Give Away! Honey Whole Wheat Bread Mix-Scroll down for details

So I was invited to a "Free Cooking Class" yesterday by my husband's cousin's wife (which in Latin culture mean's she's basically my Sister-In-Law) who also happens to be my next-door-neighbor. I was skeptical to say the least for a few reasons...

I went anyway

I was right in suspecting that what promised to be a fun-filled evening of female bonding was in fact a thinly disguised marketing ploy and the event was, in fact, a sales pitch. I was surprised, however, at the quality of the products being hocked. The company in question is Shirley J, an Orem-based foods company which specializes in "Just-Add-Water!" mixes. The food was decent, the products reasonably priced, and I only had to suppress the urge to quietly slip out the nearest exit once during the entire evening, which if you know me says a lot. I appreciated that they didn't push us to sign up as "distributors" and that my dear semi-sister-in-law got a decent share of the profits from the sale; her hubby recently got laid off from his job and they really could use the funds.

I breezed past their "best selling" sauce mixes and opted instead for the bread mixes and the pasta/pizza seasoning mix. The total came to less than $40, which I thought was decent considering the Olympian portion sizes of the 3 bagged bread mixes. I thought that they could make a valuable contribution to my food storage.

I tried out the sweet-roll mix tonight (pictured above) for research purposes, and was surprised to find that it was so easy and quick to make. Usually things like this have a long series of complicated steps which my feeble brain is incapable of adequately following. The prep was simple, however, and exactly as described on the bag. The only ingredients I needed to add were a cup of warm water and 2 tbsp. rapid rise yeast (which I very conveniently happened to have in my freezer). 

The results were SPECTACULAR. From start to finish the whole process took less than an hour! Hooray! Just enough time for me to get my nerd on with a documentary about "Egypt's Lost Pyramid," which was exhillirating I must add.

The only problem is that I have with the entire escapade is that I appear to have gotten a bit carried away in my purchases. I seem to have completely forgotten that I am on a VERY low-carb eating plan these days in preparation for my summer vacation to the beach. I fear that having so many delicious and easy to prepare bread mixes around the house will prove far too tempting to me. I live near the Shirley J Wharehouse and the prices are so reasonable, that it really would be much more sensible for me to pick up another mix after I get back from my trip.

SO... Here's your golden opportunity. Leave me a blog comment saying one delicious thing you could make with the Honey Whole Wheat Bread Mix and I will enter you into a random drawing a week from now* for the unopened 5ish pound bag.  I will privately contact the winner to arrange the delivery details. If you don't have a Google ID, feel free to post an "anonymous" comment with your name somewhere in the body of your message. If you have more than one idea for the mix, feel free to post more than one comment. The mix in question is valued at around $12 and will make, according to package directions, upwards of 6 regular sized loaves of piping hot, home-made whole wheat bread and heaven only knows how many other delicious things.

Love straight from me to you.

*due to shipping costs I can only mail to U.S. or Canada... sorry my overseas dearies!

Middle School- who knew?

I teach ESL at a Middle School that is an akward combination of the "haves" (rich kids- the Provo LDS Elite) and the "have-not's" (50% free and reduced price lunch!). It's a bizarre group clumped together in an 80 year old building. We also have a weird ethnic mix- about 50% caucasian and about 50% minority (mostly Hispanic). I think I was born to teach this group of kids at this school.... It's like a microcosm of my life, I think. It literally is like if you took half of Doerre Middle School in Klein TX and smooshed it together with El Capitan Middle School in Fresno CA... (my two middle schools). 

I also firmly believe that I was born to teach this age group, because my sense of humor has never really matured beyond this point. I don't mean that this is my dream job (far from it, actually)- just that everything I have ever gone through in my life leading me up to this point appears to have been preparation for my work here. Here are a few supporting arguments to back up my theory.

Case Study Number 1: Friday we ended 7th period 3 minutes early to allow time for a Sumo Battle. Two boys shoved pillows in their shirts and ran at each other full speed while grunting as the rest of the class cheered them on. I considered this to be time well spent. Surprisingly the skinnier kid won.

Case Study Number 2: Today after state testing a boy asked me if he could just crawl under his computer desk for the remaining 10 minutes left in class and pretend he was in a fort. I agreed on the basis that it remained a 1 man fort, and that said fort did not engage in military aggression against other students. He remained silent and out of sight until clean-up time. I was a little bit jealous.

Case Study Number 3: My 5th period class has a secret handshake that involves fist tapping and a strategically placed snap of the fingers... which I taught them.

