The US Airmail Beacon System

My parents came for a visit last month. Ninety-five percent of the reason for their visit was to see us, but the other five percent was to check out a little piece of history near Laramie.
The US Airmail System used concrete arrows to direct its pilots in the days before electronic navigation. While most of the arrows were destroyed or rendered obsolete by improved on-board navigational systems, some still exist in various states of repair. My dad, a pilot, learned that there were several arrows in our part of Wyoming, and decided to visit them on the trip. He and my mom took Sammy out to visit one near Cheyenne, and the whole family got to visit the one in Medicine Bow.

The beacon is still standing at the arrow in Medicine Bow, a rarity.

Dad actually climbed the beacon tower to take this photo. He said it was "terrifying."

Close-up from atop the beacon. We left Amelia in the car because it was raining.

Dad and the boys

To learn more about the concrete arrows, you can visit Sometimes-Interesting.com

Parenting is a Crapshoot

Just when you think you've got parenting figured out...
Sam and Ben are incredibly different from each other. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, and somehow they are opposites. Sam had trouble sleeping as a baby, Ben was perfect. It took Ben two tries to be potty trained, Sam took three days. Ben just wants to snuggle, Sam wants to wrestle... and the list goes on and on.

So because my two little boys are so different, I figured I wouldn't have any trouble with Amelia. I don't know if it's because she's a girl, or the third child, or just naturally easy, but Amelia has been a breeze.

UNTIL NOW.

We have finally uncovered Amelia's Achilles' heel: solid food.

I loved making baby food for the boys, and they loved eating it. We tried Amelia out on rice cereal at four months old, but she wouldn't eat it. We reasoned that no one would want to eat that mushy crap, so we didn't force it. Now, however, she is six months old, and it's time to introduce fruits and vegetables. I tried Gerber carrots for the first three days. Nothing doing. Today I smashed a banana for her, added a little water and rice cereal for consistency, then gently warmed it in the microwave. She gagged and cried. Benjy tried to eat her banana mush because he is addicted to fruit.
I will keep trying, however. There's got to be something she likes as much as "boopie milk".

This is the face of someone who will be nursing for the rest of her life.

Surprises

My sister is a 3rd year vet student at Tufts. She finished her coursework in February and participated in her school's white coat ceremony, symbolizing that she and her fellow students would be let loose upon the world. My parents bought tickets to fly out to the East Coast. Which meant they would of course be visiting their respective families in Maryland and Pennsylvania, even though both families were going up to Massachusetts to see Cassi.

And because my grandpa Lauver turned 80 in February, it meant they were going to have a surprise party.

My mother's family cannot resist a surprise party of any kind. My mom turned 40 the first year after we moved to Alaska, and my dad and her parents arranged for them to visit for her birthday. They've had surprises of random family members showing up at birthday parties, anniversary parties, graduations--pretty much any time they can surprise somebody, they will.

So when my grandmother decided to throw a surprise party for my grandpa to coincide with my parents being in town for Cassi's white coat ceremony, my mom asked me if I would like to get in on the surprise. 

Absolutely I would.

It meant I had to fly from Denver to Baltimore with all 3 kids by myself, but it was totally worth it. We lied to my grandpa and said that the kids and I were also coming to the white coat ceremony. We told a lot of lies that weekend. WORTH IT.

Grandma Huelin made the cakes--even my dad's family was in on the surprise!

Having me and my parents at the party wasn't surprising enough, so my sister flew in from Boston for the weekend and my cousin Steven and his wife came up from Florida.

Do they look happy or what?

My grandparents and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Minus Ryan, who had to work :0(

Also, Cassi looks taller than me in this photo, but I assure you SHE IS NOT.

We hung out at the restaurant for about 4 hours, then moved the party to Aunt Dori and Uncle Kevin's house for another 4. It was fantastic to hang out with my extended family. Everyone had a blast, and the kids were even on their best-ish behavior.

Poor Benjy needed a nap after all the partying.

Coconut Chicken Curry

I like when Ryan makes dinner requests because a)I like trying new recipes and b) I don't have to decide what to make for dinner. He requested coconut chicken curry around the time Amelia was born, and luckily my mom (who happened to be visiting) had a friend's recipe that she liked. We did modify it a little, and were very pleased with the results. So without any further ado, here is our recipe for coconut chicken curry!

