Girls' Camp

This past week was "Girls' Camp" for the Young Women of our church. Usually this involves tent camping in some state park or national forest. This year because the youth did "Pioneer Trek," a reenactment of the Mormon pioneers' journey across the plains to Utah, complete with handcarts and prairie dresses, we decided that Girls' Camp would be somewhat less hardcore. We stayed in the beautiful new home of a member of our church in Bath, NC. Here's how Girls' Camp was like real camp:

• we had a bonfire and roasted s'mores and sang camp songs
• we slept in sleeping bags
• we got sunburned and mosquito bitten

Here's how Girls' Camp was NOT like real camp:

• air conditioning
• tubing and wakeboarding
• hot showers
• pool and hot-tub
• million dollar water-front digs

The girls still worked on their "certification" in things like knot tying, fire building and other wilderness survival skills that were totally irrelevant in our "camping" experience. We joked that what we needed to teach the girls were skills like learning how to operate the remote control that turned the hot tub on and changed the color of the pool lights, or how to drive a ski boat.

The girls all had a really great time. I'm so glad that I was able to go because I got to know them much better. I had been having a hard time with my church calling (Young Women's leader) because I didn't feel like I connected with the girls. But now I feel like I finally got to know them and feel much more confident about being able to be a good leader because I have a better understanding of their individual personalities. They are such good girls.

Elliot came with me of course and slept on a blanket next to my airmatress (we all slept in a game room above the garage). He did really well until the last day when he got diarrhea and started spitting up A LOT. I was really upset about it because I was afraid that he had gotten sick from all the "love" he had gotten from the girls. Brother Baldwin, whose home we stayed in, and Ron Henderson, the husband of one of the other leaders, gave him a blessing. He made it home and is doing much better today.

Here are some of the pictures from camp. My camera battery died as soon as I took it out of the case on the first day and I didn't put it together until the last day that one of the other leaders had the exact same camera and had brought her charger.

Droppin' Science

A few days ago the New York Times ran a piece on the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. They talked to bakers at the city's best bakeries to find out what their secrets were. Turns out one thing that almost all of the bakers had in common in terms of technique was letting the cookie batter "rest" in the fridge for a while (an average of 36 hours).

In the name of science I thought I'd put their recipe and technique to the test. I made two batches, one following the NY Times' recipe calling for a precise combination of bread and cake flour (doesn't that end up more or less as all purpose flour?? whatever.) chocolate chips with a minimum of 60% cacao, and sea salt. Phew! I put that up against the "control" batch of the gold-standard Nestle Toll House recipe.

I decided that I was going to go about this business in a very systematic way (witness the "mise en place" above). Unfortunately, my brain doesn't work in a very systematic way so I didn't get very far into the Times' recipe before I veered wildly off track. I carefully measured and added the cake flour, the bread flour, the baking soda, the baking soda again...whoops. Ordinarily I would have just scooped out what looked like baking soda from the top of the flour in the bowl but that would have thrown off the validity of this experiment so I started all over again.

Ultimately, my results were inconclusive. I tried them each (repeatedly) and I couldn't decide which I liked better. They were both pretty awesome. I put it to the moms in Ollie's playgroup and they also liked them both, with only one person coming down solidly on the side of the dark chocolate cookie (the Times recipe).

Last night, however, we encountered a dark horse in the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Our friends made a fresh batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that were pretty strong contenders. They may just be better than either of the two recipes I tried. I'll have to continue my research...

Bermuda

We have started to make a habit of leaving the country for the 4th of July. In the 6 years of our marriage we have spent July 4th in Cambodia, Canada, Germany and now Bermuda. This has nothing to do with our patriotism (or lack thereof). Our lapel pins are intact, etc. etc. We just like to take advantage of long weekends with their "free" vacation days. So this past weekend we headed to Bermuda for a quick trip with my Dad and Abby. We picked Bermuda because it was a beach destination that was easy to get to...theoretically anyway. We had all kinds of delays with our flights so it ended up taking about 7 hours both ways. It should take 2 hours if you fly direct...which of course we didn't.

Traveling with an almost 2 1/2-year old and a 6 week old calls for nerves of steel and apparently a high tolerance for spit-up/drool/ketchup/chocolate/??? on one's clothes and body. I realized a few hours into the trip that I should have packed twice the number of outifts for me and the boys.

