Change the World

I believe there is a difference between dessert, that which requires dishes and silverware, and a treat, grab and go type confections, not requiring dishes or silverware. Some people use the terms interchangeably, but not I. I have been baking since I was ten years old. I started with the basics, brownies, cookies, muffins, etc.

When I was twelve I made my first peach pie. I gave it to some friends who had our family over for dinner. They raved about it, they loved it, and they couldn’t believe I made a PIE! I didn’t understand. I knew how to read, I knew fractions, and I knew how to turn on the oven. What was the big deal? It didn’t even take that much time.

That is when I started baking regularly. Think Monica’s, from Friends, Friday nights as a teenager. I baked anything and everything. I loved trying new recipes, rarely making the same thing twice. I don’t really believe in “The Best (fill in the blank)” recipe. Why limit yourself to doing the same thing, the same way all the time? I have many favorite brownie, pie, and chocolate chip cookie recipes. No one dessert/treat is appropriate for every event.

But, I digress, this really isn’t a discussion on confectionery categories or their appropriate settings, this is supposed to be about my vision for changing the world, which takes us back to my baking. I would bake pies, cookies, anything, and everything. Baking is elusive to some people, but I never understood that perspective. I have always believed and been driven by the philosophy “if you can read, you can bake.”

I had been baking for more than ten years when I experienced by first real baking failure. I tried making caramel. I followed the directions, and it was a disaster! I just didn’t understand. I did exactly what I was supposed to do, as always, and it didn’t work out. I finally understood why some people viewed baking as difficult. If this had happened the first time I tried baking, or even the second, I probably wouldn’t try again. I would label myself as “Not able to bake.” And move on, to activities at which I excelled. Since I was a confident baker, at that point, it didn’t deter me, but I did learn a very big lesson, one that explained many experiences in my life. Which is, that which is easy for me, is not easy for everyone. When I started baking, it just worked, it was delicious. When I was in school and I learned things I understood. I went home and did my homework and turned it in. It was so obvious to me. But what is easy and/or obvious to me, is not easy and/or obvious to everyone.

The inverse is true as well. I didn’t know how to make friends. I didn’t know what people “talked” about. I felt alone, and lonely, but I was seen as strong, smart, and capable. I didn’t feel strong, smart, or capable. Since that is what I was expected to be, I pretended. I did the things, acted the way, and pursued the path that would make me look those things, without truly understanding that I was composed of those things and didn’t need to try so hard.

Just being me, and sharing myself, my thoughts, my perspective, truly can, and will impact others. Because life seemed so obvious, I took it for granted that everyone knew and understood what I did, in the way that I did. I see now that the way I process information and situations, is not the same as everyone else. What I see as obvious, is not obvious to others. And I also acknowledge that I do not see everything that others see. That I need to listen to, and learn from others, to fully develop as a person.

So the $10,000 question for the Toptal Scholarship for which this is written, is: Can one person change the world? There are many people throughout time who have made an impact. Famous, and infamous, people who are inspiring, soulful, horrible, and/or evil. We study them, we look at their actions, influence, and power, and we do what? Hopefully, it changes who we are, the path we are on, and the choices we make. Everyone, famous, infamous, or not, has the power to change the world for at least one other person. Sometimes, that famous person did their great deeds because of the influence of a person nameless to history. My goal is not necessarily to have my name is history books, but it has always been, that when my name is mentioned, it is with respect and appreciation because of the influence and positive change that I left in lives of those with whom I have interacted. My vision to change the world, is to become the most developed, accepting, positively impactful person I can be. So that my influence ripples, spreads, and permanently marks my path through the world. To become that person I need to grow in my strengths. I love learning, and I love improvement. I studied supply chain management in my undergraduate program. The principles of reducing waste, eliminating errors, full support from leadership, and continuous improvement, truly resonate within me. There is always opportunity for improvement, and errors to eliminate.

