This morning, Gideon and I got up well before the sun since we are still on Central time. After some coffee and peanut butter toast, about all we had at the house this morning before our trip to the grocery store, Gideon went down to wake up Daddy and Wash.

I looked out the window and it was snowing. Not huge delicious flakes, but small beautiful fluffs of delight. I ran down all three flights of stairs, we are in the basement of the house, calling for Gideon. We threw on some coats and dashed out to see the snow.

It was wonderful. Gideon and Ries ran around the house, playing in the snow that was already on the ground. My heart was so full of the mountains and winter that I was content in a way that made me want to clutch the moment to remember later when I am back in Houston, sweating and cursing.

There are things that everyone knows about themselves. Things we learn over the course of our lives, about ourselves, about others, and about the world. Almost as long as I have had the memory of contentment, I have known that the mountains is the place my soul lives.

Even so, this is the first time I have been in the heart of the mountains in winter. The views work on me the same way the summer valleys do though they are covered with snow and brown grass and not green waves with flowers. I would not trade this place for any other place. It is not the Grand Tetons specifically, almost any Rocky Mountains will do.

There were other moments in this first day of a week of mountain adventure, but for me, the moment of seeing that first mountain snow eclipsed everything else.

The kids are asleep and it is time to open a 90 Shilling and say slainte to this day.

Good Night, from Jackson Hole, WY

Jewelry and Scotch

I asked my mother-in-law for a handsome Scottish man with a brogue and a kilt, but I do not think Gerard Butler would have fit in their luggage.  My parents are on a trip to the Greek isles at this moment and I have to say, the bar is pretty high. I suggested they bring us a bottle of Ouzo.

Two things recently led me to change the way I pack Gideon’s lunch and how I prepare my own lunch for the day.

A couple weeks ago, I stopped midway through my afternoon and I realized my food intake since breakfast had been a peanut butter and jelly sandwich plus the crusts from Gideon’s pb and j. As a nursing mom, and a mom trying to loose my baby weight in a healthy way, not having time to eat more than pb and js and crusts is not wonderful. I needed a way to have a real lunch.

I went to Gideon’s meet the teacher before his school started and one of the things they stressed is that the kids be able to open all of their lunch containers themselves. We are very big into trash free lunches so I have a lot of small containers that I pack things into.  After some experimentation, I realized, Gideon was not able to open most of the small containers I was planning on sending to school with him.

I was looking around for alternatives to packing our lunches and I found bentos. Bentos are meals packed in a small box and are Japanese in origin. The food packed into the bento should be healthy, not fatty or too carb heavy. The boxes for the bentos are very small.

The size I bought for Gideon and I are 600ml. They are just small Sterilite plastic containers with locking lids. Your bento box should have the same number of ml as calories per meal you are supposed to eat. The box is packed very tightly. I also bought some regular and mini-muffin silicone cups to use as separators.

Here are some bentos I have made:

These bentos contain half a turkey sandwich, strawberries, pineapple, cucumbers, and a pickle. The one on the right is Gideon’s and his only has one cucumber. I pack mine a little tighter and fit a few more things into it. In this first photo, I had not found the silicone baking cups and I used foil baking cups as dividers.

This was a bento for me, though Gideon has gotten very similar ones. It has half a bagel with cream cheese, strawberries, cucumbers, a hard boiled egg, and green olives. When I pack an egg for Gideon, I quarter and salt it, which makes it easier for him to eat. In the picture above, you can see the red silicone baking cups.

One more example. My bento is on the left: half a bagel with cream cheese, clementine quarters, grapes, a hard boiled egg shaped like a car, and olives. Gideon’s, on the right, had less oranges and a pickle and cranberry coffee cake instead of the bagel. I wold not normally send something so desert-like but I was feeling generous and he really liked that cake. His egg is shaped like a fish. He informed me after this day that he preferred the quartered eggs to the shaped ones. The shaped eggs are cute, but you have to peel them while they are still hot and it is more work.

Overall, the bentos have been great. Gideon almost always eats all of his lunch, even the bread crusts. He likes that I put a couple olives and pickles in his lunch. That kid would live on those two things if we would let him. I eat lunches filled with healthy fruits and veggies and no longer find myself eating only a sandwich as I try to wrangle two toddlers through lunch time.

One of the benefits of the bento is that the food is usually finger food, so I can eat it in stages if I have to snatch bites between diaper changes and feeding the bairns.

