Mallo Adventures

Well, in the last 2 days I have had a cooking near disaster and a very pleasant surprise.

The other night I decided to make brownies - incidentally one of my favourite things to make - because I knew that Geoff had been working long and hard on some projects and I thought he would enjoy some nice brownies. I have a particular recipe that I use as standard because it has minimal flour in it which makes it really easy to make wheat/gluten free. So once the kids were in bed, I threw it together. However, once it was in the oven and I checked on it about half way through, it struck me that it was ‘behaving’ rather oddly. It looked funny too. So I tested it and it was definitely done, but a very strange consistency for my brownie recipe. Having taken it out of the oven then, I decided to look back over the recipe. OOPS! I forgot the SUGAR! Well, it wasn’t a complete disaster as the recipe uses real chocolate, not cocoa. Not too bad with a little bit of vanilla ice cream. I was actually able to laugh about it afterwards.

On the other hand, with yesterday being the 4th of July, we had friends of ours over, one of whom is also American - first July 4th in Australia. We had a BBQ and apple pie was the request for dessert from our American friend. Well, ordinarily pie isn’t much of a big deal. I feel reasonably comfortable making pie. However, since the advent of Geoff’s wheat allergies, pie is a little harder because of the pastry. I haven’t quite had great success with pastry recipes that are wheat or gluten free. Recently I bought a small Wheat and Gluten Free Baking cookbook and it had a shortcrust recipe in it. So I plucked up my courage (with company coming and all!) to try it out on the night! It was great! Everyone seemed to like it and when I said it was gluten free, one of our guests said, “You wouldn’t have picked it.” Victory! And you’d better believe I’ll be using that recipe again!

Out of the mouths of babes…

I love it when kids say stuff naturally as part of life that is a reflection of how God wants us to be. They make such teachable moments - both for kids as well as for us. After a night of camping away with Daddy and Linnhe, Daniel said to Geoff on the way home in the car, “Daddy, whatever you want, I want.”

As this was recounted at the dinner table, it struck me that this is just what God wants for us as our Heavenly Father. He wants us to want whatever He wants - “Your will be done, oh Lord.” We talked briefly about it at the table last night and discussed some of the things that God wants - for those who don’t know Him to know Him, being kind and caring with one another, respecting parents and others, etc. It was a lovely discussion.

But more than a discussion, it is also a prayer - that as a Mom, a wife, a child of God - that I would want what God wants, no more, no less. May God bless me with that attitude more and more every day.

Over the past few months, we have gotten hooked on a British TV show called “Scrapheap Challenge.” What, you may ask, is Scrapheap Challenge? It is a competition program where several teams compete to build the challenge of the week in 10 hours made completely from what they can find in a scrapheap. For example, they have built planes, catapults, demolition machines, boats of various descriptions and the list goes on.

Anyway, often in the evening after dinner Geoff will put on an episode while laying on the couch to give his back some rest. The kids have taken to the show too and they love sitting with Geoff on the couch. Tonight, as the Scrapheap Challenge music began, they both yelled out, “I’m going to sit in MY special spot” - each of them surrounding Geoff for cuddles during the challenge. How precious!

On Monday, we returned from a lovely almost 2 weeks in the USA. We stayed on the west coast this time around which is very unusual for us. Normally we do try to get back to Rochester, but with limited time, we stayed in CA.

The purpose of our trip was to participate in Carrie’s childhood friend’s wedding (Carrie - bridesmaid, Daniel - ring bearer, Linnhe - flower girl, Geoff - kid control during ceremony ;-)). And then we tagged on a holiday/vacation with Carrie’s family post wedding. We went up to Yosemite - somewhere Geoff has always wanted to go - and spent a lovely 2 1/2 days there. We definitely want to go back. It would have to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.

All in all it was a lovely break, holiday and time with family. I’m sure that we’ll get some photos of the trip online soon and perhaps some more details. But for now, I’m off to deal with jetlag (ie go to bed)!

We’ve been experiencing some problems with our regular email out newsletter. To fix this we’ll be writing them here and you will be able to subscribe via email to it.

Firstly I have to set a few things up before I can enable the email address sign up. Stay posted.

Well today, out of the blue, Linnhe announced to me that she wanted to be a big girl and sleep without her dummy (pacifier for those in the US) anymore. It is something that we have talked about for awhile - that big girls don’t sleep with dummies - but Linnhe has been a bit resistant to the idea.

Three weeks or so ago, I forgot to stick her dummy in her preschool bag for their nap/rest time, but she did ok without it. From that point, we dropped it from preschool. After she told me that she wanted to get rid of them today, I thought for sure she would change her mind when it actually came to throwing them out.

But tonight, after brushing teeth and before bed we talked about it again and she took all 4 and happily threw them in the rubbish bin. I promptly took the rubbish bag out to the big rubbish bin to save temptation if she thought she wanted to change her mind.

At bedtime she got into bed and didn’t ask for them at all or give any indication of regret. She just went straight to sleep. I am almost completely flabbergasted that it was that easy. We’ll see if she sleeps through the night tonight without dramas!

I am so proud of my big girl!