As you can see, after everything said and done, I appear to have made the correct career decision. It's not really what I expected, but it's pretty satisfying in a round about way.
What job were you born to do?
And since we're on the topic, my dream jobs would most likely be Interstellar Space Rogue or Hot-Shot Brooding Archeologist, both of which appear to have been inspired by Harrison Ford's illustrious movie career. I wonder what that says about me?

Fine China

I got married when I was 21. I was 2 weeks away from starting my student teaching (14 weeks of unpaid slave labor, here I come!), I was dirt broke because I'd spent all my money on living in the Spanish House the entire summer leading up to the wedding, and I was horribly depressed because my dad and step-mom had just gotten divorced. It was a very short engagement (less than 3 months) and I just didn't have it in me to go through with a lot of the formalities of getting married. I had no trousseau saved up. I almost didn't even have a bridal shower (loooooong story!). To compound matters, my dear hubby comes from a different country/culture and they do things so differently in Mexico that neither of us were really sure what we were culturally obligated to come up with, and we knew off the bat that half of our prospective guest list wouldn't be able to make it to the wedding at all.

 We kept it informal, to say the least. No wedding luncheon. No bridesmaid's dresses... you get the point.

Regardless, I loved my wedding. One thing I have always regretted, however, was that I never registered for china. That's so stupid sounding, I know, but it's one of the thousands of little girlie things that I've just kind of glossed over in my life (you know, like having babies...), and I always felt kind of short-changed. Well, the other day, I decided it was time to rectify the situation. This is what I came up with:

Thanks to the good folks at ebay, a small part of my life-long dream of becoming a "real girl" has been fulfilled. Huzzah!

I did a little research and the mark on the bottom can be easily traced back to a china company in England circa 1930-1969. A little more research and I discovered that this color scheme/pattern dates the set firmly in the 1930's or at latest the early 40's. I think I'm in love, but that may just be because I purchased my fine vintage china (ooooh!) for $35.59+shipping. I also love the color, the gold detailing... pretty much everything about it.

Now to find some matching dinner plates and soup bowls. I'm thinking white with gold trim...

Insomnia

As many of you may have read on the sidebar, I am a total insomniac. I blame the Brown side of my family who are total night owls (as opposed to the Black side of my family who are extreme early birds).

Side note: there are a lot of color names in my clan- Browns, Blacks, Grays, and even Snows!

But back to my story.

The hardest thing about my job is the 7:30 a.m. start time. Seriously? I have to be AT work at 7:30, which you will hear me gripe about to no end on this blog because to me it is ridiculous. I mean, seriously! How can you expect 12 year olds who have been up all night texting their friends to focus at 8 in the morning? I am looking at 3 who are dozing off as we speak.

The early start time is compounded by the fact that I do not, as mentioned earlier, sleep well at night. I toss, I turn, I dream, I wake myself up at ridiculous hours of the night because I worry that I'll sleep in through my alarm and arrive at work late... it's a mess. On weekends I usually just stay up until all of my theories, plans, capers, and curiosities have played themselves out and I can drift of effortlessly into dream land (usually around 2:30 am), but this is not a luxury I can afford during the work week. The problem is, that stressing out about having to go to bed early keeps me up tossing and turning.

Last night was such a night. I finally got INTO bed around 11:30, but having suffered from a terrible migraine earlier in the day I was a little bit jumpy from the Liter of Diet Coke I had to drink (just to cut the pain down enough to function for the evening).  Compounded by the fact that said migraine caused me to involuntarily pass out from 4-7 pm and the minor detail that I didn't get around to jogging until around 9 pm- let's just say I knew I was in for the long haul

Somewhere around 12:15, I had enough and I resorted to my tried and true insomnia remedy. I thought I'd pass that along to you all just in case you or a dear loved one tosses and turns and doesn't sleep at night.

Whenever I absolutely cannot calm my brain down enough to sleep and I have an early wake-up call the next day, I grab my blanket and sleep on the floor. 5-10 minutes of laying on the floor and I'm out like a light. I have several theories why this works so well. Possibly because the floor is cold and I don't sleep well when I'm warm. Possibly because there's not a giant hulking beast snoring in my ears when I'm down there (let's be clear, I'm madly in love with the giant hulking beast who resides in my bed, just not his snoring). Possibly I sleep better because it's so gosh-darn uncomfortable that all I can think about is how hard the floor is and all of the other little thoughts that are buzzing around inside of my head, keeping me awake, go flitting out the window. It worked last night, and I finally fell sleep around 12:30.

