Dying for Pop Tarts

Last week Aaron went on a backpacking trip with his scout troop. Each scout had to bring all of the food they would be eating for the few days they were camping. I bought him multiple things that didn't need to be refrigerated including a box of Pop Tarts, which is a treat that I don't usually buy.
A few days ago, Brielle was complaining that I had bought Pop Tarts for Aaron, but I wouldn't buy them for anyone else.
Brielle: "Why won't you buy Pop Tarts for the rest of us?"
Me: "Because they aren't good for you, they're mostly just sugar."
Brielle: "But you bought them for Aaron!"
Me "That was because it was one of the few things that didn't need to be refrigerated that he could take with on his camping trip. Besides, they were on sale."
Brielle: "Will you buy some for me?"
Me: "I already said NO!"
Brielle: "OK, let's say that you HAVE to buy Pop Tarts for one of us, which one would you choose, me or Aaron?'
Me: "Max. I would buy them for Max, he can stand to gain some weight."
Brielle: "But what if there was a situation where you were dying and you had to buy Pop Tarts for either me or Aaron to be able to live, which one of us would you buy the Pop Tarts for?"
Me: "Seriously? In what type of a situation would I need to buy Pop Tarts for you to save my own life?"
Brielle: "???????????"
Me: "I guess if I was in that situation I would buy them for myself, because if I'm dying anyway, it won't really matter if I'm eating something unhealthy, right?"

Technology kills productivity........

Earlier today I was helping Brielle make a double batch of sugar cookies using my grandma's super delicious sugar cookie recipe.

Once the dough got too stiff for the mixer, I dumped the dough into a larger bowl, got out the large wooden spoon and stirred in the last of the flour.

"I just remembered why I don't like making sugar cookies" I said "I really don't like having to stir all this dough by hand."

Brielle said "I bet your grandma didn't have an electric mixer to mix the dough in the first place. Was she a very patient person?"

"Yes she was, in fact, she nursed twins until they were 18 months old, and during that time still managed to take care of her two other small children, make bread, do laundry, keep the house clean, make breakfast, lunch and dinner, take care of a garden, can vegetables from the garden and she even crocheted a queen size bedspread!"

Brielle chuckled and said "Obviously, she didn't have Facebook."

Oh, well that changes everything.....

This week at Brielle's Young Women's activity, the girls learned how to make their own pajama pants.
We went to the fabric store, and after looking at what seemed like every bolt of fabric, Brielle found some blue fleece with cute little pink pigs all over it.

Brielle loves pigs.

She made the pajama pants and they turned out really cute! She comes home from school and immediately changes into them. (and I can't blame her, because they look really soft and comfortable)

Tonight Brielle was attending the birthday party of her friend Audree. She was struggling to think of a present to get her, and I suggested that she make her a pair of pajama pants.
She LOVED the idea, and so off we went to the fabric store.

Again.

She found a cute print with yellow rubber ducks all over it.

As we were looking at the fleece I decided that I wanted to make myself a pair of pajama pants too, so I started looking for a print that I liked.
Brielle really got into this, and was suggesting the most bizarre prints. Bright neon tie dye fabric, bright red with big Christmas lights and big colorful crayons on a black background..........

She was really enjoying herself while thinking of me wearing pajamas made out of these fabrics.

Until I said "Just remember dear, that these pajamas will be what I will be wearing when I drop you off at school in the morning."

She paused, then disappeared around the corner. She returned and handed me a bolt of plain, dark purple fleece.

"Here mom, this is perfect!!"

Faux facial hair

This afternoon Brielle came into the room and was sporting a lovely new villain type mustache, obviously drawn on with a magic marker.
I laughed, because this was funny, then asked her if she was sure that she had used a washable marker.
"Yes, it's washable, I mean, at least I think it's washable, I hope I didn't accidentally use the sharpie."
I asked, "So how would you feel if it turns out to be permanent, and you have to go to school looking like that?"
She laughed and said she wouldn't care.
A few minutes later, Max showed up wearing the exact same mustache.
"Max, why did you let your sister draw on your face?"
Max giggled.
"What if it's permanent? You could look like that forever."
He thought for a moment, then looked at himself in the mirror. He must have liked what he saw, because he left it there.
About an hour later, he came and told me that he was tired of the mustache and wanted it off.
I told him to get a washcloth, get it wet and use some soap to get it off.
He came back in the room a few minutes later with a marker streaked washcloth, and the mustache smeared onto his cheeks.
"Did you use any soap?" I asked.
"NO!, I couldn't find it! There isn't any!"
I tried to get it wiped off as good as I could with the non soapy wet washcloth, but then the doorbell rang, it was my mom who was coming over to have dinner with us.

