A MAN NEEDS A MAID

The first time I truly considered the great importance of having a maid was when I heard Neil Young sing about their handiness.

Lyrics (to actually hear the song visit http://listen.grooveshark.com/)

My life is changing
in so many ways
I don't know who
to trust anymore
There's a shadow running
thru my days
Like a beggar going
from door to door.

I was thinking that
maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby
for her to stay.
Just someone
to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.

A maid. A man needs a maid.
A maid.

It's hard to make that change
When life and love
turns strange.
And old.

To give a love,
you gotta live a love.
To live a love,
you gotta be "part of"
When will I see you again?

A while ago somewhere
I don't know when
I was watching
a movie with a friend.
I fell in love with the actress.
She was playing a part
that I could understand.

A maid. A man needs a maid.
A maid.

When will I see you again?

Unlike Neil I don't want anything from a maid other then to have it (not gender specific) keep my house clean, fix my meals and go away. When Laura and I would arrive home after long days on campus with the house a mess and dinner barely an idea I would comment about the luxury of having a maid and how I would love to come home with everything effortlessly clean and a hot meal on the table.

I am pleased to report that as of yesterday I officially have a maid! Barrick is turning out to be a more fantastic company then I originally thought. They have placed me in a newly furnished double wide trailer with my own room and master bathroom, I never thought of living in a trailer as luxury but Barrick is changing my mind slowly. But the best part is that every week a group of ladies show up and clean the whole house, they change the sheets, clean the toilet, wash the towels, mow the lawn, dust the lamps, and make our place smell real nice.

Please let me know how you like the song and yoru general thoughts on having a maid.

Thinking about Mom's

I just got finished reading all of my blog posts for Mother's Day.  With this weekend feeling like a complete whirlwind AND getting the amazing oppurtunity to spend Mother's Day with both my mother's (birth and in-law) I am feeling particularly thankful.  Though Mother's Day has passed, I just wanted to take a moment to share with the rest of the world how much I love all the mother's in my life. 

My mom is amazing. . . words fail to adequately describe the love I feel for her and the gratitude that is overwhelming.  Matt was right, when he said that whenever he calles to talk about her life she always has a way of bringing it around to ask talk about mine instead.  She does this with everyone.  After anyone I know meets my mom, I always hear for days about how amazing and wonderful she is.  It's the truth.  Thank you for teaching so much, being patient while I learn or experiment, and finding joy in life and in me.  I love you mom.  It is the indelible impact that you have had on our lives that is the reason we look forward so much, to passing on your name to our daughter.

My mother-in-law is also, by in every sense of the word, a mother to me as well.  I love her dearly.  She is so thoughtful, so generous, and so fun to be with.  We love living so close so that we can come up any time and spend time with you and your family.  Your family has been such an increadible blessing to me as I have lived up here in Logan for the past few years.  Thank you for sharing your heart with me to, just as you do with all your daughters.  I love you.

My grandmothers as well are such fundamental parts of my life.  From the way you raised my parents to the individual time you have taken with me over the years, to grow, learn, share your talents, and life with me.  I have always loved our days and weeks we spent together growing up and carry many of your habits and talents on.  My mom even noted, that our kitchen smelled like Grandma Virginia and our bed skirt is made from Grandma Howe's special cloth.  Thank you for sharing your lives and hearts with me.  You are both women with some of the biggest hearts I know.  I love you two so so much!

My sisters!  How could I ever imagine life without you three?  I am grateful for all your "mothering" as I grew and that time washes away the years between us a bit, so that we can share so many of the same experiences together more as peers, now.  I look to each of you for so much.  I like my cell phone most of all because it means I can call you all throughout the week to share embarrassing moments, fun things, hear your advice, and make me tell you all that you are my favorite sister.  I love you three!

And my sisters-in-law.  I have so much to be grateful for from you three too!  Thank you for bringing me right into the family, even when Jared and I weren't married yet.  Thank you for giving me a home (Estee), for studying together (Sadie), and for making jewelry and talking about cupcakes on the beach together (Lindsay).  Each of you make time together full of laughter and I just love that!  You are all talented, gorgeous women, I look up to so much.

And lastly, to our sweet little baby girl that will soon be arriving, making us parents!   I have waited so long to see you again.  We can't wait to hold you precious one!

Hot Mommy Walks as Magna Cum Laude

She Did It!

