The Orchard Team Huddle

This past week I made one of my most favorite dinners, homemade pizza.  My mom happened upon this recipe in a magazine while waiting at one of her pre-natal appointments years ago.  I believe it was fate, or inspiration or whatever you want to call it because we loved this growing up and my family loves it now.  I know homemade pizza may sound a little scary but I promise, this one is do-able! Sauce: 1 Tbsp. olive oil 1 6 oz can tomato paste 1/2 tsp. oregano 1 tsp. salt 2 1/2 cups water Cook the tomato paste and oil together in a deep pan until they are no longer separated.  This only takes a minute or two and I stir the whole time.  Add water, salt and oregano.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer on low heat, stirring occasionaly until thicken to desired consistency.  If you make a singe batch I would guess it takes about an hour.  I always make a triple batch and that takes about 2.  There will be a lot of popping and mess making so you eith...

your baby clings to your legs from the minute he wakes up. he asks for his binky for the first time in over a week even though he was weaned 3 weeks ago. his nose won't stop running. he asks for medicine. he wants you to go from "yoom" to "yoom". he won't let you sit down. the only way he will nap is laying on top of you on the couch. he won't have a thing to do with his brothers. he begs for his dad all day long. he tells you "better" when he grabs his ear. after you say a little prayer to know if you really need to spend $35 to see the Dr. he begins to cry and doesn't stop for a very long time. Thankfully , Dr. Wirkus got us right in.   Thankfully , we don't know if Mason is allergic to anything because he has never needed anything.   Thankfully , Amoxicillian is cheap and should clear up the ear infection.   Thankfully , Ibuprophen is amazing.   Hopefully , tomorrow won't be quite so long.

Just the title of this post makes me so happy!  It was one of those things looming over my head that I knew needed to be conquered but I wasn't so sure I was ready for it. Sleep is such a commodity at our house and I didn't want to do anything that might disrupt that.  But..... One day, (April 6th to be exact) I decided to leave Mason's binkies in his bed following his afternoon nap.  We went about the rest of our day never seeing or discussing them.  Since he had gone record time without as much as a mention I decided to put him to bed without them (I keep using the plural form as he ALWAYS had one in each hand, one in his mouth and a few strewn around the bed).  He went right to sleep.  "There is no way it could be that easy," I thought.  I slept a bit restlessly as I fully expected him to wake at any time begging for his binkies.  The next morning he woke up a little grumpy and nose running. Yep, he was sick.  Had I forseen this little k...

We had a lot of fun decorating eggs. We had even more fun finding them!     Happy Easter!

Over the past 2 seasons I have written a few post about our baseball adventures. Here are 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11  such stories but this is the best one yet! This past weekend both boys played in the Spring Fling Slugfest tournament here in the valley.  Once again, I printed the schedules and viewed them side by side.  For some reason, the league just doesn't see the need to schedule my two boys to where their games do not conflict with each other.  I HATE missing games.  Russell and I made our plan of who was going where when, who got to take Mason and our adventure began! Thursday:   Douglas played in Saratoga Springs at 3:00, had to be there at 2:00 and was checked out of school at 1:30.  Stockton got dropped off from school, got himself into uniform, to piano lessons and a snack and was picked up for his 4:30 warmups in South Jordan.  I got Mason while Russell helped coach.  Douglas' game was a bit of a yawner...