After we were finished eating, we sat around the table and talked. Brielle was being her normal talkative self, and was discussing some very important pre teenage subject, when I finally said to her "You know, I'm having a very hard time taking you seriously right now."
She looked surprised and asked why?
"Mostly because of that silly mustache you still have on."

She laughed "Oh, I forgot about that!" Then continued on with her conversation.

Several times through the evening, I reminded her about the mustache. Apparently she kept forgetting about it, and it just didn't seem to bother her.

Later tonight, she tried unsuccessfully to remove the marker with the wet washcloth. She was getting quite frustrated, because it just wasn't coming off.

I finally stepped in and used some soap on the washcloth, and amazingly enough, the marker came right off.

Imagine that. Soap.

I used it on Max's face too. Max is now mustache free.





p.s. Remember to vote for Crash :0)

Cold showers, experimental fudge, illegal drugs, the evils of texting, and other random stuff.......

Apparently, my theory is true about our appliances signing a suicide pact earlier this year.

Today we came home from church to find that our water heater was leaking and had caused a small flood in the basement. (Fortunately, we caught it before the water got too far.......)

Here's the dead appliance list for this year.

Oven/stove

Dishwasher

Disposal

Refrigerator*

Water heater

*I don't think I blogged about the refrigerator. It stopped working a few months ago, but it wasn't very eventful because it didn't cause a flood, just slushy popcicles.

When we first discovered the water leaking, we turned off the main water valve, and told the kids not to use any water until we turned off the water to the water heater then turned the main water back on.

Max has been freaking out all evening because he isn't sure whether or not he should flush.

Super.

We finally get him to actually start flushing the toilets, and now after not being able to flush for an hour, he's back to not flushing again.

No matter how many times we tell him it's OK to flush, he still won't and also when he turned on the bathroom faucet, it made a spitting sound, so..............

"AND NOW I CAN'T WASH MY HANDS BECAUSE THE WATER IS MAKING A FUNNY NOISE!!!!"

So now, we won't have hot water until we get the darn water heater replaced.

And the noisy fans are back.

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I just made fudge, except instead of putting chocolate in it, I used vanilla and root beer extract. It was quite good! (and I say "was" because the teenager ate all of it)

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Tonight I explained to my pre teen daughter that she is required to actually speak full words instead of text speak.

Yes, I will be insisting that she speak the words "I don't know" and "be right back" instead of IDK and BRB.

We thought that not having texting on our phones would avoid such nonsense, but alas, the teenagers are now so lazy that they can't speak full words, and must speak in texting shorthand.

LOL!

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This past week was red ribbon week at our elementary school. They had an assembly where they discussed the dangers of taking drugs.

All weekend, Max has been coming up to us at random times and saying "HEY! DON'T TAKE DRUGS!!"

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I just checked on the homework that Max is doing (What? Doesn't your kindergartener work on their homework Sunday night??) (shut up)

He was doing a worksheet where there are pictures, and he is supposed to say what the picture is, then write down the first letter of the word.

For some reason, he had written numbers under all of the pictures instead of letters.

I took the paper and studied it closer. Under the ant, Max wrote a 6, under the octopus he wrote 8, the goat, table, dinosaur, cat and elephant, he wrote 4s.......

He was writing the number of legs on the object in the picture instead of the first letter of the word.

There were other pictures too, the dress had a 2 under it (someone wearing a dress would have two legs?) the house had one, the fish had 3, the ladder had 8.

I counted the steps on the ladder, and sure enough, there were 8.

I showed Max that he was doing the paper wrong, and he laughed and said "I guess my teacher probably won't like it like this!"

Then he flipped his pencil around and started erasing..........

Just when I thought Halloween was over.......

Alternate title: "Costume surprise! "or "Surprise, I need a costume!"

Brielle's costume

A while ago, Brielle mentioned to me that the Drama teacher and the Science teacher were teaming up for their class and were going to have the students be in a play. They chose the subject of the solar system for the play, and Brielle was chosen to be Mars.

"I need a Mars costume." she told me hesitantly, "Just don't make it very big, I don't want to attract too much attention."

I got excited "COOL! I don't need to make it big, I can just make you a red unitard, and I can airbrush the geographical features of Mars all over it, then I can make you a special headband with the moons attached so that they rotate and then........"

"MOM! NO! I don't want anything like that! The drama teacher said that it didn't need to be anything elaborate, just something that we put a little bit of thought into. She said that we could just wear our regular clothes with some sort of SMALL costume, just so they could tell what planet we are. We're only going to be performing the play to our class, it's really not that big of a deal."

I was disappointed because really, costumes are my thing.

Brielle didn't say any more about the costume and I actually forgot about it until the other night when she said "The play is tomorrow, and I don't know what I'm going to wear, do you have any ideas?"