USU hase given me a lot in the four academic years that I have attended like knowledge, experience, good friends, and lots of fun. That being said the greatest thing I gained during my time at USU was my sweet wife Laura. Yesterday her undergraduate journey came to an end as her name was called and she walked across the stage to get her diploma as a public health education major. She finished her last semester with a GPA of higher then 3.75, a great accomplishment especially with the difficulty of her classes. The ceremony was short and sweet (under an hour with lots of hooting and hollering) and the rest of the day was really special as family and friends combined together to celebrate Laura and her great accomplishment.

Everyone who attended the ceremony

Spiritual Leah, silently meditating over her scrumptious food

Backyard festivities, the weather was perfect for a barbecue!

Little Cooper chillaxin at the party

The Sherry Clan

Today I wanted to honor my beautiful wife Laura. Laura has been preparing to be a mother her entire life and now that we are expecting our first child her love for our future children really shines. Every time we go shopping she always seems to find a cute baby outfit and holding it up so I can see it says, "Jared its adorable, and it's only a dollar plus I have a coupon that will take off another 25% so really after taxes we are only spending about 81 cents." And I would think to myself, "we are grocery shopping sweetheart how do you find baby clothes when were grocery shopping?"

Laura is the women of my dreams! From the very moment that I saw her I knew that if this world were perfect I would end up with her as my wife one day and it only took four years for that to happen. She is loving and selfless, charitable and kind, she seems to see people as heavenly father does, always viewing their potential and strengths and not their weaknesses and faults. I love her with all of my heart and count myself blessed to spend each day with her on this eternal journey.

Laura I love you!

Happy Mothers Day!

A 2-fer-1

Tonight for Family Home Evening, we listened to General Conference and put together our much awaited crib that arrived a whole month early!  We looked a lot into cribs and think we are going to be very happy with this one.  So, in today's post you will not only be getting some fun pictures of things we have been doing in the baby's room as of this weekend, but there is also a picture of the belly (yes, I can safely say the bump has now graduated to belly status).

The dresser mom and dad gave to us a year ago, with new knobs I have been super excited about (thanks to anthropolgies hot sales)!

Baby changing table courtesy of Sara and Birch that we made match the dresser with more fun knobs.  

I LOVE THEM!

Our beautiful Parker 4-in-1 crib.  It looks darker in this picture than it really is.  That said, we do like it's richer finish called, coffee.  I was really impressed with this crib for it's baby/kid friendly design, materials, and finish as well as how sturdy and beautiful I think it is.

And yes, Jared snaggeda picture of our sweet little one who has been growing!  Speaking of which, it is late, past my bedtime, and I still need another before bed snack. Ah, pregnancy!

And might I just add one more BIG thank you to everyone who is helping our baby come into a wonderful home with all the trimmings!  Jared said on Saturday while putting in the knobs together, "You know how much love this baby is going to be born into?" We sure eagerly await her arrival and feel so so very grateful, especially as we recognize what special blessings so many  are sharing with us that many others didn't/don't have.

Delicious Waffles!

One of my favorite cooking/baking blogs out there is http://www.101cookbooks.com/ (which this photo is from).  She is a remarkable in the kitchen!  And from all her other entries seems like a remarkable woman all around, that I would love to spend some time with.  I am always drooling at her seasonal recipes, cookbook recomendations, and photography.  I want to go to San Fransisco and enjoy walking around all the streets and beaches, love up all the Farmer's Markets, and visit some of the restaurants.  Until then, I try out her recipes with, I'll admit, often a number of changes.  I don't always have the wide spectrum of vibrant spices or delcious greens or beans, but I do what I can. 
As a major waffle fan, I have been experimenting with recipes for a while.  This one she recently posted we tried this morning and I think is, hands down, my favorite one yet.  It has the whole grain goodness I love from one of my mother-in-law's recipes and the crunchy outer layer, soft inner layer lightness that I love from the whole wheat waffle recipe I grew up on.  It is definitely worth breaking out your wheat/grain grinders if you have one.  It doesn't take any extra time really! So here it is:  My substitutions/adjustments (which were minimal this time) in italics:

