Bloopers

Do you ever have a day (or a week) where you just feel like you're picking up after all the bloopers that happen to you? Here are are most recent bloopers.

The other day L was taking a bath in the kids' bathtub. I handed him a couple of toys from out of the cabinet in their bathroom. He played with it for a couple mintues then said, "yucky water, mommy." I walked in to see the yucky water thinking I'd find brown "flaoties" in the water. I didn't. I found strings of mold that had shot out of the bath toy....I looked at the toy and could see through it . There was a ball of mold inside!!! Yuuuuck! I immediatley threw nearly all our bath tub toys away. I took L to the other shower upstairs, rinsed him off, then washed the "infected" bath tub. Then I threw away the towels I used to clean the tub.

The next day L was vaccuuming the kitchen with the stick vacc while I was on the phone with the pediatrician. Harmless, right? The conversation with the ped's office took a while. I stood in the laundry room with the door shut so I could have a quality conversation with the nurse. I felt like I knew what L was up to when I was in there because he must have checked on my every five minutes and said, "you okay, Mommy?" When I got off the phone, I left the laundry room and found L sitting on the ground with the vacc turned upside down while still turned out...I walked over to him to prevent him from putting his fingers in the running vacc. L tipped it in an attempt to turn it back over and the vaccuum "puked" all its contents all over the place. Fortunately nothing got in anyone's eyes!

My car was in the shop for two days....One day longer than originally anticipated. I was fortunate enough to get a rental from the dealership free of charge. When they called to tell me my car was done, I was super excited. It was right before nap time, but I thought if I got to the dealership quickly and returned home I could get L down for a nap in time. As we walked out the door I realized L had a stinky diap. Of course! So, I ran in, changed him real quick, scooped up the diap and nearly slipped when I attempted to cross the living room floor. I looked down and you'll never guess what I slipped on!! Yep, all the "contents" of the diap had fallen to the floor and L and I both stepped in it. Ickkkk!! I cleaned it up the best I could, but couldn't quite get everything out of the carpet, so I had to call "Carpet Kevin" (as the boys call him) for his professional help....And he knows just exactly where we live 'cause he was here a mere two weeks ago to clean said carpet...Luckily Carpet Kevin has a good sense of humor...and a strong stomach.

Did I mention our garage door is on the fritz? Ya, it will go up, but it won't go down. Makes leaving the house that much more challenging.

I was going to call our painter to paint up a few of our ding-ed up walls, but I'm almost afraid of what bloopers could come our way if I invite paint and ladders into our house...Might have to rethink this one. :)

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving 2011 was different than years' past. Our usual routine is to eat breakfast at home, get dressed and head to our hometown to hang out at D's parents'. We eat lunch there, then head to my parents' for the afternoon and nighttime meal. Then we return to our house to get a good night's rest in our beds...This year was different. L woke up with a yucky ear and some side effects from his meds, so we decided he needed to stay away from the family. D and I both wanted to be with our families, so, after a lot of consideration we decided to keep L home the whole day. N was coming down with a cough, but wasn't too sick yet, so we'd have to see how he did Thanksgiving morning and we'd decide if he'd return home in the afternoon or visit my parents in the evening.

I stayed home with L all morning and most of the afternoon. We ran out in our jammies to find the Thanksgiving Day paper with all the Black Friday ads. My plan was to swing through the newspaper stand. I planned to park next to the newstand, pull a paper out of the bin while L waited in the car. However, when I pulled up to McD's there was no bin. I drove around to two other places and there were no news stands to be found. I drove to our little local grocery store and they were open. I could see their newspaper stand through the window. Should we really go into the store in our jammies to get a paper?? Yes. We did it. We picked up a couple other things while we were there and noticed other people entering the store in their jammies and sweats to get their paper.