Naturally, she had asked me this on a night when I was too busy with my own work to help her, so I told her that she would need to figure it out on her own.

The next morning, I asked her if she found something to wear. She assured me that she had, then left for school.

When she came home that afternoon, I asked her what she came up with for her costume and how the play went.

"Well, I wore my red shirt and taped a bunch of blue milk caps all over it. When I got up to introduce myself, I said "I am Mars. I have ice caps." then the drama teacher looked down, covered her face with her hands and started shaking her head. Mr. Andrews just started laughing. They both laughed through the rest of my presentation, I don't think either one of them listened to anything else I said."

CJ's costume

A few weeks ago, CJ informed me that he needed to do a book report on a biography of someone. They were going to give oral reports, and needed to dress up as the person.

I asked him what kind of a costume he needed. He said that the book he read was about a rocket scientist.

"COOL!" I yelled "I can make you a really neat rocket costume! I can make it all white, and put a big pointy hat on your head, we can use a couple of empty oatmeal containers to make you some rocket boosters, then I can make some flames coming out of the back of them........."

CJ looked at me like I was crazy and said "No Mom, I won't wear that. We're supposed to dress like the person, not what they invented."

Seriously, these kids are really cramping my style.

"OK, then what kind of a costume do you want?"

CJ thought for a moment then said "What about a lab coat? That would make me look like a scientist."

I said "I can make you a lab coat. Can I at least make a great big sequined rocket on the back of it?"

"No Mom. I don't want a big sequined rocked on it."

"What about a small sequined rocket?"

"No rocket."

I told him that he was a party pooper.

I completely forgot about the costume until last night when he reminded me that he had his report today.

"No problem" I thought "I can whip up a simple lab coat pretty quick, I wouldn't even need to put a pocket on it, plus I was pretty sure that a while ago when we were cleaning out the storage room, I saw a big piece of white fabric in my 20 year emergency fabric supply that would be perfect for a lab coat.

I tried one more time to talk CJ into the sequined rocket, but he was really against it, so I went to get the white fabric.

I looked where I thought I saw it.

I looked in the logical places that I was sure I would have put it.

I looked in the illogical places that it might have been stashed.

I couldn't find the fabric.

I knew it wouldn't take me long to make the stupid lab coat once I had the fabric, only I couldn't find it anywhere. I was even beginning to wonder if I had really seen the fabric or if it was a figment of my imagination.

As I was looking, I ran across the Nativity costumes I had made for our Ward Christmas party quite a few years ago.

I had an idea!

I got the largest angel costume and held it up. Maybe, if I cut it straight down the front and put a collar on it, it could sort of resemble a lab coat! Sure, it would be a little snug on CJ, but hey, it's a costume!

As I was walking out of the storage room, I decided to look through one more box for the fabric. I got to the bottom of the box and was excited to find a large piece of white fabric! I cheered and was about to do the happy dance until I pulled the fabric out of the box only to discover that it was bridal satin.

So I tucked it under my arm and took it upstairs to give CJ the choice between wearing a too small converted angel costume, or a lovely lab coat made of bridal satin.

He didn't really seem to like either choice. I even offered to put some lace and pearls on the satin coat, but that just made him grouchy.

I decided to go put the two fabrics away in the storage room and look for another fabric that might work. Maybe I could use a different color of fabric.

Then, almost as if it was a miracle, I found the white fabric I had been looking for in the first place, it wasn't even in the storage room!

I brought the fabric upstairs and went ahead and made the lab coat. (It wasn't attractive, but it was functional)

CJ was working on his report on the computer in my sewing room, and when I was nearly finished with the coat I had him try it on to check the sleeve length He said it was perfect, then added "Now I just need a prop."

A prop?

great.

"What about a small rocket?" I asked, "you could make it out of a paper towel roll and make a cone on the end of it."

I could tell by the look on CJ's face that he liked the idea, but something was wrong.

"Do you want me to make you a rocket?" I finally asked.

He looked relieved and said "Yeah, that would be great if you could."

So even though it was getting late, when I finished the lab coat, I taped together some paper to make a rocket. It took me like 3 minutes. It was not pretty, but it did somewhat resemble a rocket, and CJ said it would work for the prop.

Then he thanked me for helping him with his costume.

I informed him that he would now be my personal servant for the rest of the week.

What do you think I should have him do for me first?

Why sixth grade teachers quit

On the first school day after Halloween, Brielle's school teacher told the class that he didn't have any Christmas decorations so they could bring any decorations they wanted and he would let them put them up in the classroom.

Brielle took this as a challenge.