Whatever the reason, I am SO glad that I've figured out how to get a little shut-eye on those sleepless nights. Do any of you have insomnia? What do you do to get yourself to sleep at a reasonable hour?

A New Leaf?

So it's been a while since I blogged about my fitness goals for this year. It's been a tough road. When I injured my back I had to basically lay around for close to three weeks and I gained back all of the weight that I had lost since January and it brought along a few friends, too. I finally decided to just get back on the horse, and I started the Couch to 5K program, despite not being able to walk comfortably. I figured worst case scenario, I'd feel like crud, which I already did. I also started the Kristi Approved Live the Life program... well at least I downloaded the free trial. I figured having a more structured eating plan wouldn't hurt, at least while I lost back all the weight I've gained since Christmas.

It's been a REALLY tough uphill battle, but I think I reached a turning point today. I was able to successfully complete Week 5 Day 2 of the C25K program, which means that I am halfway to running 5K in 30 minutes. Today I broke my own personal record (which was set when I was in 3rd grade) for most ammount of time run in a single stretch. I ran 8 minutes without stopping.

Granted I was running kind of slow, but I didn't stop.

This might not seem like a big deal, but to me it is a huge deal. I  have struggled with my weight and fitness literally my whole life.

I always regretted not being able to run and play with the other kids on the playground and I've felt

trapped in a fat suit

since I was in kindergarten. Few people know this about me, but my dream when I was a kid was to be a dancer. I asked repeatedly for dance lessons  when I was a kid, and was repeatedly told

it wouldn't be a good idea

because I couldn't keep up, and I would just embarrass myself dancing around in a skin-tight leotard. I guess I just never believed that I could keep up after that, so after a while I stopped trying. The faProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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est I've ever run the mile in my life was today at 14m58s. My previous record was 15m23s set in PE in 4th grade. I soon after figured out how to cheat when running the mile in PE and

never actually have run a mile since.

So what now? I guess the sky's the limit.

UPDATE: Despite all odds, I completed W5D3 of the running schedule, which required that I shatter all previously held running records and crank out 20 minutes of non-stop jogging. I didn't really think I could do it, so I set a goal to meet halfway in the middle of at 14 minutes. When I got to 14 minutes, I figured I'd shoot for 16, and by the time I got that far I was kind of on a natural high and I pushed myself all the way to 20. That's right. I ran 1.5 miles in 20 minutes without stopping. For those of you counting, that's a 13 minute mile. Presidential Fitness Award? No. Personal best? Yes.

Some Little Known Facts About My Step-Son

Andrei was originally supposed to be named Luis Jr; When I was 12 I decided I was going to name my firstborn son "Andrew" or "Andre" after my brother who died; I learned around that time that it would be difficult or impossible for me to ever have a son of my own; I don't believe this is entirely a coincidence.

Andrei was born at 34 weeks weighing around 7 pounds; the second toe on his left foot is twice the width of his other toes with a funny-looking nail- we think it started to divide in half at some point in the womb; he had a heart murmer when he was an infant and I cried myself to sleep for a week before his appointment with the cardiologist because I was so worried.

Andrei learned how to whistle, snap his fingers, and burp on command before he could even speak in sentances or paragraphs; last summer he learned how to make farting noises with his armpit; I encourage him, even though I know I shouldn't, because I think he's cool.

Andrei is bilingual, but doesn't like to admit it; his first language is Spanish.

When Andrei grows up, he wants to be a "fry cooker"; I support this goal, because I think that there are a lot worse things in life that he could be aspiring to, and because he actually does have a talent for cooking; He could boil water and toast bread by the time he was 3.

I can always tell when Andrei is actually asleep and when he is faking because if he is awake he has a constant stream of sound effects narrating his life experiences; usually Andrei's sound effects sound like he is shooting something or crashing a car.

Andrei has had a six-pack, back hair, and peach fuzz since he was a toddler; Andrei has at least 2 admirers who live on our street, most likely due to said moustache and six pack; both of those girls are older than he.

Andrei invented a game when he was a baby called "chili pim-paw"; I have no idea what that means and neither does he anymore, but we still play it on a regular basis.

Andrei shares everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, he owns with everybody, including strangers; we cannot keep juice boxes in our garage fridge because he will wander around the street offering them to every person under 30 that he sees.

Andrei invented the nickname "Nana" for me when he was 1 year old because he realized he couldn't call me "mommy" or "papa," but didn't want to call me "Camille"; he still refuses to call me anything else, because he thinks "Nana" is more special; I agree.