There are a ton of bento websites, but here are the two that helped me get started:

Just Bento

Lunch in a Box

Easy Key Lime Pie

originally from Real Simple , June 2008

• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 6 oz can frozen limeade
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 6 oz graham cracker pie crust

Place the condensed milk, limeade, and heavy cream in the bowl of an electric mixer. With the whisk attachment, beat until fluffy, medium peaks form. The consistency will not change that much once the pie is refrigerated, so whip it until it is the consistency you want. Softer peaks for a softer pie and firmer peaks for a firmer pie.

Pour the filling into the pie crust.

Refrigerate for 4 hours ro overnight, until the pie is set.

Voila! Serve with whipped cream and coffee for true decadence.

Baked Pork Chops with Stuffing

• 4 pork chops
• 1/2 of a large onion (or one whole medium) white or yellow, sliced
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• seasoning of choice: like Seasoned Salt, Fajita Seasoning for Chicken or similar (for a more savory flavor, try rosemary or oregano)
• 1/4 c. water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 box of pork stuffing mix

Make the stuffing mix according to the directions and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a greased 9×11 glass pan, place the pork chops so that they do not overlap. Season one side of the chops and then flip and season the other side. Layer the onions over the pork chops and then spread the chopped celery over the onions. Salt and pepper to taste, keeping in mind that the stuffing mix already has a fair amount of salt in it.

Pour 1/4 c. of water into the pan.

Distribute the stuffing mix so that it covers the pork chops as evenly as possible. The stuffing is very sticky so it will not be in a layer like a casserole, but more like small clumps over the chops and vegetables.

Place a sheet of foil over the dish and seal as tightly as possible.

Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour then reduce the temperature to 300 degrees for 30 minutes.

Enjoy with a vegetable side and a smile.

This morning at 6am, Gideon joined the already full bed, so that all the humans were squashed together, snuggling. I had Wash next to me with Gideon next to him. Neither of the boys was going to go back to sleep, but I was letting them talk to each other while I pretended I might get to sleep for 10 more minutes.

I had my arm across Wash and resting on Gideon, whose side I was patting. Gideon said, “Mom, can you keep your hands to yourself?”

Sheesh.

That being said, this past weekend, Ries went out of town (on a boys weekend to Colorado, jerk) and I sent Gideon to his Oma and Papa’s for the weekend. I felt like I was alone, with only the Wee Wash to look after. Well, and the huge slobbery dogs. Saturday, Wash took a long nap and I was able to sit down and write over 3600 in my new writing project, the most I have done in one sitting, I think, so far. It felt great and I was very happy.

It was quiet here, without Gideon, and I was happy to go pick him up yesterday night. When I arrived, he was playing with some wrenches from Papa’s tool box. I walked up to him, holding a Sonic LemonBerry slush. He took one look at me and said, not “Hi, Mom!” or “Mommy!” or “I missed you.” with a huge. No, he said, “Hey, did you bring me one of those drinks?”

So, on the grand scheme of things, I rank somewhere lower than a Sonic LemonBerry Slush.

Ries on the other hand, ranks higher than both the slush and me because today at lunch, Gideon and I had the following conversation:

Gideon: Our family is missing something.

Me: Oh? What?

Gideon: Daddy.

*eyeroll* Moms are never appreciated. Perhaps it is because we do not come with that fabulous Sonic ice.

At least twice recently, I have had the same conversation, which I open up with some version of this: “You choose your spouse, you do not choose your kids.”

Think about this. You pick the person you marry, Lord help you because you will need it, so when they start bothering you, you have no one to blame but yourself. You got yourself into this mess and now only you, God, and your spouse can deal with it. Your kids choose you, in a way, but you still have to live with them. God gives you those little bundles of joy. Eventually, those bundles become annoying 3 year olds.

Now, you all know I adore my sons, but Gideon is at times a loud, demanding, bossy, argumentative boy who Never. Shuts. Up. In a word, annoying. What is worse is that he is my personality trapped in a little three-year-old-boy body so I am really just getting irritated with a tiny version of ME.

Fortunately, I know how to deal with me, trapped in a little body, and I handle it well about 70%of the time. About 30% of the time, I am crazy mom lady, but he has to have something to tell his future psychologist.

The thing I like and hate most about this age is that he is so rational and has this huge imagination at the same time. He is amazing, like a sponge. Sometimes, he just stops what he is doing and says, “I love you, Mom.” After that I am a puddle on the floor and I know without qualification that I have the best life filled with three boys, one big and two small, that I adore.