlee.

Today happened to be that day. We went and ate lunch with Ashlee and then her class went into their room during lunch recess instead of going outside. They all cheered Ashlee on as she got to play tennis and bowl on the Wii. She put up a tough fight at tennis but lost and then creamed the principal at bowling...must be all the practice she's gotten lately. She got 3 strikes and multiple spares. I thought it was very cool of the Principal to take time to make Ashlee feel special!

Prayers for Gavin

Remember my cute "little" :) nephew, Gavin? My sister-in-law, Heather, took him in for his 2 month checkup and the doctor heard a heart murmur. He ordered a chest xray and they discovered his heart was enlarged and later diagnosed him with a Coarctation of the Aorta. I'll let you read more about it on their blog since she goes into more detail. Please pray for Gavin and his family as he goes into surgery this afternoon.

Dancing Queens

Okay, one last video. I found this when I was trying to find where I had saved the video of T reading. We were at the mall and the girls found this huge mirror in one of the stores and couldn't resist the beat of the music. Rob got this video of them on his phone (you may have to turn up the volume since the quality isn't the greatest). The date on the file was January 16, 2006 so Brynlee was 3 years old and Ashlee was 5 years old.

Little Reader

T loves books and likes to "read". I finally got a video of him doing it. Ashlee was the same way when she was a baby. When she was about 9 months old, I'd ask her where her book was and she'd look around, crawl to find a book, turn the pages and babble like we knew exactly what she was saying.

Relief Society Birthday Dinner

I am the Enrichment leader in our ward and last night was our Relief Society birthday celebration. I got the idea for decorations from a friend by the lovely name of Kirsten :) After dinner, we played a little Relief Society trivia game. I did a PowerPoint slideshow of the multiple choice questions. Each table was a team, complete with team names such as the Chicklets, Spring Chicks, and the [Re] Producers (this was my table...each of us was either pregnant or had a baby in the last year and a half...one covered both of those criteria :) After the quiz, I showed the following video I found on lds.org. It's a little clip from President Uchtdorf's talk from the Relief Society broadcast in September. (In case the video doesn't work here, click on the Relief Society link above and it has it there).

New York Style Pizza

All pizza in my life is either consciously or subconsciously compared to Luigi's, the pizza place that was about 2 minutes from my family's house in New Jersey. I still have nightmares about the night I had several front teeth knocked out (tire swings and running around while yelling into a long pipe are not a good combination), and of course we had Luigi's pizza. I remember standing in the bathroom trying to rip the useless loose teeth from my mouth so I could get back to the dinner table before the pizza was all gone.

I can count on one hand with several fingers left over the number of times I've had good New York style pizza since moving from New Jersey. Since you can't buy it in Utah, perhaps it's possible to make it. I make pizza all the time, whether it be cooked on the stone, grilled, deep dish in the Dutch Oven, or some pizza-like food such as calzones or stromboli, and it turns out good, just not New York style. The only other time I've tried to make New York style, it just came out a crunchy failure.

However, I was inspired by the new 14 inch stone we just bought. We have well-seasoned 12 inch round and rectangle stones, but the unstained 14-incher was just begging for some New York love.

After reading several websites, I learned a few things:

• The dough needs to be kneaded longer to develop the gluten better. This allows the pizza to stretch more, so the middle can be thinner, instead of the thick, even focaccia-like crust I usually end up with.
  
• Put the oil in last after everything is mostly mixed (but before kneading), since it will prevent the gluten from developing if you add it too soon.
  
• Letting the dough sit 24 hours develops the taste of the crust better, which is also part of why the DO Bread tastes so good.
  
• The pizza needs to be cooked on the bottom rack of the oven so the cheese doesn't get too crispy too fast.
  
• The oven needs to be hot, preferably 800 degrees.
  