Andrei  picks me flowers whenever we go out for a walk; he calls my hair "spaghetti" and pretends to eat it if I wear it down.

Andrei will make some woman very happy some day.

The Great Doorbell Ditching Cupcake Caper

We have a lot of family traditions in our clan. Possibly the oldest standing tradition is Friday Night Movie Party, dating back to the prehistoric days of our marriage when Luis would go off every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night to work, leaving me at home alone with the boy. We both missed him terribly and drown our sorrows in Disney flicks with lots of hot buttered popcorn. Even when daddy stopped working nights, Friday Night Movie Party continued, and is alive and thriving today (it even has it's own theme song..."It's a Friday night movie party! We're gonna watch a movie 'cuz it's Friday night!"). Luis picks up Andrei from his after-school program, brings him home to dinner followed by chores, then popcorn and a movie. One or both of them are asleep and snoring by the end...

This week, however, we had to cancel the movie party as the little booger was grounded for hitting a kid in school (in all fairness, the other kid hit him first, but we don't condone violence and felt that he needed a negative consequence). So he was not allowed to play outside with friends, watch tv, or have his beloved movie party.

Luis was out DJ'ing and I was kind of at a loss for how to keep the boy busy for 4 hours in between drop-off and bedtime, so I decided that we were going to use the time to perform a service project. The project in question was making cupcakes and doorbell ditching them at the neighbors. I had 3 alterior motives for this: a) I wanted him to run around a lot and get all the extra energy burnt out of his system  before an early bedtime b) I wanted him to learn a little about giving service in an anonymous yet fun way and c) I wanted to get rid of the red velvet cupcakes that have been sitting in my fridge taunting me.

Mission accomplished.

Making the cupcakes... yum yum!

Delivering the cupcakes (we only got yelled at by one neighbor but they apologized after they saw the cupcakes on the ground!)

I like this photo because he's all red and sweaty from running up and down the street like 6 times and his face is covered in frosting!

Small mountains of frosting, several vials of sugar sprinkles, and 2 dozen red velvet cupcakes later my kitchen is a royal mess, the dishes still aren't washed, and the laundry isn't put away, but I think my boy learned something about the joy of serving others; I consider it time well spent. Besides, I'm pretty sure the dishes will still be there tomorrow.

His eyes are closed because he said he didn't want to be in the picture, just the crown.

We made cards to go with the cupcakes, and he told me his feelings were hurt that I didn't make one for him. Instead I made him a crown, which we proclaimed shall officially be the story time crown, so he wore it in bed after the caper had concluded during story time. He looked rather regal in his Superman jammies.

Are you Smarter than a (ESL) 7th Grader?

So here's a quiz I gave my 7th graders today about Drama. Just for kicks, I thought I'd let you all take a crack at it. Keep in mind that these are ESL students.

Drama Quiz

Short Answer (2 pts. ea.)  History of Drama
1. Name at least 1 thing that the Ancient Greeks contributed to the development of theater.
2. What are the 2 main categories of Greek drama?
3. Name one characteristic of Shakesperean theater.
4. Compare and contrast Shakesperean comedies with Greek comedies.
5. Name one form of contemporary drama/theater.


Diagram (1 pt ea):        The Stage
Draw and label the components of a contemporary stage (at least 5)

Essay (5 pts ea):      Application
Select one of the following prompts and respond in a well-developed essay.
11 a. Describe how drama has changed since its origins in ancient times.
11 b. Describe how drama is different from prose and/or poetry.
11 c. Explain the process and elements of reading drama. You may wish to include a discussion on  reading screen plays and how they differ from traditional stage productions.

20 pts. total 

So, how'd you do? 

Have a happy Friday!

The Many Faces of Camille...

I was bored at work today- I know that I should never be bored at work, because I should always be productive, busy, enlightening minds and such...but sometimes I am. The kids are watching a video and I am too tired to grade papers, or file, or make budget reports. Here's a little teacher secret: sometimes we just sit there and babysit. Not too often, but sometimes. 

Instead of building character and planting the seeds of knowledge for future generations, I made a photo collage of pictures that I took a while back one day when I thought I looked kinda cute. Don't worry: I took the pictures on my lunch break... I actually did open minds through the magic of literacy the rest of that particular day. So without further ado, I present to you: The Many Faces of Camille. If you were actually having a conversation with me, this is what you would most likely see. A little egocentric? Probably. Entertaining? Hopefully... at least it was for me!