In my current position we have inadequate tools for performing the job. The company has goals and no way to measure the success of the goals. I believe that the tools I want to develop will allow the employees to exceed every goal. I understand though, that what I see as obvious, others do not notice at all. My perspective of continuous improvement, process evaluation, and data driven decisions, are not the conclusions of others. How do I show the benefits and return on investment, the improvement in productivity and reduction in cost when I don’t know how to develop the tools, analyze the data, and eliminate waste from processes that I know not how to map. That is what I am learning in my graduate program so that I can be an effective asset in my company. Combined with the education, I know that I need guidance. I need to have a mentor of whom I can ask questions. Especially since in my current position, the obvious to me is not obvious to others, they often do not understand the questions and inferences I make that would lead to improved productivity and lower costs. I know that I can make an impact, that I can change the world, starting at my current company, by applying my perspective, education, and principles, and that I can influence and impact those around me to accomplish my goal to make a positive, lasting impact on all those with whom I interact.

My Free Grandfavers

"My free grandfavers gave me these boards and told me I could paint them." That is how Gavin validates the things he says "My free (three) grandfavers (grandfathers) told me..." They often give him permission to do things - "They said I could go rollerskating" - or permission to not do things - "My free grandfavers said I don't have to go to bed." Mostly they just tell him things, "My free grandfavers told me that the sky is green, so it is!" Gavin has been the most interesting kid. When he was two he had an imaginary friend named Tootie. I think he got it from Yo Gabba Gabba, but he insists that Tootie is real. When I asked him what Tootie's mom's name was he said "Toot-a-loot-a-loo!" in a very sing-song voice. I am sure there will be more updates about his free grandfavers. They come up a lot.

Just hanging out

Life has been anything but exciting. We have just been muddling through (that's for you mom! he he). Dallin goes to school every day and Sophie has dance class once a week. She is still enjoying that. Dallin got an excellent report card this trimester. His teacher says he is at or beyond where he needs to be and as soon as he masters the skills he will start getting 4's on his report card. He got all 3's though. At his parent/teacher conference all she wants him to work at is being nicer to others and in particular to the girls. I do try to work on that with him at home though.

So this week Gavin and I are alone at home. Dallin and Sophie got to go to Utah with Grandma and Papa Griffin. Sophie was very excited for that trip. She has been missing her aunts and uncles and cousins. It is her first big trip away from home. She has been away from us since Friday and she called last night at 10:30pm our time which was 11:30pm in Utah. She didn't really have much to say but I think she missed us. She isn't usually up so late. We haven't heard from Dallin on the other hand. He was a little apprehensive about going without Eric or I but now that he is there he loves being with his cousins. I knew he would, he just needed to get through actually leaving us. When I left him in Oroville he was on the verge of coming home and he was so sweet. He said "I just want to do both, I want to go home with you and I want to go to Utah." It was cute. I am glad he chose to go though. 

Gavin and I haven't stayed too busy. I took pictures of him today because I have been getting a lot of comments about how big he is and more surprising to me is the comments about how much he looks like me. At first I thought it was a fluke because it was coming from people who don't know Eric but even people who know us both really well have been saying it. It is different for me though because Dallin has always looked just like Eric. It is weird having a boy that has some of me in him. Anyway, here are the pictures. 

Gavin is doing a lot lately. On Saturday the 28th he did a complete from back to tummy roll. He has been working on it for a while but could not figure out how to get that arm out from under him. But finally he did it. Right now though he is at a funny place. He can see things and I can tell he wants it but he doesn't know how to get it. Like, he sees his bottle and I can tell he wants it but he doesn't know how to reach his hand out and grab it yet. It is kind of cute. It will be fun to see how he develops over the next couple of weeks. He is a great baby though. Although  this morning he decided to get up at 4:15am and has kept me up ever since...not a happy mommy. Oh well, we both look forward to Dallin and Sophie coming home.