The first four items are simple enough. As tempting as it may be, I'm not going to purchase a commercial oven, build a wood-fired oven in the backyard, or disable the latch that locks the oven during the self-clean cycle, so I'm stuck with about 550 degrees (my guess, without an oven thermometer to measure exactly). To get the oven hot and keep it hot, I set the oven as high as it would go about 45 minutes before I was ready to put the pizza into the oven. The stone the pizza was to go on went on the bottom rack and another stone went on the second rack to try to create a little high temperature pocket between the two stones like this:


I followed the recipe from pizzamaking.com pretty closely, and I'd recommend you visit their site for additional tips and details:

3½ cups (16 ounces) high-gluten flour
9 ounces warm water
1 tablespoon classico olive oil
1 teaspoon instant yeast
¾ teaspoon salt

In a stand mixer (e.g., KitchenAid) fitted with the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until ingredients come together and form a scrappy dough. Add olive oil and mix for a few seconds longer until it's incorporated into the dough. Switch to the dough hook attachment and set mixer to medium speed. Allow mixer to knead the dough for a full 15 minutes at which time it should pass a windowpane test. Place dough in a large oiled bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Place dough in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

When ready to make pizza, remove dough from refrigerator and allow to warm to room temperature. Preheat your oven (with pizza stone) to 550°F one hour prior to making pizza.

Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface. Press the dough into a flat, round disc. Use your fingers or the palm of your hand to press the dough out thin, leaving an outside raised edge. Place the dough over your fists and begin stretching it into a large circle. Place the dough on a pizza peel which was been dusted with flour, cornmeal, or semolina flour. Add your sauce, toppings, and cheese (perform this step rather quickly so that the dough will not have time to stick to the peel). Transfer the pizza to the oven and bake until the crust is dark brown and somewhat charred. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack for 5 minutes. Transfer to a serving pan and slice.

Some people swear by certain special flours. I just used regular flour, plus a couple tablespoons of gluten. I used regular active yeast instead of instant, and I did activate it before adding the flour. Since you're proofing it in the refrigerator overnight, you probably don't need to use warm water, but I did. I took it out of the oven about 2.5 hours before baking, shaped the cold dough into two discs about the size of frisbee golf discs, covered them, and let them come up to room temperature before stretching them both out to 14 inches. Put parchment paper under the dough if you're not handy with a pizza peel.

For the sauce, rather than going with something exotic like alfredo or barbecue sauce like usual, I just blended up a couple cans of Italian style stewed tomatoes, added some oregano and simmered it for half an hour to thicken it up a little, and added mozzarella and pepperoni to both pies right before putting in the oven.

The result was good. It needs some work, but it's headed in the right direction. The crust was crunchy and brown around the edge and floppy in the middle, like it should be. The cheese didn't get too crispy like usually happens to me. It was melted just right. It didn't have large air bubbles in it, even with the overnight proof. I may try using less yeast and proofing it for 24 hours in a warm location instead of the refrigerator to see if I can get some bigger air bubbles in the dough.

Give Away Today Blog

Go to this blog for some cool daily giveaways!

Young Love

Brynlee has a not-so-secret admirer. After dinner I asked her to bring me the papers from her backpack. The first paper she showed me was a note. It was on the same paper as another note that she got yesterday from a girl in her class. I asked her if they have that paper in her classroom and she said one of the centers this week was to write a note to someone in the class. So that explained the note...it was from Anthony, it was part of an assignment, and it said......no worries, right?

Then I finished going through her backpack. What did I find? Another note...from Anthony, with a little more than just "I hope you have a grate time"...At least he spelled her name right on the first one :)

It's 10:00, Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

Three of them are asleep. One doesn't like to sleep in his bed. Instead, he keeps going upstairs to get a piece of bread. Now he is playing with Mr. Potato Head...hahaha...I just realized that all rhymed...goodness, I think I need to go to bed!

For some reason, Landon does not like to sleep in his bed. He thinks he only has bad dreams when he sleeps in his bed. Dreams that involve dinosaurs chasing and eating him and dogs biting him. Poor guy! Lately he's been sleeping in the guest room or he'll fall asleep on the couch or a self-made bed on the floor and he gets transferred to his bed after his sleepy eyes have finally given in to dreamland...sweet dreams, little buddy!

Pay It Forward

You may have seen this on other blogs - you sign up to receive something homemade and crafty, and then you pay it forward by doing the same thing for 3 people who sign up to do it on your blog.

