Recipe for The Best Mother's Day Ever

Ok, it's not a recipe at all. I lied. Just needed a place to write things down and not lose them ...

I had the most awesome Mother's Day this year. 

Earlier in the week James and the kids asked what I wanted for Mother's Day, and while I was tempted to ask for the kitchen floor to get mopped, or for a box of See's candy, I decided I'd really like to go for a drive and have a picnic in the mountains, which I knew would end up in James and the kids going for a hike. I let him know that I wanted to opt out of said hike and lay in the grass and read a book. 

Alone. 

(Well, me and Jack, anyway.)

Saturday we had to take the kids to their Endangered Species Faire in Chico for them to parade around with their endangered species puppets they made at school. It was rainy and dark and since we'd all been sick we slept in so late I assumed we weren't going. By the time everyone voiced their desire to go, we were running late and I was stressed about the probability of my cough getting worse, having the baby get cold and wet and possibly succumbing to our germ fest, and just the task of packing up everything we would need and getting everyone out the door. But we got there at the perfect time, we all had fun, and we didn't stay too long. 

Before we left Chico James took me to See's (as he had told me he was going to but I think I really didn't believe) to get a Mother's Day box of chocolates. 

Which meant we ALL went in. 

The day before Mother's Day. 

Yup, it was slightly ridiculous in there, and each of the kids were quietly hoping (outloud) to get their OWN box of candy, which was adorable, pitiful, and annoying all at the same time.

(It's MOTHER'S DAY not kid's day!) 

James hates going in stores, and he hates spending money, so I knew how incredibly thoughtful this was of him, and I loved him for that even more than I loved getting to have my favorite chocolates. 

When we got home the plan was to clean up the house so we could have a fun day on Sunday. That sorta worked. A bit. It was just a little too much and the kids kinda wanted to do anything BUT that, so they all did a little and then disappeared. 

(Or I had to remind them that they needed to disappear if they weren't cleaning up.) 

James and I got derailed because the kitchen sink, dishwasher, and washing machine got backed up from Sam dumping pine shavings down the sink (only because he's been so responsible in taking care of the chicks' water every day) and the laundry room got flooded. So we spent a LONG time working on that and thought we might even have to call a plumber. 

(Like later in the week, NOT on the Saturday evening before Mother's Day.)

$$$

But in the end my awesome hubby not only fixed it, but also 

MOPPED THE KITCHEN AND LAUNDRY ROOM FLOOR, 

which is ALWAYS an amazing gift for me. And even though the house didn't get completely clean, their effort did make a difference that I appreciated.

Since we planned to go on a picnic after church the next day, I went to Savemart after the kids went to bed to buy way too much picnic food, and in an effort to save my "good" chocolate from my adorably pitiful children, I went to Walgreens to get them each their own Mother's Day box of chocolate that they would be welcome to gorge themselves on. 

The last few days I've gotten lots of "I love you's" and "You're the best Mommy ever's" from the kids whenever they remembered that Mother's Day was coming up. During the week Jonas had asked me if Michael's would have any heart shaped paper, and I noticed him trying to cut out a heart on Saturday which must not have met his high standards because he later abandoned it on the couch. 

And on Saturday when we were walking through the parking lot to See's, Sam had his last $10 out, all ready to pay for my special chocolate.

Sunday was my first day back at church since Jack was born. When we were getting ready Jonas quietly came in from the back yard and wordlessly handed me a red rose. (Literally JUST the rose.) He plucked it right off the top of the stem because he couldn't figure out how to pick it with all those thorns. I tried to figure out a way to put it in my hair or pin it on myself like a corsage, but there wasn't even enough stem to do that so it's perched on top of my old bottle of "Green's Lung Restorer" that I use for a vase. The look on his face when he handed it to me was just the best. One of those you can never capture with a camera. He was very serious and gallant about it with just the tiniest hint of a shy but proud smile in one corner of his mouth. 

Jack was just the cutest little thing in his white shirt, tie, and hat. He was the best behaved little baby ever all through church and I'm still basking in the illusion that he will stay that way forever. 

(lalalalalala ... I don't want to hear any different.) 

Sad I didn't have time to take a picture of him. Next week.

