Dinner prep

Every once in a while, I like to give a little glimpse into the craziness of our house.  I love doing what I do, but there are times when it is just too much and a mommy needs to get out of the house. 

To babysit someone else's children.  (Yes, that's what I did. Now I realize why I was so very wrong to think that I'd have no problem being a mother for the first time because I'd done so much babysitting.  The two are not alike in the least. That was a piece of cake.  And there was wine.)

Here's how tonight's dinner preparation went:

I was using a meal that I had to add my own shrimp to, so it's basically just seasoning the shrimp and cooking it and then cooking the pasta that it gets served with.

I set the three boys up at the table with some new coloring books and new crayons, (well, Jack with a new doodle pad and sharpened pencil 'cause that's how he rolls), since the box for the meal says it takes about 15 minutes. Blarney is at the bark-her-ever-loving-head-off stage, so I have her gated in the (postage stamp-sized) kitchen with me.

The boys did their thing for about one minute. Then PJ wanted to show Jack how to play the box game (you know, finish the box by connecting the dots and put your initial inside. I just showed him that yesterday) well, Jack wouldn't let PJ use the pencil, there was yelling and hitting and finally Jack spit (!) on the book so I gave him a time out. He screamed "no!" and I gave him the option of a time out by itself or a time out with a spank. He opted for the first, but threw a toy across the room before he went to the time-out spot. That's an automatic smack on the hand for him today since that was his fifth toy throwing for the day, and he was warned. I'm sauteing shrimp and the water is boiling for the pasta, but I go over the gate, smack his hand, and Blarney grabs something off the counter. 

I come back, turn down the shrimp, add the pasta, get the papers from Blarney. She's looking for something else to get, so I squirt her with some water in a squirt bottle as I tell her no, then Thomas is trying to climb over the gate into the kitchen, so I squirt him with some water too, which sends him screaming (it was not my finest mommy moment, admittedly), then Thomas goes back to the table and falls off his bench. 

Over the gate again, kiss the booboo, back to drain the pasta quick so it doesn't overcook, bring Blarney outside. finish up with the shrimp, add the seasonings to the pasta, combine the two and Blarney is scratching the shizzle out of our screen door so I bring her back into the kitchen. Jack hits PJ with a plastic sword and PJ is screaming. I head back over the gate to separate and threaten the two of them with timeouts. 

Then I go back to kitchen to finish stirring, and Blarney has left a puddle on the floor. I pick her up to take her back out onto the deck - this time leaving the screen open and just closing the glass - and realize that she must have walked in it too because where her paws touched my teeshirt is soaked. I ran upstairs to change my shirt and come down to Blarney out on the deck barking, Thomas asking me to read him a book for the thirtieth time, and Jack and PJ seeing how far they can run and slide on their knees on the new laminate floor. I'm counting down the minutes until we're going to need stitches from that new game.

Dinner is ready, but now I'm sweating and exhausted. 

15 minutes my arse.

Wondering how long it will be before I'll have the time to cook something from scratch...

Cookie monsters

A few days ago, I made some sugar cookie dough with this, my favorite recipe for rolled cookies. I cut out some hearts and airplanes - they're boys after all - and made white, pink and red(ish) icing.
The boys had a great time decorating them.

The rainbow colored non pareils were the big hit.

And then...someone went a little crazy with the sprinkles, accidentally opening the "Pour" side instead of the "Sprinkle" side.

It was like dropping chum in shark-infested waters.

The boys went crazy licking their fingers, dipping them in the colorful dots, and then licking again.

It was a rainbow-colored frenzy.

Dipping, licking - more frantic now, since they're almost gone.

PJ probably holds the record for the most non pareils adhered to a person at one time


But Jack definitely won the award for the most consumed

and he got the last lick to boot.

A busy fall...

This season has certainly brought with it a lot of activity!

Last weekend, we went to pick pumpkins at Milky Way Farm for my niece's birthday. My camera battery was dead, so I took some pictures with my sister-in-law's camera, which I'll post when she sends them to me. It was a gorgeous day, and we had lots of fun - hayrides, baby animals to pet, and, of course, time in the pumpkin patch picking out the perfect jack-o-lantern-to-be.


This past week, I had a book show for some grandmothers who wanted to do some holiday shopping for their grandchildren. It was a blast! If you have children on your holiday shopping list, consider checking out my Mystery Hostess show. You can get some great gifts and have a chance to win some free books for your family too! The hostess of my show on Wednesday received...are you ready?...$150 in free books! As you can imagine, she was thrilled!


On Saturday, we took Jack and PJ to the Strasburg Railroad again, only this time, we actually took a ride on the train. Jack was in heaven! We had such a fun time watching him. He'd been anticipating it for months now, since the last time we went, we told him that one day we'd take him for a ride on the "big black choo-choo."

First and foremost, we had to get a big bag of kettle corn for the trip. Sooo yummy - a little sweet, a little salty. (Oh yeah, the diet. Corn is a vegetable, right?)

The trains are just so well-maintained and beautiful. Here's the conductor waving as the train pulls into the station.



Waiting for our ride to start.



Jack was so stinking cute.



Checking out the beautiful farmland.



We all wore our Sox hats, hoping they'd pull through and make it to the series again.

(Missed it by that much!)

Anyway, PJ turned his head into Patrick's chest, and when he turned back, his hat looked like this.



How cute is this kid? He smiles about 99% of the day.

Even though he's teething something fierce.



Finally, yesterday, I tried my hand at Bakerella's cupcake pops for a birthday party last night.

If you want to try them yourself, you might be interested to know that I found the pops a lot easier to make than the bites (same thing without a stick), simply because I couldn't get the chocolate to dry smooth and flat enough on the bottom to get them to sit up and not topple over.

My biggest challenge was presentation, since they were just stuck into a white styrofoam rectangle and I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't really figure it out until we were en route to the party, but if I do them in the future (which I probably will), I'll put the styrofoam on a plate or in a basket, and put colorful curling ribbons - like the kind you buy to stick on top of a package - around the bottom to cover the styrofoam.

They were a little labor-intensive, but a lot of fun to make, and while I don't think mine came out quite as cute as hers did, they still looked good and tasted really yummy.





Not on the Raw Food diet, of course, but what I really liked about them was that one pop was two bites big, and totally enough.

Happy Monday!