My darling daughter has spent the last two weeks drawing all sorts of Christmas pictures and has taken them to school to be put on the walls of her classroom.
I think my favorite is the one she drew of her teacher wearing a Santa hat. The caption at the bottom of the picture says
"Santa, the bringer of presents, Mr Andrews the bringer of HOMEWORK!"

Then she drew a speech bubble coming from his mouth saying "HO HO HOmework!"

The teacher liked it so well that he framed the picture and put it on the wall.

A few days later, at the end of school, the teacher announced what homework would be assigned for the next day. Brielle proceeded to give him "the look" This is her half joking, half serious version of the "Evil Eye" (I have no idea where she picked this up..............really, I don't)

Mr Andrews found this rather amusing, so naturally, he laughed.

This only encouraged Brielle, and for the next several days, every time the teacher mentioned homework, she would give him The Look.

Yesterday, apparently, the teacher had had enough of the "evil eye" and told Brielle that the next time she gave him that look, he would take a picture of her, make a bunch of copies and plaster them all over the school.

Brielle then put up a sign on her desk that said "No flash photography."

(again, I don't know where she gets this stuff from)

Making the grade

The kids brought home their report cArds lAst week. I won't go into detAils And tell exActly whAt grAdes they eArned, however, I will sAy thAt we Are quite pleAsed with how hArd they hAve worked this yeAr. We're so impressed with the effort thAt they hAve put into their schoolwork And for the AmAzing improvement they hAve mAde since lAst yeAr!

I just wAnt to tell my kids thAt they Are Awesome!!!

Stupid flu

Brielle came home from school sick on Monday. I called our doctor's office and the nurse said it sounded like a virus and she would be better in a few days.
Yesterday, she was getting worse so I took her to the doctor. You guessed it, she's got the flu and she's too far into it to treat it so we just need to wait it out.

The poor kid has been so miserable, but worse than that, she's incredibly bored! She even had me email her teacher to ask for her homework so she would have something to do besides watch TV.

The rest of us have been washing our hands and using hand sanitizer (or sand hanitizer as some of us prefer to call it) like crazy, I follow her around and wipe down everything she touches with clorox wipes. We've been using disinfectant spray on everything. Max won't get within 10 feet of her because "SHE HAS GERMS ALL OVER HER!"
Instead of hugging her, we "throw hugs" across the room to her. (except for me, I can't go without hugging my little girl)

We've been doing everything we can think of to keep this thing from spreading. Seriously, I don't have time to get sick!

Today she's feeling a bit better, (Hooray!) however here's the real question.

When do you think the rest of us will get it?

Leave your guesses in the comments. The winner will get the privilege of bringing us dinner for a few nights ;0)

Happy Bagsalody Day!

Remember my post from yesterday where Brielle was being mean to me? Then when I told her she couldn't have a popcicle because she was being rude, she started sucking up so I would let her have a popcicle, and I still wouldn't let her have the popcicle because the only reason she was being nice to me was so that she could have the popcicle, not because she was actually sorry that she had been rude.
Today, I was looking at the calendar on my iPod and I noticed that there was an event scheduled on Saturday, August 22.
I couldn't think of anything we had scheduled for that day, so I clicked on it to see what we were doing.

Apparently, August 22 is Bagsalody day.

What is Bagsalody Day you ask? Well, I didn't know either, so I looked at the memo section for that day, and this is what I read.

"This is a day in honor of my mom being pretty. I hope everyone thinks my mom is pretty. I love you mom."

So there you have it.

How do you think I should celebrate Bagsalody Day? Should there be gifts involved? Cheesecake? Chocolate?






Brielle just finished her popcicle.

The gloved one and other happenings

No, this is not yet another tribute to Michael Jackson.

Made you look!!

A few days ago, Max found a pair of purple stretch gloves. He started wearing them every day, all the time. He even made up a song about his gloves.
He looked pretty funny wearing warm gloves with his shorts and sandals.

Today, I noticed that Max was wearing only one glove. At first I thought that perhaps he was wearing one glove as a tribute to MJ (because he's seen more MJ on TV in the last few days than he has in his entire lifetime)
I asked him why he was only wearing one glove and he looked at me like I was a complete imbecile and said "Because I don't know where the other glub is!"

So there you have it. Max might have discovered the real reason that Michael Jackson only wore one glove, he simply couldn't find the other one.

BTW, I have a theory, I think he didn't really die, he's gone into hiding, and is living in a double wide with Elvis in a town just outside of Scottsdale Az.

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This morning, Brielle got up nice and early so I could take her to the Rec center. Before we left, she looked through the kitchen to find something to eat, and found an energy bar in the cabinet. Knowing that her dad had bought the energy bars, she asked him if he was planning on eating it. He said that he was indeed planning on eating it, took it, unwrapped it and was about to take a bite when I walked into the room.
"Hey, are there any more of those?" I asked.
"No" DH replied, "this is the last one, but you can have it if you want."
I told him I didn't want to take it from him and he said it was really OK, he would just eat cereal for breakfast, and I said no, he could have it and he said I could have it, and............

