Hot New Bakery Item!

Step right up! Be the first to sample the newest trend in sweets. We were baking double chocolate chunk cookies today and as the ingredients were added to my mixing bowl, the girls noticed some remnants on the counter.
They decided to invent their own dessert and created their own recipe and blended it to perfection in my Pampered Chef chopper. If you don't have one, or have one and have always wondered, YES! It can chop lifesavers, yogos, chocolate chips, Easter chocolate and candy canes!
Here are the dry ingredients, flour, cocoa powder and chopped (and then chopped again and then chopped to smithereens) nuts.
Then for added flavour we throw in the candy cane, yogos, chocolate pieces and one lifesaver. As we bake, the girls take turns measuring out ingredients as I need them for the bowl. When the chocolate chips get done, each girl is allowed to eat 2 chips. NO one ate theirs today. Everybody contributed them to the new recipe.

As they mixed and chopped, they were troubled when it didn't seem to stick together at all and wanted to know how to get everything to mix and stay blended. I explained that they hadn't used any wet ingredients like I do in the regular cookies. Undaunted they immediately asked if I'd give them an egg. Unwilling to sacrifice much to this venture, I offered a bit of brown sugar and a little bit of margarine. They were THRILLED by my contributions to "Treat Delight".
Here's their first batch. Yes, this is the ENTIRE batch. Yes there are large chunks of lifesaver still visible. They couldn't wait to get this baby in the oven. They all came together and slid the tray into the oven. They decided that if the recipe was as good as they were anticipating, they were changing the name to "Kids' Delight".
Here it is out of the oven, not quite what they were expecting but they were still hopeful. After it cooled, I was able to pry it off the pan in many many pieces but they were still undaunted.

Partial recipe. The rest is a trade secret and we'll be copyrighting it shortly I'm sure so don't be getting any big ideas! Kids' Delight is OURS!!!!!!!!!!!! They were pleased with their samples and have definitely changed the name. Honey has also decided that a chef's life is where it's at. Murray and I are going to be so set in retirement with at least 2 master chefs catering all our meals!

Grammie came to visit with her bag of tricks. Mani & pedi sessions for all, except Honey who had gotten into a good book and wouldn't give it up to make the trip to the salon in the next room! They were long overdue for some nail grooming to put it mildly!

The Pen IS Mightier than the Sword!

Recently Sweetie caused some major mayhem! Now that they're learning how to write and sound things out, she's discovered she can be very naughty with her written words. She had the audacity to pick up a discarded sales tag from Honey's new hat. She was shaking with giggles as she spelled out "poop" on the little piece of cardboard.

Sure enough, not long after, Honey comes along and sees the defiled card. She's furious!!! There is much wailing and screaming about the graffiti and we do our best with an eraser but it was in pencil crayon which doesn't come off all that well.

Sweetie stays nearby to witness the anguish and grief and as things are subsiding she squeals with delight and her voice cracks with her high pitched pronouncement "now I'm going to write penis!!!!!!!!" and then she cackled all the way to her bedroom. I'm not sure if she followed through on this plan or not. Someday in the not too distant future, I'll probably discover she has as I hand in a church envelope or something.....

Healing Right Up!

Honey's tongue looked a million times better this morning! When they say the mouth self heals quickly, they aren't kidding. It's still not real pretty but it's not a gaping, hanging open wound anymore. She still finds it tender but is able to eat without any problem today and managed to put away her supper and scarf down the freshly made cinnamon buns for dessert!

When the girls got home from school the weather was really nice so we had a snack picnic of popsicles and pineapple (the fruit cancels out the junk you know!) on the blanket out front. Someone decided to be helpful and bring the slippery plate of ripe and juicy fruit out to the blanket but lost some on the way so it had a bit of dirt on it. Lovey wasn't having any of that and boycotted it. She managed to eat her popsicle no problem though (it never hit the ground that's for sure!).
Once they were done their food they decided to do homework outside too and brought their reading books out and we read those. When it was time to do the writing portion it looked like it was about to rain so we packed it up & moved indoors.

and then it was mass hysteria!!! Sweetie couldn't figure out how to spell what she wanted, Honey didn't believe me that there was an "i" in the middle of "like" and Lovey was having conniptions at trying to figure out how to spell the "ong" part of "Kong". My hint that it was almost the same as "ing" which she does know how to spell was not enough to prevent the screaming waterworks.

All 3 were insane and I couldn't fix anybody at that stage of the game so I went out to get the laundry and hope they'd be more reasonable when I came back. I have no idea why I thought this miracle would suddenly happen but it gave me time to pull myself together anyway!