In My Dreams

I have had  a lot of dreams lately, not too many of them pleasant. For example, I dreamt that I slept in and was late to work; upon arriving was fired on the spot by the assistant principal. I dreamt that I was on vacation in Paris with my family, but that they went skydiving and forced me to jump out of a plane with them; I had no parachute. I dreamt that I went to a park and was playing frisbee with my boy; my little doggy ran away from us while chasing butterflies and drown in the Provo River.

Such strange nightmares. To compensate for it, I've been working extra hard on daydreaming lately. Here are a few of the things I daydream about quite regularly...

Sigh...

Fairy Princess

What do you get when you combine 16 yards of tulle, 6 wire hangers, 3 pairs of ivory panty hose, and a crap load of glitter? FAIRY PRINCESSES!!! Here's how it went down:

I've been having a great time during Spring Break working on a few projects that I've put off for a while, namely making some diaper bags for my friend Natalie and my friend Karlie, both of whom are expecting baby boys in the near future. I haven't photographed them yet because, well, they are lying in pieces on my ironing board waiting to be stitched together. Side note: Did you know that like 75% of sewing is actually just cutting and ironing? It's a real pain in the butt!

Anyway, today I took an unscheduled break from my to-do list because an opportunity presented itself which was just to wonderful to pass up: my sister Melissa texted me in the morning asking if in our vast collection of children's costumes if we happened to have any princess costumes for a project she's working on. She's going to have her darling girls photographed in princess costumes, then frame and hang the photos in the girls' room. I informed her that I do not, in fact, have many girl's costumes, but then I was struck with a flash of inspiration: fairy princesses! I figured I could pretty easily throw together some fairy princess outfits, and since fairy princesses are the very best kind of princesses, I figured I'd pitch the idea to Melissa who graciously accepted my offer.

We met at JoAnn's and all the little girls picked out the colors for their own costumes. It was fun, and a great excuse to see my favorite blue-eyed babies for a little while today. And, might I add, those little girls sure know how to coordinate their colors!

Anyway, long story short, here are the photos of the finished products. I must say, I'm pretty proud of them myself. I really like how the girls' personalities kind of show up in the finished outfits. Janie's is bold and a little whimsical with hot pink June-bug wings (sometimes I secretly call her Janie June-bug... tee hee!); Ella's is sweet and dreamy with green and silver moth wings; Molly's is sophisticated and delicate with burgundy butterfly wings. I sure hope they enjoy them, and that they send me some of the photos they take... hint... hint...

Family History

So if you haven't done your family history you should, you know, like do it. It is fun and awesome and interesting.
Case in point: I spent the better part of my college years trying to track down my mother's father's mother's father's mother. Did you follow? That's my maternal grandfather's maternal great-grandmother. I didn't find her until after I was married. Her name is Christina Morse, and although she is rumored to be native-american in my family, she's not. At least not totally. In fact, I can now trace her family down like 6 generations (both men and women) as French-Canadians. Like Acadian French-Canadians... the kind that had to flee the hated Brittish and eventually became Cajuns. That kind of French-Canadians. In fact, it appears that the family changed their names from Masse' to Morse and moved West to Wisconsin right around the time that whole mess went down. Convenient, eh?
Anyway, this evening I traced the family back another 5-ish generations to the motherland. That's right. I finally found the French connection. It appears that Marguerite Ardion and Jean Rabouin were both born in La Rochelle France around 1630to parents who were wed in the midst of the whole Huguenot revolution that was happening then and there. That's right. The Huguenots. I don't know why that is so significantly meaningful to me, but it is. Other branches of the family came from Lyon, Alencon, and even Paris.
I've now traced both my dad's and my mom's family back to the Puritans and my mom's family back to the Calvanists. That means both sides of my family left Europe for religious freedom. Way to represent!

Boo

So Luis left last Tuesday morning to go to Mexico for a cousin's wedding. Ana and Kenley went with him. They won't be back until Tuesday. That's fine, except it means that I am experiencing General Conference and Easter by myself this year. This is especially sad because I have always had Andrei for Easter. Always. It's like the one holiday that his mom doesn't really care about or do anything for and it always falls during our visitation time with him, so I never have to share. We always have an Easter Egg hunt, we dye eggs, and we read the Easter story.
It feels kind of empty this year not being able to celebrate the holiday with him. It's funny how holiday's (especially the religious ones) are so much more meaningful when you share them with children.
Oh well. I will keep myself busy by watching General Coference, taking care of some long-put-off projects, and eating Easter Candy. If you are in the Provo/Orem area and feel like popping in, I'd be happy to welcome you for a visit.