When we got home we watched the Macy's Day parade while I ran on the treadmill. It was strange to exercise on a holiday, but it ended up feeling really good in the end. L loved watching the parade. In fact, I recorded it on the DVR and we've watched it several times since it aired. Thanksgiving morning went really fast. Before we knew it, it was time to eat and nap. I was really excited to pour over the Black Friday ads while L napped. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing with him that morning, but soaking up the ads in a quiet home was kinda nice!

D returned home that afternoon. N stayed at D's folks' for some quiet time while he waited for me to pick him up when I got into town. I drove to our hometown, picked N up and we headed to my parents' for Thanksgiving. N and I really enjoyed seeing my sister and her boys, my parents and my Aunt. We had a nice relaxing time and got to visit with everyone. The meal was terrific! N was a super good boy, especially considering the long day he had! We got home pretty late (late for us anyway), but went to bed grateful for the day we had.

Breakfast picnic

This week (Nov 21st-25th) started out a little different than other weeks. Both boys woke up coughing Monday morning. L's cough was lingering from the past six weeks. Ugh! (It's mostly gone now and it's Wednesday night). N's cough was new on Monday. One thing I always do when the boys wake up coughing in the morning is to get them some humidity to try to loosen things up in their chests. As I lay in bed listening to them cough (one on the monitor and the other across the hall), I decided to try to start the week off as fun as we could given the circumstances. So, I hurried up and collected some breakfast for the boys and I. I grabbed a pop up picnic tray, some drinks, a big beach towel and our nebulizer (we've gotten our money's worth outta that puppy!!). I headed to the master bath and set up a picnic. I set up breakfast, cranked up the nebulizer and started the shower. By the time I got the boys into the bathroom it was nice and steamy. So, we had a nice little picnic to start off our week. While it wasn't exactly breakfast in bed, it was fun. The kids thought it was kinda cute, even though they complained that one wanted toast instead of a cereal bar and the other didn't like the way his yogurt tube was cut....Ugh.

Tuesday N had his Thanksgiving feast at school. He was excited to wear a Pilgrim hat. He said some kids wore pilgrim hats and some wore Native American (although I think he called them Indians) in and effort to reinact the first Thanksgiving dinner. So cute! His school does a lot of really fun, inexpensive, educational things. N really enjoys all that fun stuff. Last week they celebrated the 60th day of school. Every time they hit a day that ends in a zero, "Zero the Hero" or his buddy "Side kick" visit the classroom. This week Sidekick brought donuts to school. So fun!

The kids got out of school early on Tuesday and got the whole day today (Wednesday) off in honor of Thanksgiving. I lined up a babysitter to come for the afternoon on Tuesday. She got N off the bus while I was gone. She's so terrific! I got a good start on my Christmas shopping while she was here. It feels good to have a good chunk of my to-do's done.

As I mentioned above, N had today (Wednesday) off. I really wanted to do something fun with the boys, but with their coughs I decided it wasn't a good idea. So we stayed home, exercised and played. We made a really fun tent, streamers and wall art included. We played the Wii, made things out of Legos and Bristol blocks and actually got to play outside for a bit. Late in the morning L started acting super clingly to me. I was kind of annoyed by it, but I did my best to be patient with him and I'm glad I did as his ear is acting up again. Ugh!!!! I gave him some meds for it and put him down for a nap. He slept for 45 minutes and woke up screaming. His ear ruptured again. Ick!! Called the pediatrician. They had one cancellation this afternoon, so they were able to get us in, thank goodness! The doctor gave us more meds (two antibiotic shots, poor L!!). I'm not sure what Thanksgiving holds for us. We'll see how the boys do tonight and tomorrow. Whatever happens, we'll do our best to celebrate the holiday as best we can.

Scotch-a-roos: The Sequel

I did it! I made a successful batch of Scotch-a-roos! Ya-hoo! The girls in my mom's group will be proud! I've made this recipe several times and have failed (as noted in this post) miserably every time. But this time I finally got it right. What did I do differently? I took the Karo syrup and sugar mixture off the stove long before I thought I should. I took it off as soon as I saw the first little bubble pop up to the surface. And that was the trick! Ya! I love these gooey, chewy yummy little boogers. Mmmm, yum. Now that I've figured out how to make the bars, I'll have to figure out how to spell Scotch-a-roos (as I have seen it spelled many, many different ways). Maybe I'll just call them scotchies. Here is the recipe. I used the recipes from these two websites to make these bars.