Another picture I NEEDED was the heart-aching cuteness of seeing Daddy and Soraya holding hands and walking to church together. (I elected to drive the van and the boys hopped in with me.) Soraya wore her black and white polka dot dress that she's just barely starting to grow out of so it's gotten short enough that it has that little-girl-from-the-60's look to it. Both of them were carrying their scriptures and you could tell even from behind that Soraya was happily chatting away with Daddy until she saw us and her face lit up as she began running and tugging Daddy along to race us. 

We were late enough that we took the sacrament in the foyer and it wasn't until we sat down and got settled in the chapel that we looked up and realized all the primary kids were on the stand ready to sing their Mother's Day songs. I told the kids, "That's ok, you can just sing to me here." That's when Sam humbly apologized for not paying attention when they were teaching them that song. But I did hear him singing softly to me the other two songs that he must have been paying attention for. 

Another image I wanted to burn into my brain was Sam holding Jack in Sacrament meeting, and seeing Jack so comfortable with his gentle big brother that he fell asleep on his shoulder. 

After Sacrament meeting James and the rest of the elders quorum passed out chocolate bars to all the mothers and my renegade bearded husband slipped me an extra one. 

The kids drew pictures of me in primary which they excitedly ran up to show me. Sam apologized that he was being silly with his friend and drew me with pink hair. Then he scolded Jonas for throwing away the picture that he had drawn of me. Jonas insisted it wasn't good. 

"She doesn't care, Jonas. She likes it anyway!" 

When Sam learned that Jonas didn't rip it up but merely crumpled it and threw it away, he and Jonas took off to dig it out of the garbage for me. They returned to announce that the young men had already dumped the trash cans and when they went out to the dumpster to see if they could find it there was dog poop in it. 

(And I was thankful for the gift of children NOT covered in dog poop.)

Throughout the day I got so many of those sweet "I love you's" from Soraya - those really good ones where something just stops her and out of the blue she looks into my eyes for a good second or two and puts her hand on my cheek or grabs my hand to snuggle and says with so much feeling, "I really love you, Mommy." 

After we got home James hurriedly replaced the exhaust hangers on the truck that we broke on our last 4-wheeling adventure, gassed up, and packed not only my comfy lounge chair, but also the pop-up pavilion for a super princessy picnic (and also because it was so cloudy it looked like it might rain!) We drove out past Butte Meadows and Jonesville through an amazing amount of fog. James had planned to take me to the top of the summit where there was a sunny open area and a gorgeous view. As we got close to the top we did our best to 4 wheel through patches of snow until we got high enough that the snow completely covered the road and we decided to turn back. But we didn't have to go far. We had passed a nice little flat spot near a creek that we doubled back to for our picnic. We were starving by then and just ate in the back of the pickup since we realized we didn't bring anything waterproof to put under our blanket and the ground was very wet from the rain we'd gotten the last few days. The kids were thrilled with their miniature sparkling cider bottles and giant boxes of chocolates (as was I!) ;) After everyone had full bellies James took the kids around to explore, and Jack and I lounged on my favorite chair (still in the bed of the pickup) and I absorbed myself in the tail end of "East of Eden." Jonas picked me a Dandelion to put in my hair. Sam found an old bottle of Red Stripe Beer that made James and I laugh remembering the commercials for it. Sam didn't know why it made me so happy, but he was thrilled to be the one to have found it for me and bring it home so I could have a new vase. The kids fell asleep on the way home and James and I enjoyed the very foggy (and quiet) drive together in the dark.

Just so I don't gloss over things and remember them too rosy, the kids were still their normal selves. 

We were asked several times about the exact length of the drive to get to this mystical picnic. (Obviously so they knew exactly how much they should plan to whine on the way.) 

Sam was peeved that Soraya got to sit in the front. 

He and Jonas couldn't keep their hands to themselves in the back and had to be reminded to not be annoying every 7 1/2 minutes. 

The drive was "too long" and everyone complained about being hungry, but Jonas literally thought he was going to DIE and was practically hyperventilating back there until we'd gotten so far away from civilization that we let him sit in the pickup bed and he forgot all about the fact that he was so close to death by starvation. 

Then Soraya was heartbroken because SHE wanted to sit in the back, TOO. 

"I won't fall out, Daddy! Jonas can hold on to me! He's strong enough. PLEEEEAASE!" 