Sweetie wanted to practice what it will look like when her teeth fall out. Can you picture it???
We have a challenge on the forum, the theme is "get low" (apparently there's a song??? not sure.) and so I thought I'd lay down and get this. It's definitely low but I don't know if I like it enough to make this one my entry. I have a week or so to come up with something so I'll keep trying.

Eventually the freak outs subsided and we were able to get all the homework done without me following through on the urge to poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick!

Bite Your Tongue!

On second thought, no! Please don't!!!

I got a call from Murray while I was at the gym this morning. Honey had a fall off the monkey bars today and cut her chin. Her teacher wasn't sure whether it needed stitches or not so asked me to come check it out. When I arrived Honey was calm and the bleeding had stopped and she felt fine. She had a bandaid on and everything seemed OK and the cut wasn't very deep or long. She was OK with staying at school so I made sure the cut was cleaned out and then I left to go get groceries.

When I got home there was another message from her teacher, wanting me to call back as she wanted to follow up on the incident from that morning. I phoned back right away but it was lunch time and no one answered in the office. I left a message & the teacher phoned me back a little later. It turns out that the cut on the chin was minor compared to what happened when her teeth chomped down on her tongue!

I put the freezer/fridge stuff away from the groceries & left the rest, loaded Murphy in and went back to the school. The teachers were amazed that Honey hadn't complained about her tongue until she was unable to eat her lunch because it hurt. Holy moly, not much wonder the girl couldn't handle a sandwich!!!!!!!!!!!! She didn't feel like staying at school anymore so I brought her home & stopped at Murray's office to see what he thought. From what I'd heard, stitches aren't done inside the mouth so I didn't know if there was any point in taking her to emerg. Murray thought it was worth checking into so I took Murphy home, finished putting away all the stuff he'd devour while left unattended and then we went to the hospital and Murray came home early to meet the other two off the bus.

We weren't there long before getting to see a nurse who told me that she'd had a patient once who had cut his tongue straight through from the tip towards the back and it was split into a fork and they wouldn't stitch him so she was sure they wouldn't for Honey either. I appreciated not having to sit there for 2 hours to find that out! We didn't bother waiting around and I took her to McD's for an ice cream as the nurse had "prescribed" cold foods for her. :) She's taking this quite seriously and had jello when she got home, a milkshake for supper and a Popsicle before bed. I convinced her to take some motrin (ie bribed her with that Popsicle!) so she seems comfortable so far. Hopefully it'll close up a bit overnight and make it easier to eat tomorrow. She was a trooper and never complained a bit about it. The teachers at school were pretty impressed that she didn't even cry about it. The pain from her chin probably distracted her and she couldn't see how bad the tongue was so she didn't know to freak out about it!

In other goings on, Sweetie built a fort today and was giving out tickets for viewings. I received an unlimited pass that enabled me to visit as often as I liked and for as long as I liked and I get to keep the ticket to use on other days too!!!

Child Prodigy Comin' Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight Up!

Lovey started asking for violin lessons over a year and a half ago. We put her off, not really sure that the interest would last. For Christmas 2008 the thing she really really wanted was a "real" violin from Santa. Based on the way they treat the rest of their stuff, we didn't feel it was a good investment on his part. Santa is way smarter than us and managed to find a toy violin that looked incredibly real but was the perfect size for her. It had metal strings and metal for the bow string as well. When the bow string makes contact with the violin strings it plays a prerecorded song to the beat that she makes while sliding the bow back and forth. She was in heaven and LOVES "playing" her violin. The other remarkable thing is that this has not gotten broken! Almost a year and a half later it is still intact and in working order.

This spring we decided to look into lessons since she was still asking. My cousin played violin for years so we asked my uncle what he thought & she said she could probably begin. He put us in touch with his son's teacher and voila! we were all hooked up!

Murray took her to the lesson and he said she just smiled the whole time she was so happy! She showed me everything Misty taught her and the names of all the parts of the violin and then gave me a little demo. She was still grinning ear to ear!

Honey had asked to take a lesson as well so we had arranged for them to have their times back to back. Once she got there, she got too nervous and could not be persuaded to give it a try. They went through everything with Lovey and Misty kept offering her a chance to hold the violin, the bow etc but she wouldn't got for it.

Sweetie went to play at a friend's house and is still maintaining her "no lessons on anything ever" stance! haha!

When Lovey was showing us all her new moves, I asked her to show Honey everything she learned and for her to show Honey to do all the same stuff and they were both keen on it. Honey then told me she wished she had done the lesson and wants to go back so we'll see if it lasts!