French Baguette

Ok another post on my baking endevours. This week I tried a French Baguette from my same baking cookbook as last week. It was interesting. The process doesn't take as long, which was nice. The dough for the baguettes was a lot softer. I liked working with it a lot more. Although I should have known, nothing about British food has ever been appealing to me so obviously a French recipe would be more appealing. I can't say I didn't enjoy the British recipe from last week, it really was good, but definitely to compare at least the preparation, I liked making the baguettes more...anyway, back to the bread. It made three loaves of bread and it was good. Not as dense as last week but definitely not as light as a store bought loaf. In the book it says that it is hard to properly make this bread in a home oven. You just can't get a high enough temperature in a home oven, or the humidity. I tried though and I was happy with the results. I really do marvel at baking. All you need is flour, yeast and water, maybe throw in a little salt, and you can make so many different things depending on the amounts, the time and the technique. It is fascinating to me, although I am pretty easily amused. Haha

Action Packed Weekend

It started Friday with dinner and a sleepover for Dallin's birthday. He invited some friends over and we had pizza and watched Wall-E. In the middle of it all I left and went to my scrap club, which I love!

Saturday we got up and went to the primary quarterly activity. The kids had so much fun. They had breakfast and got to play games. After that I took the kids to Jungle Playland, great place!, while Eric went to get a new piano. We have great friends who helped him move it and it was a deal because it was freeeeeee! Here he is unloading the piano from the truck... yeah, via remote control, which he says is the "only" way to move a piano! It is a great player piano. I guess the thing didn't even work but within an hour of getting it home my fantastic husband who doesn't know anything about pianos, let alone player pianos, had it fixed and it plays beautifully. People who know stuff tell me it needs to be tuned but my undiscerning ears thinks it sounds great. So far we only have one piano roll: "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans." As you can see, the kids absolutely love it.

Later that night we were supposed to go to dinner at a friend's house but she had other visitors stop by and it got late so we rescheduled and lucky for us our friends the O'Neils stopped by with their beautiful twin daughters and we got to hang out with them for a while. It was really nice because we haven't had many chances to hang out with them since they got the girls.

Then on Sunday we went to church. I was asked last minute to substitute Dallin's class. I was kind of bummed because I had actually read the Sunday School lesson and I love Charles' lessons, but it was ok. At least I got to learn on my own a little bit. I taught the kids a lesson on repentance. I don't think they heard much of what I said though. It is a very easily distractable age and there was one girl and five boys in the class. I do love their regular teacher though. She has a way with them. Dallin loves her too. Then after church I got to have a nap, Eric had a presidency meeting, is it terrible that I have already started counting down, well the months, till he reaches his 3 year mark as president? I believe 3 years is the norm for a calling like his but I know that nothing is definite. I don't know why I am counting down, I really don't mind him having the calling. He gets a lot out of it and I think he does a great job leading his quorum. Anyway, after the nap and the meeting we had the Shoops and the Prasads over for dinner. It was lots of fun. I hope I didn't dissapoint too much in what I served. I just did Hawaiian haystacks. It isn't my favorite and I consider anything with a Campbell's soup in it to the the antithesis of gourmet but Eric loves it and it is really easy. We love hanging out with friends. I would redo my teenage years of having very few friends for this any day. We have so many wonderful friends that I have a hard time figuring out who to invite over and I often get overwhelmed when I want to invite everyone at the same time. I love the house we are in now though because we can have BBQ's in the summer and overflow into the adjacent park. Then I really can invite everyone and still have space.

Anyway, we ended our Sunday in the most perfect way. After our friends left we turned on the player piano and danced. Eric danced with Sophie and I danced with Dallin and Gavin watched us all from the couch. It was wonderful and the kids were asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow. All in all I would say we had a pretty great weekend and my little baby, my very first is now 6 years old. Can you believe it?!

These are just some random pics of Sophie and Gavin that I took while I had the camera out to take pictures of the piano today. I didn't have the batteries charged to take pictures of Dallin's party. I know I am terrible huh?

You don't shoot people!