Multigrain Waffles

1 1/2 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 cups / 475 ml buttermilk (I cheaply made my own 'cause I didn't have any)
1 cup / 3.5 oz / 100g barley flour (ground in our Nutramil)
1/2 cup / 1.5 oz / 45 g oat flour (gound rolled oats in our blender)
1/2 cup / 2 oz / 55g rye flour (ground in our Nutramil - could subst. with whole wheat or millet flour if you don't have any rye for a good waffle and slightly different tast)
1 tablespoon natural cane sugar or brown sugar
1 tablespoon aluminum-free baking powder
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
3 large eggs, whisked
1/3 cup / 3 oz unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit  (I may or may not have used less :)

If you happen to remember, soak the poppy seeds in the buttermilk overnight, if not, it's no big deal. Just add them to the wet mix later on.
Preheat your waffle iron. I set mine to medium heat (3-4), but you'll have to play around a bit with the settings on your particular waffle iron to settle on the right temperature.
In a large bowl mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt together. In a separate bowl whisk the eggs into the buttermilk mixture, then whisk in the melted butter. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined.

I use about 1/2 cup / 120 ml of batter per waffle. Close the iron, and resist the urge to peek for a couple of minutes, the waffle needs time to set and develop a bit of a skin. After that you can check to see how your waffle is coming along. Cook until deeply golden. Serve with syrup, preserves, fresh fruit, yogurt, peanut or almond butter, etc. 
Made 8-ish round (6 3/4" diameter) waffles.

Photo Shoot

Last Thursday, we got treated to the best half hour photo shoot I have ever witnessed (no offense Leah, this isn't the same work you are a master at).  Yep, we took a break in between classes to head down and see our little baby, who is so much bigger now!  It wasn't until the last 5-10 minutes though we got to see if it was a boy or a girl.  Our radiologist was fantastic.  She took us through every little part; brain to toes, bones, organs, everything!  We loved it.  This is a mix of both 3-D and normal ultrasound pictures.  Here they are:

Her gorgeous profile.

Thumbs up Dudes! And what a cute little belly.

Already a thumb sucker.  And is that a hair line I see?  She might be coming out with a head of hair.

Waving.  

Notice the light/white colored bubbles in the lower left hand corner, that's her umbilical cord.

Side shot.  Can you tell what we are having?

Yep, it's a girl!

Perfect Bedding

I have been wanting to do this blog post for a while, because this project started back in October over General Conference weekend, picked back up over Christmas break until I got what I thought was a wicked case of the flu (good thing it was something totally better :) and was finished over conference weekend this April.  I know, I know, leave it to me to drag a 6 hour project out to 6 months.  Anyhow, I did finish it and am quite happy.
The duvet cover was a design I saw in Garnet Hill and just fell in love with.  I sent it to my mom, mentioning that I thougth we could make this, and if she ever saw any fabric like this in one of the two colors I liked to snag it please.  Well not more than a month later, maybe it was less, she acutally did find this fabric, brought it to Utah, and we worked on making the little pinched ball things together.  She really did the whole of it though.  On the other hand, I didn't know what backing to put on the cover, and spend the next 3 months looking, till Jared and I randomly decided to check at one more Khols while we were down in Farmington.  Again, by sheer luck he found a sheet set that was perfect for the backing about the same time I was ready to give up.    We got it for a MAJOR steel ($6) and I quickly went to work finishing the duvet cover.  Ta Da!

I really wanted a bedskirt though with shams to complete the finished look so I was stumped again at what to do.  I had two very different kinds of fabrics and colors that went well together but needed something to tie it all in.  At the brink of breaking down and purchasing a bedskirt and pillow shams from Anthropologie (on sale but still somewhat over what I wanted to sink into this project), I remembered that I had this awesome set of batiked fabric from Venezuela that had been left in the cabin for years, was getting eaten by moths, and what not, and rescued in 2008 as we were cleaning out the fabric.  It was just two gorgeous to get rid of.  So I designed my own pleated bed skirt ....

.... and pillow shams with Anita's help and her lending me her sewing machine once again.  I love them.  Eat your heart out Anthropologie!

This project was probably entirely to difficult for me, but somehow it got finished, and since I made some sizing mistakes I ended up having to put snaps on the back of the pillow shams to keep the pillow from bursting out of it's cover.  That was my project over this April Conference weekend. 
Either way, I am one happy camper to have it all done and am quite pleased with it all together.  It even goes with our grassy swamp green carpet!  Next project .... baby's room.