After our picnic, when Daddy was leaving on the first hike Soraya decided at the last minute that she wanted to stay with me. After a couple minutes she realized she actually DID want to go with Daddy, but they were already gone, so she whined and screamed and cried during most of that time I was looking forward to as being peaceful alone-time bliss. I, like the good mother I am, did my best to ignore her and just enjoy my book and chocolates, while making sure she didn't wander off so far looking for Daddy that she became bear bait. 

Jonas had stinky gas, which caused the inevitable speculation of ... "Who did that?" ... "Do you need to go to the bathroom?" ... "That's stinky!" ... "Don't do that any more!" ... "Jonas, not again!" 

Somehow Sam decided that the clouds gave him a headache and also made him car-sick, as did the smell of the chips we gave to Jonas to keep him from dying at the hands of his cruel parents who starved him. 

Soraya jabbered and peppered us with questions constantly to the point that it was obvious she simply couldn't cope with not hearing the sound of her own voice.

Not that I'm complaining about ANY of those things. It was literally one of the BEST days ever - definitely my best Mother's Day ever. I just wanted to remind myself that my children weren't body-snatched and replaced with perfect little stepford alien children for the day. They were themselves. The same amazingly wonderful kids they are every day. All those good things they did that I wanted to somehow pin down and capture forever - they weren't unusual in any way. That is them. All the time. Every day. All that thoughtfulness my husband oozed - that's him. All the time, actually. Just having a day to label that it was all for me helps to see it as a gift, I guess, when really he would do that and more on any given day (and has many times.)

Anyway, just wanted to save a little of it in some way, even though there were no pictures to put on facebook and brag about the perfect life I somehow got to have. 

Hashtag: "blessed" (or something equally obnoxious.) ;)

My First Shepherd's Pie

I made it through my entire childhood without ever eating a Shepherd's Pie. I don't even think I'd ever heard of such a thing until my 20's. It didn't look like I was missing much. I'm not a fan of canned peas, and those mushy little green things seem to pop up a lot in that dish. And, I'm sorry, but spreading mashed potatoes on top of hamburger does not a pie make. But now I've got a husband and two little boys that are the epitome of meat and potatoes kind of men. Making mashed potatoes ALWAYS wins me Mom-points.

So a few days ago when I had a package of ground beef in the fridge waiting to be used and my finicky pregnant belly decided it was no longer craving the spaghetti it wanted when I bought the ingredients, I thought I might give this Shepherd's Pie thing a go. Maybe it's those prego taste-buds in full force, but I LOVED it, and wanted to make sure I saved my made-up recipe so I can make several casserole dishes to freeze before bun #4 makes its appearance, so here it is ...

MASHED POTATO LAYER
6 potatoes
6 ounces cream cheese
1/2 stick butter
splash of milk
salt

BEEF LAYER
1 pound organic lean ground beef
1 big package of mushrooms
1 purple onion
1 Tbsp crushed garlic
A little salt and pepper
1 can of corn (drained)
A TINY ribbon of ketchup
A few sprinkles of flour

Since I was making it up as I went along, I started by peeling and cutting the 6 potatoes I had left in the cupboard to get them boiling. Then I started sauteing the mushrooms in olive oil but realized I should have some onions in there, too! So I turned the heat down on the mushrooms, quickly chopped a purple onion, and then moved all the mushrooms to the edges of my cast iron skillet to put the onions in the middle where it would hopefully be hotter. I turned the heat back up, plopped some minced garlic in the middle and sprinkled salt and pepper all around.

Had I thought this through a little more, I SHOULD have chopped the carrots I was thinking of throwing in FIRST so they could be boiling, too. But I didn't, so our pie was carrot-free. I also thought about chopping up some of the zucchini I had bought for the spaghetti, but that never actually made it in, either. Next time we can try a version more heavy on the veggies. This time I just threw in a can of corn and called it a vegetable.

Once it was all cooked, I squirted in a VERY stingy ribbon of ketchup. I didn't want it to taste ketchup-ey, and there's a fine line there. Don't screw it up. I also sprinkled in some flour a few times, stirring in between, to make sure I soaked up any liquid (there wasn't much) but I think this helped to sort of hold everything together well.