So here’s how it works:

1. Be one of the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post and I will send you a handmade gift.

2. You get to pay it forward as well by doing the same thing for 3 people on your blog.

3. Once you leave a comment telling me that you want to participate, you need to make a pay it forward post on your blog.

So, anyone game? My creative, handmade, crafty juices are flowing (or I may just borrow some ideas from my crafty friends!) Either way, it'll be something just for YOU...

Landon-Mommy Time

After I drop Brynlee off at afternoon Kindergarten and put Trevor down for a nap, I usually have "ME" time (ie read, clean, blog) while Landon watches a movie. I decided I could probably use this time to spend with just Landon. I found an ABC book online to print off and each day he will do a letter. We'll talk about the sound the letter makes, things that start with the letter, and he can color the things in the booklet. This morning I volunteered in Ashlee's class and they made their Valentine's Day bags. Her teacher let me take home some extras for Landon. So today we did the letter "A" and made a Valentine bag. He cut the cat (or is it a dog?) all by himself. I was pretty impressed.

Oh, and I still got some cleaning and blogging in while he was busy cutting and coloring :)

Brothers

The other day I heard Trevor making some "get this kid off of me" noises. I guess Landon was teaching him some wrestling moves. Lest you think the bigger one won, Trevor soon caught on and started smacking Landon in the face.

Saturday Night Fever

Okay, so I lied, there was one more party we went to yesterday. We went to a 70s themed party for our friend, Aaron Wells', birthday. We had dinner and played Twister and Pictionary.

The birthday boy, Aaron, and Lindsey...

Amy and Jeff are ready for a disco...

Thanks to some friends and Deseret Industries we found some sweet polyester...

The guys playing Twister in their groovy chocolate brown pants. Luckily Jeff and Aaron didn't split theirs! Rob bought his about 2 sizes bigger than he would usually buy and they fit just right.

Thanks for the fun party, Lindsey!

Happy Birthday to You....Cha Cha Cha

On Saturday Ashlee had her birthday party with friends. She had been planning a snow themed party for the last few months, but the weather didn't exactly cooperate. Remember the "non-snowman making" snow we have? Yeah, it only got worse. Definitely not sledding snow, either. So she chose this past week to go bowling. The girls all had lots of fun, especially since it was Cosmic bowling and there were black lights on at the bowling alley. Some of the pictures were taken with the flash on, but the ones that are neon color were taken with the flash off (thus the reason for the blurriness, but the cool effect of the black lights).
Nice form, Brynlee...

Mariah's turn...

Rachel hoping for a strike...

Ashlee ended up with a score of 106, her highest yet! It helps that she's been bowling 3 times in the last 3 weeks (oh, and bumpers help as well :)

Cool bowling balls and shoes in the black lights...After bowling we came back to our house for cake and ice cream and opening presents. Here is Ashlee's "cake". I saw these cupcakes in a magazine and they were perfect for her snow theme (I wasn't coming up with a new idea even if we didn't end up getting to go sledding). The middle ones had snowflakes that I made out of white chocolate and the bottom ones are...you guessed it, snowmen :)

In the middle of singing Happy Birthday, I realized the camera wasn't recording so just try to ignore me at the beginning of the video :) Then I switched the camera from video to still shot but missed her blowing out the candles...oops! I tried to get her to let me light them again but she didn't go for it!

Andi, Mariah, Jenny, Rachel, Brynlee (in back), Ashlee and Emily...

Whew, now I'm all birthday partied out! In January we had Brynlee's birthday party, Brynlee went to 2 friends' birthday parties, Ashlee went to 3 friends' birthday parties, Landon went to 1 one friend's birthday party and we finished off with Ashlee's party! Now I can rest until Landon's in June...oh wait, it's the big 3-0 for me in March...party on!