You will need:
Onions
Ginger
Garlic
Red curry paste
Chicken bouillon
Coconut milk
Shredded chicken
Rice

How much of each, you ask? Well, this is one of those recipes that you adjust according to your tastes. I do use one can of coconut milk to about 4 ounces of curry paste, mixed with one chicken breast shredded. If that helps.

Chop the onions

I don't like a lot of onions. If a recipe says to chop one medium onion, I'm more likely to use a quarter of the onion. So you may want more than what I've pictured here.

Next is fresh ginger. This freezes really well, just cut up a large piece of ginger root into smaller pieces, then wrap in tin foil.

I use about 2 "fingers" of ginger. By the way, if you need proof that English is a confusing language, say "I need a finger of ginger" out loud.

I don't like chomping into large pieces of ginger, so I grate it. You could also chop it up. Or, if you are pressed for time...

You can buy a squeezy bottle of ginger paste!

Next, sauté the onions and ginger. I use olive oil, but it really doesn't matter. This will smell awesome, by the way. After the onions and ginger have a few minutes head start, add the garlic. You can chop it yourself, or use the minced garlic you refrigerate that lasts forever. Guess which one I use? Either way, you need the equivalent of about 4 cloves of garlic. Unless you don't like garlic. Then use less. See what I mean?

After those have sautéed for a few minutes, add the curry paste. I like World Foods brand, which I have only found at Albertson's here in Laramie. You might have to try different brands to find your favorite. Like I said, for this amount of onions etc, I use about 4 ounces of curry paste.

Then I add several tablespoons of chicken bouillon (the paste kind, not the cubes).

Stir, and heat for several minutes. According to the jar of curry paste, this allows the full flavor to be released. Fine by me.

Next, add the coconut milk. Save a little bit in the can to taste, because yum.

It should look like this once the coconut milk has completely liquified and mixed with the curry paste etc.

Then add the shredded chicken.

I like to buy a big pack of chicken breasts and cook them in my Crock Pot in advance. Put the chicken in, add water and a couple cubes of chicken bouillon (not the fancy paste, the cubes this time!) I also add garlic. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, then pull it out and shred. I put each shredded breast in its own container, then freeze them. It saves a lot of time when I want to make curry! You can use any kind of chicken, turkey, etc that you like. Our family just happens to abhor dark meat.

Okay, that little note aside... after you add the chicken to the curry you just need to heat it until everything is nice and hot. Then you are ready to serve! We like to eat it over sticky rice, but I imagine it would also be good over egg noodles.

Om nom nom.

My kids won't touch it, so this recipe makes enough for me and Ryan to each have dinner, then some leftovers the next day. What do my kids eat on curry night, you ask? 

Chicken nuggets.

The Rubik's Cube

My second favorite holiday is New Year's Eve. I love making gyoza (Japanese pot-stickers), drinking Martinellis, and staying up late flipping between Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly (with a few minutes spent with Anderson Cooper, natch). My genius sister bought on-sale Christmas crackers (the kind you pull, not the kind you eat) to cap off our celebrations. Eight crackers=eight lame jokes, eight silly plastic toys, and eight PAPER HATS.

He was excited to wear a hat, though he later traded for a red one.

Special OJ for a special night.

Mmm. Gyoza and Martinellis.

We were all amazed that Dad wore the hat without complaint.

 Genius sister is a genius.

She might not look it, but I bet Amelia was secretly thrilled to have her own paper hat.

Earlier that week, Sam discovered a Rubik's cube in a closet. I showed him how to play with it, and he wanted to solve it right then and there. I had to tell him that I had no idea how to get all the sides the right colors. He was disappointed, and started to lose interest. But because it was six thirty in the morning and I didn't want him to go wake anyone else up, I told him we could try to find out how on the computer. 

So we did. We used the official solving guide and we solved the crap out of that Rubik's cube. Which has been a lifelong dream of mine. Thanks to my son, I finally sat down and did it.

I made a New Year's resolution this year. Two, actually. I'm going to query another novel in the hopes of finding an agent, and I'm going to learn how to solve a Rubik's cube FROM MEMORY.

Plot twist!