Once the potatoes were ready, I got the idea to use up some of the giant tube of organic cream cheese we had gotten at Costco too long ago. I used half a tube (should have been about 6 ounces) This made a HUGE difference in the taste. It made it tangy and thick and perfect for a topping asking for pie cred. (If I ever find myself in the middle of making this and DON'T have cream cheese, try sour cream instead.) I also added butter because, butter. Maybe a half a stick? And just enough milk to stir it up, but I wanted it thick. Oh! And salt! Don't forget the salt.

I decided to just leave the meat in my giant cast iron skillet and spread the potatoes on top. Then I started looking up exactly how long and what temperature you're supposed to cook a Shepherd's Pie. 375 for an hour just seemed ridiculous to me. Why? Everything's already cooked! I was WAY too hungry for that. So I ended up pulling it out of the oven after about 10 minutes and putting it under the broiler for 5. It could have even been less than that. It gave the mashed potato top an impressive brown ribbon crust and I called it done.

For some reason Jonas was not a fan because of the mushrooms. Not sure when he decided he didn't like mushrooms, but he better get over that quick or he's gonna be a hungry boy. Soraya didn't turn her nose up at it, so we'll call that a win. Everyone else loved it, and to me it felt like it needed to be a dinner in heavy rotation. Pretty sure I could eat it for any meal of the day.

Maybe this baby will be a lumberjack.

Soraya Sophie Sprouts

(Just so I don't confuse myself years down the road ... I wrote this when Soraya was 8 months old, but just never posted it. Probably because I never found the time to attach pictures to it. So that date up there, obviously, is wrong. ;)

My sweet little Soraya Sophie. I should tell you how much I love you. I should tell you what a joy you are. I should tell you about all the sweet little baby-things you do; like how when you wake up from a nap your face is nothing but pure joy. When you see me in the doorway with your eyes still all sleepy and shiny, your smile is just literally bursting. And after a second or two when you just can't contain it anymore, you fall into the fluff of the pillows and blankets, buried in smiles and wait for our kisses to come for your cheeks and that sweet spot on your neck that makes you squeal with laughter. You pop up a few more times and repeat this snuggly dance for everyone that comes to see "the baby is awake!?!"

But what I need to tell you; the reason I had pry myself away from your sweet, sweaty, dreamy snuggling at 3:30 in the morning when all hope of falling back to sleep without getting these thoughts out of my head and passed on to you was gone, is that ...

I hope you don't grow up hating your name.

We tried SO hard to find your name. We prayed. We read. We thought. We discussed. And our discussions usually melted into the nonsense of ...

"Let's just name her Onion."

I don't want to say I hate my name. I really don't when I see it on paper all sprawled out and official, Donielle Elaina Bebo Holden, but when I hear it just thrown out all casual-like, I sorta do. When I hear "Donielle" it doesn't feel like me anymore. It feels like some awkward former-self, struggling to find her way; find who she really is, and making lots of stumbles and mistakes along the way. When I hear "Ellie," it just feels like Me now. It feels like the girl who figured out how to be comfortable in her own skin; who scraped up enough confidence together to fake it; to be the one to go out of her way to say 'hi' first, to serve others even when I don't think there's a thing in the world I can do to make a difference, to do scary things; the girl that married your daddy, and the girl whose attention is stolen anytime she hears a little voice say "Mommee" anytime, anywhere.

Your daddy and I always loved the name Sariah from the time we first started throwing out names for some future babies way back a million years ago when we were teenagers. Babies.

When I was pregnant with Sam I remember making the drive home from work one day; just a day or two before we were going to have the ultrasound to see if our little biscuit was a boy or a girl. Names had been dancing around my head for months and in a rare moment of clarity I felt,
"If he's a boy, he's Sam. If she's a girl, Sariah."

When I was just very first pregnant with Jonas I spent those first couple weeks SURE that baby was a girl. All I could think about were girl names and the familiar memory of Sariah kept coming back. There is a reporter we hear most days on NPR with that name, so one day I looked her up and found her name was not actually Sariah, but Soraya (Sarhadi Nelson.) Soraya??? With an O? I'd never thought of it that way before. This opened up a whole new patch of possibilities and I found there are a million spellings for this very ancient name.

