Plant smiles
Harvest giggles
Grow love.

If you live to be a hundred,

I want to live to be a hundred, minus one day

So I never have to live without you.

-Winnie the Pooh

Isn’t it good luck in Greece when dishes break? If so, there will be lots of good luck in our house. Eli insists on helping with the dishes in the dishwasher, breaking three in the last week.

Eli, 22 months, is fascinated with Mommy and Daddy’s boots, used to survive Minnesota’s winter.

Baby Isabel, 3 months old, is 5 percentile, meaning 95 percent of other babies are bigger than her. Yesterday she did not want to take a nap after being awake for several hours. I called her father (my husband) so he could tell her that if she doesn’t sleep, she will be short like her mother.

I was snacking on white chocolate chips and pretzels with my 22 month old and discovered that the combination of sweet and salty is fantastic. I tried making English Toffee coated in chocolate and broken pretzels (in place of nuts) and, well, it was mighty tasty. Every time I entered the kitchen, the Toffee looked at me and said “See me, here I am. Come have a bite”. I happily obliged.

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons corn syrup
3 Tablespoons water
2 cups thin pretzel sticks broken into pieces
12 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips

Butter a 12×18 in pan. Cover cutting board with parchment paper. Cook first four ingredients in a pot until 280 degrees. Pour toffee into buttered pan. Let thicken and soft, yet still warm. Transfer to parchment paper. Pour chocolate chips on top, let melt. Smear chocolate. Spread pretzels on top. Let harden, then eat. If you want to substitute toasted almonds for some of the pretzels, that’s yummy too. Enjoy.

Mommy and 22 month Eli are calling Eli’s 9 year old cousin, Josh, to wish him a Happy Birthday. Mommy dials, gets voicemail. As she hands the phone to Eli, she asks “Do you want to wish Josh a happy birthday? Eli responds “no”, and continues playing in the cabinets in the kitchen.

So grieve a while for me,
If grieve you must.
Then let your grief
Be comforted br trust.
It’s only for a while that we must part,
So bless the memories within your heart.
-Unknown

It’s the moments in life we remember, not the days.
Deborah Rogers

By expanding our deepest
Beliefs about what is possible,
We change our experience of life.
-Dan Millman