baking together

today was our first baking project together--ella and me. one reason i haven't baked with her before today is that we don't have a good set-up for her to help me in the kitchen. our table is in the dining room, and the kitchen is tiny, without a little table for her to easily work with me. but today i decided to pull her high chair and tray into the kitchen and let her help me from there.

i can't even express how much fun it was. c. sent me a new cooking magazine for my birthday and it had a banana streussel muffin recipe in it that i had pretty much all the ingredients for (i substituted a few things). elenora was so good at helping me. she put the ingredients in the bowl and helped me pat down the brown sugar (while licking her fingers the whole time) and stirred the ingredients together. she was so good, and interested in everything. she helped me grease the muffin pan with butter, and then told me which cup to place the batter in. then she helped me sprinkle all the uncooked muffins with the streussel mixture. as they cooked in the oven she was so interested in them that we pulled her stool up in front of the oven and she kept sitting there to look through the lighted window.

they turned out pretty good, too.

i used frozen ripe bananas that have been sitting in my freezer for a good year or so, and i didn't have any all-purpose flour--just wheat--and i didn't have any walnuts, so i used oats in the streussel instead. also i used olive oil instead of canola. but with all those substitutions the muffins actually taste pretty good.

tonight s. and k. are taking me out for indian cuisine for my birthday... the first of three nights celebrating my 30th. tomorrow night ella will sleep over at momby's and j. will be taking me to duckworths, our favorite restaurant, for an amazing meal (their food is incredible). monday night momby is hosting a party on my actual birthday. she's making lamb... mmm.

we haven't heard anything about the house. we might hear something on tuesday. we're not expecting to get the house, but it's exciting anyhow. we're both sort of hoping we get it. it really would be a great place to live. but we know that only God can put us there, and we're trusting that he knows if it's actually a good situation for us or not and will make things happen accordingly.

it's raining today. this is the first rainy day in weeks. the last 2 days have been amazingly beautiful. i awoke on thursday and thought "it's autumn now." you could feel it in the air.

thursday afternoon s. brought aurora over and we took the girls down to the park. while we were there ella was swinging on the baby swings and aurora and s. were on the big, bench swing and i asked ella if she wanted to swing on the bench swing with aurora and she said "want to not swing on the big swing with rora?" but then 1o minutes later after aurora had moved away from the big swing these 2 big girls placed their stuffed animals on the bench swing and ran away. ella was curious, saying "kitties on the swing!" and she walked over to look. one of the big girl's little sisters must have thought ella was going to steal the stuffed animals, and she ran over and stood in front of the swing with her arms stretched out and a glare on her face. poor ella has never been glared at before, and she just stood there talking to the little girl. i went over and said "ella, this little girl doesn't want to share with you" (can you tell i was hurt, too?) "let's come over here with mommy." elenora looked up at me sadly and said "mommy asked you 'do you want to swing on the big swing'." which for some reason struck me as really perceptive--she just expresses herself with such clarity and understands her own emotions so well.

anyhow, so we took the girls to zumis for ice cream.

tonight during dinner ella and i were talking about cats and i asked her "ella, where is freddy?" and she said "in cat heaven" and so i asked her "where is god?" and she answered "in god heaven."