Over the years your daddy and I have gotten in the habit of watching a lot of foreign films. In the ones from the middle east there are often Sorayas. It seems to be a pretty darn common name in many countries from Iran to Iraq to Israel and even scattered around South America. Your daddy and I don't have a very good history of being decisive on names, but when you were in my belly after one evening of watching a movie where a Soraya was a main character, your daddy tentatively asked, "How about Soraya?" And my response was just, "Yes." And I felt it with all my heart. It was already the name that kept floating back to me and I had hoped he hadn't changed his mind about liking it. It was decided.

Just not the spelling.

Or the middle name.

Those would be the agonizing decisions that we would wrestle with until the last possible moment before we fled the hospital with you.

One summer day before you were born, on our last date together "before the new baby comes," your brothers spent a few hours with Gramma and Grampa Bebo at FunderLand and your daddy and I went to the temple and out to lunch. As we sat together at Olive Garden drinking strawberry lemonade and filling up on salad and breadsticks, I took the rare opportunity of having an uninterrupted conversation with daddy to pin him down on the spelling of this new girl-baby's name. On a scratch piece of paper plucked from my purse I began scrawling out all the possible variations and explaining to him what I knew about them ...

Seraiah is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. Always as a man's name, and I think once as a place. (It was vetoed by Daddy, as was Serraiah and any other possible variant. The 'Se' just didn't look right.)

Sariah. The tried and true Book of Mormon version. After all these years of seeing the Arabic and Persian spellings, Sariah just seemed so plain now, so American. I talked to a couple people who knew Sariahs in real life and read the comments of Sariahs on all the baby-naming websites, and something I heard a lot is that very, very often when people first look at the name their eyes don't see the 'i' and they just say, "Sarah." Or they think the 'i' is a typo and remove it to be helpful. Since I was the little girl whose every trophy or certificate of any sort of accomplishment was changed to read "Danielle Bebo" by some well-meaning person along the way, I definitely did not want to saddle you with a name that is just one-letter-off of the norm.

Sorayah. I've always thought adding an 'h' on a name that ended in 'a' lended so much more of a breathy, feminine quality to it even though you just see it and don't say it. But in this case your daddy and I quickly agreed that the 'h' on the end made it look like a karate chop. "Hi-Yah!"

There was a Sorayeh in an Iranian movie we watched. A sweet little girl, and seeing her name over and over in the subtitles with that breathy 'eh' at the end made me like the exotic-ness of it. After reading "Funny in Farsi," (one of my favorite books) and seeing the names in so many Iranian films, I put together that it seems to be a pattern in Persian names to have 'eh' at the end where you would normally have 'ah.' I kinda liked it the more I got used to it, but your daddy didn't. He thought it looked weird. It was out. (I was fine with eliminating some of the unending choices!)

Saraiah. The Hebrew version. We liked this one. We really liked it. We knew a girl in highschool named Saraiah just long enough to be intrigued by her but not long enough to find out anything bad about her. She was a new girl. Her skin color was some unknown combination of ethnicities to give her this amazing mocha skin and long black coils of hair. She seemed a million years older than all of us. She held her head high and was untouched by the childish nonsense of adolescence surrounding her in those formica desk/seat combos.She was just so impossibly cool her parents HAD to have been hippies. (Not hippies like us, Punkin. The kind of hippie parents that go by their first names instead of "Mommy" and "Daddy," grow weed instead of tomatoes, and live like gypsies.)  I still think Saraiah is a beautiful name. We worried a little about the mess of vowels pouring out of the mouths of unsuspecting people who would have no idea how beautiful it was supposed to sound ... a-i-a-h ... I can just see it scrambling brains. It also seems so grown up. While you want your baby to have a beautiful name to grow into, you're also handed this tiny little baby; this sweet little person who is no bigger than a pet name for so many years. Some names just seem like so much to pin on a tiny little peanut. But this one was definitely in the running and I hated to finally let it go when we HAD to put SOMETHING on the birth certificate.

Soraya. This one had become so normal to us. It was both the Arabic and Persian version and seemed to be the most common spelling in the countries where people don't say, "how unusual" when they hear it. From all the research I had done it seemed like this was as close to the original as we could get without being the ancient Arabic grandmother of them all, Thuraya. (You're welcome, Sweetie.)

The spring of 2011 I planted your brothers a sunflower house in the garden. I had two packages of sunflower seeds that I alternated all the way around, "Cherry Rose" and "Soraya." Had I been the kind of mom I always think I want to be in my imagination, your baby announcements would have included a cute little packet of Soraya sunflower seeds for everyone who rejoiced at your birth to plant all over the country wherever they may be. (Had I truly been that mom that I imagine myself to be, your birth announcements also would have found their way into the mail instead of still sitting on my dresser 8 months later, but I digress.)

