For Kelly, and anyone else who wants to try it.

Sorry this took so long.

1 3/4 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine (which is 1 small molecule from plastic)
1 egg
6 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup powdered milk, optional
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
2 cups wheat berries blended with 1 cup water

Combine water, sugar, salt, butter,egg, 1 cup flour and wheat berry paste. In another bowl whisk together powdered milk, yeast and 2 cups flour. Add to liquid ingredients and mix until smooth.
Place bowl on a rack over a bowl of boiling water and cover with a clean towel. Let it stand for about 20 minutes or until batter is slightly bubbly.
Stir down batter. Add almost all the flour and mix well. Pour last bit of flour onto clean surface. Turn out dough and knead about 5-6 minutes adding just enough flour to keep the dough from being too sticky. Dough should be soft and elastic.
Cut dough in half and shape into loaves. Cover and let raise in sprayed pans until tops of dough rise above the edge of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes until the bread is lightly golden brown.
Cool in pans for 15 minutes on a wire rack. Turn the loaves out and cool completely.


TO MAKE WHEAT BERRIES

1 cup wheat and 3 cups water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Let cook 30-60 minutes or until most of the water is absorbed.

OR

1 part wheat, 3 parts water and slat in a slow cooker. Cook 5-6 hours on low.

Church

Today was our Wards Primary program. I am not a fan of the Primary program for a couple reasons. I fail to see the point. I know the kids have fun, some of them, and that they learn new songs, and they get a chance to show off, I mean, practice speaking in front of the congregation, again, some of them. Today Moody had a 1 minute talk on Heavenly Father loving us. She did fine. Grumpy didn't want to go up at all and so she was on the verge of tears the whole time. Quirky sat for a while with her class but then halfway through her teachers husband came and sat by me and wanted me to know that Quirky was sad. She was crying in fact. After a weird pantomime series of trying to solve the problem from the stand to the overflow where I was sitting with The Lone Ranger and Tiny, I motioned for her to come to me. She was crying and said she "needed me". Then Moody brought Grumpy to me, she too was crying and once she saw Quirky leave the program figured she might as well too. Moody then went back up to the stand. During this time I was trying to entertain The Lone Ranger with a color Wonder book and fruit snacks. This lasted about 5 minutes. He thought it was funny to put the marker lids on his fingers and then even funnier when he found that a flick of his wrist would send them flying. I mentioned we were in the overflow area where the floors are wood? Every time one of the lids left his fingers it seemed to make a horrendous noise. Then he began to make a horrendous noise. For a boy he sure does scream like a girl!! All in all, my kids did not sing, they did not speak, with the one exception, and they were they only kids making trips back and forth from the stand. I love getting ready for church, thinking we are doing well, and then trying hard not to scream obsenitites at them. The one I haven't introduced yet is Nameless dwarf. She goes by many, many, many names. She is whiny yet helpful, responsible yet off in the clouds. I have no all encompassing name for her. She tried to be helpful but mostly just roamed about the overflow area chasing down marker lids and what not and then GIVING THEM BACK TO THE BOY!! When I took the boy out for the first of many trips out, she sent Quirky and Grumpy out to get me to see if she should pick up Tiny who was "screaming". I could not hear her screaming, I think Nameless just wanted to hold her for something to do. Lets just say Relief Society and Sunday School were FANTASTIC!!!! And needed.

I have a good friend who regularly writes a list of thinks she is grateful for at the end of her posts, I thought I might try it but today is not the day. Grumpy is screeching at Nameless that she hates her, Quirky is supposed to be getting hangers for the laundry that isn't actually being done and I am just sitting here thinking that I should be watching them better, I should be helping with the laundry and I should care that The Lone Ranger is eating a chapstick. I know I have many things for which I should be grateful and should express gratitude for. Today was a struggle. WAIT!! I have it! I am grateful that we were able to go to church today. Because this is America. And because it is America we have freedoms to go and worship as we please and where we please. And since we made it this week to exercise our religious freedoms, we can have our other freedoms back that we lost when we didn't go last week. In other words, we are no longer grounded from the tv, phone, and computer. Thanks to my mom for the freedom speech all those years.

Have a good Sunday All, I am going to go lay down and try to find my happy place.