1 cup sugar
1 cup Karo syrup

1 1/2 C Peanut Butter
5 1/2 C GF Rice Chex
1 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup chocolate chips

Warm sugar and Karo syrup in pot on stove until just barely bubbling. Once it comes to a bubble, remove from heat. Add in 1 1/2 cups peanut butter. Then add 5 1/2 cups GF Rice Chex. Stir together and pour into cake pan. Spread out into the pan. Melt butterscotch chips and chocolate chips together in a pot. Pour over the cereal mixture. I would cut these while they're still a little bit warm. Let set before serving.

A few notes:

I measured out 5 1/2 cups of Chex cereal in it's original unchopped size. Then I used my handy mix and chopper (Pampered chef tool) tool to smash the Chex cereal down to a smaller pieces before mixing it with the sugar/Karo/peanut butter mixture. This made for a nice consistency.

I use Hershey's Butterscotch chips as they are gluten friendly. Nestle uses barley to color their butterscotch chips, so they are not gluten friendly. I hear Kroger brand butterscotch chips are gluten friendly as well, but I have not tried them myself.

I used Nestle's chocolate chips.

An 8x8 pan makes pretty thick bars. You might have to double the batch to make a decent sized bar in a 9x13 pan as I think this recipe might be too thin if you try to stretch across a 9x13 pan. I could be wrong though. Maybe I'll have to make these again and find out. ;)

Side note: Here is an interesting article I came across in Sports Illustrated regarding gluten. This is the part that is really fascinating to me....."the digestive juices in your stomach are so corrosive to meat protein that if you dipped your finger in them, it would be down to the bone in 30 seconds—but the same juices can't polish off the gluten in a single crouton. Some parts of gluten have the digestibility of a rock...."

Confetti

L is talking sooooo much! He speaks pretty well, but is kind of difficult to understand if you haven't been around him a lot. He are some examples.

He says most (but not all) of his "r's" like "w's."

Snowman sounds more like toe-man

He says "Oopies" instead of "Oopsies."

He calls Capir Sun Waters "rinks"

He has learned that if he reallllly wants something he might just get it if he says "Pleeeeeease, Mommy" in his sweetest voice. This doesn't always work, but it's always worth a try.

I am doing my best to teach L animals, but he insists that any animal about the size of a dog is a dog, any animal the size of a cow is a cow and all birds are geese (even if there's only one of them which would be a goose). Cows say moo, dogs saw arf (or awf) and everything else says oink.

If L wants me to play with him he will ask me nicely to play with him. If I stop playing with him before he's ready, he will find me, take my hand and walk me to the place he wants me to be. He will say, "Sit, Mommy," and he will show me what we are playing.

The other day I got N a bowl of cereal for breakfast. He ate a couple of bites before he jumped up, ran to the garbage can and spit it out. I turned and looked at him to see what he was doing and (with a look of disgust on his face) he said, "That tastes like boogers!" I just cracked up laughing! (Maybe you had to be there for that one to be funny, but I remember it very well. Makes me laugh thinking about it.)

N had a very quick growth spurt! I bought him several pairs of pants at the beginning of the school year that were a bit on the long side for him at the time. Several of them are now approaching the high water look, so I had to go out and buy him a new batch of pants.