All in all the boys did really well. Elliot, especially, underwent a remarkable transformation. He usually spends a fair part of his day at home in various stages of distress (whimpering --> crying --> wailing --> red-faced ululating). The island vibe must have really done something to him because he was totally blissed out for most of the vacation. The island life also had an effect on Oliver. He became a voracious gobbler of french fries and shredded cheese...which is actually pretty good all things considered. He has a total junk food diet but at least he's eating. (In a side note, today, our first day back, I made him beet muffins to try to sneak some vegetables into his diet. They were pretty good and Ollie seemed to like them. Lots of people eat carrot cake or zucchini bread, so why not beet muffins??)

We stayed at a really cool place called the Pink Beach Club. It is a "cottage colony" a peculiar Bermuda institution that is like a WASPy version of a Borscht Belt resort (think Dirty Dancing). I LOVED it for its old-school charm. When we checked in we realized that there was no computer behind the desk, all our reservation information was written by hand in a large book. It was like checking into Hogwarts for a vacation. There were no TVs in the rooms (although practically the entire guest population gathered around the TV in the lounge to watch Nadal beat Federer at Wimbledon), the men had to wear jackets to dinner, the clubhouse was furnished with threadbare oriental rugs and faded chintz sofas. The website makes it look far more slick than it actually is, but I liked the sense that it was a place that hadn't changed much since it first opened.

We had a cottage on a cliff overlooking amazingly blue waters. I loved hearing the sound of the surf at night. There were two beaches with the famous pink sand that we could walk to from our cottage. In fact, we could swim from one beach to the other in about 10 minutes. Oliver was not a fan of the ocean. Rather, he preferred to admire it from a (great) distance. He did have fun playing in the sand and spraying the hose that was there to wash sand off your feet. Elliot apparently liked the beach because he never cried and slept peacefully under an umbrella most of the time.

Ryan wanted to go scuba diving, especially because there were many shipwrecks in very shallow water. Unfortunately we didn't plan it ahead of time and it didn't work out. He was really bummed. Instead we walked around historic St. George's town and visited the remarkably interesting Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo. We really had a great time and feel like we just scratched the surface of all that we could do and see. We'd love to get back to Bermuda again sometime. Here are some pictures of our trip. Abby's web album has some great pictures with HILARIOUS captions.

The view from our cottage
Ryan on our first day...we can't believe how awesome this place is!

The cottages looking out over the bluest ocean. Roofs are kept spotlessly white in Bermuda because they collect and use rainwater.
Ryan wearing his new Espagna jersey (thanks Grandpa!)
Dad/Grandpa
The pool terrace

Ollie is using "mail" (a folded up brochure) to swat at fish...just like we swat at flies at home...you can take the boy out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the boy.

Touring St. Georges (Elliot is hiding under my shawl)
Ollie in St. George's
Houses in St. George's
The view of the East Beach from our cottage
Daddy, Abby and I wave at Oliver and Ryan as we swim past our cottage.
Ollie LOVES french fries!

Just Say No!

I am honestly at the end of my tether with little Oliver. His favorite word, nay, his first and immediate response to any question, request or instruction is a sharp and resolute "NO!" It doesn't matter what I've asked/offered/requested, the answer is always, "NO!" I don't know what to do about it. This has been going on for several months, so obviously what I am doing isn't working to make it go away.

My first strategy was to ignore it so as not to "positively reinforce" that behavior by any attention (good or bad) and repeat, rephrase or re-frame the request, as if the "No" response was simply invalid, not an option. Then I reward him (with praise or a smile and a hug) when he does what I've asked. So, essentially reward good behavior, ignore the rest. Simple and straightforward.

But somehow it isn't working. It's got to be something that I am doing to undermine this process, because really, it should work, right? I find that instead I am, quite pitifully, asking him to say, "NO!, thank you!" instead of just, "NO!" I feel like a chump. I'm getting whooped by my 2 year old. And really, it's not a battle, or at least it shouldn't be, I don't want it to be. I want us to be on the same team.

Plea for Photo Tips

OK, one of the reasons Elliot has appeared so infrequently on this blog is that it is really hard (for me at least) to take pictures of babies. They have no neck control so if I try to prop him up his head sinks down into his shoulders, if I lay him down on his back he looks like a giant head with a tiny appendage (the rest of his body) and if I lay him on his stomach you can't see his face at all because he looks directly into the blanket.

So my question to you, my dear friends and family, is what can I do to improve my infant photos? Specifically, how do I get the camera to register those blue, blue eyes that are so obvious when I look at him but look like black holes in the picture? What can I do to pose him so he looks more like a baby and less like an alien? Are there tricks that I am just missing?? Please give me some advice.

Here are some of the results of this afternoon's photo session.