Random Catch Up Time!

A lot has been going on around here and not much of it has made it to the blog.  Not a lot of it is super-interesting, but I mostly use this space to document life with 4 kids and there are things I don't want to forget.  Here, in no particular order, are some things:

Baby Girl lost her first (and second) tooth this summer.  Exactly one week apart.  She was BEYOND thrilled at this occurence.  As a matter of fact, she would like it to happen EVERY week. ;)  Her brother thought it was great fun to follow the trail of "fairy dust" to the back door.  (Sidenote:  I'm pretty sure the Tooth Fairy didn't USE the back door, so I don't know what he was actually following.)

The boys had their first cross country meet of the season (an invitational with a total of 9 teams): 

 I love how Youngest Boy looks like he's praying.  He was pumped. 

 And then he wasn't.  He got a side stitch, but we didn't know that as we're yelling for him to at least RUN across the finish.  He was walking and we thought that HE thought he was done.  But, alas, he was just crying his little eyes out.  Poor thing.  And he came in with a pretty decent time (16:14.30 for 1.75 miles), especially considering he walked quite a bit. 

 Oldest Boy easily cruised across the line with a time of 20:03.50. 

 We also went to the zoo.  We decided it would be a GREAT idea to go after the kids' orientation last Friday because A) Mr. MOTH already had the day off and B) Our yearly pass was about to expire.  In hindsight (which is 20/20), notsomuch.  Our kids are all morning people.  Going after lunch was a recipe for disaster.  They were hot, tired, hungry, and EXTREMELY cranky.  So were their parents.  My parents did OK, though.

 And, this morning, they left for the first official day of school - Kindergarten, 2nd, and 4th grades.  {SIGH}

Yesterday, Little One had a follow up at the ENT doc for her ear tubes.  I made the appointment thinking that school would have started yesterday but, since it didn't, Aunt Jo came to stay with the older kids while we went.  Little One was NOT happy about leaving and on the way home she just kept saying, "Will Aunt Jo still be there?  Are you SURE?" and "I need to get home to MY KIDS, Mommy!"  As we were driving down the Interstate I was using the cruise control.  She must've been able to see. 

Little One: "Mommy, do you have your shoes on?"   

Me:  "Yes, baby."

Little One:  "Then you need to put your foot on that long thing and make us go FASTER!  I need to get home!"

Mr. MOTH is probably to blame.  My dad followed us down to the zoo on Friday and, because we didn't want to lose him, Mr. MOTH drove well below the speed limit - something that has happened, wait, lemme think, NEVER.  In the back of my head I could hear my dad saying, "It's a speed LIMIT!  Not a MINIMUM!"  Mr. MOTH may have muttered something about the location of the gas pedal.  Little One hears everything.



Red Cake meets Whoopie Pies

In my family, red cake (more specifically the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe of the 1970's - Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet Cake) is a tradition.  It's delicious, yes, but for us it's all about the memories.  You had to beg (BEG!) for one for your birthday, but I'm pretty sure my grandma just liked to see us squirm.  She enjoyed eating it as much as the rest of us, but it is a PITA to make (for those of you abbreviationally challenged, that's Pain In The A$$).  You aren't truly a member of the family if your mixer isn't covered in blood-red stains from creating this beloved concoction.

However.  My Grams would have LOVED the idea of using a boxed cake mix for this.  Truly, she was all about shortcuts.  The problem is, it's the icing that makes the cake and, well, that's the tricky part.  It's not hard, per se, but it's...tricky.  So, because I wanted me some red cake but didn't want the hassle of having my kitchen look like a butcher shop, I bought the mix.  And then I got to looking at the box and lo and behold, there was an epiphany waiting to happen!  There was a photo of "red velvet sandwich cookies" - which is to say they looked like red velvet whoopie pies.  (If you don't know what whoopie pies are, I kinda pity you.  Google it.  You can thank me later.)  But wait!  What if I made the red cake part and then!  AND THEN!  Filled it with the Red Cake ICING!! 

Oh, yes.  I did:

 (Uncle Mark, stop licking the screen now...)

Luckily, my parents were here on Sunday to taste-test.  Lemme tell ya, I really had to twist their arms! ;)  I had to laugh while we were, uh, sampling them because I was just licking the icing off from the outside of mine when I looked at my parents and they were BOTH doing the same dang thing!  It really is the best part.  Good news, family!  I'm going to make these for Christmas and tint the icing green!  Whoopie!

And, because this just makes me smile every time I see it and also because - after starting to run again after OVER A MONTH of injury - it's exactly how I felt:

PS - Even with the box mix, my kitchen still looked like a butcher shop.  Also, I adjusted the recipe per the reviews and added an extra egg and 2 TBSP vegetable oil.  They came out delish but flat.

Hidden Talents

My boys.  A lot of folks say, "Boys will be boys!"  which I find to be kinda a stupid thing to say.  I mean, obviously. But there is something to it, I think.  My boys have the ability to do something that my girls (mostly) just don't have.

They can clog a toilet in the blink of an eye.

Even the industrial ones at Walt Disney World (yes, Jodie, the ones that whoosh crap away at 90,000mph)

Monday evening as I was making dinner, Youngest Boy came into the kitchen and said, "Mommy, it didn't go down!"  Translation:  I pooped and it's stuck in the potty.  Now normally this isn't a big deal.  It happens SOOO often that we have a plunger near every toilet and we just take care of business and all is well.  Except this time.  Instead of the water just stopping (which is what normally happens), it didn't.  And to top it all off, I forgot all about it in the dinner/leave for practice/where's my water bottle/can you please tie my shoes again rush. 

Mr. MOTH came home and jumped on the treadmill in the hopes of mostly completing his work-out before we left so he could keep a close eye on the girls.  He wasn't quite finished when we were ready to leave so the girls went down in the basement with him.

As I'm driving down the highway I get a call.  "What the heck happened?!?!  There's water everywhere!!!  It's dripping through the basement ceiling light fixtures!!"  (You might remember a similar story from a couple of years ago).  Needless to say, we have since had a little chat about when it's OK to just walk away and when there's the need for true panic. 



S'mores by Solar Snack Set-Up

I mentioned before that we've been participating in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry's Summer Brain Games.  We completed Week 5 Solar Snacks awhile ago but things around here are just a bit crazy.  Here's how it all went:

Mostly, the girls just supervised on this one.  You line a pizza box with aluminum foil, cover the opening with plastic wrap and place whatever you're hoping to "cook" inside on a paper plate.  We made s'mores (because that's what the directions recommended and I wasn't feeling particularly creative)(I did want to try to pop popcorn, tho, but I really wanted this to work):

 As you can see, the results were delicious:

For future reference, I would recommend NOT placing the top graham on the s'more until melting is complete (45-60 minutes) because ours just slid off anyways.

I believe we are going to skip Week 6 Take Flight because we spent all last week making paper airplanes.  Week 7:  Light Up the Night looks like a lot of fun and I'm hoping to get to it before school starts.  However, this week was Cross Country Camp - which my boys totally rocked - and we are all exhausted.  And my home is starting to house an entire family of dust bunnies.  And the laundry!  Oy!