Cleaning in the House of Mess Makers

So I am sitting here thinking of all the things I should be doing. I originally came upstairs to use the bathroom but sat down instead and looked at the pampered chef outlet page and then Jules page, and here I sit. My dear Moody is outside digging in what is left of my garden with The Lone Ranger. I know that he likes to dig and so does she and they are out of the house and quiet but they are digging in DIRT. I am trying to clean and they are going to come in filthy and get dirt everywhere. This is why I hate cleaning. I have what feels like 50 people following behind me messing it up. And not just leaving a little clutter, they somehow manage to make things so messy that Prince Charming thinks I sit and do nothing all day other than spend us into the poorhouse. So far all I have done is clean the oven. I wanted to get the entire kitchen done, drawers wiped out, cupboards cleared of all the crap that doesn't belong in them. I have cleaned the oven. And I only did that because every time I turn the thing on P.C. hollers down from his throne, the computer chair not the potty, "what's on fire?" No one else notices a fire like stench. Of course no one else here can smell bacteria.... I am going to be in SO much trouble if he reads this. He probably won't though due to his overwhelming aversion to blogs.

Jules and I were talking a couple days ago about the names of the dwarfs and how so many of them could be called Grumpy. We finally came up with this for the eldest, Ultimate Fighting Dwarf, or UFD. Those of you who have met said dwarf are just getting back on your chairs after laughing yourselves right off of them. The name totally fits her. If she is awake she is arguing with someone, if you are within her reach and she is in the right mmod, she will start a physical battle. And she will NEVER give up. I suppose this might be a good quality in life, the never giving up, but in a family it SUCKS!!!!!

I better stop rambling now and get busy, so many messes, so little time, and so many mess makers....

Morning

I don't know how I thought I had time for this. My dwarfs won't let me be for 2 minutes. At the moment Grumpy is laying under the chair so that if I move I will pull her hair, I think that is part of her plan, she is also crying because she wants me to get her shoes RIGHT NOW, The Lone Ranger is screaming like a little girl at Grumpy, and let me introduce you to Quirky Dwarf. She is my child who definitely marches to the beat of her own drummer. She spends each morning trying her best to convince me that the toga is in style and she should wear only a towel all day. She walks through the snow barefoot and puts together crazy outfits and thinks they are cute. She also has an aversion to brushing her hair. She is on my bed waiting for me to scream at her to put her clothes on so she doesn't make Moody late for school. Moody is almost 12, I think that explains it.

I made my bed last night at 11 with nice clean sheets. I turned the mattress and put fresh pillowcases on all the pillows. The Lone Ranger has just eaten one side of his Popsicle and left the other side to fall apart and melt all over my side of my fresh new sheet. The really sad part is that I don't care enough to wash the sheets again right now. I might just sleep in Popsicle. That my friends is what absolute sleep deprivation will do to you.

I better get up from this chair now and start the morning yell-fest. Otherwise I will sit and ramble the morning play by play to anyone who will read it and they will all be late for school, and it's a preschool day and I LOVE my 2 hours without Grumpy. I mean, Grumpy LOVES preschool.

Have a good day all. I will be finishing the pears and moving to pickles so I know I will have a day filled with glee, and bandages. I will try to post the bread recipe later Kelly.