L has been sick on and off with a cold, cough, bronchitis and ear infection for the last five weeks. Ick! (As I mentioned in my last post). The antibiotic and oral steroid the doctor gave him both tasted awful, so he spit them out. I tried to camouflage both of them in yogurt, pudding and chocolate syrup (not all at once, ha!). He didn't notice the difference for the first couple of bites, but once he did notice the difference, he'd refuse to eat the rest. If I tried to give it to him alone, he'd spit it all out. So, after a few days of the meds I was concerned he wasn't getting the appropriate amount to get him past this sickness. Well, my concerns were made clear when I noticed his right ear had ruptured and was draining. I called the doc, they got us in and gave us new meds. These meds taste better, but have other side effects. We can deal with the side effect, though 'cause L doesn't mind the taste of these meds and has taken every dose so far (knock on wood). I knew at some point I would come down with this virus and I felt it coming on a few days ago. I've done my best to take vitamin C, drink fluids and get rest and that has really helped. I also made a yummy veggie soup that I've been eating every day. I am already feeling better, so I think I might whip this virus before it whips me! I really look forward to getting this all behind us before the holidays. And I really look forward to getting back to the gym!!! I've been working out at home, but that's just not the same as going to the gym. Although...When L does finally get better, I may not want to take him to the gym 'cause I think that's where he picked up this bug...Oh well. We can't live in a bubble forever.

We are getting all of our floors (except the wood floors) professionally cleaned and the tile sealed tomorrow. I can't wait! I feel like such as adult saying that, but I think it may help us get some germs and dust out of the house.

Halloween

We had to miss several Halloween (H-ween) activities this year because L has had a cough on and off for the last four weeks. Just when I think he's over it, it resurfaces again. Therefore we skipped H-ween at the zoo, the Farm Park and at N's school. I figured the cool, damp air wouldn't work in his favor. We still had a good H-ween though.

We trick or treated at that the high school. D was out of town for work that night. I got a sitter for L while N, Grammy and I went to that. Remember me saying that L is super afraid of H-ween stuff? Well, he is, but he's even more afraid of the dark. The majority of the trick or treating at the High School is in the dark. L would not have enjoyed that, so he stayed home and played with Miss N. They had fun.

We went to the annual H-ween party my Mom's group hosts at a church. Everyone brought food to share, the kids wore their costumes, played games and trunk or treated. It was such a great event!! My Ghostbuster (N) and Slimer (L) sure had a great time and got lots of comments on their costume choices. :)

N had an outdoor parade and (indoor) party at school on H-ween day. Parents are invited to watch it the parade. N participated in it, but L and I skipped it because of L's cough. The kids wore their costumes to school, did the parade and visited a nearby nursing home to greet the residents. They returned to school and had their H-ween party in their classroom at some point during the day.

On H-ween night our neighbors invited us over to eat hot dogs before trick or treating. They are still fairly new to the neighborhood, so it was nice to eat with them and get to know them some more. Almost everyone in the cul-de-sac happened to leave their homes to trick or treat at the same time, so we all walked together. It was so fun! We packed our wagons and strollers with extra coats and blankets in preparation for the drop in temperature once the sun went down. I'm so glad we did 'cause we needed the extra layers. Fortunately we didn't have any rain and it wasn't nearly as cold as last year, but we were still glad to have our coats. We walked on the street near us that makes a big square shaped loop. Many of the homes on that street have a tradition of sitting outside in lawn chairs around their fire pits while they hand out candy. It makes for a fun, friendly holiday. We collected some mad candy loot! The kids were super excited, but remembered that the Candy Fairy would come to take most of the candy (with red dye) and leave a toy in exchange.

The Candy Fairy kept her promise and made a trip to our house. She left behind some candy and took the rest. She gave each boy their own Tervis cup (love!) and mini Pillow Pet. On her way out of town the Candy Fairy dropped the candy off at the nursing home where she hears the residents are always asking for goodies. So, it's a win win for everyone. The Candy Fairy left a bonus gift for Mommy and Daddy this year. She gave us the game Banana-grams. I'm can't wait to play it this winter on our Pioneer Days...more on that later.

The day after Halloween I went to a store (can't remember where I was) and the first thing I noticed when I stepped in the door was the Christmas music!! Aaaa!!! We haven't eaten the H-ween candy yet and they're already forcing Christmas on us!