The Reynolds Tribe is on another adventure, though not the one we originally planned.
We left Laramie after church on Sunday and drove to Ryan's brother's house in Denver to have Reynolds Christmas with Ryan's family. Ryan's mom cooked a feast for everyone, we opened presents, and most importantly--the girls' team won the annual game of SceneIt.
On Monday we left Denver, aiming for Las Vegas (the New Mexico one), which is about halfway between Denver and my parents' house in Las Cruces. We were going to stay in a hotel, swim in the pool, and eat at Pizza Hut--basically Sammy's trifecta of joy.
It was snowing in the mountains along the Colorado-New Mexico border, and we saw at least five cars off the road in various states of being towed. Ryan drove slowly, but surely, on to Las Vegas. But about 15 miles outside of Raton, NM (the last "big" town before Las Vegas), something went wrong with the car.
Let me just say that it was a good thing that Ryan was driving and not me, because I doubt I would have noticed anything was wrong. But Ryan heard a weird sound and noticed that the engine noise had changed before all the warning lights on the dash lit up. We pulled off the highway on an exit-to-nowhere, where Ryan determined that the car was undriveable. We called our insurance's roadside assist and arranged for a tow truck. Neither of us had ever been towed before, so it was a good thing the nice lady helping us told Ryan that he would need to arrange for us to be transported back to Raton. Most tow trucks don't have room for five extra people, three of whom are in car seats, obvs. But Raton didn't have any rental car companies that we could find on Google, so... we had a dilemma.
1) Get a rental car from Las Vegas, eighty-ish miles away and get towed there instead of Raton. But then we would have to pay for the tow.
2) Get a rental car from Las Vegas, leave our car in Raton, and use the rental car for the 10 days left of our vacation.
3) Think fast.

We chose number 3.
Every time we drive past Raton, we have made note of the nice, new LDS chapel right off the highway. We knew the church was here in Raton, so we got on LDS.org to find the phone number of the bishop or branch president. It only took a few minutes, and we got lucky--President Terhune answered the phone. Ryan explained our situation to him, and President Terhune and his wife jumped in their cars to pick up our family. They arrived less than five minutes after the tow truck, with room for all of us and our luggage.
The craziest part was that once upon a time, the Terhunes had lived in Wyoming. President Terhune was one of the first Seminary teachers that Ryan supervised when we moved to Laramie.
They drove us to the Holiday Inn, where my mom had made a reservation for us. Ryan walked through the snow, trying to find a fast food place close by so we could eat dinner (at 9:30pm), but no luck. So I hit up the vending machines. After the machine ate three of my dollars, and my chips were all stuck, I stood in front of it, feeling like crying. A nice girl who was much stronger than me came by and shook the machine until it released my food. Ben and Amelia were fast asleep, so Ryan, Sam, and I had a picnic on the bed while watching SportsCenter.
And that's where we are now, still waiting for an update on our car.
There's a popular saying among writers: When something goes wrong in your life, yell "Plot twist!" and move on. We've had quite a plot twist: By now we should only be a couple hours from my parents' house, listening to Christmas music and bopping around in the car. Instead we're facing the possibility of staying in the Terhunes' home for Christmas (while they visit family in Utah). We won't have any idea of when we'll be out of Raton until we hear back from the mechanics that have our car.
It's a crappy situation, but we feel like it was as good as it could possibly have been. We broke down in an area that had cell phone reception (not a guarantee in this part of New Mexico), we were able to get towed to a place close enough to be covered by our insurance, and best of all we were rescued by a couple of true Saints.

O Christmas Tree

This year my ambitious husband decided that instead of buying a Christmas tree, we would go into the mountains and cut down our tree ourselves. We bought a permit from the Forest Service for $10, a fraction of the cost of what we usually pay for a tree each year. Last Saturday we loaded up the kids and some lunch and went out in search of a tree. Ryan carried the axe and lead the way. I wore Amelia in the Baby Bjorn and kept an eye on Sammy and Benjy. Amelia did great on her first hike--she slept the whole time! 

Posing with the tree after cutting

Amelia is not actually that big--but we don't have a newborn-size snowsuit!

The tree was well-proportioned all around, but the branches were thinner than the trees we usually buy. It actually displays our Christmas ornaments better! The boys "helped" decorate--Sam put ornaments on the tree Sunday afternoon, and Ben has spent all week moving them around. He was banned from touching the tree after breaking his second ornament.

There she is, in all her glory!

I wanted to buy a Weeping Angel tree topper, but by the time I got around to ordering it ThinkGeek was sold out! We made do with our usual star instead.

For our next Family Home Evening we will talk about the symbolism of the Christmas tree, the star, and the ornaments. We would love to hear about your Christmas tree traditions in the comments!
Speaking of Christmas tree traditions, I am going to dominate my sister this year in finding the Christmas pickle. *cracks knuckles* Cassi, you've been warned!