Truly a Parker

Making great strides in the speech department:

Homemade Brownies and Pitas

For those of you who asked for my brownie and/or pita recipes, I figured this was the easiest way to get it to all of you. If you know anything about me, I have this strange need to alter just about every recipe I try. Anyway, I'll post the original recipes, then give you my alterations.

I got the brownie recipe from AllRecipes. Here is the original recipe:

• 1 cup butter, melted
• 3 cups white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish.
2. Combine the melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each, until thoroughly blended.
3. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture until blended. Stir in the chocolate morsels. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared baking dish.
4. Bake in preheated oven until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove, and cool pan on wire rack before cutting.

**My alterations: Instead of using 3 cups white sugar, I used 2 cups white sugar and 1 cup brown sugar. Also, instead of using 1 cup cocoa powder, I used about 1/3 cup cocoa powder and 2/3 cup dark cocoa powder.


And here's the pita recipe:

1 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

1. In a large bowl, combine first 4 ingredients. Add 1 cup of the flour, along with the yeast, and stir to mix. Add remaining flour and knead to make a soft dough. (Add additional flour if necessary during kneading.)

Alternately, if you have a bread machine, you can put the ingredients in the pan in the order listed and use the dough cycle. Skip to step 3 if using your bread machine! :)

2. Put your dough into a bowl, lightly oil the top, and cover. Set in a warm place to rise, until almost double (about an hour). I like to turn my oven on for a minute or two, then turn it off, and let the dough rise in there, since our house is cool.

3. Punch dough down and turn onto a lightly floured surface. Using a sharp knife, cut dough into 8 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball. On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball into a 6- or 7-inch circle.

4. As you roll the rounds, set them aside on a lightly floured countertop or table, and cover loosely with a towel. Let rise for about 25-35 minutes, until slightly puffy. (The rounds will still be thin though! :D)

5. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place 2 rounds, side-by-side, onto a wire rack, such as is used for cooling things. Place rack in the middle of the oven. Bake for 4-5 minutes, until puffy and just slightly browned. (If bread is too browned, it will be dry and not pliable.)

6. Remove rack from oven and immediately wrap/layer pita breads in a damp towel, to soften. Continue baking the remaining breads, layering them between damp towels as soon as they're baked. Allow breads to completely cool.

7. Cut pita breads in half, or split the top edge, and fill as desired. :)

8. Store pitas in a plastic zipper bag in the fridge for a few days, or place in the freezer for longer storage. To re-warm pitas, wrap them in a damp towel and then wrap in foil. Place in a warm (200-250 degree) oven for about 20 minutes.

**My alterations: Instead of 3 cups all-purpose flour, I used 2 cups all-purpose and 1 cup whole wheat flour. It's not as healthy as whole wheat pitas, but definitely a little better than using all processed flour. :) If you're looking for a whole wheat pita recipe, there's one here. I haven't tried it, so I don't know how it is, but it's from the same site as the recipe I posted above, so it's probably pretty good.

The Many Faces of Hannah Grace

As most of you probably already know, Hannah is a huge ham. For those of you who didn't know that about her, let me show you. Keep in mind that all of these pictures were taken within the span of about a minute or less.

This one's just plain scary:

Hannah loves to dance...as long as no one's around...except Daddy and Mommy.



Hannah and Linnea absolutely LOVE each other! It's so neat to watch them play and interact with one another. Linnea thinks Hannah is quite funny and entertaining. :) Hannah thinks the same about Linnea.

Beautiful Creation

Saturday we had the privilege of going to the Poppy Preserve in Lancaster. The park covers almost 1,800 acres and the state doesn't water or stimulate the flowers, so everything is natural. It was absolutely gorgeous and we marveled at God's AMAZING creation!! Uncle Aaron, Aunt Kimmy, and Linnea came with us, and we borrowed a van so that we could all ride together. It was a great day! Here are (more than) a few pictures:





Ok, I'm tired of trying to walk through all these flowers. Can you please pick me up now?




And now, the pictures everyone's been looking and waiting for:

Is Hannah already trying to blame her baby cousin for things? It looks like she's saying, "She did it!" :)

Kisses...
...and hugs! They love each other!

The girls seemed to enjoy sitting next to each other in the van. They held hands and shared toys - it was precious!!!

