A poem

Delgoog

Lady who did not whine.
Big Nate cheats stink bom,
to his room spank site.
Something really cool to show Jill.
Habblo hotel tag,
show Jill the game.
Max has pooped his undies,
potty train a teenager.
Suppolot.

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.

Word Verification Wednesday!!!

Yesterday, I had made a loaf of bread in our new bread machine.

MMMMMMM

It smelled SO good!

I was trying to get the loaf out of the pan, shaking it upside down, trying to get the bread to slide out. I must have looked like I couldn't handle the situation, because Max comes over and says......

"I think I know what the plobwem is."

"OK Max, what's the problem?"

He replies "It's stuck."

(thank you Captain Obvious)

*****************************************************************

Today is Wednesday, and time for everyone's favorite game!

Word Verification Wednesday!

Go to the comment box, look at the word verification code, make up a definition and leave it in the comments.

It's fun!
It's easy!

Come back often to see the definitions left by others.
Play as many times as you wish!

Don't like the word you got? Refresh the page and try again!

Previous Word Verification Wednesday posts can be found here.

Have fun!!!!

Have you ever wondered?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you used liquid dish soap in the dishwasher?






Or worse, have you ever wondered what would happen if one of your kids wondered what would happen if they used liquid dish soap in the dishwasher?



















I now know.

I can't even begin to describe the mess that was on the kitchen floor.

Give us this day.........

The UPS man came to our house last week.

He brought us a special package that brought JOY to my heart!

We gathered the family around and opened the box.




What could it be?




Can you guess?

Is the anticipation just too much?




Do you have any idea what it is?






It's one of these!





A BRAND NEW BREAD MAKING MACHINE!!!!!!

TA DA!!!!!

(please notice the Vanna White-ish "Here's the fabulous prize" hands being used by Max and CJ)

(Yes, I forced them to do this.)


(And No, Max is not still in his pajamas at 10:00 in the morning. It was like 9:30, 9:45 at the latest)

We took this magnificent, MAGICAL machine out of the box, and stared in awe at it's greatness.

(Isn't it lovely? Does it just make your heart leap with joy ?)

At this point, I held up one of the styrofoam blocks which had been used in the packaging of our lovely bread making wonder. I looked at Aaron who had been eyeing the styrofoam packaging and gave him a look.

"THE" look.


You know the one, the "tight lipped stern frown, head slightly tilted, one eyebrow raised" glare.


The look of excitement left Aaron's face. "OK Mom" he sighed "I won't turn the styrofoam into snow."

And I was so glad that we got this settled before he broke the styrofoam block into a bazillion little pieces and distributed them all over the house.

He loves to do that.

Anyway, back to the making of the bread!

I started to read the instruction manual, but finally decided on watching the handy video instead.
We sat down as a family, and watched the riveting demonstration on bread making. And just for the record, we did not make fun of the lady in the video.






Really, we didn't.







Then, it was time for us to make our own bread!


First, we put in the water and the flour.




Then the sugar, dry milk, butter and yeast.


( the whole time we were doing this, we did not imitate or make fun of the lady on the instructional video)




(Really, we didn't)



(Notice Max's "Vanna hands")





Then we put the pan in the bread machine.




Turned it on, and waited for the magic to begin.



The little window at the top was a point of fascination for the kids. They stood there shining a flashlight inside to watch the bread being made.



For like two hours.





The heavenly aroma of baking bread filled our home. We could hardly wait for the bread to be finished!


Finally, our dear breadmaker beeped, indicating the bread was finished!!!







We gathered round, and slowly I lifted the lid to reveal...............









One great big loaf of really ugly bread.

(Not that I've ever made butt ugly bread before)







YIKES!!



I went ahead and sliced up the strange looking loaf, and what do you know?

It was delicious!!

And completely devoured within a few minutes.

Now, I do need to add that the first loaf was the only one to look like that (except for the one time when I kind of forgot to put the mixer paddles in, and didn't realize this until about an hour into the process and at that point had to dump everything out, put the paddles in and then dump it back in and start over) The rest of the loaves have turned out quite nicely.

Since then I've made quite a bit of bread. I don't have pictures of the other perfect looking loaves, because they seem to disappear before I can get my camera.


Over all, I will give the Zojirushi home bakery a 5 star rating!!

We love it!
Especially the timer feature, which allows us to wake up to a fresh warm loaf of homemade bread in the morning.

Word Verification Wednesday!

Go to the comment box. Read the word verification code and give it a definition.

Please, nothing rude, crude or unrefined. (my kids read my blog)

Play as many times as you wish!

Don't like the word you got? Refresh the page until you get one that you like.

For previous posts and examples, go here.

Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and HAVE FUN!

Vampire? .............Or not?

A while ago, CJ was complaining that some kids at school were calling him "Vampire."

At first I thought it was kind of funny, but lately, I'm beginning to wonder if they might be right.


Reasons my teenage son might be a vampire.

#1. He likes to be awake all night, and will sleep all day. (if we let him)


#2. He has a widows peak.


#3. He doesn't like garlic bread.


#4. Look at these teeth! Only recently have I noticed how pointy they are.






#5. He can make his eyeballs shake. (OK, I realize that isn't a typical characteristic of a vampire, but it is pretty creepy when he does it)

#6. He really likes corned beef hash.


On the other hand, I just had him go look in the mirror, and he did see his reflection (or at least he said he did)

What do you think? Vampire? Or not?

I would just like to add that I have NOT read the Twilight series, nor have I seen the movie. Not that it has anything to do with this post, I just want you to be aware of this before leaving a comment comparing my son to Edward Cullen. I won't understand what you're talking about.