Yes, that is what I have told my son since he got his first toy gun. I don't mind toy guns, I don't think there is anything wrong with them but I do think that they shouldn't be pointed at people. So the other day after a long day and dance class and trying to do dinner, I hear behind me Dallin pretend shooting me and I turn to see him pointing a little plastic gun at me. Now, I was quite proud of myself because I didn't get angry, but I did know that I needed to dispose of the gun permanently. I needed to teach him a lesson that he wouldn't forget. So I quickly weighed my options. 1) throw it in the garbage...no because he would just take it right out. 2) take it out to the outside garbage can for a permanent throw away...no, then I would have to put on my shoes, and go out in the cold and I don't know if it would have the impact I am going for. 3) destroy the gun...bingo! So I calmly took the gun from him and threw it as hard as I could on our hard tile floors, yes the ones that have caused the casualty of most of our dishes in the 8 months we have lived here. That was it! That did the trick. The gun shattered into 3 large, unfixable pieces. My son, stallwart(sp?) as he is, didn't really blink. He just went over and tried to put it back together, you can't keep him down long. After a couple of minutes of unsuccessfully trying he walked into the kitchen and said "You broke my gun." And I said "Yup." This was offensive to him finally...Now fastforward to dinner. Dinner is always a tough time for Dallin. Food isn't that important to him and he doesn't usually like to eat, so that night when he decided to not eat dinner Eric tried to get him to eat. When Eric tried to ask him why he wasn't eating Dallin broke down "Mom broke my gun and she threw my axe out the window!" he said tearfully. Now here I must digress. About a year ago we were heading home from my parents house. We weren't far out of town and he got upset at me while I was driving and he threw this little fiberglass axe at me. It didn't have any sharp edges and it was really light but it threw me off while I was driving and I was mad, first that he threw it at me and also because of the fit he was throwing. Once again I knew I had to teach him a permanent lesson. That time though I was mad. I told my sister to roll down her window and I chucked the axe. Now, don't get me wrong, I know I shouldn't litter. I go out of my way to not litter but this time I just did it. And I don't regret it either. Now back to present day. I haven't been good at making a point when it comes to Dallin. A lot seems to go in one ear and out the other but I believe he actually learned lessons from having his axe thrown out the window and having his gun broken. I am curious though to see if these will be so traumatic that he will still speak of them when he is 30...

Of bread and valentines

I have been super bored lately. The house has been fairly clean, although I have been neglectful of the laundry, and I have just had nothing to do. With all this time on my hands I have taken up surfing Stampin' Up demonstrator's blogs. There are so many creative people out there. Hence of course, the previous post of the Ghirardelli boxes. Anyway, today I made valentines from the template found here http://paperpleasing.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/quick-valentine-gifts.html . Yes I am ghetto and I don't know how to do a link in my text. Anyway, here is my version. I found these a couple of days ago and I have lamented not having the same supplies but I decided to just make do with what I had and I was pleasantly suprised to be able to make my own without buying anything except the candy to go inside. I even had the plastic bags to put the candies in!

So that was today, on V-day while my husband, who planned a date night last night, was out at our accountant's house getting our taxes done. Two days ago though, in the throws of boredom I decided to bake. Now, I love to bake. I love to eat what I bake too and that has left me with about 60lbs to lose so I am trying a new route. I made an artisnal bread. I know, a bunch of white flour isn't good for me, but it is still better, and takes more work than 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies. I opened my book called Complete Baking by Martha Day. I love this cook book. Almost everything I have tried I love, and better than that they have a color picture for every recipe. So I opened up to the "International Breads" section and chose British Poppy-Seeded Bloomer, mainly because I had everything in the pantry for it. Now I have never HAD a British Poppy-Seeded Bloomer so I am not sure if it turned out proper but I think it tasted good. It had the consistency of a sourdough round but without the sourdough taste. So it was pretty dense but it was light at the same time. I made Sophie an egg salad sandwich on it and it was wonderful. I really enjoyed the process, all 10 hours of it. I definitely have to work on my kneading and loaf forming skills. I also think I should have left it to cook just a little longer.