Soraya is also the Arabic name for Pleiades. If that is not an ancient, regal name I don't know what is. You are named after the stars, baby girl. A whole constellation. Yours is the name wise men gave to the brightness in the sky thousands of years ago.

Your daddy liked the phonetic simplicity of Soraya. It just makes sense. Much less flowery than Saraiah and easier to remember how to spell. Your Gramma Sherrie loved the spelling of Saraiah and was positive that everyone would pronounce Soraya as SoRAYa. I'm not sure what the verdict will be throughout the rest of your life, and while *most* people get it right, many people do try SoRAYa on their first attempt. (Although you've gotten your fair share of SaROYas, too. The whole world is going dyslexic.)

Even though you don't say the Ray in your name when you pronounce it, it's still there, and I kinda liked that. Your Great Grampa Ray passed away just 4 months before you were born. He knew you were coming and he knew you were a girl and I know he loved you already. When I said goodbye to him at the ICU (for what would turn out to be the last time) he held my hand for a long time sort of shaking it and patting it in his way. He had that happy look he gets in his eyes when you know he's feeling something and thinking about just maybe saying something, but since he's not one for saying much of the serious sort of stuff he just stayed like that for quite a while - holding my hand, patting it with his other hand, smiling at me and saying the sort of simple things like, "take care, now" ... "love you, too" ... "thanks for comin'" ... "drive careful" ... he patted his hand on my bulging belly and told me to "take care of that little one." A full-circle statement that made me feel truly grown-up, since he'd always called me "Little One."

After Sam was born it was always such a compliment to me that Grampa was proud of me for the kind of mom I was. He would just say little things, or nod his head and smile like I was doing a good job, but I heard from other people that he told them I was "just doing everything exactly right" and that I was a "good mother." Sometimes when he and great gramma would come to visit he would end up sitting at the nook in the kitchen watching me fix everyone a snack or get drinks and I could tell it made him happy. Like it reminded him of the good things in his childhood. He'd clip little comics about parenting from the newspaper to save for me, or little articles with tips he thought I might like. He'd ask me about the garden or canning and I knew he was proud of me. You would have stolen your grampa's heart, baby girl. I'm sure you have. I'm positive he makes this face a lot when he sees you.

So when the choice had to be made; when I had to just close my eyes and go with that inside part of me that just knows, you were Soraya. The sweet little simple name it seems no one has ever heard of that you can grow into and make into your own exotic, intriguing, royal name.

But the list for possible middle names was even longer ...

Soraya Eliana ... Since my middle name is Elaina I thought it would be nice to switch the 'a' and the 'i' around and pass it on to you in a kind of family history sort of way. Unfortunately it just seemed like too much of a flowery pretty-pretty-princess sort of name and I felt like it cheapened the beauty of each of the names. Daddy was never a fan either, so it was out.

Soraya July ... There's an artist/writer/poet/generally talented person with an awesome sense of humor named Miranda July that your Daddy really likes. He liked the way Soraya July sounded, but it didn't quite have enough of an emotional connection to really stick. Plus we were all pretty surprised you stayed cooking all the way to July and it would have been weird to name you that if you were born in June.

By the time you were born we were still left with four options ...

Soraya Meadow ... I've always loved the name Meadow and I never dreamed that your Daddy had become hippie enough over the years to like it, too, but he did.

Soraya Penny ... Your daddy came up with Penny, and earlier on this was his favorite. I worked on letting it grow on me, and it did. Your Gramma Sherrie loved how Penny Holden sounded - like you were holdin' a penny in your pocket. When you were born I tried hard to get daddy to say that this one was his favorite and I was totally ready to let him give you this sweet name, but he just kept saying he "didn't have a favorite." He "couldn't decide." He "liked them all."

Soraya Sky ... This was your Gramma Sherrie's favorite. Daddy and I really liked it, too. (Still in shock that my hippie-esque names are being approved by daddy!) I loved how it made Soraya sound like an adjective - like a color almost. In the end our only concern was that since we were saddling you with an unusual first name, we wanted to give you an easy, no-fuss middle name to fall back on just in case you wanted to opt-out.