Brielle jumped in and said that she wanted it, so DH gave it to her and she went out to the car.
I grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper healthy piece of toast then went out to the car.
As we were backing out of the driveway I noticed the energy bar sitting in the front seat with one bite taken out of it.
"Brielle, aren't you going to eat the bar?" I asked.
"No, I didn't like it, it didn't taste very good" she replied.
Knowing that sometimes she can be a very picky eater, I asked if I could have a bite, and she told me that I could eat the whole thing.

I looked at the wrapper, cinnamon bun flavored! MMMMM Seriously, how could anything flavored like a cinnamon bun taste bad?

Then I took a bite.

My taste buds were immediately assaulted with the most vile taste I've ever tasted since I was two years old and ate dirt.

It was awful!

I thought that maybe I could just finish chewing it up and swallow it, but the more I chewed the "cinnamon bun flavored" energy bar, the worse it got! The texture was something similar to sand soaked in wax, only it didn't taste as good as wax soaked sand.

I hurried and spit the wad of disgustingness into a napkin.

Unfortunately, some of the residue remained in my mouth because it was stuck in between my teeth.
From the backseat I heard Brielle say "I told you it was bad."

Unfortunately, "bad" didn't even begin to describe it.

I asked her how she had managed to eat the bite that she took, and she replied "Oh, I didn't eat it, I spit it out in the garbage can."

When we finally got to the rec center, I bought some fruit snacks from the vending machine to help us "cleanse the palette" unfortunately, later on the ride home we could still smell the bar which I had foolishly forgotten to throw away.

When we got home I brought the bar in the house and told DH that it really tasted bad.

He laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

"Why do you think there was one left? he said "As soon as I smelled it, I remembered how bad they tasted."
Naturally, I wasn't very happy with this, because he gave it to us (practically tried to force me to take it) knowing full well how bad this thing tasted.

Brielle said it tasted like duck poop.

(and no, I have no idea why she would have any clue as to what duck poop tastes like)

Naturally, we have absolutely no intention of letting this go. We feel it was a cruel joke to not just let us eat the "duck poop waxy sand puke bar" but even encourage us to eat it!

We will get even!

Actually, we won't get even, we will get ahead ;0)

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Here's some new artwork from Max.
At first glance, one might think that it's a picture of a deranged zombie robot turtle with two disembodied heads floating around with arms where their ears should be and blueberry jam smeared all over their faces, but no, it is yet another illustration of Max being born by c-section. The floating heads are the doctors and the blueberry jam would be their surgical masks.
The strange thing about that is that in all the photos that the kids showed him of the event, none of them showed the doctor's faces.
Is it possible that Max actually remembers the whole thing?

Hmmmm. Something to think about.

At least in this version, even though I'm still bald, my arms have moved from my head to the side of my body.

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Why is it that I am the only person in this house that can hear the phone ring? Why do I need to run across the house at top speed to answer a phone that is sitting within arms reach of one of my darling offspring?

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The males in my family seem to be unusually gassy today. Not sure why.
Actually, I'm not sure why I told you that.

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Quote for the day:

"Chairs are for butts, not backpacks"

Max, the boss of the alphabet

Tonight, Brielle was helping Max read some words. When they came to the word "what" Max insisted on pronouncing the "H" sound.
Brielle said "Max, when you see a "w" and "h" together, the "h" is silent. It doesn't say anything"
and Max replied,

"WELL THEN WHY DID THEY EVEN PUT IT IN THERE?!?!?!"

Cool mom or glutton for punishment? You be the judge.

Alternate post title:
Yes, I am insane. Why do you ask?



Yesterday was Brielle's birthday, so tomorrow night, she has invited 17 of her closest friends to our house for her Birthday party.

Yes, you heard me correctly. I said 17.

seventeen.

SEVENTEEN!!!


Seventeen 10 and 11 year old girls will be spending 4 hours at my house.
Now, before any of you start giving me a hard time about allowing her to invite that many friends, I will let Brielle explain the situation.

"Shannon, Stacie and Lauren are my best friends at school, so I want to invite them. But if I invite Lauren, I need to invite Kelly because they're good friends and I don't want her to feel bad, and Katie invited me to her party, so I should invite her but then I should probably invite Hannah because Katie doesn't really know any of the other girls but if I invite Hannah, then she'll tell Kailey and Kailey is friends with Kelly too, and if I'm inviting Kailey and Kelly, then I'll need to invite Isabelle, Jessica and Natalie, and if I invite Natalie, then I should probably invite her little sister Rachel too, and I need to invite all my friends from church, Kristi, Danielle and Melissa, but if I invite them, I don't want Becky and Alicia to feel left out because they carpool with the other girls and I'm sure they will find out about the party, then I still need to invite my friends from dance, Shannon and Tiffany, and Morgan is in our same group for the recital, so I should invite her too.........."

