Three Things

Three things: my musical life, my healthy treat life and a funny experience with Mom yesterday.

My musical life.  Anna and Gracie hate all of the songs that I play on the piano because I play them so much.  Of course, Anna is not one to talk.  She has this one song that she has played so many times.  I asked Mom the other day how long she has known it and she said, "I think a year."  So imagine how often she has to play it in order to keep it memorized for a year.  They also hate it when I sing.  I can get really carried away when I start singing.  I can't even sing when I do the dishes because I can't concentrate enough to get them done.  So, whenever I sit down at the piano or start singing both Anna and Gracie exclaim, "No!  Aliese, seriously, you've been singing all day!  I haven't even gotten on the piano.  Just stop!"  I never do, though. :)

My healthy treat life.  Mom, Lizzie, Danielle and a little bit of Amy are really into this healthy treat thing.  Mom and Lizzie will talk and exchange new recipes.  Mom does not make treats with sugar anymore.  She replaces it with coconut sugar, maple sugar, date sugar or honey.  She is always making new changes.  She also loves different grains.  She has been experimenting with spelt and she even made rice pancakes this morning (they had kind of a gooey texture).  And when a recipe is really great, like a brownie recipe with half spelt, half whole wheat and all coconut sugar, she has to change it again and add a bit of honey because it is cheaper than coconut sugar.  I have gotten into it, too, actually.  In fact, Mom had this idea to open a booth at a farmers' market where we would sell healthy treats.  We got really excited about it.  We talked about how we would have information about the grains and the replacements for sugar.  We really thought we would do it until we went to a farmers' market and talked to the people in charge about getting a booth.  You have to have a commercial kitchen and several different licenses.  Plus we would have to wait to get in.  They said it might take years.  So, oh well.

Okay, so now I've talked about how much Mom is into healthy treats, she was making some Texas sheet cake for a friend that she was going to go visit teach.  This friend is not into healthy treats so Mom made it not healthy for her.  So, she put in two whole cups of white sugar and two whole cups of white flour in.  It was so hilarious watching her measure it out.  It looked like she was cleaning up vomit or something, there was such an awful grimace on her face as she put the sugar and white flour in.  She just kept saying, "I feel like I'm poisoning them.  I'm supposed to be helping them."  It was really funny.

So there's the three things.  We have a busy week.  Lindsey is coming this week (Steve's daughter) and we will be going to the beach twice and Disneyland once so I'm sure there will be lots to post about!