And then there was Soraya Sophie. Soraya Sophie had been my favorite for months and it was even daddy-approved early on. I had been trying to find a sweet, simple, old-fashioned sort of name, almost a nick-name even to soften up the seriousness of Soraya. Effie, Tess, Elsie, Fern; nothing was quite right. But Sophie ... I am a sucker for alliteration. Then when I made an attempt to settle on a name with daddy BEFORE you were born, he mentioned that Sophie sounded a little like Sofa. Perfect. Just the mental image every girl wants conjured up at the mention of their name: a large piece of furniture.

So the day after you were born we found ourselves in the same predicament as we were when Jonas was born. Ya gotta name those babies before you can leave the hospital (and, oh, how we wanted to leave) or they end up with a 2 page birth certificate the rest of their life and you have to go through a formal name-change procedure.

When Jonas was born we narrowed it down to Jonas Henry or Jonas Gabriel and then we decided to ask Sam. He said Jonas Henry right away with no hesitation. (He liked the option of being able to call him Hank.) So we decided to do the same with you. We would let your brothers have a vote in the hopes of helping us decide. (At least they could help us narrow it down to two, right?) I asked them both separately over the phone, and both of them, without ANY hesitation, voted for Sophie. So it was settled.

They are very proud of your name, and when anyone asks,
"What's her name?"
"Soraya" is not an adequate answer.
They think everyone needs to know that your name is Soraya Sophie Holden. (They also sometimes insert the revelation that ALL of us in our whole family have the name Holden. Pretty cool, huh?)

So what recipe can I give you, baby girl, to make this memory stick? How about the food that I craved the most; that you craved the most when you were inside me.

Brussels Sprouts.

Now, hopefully you will have grown up eating these lovely little green balls often enough that you will love them, but let me tell you, for most grown-ups the thought of Brussels sprouts does not make their mouth water. Most of us have only ever had them boiled, and quite often they were the frozen grocery store variety.

Those were not the brussels sprouts for us, sweet girl.

What we wanted was that sweet carmel-ey goodness that comes from chopping those bad boys in half and sauteeing them in olive oil. With onions. And garlic. And sometimes even some bacon and mushrooms.

We ate these A LOT.

It will be interesting to see whether or not you like them when your big-girl-chewing-teeth come in. I may need to grab some next time we're at the store and let you nibble on some soon.

Soraya Sophie Sprouts

(There's probably better ways to do this, but I'll just tell you my made-up way.)

You'll need:

Fresh Brussel Sprouts

Olive Oil (unless you're opting to add bacon, then you can just use the bacon grease)

Chopped Onions - don't leave these out!

Garlic, Salt, Pepper

An optional sprinkling of chopped mushrooms is nice to sautee in there, too

Drizzle olive oil all over your sautee pan - you want it pretty much covering everywhere.

OR you can chop up a little bacon and cook that in the pan, then remove the bacon and cook your sprouts in the bacon grease.

Slice your brussel sprouts in half and if there's a hard part on the stem, trim that off, too.

After your oil is heated up good (medium/high heat) add in some minced garlic, throw in your chopped onions and start laying your brussel sprouts in the pan cut-side-down.

(Sometimes I would add in a little bit of chopped mushrooms, too, but the only real necessity is the onion.)

(If you don't have any fresh garlic you can always just sprinkle garlic powder over the whole bunch.)

You're gonna want to let them sit there for a bit. You want to let them get just a little darker than golden brown. For the first 2-3 minutes I would usually put a lid over the pan to help cook them all the way through, then I would start using tongs to peek at the underside of those sprouts for brownness.

Once you've got a nice carmel-ey brown on that side, then use your tongs to start turning them over to cook on the other side. You can kinda stir up the onions or other stuff you might have cooking in there every so often as needed, too.

Once they get a tad brown on the other side, you can be pretty sure they're cooked all the way through, so eat up while they're hot.

Make as many as you can fit in your pan, because they're almost as good the next day. You can mix 'em up in some rice for a yummy lunch. If there's not enough gooey carmel-ey flavor left in the pan you can stir in some butter or hummus or throw in a little corn.

(This is making my taste-buds sound pregnant, isn't it.)

We seemed to eat these sauteed sprouts as a side with salmon quite often, so my lunch the next day would be the last of the sprouts, salmon, and rice all mixed together. And now I'm hungry.