The Boy Loves His Beans

Whenever we get Costa Vida (take out, of course!), Ashlee and Trevor split a kids meal. Ashlee doesn't like rice and beans but loves a steak quesadilla so Trevor gets her black beans and rice. Boy does he love them! And as a bonus, the fiber helps with his "issues" :)

Animals

For dinner last night, we had steak, at Ashlee's request. Lando asked me if I killed the cow. I said no and that we got it from Grandpa's warehouse. The dinner topic somehow moved to what life would be like if we didn't have any animals (e.g., no blankets, since we wouldn't have sheep's wool).

Out of nowhere, Brynlee pulled out this animal-related fact:

Brynlee: Back in the old days before they had doctors or I mean before they had animal doctors, if an animal got hurt or sick, they had to kill it.

Rob: Who told you that?

Brynlee: Nobody.

Rob: No really, who told you that?

Brynlee: No one told me.

Rob: Well, how do you know that?

Brynlee: From television.

Bowling

We went bowling a couple weeks ago with some friends. We were planning on seeing Madagascar 2, but when we showed up 1 minute before the movie was to start, they were sold out. So we headed over to the bowling alley instead. Here are some videos from the outing. My apologies for the poor quality cell phone video. One of these days I'll stimulate the economy by getting a nice HD digital camcorder.

Lando had his own style for propelling the ball down the lane.


The bumpers were up, but Ashlee rolls a spare without even using them.



Ashlee got to go bowling at a classmate's birthday party yesterday morning before her baptism. She rolled an 81. Her practice with the family apparently paid off.

I didn't get a video of it, but in the first ball of one frame, Brynlee rolled one of the most interesting results that I've ever seen. She knocked down pins 1-6, leaving just pins 7-10 standing (the four in the back). See if you can figure out how that happened. I'll give you a hint; it involved a very, very slowly rolling ball.

An Extra Special Birthday

Today we celebrated an extra special birthday. Ashlee turned EIGHT and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was a wonderful day spent with family and friends.

Ashlee and her friend Mariah in their baptism jumpers...Beautiful girls in their beautiful white dresses after the baptism...Our family...With Grandpa and Grandma Kovacs...

A couple of weeks ago, Ashlee and I went shopping for a dress. I really wasn't planning on making one, mainly because I was busy and figured it would be easiest to buy one. We went to 3 stores and couldn't find a dress she liked that was her size. There were two that she really liked but they went from a size 6 to a size 12. I guess they were popular dresses for that age since no one had size 8 or 10. I found a pattern similar to the style of one that she liked, made a few tweaks (adding an organza overlay with wide band) and now I'm really glad that ended up making it.

No Ordinary Snowman

Last week Brynlee and Landon were playing outside. The snow was that nasty hard/icy stuff since it had been there since Christmas with no new snow. The kind that you don't sink into when walking on it. Definitely not snowman-making snow. Our neighbors gave us a cute snowman kit for Christmas. They took the stuff outside and I wondered how in the world they were going to build a snowman. When they came in to tell me they made a snowman, I kinda laughed. They said, "No, really, come see our snowman." Well, this is what my creative kiddos did...

Nausea and "Roid Rage"

On Friday I went to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. I got to see my CT scan and yep, the doc was right...completely full. Well, two of them at least. The frontal ones (where my headaches were centered) were completely full. In the scan, the sinuses are supposed to be black...in mine the frontal ones were gray with a speck of black. The ones in between my eyes going down the side of my nose (where all the arrows are pointing toward in the picture in the previous post) are also full, thus blocking the drainage. The bottom ones below my eye kinda surprised the ENT. They showed infection lining the perimeter, but not filled. She said that is usually indicative of chronic sinus infections, whereas I'm pretty sure this is the first one I've had. Maybe I've had them before but haven't known it? Who knows. The fourth one is back kinda by my temples, and that was pretty clear.

So the plan of action...an aggressive antibiotic and steroid. Thus the subject of the post. Luckily the ENT warned me that I might have nausea so to take them with food and also that I might be very irritable and moody. So yesterday about 20 minutes after taking them for the first time I experienced both. If I lash out at you, I blame it on the steroids!

Once I am finished with those, the plan is to get another CT scan to make sure everything is cleared out. If it isn't, she recommends surgery to scrape them out and drill through the openings to help things drain better in the future. I'm praying the antibiotics do the trick!