(all names have been changed mostly because I can't keep them all straight in the first place)

I decided it was easier to let her invite all 17 than to limit her to 12 and listen to her stress over who to cut from the list.

Anyway, we plan on doing the normal party things, however, instead of pizza, Daddy will be grilling hot dogs for the girls. He even promised not to burn them.

Brielle wants to make her own birthday cake. She saw Amber's tie dye cake a few months ago, and has been anxious to make one.

We're also going to have the girls watch a movie. They are going to watch Pee Wee's big adventure. Only one of Brielle's friends has seen it, none of the rest have.

Actually, we wouldn't really need to have them watch the movie, they can just have Max recite the whole thing for them. (I won't even tell you how many times he watched that movie while we were on vacation) It's really cute when he repeats the Large Marge part of the movie. Or as he calls her Lahwge Mahwge.

So basically, the movie is approximately an hour and a half.
It will probably take a half hour or so to eat.
Cake - 15 minutes.
Opening presents - 25 minutes

The girls will be here for 4 hours, that leaves about one hour and twenty minutes left to come up with something to entertain these girls.

We had originally thought about letting them play outside for a while, but it looks like it might rain.

I thought tie dyed t shirts would be a fun activity, but I know that at least one of the girls will wear a new outfit that would be destroyed when the dye fight breaks out.

I need HELP!!

Please, do you have any ideas for things we can do with all these little darlings?

The activity must be inexpensive, easy, not too messy, and completely legal. (emphasis on inexpensive, legal is negotiable)

I've already made a few suggestions shot down by the Birthday girl, such as.............
1. Pictionary marathon .
2. Pulling out the cleaning supplies and playing "Who can wash the walls the fastest?"
3. The quiet game.
4. Anything involving duct tape.

Activities we are still considering include:
Making magnets with craft foam.
Making pom pom ball creatures.

Please, any suggestions you have will be greatly appreciated.

Extra points will be given for creativity, and legitimate use of duct tape.



Now, for those of you still think I'm crazy for having this party I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you. However, I will be carrying a note pad around with me and taking notes. I figure I should be able to get at least 5-6 good posts out of this party.

(with my luck, they'll probably be quiet and well mannered the whole time)

(Wait! That would be a good thing wouldn't it?)

p.s. Max's Birthday is on Monday. We're having a party for him on Saturday.




Sidenote.
Nobody correctly guessed the location of our vacation.
We went to Arizona.


I'm quite serious. This was the road on our way through Flagstaff headed toward Phoenix. The really bad part? I did not anticipate snow, and packed accordingly.

She blinded me with science

Last week was Brielle's Science fair.
Thank you all so much for your project suggestions!
She almost decided to do her project on which cleans better, regular store bought cleaners, or home made "green" cleaners. (suggested by Jo)
However, Tiburon suggested that she do a project where she makes several batches of cookies and leaves on ingredient out of each batch to see what would happen.


Hmmmmmmm. Let's decide................

Cookies or cleaning.

Cleaning or cookies.

Cookies or cleaning..............


She decided on the cookies! (with no influence from me, I promise;0)






One evening, she made a batch of regular cookies, to use as an example of a perfect cookie.



The next afternoon, I heard my hand mixer being used, which was strange, because I have a perfectly good Kitchen aid which is great for making cookies.
When I went into the kitchen to see why she was using the hand mixer, I discovered that the bowl and beaters to the Kitchen Aid hadn't been washed, so she was forced to use the hand mixer, because there wasn't enough time to run the dirty bowl through the dishwasher.

???????

Brielle had a quick lesson on how to hand wash a bowl (and no, this was not the first time that she has been taught this skill) and we continued with the making of the cookies.

We made 1/4 batches of cookies and we worked out a system where I would mix the ingredients for the cookies, and Brielle would put them on the pan and in the oven and out of the oven and onto the cooling rack then onto the plate to be photographed.

This way, I was the keeper of the dough.

I love cookie dough.

I have to admit that I actually learned a few things with this project. I really thought that by leaving the butter out of the cookies that they would stick to the pan when they baked. Instead, they were just really gross.

Seriously, if you're going to leave something out of a batch of cookies, DO NOT LEAVE OUT THE BUTTER!!!

The butterless cookies looked awful, almost like they were growing hair on them or something, and they tasted terrible! The dough even tasted bad.