I Should Have Skipped The Cheese

And so I got the Prince out the door with a smallish size "discussion" on the dangers lurking in cyberspace waiting for me. And I got the middle two dwarfs out the door, the older ones got themselves out earlier, and I set off to our local over-priced with a really good sale grocery store. I should note that I can't actually afford to buy groceries anymore due to our bathroom floor that turned into a remodel project. I went anyway. I think the Gods were against me though because as soon as I set foot in the store with Grumpy, Tiny and The Lone Ranger, Grumpy began to have issues. Like she didn't want to be IN the cart with her brother, who was happily honking the horn in the whale cart. She wanted to walk. I had a whale cart, about the size of a whale and just as easy to turn, and a regular cart because I had 3 small dwarfs with me and needed a place for the groceries. I needed her in the cart. I told her to get in with her brother, and she did, with the promise of a treat IF she behaved. And she behaved. For all of 5 minutes. If that. We were in the front where they had the really good sale, I had to count to make sure I had enough items to get the extra amount off my total, when she started to complain. When we got to the baby aisle to get food for Tiny she was crying about how she just wants to walk. There was a lovely lady on the baby aisle, she had her nice quiet troll with her, they were pretty much taking up the whole aisle. As we maneuvered through the aisle and out toward the meat, to see if they had any good chicken sales, and they didn't, she wailed louder that she just wants to walk. We got to the cereal aisle, also on sale for cheap, and she got out. This was the beginning of the end. She wasn't getting back in because she didn't like the cart, and she also wanted some fruit snacks and the cereal that wasn't on our list. So she sat ON the cart. In the front, so that if I were to stop fast she would fly off, or if she were to jump off I would run her over. My dwarfs pretty regularly jump off of, out of, or in front of carts at the store and then wail the rest of the way through that they are either dying or that I hate them and ran them down on purpose. I stopped the cart and told her we would wait until she was in the cart to continue. When she got back in I thought "wow, that was easier than normal" and that is because she decided if I wouldn't let her walk voluntarily then she would force me into letting her by being mean to her brother. We were ready to leave when I remembered the cheese. I couldn't leave without some cheap cheese. So I again get rolling down the aisles with my whale and my really full cart, and get some cheese, aisle blocker lady and troll were there also, they weren't getting cheese, they were also on the cereal aisle, I think she was following us. At this point Grumpy was mad because I told her to leave The Lone Ranger alone and I told her she was not getting a treat, and so she began to scream at me that she wanted a treat and she would behave and why aren't you listening to me. She screamed the same thing over and over for what seemed like forever. It took about 15 minutes to check out, and the blocker/troll people were behind us. I told Grumpy no every so often when she would come up for air mid-scream and then blocker woman says, "don't give in, then she'll be like this at 12". I said I know, but I wanted to kill her and her little troll. When we were finally done I took Grumpy, screaming, and The Lone Ranger and Tiny out to the car, along the way a bag broke and a couple cans fell out and I had to get them while holding onto the whale, the cart, and Grumpy. It was FUN!! I got everyone in the car, all the groceries, and then looked over my receipt. I should have done that before leaving the store because 6 of the cheeses had not rung up at the sale price. Now the dilemma, do I take them all out of their seats, screaming still, and get my money back? Do I run in and leave them in the car? Can't do that. Or should I suck it up as a loss and go home? I decide, somewhat foolishly, to take them all back into the store and get my money back. It was almost 18 dollars and I am glad I took it back in. I told the lady there that all the varieties were marked the sale price and she said she would go check but I stopped her and let her know I just would have the money back and leave with the screaming fiend.
Grumpy screamed all the way home because she didn't get a treat during the second trip into the store either and then she wanted the radio turned down, it was up so I wouldn't be able to hear her quite so well. When the cell rang I was tempted to not bother answering because I wasn't ready to turn the radio down but I did and guess what? It was the lady calling to schedule my tubal ligation. If I had any doubts they were gone right out the window at that point. I scheduled with her, put Grumpy screaming into her room, made a bottle for Tiny and The Lone Ranger and I sat down to watch Nick Jr. with a package of oreo's and a diet pepsi. The moral of this rambling is that even if the cheese is free you should get out before the screaming begins.
THE END

Prince Charming? OR The Frog... You Decide

Last night I told Prince Charming that I had started a blog, he thinks I am nuts. Like it's the first time? He took the rest of the bathroom apart last night. It required taking out some of the walls. I took some pictures but I don't know how to put them on the computer so I have to wait for P.C. to put them on before sharing my joy with you all. Today he is replacing the sub floor. I have to finish this later, I am being told about the unlimited dangers of having a blog.

What's left of my bathroom OR I wish I was with Martha

I was going to post a picture of our recently destroyed bathroom but I got too busy with the feeding, laundering, cleaning, screaming, I mean, kind gentle reminding, that is my life and now it isn't nearly the mess that I wanted to share. It is a shell of a room with a toilet in it. It also still has the tub but I am told that is leaving on Thursday. Oh YAY!!

It is the most fun having 1 bathroom for all of us to share. Especially since that bathroom is accessed only by walking through MY bedroom. And it only has a shower. And I really like the transformation the hall has gone through, it is so much easier to find things now that they are in clear totes linging the hallway. Yesterday the lone boy carted around a box of feminine hygiene products through the house. He got really irritated when I took it from him. If only he knew that later in life he would die before touching them, (at least until his wife forces him to get them on the way home from work or face certain death upon arrival). Anyway, I am babbling and I should be getting kids out the door for school. They don't seem to move unless I am working on my drill seargent routine right behind them, why is that? Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know how to fix it? I am sure Martha could fix all my woes in just 1 hour with 4 commercial breaks. I wish she was here, or I was wherever she is.

1st Post!

So here it is, the long awaited first post! You can see from the title that I don't have much time so it might be the only post for a long, LONG time.