Christmas Card 2013

In true form, Christmas cards will not be going out on time this year. If this year proves to be anything like previous years, I will start sending them out around June, lose several before they make it in the mail, then lose my list of whose were actually sent before I give up and throw them in a shoebox. So here is the digital version for all my friends and family who would like to receive a Christmas update from The Holden Family free of tiny peanut butter finger and/or foot prints. (or worse.)

 

Merry Christmas!

(Or whatever Holiday is closest by the time you get this.)

At this point, I'm not even sure how many years I've missed doing a Christmas letter. Did I mention I've got 3 kids? (That excuse is sounding pretty tired to me, too, but it's all I've got.) So ... 2013 ... our big news is that JAMES GRADUATED!!! (There is just not a large enough font for that.) Just stating the number of years he has been going to school makes us sound ridiculously old. It's been our whole married life and all of our kids' lives! Finally, as of May 2013, we are DONE!

We got a slightly rude awakening this summer when we slowly realized that graduating with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, AND a minor in Sustainable Manufacturing Engineering, AND earning your Engineer In Training Certificate doesn't equal "awesome-engineering-job-and-big-bucks." Who knew, right? So after all these years of having a very focused plan, now we've sort of been in a little bit of a limbo with our plans, and that is pretty foreign to us. Every time we think we've found the direction we should take the door pretty much slams right in our face just as we try to walk through it.

Graduate School?

Um ... No.

 ... Moving for an awesome job?

Um ... No.

... How about this job?

Yeah, NO.

Ok, ... well ... let's buy this house.

NO!

Ok ... what about this hou-

NOOO!

So we're still a little confused about what our next step should be, but in the mean time James is enjoying working for a great company that loves him. He gets to do some engineering and we get to stay in Paradise which has been a happy surprise for all of us. We're learning that we don't necessarily have to be working towards the next big thing and to enjoy the pretty fantastic spot we're at in our lives right now.

Sam turned 6 in January. He has loved kindergarten and now first grade. Seven-years-old is just around the corner! *gasp* He's getting to be a big, responsible, amazingly helpful boy. He loves hiking. Especially hiking anywhere that he can ...

A: Climb on rocks, trees, etc.

and

B: collect cans to recycle for $$$.

He loves rocks and crystals, planets and space, inventing and building all sorts of things, and that baby sister of his has him wrapped around her little finger.

Jonas turned 4 in August. He's enjoying preschool two mornings a week. He has the same teacher that Sam did so it's been fun for them to talk about preschool together. Jonas has discovered that he loves to read and it's been fun to see him comprehend more and more and enjoy it. He keeps us laughing with his funny perspective on the world and will one day make me rich when I can get a book deal for his witty quotes.

Soraya turned 1 in July. Her first year of life she was the sweetest, EASIEST baby I have ever had the privilege of knowing. She is now making up for every bit of that in her second year. She is still sweet as pie. Easy, however, she is not. She is the most amazing climbing baby I have ever seen. If it was an Olympic sport I would be working on getting her a fake birth certificate for Rio, 2016. She loves her brothers almost as much as they love her. (Jonas, she loves torturing, but the love is there in those twinkly eyes when she steals something and begs him to chase her.) She loves pistachios, peanut butter straight from the jar (no utensils required), and she loves to sing. REALLY loves it. From the time she was a tiny baby she made it obvious that she loved when we would sing hymns at church. Now SHE'S the one singing them. She is one happy, confident, strong little girl and I am hoping she stays that way.

Seriously, I wish I could bottle the way Soraya says "Am! Am!" over and over when she steals my keys and tries to convince me that it really is time to pick up Sam from school ...

RIGHT NOW.

Or this un-spellable squeal she makes when she hears the door squeak and knows that DADDY IS HOME!

Or how she surprises me when she stops nursing for a second just to reach up and give me a kiss on the lips.

Or the way the boys look at her, and snuggle her, and take care of her, and teach her things.

Besides the mountains of laundry that can make me feel buried in things demanding my attention that I'd rather ignore, we truly are blessed with an abundance of laughter ... 

and happiness ... and joy ...
And dirty dishes. Also an astonishing amount of dirty dishes.

Wishing you a wonderful 2014!

Love, The Holden Family