Hannahisms

Hannah has a couple of fetishes/habits. These include, but are not limited to:

• Closing anything that is open (cabinets, doors, drawers, the fridge when we're trying to get something out. James said we should get her a Papelbon jersey, since she's our "closer" - haha... yeah, it's Parker humor.)
• *Trying* to play with fruit (when she sees oranges or grapefruits, she yells, "Ball" and tries to get it, so she can throw it around the house). I say "trying" because we don't let her.
  
• Brushing her teeth
• Purses
• Shoes (and the sound they make on hard floors)
  
• Plants (we took her to the zoo, and she was more interested in touching all the plants than looking at the animals. Same on our walks - she loves to touch all the plants.)
• Other kids (she LOVED the time she spent with her cousins at Easter, and I can't wait for her to get to play with her Pichura cousins!)
• Having clean hands (if there is even the smallest piece of fuzz on her hands, she comes up to me, whining to get it off.)
• Knocking on doors (I've had to stop her from knocking on our neighbor's door)
• Reading books aloud (and upside down)
• Being outside (I've learned to be careful about using the word "walk" around our house. When she hears it, her face lights up, and she runs to get her shoes. This word is now only to be used when we're actually going to go for a walk.)
• The blanket from Papa and Grandma
• Her stuffed mouse, followed by any stuffed animal
• Mirrors
  

And just to even things out a big, here are some things she loathes:

• The vacuum cleaner
• Getting water in her face (you should have seen her reaction when we put all four of the Fujita grandkids in the bathtub and one of the boys thought it would be fun to dump a cup of water over Hannah's head. Yeah. Let's just say I've never seen her so anxious to get out of the tub.)
• That's pretty much it. Can't think of anything else. This girl is a pretty happy girl.
  

Here's a video we took of Hannah, which includes a couple of her fetishes.


Since most of you probably don't speak Hannahese, here's a translation:
"Knock, knock. Something even Mommy can't understand. Door. Something Mommy can't understand."

Then comes the stomping of the foot. These shoes are WAY to big for her, but she found them (or, one of the them) and put it on herself (on the wrong foot, of course) and proceeded to walk around, stomping on the hard floors, because she likes the sound. I can't blame her, because I remember liking the sound of my shoes clicking on the ground when I was a little girl, too. Am I the only one, or is that a "normal" little girl thing?

How Many Lines Do YOU Have?

Last Friday, Hannah added a neurologist to her list of medical specialists she has seen. For only being 18-months-old and healthy, this girl's seen a lot of specialists! She's been to an ophthalmologist, a pediatric ophthalmologist, a geneticist, and now a neurologist. As I mentioned in a previous post, she was referred to the neurologist since her soft spot hasn't closed yet. The neurologist didn't seem too concerned, since Hannah appears to be a healthy little girl and is developing right on schedule. The doctor mentioned that sometimes a Vitamin D deficiency or thyroid problem could lead to the soft spot staying open, but as she watched Hannah walk play in the exam room during her appointment, she kept saying that she looked to be very healthy and didn't think these were factors. She ordered a blood test anyway, just to make sure. She also ordered an ultrasound of her soft spot to make sure there was no fluid in there. The neurologist really doesn't suspect that anything's wrong and told us that many babies' soft spots don't close until 2-years of age. Regardless, I'm thankful they're being proactive, as Kaiser isn't always known to do so.

One other thing she noticed were Hannah's hands. She only has one line/crease that goes all the way across her hands. Most people have two lines going across their hands, but neither line goes all the way across. She said having one line go all the way across is common among people with Down's Syndrome (which we know she doesn't have, by the way). She said it may be linked to the chromosomal translocation that she (and James) has, and was going to check with the geneticist. It's not anything to be concerned about, just interesting. Anyway, once she pointed this out, we were curious as to whether anyone else in the family had only one line going across their hands, so we called James on our way home from the doctor. Sure enough, on both of his hands, he only has one line going across. My parents, my sister, and I all have two lines on both hands. So now we're wondering - all you Parkers (including Pichura kids) need to check your hands and see how many lines you have! :) We checked Kim and she has two. So, how many do you have?My hand is on the left. You can see two overlapping lines going across my hand. James's hand on the right only has one line going all the way across.

Hello Toddler; Goodbye Clean House!

This is how I like my house to look. It's clean,
neat, organized, relaxing, and enjoyable:

This is how my house looks between the hours of 8:30 am
and 8:00 pm.It's messy, unorganized, and anything but relaxing:

This is why my house looks the way it does:

And I wouldn't want it any other way!


Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Psalm 127:3