I thought that by leaving out the baking soda that the cookies would be flat, but strangely enough, they turned out to be one of the less bad batches of cookies.

Oh, and did you ever wonder what would happen if you leave the flour out of cookies?





The kids said it looked kind of like fruit leather with chocolate chips. Strangely enough, this was one of the better tasting batches. We referred to it as "cookie leather."





The overall winner for tasting the best were the cookies made with Splenda. Max wouldn't even try any of the others.

I can truly say that when this was over, I was SICK of cookies!

And I never thought I would say that. Ever.

Brielle made a big poster with photos of each plate of cookies along with her prediction of what would happen if a particular ingredient was left out, what actually happened, and then she taped a sandwich bag with the actual cookie in it next to the photo.

The morning of the science fair, when Brielle picked up her poster to take it to school, most of the photos fell off.

YIKES!

The double sided tape she was using was actually removable double sided tape.
We scrambled to find some real tape, and she taped everything back on, and we managed to get her to school only moderately late.

The teacher was very impressed with "The great cookie experiment" as she chose to call it.


For three days, we had plates of leftover cookies sitting in our kitchen. They sat there and nobody ate them.

NOBODY!

And we have three boys living in our house, one of them being a teenager who is chronically hungry.

So, I threw the cookies away.

Did you hear that?

I THREW AWAY COOKIES!!

But they weren't fit for human consumption. And I'm pretty sure that if we had a dog, it wouldn't have eaten them either.

The conclusion to this experiment?

Don't leave anything out of your cookies, or you'll be sorry.

or

Be sure to do a two part experiment. What happens when you leave ingredients out of cookies AND What kind of cleaning products work the best to clean up cookie dough which has been ground into the grout between the tiles on your kitchen floor.

HELP! We have a science emergency!

Brielle's class is having a science fair next week. She has no idea what to do for her project.
I told her I would ask my vast and unpaid research team (you) if they had any ideas.
Last year her project was to figure out which brand of microwave popcorn popped the most amount, left the fewest unpopped kernels and tasted the best (in the opinion of our family)
We were eating popcorn for weeks.
The winner was Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn. Movie theater butter flavor.


I suggested that she should do an experiment that has something to do with cooking. Or which kind of dishwashing detergent works the best. Or what works better, the upright vacuum or the cannister vac. Or which cleaning product gets the bathroom cleaner...........

Seriously, any ideas you might have would be helpful.

And she only has a week left.

Would you like some candy little girl?

Last night after dinner, I was in the kitchen working diligently on what turned out to be an unfortunate series of cooking disasters. (more on that later, right now, the disappointment is too fresh, and it might take a day or two to see any humor in the situation) (but seriously, my mom is a FABULOUS cook. She makes all sorts of candy, fudge, cookies, you name it, mom makes it and it always turns out great. What I want to know is why that "Holiday treat making" gene didn't get passed on to me?) (and whoever the wise guy was who said that my mini muffin pan had a non stick coating on it is pure evil in my book. If it really was non stick, then things shouldn't stick to it, right? You shouldn't need to use a fork/spoon/jackhammer to get the stuff to come out of the pan, mangling the treat beyond recognition)

Anyway................

I'm in the kitchen working, my hands are messy, and the doorbell rings. I start to quickly wash my hands so I can answer the door, but Brielle and Aaron beat me to it. They came into the kitchen with a bag full of chocolates and said "Look! Sweets!"
"Oh how nice!" I said, because I really love it when someone delivers chocolate to my front door, "Who brought it?"

The kids looked at each other, then back at me and said "I don't know."

"Did you recognize this person at all?"

Brielle answered "Well, it was an older man. He looked like someone who might sit on the back row at church."
"Was it Brother Parker?"
"No, this guy was shorter and younger."
I couldn't think of anyone else fitting that description. "So does he always sit on the back row?" I asked.
"No" Brielle said "I didn't say that he sat on the back row at church, I said that he looked like someone who might sit on the back row at church."

(OK, that really cleared it up)

She went on to give more of a description, about 60 years old, kind of short blondish/brownish hair, glasses, drives a Honda, had a lady waiting for him in the car (whom she might or might not have recognized, she wasn't sure)...................but we still couldn't figure out who it was that brought us the candy.

So basically, our daughter is taking candy from strangers.

Of course that didn't stop us from eating the candy. (again, chocolate brought directly to the front door, like I'm not going to eat that?)

It's been 24 hours and we're all still alive and healthy.

And Brielle is not allowed to answer the door by herself anymore.




P.S. I'm cooking a turkey tomorrow. I've never cooked a turkey before. Please cross your fingers and wish me luck that my recent string of culinary disasters will come to an end before I get this bird in the oven.

Let's pretend!

