homemade pizza attempt #1: fail

You pick your battles. Some things are not worth the fight.

Because it's all about priorities, I've decided pizza is worth fighting for. I've wanted to learn and eventually master making it from scratch for a long time and I'm excited to begin learning. I'm going to keep trying until I get it right. Or until we all get sick of pizza.

Round One was a pretty bad failure. It was my first try making anything with yeast, and I have no idea what I'm doing. When making pizza dough, it matters what temperature water you use so it interacts with the yeast the right way. But, how do you know when water is 130 degrees??? Do people just KNOW this stuff by feel?

I also learned the hard way that pizza sauce is NOT just tomato sauce from a can with a few spices thrown on top.

Thankfully Mark and the girls are forgiving pizza eaters and ate it up anyway.

(This is what pizza crust looks like when it has the density of a muffin:)

gem

When given the right activities, Meg can get in a happy zone where she is easygoing and really fun to be around. One of the most surefire ways to make her happy is to surround her with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. She LOVES hanging around with them!!

Making cookies with grandma is pure joy.


Meg's current passion is coloring and "writing". She is trying so hard to write words like "mom", "dad", and "Meg". It usually comes out looking like "GEM" with a lot of extra flair on the "e":


She is also my little helper. I ask her to "babysit" Claire while I go off for a minute to brush my teeth or take out the trash, and she will sweetly be singing or reading a book to Claire when I come back.

19 months

Katie is hilarious. She is continuously trying out new words, most of which we don't understand. We are learning her language, though: "goop" is "grape", "puck" is "cup", "kaa" is "Claire". She is into saying "yep" and "nope" for yes and no.

Whenever one of her sisters is crying, Katie does the funniest impersonation of them, putting her fists up to her eyes and saying, "wah, wah!" Not so funny for the crying sister.



Learning to use a spoon and fork. Somehow using a fork makes her happy to eat vegetables. Whatever works!

3 months

This year, I'm going to try to post an update of each girl each month. I'll start with my sweet Claire...

She is 3 1/2 months old already! She smiles, she laughs, she coos...she is a delight. Adding to my delight, she has started sleeping through the night.

Claire loves to hang out with her right arm raised straight up - it is so funny! Her hair is dark and crazy, her eye color can't be determined (dark blue? olive green??) and her skin is porcelain, true to Webb girl form. Not ideal for living in Florida, but we'll deal with it. I see many cute sunhats in our future!

your christmas was better than ours.

We got the stomach flu. On Christmas Eve...through the night...into Christmas morning.

We were in Jacksonville, so early on Christmas morning we had to pack up the car, including our still-wrapped presents, and drive on the empty interstate back home. I have always wondered what the people in cars stopped on the side of the interstate are doing, but now I know about the dreaded kid-throw-up-in-the-back-seat moment. Gross! And cleaning it up is so much worse when you are in the throes of it yourself. On the side of I-10. On Christmas morning.

On the bright side, I got to meet my two new nephews!! They were adopted from Moldova 3 weeks ago. They are beautiful, curious, energetic, and perfect. I am so excited to watch these boys grow up with my girls and it was so surreal to see these little guys toddling and crawling around.

Isaac and Katie (one of the very few pictures I took):

we are so excited for christmas!

Sometimes Meg gets mixed up when she gets excited and says, "I am so exciting!"

Meg wore a dress to church last Sunday that was my mom's when she was a little girl!! I won't say how old it is...but I think that is so cool that she saved it.

christmas program

Meg's preschool had their Christmas program yesterday morning. So cute! Meg was a sheep. It was so fun to see her up there singing and doing all the hand motions because I know she loves it so much.



Meg's little sisters were there to watch, too. At first they were great but by the end I think they were ready to go home.