Remember a while ago when I told about this great incentive program where we would pay the kids one dollar every day that their rooms were clean. It was kind of a flop because in several years we only ended up paying out $17.00.
Last week, Brielle decided that she needed some money so she cleaned her room. She did a really good job, but was quite disappointed when I told her that we were no longer paying for clean rooms.
So this week, she has been doing a great job at keeping her room clean, and is making comments such as..........

"My room has been clean now for three days, I have $3.00 in my imaginary allowance."

"I've kept my room clean now for 6 days, I'm up to $6.00 in my imaginary allowance."

And when we were at the store she said

"If I had that $8.00 from my imaginary allowance, I would buy this cute headband."
and
"If I had that $8.00 from my imaginary allowance, I would buy everyone a candy bar."

Yesterday, She said "If I had that $15.00 from my imaginary allowance, I would want to go to the store and buy a new shirt."

"$15.00?" I asked, "yesterday you only had $10.00, where did the extra imaginary $5.00 come from?"
and she answered "I watched Max for you yesterday while you went to the store, and I did such a good job that you gave me an imaginary $5.00."
So I offered to pretend to take her to the imaginary store so she can buy herself an imaginary shirt.

And while I'm at it,

I think we'll take the kids on an imaginary trip to Hawaii, and buy an imaginary new couch and loveseat for the living room, and then I can lose a bunch of imaginary weight so I can go and buy me an imaginary new wardrobe...............

Place it on it's side and it's a symbol meaning infinity

This week, Aaron turned eight.
We are so excited about this, because now.............

He's accountable ;0)

(This will make more sense if you click on the link above)

Next week, Aaron will be baptized. I can't believe my baby is eight already. It doesn't seem that long ago that the doctor handed me that little bundle of Aaron. He didn't cry, he just looked around with those huge eyes with an expression on his face that seemed to say "What's next?" (or as we discovered later "What can I get into next?")

When Aaron turned five, we asked him if he wanted a party, or to go to a movie and out to lunch with Dad. He went for the lunch and movie. We thought we were off the hook until I got a phone call from one of the neighbor kids, giving her R.S.V.P. for Aaron's birthday party the next day.

"What party?" I asked.
"Brielle and Aaron just brought me an invitation to his party tomorrow." she said.

After I hung up the phone, I went looking for Brielle and Aaron, they were just coming in the front door.
"Hey" I said "Where have you two been?"

Brielle looked like a deer in the headlights. "Outside." she said.

"And just what were you doing outside?" I asked.
She wouldn't make eye contact with me. "Stuff..........."

Aaron jumped in "We just delivered the invitations for my Birthday party tomorrow!"

"And what party would that be?" I asked "The one we weren't having because Aaron decided on the movie with Dad instead?"
"Yeah, that one................. But Mom!" she pleaded, "You won't have to do anything! I planned on doing the whole party for him myself! I made all the invitations without your help!"

Me: "When did you plan on telling me about this party?"
Brielle: "I don't know, tomorrow maybe?"
Me: "Like when everyone showed up for the party?'
Brielle: "Yes, I would have told you then."
Me: "Well, what did you plan on doing at this party?'
Brielle: "I thought we would play outside, we will fill up the little pool and run through the sprinklers."
Me: "Okay, then what were you planning on feeding the kids?"
Brielle: "Easy Mac-n-cheese and Kool-aid."
Me: "What about a cake? What were you going to do about a cake?"
Brielle: "We have a package of Ding Dongs in the kitchen closet. We can put a candle in one of them for Aaron to blow out."

I was actually kind of impressed. I mean Brielle (who by the way was only seven at the time) had thought of everything.

"What about goodie bags?" I asked "What had you planned on giving them for goodie bags?"

Brielle wrinkled up her forehead and thought for a moment............... then said "I don't think they really need goodie bags."

I then asked Aaron "Would you be really upset if this party didn't happen?"
"No," Aaron said "Dad already took me to a movie and lunch for my Birthday, and we had my family party with Grandma and my cousins."

The party never happened, because (being the mean mom that I am) I made Brielle go around the neighborhood and explain to everyone that the party was not being held because she went ahead and planned it without my knowledge or permission.

Yesterday, we did have a real party for Aaron. We went swimming at the local Rec Center. It's amazing how noisy a group of eight year old boys can be. My head still hurts.

The best part is that we have some leftover cake :D

Costco "All American Chocolate cake."

It made the whole thing worth it.

That's my girl!

Quote for the day, by Brielle, age 10.

"Shopping is good for you!
It makes you healthy, because it's like exercise.
You pick things up and carry them.
You do a lot of walking.

Shopping is a good thing."

(Might I also mention the cardio workout you can get if you are foolish enough to take a toddler shopping with you.)